Top Ten Tuesdays #257: Book Titles

Posted October 15, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 1 Comment

Extraordinary Book Titles 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. The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton | I’m reading this one for this month’s local brewery-based book club and it’s had quite a bit of buzz lately! I think the title really makes you curious: why does this bitch keep dying? I know that’s one of the main reasons I added it to my TBR last year. My New Crush Gave to Me by Shani Petroff | I didn’t love this holiday story but the cute title and sweater cover definitely sold me. I like puns or plays on words for book titles, so this was an auto-add-to-the-TBR kind of title. The Falling in Love Montage by Ciara Smyth | I literally added this to my Goodreads TBR a week or so ago because this title immediately made me HOPE I knew what the book was about. And I was right! The couple base their summer romance around classic rom-com date montage moments. Girls with Sharp Sticks by Suzanne Young | Yes, please. This title just screams something about badass girls doing badass things and most likely fighting the patriarchy. I knew I wanted to read this book because Suzanne Young is […]

#ReadForGrace Today

Posted October 14, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 2 Comments

Original post HERE Hi friends, just wanted to pop on here quickly to remind you that today we are reading in the memory of Grace at Rebel Mommy Book Blog, who lost her battle to cancer over the summer. Today is her birthday. She was one of the brightest lights and sweetest people in our community, so we are reading books she loved or books she had left on her TBR to honor her. Consider joining us and please consider making a donation to one of the following: Her breast cancer charity of choice was Metavivor – donate here Her husband and family are participating in Making Strides for Breast Cancer on 10/20 – donate to their team here Today you’ll find some photos on Instagram or messages on Twitter using the hashtag, sharing our reads and memories of Grace. Please check them out and share if you’d like! I made sure to post a classic Grace picture on Instagram, where she was always found with a Kindle on her lap and a coffee in hand. I’m excited to get started on this book today. View this post on Instagram Happy birthday to Grace 📖☕️ Today I wanted to honor her memory with a classic coffee-and-kindle-in-lap picture, which she was well-known for! I’m starting TWICE IN A BLUE MOON from Grace’s TBR (and it’s by one of her favorite author duos) to #ReadForGrace today. More details on the blog. 💛💜 ——— #book #read #reading #books #currentread #currentreads #igreads […]

Reorganizing My Goodreads Shelves

Posted October 11, 2019 / Discussions, Features / 6 Comments

I watched and enjoyed Kristin’s video about how she organizes her Goodreads shelves, and then followed it up with Cristina’s post about how SHE reorganized her shelves (inspired by the aforementioned video). Both of these really inspired me to reorganize my shelves too because I’m always overwhelmed by my books and can never figure out how to actually find the books I want to read next. I could sort my to-read shelf by release date or date added, but it’s so hard to dive deep and remember that there are genuinely books on there I want to read and keep forgetting about. What I was working with I previously created a “consideration” shelf and did a bunch of moving around a few years ago. I’ve also done a decent job of adding books I’m genuinely considering but on the fence about. However, I knew I could make this shelf work even better for me. I already had a lot of other non-exclusive shelves that I love using, so I wasn’t planning on changing those. I thought it would make more sense to fix up my exclusive shelves. My “want to read” shelf was the biggest issue, with over 2,000 books on it. I had to figure out how that shelf could work for me. (This screenshot is from right after I purged a bunch from one of my shelves so the numbers are a little off.) You can see that I also have an “up next” shelf, which usually features […]

Fall Bucket List

Posted October 10, 2019 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

Usually I write some kind of fall-based post or bucket list in September, when my birthday and all the fun things start to hit, but I wasn’t in the mood to deal with anything until right now. It doesn’t help that my Summer Bucket List wasn’t really completed until the last day of September, when I ate my final lobster roll for the “season” and finished my post about it. In any case, I do have some fall goals I’d like to accomplish! Bookish (1) Read 5-7 spoopy/falltime books (by Lauren-standards). I’m not one for horror or anything overly creepy, but I DO enjoy a good thriller or paranormal story occasionally, especially during October. For fall in general, I love reading thicker books or deeper ones, like fantasy or retellings. I just know that October-November are all about non-contemporary romance reads for once in my life. I hope to read at least five but hopefully seven books that I would personally qualify as good seasonal reads! (At the time of posting this, I have already read or am currently reading a couple of these below!) (2) Finish the yearly challenges that I logically can I just posted my final push for challenges TBR/planning post the other day. If you read that, you can see that I’ll be almost completely done with my year-long challenge goals in November… if all goes according to plan! I do have the Monthly Motif Challenge that needs to be done in December, but the “last […]

Review Round Up | Girls’ Night Out, Maybe This Time, and Past Perfect Life

Posted October 9, 2019 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 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! Backlist Review I’m glad that my adult fiction book club is making me read backlist Kindle books I’ve purchased! I’ve been really trying to get more into actually *reading* the adult mystery/thrillers I put on my TBR. The premises always excite me and then they sit and stew, never getting read. Anyways, GIRLS NIGHT OUT features Natalie, Ashley, and Lauren, as they “enjoy” a friendship-saving (hopefully) trip to Mexico. The book alternates between their points of view in the present and Ashley’s in the past, because she goes missing at the start of the book. Overall, this book was broadly fine? I was usually in the mood to read it, once I got going, but it it wasn’t necessarily unputdownable. I couldn’t keep ANY of the characters straight for the life of me. I also feel like the book specifically leads you to believe something happened so obviously that’s not what ACTUALLY happened. I also thought the “secrets” they were hiding from each other were pretty transparent. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief at times either – these ladies are 40 years old and one of them blindly trusts a stranger she meets in Mexico after two minutes? This trip was organized for them to reconnect but instead […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #256: Character Traits

Posted October 8, 2019 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Character Traits I Love & Dislike 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. I have to say, I’m not the best at this! There are plenty of TROPES I love (and many of those have character traits kind of involved?) but I can’t think of things I love in my heroines or heroes. I thought it would be good to include some character traits I also hate because those came to mind much faster lol. ALSO I managed to write over and demolish this post accidentally so I had to rewrite it and forgot things. Oh well. Here’s a half-assed TTT. Traits I Love (1) Feminist This goes without saying and the character doesn’t need to run around yelling that they are a feminist, but it’s important to me that general principles of feminism are on display for YA readers, IMO. I love when the characters are very ~*girl power*~ (but inclusive – you know what I mean) etc. (2) Imperfect I love when I read about imperfect main characters because I made so many mistakes in high school. I did a lot of dumb shit for whatever good or bad reasons/intentions. I like to put myself in the shoes of people […]

Final 3 Months | 2019 Challenge Push

Posted October 7, 2019 / Book Challenges, Features / 0 Comments

Here we are – somehow in the final three months of the year. Feels like just yesterday I was listening to Weezer’s version of Africa on repeat with my friends on New Years’ Eve and eating way too many tacos. I digress… I’m here to do my usual “holy shit I need to finish my challenges ASAP because they year is almost over” post. I had the realization that I should really try to push through in October/November: Random goal I need to tweet now to put out into the universe: finish all of my 2019 reading challenges in November so I can read 90% Christmas books in December — Lauren (@bookmarklit) September 20, 2019 I’m obviously a huge fan of a good ol’ holiday romance, so unless those fit in with some challenges, I’d love to get my challenges out of the way as soon as possible! I’m going to talk about my current status for all of the 2019 year-long challenges I signed up for, plot out when to read certain books, and decide if I still even care about meeting certain goals. Spoiler: probably not. Monthly Motif Challenge This one is realistically the easiest to track what I might want to read because each month is a specific prompt to follow along with. I’ve been aiming to read two per month, and have succeeded so far, but we’ll see what happens for the rest of the year. Status: 2 books completed per monthly motif Left to complete: 1-2 books […]

ARC Reviews: She’s the Worst and Love on Lexington Avenue

Posted October 4, 2019 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

I have to say, I was super excited about this one but a bit nervous too. I didn’t like Spieller’s debut that much and was nervous that I’d be disappointed here. Honestly, it was so cute and fun! I read it in one sitting on a Saturday morning when I was desperate to read a little more on the final day of the month; it was the perfect book to just read at once. April and Jenn were definitely “opposites” in most ways, with Jenn being the perfect sister that always helped their parents and got good grades. April was a bit younger and reckless, playing soccer instead of working at the family’s store. It was hard to read about how easily they grew apart, and the fact that it was honestly mostly their parents’ fault. I don’t want to dive too much into them because I HATED THEM SO MUCH but they were incredibly unreasonable. I have to say, they were some of my least favorite parents I’ve read about. April decides to give Jenn a tour of their memories around LA, where they live, and I won’t disclose Jenn’s secret, but it was a good idea for their sister day. They had a lot of issues to resolve within their relationship, as well as how they were impacted by their parents’ choice to open – and fight about – an antique store for years. There were other things touched upon, like Jenn’s feelings about college, her boyfriend, and […]

Summer of Lobster Rolls (Bucket List & TBR Update)

Posted October 3, 2019 / Food & Drink, Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 2 Comments

While I created a whole bucket list and TBR for the summer, the goal I was most excited for was about FOOD. I made it a goal to eat 10 lobster rolls in the summer of 2019. I initially planned to literally just eat 10+ of them without caring where they came from, but I ended up with so many suggestions on where to go from people! Chris and I both love seafood and trying new places to eat, so I turned my general goal into an actual Lobster Roll Bucket List with 10+ different restaurants or seafood shacks to try this summer. I’ll go through the delicious list and photos, then recap on my TBR progress and how I did on the rest of my bucket list afterwards. 1. Jessica’s Garden We kicked off the list with Jessica’s Garden, a place I’ve been meaning to try since I saw it in a few articles in the past couple of years. It was an adorable place with ice cream, smoothies, hot dogs, mac and cheese, and lobster rolls (of course!). As you’ll see when we go through the list, I’m a bigger fan of cold lobster rolls (lobster salad with mayo) than hot with butter. 2. The Blue Oar There’s this gorgeous restaurant by a boat launch, right on the water of the Connecticut River, that we enjoyed early in the summer. I took some time off for Fourth of July because Chris gets that week off, and we made […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | September 2019

Posted October 2, 2019 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin wraps up the last month in reading and what was on the blog, as well as what’s coming up next. You can check out my book haul, books read, posts shared, challenge updates, etc. You can read past bulletins here. If you’re looking for more personal updates, you can check out my Lauren Lately feature; it highlights my life events and non-bookish fun from the previous 30 days. I was sure keep up the general butt-ness of my reading life in September. I do *know* that this happens in September because I typically spend more time out and about, with friends and family, and taking trips to celebrate all the good things September brings for me. Not mad about it! Because of Contemporary-a-thon though, I WAS able to make a good push right at the end of the month to ensure I didn’t totally blow it. I technically only finished one book during the readathon, but I started two others and actually finished them both the day after the readathon, aka the last day of the month! All of the books from this month: Check out my 2019 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 0 read this month | 35 read total | 88% complete None this month Monthly Motif Challenge 2 read this month | 22 read total This month: Animal, number, color, name Retellings Reading Challenge 0 read this month | 5 read total | 50% complete None this month […]