Author: Lauren (Bookmark Lit)

WWW Wednesdays #18

Posted November 19, 2014 / Weekly Memes, WWW Wednesdays / 5 Comments
WWW Wednesdays #18

WWW Wednesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading, where we answer three questions each week: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What are you planning to read next? I’m still plugging along through The Scorch Trials. I’m not as enthused about it compared to The Maze Runner, but it’s still interesting enough. I feel like by the end of this series it’ll be more about the journey than the destination, but I still REALLY want to know what the fuck is going on. My goal is to finish the series by the end of the month; sometimes I think it would be better for me to just read the books instead of listen to them. Oh well. For my current read, I just started Biggest Flirts, in The Superlatives series. I’ve had the ARC for the second book, Perfect Couple, on my Kindle for months. I obviously wanted to read book one first. I’m enjoying it so far. I don’t like the trope of “I don’t need a boyfriend and will remain emotionally detached from boys until this one boy changes my mind,” but I’m hoping there will be a more unique take on the book based on the plot summary. We’ll see! Eeep I finally finished One Past Midnight and really liked it! It was definitely a unique take on the parallel life concept that I love so much. I feel like the book got started very quickly, which was nice, but I wished there […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #16: Sequels

Posted November 18, 2014 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 8 Comments
Top Ten Tuesdays #16: Sequels

Top Ten Sequels I Can’t Wait to Get Top Ten Tuesdays are hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, where we give our top ten books to answer each prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. This is a great one for me. I’m going to include the sequels that haven’t been released yet as well as the second books in series I just haven’t gotten yet. I love series and don’t leave them open-ended that often, unless the next book hasn’t been released yet. I joined the All About YA group on Goodreads, which has a place for you to track your series – it’s been really helpful! Most of my unreleased sequels don’t even have covers yet 🙁 I need a time machine.

Review: Yolo

Posted November 17, 2014 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments
Review: Yolo

The Internet Girls/Winsome Threesome are back! I was so excited to see this book in Barnes & Noble a few months ago. I read the Internet Girls series back when the books first came out and loved the style. The books are written in instant messaging format, so they’re super quick reads. The first three books in the series were written over seven years ago and followed three best friends through high school. This follow-up book brings the three girls into college, where there are new forms of technology and social media to deal with. I loved hearing about their new college experiences but wish I remembered more about the previous three books. Since I read them so long ago, I didn’t remember much about the boyfriends or their social situations; I only remembered basics. Luckily that was enough to get me through the book without much confusion! I liked that this book was a realistic portrayal of college life and how it affects friendships and relationships. I had experienced almost everything these girls did when I went away to college. In some ways, their stories seemed a little superficial or stereotypical… but I still think they were realistic. It’s not that easy to fully explain what each character is thinking or going through when you’re only using IM format. Regardless, the three girls were dealing with very different issues, so it seemed to encompass the variety of “paths” people choose during college. Angela, at one point, had an experience […]

Bookmark Lit Bulletin: Mid-November 2014

Posted November 15, 2014 / Bookmark Lit Bulletin, Features, Wrap-Ups / 4 Comments
Bookmark Lit Bulletin: Mid-November 2014

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 the weekly Stacking the Shelves or Sunday Post 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!November has been fairly laid back so far, considering how busy I was through September and October. The first weekend was spent down in New Jersey for BrickFair 2014. We stayed with some friends and attended the Lego convention that weekend. It was a lot of fun seeing everyone’s creations. It inspired us to get a little more creative with our Lego collection; instead of just building existing sets, we’re hoping to design some of our own things soon. I love the mosaic style pieces, where the bricks can create an image. The Rosie the Riveter one impressed me the most! I remain obsessed with Taylor Swift’s new CD, 1989. I finally reached the point where I have a few favorite songs that I can’t stop listening to. “Blank Space” is my favorite, and I also LOVE “Style,” “All You Had to Do Was Stay,” “Out of the Woods,” and “That’s How You Get the Girl.” I’m also (unnecessarily) getting hyped up on Christmas stuff and have officially abandoned pumpkin spice for the season. That’s right – it’s way before Thanksgiving and […]

Getting to Know You BLOG HOP + Giveaway

Posted November 15, 2014 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 40 Comments
Getting to Know You BLOG HOP + Giveaway

The lovely ladies over at Cuddlebuggery got a beautiful new look for their blog, came back from hiatus, and started up the GETTING TO KNOW YOU Blog Hop! This blog hop is specifically to get to know bloggers and help build a strong community. “This blog hop is to let people know a little about yourself and who you are and to get your name out there! Post ideas include other hobbies you enjoy, favorite movies or music, why you decided to start blogging/writing or anything else you feel comfortable sharing. And since this is a bookish community, please share a book or series that’s special to you.” This post is one of three that I’ll be having over the course of the Blog Hop! I don’t post too much personal information, and since my blog is fairly new, maybe some of you would like a chance to get to know me better. Here’s my schedule of the posts and what info they’ll be featuring: 11/15 – Getting to Know You: Introduction and Special Book Series 11/20 – Getting to Know You: Why I Blog and Other Hobbies 11/27 – Getting to Know You: Favorite Movies and Music I’ve talked before about how the Pretty Little Liars series by Sara Shepard is incredibly special to me. I read a lot of books in middle school and early high school, but very few hooked me quite like PLL did. Remember, this was LONG before there was a TV show. Each time one of […]

200 Word Review: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

Posted November 14, 2014 / Book Reviews / 7 Comments
200 Word Review: Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy

I think I MIGHT like Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy a littleee more than I’d Tell You I Love You but Then I’d Have to Kill You. A little more. I think there’s more of a mystery element to this book than the previous. You follow Cammie as she tries to get to the bottom of what the Blackthorn-related mysteries are. I didn’t care too much for Zack (I’m a Josh fangirl) but I started to be okay with him towards the end. The overall storyline of this book was just maybe more interesting than the first one? The fact that I don’t remember anything about these books anymore has nothing to do with their QUALITY, but everything to do with TIME. I read these back in eighth grade/freshman year of high school. It’s been quite a while! I have a hard time remembering my thoughts and basic plot points of books I just read a day ago, let alone 8 years ago! I’m excited to continue with the series and remember what happened with all of my Gallagher Girls. There are hints that hopefully she’ll learn some more about the circumstances of her father’s disappearance/death too.

Five on Fridays #8

Posted November 14, 2014 / Five on Fridays, Weekly Memes / 2 Comments
Five on Fridays #8

Five on Friday displays the the top five things that have been on my mind this week! It could be book-related, but it may be music, movies, TV, personal life, food, etc. Lazy Sunday On Sunday last weekend, Chris and I were the laziest people on earth. We didn’t leave the apartment, except to sit on our back porch a couple of times. Our front door stayed locked all day from the night before and we hardly moved. It was AWESOME. The day before, we went to Maine to visit his sister for her birthday and spent the whole day travelling (3 hours driving up, 2 hours of time at dinner and hanging out in her dorm, and 3 hours driving home). We felt like we wasted the day because we spent 6 hours in the car. The next day we decided to waste the day in a much better way by being lazy and making the most of our free time. Normally we go to my Dad’s house on Sundays because he has NFL Sunday Ticket and we can watch my football team. Because the Panthers were on Monday night (I don’t even want to talk about how that game went), we just stayed in our apartment all day watching other football games. I took a bath, ate a lot of leftovers, browsed the internet, and just chilled. Starbucks Caprese Sandwich UMM wow. I went to Starbucks in Barnes & Noble yesterday for my lunch break because it was payday […]

Random Bookish Thoughts: Book Ratings

Posted November 13, 2014 / Discussions, Other Memes, Weekly Memes / 29 Comments
Random Bookish Thoughts: Book Ratings

BOOK RATINGS. I saw a Twitter conversation a month or so ago about the ratings that bloggers and readers give to books. These ratings could be on Goodreads or on blogs. This person thought that if someone’s Goodreads ratings average was too high, they weren’t critical enough – and therefore their opinion was not valued in the community. They should not bother with book blogging or reviewing, because they were not actual critics of books. I didn’t even know how to formulate a logical tweet in response, so I let it be. And by let it be, I mean let it stew for months until I was able to come up with this post. But Taylor pretty much sums up my reaction: I think that’s bullshit. I should go without saying that all opinions can be valued as long as they are not particularly offensive, racist, sexist, etc. Who gets to determine if someone’s opinion is valuable or not?? Not some random guy on Twitter, that’s for sure. Let me back up a little bit and talk about ratings in general and my thoughts on them. How I rate books on my blog I use my little heart system here on the left to rate books. I DO use half-hearts (quite a bit, actually), as the bottom of the graphic shows. I don’t think it’s possible, for me at least, to give EVERY book I read a dead-set rating between 1 and 5 without any halves. The 5 heart rating is given to books that […]

WWW Wednesdays #17

Posted November 12, 2014 / Weekly Memes, WWW Wednesdays / 12 Comments
WWW Wednesdays #17

WWW Wednesdays are hosted by Should Be Reading, where we answer three questions each week: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What are you planning to read next? I started One Past Midnight the day before the Ho-Ho-Ho Holiday Readathon started, so I didn’t get much done before jumping into my holiday book. I was able to pick back up with it this morning. So far I’m really intrigued. This has been one of my highly anticipated reads this year because it involves some parallel life stuff in a unique way. I’m surprised at how quickly the plot is taking off; I expected there to me a lot more intro stuff. My current audiobook is The Scorch Trials, book two in The Maze Runner series. As usual, I’m constantly asking myself “what the fuck is going on?” about everything that happens. I have to suspend all of my beliefs when reading this book because it all just seems so crazy. Overall I’m really enjoying it though. I’m about a third of the way through and so far I like the first one better. Chris liked this one a lot, so I’m thinking it’s going to start getting wild again soon. Obviously I just finished The Maze Runner, considering I’m onto the second book now. I wasn’t sure what to expect with this one because it seemed like not the kind of book I would like. The only dystopia books I’ve read so far was the Hunger Games trilogy, so it’s […]

Review: The Fourth Wish

Posted November 12, 2014 / Book Reviews / 2 Comments
Review: The Fourth Wish

*Do not read this review if you haven’t read book one, The Art of Wishing! I don’t recommend that you even read the synopsis for the second book until you’ve read the first book. I was so excited to see how Margo would deal with becoming a genie. My favorite part of the second book was just that: learning how it works and seeing all of the different kinds of magic she could do now. The book jumped right into the middle of the action and confused me because it didn’t pick up right where the previous book left off. Well, it didn’t seem that way at least. Regardless, you soon learn what happened and again, you get the slow release of information about the world. I absolutely LOVED the gender stuff in this book. As you can imagine, genies can shapeshift into exactly what their current master would want to see in a friend, partner, etc. That means that they can switch genders in order to make wishes happen for each person. It was awesome to read about that flexibility and (basically) complete acceptance from both Margo and Oliver on that end. It was handled in a great way because the characters were open about it and had the attitude that it was the person beneath the gender that was important. So healthy and awesome to read! This book kind of reminded me of the Shadowlands series by Kate Brian (really just the ending of the third book). Without […]