Month: February 2016

Top 10 Authors for Romance Newbies to Start With

Posted February 4, 2016 / Book Challenges, Book Lists, Features / 6 Comments

As you (probably don’t) know, one goal I had when starting this blog was to feature recommendation lists for people seeking new books to read within different topics. Top Ten Tuesday kind of took over for this area for me, which is perfect, but sometimes I like to create my own. The Contemporary Romance Challenge hosts a monthly topic to partake in. Sometimes I’ll be posting these in my Bookmark Lit Bulletin posts and sometimes they’ll get their own post, depending on my blog calendar. More info about February’s post topic: For this month’s topic we wanted to highlight books and/or authors people could start out reading if interested in dipping their toes in contemporary romance. If you’re a newbie to the genre you could talk about which ones you’re starting out with. I’m sticking with young adult contemporary romance, because that’s kinda my thing. I’ve read multiple books by all of these authors and they’re all absolutely auto-buys for me. The links to the reviews or Goodreads pages for the books are featured below the graphics! The speech bubbles should be all the reason you need to give them a try if you’re thinking about it 😉 Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins | The Distance Between Us by Kasie West Just One Day by Gayle Forman | The Start of Me and You by Emery Lord The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen | The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han Catching Jordan by Miranda Kenneally | Second Chance […]

Organization Part Five: Goodreads

Posted February 3, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 14 Comments

Inspired by my recent organizational acquisitions (and posts by Hannah), I wanted to share some information about how I keep myself organized – primarily for blogging and reading, but also a little about my personal organization, too. Part Five: Organizing My Goodreads Shelves There have been an influx of Goodreads-related posts online lately (Brittany’s post and Bekka’s post for starters!) plus Hannah’s tried-and-true guide that I think everyone has read. Feeling inspired by these posts, I decided to include how I personally use Goodreads to keep organized. I’ve come a longggg way since I first started using the site in 2010. Hopefully some of these methods help you out too! Time for a Change When I first started using Goodreads heavily when blogging, I noticed everyone had fun shelves that they were using to remember certain things about books. They also had them split up by genre, for easy access to certain kinds of books. I think mine was super general, including just read, to-read, and currently-reading. I decided to at least add in genres so that I could keep track of what I was in the mood to read. This was a REALLY LONG PROCESS. I added all of the books I read and all of the books on my TBR to these genre shelves. I also added a few more to keep track of things further. Step One: Genres, Formats, and More I added the shelves you see on the side (thank god for old screenshots from when my Goodreads looked like […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #75: Historical Fiction

Posted February 2, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 15 Comments

Top Historical Time Periods I’m Interested in (and the Historical Fiction Books I Plan to Read!) Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, 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. This week’s topic can be widely defined as books in the past or future (Top Ten Historical Settings You Love/ Ten Historical Settings You’d Love To See or Top Futuristic Books You Love/ Ten Futuristic Societies I’d Love To Read in Books). I’m not really clever enough to think of futuristic things/time periods and am not a history buff. Because of this, I decided to put my own spin on this topic. I’ll be sharing the top ten historical fiction books I plan to read, and the time periods they happen during. I hope you’ve read some of these so you can tell me what to read first! I’ve only read a handful of historical fiction books, and most of them involve some kind of magical or fantasy elements. I’m not sure why I haven’t read more, to be honest. I am generally interested in some parts of history and think these books could be super interesting. This list will hopefully be a nice jumping off point for me to get going on my history lessons. I started to compile this list by thinking of the time periods that […]

Mini NA Reviews: Faking It and The Score

Posted February 1, 2016 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments

After really despising the previous book in this series (and DNFing it), I couldn’t decide if I wanted to read the rest. Because this is a companion series, I was tempted! New characters but the same Cora Carmack writing I generally enjoy? Why not?! I finally decided to go for it via audio (after testing out a sample, because the narrator ruined it last time). I have to say, this book was the complete opposite for me! The narrators were perfect and didn’t feel like young children reading books about sex. The characters were so fun and the narrators did an awesome job of capturing their personalities. I knew from the first few chapters that this one would give me a totally different experience. Thank god! I’ve been feeling annoyed by anything resembling instalove lately, and unfortunately SOME of this fell in that category. I rolled my eyes a bit throughout but it’s because I’m bitter about romance, and have been for the past few months. I liked their chemistry from the very beginning and fake dating is a trope I looooove. It was also a case of opposites attracting, so that was fun. Beyond the romance, Max had a lot of complicated personal and family-related things going on. Cade did too but they weren’t really addressed at all. It was focused a lot on HER and her problems, and I wish he got more attention. As far as characters are concerned, I wished for more about him and less […]