Top Ten Tuesdays #210: Thanksgiving

Posted November 20, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 4 Comments

Books Read in 2018 that I’m Thankful For 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 always feel a little lost and/or overwhelmed when I prep this yearly Thanksgiving post. I think it’s because I always feel repetitive when I talk about books or blogs or people/bloggers I’m thankful for. This list could look the same every year. I’m going to focus on all the books I’m thankful that I read this year for various reasons. Thank you for… adding variety to my usual genres Most of the books I read are young adult fiction, and most of THOSE are contemporary. Sometimes I mix in paranormal, fantasy, historical, etc….but this year I was all about the adult fiction! This took a few different forms too, because I tend to read a lot of adult romance/contemporary anyways. I listened to wonderful audiobook memoirs of two black comedians/actresses that I love and admire. I listened to a true crime book instead of just podcasts. I binge-read an adult mystery series that sometimes frustrated me but usually kept me addicted. All of these books above definitely expanded my reading horizons in 2018. Thank you for… living up to my high expectations or hype I built […]

Missing the Five-Star Reads in 2018 (Did My Predictions Come True?)

Posted November 19, 2018 / Discussions, Features / 9 Comments

The more I read, the less “favorite” books I seem to find. Each year has resulted in less and less five-star reads for me. I don’t know what it is. Am I getting pickier? Do I need to expand my reading horizons because I’ve always read too much of the same thing, and everything is too similar to me? I really don’t know. To be honest, I think it leans more toward me being pickier. As I keep reading more and more books, I become more critical of them. The book has to be mostly perfect for me to consider rating it five stars. Even then, I end up critiquing it later and saying “did this REALLY even deserve that rating?” I have SEVEN five-star reads this year… and TWO of them were rereads. And one of them literally happened a few days ago. This is legitimately sad to me. Do I need to reduce my qualifications for making a book five stars? I always think that if a book would be considered a FAVORITE, it would be five stars. If I don’t get that feeling my heart and head, it ends up with 4.5 stars. I’m wondering if my standards are too high. Which brings me to… Five Star Predictions – Which Came True? I wrote a post in November of last year predicting which books I thought would be five stars for me in 2018. I thought this post would be the perfect place to see how they fared. Which books […]

Tis the Season! | Holiday 2018 Plans

Posted November 16, 2018 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 5 Comments

I feel like I’m more excited for Christmas than ever before this year. Not sure why, but it’s true y’all. I found myself getting the itch for Christmas movies in late September and I’ve been holding myself back until Halloween to finally listen to Christmas music – that’s always my deadline. Otherwise, my decorations are up after Thanksgiving and we get our tree the first weekend of December. This year’s holiday posts will be plentiful because I’ve already started reading some light holiday books. Keep reading to see what’s happening on the blog over the next month and a half! I pulled this TBR together back in mid-October because I LOVE CHRISTMAS. It also happened to be because I was in the middle of planning my November TBR and I knew I wanted some holiday reads on there. You’ll see that I have four books for review, four books pulled from last year’s TBR that I didn’t get to, and six books that are either newly published in 2018 or just new-to-me. Mistletoe Cottage by Mason | The Best Little Christmas Shop by Morrey It Started with Christmas by Hale | The Corner of Holly and Ivy by Mason I have one egalley from last year that I never got to – CHRISTMAS SHOP – so I definitely want to catch up on that. I also have three more books. I have a physical ARC of MISTLETOE COTTAGE (plus an egalley by the same author – CORNER OF HOLLY/IVY) and […]

Lauren Lately | November 2018

Posted November 15, 2018 / Features, Lauren Lately, Wrap-Ups / 2 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 ✨ Friends’ wedding | Two of my friends got married in October and it was a gorgeous ceremony! They had it outside in front of a waterfall with a lot of fall-time accents, like pumpkins. It was in the middle of nowhere though; the bus from the hotel to the venue was 30 minutes! We had a lot of fun celebrating with a bunch of my friends and the afterparty involved a lot of Domino’s pizza in the hotel conference room. Lazy, rainy Saturdays and sports | This entire fall season has involved too much rain to really do anything fun and outdoorsy. We had a few Saturdays in a row where we would hang out at home, with me reading and Chris playing video games. We also had a period where we were watching way too many sports at once! Between the World Series (go fucking Red Sox!!), football games, and wrestling shows/PPVs, we once […]

Monthly Recommendations: Relatable Characters

Posted November 14, 2018 / Monthly Recommendations, Weekly Memes / 4 Comments

I’ve been enjoying Madalyn’s monthly recommendation posts and recently decided to join the Goodreads group! Each month, the host(s) determine a topic to provide bookish recommendations for. Here are some of my picks based on this month’s prompt… Relatable Characters Rachel from Crazy Rich Asians | I loved how down to earth and normal Rachel was. She never overreacted or freaked out about small things like a lot of main characters would, in order to move the plot along. Their “breakup scene” was logical. She was just so easy to relate to, from a personality perspective, not from the actual occurrences in her life! haha. Daisy from Royals | Like Daisy, I’m not into the whole royal thing. She becomes thrust into the spotlight when her sister gets engaged to one and she still manages to be herself. I loved being in her head because she just shared so many of the same thoughts I’ve had on the whole situation. Doris from Unclaimed Baggage | These three books so far definitely have different circumstances for the MCs than my life, but I relate to their inner thoughts and personalities a lot. The same is true for Doris – she was the lone liberal in a super conservative town (not super true for me) and had a lot of smart thoughts I agree with, especially about politics, feminism, etc. Brianna from Herons Landing | I’m a sucker for books set in small, cozy towns – especially when the MC […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #209: Bookish Merch

Posted November 13, 2018 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 8 Comments

Bookish Items / Merchandise 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 don’t acquire a lot of bookish merch, if I’m being honest! I’ve tried to buy less and less THINGS over the past few years (I’ve moved so much since high school that I’m so tired of lugging items everywhere I go!). The two bookish things I like to collect the most are candles and bookmarks, so here are some of those (and more). Some items below are specifically on my wishlist while others are just favorites in general – I’ll mark them so you know. All photos are credited to the original websites/shops or were taken by me if noted. Favorite Novelly Yours Candles Full disclosure: I am incredibly picky about candles. Most are too sweet for me and give me a headache, but I knooow I can count on a few specific scents to work perfectly. Usually they involve apple, but not always. Brittany’s candles are some of the BEST out there and I have a couple of go-to scents. I thinkkkk Winter is still my favorite here because it’s the most apple-y of them all, but the close second is probably Brave. I love the pumpkin pie scent mixed in! Cabeswater is […]

101 Things in 1001 Days Update

Posted November 12, 2018 / Goals & Planning, Personal / Information / Etc. / 5 Comments

The Day Zero Project made it on my radar a few years ago when I started following Stephanie’s blog, Not Entirely Perfect. This project is where you make a list of 101 goals to complete in 1001 days, which is just under 3 years (2¾ years). It’s fun to plan out the goals you think you may have over that time frame because you can mix in easy one with more difficult long-term ones. So, I did make a list at the time and did… somewhat okay… with a lot of the goals. I ended up quitting because the goals weren’t related to my life anymore, with the move and other priorities shifting. When Stephanie posted how to make a 101 in 1001 list, I decided it was time to do it again. I think I’m ready to do it again now that my life is going to be somewhat settled in the near future lol. I started the list on December 1, 2018 so it will end on August 28, 2020. I decided to share my list here with you. Here’s my list on the website if you want to follow me or check in on my progress! Today’s post is the first update to my list with all progress made and immediate goals! 66 not started yet | 9 in progress | 26 completed In Progress Post challenge updates each calendar year during it | I wanted to post each year during the challenge with some of my challenge progress. So far so […]

Cover Battles: Princesses and Name Tags

Posted November 9, 2018 / Features / 1 Comment

Lookie here, a new cover-related feature! Who would have thought? When I was going through my ARC shelves on Goodreads, I noticed some similar book covers and thought it would be fun to compare them. For this feature, I’ll be showing two book covers that look super similar, and then comparing the covers to the insides AND how I felt about each book. Which cover wins? Which story wins? Seven Ways We Lie by Riley Redgate vs. Rebel Bully Geek Pariah by Erin Jade Lange Cover battle: These are both ARCs I read and received (and were published in) 2016. I remember being more partial to the SEVEN cover just because it was organized nicely and colorful. The plain font for the title wasn’t my favorite though. For REBEL, I liked the font choice and the fact that it was bolder for me. I don’t love that the edges have that weird old-school Instagram filter thing where they’re darker. It’s a toss-up honestly but for some reason I love the starkness and simplicity of SEVEN. Story battle: Go figure, these were both four star books for me. Of course the toss-up continues. I remember lots of other readers didn’t think the seven POVs in SEVEN were distinct enough, but I didn’t have a problem with them. I thought they were all outlined well because I could tell them apart, but I wasn’t 100% sure which corresponded to each of the deadly sins. REBEL was a book that was completely opposite of what I […]

How We Cut Cable

Posted November 8, 2018 / Media, Personal / Information / Etc. / 7 Comments

I’ve had this post drafted for a while (and by “drafted” I mean a post draft with zero body text and just the title of “How We Cut Cable”) – back in October 2017. We cut cable a few years ago and have had zero regrets since. I can count on one hand how many times I’ve wished for regular cable again in the past year or two. I’m here to chat about how we get by without cable! (To be clear: this post is not sponsored by anyone or any service, but the link below has a referral discount I’ll talk about later!) As you can see, we were still able to stream the World Series, football games, and seasonal faves! What we watch We watch the following things live each week: football games (and sometimes other sports, depending on the season) and wrestling. We needed to figure out how to watch the channels that those appear on, because a lot of other shows that we’d watch later can be found on Hulu or on channel-specific apps. Our wrestling shows happen on the USA network (and will also be on Fox in a year or two). Football games happen on CBS, Fox, NBC, ESPN, NFL Network, and Amazon Prime, depending on the day of the week. Full disclosure: my team is based in North Carolina so I don’t often have the option to watch them on regular TV where I live. My dad has NFL Sunday Ticket, so we will go over […]

Review Round Up | The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats & Piracy and Royals

Posted November 7, 2018 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 4 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! GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE was a pleasant surprise for me – I can be hit or miss with historical fiction and it was overall a bit out of my comfort zone. I was optimistic about LADY’S GUIDE though because of how much I enjoyed Felicity in the previous book. Needless to say, I wasn’t disappointed here! Like the first book, it’s a bit looong. The audiobook made listening enjoyable throughout a month-long timeframe and it became one of those books where I’m not in the MOOD to listen to it, but I loved it while I was actually listening. This is exactly how I felt about GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE too. The audio narrator was solid and really brought Felicity to life. While Felicity is the main character, the other powerful ladies at the front of the story made a huge impact too. Joanna, Felicity’s childhood ex-friend, and Sim, the badass pirate, were so fun to get to know. They all wanted more for themselves and fought against the stereotypes or expectations of the time. I loved how everything ended for them too. Of course, meeting up with Monty and Percy again was wonderful. There were a lot of different parts or stages in this story, from Callum’s bakery to Joanna’s […]