Bookish Things I’ve Learned About Myself

Posted September 21, 2018 / Discussions, Features / 3 Comments

This is a little random round-up of some bookish facts or habits I’ve learned about myself in the last few months. My preferences or habits have changed a lot since moving (and then moving back) in the past few years so I’m constantly learning new things about my bookish self. 1. I cannot and should NOT let myself request fantasy books on NetGalley The reason? I am the biggest mood reader when it comes to fantasy books. THE BIGGEST. I rarely read them because I have to be in a specific headspace, time of year, and at a certain level of Goodreads challenge status. I take a long time to read them because I have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to complex world-building and often slow starts (because of said world-building), so I need a lot of time to read them. I don’t read them in the summer either because they’re just not light enough. The fact of the matter is, requesting fantasy books on NetGalley NEVER works for me because there’s a 10% chance I read the book before the pub date. Why bother then?! 2. I don’t need my physical shelves in a specific order To be fair, this is primarily because I have a lot of small/random bookshelves and not a gorgeous library room with built-in bookshelves. I will someday, but not yet. I have two taller/bigger black bookshelves, two smaller white bookshelves, and one little corner bookshelf. I also have one at […]

Gimme the Books (4): Fluffy Contemporary Edition

Posted September 20, 2018 / Features, Gimme the Books / 1 Comment

I’ve written a few posts to talk about books I’m super excited about that haven’t been released yet, but I felt like adding to that title repeatedly like I had been doing was a bit much. See early posts here: 1, 2, and 3. I decided to make this into a realistic regular feature where I do kind of a Waiting on Wednesday wrap-up post for when I add books to my TBR and “jazzed up for this” Goodreads shelf. Upcoming Fluffy Contemporary Fiction These posts are usually more general but I decided to focus on fluffy-ish contemporary fiction for this edition instead! I love books like this and think the term “fluffy” is NOT an insult by any means. Sometimes there’s nothing better than a book that will make your heart happy. All of these books SEEM to fit the bill based on the synopses on Goodreads, but no promises that they’re 100% fluff – how would I know until I read them?! Hearts Made for Breaking by Jen Klein Goodreads | Release date: April 30th, 2019 From the author of SHUFFLE, REPEAT and SUMMER UNSCRIPTED comes a new novel about mysterious boys, first-time love, heartbreak, and the incredible bonds of friendship. 17-year old Lark knows how to survive high school dating: date boys briefly, let them down gently, remain friends, and move on. Her best friends, Copper and Katie, think that Lark is denying herself the opportunity for true love because she does not want to be hurt. They challenge her […]

Review Round Up | Strange New World, One Was Lost, and In Other Lands

Posted September 19, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 2 Comments

In an effort to cut down on posts and burnout, my Review Roundups will feature 2-4 books I’ve read or listened to recently. Sometimes they’re newer releases and sometimes they’re all backlist titles. My ARC reviews usually get the solo treatment. Enjoy the mini reviews! I loved the first book in this duo and was eagerly waiting for book two! It had a major cliffhanger (which I, OF COURSE, didn’t even mention what it was in my review so I couldn’t even remember what happened) that I was dying to see through. I picked up on what happened pretty quickly though, so all was well. This one was not quite as interesting as the first one IMO but that’s because it was just different overall? The first book followed Dahlia 16 as she tried to escape Lakeview and learn what was really going on beyond those walls. Once she found herself in the real world, reality hit her like a ton of bricks. I thought the life inside of Lakeview was fascinating with all of the clones, so I think that piece was more interesting overall. This book, on the other hand, had REALLY cool futuristic technology that was fun to unpack. I didn’t like the storyline as much with book two but it’s not like it was BAD. Just a bit different. For some reason this book also took me a looong time to read – I read the first one in just a few sittings at most. Dahlia 16 learns […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #201: Fall TBR

Posted September 18, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 14 Comments

Top 10 Books on my Fall TBR Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. Check out some of my other related posts like my September TBR list and fall bingo ideas for more books! I’m going to try not to repeat a lot from the lists linked above and really focus on the top books on my TBR. I know fall technically extends into the majority of December, but my holiday TBRs get a little crazy… I don’t want to get sidetracked. This post will feature my planned books for my book club over the next few months, general fall-oriented reads (like heavier stories or spooky ones), and general books I need to get to. EOY Book Club Picks Yes, my book club has already picked our books for the next few months! We read quite a few series-starters last year, so we decided it only makes sense to plan our months based on when the sequels come out. We noticed a gap between now and when LADY’S GUIDE’s releases in October, so we added in a fun and quick romance choose-your-own-adventure (MY LADY’S CHOOSING) for late September. We have the next NOAH SHAW book for November and ARCHENEMIES for December. […]

“Cozy Mysteries” – My New Obsession

Posted September 17, 2018 / Book Lists, Discussions, Features / 3 Comments

I mentioned in a few recent posts how I’ve been obsessed with the Aurora Teagarden Mystery movies on Hallmark Channel (based on the book series) and my coworker recommended the Rose Gardner Mystery books for me to read as well. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been loving these style of books/movies without really knowing what they were called. I’ve HEARD the term “cozy mysteries” but never really knew what it meant… until I finally made the connection. Wikipedia says that they feature these main qualities: sex/violence are downplayed (compared to straight up murder mysteries) small town location – intimate communities amateur detectives, often women who are well-educated with public-facing jobs (they know everyone in town) and have some kind of insider connection to the police often dismissed as nosy busybodies even though they’re working it and solving murders 💁🏼 murderers are regular community members with some kind of revenge/greed/jealousy as motive What started it all After the Christmas season wrapped up and all of my holiday Hallmark movies were binged, I missed Candace Cameron Bure. I don’t remember how I exactly stumbled across the Aurora Teagarden Mysteries but I thought: why not? I was in the mood for more CCB so I went for it. I LOVED THEM. I binged the first few movies over the course of a week or so, while Chris was working overnight, and didn’t stop thinking about them when I wasn’t watching. There were also THREE new releases in the “series” this year (January, April, and July) that I […]

Lauren Lately | September 2018

Posted September 14, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 2 Comments

Because my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups got out of hand, I wanted to break up my monthly wrap-ups into two posts: one personal and one bookish/bloggy. I created Lauren Lately here to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, recipes I’ve loved, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point of the month and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ Chris’s sister and her fiancee visit | We had Chris’s sister and her fiance come over for dinner and a fire at the end of August. We went to check out their place the previous week and they came around to see our new place after. We went to the local restaurant on the lake, got frozen yogurt in the next town over, and then had our first fire in the fire pit. Travel to New Jersey for the dance practice | I took a quick overnight trip to New Jersey with my friends to have a dance practice before the wedding. We had a decent time practicing and felt fairly confident about our upcoming performance during the sangeet! The rest of the weekend just involved wrestling shows. Wedding weekend | From Thursday through Sunday over Labor Day weekend, we were down in NJ for my friends’ wedding. We had multiple days of outfits and activities, […]

Birthday Trip to Charlotte

Posted September 13, 2018 / Lifestyle, Personal / Information / Etc. / 6 Comments

As you may know from a couple of other posts, the fates were on my side when the football schedule was determined back in April. I knew my team (obviously the Panthers – if you don’t know that by now, what have you been doing on this blog for the past 4 years?!) would be playing my mom’s team (Cowboys) at some point this season. When the schedule was released, we learned our teams would be playing each other in the SEASON OPENER, ON MY BIRTHDAY, IN THE PANTHERS HOME STADIUM. Talk about the best effing birthday I could imagine. We immediately hopped on getting tickets (me, my mom, my stepdad, and Chris), and the rest is history. We headed there on Saturday the 8th and returned home Monday the 10th for a quick weekend trip to one of my favorite places, to do one of my favorite things, with some of my favorite people, on the best day of the year. Saturday September 8th We technically started our trip on Friday night, when we stayed overnight in Rhode Island to fly out of TF Green in the morning… very early morning. We headed to the airport, got some Dunkin, and boarded our 6:15 AM flight. We were nervous we’d be hanging around the city for hours without a hotel room but we got lucky – they had one available for us to check into at 9 AM! We freshened up and set out to explore a bit. We went […]

Virginia Shreves: Now and Then

Posted September 12, 2018 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I always wanted to read THE EARTH, MY BUTT, AND OTHER ROUND THINGS when I was younger, but was never sure what my mom would think if I tried to pick it out at the bookstore. I decided to give this “classic” a go when I saw the audiobook on Scribd. I later received the sequel, THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING (AND SO AM I) in the mail for review, so I decided to combine them here! I have a lot of feelings about this book. The first thing I feel like I need to mention is that obviously it was written in the early 2000s, so a lot of the words and references are outdated. I knew that going into it. The weird thing is that the sequel coming out isn’t like a “fifteen years later” kind of book. It takes place right after this ends. (More on that later.) Virginia was an extremely difficult narrator for me. She spent the vast majority of the book — I mean every single page — talking about her fatness and her (horrible) family reacting to her (horribly). I can feel for her on a lot of things, because I personally get it, but oh my god. It’s a very unhealthy and outdated (IMO) view of being a fat teen. She HAS to be sad and pathetic and unhappy with herself until she “gets healthier” in a very cliche way. I just don’t feel like there’s room for this portrayal of fat girls […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #200: Hidden Gems [Giveaway!]

Posted September 11, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 3 Comments

Hidden Gems – Books & Authors Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. In honor of my 200th Top Ten Tuesday post, I decided to do a giveaway! This week’s topic is PERFECT for it because all of these books and authors need more recognition and love. The giveaway at the bottom of the post will allow one person (international if The Book Depository ships to you) to win a copy of one of the books featured in this post. I decided to focus this post on specific books as well as authors in general, so there could be more than 10 books to pick from here. Away we go! Marci Lyn Curtis Not only is Marci incredibly sweet, her books are straight up wonderful and some of my all-time favorites. I love how she manages to mix humor in with sadness or more serious topics, without her books ever feeling preachy or too “issue-y” … hopefully that makes sense LOL. I loved both of these and I don’t know if I could pick a real favorite between the two, which is why she gets a double shoutout here. Both feature humorous and/or snarky MCs and cute boys and so much […]

Finally Mastering My Oily Skin: Current Skincare/Makeup Routine

Posted September 10, 2018 / Health & Beauty, Personal / Information / Etc. / 6 Comments

I have been struggling with oily skin forever. I’ve gone through so many products and been educated on so many different things over the years… and I’ve FINALLY found a routine that keeps me minimally oily for the vast majority of my day. I had a routine recently that kept my fairly matte but would get cakey by mid-day because the products never fully settled into my skin. I switched to a new amazing concealer and powder routine that allows me to go from 8 AM until 4-4:30 PM without blotting my face. This is huge for me because usually I start to get oily after just a few hours of having my makeup on. If you’re curious about my journey to get here, here are some makeup and skincare posts and product reviews: old skincare routine and updates, new makeup, and favorite beauty brands. This post does not include other makeup items (like lips, eyes, etc.) — it’s purely focused on the face and how I combat oily skin! Check some of the other posts and my Lauren Lately updates for more. Skincare I have a slightly weird routine for this because I always want to use oil-reducing, mattifying products, but using too many can actually dry out your skin and produce more oil. Because of this, I try to alternate them with more hydrating products and balance things out without giving too much moisture. I have “A” and “B” days to categorize my morning routine and parts of my evening routine, […]