Book Buddies Review: What Alice Forgot

Posted February 24, 2016 / Book Buddies Reviews, Book Reviews / 7 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. If something similar happened to you, what do you think ten-years-younger-you would think about present-day-you? Cristina: It’s crazy to contemplate how different nearly everything in my life would be so drastically different, I think mostly due to how big of a jump there is between being in your teens and being in your twenties. I wouldn’t know my boyfriend yet, would literally have a completely different friend set, and have very different overall goals and aspirations. However, I think 10 years younger me would be pretty happy with where I’m at. The teen years are pretty angsty, and I was definitely caught up in the small details of life back then. Yet 10 years later nearly everything in the big picture of my life is going very right in the grand scheme of things. I think younger me would be proud and impressed that I now have a great job, an awesome boyfriend, a college degree, and an […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #78: Not My Usual Book

Posted February 23, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 20 Comments

Five Out-of-My-Norm Books I Recently Enjoyed + Five I Plan to Read Soon 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. This week’s topic involves the ten books I enjoyed recently (within the last year or so) that are generally out of my comfort zone, not my typical kinds of books, or not one of my favorite genres. I find that a lot of hyped books I end up reading don’t meet my expectations when they’re out of my comfort zone. I get “peer pressured” into reading certain books that wouldn’t usually be on my TBR, and I don’t like them. Sometimes it’s better to trust your gut, but some not-my-usual books end up being great pleasant surprises! I split this one up to include five I’ve read and five I plan to read. A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis • We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson • I’ll Meet You There by Heather Demetrios • Magnolia by Kristi Cook • Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer /// I never thought I would enjoy Southern books for some strange reason (too Northern?!), but I’m happy to report that this is no longer the case! The other books (generally creepy, involving aliens, or having military/PTSD themes) are just not my cup of tea – but these were fantastic! Gone […]

2016 Love-a-Thon Mini Challenge: Mix and Match

Posted February 20, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 28 Comments

If you aren’t familiar with the Love-a-Thon, check out the the sign-up post! Mini Challenge: Mix and Match Objective: We all love books, but there are other things we’re passionate about too! Mash-up a non-bookish hobby/passion/talent/fandom with your bookish life. Do it through photos, art, videos, etc. Get as creative as you’d like! One of my goals for 2016 was to actually read less. I am somewhat succeeding with this so far. Instead of reading nonstop, I take breaks to binge shows and re-watch the Marvel movies with Chris, decorate my planner, start a bullet journal, and get back into Lego. I’ll be highlighting all of these fandoms, hobbies, and passions below… and connecting them to books! One of my bigger hobbies (and I mean this just by sheer volume of Lego bricks within my apartment) is Lego. My boyfriend, Chris, and I collect sets, come up with our own creations (the Lego term for this is “MOC,” or “my own creation”), and build together. Here’s one project I worked on completely by myself: a Disney Princess apartment building. The pictures are terrible, so I apologize, but hopefully you see the idea. Lego has Princess sets out right now, so I took some of mine and reworked a lot of the elements. I made the entire building myself. It has three floors and contains beds for multiple princesses: Rapunzel, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, Aurora, Elsa, and Anna. Each of their rooms and beds are reminiscent of the characters themselves and feature pieces from their Lego sets… but […]

2016 Love-a-Thon Kickoff and Questionnaire

Posted February 20, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 16 Comments

I had a really great time participating in the Love-a-Thon last year, so I knew I would be carving some time out to join in this year! I am planning on going skiing tomorrow (Sunday) so I’m not sure how much I’ll be around, but I will definitely be giving it my all for as many hours as I can! This year it is hosted by Alexa, Cee, Hazel, and Mel. For those not familiar with the Love-a-Thon, here’s what was shared on the sign-up post: The Love-a-Thon is an event dedicated to spreading positivity and love. It’s time dedicated to visiting other bloggers/Instagrammers/BookTubers, leaving a comment or two, making new friends and fostering positivity among the members of our amazing community. As in the previous years, the event will include mini challenges, Twitter chats and giveaways galore! The first event is a kickoff questionnaire so other participants can get to know you a little better! Here are my answers… What’s your name? Lauren! I’m the only blogger here at Bookmark Lit. Where in the world are you blogging from? I’m blogging from a small town in Connecticut, USA. How did you get into blogging in the first place? I was a HUGE reader in my younger years, all the way until college. During school, I wasn’t able to read nearly as much as I’d hoped, but I kept it going during summer and winter breaks. (Thank you, lunch breaks at my internship!) Anyways, once I graduated from college, I […]

Review: None of the Above

Posted February 19, 2016 / Book Reviews / 5 Comments

I think this book is so incredibly important and, a lot of the time, super powerful. I’ve never read a book about an intersex character and I don’t know of any others that exist. The only time I’ve even heard of the term is in the show Faking It. I’m always happy to learn more about the letters across the QUILTBAG spectrum, so this was great for that purpose. Before I get into the characters and plot events aside from the intersex aspect, I’ll just say that this book is really interesting throughout. I wanted to see how Kristin would react to the hand she was dealt and she didn’t often disappoint me. I think it was a super realistic chain of events (unfortunately) that could happen to anyone in her situation. Learning more about AIS was great and for that reason, I’m glad I read this one. It was super informative, without feeling too forced. I think my biggest issue was with the audiobook narrator? While she had a great voice that I liked listening to, she felt really detached from the story emotionally… This made me feel like the MC didn’t have a lot of emotional reaction at times. That’s why I say it didn’t feel TOO forced or clinical, but at times it did. There was one thing that Kristin did that REALLY annoyed me towards the end of the book and I can’t get it out of my head. It involves her friends and determining who spilled […]

Taking the Guesswork Out of My Book Ratings

Posted February 18, 2016 / Discussions, Features / 29 Comments

You finished the book! WOOO. Now what? You liked most of it, but there were some things that bugged you. Do you think it’s in the 3-star range or would you give it a nice 4-star? Was it as good as that OTHER book you rated 4 stars or was it worse? 3.5 feels like not enough, but 4 feels like too much. THIS IS THE WORST FEELING, especially if you then have to change your whole decision because Goodreads doesn’t even let you use half-stars. If you decide on 3.5 stars, will you round up on Goodreads because you liked it overall, or will you round down because it really doesn’t feel worthy? I deal with this all the time. I’ve previously talked about rating with your head or your heart, rating books critically, and changing ratings… so clearly this is something that plagues me. To mitigate some of the issues I have with determining a rating, I’ve developed a really easy plan when rating my books. It helps me out the vast majority of the time. I like to follow a couple of different steps if the first one doesn’t work out. There are plenty of books that I read where I just know the rating in my gut, right off the bat. When that isn’t the case, I move to step two. If that doesn’t finalize things for me, I move to step three. It’s a really easy system but it’s made my life a LOT easier.As I said, sometimes […]

Review: Bossypants

Posted February 17, 2016 / Book Reviews / 4 Comments

I love Amy Poehler a lot. Parks & Rec is one of my all-time favorite shows and her book, Yes Please, was so fantastic. I’ve always admired her friendship with Tina Fey and as a result, had a nice soft spot for Ms. Fey. But honestly, I haven’t seen a lot of her work (aside from when they host the Golden Globes together and Mean Girls of course). I bought Bossypants a few years ago in a little indie bookstore because I really wanted to make a purchase. Like most celebrity memoirs I read, though, I decided to go with the audiobook to hear her deliver the jokes. I’m happy I did, because she was awesome. It was like she was talking with you. She had so many smart and hilarious comments about EVERYTHING – motherhood, SNL, hollywood, Photoshop, her childhood, and more. It was awesome. I think it essentially reads like a series of funny essays that she put together in one book, which was nice. It was just a smattering of her thoughts on everything. I’ve always wanted to watch 30 Rock but my interest is even higher after reading this book. I couldn’t give it a full five stars for some reason, but it was so so good. I think I just have little to no interest in Saturday Night Live, which was a huge part of Fey’s book as well as Poehler’s. I appreciated some of the stories but just generally don’t like the show too much. I’ll leave […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #77: Music

Posted February 16, 2016 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 22 Comments

Ten Tropes & Plot Devices as Songs 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 am LOVING these open-ended topics! This week is about music and books. Some suggested topics included books you’d give theme songs to and love songs you wish were books. I am generally terrible about making book playlists, so here’s my own spin on the topic. I wrote about my least favorite and favorite book tropes a while back and that helped me with reference for this, so thanks past Lauren! I also had some ideas because of songs I was listening to. Just so you know, I tried to write this post two other times with different idea before this one came to me. I thought about the different romance-related tropes and plot points and related them to songs that I happen to love. Enjoy the Spotify widgets and some lyrics too, in case you aren’t familiar with the songs.

Mini Reviews: See How They Run and The Fixer

Posted February 15, 2016 / Book Reviews / 9 Comments

I read two mystery/thriller stories in a row, and neither of them disappointed! They both had interesting political elements and little to no romance. (I had grown sick of reading back to back to back (etc.) romancey books in December and needed a new vibe to kick off the year.) I’m bringing some mini reviews your way for both of these highly recommended stories. After the major cliffhanger in ALL FALL DOWN, I was so anxiously waiting to see how things picked up in SEE HOW THEY RUN. I definitely should have reread the ending of the previous book before starting it, because I was a little lost for a while, but I started to remember things as time passed. It did generally take me a while to fully feel invested in the story. I think the action didn’t take off right away and for some reason I wasn’t pageturning like crazy. Don’t get me wrong – some crazy twists and turns happened in the beginning of the book too! It just didn’t click with me right away. In my review for ALL FALL DOWN, I said how I wanted more of her friends and to finally meet her brother. One of these hopes did come true, as her brother Jamie comes to Embassy Row with his friend from West Point. He was definitely a big presence in the book, but her friends weren’t. The pace quickened around the 200 page mark and I didn’t stop reading until I was finished. I […]

Valentine’s Day

Posted February 14, 2016 / Personal / Information / Etc. / 8 Comments

I knew I wanted to share something lovey for Valentine’s Day this year. I haven’t in the past for whatever reason, but better late than never! I’ve put together some lists of my favorite romantic books, moments, songs, movies, etc. to celebrate the holiday! I used to watch a lot of romantic comedies but I haven’t in quite some time! Netflix is better for binging TV shows, plus Chris doesn’t like them too much. We’ve been so Marvel-addicted lately. But, for the sake of reminding me what movies I’ve loved in the past (and to watch them again!) here are some of my favorite rom-coms or romantic movies. I don’t even care if some of them are flawed or cliche. They make me laugh, cry, and feel all the things. Stacy: So every day you help her to realize what happened and you wait patiently for her to be okay with it… then you get her to fall in love with you again? Henry: Yes, ma’am. Kat: I hate the way you talk to me, and the way you cut your hair. I hate the way you drive my car. I hate it when you stare. I hate your big dumb combat boots, and the way you read my mind. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. I hate it, I hate the way you’re always right. I hate it when you lie. I hate it when you make me laugh, even worse […]