Cozy Christmas

Posted December 19, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 9 Comments

I loved Kristin’s Christmas aesthetic she posted last month (I totally appreciate and share her enthusiasm for starting Christmas celebrations as soon as possible), so I was inspired to do something similar to fit in with my holiday posts this month. I like to include holiday book reviews and maybe a book tag or two each season. I was also featured last year and this year on Sarah’s blog for her Home for the Holidays feature, so my holiday cheer is pretty much everywhere right now and I’m loving it. I’m posting this earlier than expected because I’m still working my way through holiday reads I expected to finish by today. I wanted to talk about my favorite day of the year ON that day but whatever. So I love Christmas Eve Eve (23rd). I love the anticipation of being so close to Christmas Eve and Christmas day, without the feeling like they’re ending too soon. It’s the day to finish watching all of your Christmas movies in time and being super cozy. So, in the spirit of my favorite day/week of the holiday season, I wanted to put together a little collage of some of my favorite holiday things. Hopefully you can get a picture of what my Christmas usually looks like! Christmas Aesthetic Ugly Panthers sweater and ornament | I don’t own this sweater yet but it’s on my wishlist! I’ll end up with one some year. I just love the idea of having a Panthers-themed ugly sweater. I have so […]

Baby It’s Cold Outside Read-a-Thon: Goals, TBR, Tracking, and Challenges

Posted December 17, 2016 / Book Challenges, Features, TBR Lists / 5 Comments

As you saw the other day, I decided to join in with the Baby It’s Cold Outside Read-a-Thon, hosted by the ladies at Read. Sleep. Repeat. You can learn more about the challenge here and see my sign-up here. Today’s post is for the introduction, but my blog is pretty booked between now and Christmas for sharing update posts. SO! I’ll be tracking everything here throughout the week and then posting a wrap-up next weekend. Here’s the rest of the schedule from their blog: Day 1 (December 17th) – Intro post with TBR goals and Twitter chat at 8 PM Day 2 (December 18th) – Teaser tidbits and the page 99 test challenges Day 3 (December 19th) – Guess the cover challenge Day 4 (December 20th) – Post with fave winter reads or winter releases you’re looking forward to Day 5 (December 21st) – Book spine poetry with a winter theme Day 6 (December 22nd) – Title scramble challenge Day 7 (December 23rd) – Bingo challenge (try to get some bingos) Day 8 (December 24th) – Wrap up post with goals and books read My Goals and Possible TBR I definitely need a little push toward finishing my reading challenge this year! I know I can and will complete it, but I was hoping for more cushion this month. Oh well. I’d like to finish five books during the readathon. This includes completing books I’m currently in the middle of reading. I don’t need to start AND finish the five books for me […]

Holiday Review: Winter Stroll

Posted December 16, 2016 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Basics and Initial Excitement Winter Street wasn’t perfect, but you better believe it made me invested in the Quinn family. I immediately requested this one from the library and it came in faster than expected. So, you also better believe I started reading ASAP! (I also requested the third one but since its a new release that might be a pipe dream this month.) The story takes place one year later, after a fairly big cliffhanger surrounding a member of the family. I won’t say who but it might come up later in this review… so be warned if you haven’t read book one! In any case, the Quinns went through a lot of changes since the previous Christmas where we left them. This story takes place at the beginning of December so the ~holiday season~ vibes are different too. Characters and Story Every character regressed so much from book one. Each person had decided on a partner or a future plan or SOMETHING in book one, but there was a bit of cliffhanger in some ways. In WINTER STROLL, all the fucking characters (okay, minus like two of them) went back on what they previously planned on or chose for themselves. I don’t want to spoil anything but there are some annoying characters that return (Nathaniel, Mitzi) to fuck shit up. Ava can’t make up her mind between her current boyfriend and her old boyfriend. Kelley can’t make up his mind between letting Mitzi back into his life or letting her go. Margaret, […]

Lauren Lately | December 2016

Posted December 15, 2016 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 15 Comments

I always get annoyed with myself that my Bookmark Lit Bulletin wrap-ups are too long and that no one wants to read that much. I get carried away on all sides – the bookish and the personal. So! My solution was to create Lauren Lately to highlight all of the personal happenings in my life: events, activities, shows I’m addicted to, things I’m obsessing over, and goals for the next month. I decided to space them out so this wrap-up happens around the mid-point and the bookish one happens at the end of the month. (After all, I base all of my book stats around the month ending anyways and my personal life is more flexible 😉 ) ✨ Check out my most recent bookish and bloggy wrap-up HERE ✨ Thanksgiving was another busy holiday for Chris and me. Unlike Christmas, we only had to hit up two houses that day. As long as I’ve been alive we’ve had Thanksgiving in the morning/early afternoon with my family. My mom is a Cowboys fan and they always play at 4:30, so we’d have to get our asses home in time for the game. It works out perfectly because Chris’s family tends to do things later in the day. We went to my Nana’s house at noon and had Thanksgiving with them, then we went to Chris’s parents house at 4:00 for the second meal. I loved all the food – as usual – and it was great to see everyone! The long weekend […]

Read-a-Thon and 2017 Challenge Sign-Ups

Posted December 14, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 14 Comments

Before I get into the 2017 challenges I’ll be joining, I wanted to share my intent to join in with the Baby It’s Cold Outside Read-a-Thon hosted by Read. Sleep. Repeat! I have at least one more holiday book to read before Christmas so I want to make sure I fit that in… plus the many others I hope to get done for my Goodreads challenge! As I type this I’m in the middle of three books and have quite a few more to get going on. There are a few challenges along the way and I plan to participate in some of them. The first day has a TBR post and Twitter chat. There are things like teaser tidbits, page 99 test, guess the cover, book spine poetry, sharing winter reads, title scramble, and bingo challenge. You’ll see my goal and TBR post on Saturday! The time has come (the walrus said, to talk of many things…) to start signing up for 2017 year-long challenges! I decided to limit myself to only four challenges this year. I wasn’t planning on doing some of the “easy” ones (Contemporary Romance in particular) again because I finish too early when its my main genre… but then I came up with a fun twist for it. Plus I can’t resist joining in with Andi as the host! You’ll also see I decided to sign up for Flights of Fantasy again, because I want to keep expanding my horizons. Here we goooo, 2017! My […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #119: 2017 First Half Releases

Posted December 13, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 21 Comments

Top Books I’m Looking Forward to for the 1st Half of 2017 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. These are some of my favorite TTT prompts because I remind myself which books are actually – FINALLY – coming out in the first half of the year. I’m good about adding books on Goodreads if I’m even somewhat interested, because I don’t want to forget about them, but even then… I tend to forget about them until they come out. Regardless! Here are ten eighteen books I’m excited about for the first half of 2017, minus any ARCs I already have. They all have release dates between January 1st and June 30th. Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han | April I LOVE THESE SO MUCH. This family is my favorite. I was so happy when Jenny Han announced an unexpected third book in this series because the ending of PSISLY was a bit open-ended. I was generally satisfied with it but I also couldn’t be happier there’s another installment. GIMME. Now. Literally by Lucy Keating | April One of my favorite movies is Stranger Than Fiction, where a man (Will Ferrell) discovers that there’s a woman narrating his life and writing it as a novel. He tries to break free from […]

2017 Netflix and Books Challenge

Posted December 12, 2016 / Book Challenges, Features / 40 Comments

We have a book blog here so obviously we love books… but another thing Erica and I noticed in the community is the love of Netflix (or binging TV shows in general). We wanted to include both of those in a challenge for the year of 2017, which led to… the Netflix and Books Challenge! We previously put together the Netflix and Books Tag that people seemed to enjoy, so we already had some pretty great ideas in place to take it one step further. 😉 This will be a year-long challenge held by Erica from Novel Ink and me! What exactly is the Netflix and Books Challenge? This is going to be a yearly challenge focused on watching television shows we’ve been wanting to get to (both new and old), and reading books we’ve been wanting to read that match some fun challenge prompts. If you choose to, you’ll have the chance to earn points throughout the year (thank you Aentee from Read at Midnight for allowing us to use her point system idea!). Level One for the Casual Participant The first level of the challenge is to simply make a TBR list and TBW list (to be watched) and then link it up with us here. You’ll see prompts below that describe certain book and TV settings, plot points, tropes, time periods, etc. Develop a TBR list based on those prompts and see how many you can actually read in 2017. Then, share some TV shows with us that you plan to watch in 2017 as […]

Holiday Review: Season of Second Chances

Posted December 9, 2016 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Basics and Initial Excitement I’ve had this book on my TBR probably since I started blogging. I added it to my holiday TBR again this year and just resolved to finally read it. I saw that it had less than 75 pages, so why not blitz through it? I was excited to get another book under my belt early in the month because I really want that Goodreads challenge done before Christmas so I can just RELAX until January… maybe. ANYWAYS, I finally got to this one! Woohoo. The basic premise for this holiday novella is that Claire ends up stranded on Christmas Eve, trying to visit her family. Her ex-fiancee, Logan, ends up coming to the rescue. Yes, I know what you’re thinking! Second chance romance, woohoo! Because that’s totally what I was thinking. AND add in the snowed-in element? Sold. Characters and Story Logan, a single father and workaholic, lost Claire because he kept putting his job first. Claire returned to Chicago before the holidays, got snowed in, and was stuck alone in the airport on her birthday/Christmas Eve. Logan comes across her and BAM she’s at his house and feelings are pretty much back for everyone involved. I felt like the two of them were pretty well-done, in terms of characterization, considering how short of a book this was. I definitely shipped them even though some plot points were suuuuper cliche. Wintery Setting and Holiday Feels Being snowed in is one of my favorite tropes, especially if it leads […]

Book Blog Post Ideas and Discussions

Posted December 8, 2016 / Book Lists, Features / 29 Comments

For some reason, I don’t often run out of content ideas. I feel like I always have too many ideas in my head at once and want to post them ALL immediately. It’s an issue. I know, I know – it’s a good problem to have. I figured I would share some really general blog post ideas for book bloggers! Most of these I pulled out of my own head or looked through old posts I wrote. A select few are ideas from other blogs that I credited. General Bookishness Recent book deal announcements you’re excited about Favorite book covers Book synopses that grabbed you right away Your read-bait words/premises Do an old TTT topic you never did (I do this sometimes and credit them!) Create or do an existing book tag Update an old post you wrote if your feelings have changed Favorite ships, OTPs, or families in books Books you were disappointed by OR exceeded your expectations Ask for book recommendations under certain categories you want to explore more Do a deep dive into a specific genre you like: faves, least faves, why read it, etc. Resources you use for finding new books or buying/reading books Do a March Madness bracket for your favorite books during a certain timeframe, within a genre, of all time, etc. (inspired by Andi’s post) Pick careers for book characters based on their stories Recommend books for readers based on their favorite TV shows or movies Books you wish they’d make into movies or TV shows Thoughts […]

ARC Review: Replica

Posted December 7, 2016 / Book Reviews / 12 Comments

I usually break these reviews out into my typical categories below, but I decided to divide my review into the two “books” within one book. You can read this book in multiple ways. You can read Lyra’s story then flip the book around to read Gemma’s, or you could alternate chapters between the two books (as if it were one book with two alternating points of view). I decided to read all of Lyra’s story then all of Gemma’s because it was frankly easier than flipping between the two sides each chapter. TL;DR? I’m happy with how I chose to read this book. It was really interesting as certain events happened and I thought about what happened on the *other* side of the book during that time, and it did make me wonder how it would have been reading the other way. I wish it were easier to do; maybe I’ll reread it someday. I knew that Gemma and Lyra met up for a portion of the book, but they weren’t always with each other. This was helpful because otherwise it would have been really repetitive to essentially read the same story twice! I liked getting inside both of their heads – in the order I read them – to piece it all together. There wasn’t too much overlap between each point of view. So many big reveals and connections came together at each story’s end! I loved seeing how all of their research would crash together. When I read Lyra’s ending, […]