Month: December 2014

Bookmark Lit Bulletin – December 2014

Posted December 31, 2014 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 4 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin is a bi-monthly feature where I look back on everything I did and everything I plan to do next. Instead of participating in some of the popular weekly memes, I combine it all into two bulletins per month: one at the mid-month mark and one on the final day of the month. You can learn more and see past Bookmark Lit bulletins here! Christmas was a lot of fun but also extremely busy. Because my parents are divorced and I’ve been with my boyfriend for two years, we have three different families/houses to visit between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The good thing is that my family tends to do things very early and Chris’s family does things late. We can usually hit everything on both days. This year, his aunt said that Christmas Eve would start at 2:00 and my dad’s family was getting together at 4:30. We figured we’d hit his family’s gathering first, then go to my dad’s house for 5:00, then come back to his aunt’s house after because they’re usually together late. No one showed up to his family’s Christmas Eve on time, even though they all said they were going to. We ended up sitting at his aunt’s house while they cooked…until 4:30 when we had to leave to go to my dad’s. The other family members didn’t get there until 5:30 apparently. We were pretty pissed because we wasted our time; we weren’t motivated to even go back there […]

2014 End of Year Book Survey

Posted December 31, 2014 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 8 Comments

Every year, Jamie hosts and end-of-year bookish survey to summarize and flail over all of the books we read this year. (Graphic by her, too!) I started filling this one out as soon as she posted it, but decided not to post it until the very last minute… aka, the very last day of the year! (You never know when you could read a new favorite!) I’m linking up over on her blog and encourage you to do the same! I want to read everyone’s posts and get some ideas for my 2015 TBR 😉 As usual, links go to my reviews; if there isn’t a review, link goes to the Goodreads. 2014 Reading Stats Number of Books You Read: 92 Number of Re-Reads: 3 Genre You Read The Most From: YA Contemporary Best Books Best book you read in 2014? 2014 release: Dissonance by Erica O’Rourke – Thank god this book exceeded my expectations. I am someone who is obsessed with the idea of parallel universes/multiverses, so I was praying this one would be as perfect as I wanted it to be… and it was! Definitely an amazing read. Some of the sciencey stuff and the pace didn’t work for others, but this book really made me a happy camper. Backlist: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins – EEEEK. I’m so happy that the Isla Is Coming Readalong happened right as I started up my blog, because I was quickly swept up in the excitement with a lot of other amazing bloggers. This […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #22: Resolutions

Posted December 30, 2014 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 24 Comments

Top Ten Bookish and Blogging Resolutions Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make LISTS of our top ten books based on that week’s prompt… and then we stalk other people’s answers to add a million books to our TBR. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. I was planning on including a post like this within the next day or two about my goals for 2015, so this is perfect! As everyone knows, I started blogging in July of 2014, so this coming year will be my first full year of blogging. I’ve signed up for a number of challenges, since it’s the first time I can participate in the year-long stuff, and plan on doing a lot of stuff in the coming year. Thanks everyone for your support in getting me started! Write more original discussion posts: These seem to get a lot of traffic on the blog and I love reading other people’s opinions. I need to start drafting a post the minute an idea pops into my head, because otherwise I forget all of my ideas when the time comes. Write more top 10 lists and recommendation lists: These are supposed to be a main feature on my blog but I rarely post them. The problem is that I didn’t really have a lot of books to base these lists on. I would find myself repeating the same ones over and over again. With the hefty […]

2014 Statistics Survey

Posted December 30, 2014 / Features, Personal / Information / Etc. / 5 Comments

Two of my very favorite bloggers (seriously, I mean it) Brittany and Andi put together this fun survey about statistics! I never thought “fun” and “statistics” would make it into the same sentence, but they definitely pulled it off. I’m not sure how accurate this will be, because I used my review list in Excel for some of these and my Goodreads lists for others. I didn’t review everything I read this year, so some numbers could be off. As always, book title links will take you to my review if I wrote one and the Goodreads page if I didn’t. Without further ado, here are my responses to this one! Numbers Number of books under 250 pages (not including novellas): 10 Number of books read between 400-449 pages: 7 Number of books read between 450-499 pages: 5 Number of books read over 500 pages: 1 Number of books read over 1000 pages: 0 Number of novellas read: 3 Number of books that made you cry: 9 Number of books from a female POV: 80 Number of books from a male POV: 12 Number of alternating or multiple POVs: 15 Number of DNFs (did not finish): 1 Number of five star reads: 10 Number of one/two star reads: 2 Number of authors met in 2014: 0 Number of book events attended in 2014: 0 Number of books you read in one day: 2 Number of audiobooks: 16 Number of 2015 books you have on pre-order: 5 Number of re-reads: 4 By the Books Book with the highest rating on Goodreads: Aspen by […]

200 Word Review: Don’t Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Posted December 29, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

So far this one is my least favorite. I guess I just feel like it was kind of boring and not much happened. It started out strong because the girls get involved with some kidnappers within the first few chapters, but then they’re just hanging around school and rehashing the event. I think it opened things up to get more interesting in the rest of the series, though. I didn’t remember anything about this book at all before rereading. Nothing ever came back to me as it got going either. My guess is that this one was my least favorite the first time around, too 😉 The romance aspect of this one was essentially nonexistent 97% of the book. I don’t remember much about what happens with Cammie and her love interests in the rest of the series and I honestly don’t know if I care which one she ends up with. However, all was not lost! Here are the things I enjoyed, as always: Strong friendship of Cammie and Bex/Liz/Macey Learning cool things about spies and seeing how their school-related lessons intertwine with what actually happens to the girls Crazy events at the end!

Book Buddies Holiday Review: My True Love Gave to Me

Posted December 25, 2014 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 5 Comments

Book Buddies is a discussion-style review that takes place with one of my two buddies. (Learn more and see past reviews here) We both read the book and then have a private discussion about it. We post our discussion as a review on the last Wednesday of each month. You’ll be able to see our similar/different opinions on the overall book, characters, writing style, etc. – just like a regular review. Half our discussion will take place right here, and the other half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) For this particular review, because it included short stories, we alternated the stories between the two of us and shared our thoughts on all of them. Because of that, I’m featuring six stories but will share my overall rating for the other six stories at the bottom of the page. Overall Thoughts I absolutely loved reading this anthology. There were quite a few stories that left me wanting more, for different reasons. Some of them had such great characters that I would have loved a full story with them. Others felt kind of rushed or unfinished, which unfortunately can happen with short stories. They would have benefited from a few more pages for characterization, wrapping up the stories, or just better developing it overall. Regardless, I would highly recommend this collection of short stories to anyone who enjoys the Christmas season. At the bottom of my post, you can see some of my story recommendations! Discussion #2- The Lady and the Fox by Kelly Link […]

ARC Review: We Should Hang Out Sometime

Posted December 24, 2014 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I definitely wanted to like this one more, but I could tell from 7% in that this wasn’t the book for me. Honestly I didn’t want to finish it even that early. I guess I’m kind of glad that I did, because I read the book in two sittings in probably a two hour combined timespan. It was a quick read and that was fine. I unfortunately also watched one of his videos before starting this book, which kind of ruined things for me. He’s the kind of YouTube person that bugs me. I couldn’t get the image out of my mind. What worked I like that this was told from an awkward guy’s perspective instead of a girl’s. It’s nice to know that, contrary to popular culture, guys get as weird and self-conscious about girls as girls do about guys. We’re programmed to think that they don’t. Contrary to many other people, I actually liked the ending of this book. The realizations he did make about himself made sense to me. I kind of saw it coming, but it works. I could see how that was true. I did laugh out loud three times, so that was cool. What didn’t work A lot of this felt like he was a guy who deserved a girlfriend or dates just because. He seemed to be a nice, good guy, so he was constantly questioning why he never had a real girlfriend. It’s a typical tale of a guy thinking that no […]

12 Days of Christmas Swap Reveal

Posted December 24, 2014 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 15 Comments

I participated in the 12 Days of Christmas swap, hosted by Chaotic Goddess Swaps, and my partner was Jenna! Here’s how she spoiled me over the last 12 days: Not pictured – I Want It That Way by Anna Aguirre Kindle book Christmas signs Fuzzy and comfy socks Peppermint candle Lotion and hand sanitizer Bookmarks Sticky notes and flags Dunkin Donuts gift card EOS lip balm Reeses Trees Godiva raspberry/dark chocolate bar Stickers Coffee flavor mix-in stick Hot chocolate mix (Some items were put together as one gift, hence the fact that there are more than 12 items listed!) Thank you so much Jenna! I can’t wait to use all my stuff! I’ve been anxiously awaiting it, because I wanted to keep everything intact for the picture 😉

Top Ten Tuesdays #21: Books from Santa

Posted December 23, 2014 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 26 Comments

Top Ten Books I’d Like Santa to Bring This Year Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we make LISTS of our top ten books based on that week’s prompt… and then we stalk other people’s answers to add a million books to our TBR. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Well, well, well – I conveniently emailed my parents specific bookish instructions for Christmas. That makes this TTT a little bit easier 😉 The rest of these did indeed make it onto my Christmas list and Goodreads wishlist!

Holiday Review: Coming Home for Christmas

Posted December 22, 2014 / Book Reviews / 3 Comments

I’m going to try a new kind of review occasionally, where I make notes as I read and use them as a quick review of the book! Here’s my first go at this. I’m seeing a lot of similarities between this book and the previous Christmas book I’ve read by Jenny Hale. The main characters have similar personalities, are dealing with somewhat similar situations with the love interest, the love interests have similar personalities to each other, etc. I like it though; she’s really mastered this kind of story. It’s interesting reading this book AFTER A Christmas to Remember, because Allie and Robert were featured in that book and it takes place after this one. It’s nice to know where they’re headed actually. There was a slight difference that just came up… I won’t spoil anything too much, but be warned it could be heading into somewhat-love-triangle territory. I actually feel like I’m reading about the same main character in some ways. In ACTR, the narrator was incredibly self-conscious and anxious, which annoyed me a lot, but she still (eventually) stuck up for herself and just told her employer exactly what she was thinking. Allie, in this book, is not really anxious or self-conscious, but goes through the same things with her employer – she calls him on his bullshit. I like it, because they’re strong and just do what they want, but I can’t help feeling like it’s a little too similar to me. The love triangle situation is […]