Month: January 2018

Books Read by Month

Posted January 17, 2018 / Discussions, Features / 2 Comments

I take a look at my reading stats at the end of every year (and sometimes also in the middle of the year), but I don’t often pull them all together and compare year-over-year. I’ll probably do a very deep dive into this when I hit the five year mark (of tracking my info in the book spreadsheet), but I wanted to copy Cristina’s post first. 😉 She asked how her reading habits fluctuated by year, so I thought it would be fun to do the same. Do I read more in the summer because I’m laying on the beach, or more in the winter because I’m cozy inside? Does my busy birthday month impact my reading? Does a new reading year motivate me in January? I put them all on one chart to make it easier to compare, but it’s hard because my reading numbers in general have (purposefully) gone down each year. Here are some of the obvious things I see and some explanations for them… Noticeable Trends The three months I’ve read the most over the three year period above are July 2015, April 2016, and March 2017. I can’t honestly think about what my life was like in those months off the top of my head, but I was able to look back on those three Bookmark Lit Bulletins to find an explanation. It looks like July 2015 was a good month with high ratings too – I read a lot of shorter contemps, from what I […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #166: Goals

Posted January 16, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 4 Comments

Bookish Resolutions/Goals 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 already posted about my resolutions because I was trying to get ahead of the game, but here’s a very quick recap. (I’m also only including book and blogging resolutions; the post has more personal ones as well.) I’ll be using this post to share some other small bookish goals that I plan to conquer in 2018, which also includes a little bit of spinning off from the resolutions/challenges I signed up for. Official Reading Resolutions Read more here! Continue to not feel pressured to read and enjoy other hobbies Read 50% or less contemporary novels Read books from my shelves – at least one each month but a total 20+ in 2018 Start and complete 3 series next year – at least one reread Develop a blog schedule for each week that mixes in bookish and personal Develop a review system Other General and Challenge-Related Goals Get my Netgalley ratio to 80% and master Edelweiss. I signed up for the Netgalley & Edelweiss Challenge to meet this specific goal. I want to focus on reading review books, even trying the ones I’m not as interested in reading anymore. Even if it leads to […]

Lauren Lately | January 2018

Posted January 15, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 3 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 ✨ Christmassy trip to Freeport and holiday things | The middle of December involved a quick visit to Freeport, ME. It’s the home of the LL Bean flagship store, plus a cute holiday market they put together in the middle of their “campus.” We walked around the town, got dinner at Linda Bean’s, and shopped for final Christmas gifts. It had exactly the kind of Maine Christmas vibes I was looking for this holiday season. We did a LOT of holiday movie-watching this year. We saw Daddy’s Home 2 in theaters and watched countless movies at home as well. I did a few round-up posts for movies if you’re curious. WWE Live event | The same weekend we went to Freeport on Friday, we went to a WWE Live event in downtown Portland. These are non-televised WWE shows and they’re pretty fun. Unfortunately we went to the last Live event before a PPV, so it was a little […]

State of the ARC | 2018 Start

Posted January 12, 2018 / State of the ARC, Weekly Memes / 16 Comments

State of the ARC is hosted by AvalinahsBooks, which is a fun way to share our ARC progress (or lack thereof!). Instead of linking up monthly, I’ll be making a quarterly post to check in on my ARC-related progress, especially as it pertains to my 2018 Netgalley & Edelweiss Challenge progress. I will not be including physical ARCs here because most of them are borrowed from friends and/or I don’t have as much trouble reading ones from the publisher. This will only be to help me with NG & EW. Current Netgalley Percentage: 72% Each quarter, I’ll recap the ARCs I read from my Netgalley and Edelweiss accounts… ARCs Read: 2 (because this is the first month, I’ll just share the ARCs I’ve read so far in January to kick it off) …and then I’ll share which ones I have left to read, listed in release date order. Coming Soon / Unpublished: 8 Backlist / Already Published: 18

2018 Planner Life

Posted January 11, 2018 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 15 Comments

One of the things I’ve struggled with, especially since starting the blog but definitely BEFORE I had one too, is finding and successfully using a planner for an entire year. I’ve tried soooo many brands, methods, and styles, but essentially none of them stick. I’ve tried separating my three lives (blog, work, and personal) into separate ones, as well as combining them all together. Seriously… nothing works. Here’s list of posts about planners of yesteryear, in case you think any of my misery may help you. Planner-Related Struggle Bus My Planners/Organizational Series Lauren Lately ft. Do It All Planner Five on Fridays ft. Day Designer Five on Fridays ft. Happy Planner and Reading Notebook Book Bag with my Erin Condren and Foxy Dori Planners Reading Notebooks/Foxy Dori After all this trial and error, I’m here yet again to share my newest planner acquisitions that started in December of last year. So far so good and my fingers are crossed! Personal, blog, and work: Plum Paper Planner Details: Base model is $32, plus you can include extra page add-ons for around $2+ (this is for the 7×9 size) Attraction: I wanted to make sure the cover really suited me and they had plenty of options! They also had a million ways to customize it through choosing the layout and adding sooo many extra pages/sections to the planner. I like to-do lists and bill trackers, plus having the morning/afternoon/night layout. They’re incredibly similar to the Erin Condren planners and cost about $20 less. Cute […]

Haven Point Seasonal Companion Series

Posted January 10, 2018 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When I saw Hannah’s review roundup for the Haven Point series, I knew I had to add it to my list ASAP. She talked about all of the fun reasons to give them a try and every single one appealed to me. I love books set during the holiday season or during the summertime, in a quaint little town that is charming during both times of year. (This is very obvious at this point, I think!) It was tough because I couldn’t figure out how to read them all according to the season. Half of the books happen in the summer while the other half are in the winter/during Christmas. I decided to start the series in December to enjoy the Christmas feels, then feeling a little summery in between as a break. I’m going to keep my reviews short and sweet here, with a few highlights and lowlights about each book. Snow Angel Cove Quick summary: Eliza and her daughter, Maddie, are excited to start over in the new town of Haven Point, where she has a job at an inn. When it burns down exactly when she comes to start work, fate brings her into the home of millionaire Aidan Cane instead. At Snow Angel Cove, she works for Aidan as he prepares for his family to come for the holidays. Seasonal feels: Winter – Christmas Meet cute/backstory: Maddie runs into the road and nearly gets hit by Aidan’s car when he hits black ice. Eliza protects her daughter and […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #165: Meant to Read

Posted January 9, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 13 Comments

Ten Books I Meant to Read in 2017 But Didn’t Get To (and Plan to Get to in 2018) 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 could probably list all of the books on my TBR because good lord, Lauren. I feel like I always get sidetracked about random new books or series instead of ever paying attention to books I’m excited about. I actually own ALL of these freaking books except for the last one, which I have repeatedly checked out from the library and not read. I am the worst. 2018 Priorities Royce Rolls by Margaret Stohl /// A Week of Mondays by Jessica Brody The Fallen Kingdom by Elizabeth May The Cursed Queen by Sarah Fine /// Windwitch by Susan Dennard By Your Side by Kasie West /// In This Moment by Karma Brown If Birds Fly Back by Carlie Sorosiak // Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu Far From the Tree by Robin Benway

If We Were Having Coffee…

Posted January 8, 2018 / If We Were Having Coffee, Personal / Information / Etc. / 9 Comments

I LOVE reading personal posts from other bloggers and seeing Jamie’s “If We Were Having Coffee” feature take off is so fun. Laura and Lindsey also have some great spin-offs of this feature too. I was very tempted to also make mine margarita-related (like Lindsey) but coffee is so ingrained in my daily life that it just makes sense to keep it. If you’re not familiar, it basically involves a fake little conversation about what’s been happening in our lives lately. Read on to see what’s been happening lately and feel free to chat back in the comments! If we were having coffee… I’d tell you that I’m currently participating in Bout of Books and hope to make some good progress this week! I binge-read multiple books over the weekend and will start off the readathon with A TAXONOMY OF LOVE today. I’m off to a great start this year (especially because I started and finished two books yesterday!). What are you currently reading and/or listening to? If we were having coffee… I’d say that I’ve felt super energized by reading again now that my 2017 ban of reading between Christmas and NYE is over. I reached my goal of 150 books on the 26th and didn’t want to finish the year on an random number (I would have had to push to 155 books if I was going to keep reading), so I just stopped for the rest of the year. It felt weird to not read; I ended up binge-watching some […]

Bout of Books 21 Sign-Up & Tracking

Posted January 6, 2018 / Book Challenges, Features / 2 Comments

Bout of Books (January 8-14) I’m here for another round of Bout of Books. I don’t remember if I participated last time it came around (probably) but I wanted to focus up on reading early in 2018. I set my Goodreads goal a lot lower this year so I’m not pressured to read, but for some reason I feel really invigorated to read ASAP. Here are more details about this challenge… The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda Shofner and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 8th and runs through Sunday, January 14th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 21 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. – From the Bout of Books team My goal: My reading goal for 2018 is 120 books, which equates to 10 per month. I usually average more than 10 per month but I want to take it easy. I don’t mind blowing my reading out of the water, but I would prefer to not stress about it. ANYWAYS, reading 10 books per month means about 2.5 books per week. Bout of Books is a week long, so I’ll set my goal to 4-5 books during Bout of Books, including two specific books (and one category of book) that I’ll be talking about below in the TBR […]

Review Round Up | The Language of Thorns, Every Heart a Doorway, and War of the Cards

Posted January 5, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 11 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! Ayama and the Thorn Wood This story really hooked me after the first couple of pages; what an interesting collection of stories this already is shaping up to be! I liked this story a lot. I always struggle with reviewing short stories but Bardugo’s writing style is gorgeous and addicting. The Too-Clever Fox Another excellent one. This one was very clever (lolz) and I didn’t expect that ending. Loved it. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be ~learning lessons~ from these but I am so bad about fables haha. The Witch of Duva Another excellent one. This one was very clever (lolz) and I didn’t expect that ending. Loved it. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be ~learning lessons~ from these but I am so bad about fables haha. Little Knife I liked the message of this one. Bardugo is really good at surprising me when I reach the end of each story. The Soldier Prince Gorgeous writing as usual but I’m not 100% sure what happened there, or what the message is? The concept overall was interesting but still don’t know what any of it means or what really happened haha. When Water Sang Fire I wish I had a better memory of the other Grisha […]