Month: July 2022

Top Ten Tuesdays #384: Seasonal Still Haven’t Read

Posted July 26, 2022 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Books From My (2019) Seasonal TBR Posts I STILL Haven’t Read 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. It’s funny, I used my freebie last week for something similar. I focused on determining which books I’ve read or haven’t read from my “most anticipated books releasing a very long time from now.” Spoiler: did not read most of them. For fun, I’ll go back to my last normal reading year of 2019 and see which books I read from my seasonal TBRs… if I do this for 2020 or 2021, I’m sure I didn’t read most of them lol. Unread Books from 2019 Seasonal TBR Posts Spring 2019 – 5 read, 5 unread I managed to read 50% of my seasonal TBR for this TTT – not too bad! I’m not surprised at the books I didn’t read though. I somewhat lost interest in a few of these in general… I kind of think the Julie Buxbaum one is the only one pictured here I would still read! Summer 2019 – 4 read, 6 unread My Summer TBR for this TTT was primarily books that published that year (I think, from what I could see) but I also included summertime goals […]

ARC Reviews: The Dead Romantics and The True Love Bookshop

Posted July 22, 2022 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Man – this was excellent. I really enjoyed the initial books in the GEEKERELLA series but still have to finish the series off. I haven’t read Poston’s fantasy books or anything else but I think I’ll have to. I believe this was her adult debut as well? This story is about Florence and her family as they navigate the loss of their larger-than-life father. She escaped her small town to NYC 10 years prior without ever returning, and now she’s forced to face it all head-on. The Day family has run a funeral home for many generations in their community and Florence and her father even have a special connection to the dead – they both can see and communicate with ghosts. They’re able to help people with unfinished business pass into the afterlife. When Florence heads home for the funeral services and to help out her mom and siblings, she encounters the ghost of Ben – a man she just started working for at the publishing house. The two of them can’t figure out why he’s there but he helps her get through the difficult week at home. There are lots of things going on in this story that I loved. I mean, is she really going to fall in love with a ghost? This can’t end well! The family vibes were excellent – I loved reading about Florence’s mom and two siblings. (There may even be a hint of a companion novel involving her sister…?!) Funeral homes definitely […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #383: Freebie

Posted July 19, 2022 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 1 Comment

Freebie: Highly Anticipated Books Which Have I Read? 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 used to do posts about books publishing a far, far way away that I was super excited for. I thought first about doing another post like this to feature books in 2023 and possibly beyond, but thought it would be actually fun to call myself out for not reading some of these books I was so jazzed up about. I made two posts (one in 2019 and one in 2020) highlighting books coming out in the far future, so most of them should have published by now. Let’s see the state of my anticipated reads! The titles below are directly from my previous posts, so the titles and pub years may have changed. Books Unread Mary series by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows (2021-3) I’m lame and haven’t started this one yet. These books (the Janies at least) are ones I don’t love or get addicted to until I’m reading them. They’re usually super funny and engaging! I hope to read MY CONTRARY MARY before MY ATOMIC MARY comes out. Ugh. Doomed by Laura Pohl (2021) This book actually became THE GRIMROSE GIRLS, which explains why […]

2022 Midyear Stats

Posted July 18, 2022 / Uncategorized / 0 Comments

I’ve done these in previous years but for whatever reason skipped it for 2021. I thought it would be fun to do again this year just to track progress (or lack thereof…). Here are my charts! Books Read 31 Read + 0 Rereads + 1 DNF 10,643 pages read As I’ve said a million times, my goal every year is to try to read less than 50% contemporary fiction/romance. I’m achieving this so far! I’ve seen a major uptick in mysteries in the past few years and it’s been really fun. The rest of these numbers don’t surprise me. Nonfiction has only increased because of cookbooks and I’m also not mad about that. Not super surprising here either – contemporary is my most-read genre and generally speaking will equate to the most pages I’ve read. One interesting segment is that paranormal pages is increased here and nonfiction pages are a bit decreased – probably because paranormal books are longer and nonfiction/cookbooks are typically around the same shorter length. Interesting breakdown here! I’d really have to go in and see how this compares to previous years. I’m not shocked that I’ve read mostly egalleys because they’re the ones I’m “obligated” to read. I love seeing that physical non-review copies are getting love too! With a lot of egalleys comes a lot of digital reading. I don’t read a ton of straight-up ebooks that I purchased – chances are if I’ve purchased and read something, it’s physical. This chart usually looks the […]

July & August TBR

Posted July 14, 2022 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 1 Comment

My monthly TBR feature here shows my progress based on last month’s TBR, my plans for this month, and anything else I might be thinking about from a reading perspective. Sometimes I feature a little poll at the bottom so you guys can help me figure out a certain title I should read from a group of books. July and August TBR I did a ton of TBR posts in the last couple of weeks so I kind of forgot to do my standard monthly TBR! I’ve talked about my summer TBR, the upcoming summer releases I’m excited for, and the books I plan to read in the second half of the year in order to finish my Goodreads challenge. We’re halfway through July now and I’ve finished two books so far (not shown below), so I thought I’d pull together the books I’ll read in the second half of this month as well as August. Review Copies I was able to complete THE COUNSELORS and THE DEAD ROMANTICS (which wasn’t on my actual TBR for the month) so a few of those aren’t here. I started one other book from my June TBR but ended up DNFing it. For July and August, I hope to read some contemporary romances (SOMETHING WILDER, THE TRUE LOVE BOOKSHOP, and THE HOOKUP PLAN). I hope to get to CARRIE SOTO IS BACK over the next month as well, which is more of a contemporary fiction kind of book? Not sure about the romance […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #382: Summer Covers

Posted July 12, 2022 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Book Covers that Feel Like Summer 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 love a cover TTT. I won’t bore you with my usual commentary about how much I love covers but most of these are books on my TBR – the only two I’ve read are the last two books. Here are some fave summery covers!

Predicting What Books I Read for the Rest of the Year // Jul-Dec TBR

Posted July 11, 2022 / Book Lists, Features / 0 Comments

It’s funny because back when I was reading 150-180 books per year, it would be impossible to actually sit down and figure out all of the books I might read for a certain portion of the year. I knew I’d be reading anywhere from 10 to 25 books per month (!!!) so I never knew what random title may sneak in at the last minute and bump something else from the TBR. Now that my reading life is more depressing (for ME) at 75 books per year, I can almost predict exactly which books I’ll get to in a given month or season. I’ve wrote multiple TBR posts lately (spring TBR with only new releases, my summer bucket list and TBR, my most anticipated books – which included books I have review copies for – of the second half of the year) but thought it would be kind of fun to guess my TBR for the second half of 2022. Here’s where I’m at so far and where I need to go: Total Read January through June: 32 books Total TBR July through December to Meet Goal: 43 books (7 per month) I know I have to be realistic when I look at this number and not just assume I’ll read all of the review copies publishing from July through December plus some owned copies. I know I won’t get to EVERY review copy as my tastes and moods change. I need to spend at least 50-70% of November/December books […]

YA Mystery/Thriller ARC Reviews: Very Bad People and The Counselors

Posted July 7, 2022 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

For some reason, Kit Frick remains on my auto-read list even though her books never fully do it for me. I just feel like she’s a known quantity at this point and her books will be moderately good, which is sometimes all I want from a YA mystery? Add in the fact that this was a dark academia set at a boarding school with a secret society and I was ready to give it a read. Calliope is heading to Tipton Academy, where her mom went, with the hope that she’ll uncover some secrets and understand more about her late mother. Six years prior, her mom drove Calliope and her two sisters into a lake and she was the one who didn’t survive. Why did she do it? Where were they heading that day? Was it murder-suicide or an accident? She’s hoping to get some answers about her mom by transferring to the school. She’s immediately invited to join a secret society and finds out that her mother was also a member. Calliope tries to uncover some of the mysteries of her mom’s past while starting to date a boy, getting involved in the secret society’s pranks, taking down a shitty teacher, and making friends. In hindsight, there was kind of a lot going on, but it didn’t really feel that way while reading. I didn’t love her as a character and the writing style really bothered me. Calliope’s inner thoughts were very formal, like she would say “I am heading […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #381: Second Half Releases

Posted July 5, 2022 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the Second Half of 2022 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. Last week’s post featured a lot of upcoming summer releases and didn’t include any I have review copies of. I tried to make this list a bit different by going for my ten overall “most anticipated” even if I have an egalley. Here are the books releasing between July and December that I’m most excited to read!

Bookmark Lit Bulletin | June 2022

Posted July 4, 2022 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 1 Comment

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. June was helped a lot by cookbooks, as is usually the case for at least one month of the year. I went a little crazy during a sale and read 3 out of 4 new ones in June. I also DNFed a book I was excited about, which sucks and took up a lot of reading time before I quit. Luckily I added a new favorite to the list this month in EVERY SUMMER AFTER. 6 books read in June 5 new books • 0 rereads • 1 DNF Pages read: 2080 • Average rating: 3.42 stars Sources: 4 purchased, 2 review Formats: 3 hardcover, 1 paperback, 1 egalley, 1 mixed Genres: 3 nonfiction, 2 contemporary, 1 mystery/thriller Age Target: 5 adult, 1 young adult Check out my 2022 challenge sign-up post for more details, goals, etc.! Popsugar Reading Challenge 2 read this month | 23/40 read total Someone leading a double life, features two languages Calendar of Crime Challenge June’s theme – “father” Breakdown: 1 purchased | 0 borrowed | 0 free/gifted | 6 for review All review copies were […]