Month: July 2016

Summer Bingo (Remaining) TBR

Posted July 7, 2016 / TBR Lists, Uncategorized / 7 Comments

Every season for as long as I can remember, I’ve participated in the Bingo cards by Pretty Deadly Reviews. I don’t usually set out to complete the card and make a special TBR for it, but I always think it’s fun to see how how many books I read automatically end up on the card. For this one, I feel like I’m already killing it right away… so I definitely want to make a PLAN to knock this one out of the park and complete every square. So! Now that it’s mid-July-ish, I’m going to determine which books I’m going to read to finish filling out the card. Progress So Far Name in title | Defending Taylor – Miranda Kenneally F/F or M/M romance | History Is All You Left Me – Adam Silvera Red cover | Me Before You – Jojo Moyes Part of 4+ book series | The Assassin’s Blade – Sarah J Maas Magic | Caraval – Stephanie Garber June/July/August release | One True Loves – Taylor Jenkins Reid Water on cover | The Islanders Vol 1 – Katherine Applegate Folklore or myths | Fables Vol 3: Storybook Love – Bill Willingham Starts with S U M E or R | Run – Kody Keplinger Political intrigue | The Long Game – Jennifer Lynn Barnes Weather words in title | Mystic Summer – Hannah McKinnon Book about books | The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend – Katrina Bivald Yellow cover | Summer Days and Summer Nights – Stephanie Perkins Monsters | Throne of Glass – […]

Book Buddies Review: Summer Days and Summer Nights

Posted July 6, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 4 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. The first half our discussion will take place right here, and the second half will be on Cristina’s blog! (Link at the bottom) View Cristina’s part of the discussion here. As we did in our previous anthology discussion, we split up and alternated the stories. Here you’ll find the even-numbered stories; on Cristina’s blog you’ll find the odd-numbered stories! We’ll discuss each one at a really high level here and share ratings (individually and overall). Even though the average for all of the stories ends up being around 3.7 stars for me, I have to round all the way down to 3 stars. Not a lot of them left a great impression on me and I was overall more disappointed than happy. The anthology was less season-based and more… weird… than I wanted it to be. I was hoping for a book full of summery contemporaries, with a few other unique ones mixed in, but I got too many meh stories that didn’t meet what I wanted. Womp womp. The End of Love by Nina LaCour Lauren: I liked this one! I was a little nervous about the […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #96: Underrated

Posted July 5, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 14 Comments

Ten Great Underrated Books with Under 2000 Goodreads Reviews & Ratings 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. I decided to go with the absolute lowest number of ratings that I really enjoyed, and work my way up. There are plenty of underrated books worth reading so I’ll try to highlight some I don’t usually mention! I’m also going to try to avoid super new releases because obviously those may not have as many reviews too. These were published in 2015 or earlier. My Reviews: Three Day Summer • Class of ’98 • Aspen • Play On • Hello? • Only Everything Damsel Distressed • My Last Kiss • The One Thing • The Revenge Playbook

ARC Reviews: The Lost & Found and Defending Taylor

Posted July 4, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I kind of just sat here and stared at my screen until I thought of words. This book was really, truly fantastic. If you like character-driven novels with adorable side characters too, read it. If you love road trip stories, read it. If you’re a fan of light magical realism, read it. If you’re a book blogger who can relate to internet friendships becoming real, read it. Honestly… I could go on like this for days. Frannie and Louis are online pen pal-type friends who met on a virtual support group website. They both end up on trips to Austin, TX (for different reasons, but also to see each other for the first time). As a special note of magical realism, the two of them are constantly losing things. They literally just disappear. Frannie has lost letters, photos, super soakers; Louis has lost tennis rackets, fabric, money. They start finding each other’s items as they travel towards each other, as if by magic. The entire story was just so endearing. I LOVED Frannie and Louis, and I almost equally loved their “partners” in the story. Frannie travelled with her cousin, Arrow, and Louis went with his twin sister, Willa. They all had such interesting backstories. Plus, diversity! Arrow was adopted from Vietnam, Willa lost her legs in an accident, and Louis/Willa were half Indian. All of these aspects were so seamlessly integrated into the story and discussed organically; it didn’t feel like diversity for the sake of diversity. Each character was […]

Mid-Year Blogging Update and Goals

Posted July 2, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 11 Comments

HOW????? Seriously this year has flown by. I can’t believe we’re already in the warm months, let alone being halfway done with 2016. I feel like we all say this all the time, but it’s so true – where does the time go? I love doing recaps because I’m lame, so obviously I’m here to sum up my 2016 reading life so far! I also will revisit some of the bloggy goals I created and catch up on progress. As you see in my monthly wrap-ups, I keep my stats updated each time. The spreadsheet I use is definitely the reason for my organization. I use this time of year (in addition to the end of the year) to REALLY go all-out with my stats. It also helps me create new goals or update existing ones. I may decide I really should read more fantasy or more books from my own shelves. I’ll highlight all of the books I’ve read so far in general too. All of the Books Read So Far Random Fun Smallest book read: We Should All Be Feminists (49 pages) Largest book read: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (759 pages) Most read author: Lemony Snicket (13) Books read 300 pages or under: 28% Books read over 300 pages: 72% Most pages / books in a month: 7108 pages / 23 books in April Least pages / books in a month: 4271 pages / 12 books in May I always wish there was some master list of my favorite blog posts from each year […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin – June 2016

Posted July 1, 2016 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 8 Comments

The Bookmark Lit Bulletin was created to wrap up each month and prepare for the next. I share my life happenings, book haul, books I read and reviewed, posts I shared, challenge updates, and more from the previous month. I also let you know what may be coming up on the blog in the coming month. You can read past bulletins here and learn more about the feature here. There were some really busy reading days and some low-key ones. I was either voraciously reading and in the mood for books… or completely the opposite. I’m super ahead on my Goodreads challenge so I’m not entirely worried if I get “behind” on the usual number of books I read per month. Ah, life and TV shows. Average rating for books read in June: 3.92 stars All book covers link to their Goodreads pages Best of the Best • Pleasantly Surprised • Disappointed All of the books read this month: Average rating for books reviewed in June: 4.04 stars This month’s package was amazing – simple and full of things I love! I’ve been pining over a Friends role call tee shirt and this one is GREAT. It fits super well (I always get nervous about shirts, especially in women’s styles) and I’ve worn it too many times already. Ginger also sent one of my favorite books that I somehow didn’t own yet – Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer. (Read this ASAP if you haven’t, omg!) Ebooks purchased (mostly) on sale: Anything Could Happen by Will Walton | […]