August To-Read List!

I don’t usually do to-read lists because I’m kind of a mood reader and tend to throw these lists out the window, BUT I have a few distinct piles of books that I need to read and I want to make sure I touch upon all of them. I have LOTS to read, and I think that listing out what I’m hoping to read this month will help!

Pile 1: #SummerOfPLL reads

The first half of #SummerOfPLL is over, and I’ve surprised myself by staying on course with this for an entire month without reading anything early or late. At all. Which is very Not Me. So, despite that the second half of this series so far is DEFINITELY going downhill when the first half wasn’t anything particularly special to begin with, I’m determined to keep on track through August, too! Here’s my PLL reading list for August:

• Stunning
• Burned
• Crushed
• Deadly
• Toxic
• Vicious
• Alison’s Pretty Little Diary
• Pretty Little Secrets
• Ali’s Pretty Little Lies

Pile 2: Library Books

So, while volunteering at the library I spent about 6 hours over the last couple weeks shelving nonfiction books… And I KIND OF usually find a lot of stuff I want to read while I’m shelving things… So… I KIND OF checked out a giant pile of library books at once… Good job, me! Here’s my library book pile:

• The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu by Joshua Hammer
• Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner by Scott Cunningham
• The Librarian’s Book of Quotes complied by Tatyana Eckstrand
• This Book is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All by Marilyn Johnson
• How To Be Miserable: 40 Strategies You Already Use by Randy J. Paterson, PhD
• Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman
• Wicca’s Charm: Understanding the Spiritual Hunger Behind the Rise of Modern Witchcraft and Pagan Spirituality by Catherine Edwards Sanders
• Archie: Volume One by Mark Waid, Fiona Staples, Annie Wu, and Veronica Fish

Pile 3: ARC August!

Since it’s August and I have A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF UNREAD ARCS, I’m going to make a concentrated effort to catch up on as many of them as possible this month! Here’s all of the unread ARCs I have that have a release date in September or earlier (not all of my ARCs, though… Good luck, me):

• Harbor Me by Jacqueline Wilson
• Darius The Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
• Dream Country by Shannon Gibney
• Disbanded Kingdom by Polis Loizou
• How To Speak Cat by National Geographic Kids
• Like Never And Always by Ann Aguirre
• Scream Site by Justina Ireland
• Rules of the Ruff by Heidi Lang
• Love Letters to Jane’s World by Paige Braddock
• The Adventures of Wilhelm: A Rat’s Tale by Maria Ritter
• The Lost Art of Reading by David L. Ulin
• The Splintered Light by Ginger Johnson
• Big Words Small Stories: The Missing Donut by Judith Henderson
• The Ghost Road by Charis Cotter
• Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground by T.R. Simon
• Unbroken Anthology
• Black Diamond Fall by Joseph Olshan
• Trans Teen Survival Guide by Owl Fisher and Fox Fisher

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Considering that my total August TBR is now at 35 books, I have NO illusions about actually finishing all of these things this month. Ideally, though, I would at least like to get through a large chunk of them (and I know that some will take me longer to review than they will to read, as a few of my ARCs are picture books). I feel that this list at least puts me in a good starting place for getting many of the books I actually NEED to read… well, read!

What’s on YOUR reading list for August? Let me know in the comments!

 

#SummerOfPLL — A Readalong!

It’s summer, and that means there’s lots of time for reading! My friend and booktuber Wulfie, aka Silly Little Ravenclaw, and I are doing a full readalong of all of the Pretty Little Liars books by Sara Shepard in July and August! If you’ve been wanting to read this series but haven’t gotten around to doing it yet, you should join us and discuss it with us using the hashtag #SummerOfPLL on Twitter!

Our schedule (created by Wulfie!) is as follows:

1.) Pretty Little Liars — July 2-4
2.) Flawless — July 5-7
3.) Perfect — July 8-10
4.) Unbelievable — July 11-13
5.) Wicked — July 14-16
6.) Killer — July 17-19
7.) Heartless — July 20-22
8.) Wanted — July 23-25
9.) Twisted — July 26-28
10.) Ruthless — July 29-31
*Break/Catch-up/Read-Ahead/Whatever-You-Want Time!* — August 1-4
11.) Stunning — August 5-7
12.) Burned — August 8-10
13.) Crushed — August 11-13
14.) Deadly — August 14-16
15.) Toxic — August 17-19
16.) Vicious — August 20-22
17.) Alison’s Pretty Little Diary — August 23-25
18.) Pretty Little Secrets — August 26-28
19.) Ali’s Pretty Little Lies — August 29-31

Halfway through the readalong we’ll have a four-day break which can be used to catch up if you’re behind, read ahead if you want, or take a break from these books completely if you’re getting burned out! The three companion books to the series (listed as 17-19 in the list above) will be read after the full series — Wulfie considered putting them chronologically in the schedule where they should be but didn’t feel like figuring that out, so this method seemed easier. 🙂

Would you prefer a calendar to a list of dates? I’ve created a calendar for each month with our reading dates written out!

 

If this pace doesn’t work for you or if you don’t want to read ALL of them in two months, that’s totally okay! You are definitely still welcome to join in the discussion with us. This is a MOUNTAIN of books and a huge undertaking, but it should be a lot of fun as well!

Are you planning to join us? Awesome! Let us know on Twitter using #SummerOfPLL or talk with us in the comments of this blog post and Wulfie’s YouTube video. We hope you’ll join us, and happy reading!

-B

#24in48 Readathon Wrap-Up!

As I mentioned last week, the #24in48 Readathon was this past weekend! I managed to read the whole 24 hours, and I even won a book during hour 42. It’s not my only motivation for doing the readathon by any means, but during the previous one I’d won a hardcover of How To Make A Wish by Ashley Herring Blake, and I believe I won a galley of an intriguing thriller this time, and winning books is just fun. Here’s an overview of my weekend!

Stats:

Time spent reading: 24 hours 10 minutes 34 seconds

Pages read: 3,145

Books read: 10

Library books read: 2

Books read for class: 2

eARCs read: 6

Fiction books read: 8

Nonfiction books read: 2

Hours I spent doing homework instead of reading: ~5

Number of times I realized that I had an assignment due a week earlier than I thought it was originally due and had to scramble to finish it 22 minutes before the deadline: 1

Books Read:

1. The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth — 4 of 5 stars
2. The Girl With The Red Balloon by Katherine Locke — 5 of 5 stars
3. Down In The Belly Of The Whale by Kelley Kay Bowles (ARC) — 1 of 5 stars
4. See All The Stars by Kit Frick (ARC) — 5 of 5 stars
5. The Smoke Thieves by Sally Green (ARC) — 3 of 5 stars
6. The Summer of Jordi Perez (And The Best Burger In Los Angeles) by Amy Spalding (ARC) — 4.5 of 5 stars
7. The Cat Encyclopedia for Kids by Joanne Mattern (ARC) — 3 of 5 stars
8. My Cat Yugoslavia by Pajtim Statovci — 2 of 5 stars
9. Krazy: George Herriman, A Life In Black And White by Michael Tisserand — 5 of 5 stars
10. Queerly Loving #2 edited by G Benson and Astrid Ohletz (ARC) –5 of 5 stars

While I clearly read some books that I didn’t think were that great, I loved a lot of the books I read! That also got me all caught up on my Netgalley ARCs, though I still need to actually write the reviews for them now. Speaking of which, reviews for many of these books are forthcoming — stay tuned!

Did you participate in #24in48 this weekend? How was your experience? Let me know in the comments!

TBR Thursday (Yes, I Know It’s Monday…)

TBR Thursday is a new thing that I’m doing that consists of me 1.) choosing a book that I haven’t read yet that I plan to get to this week, and 2.) me making up excuses about why I haven’t read it, most of which will be terrible. This week I’m doing it on Monday because I was too exhausted to post for the latter half of last week! I was working/volunteering/job interviewing from around 8 AM to 7 PM, give or take, during the last few weekdays, and so I generally got home and fell asleep because I was too tired to do anything.

…Anyways, last week’s book was Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy, and I did in fact read it! I did, however, read it after my digital loan had expired, and I had to resort to the “airplane mode” trick in order to keep the book on my iPad. It worked, everything is fine, and I loved it! You can check out my review here: Review: Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

This week’s book is The Miseducation of  Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth!

Image of book cover from Goodreads

I have literally been putting this book off for years. I have no reason why I’ve been doing so except that I forget about the books on my Kindle VERY easily because I can’t physically see them without actually opening the app. Because of this, I don’t tend to read a lot of ebooks that aren’t library books. I’m trying to get into reading ebooks a little more, though, because I really don’t have a lot (read: any) shelf space left right now, won’t have more until I move into an actual single-family house eventually, and have ample space on my iPad to download stuff. I’ll get there eventually. Maybe.

The reason why I’m getting to this one this week is because I have to read a banned book for my YA resources class, and this book has been banned SEVERAL times before. Since I already own it, I might as well use it, right?

I have a bunch of books I want to read next week, including new purchases (intentional and unintentional… Amazon decided that I wanted to buy Highly Illogical Behavior by John Corey Whaley on Kindle while I was culling my book wish list, so I own that one now. Good thing it was one I actually wanted eventually, but yeesh) and library books, so we’ll see how that goes!

What are you reading this week? Let me know in the comments!

State of the King Address: My Stephen King Reading Quest

Though I haven’t talked about it a ton, I am on a quest to read every Stephen King novel. While I’m not at all sure about how likely it is, I’d like to be able to finish this quest by the end of 2018. I’m a good chunk of the way through it already, which is good, but there are still a LOT more for me to read. Additionally, some King books are more dense for me than others (I swear it feels like it took me ages longer to get through Dreamcatcher than it did for me to get through Under the Dome…), so it’s hard to estimate how long one of these books will take me to read until I’ve actually started it.

Here are all of Stephen King’s published novels in alphabetical order (with The Dark Tower listed in chronological order) — the bolded titles are the ones I have read so far and the italicized titles are ones I still need to get to.

11/22/63
Salem’s Lot
Bag of Bones
Black House
Carrie
Cell
Christine
The Colorado Kid
Cujo
Cycle of the Werewolf
The Dark Half
The Gunslinger
The Drawing of the Three
The Wastelands
Wizard and Glass
The Wind Through the Keyhole
Wolves of the Calla
Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower
The Dead Zone
Desperation
Doctor Sleep
Dolores Claiborne
Dreamcatcher
Duma Key
End of Watch
The Eyes of the Dragon
Finders Keepers
Firestarter
From a Buick 8
Gerald’s Game
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon
The Green Mile
Insomnia
IT
Joyland
Lisey’s Story
Misery
Mr. Mercedes
Needful Things
Pet Sematary
Revival
Rose Madder
The Shining
Sleeping Beauties
The Stand
The Talisman
The Tommyknockers
Under the Dome

According to this list, I have read 27 of King’s 49 novels, and I still have 22 left to read. This is a lot, but on the other hand at least I am more than halfway through the list. I am hoping to prioritize those 22 books in 2018 — I’d really like to get through the rest of these!

My partner is currently finishing up the Dark Tower series and wants me to start it too, so The Gunslinger is going to be one of my next few reads. I’m excited to start finishing up this quest I started so long ago!

Have you read all of King’s novels? Which ones are your favorites? Have you gone on your own quest to complete all of a different author’s works? Tell me about it in the comments!

Currently Reading Book Tag!

Hiya! I’m stealing this book tag from The Cursed Books! Questions are related to my reading routine, which is fairly predictable to some degree. Let’s get started!

1. HOW MANY BOOKS DO YOU USUALLY READ AT ONCE?

I usually stick to one at a time unless:

• The book is EXTREMELY LONG and something shorter takes priority.
• I’m mid-book and I realize that I have a library book due within a day or two and I have to read that before finishing the one I’d already started.
• I need to read something for school.

I don’t typically like reading multiple books at once because once I put one down for something else it can be really tough for me to pick it back up.

2. IF YOU’RE READING MORE THAN ONE BOOK AT A TIME, HOW DO YOU DECIDE WHEN TO SWITCH BOOKS?

Since I don’t like to read more than one book at a time, book-switching for me tends to only happen by necessity. Library book due? Time to read that one. Discussion on a book due the next day for class? Time for that one. Otherwise, I tend to just stick with what I was already reading!

3. DO YOU EVER SWITCH BOOKMARKS WHILE YOU’RE PARTWAY THROUGH A BOOK?

Nope! I don’t even switch bookmarks between books… My partner made me a pretty beaded bookmark for Christmas several years back and it’s my favorite thing ever, so despite the fact that I own over a hundred bookmarks, I only really use this one.

4. WHERE DO YOU KEEP THE BOOK(S) YOU’RE CURRENTLY READING?

It depends on where I’m reading! Usually I keep the book I’m reading on the couch, on the coffee table, or on the night stand next to my bed.

5. WHAT TIME OF DAY DO YOU SPEND THE MOST TIME READING?

Definitely the evening! I can’t focus enough in the morning to concentrate on a book, so most of my reading time happens after I’ve finished most everything else I need to do during the day.

6. HOW LONG DO YOU TYPICALLY READ IN ONE SETTING?

At least an hour or two. I don’t like to read in bits and pieces, so most of the time I’ll read a book straight through if it’s short enough. Otherwise, I’ll break it into a few longer reading sessions. I get really absorbed when I’m reading and don’t like taking breaks very much.

7. DO YOU READ HARDBACKS WITH THE DUST JACKET ON OR OFF?

Most of the time I leave it on unless I’m concerned about ripping it or it doesn’t want to stay on the book! I generally don’t mind reading with the dust jacket on, and I feel weird leaving it lying about unattended, so I just leave it on. It feels easier.

8. WHAT POSITION DO YOU MAINLY USE TO READ?

Generally I’ll be curled up on the couch, but I’m the type of person that flips into different positions every few minutes trying to get comfortable. I am very bad at being comfortable.

9. DO YOU TAKE THE BOOK YOU’RE CURRENTLY READING WITH YOU EVERYWHERE?

Nope! Unless I’m leaving the house for at least one night or for a very long day trip in which I anticipate doing nothing but sitting around, I tend to just leave my books at home. My iPad travels with me everywhere, though, so I always have my ebooks with me if I need them.

10. HOW OFTEN DO YOU UPDATE YOUR GOODREADS PROGRESS ON THE BOOK YOU’RE CURRENTLY READING?

I almost never update Goodreads while I’m reading! I use Bookout to track my reading while I’m doing it because I like the statistics and habit-tracking, and using multiple systems for the same purpose gets to be too much for me. I’ll update once in a while if I REALLY need to share a thought while I’m reading, but that’s about it. Otherwise, I just update when I finish reading a book, adding my star rating and my start and end dates.

That’s it for me! I’m not going to tag anyone because I’m way too shy for tagging, but feel free to steal if you want to do this, too! (I love tags and definitely like being tagged, but I often feel too intimidated to tag others.)

What reading position do you find most comfortable? Let’s discuss in the comments!