February Wrap Up! ’22

Well hi! In February I read fewer books than in January, but they were all chunkers, so it makes sense.

Books

I buddy read Malice with some irl friends and out of the three of us, I think I’m the only one who actually liked the book. Though to be fair, I was hate reading it for a while. It did redeem itself though in my opinion. I will be continuing on with the series. I don’t know if my buddies will, though. – 4 stars

Another buddy read with an irl friend! This one is the second book in the series, and I think I liked it a bit less than the first. I feel like it the plot was pretty stagnant, which was its downfall. I do plan on picking up the third one in hopes that something actually happens, but we’ll see. – 3.75 stars

This was a reread for me, and this time around I picked it up on audio book. The first time I read it back when it came out, I think I gave it a 4 star. This time, an easy 5. I don’t know if I just wasn’t paying attention originally or what, but this book is definitely awesome. I read this in prep for The Dragon Republic, which is one of my 10 in 2022 books. – 5 stars

Another buddy read! This time with Katy @bookbinderway – kinda. She ended up reading the book over one weekend whereas it took me the whole month. This book was the second in my 12 friend rec books, recommended to me by an irl friend. I ended up rather liking this – the humor was spot on for my tastes. The beginning dragged though, and the ending was a bit rushed I think. But the middle was solidly good. – 4 stars

And that’s it – no manga this month. Just the four books.

Reading Goals

Read a total of 80 books – 15/80
- 35 novels/books – 8/35
- 45 manga/graphic novels – 7/35
Complete my 10 in 2022 list – 1/10
Complete the 12 Friend Recommendations Challenge – 2/12
Reduce physical fiction TBR to 115 (started at 157) – 158
Reduce physical manga TBR to 100 (started at 146) – 140

Other Stuff

I’ve been back to work now from maternity leave for a month and I kinda hate it. Not my job, I like my job, I just hate that I can’t just be around my kid all the time.
I’ve fallen in love with jigsaw puzzles. I’ve buzzed through a ton of them this month and the itch to get more is strong, man.

And that’s it! Until next time!

Hi, I’m not dead

I haven’t really updated since March, and it’s not because I’m dead. I’m just in a major reading slump right now, and because I haven’t been reading I don’t have anything to post about.

So. Just so you know. I’m alive, I’m just slumpy. I’ll try to start this blog back up again when I find myself reading at a decent pace again. Til then, peace out.

March Currently Reading! ’21

Happy March! This is what I’m currently reading!

Hood by Stephen R. Lawhead – This is my current audio book and honestly it’s pretty slow going. I’m a little over half way through at the moment. It’s not bad but I haven’t been sucked in or anything.

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas – Shortly after posting my haul, I realized I forgot to include this book. Whoops – I’ll put it in next month’s. This came out earlier this month and I dove right into it. I’m about two thirds through. It’s… exactly how every one of this author’s books are. It’s fun but it’s also completely ridiculous.

Dragon Wing by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman – This is my current buddy read with Zezee @Zezeewithbooks! So far I’m rather digging it, though it is a tad slow. It’s not bad at all though and I’ve laughed out loud during the thing a few times now.

The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin – This is my current buddy with an irl friend! We read the first one last month and adored it, so we picked this one up right away. So far, we’re loving this, too!

And that’s it! Happy reading!

Blogmas is over! | Holiday Bucket List Check-In

It’s the last day of Blogmas! Well, ‘my’ blogmas, which has been going from November 21st until today. Every single day except Christmas day, I’ve been posting.

And man, I’m tired now. It was tons of fun though!

On Black Friday, I posted a Holiday Bucket list of things I wanted to do. Today I’m gonna see what I did!

Holiday bucket list

Chestnut praline latte
Peppermint mocha
Winter beer
Break out the electric blanket
Make a list of Christmas movies to watch
Watch those Christmas movies ㋛
Bake Christmas cookies
Ship cookies to buddies
Decorate the Christmas tree
Go Christmas shopping (online? )
Winter nail art
Go Christmas light hunting
Hang up Christmas lights outside
Get Christmas sweets
Get fiction TBR down to 200 books

Watch Harry Potter (from beginning!) ㋛
Watch Lord of the Rings (again)
Wrap presents
Decorate apartment all Christmasy
Finish hanging frames on the walls ㋛
Buy a car
Complete blogmas
Irish cream cold brew
Get Christmas jammies to wear to bed Christmas eve
Learn how to play Carol of the Bells on guitar – in progress!!! ㋛
Break out Christmas scented candles
Finish book buying ban successfully
Make nacho dip for New Year’s
Send cards to my grandmother

The ones with the ‘eh’ smile are ones I did partially, but didn’t complete. Namely, ‘learn Carol of the Bells’ I didn’t finish. I definitely made good progress but I didn’t quite get as far as I wanted. C’est la vie.

But otherwise I think I did pretty good! I still need to buy a car. I swear, I’m just being procrastinatey about it at this point because I don’t wanna go out, ahah. I’ll get there though. Bwah. Hopefully this month? We’ll see!

And that’s it for Blogmas, after today, I’m going to resume my new-normal schedule of two posts a week, unless there’s a special post to go up. If you’ve stuck around throughout this, thank you. I appreciate you.

Thanksgiving decorations 2020!

I decorated for Thanksgiving this year, which is something I’ve never done. I used being stuck inside my house because of the plague as an excuse to get extra festive because I won’t have anyone visiting to be festive with otherwise.

So this is everything I set up!

As you can see it’s mainly my livingroom that’s decked out. Christmas decorations will spread to other rooms but since this is my first time decorating for Thanksgiving, I didn’t have too many things to decorate with. The flowers are on my kitchen table, but other that that, it’s all in the main living area.

Let me know what you think! I think it came out pretty nice if I do say so myself.

January Book Haul! |#36

It’s been a while since I posted, about since I made a post going ‘I’m gonna post consistently’. C’est la vie.

Today I’m gonna post about all the books I got this month, and I’m doing it a bit early because I’m going on a self-imposed mini ban, starting today through February 14th. Basically I got a lot this month and I wanna actually read a lot of them.

This is what I got:

Manga

I’m really on a manga kick right now. And you’ll see this in my wrap up, but I’ve literally not read anything else so far in 2020. Maybe that’ll change by the end of the month, but we’ll see.

Black Butler vol 1 by Yana Toboso – Finally bit the bullet and decided to start this series. I watched the anime a while back and thought it was decent. I wanted to see the source material though and find out if anything had been changed between the two medias.

Magus of the Library vol 1 by Mitsu Izumi – Confession here: I have no idea what this is about, aside from a Magus and a Library. I picked it up because Katy @Bookbinderway really loved it and her tastes in manga overlap mine a lot, so, Katy don’t let me down. No pressure.

All You Need is Kill by Ryosuke Takeuchi – I’ve actually read this one. If you’ve ever seen the movie Edge of Tomorrow, that Tom Cruise ‘Live, Die, Repeat’ movie, this is the source material of that. The movie definitely took some liberties but honestly I thought it was pretty solid. This manga in my opinion is even better.

O Maidens in Your Savage Season vol 5 by Mari Okada – I need to reread the first four of these before hopping into this one. This is a recent favorite series, and I hope this volume keeps it up.

Ajin: Demi-Human vol 1 by Tsuina Miura – I picked this one up at the recommendation of my husband, who watched the anime and really liked it. I tried the anime, but I couldn’t get farther than like five seconds, purely due to the animation style. I didn’t dig it. The plot though sounds neat to me, so I’m gonna try the manga instead.

Our Dining Table by Mita Ori – This. This is my first five star read of the year. This is a little one shot, fluffy BL romance and it’s so damned cute. I loved this.

Ouran High School Host Club vol 3 by Bisco Hatori – Going through and collecting this still. I’ll read them eventually, probably after I have at least half of them.

Otomen vols 1-12 by Aya Kanno – I’m also on a shojo manga kick and guys. Guys. This is one of the most ridiculous series I’ve ever read. I like it. I shouldn’t. But I do. I’ve read four volumes so far and literally in volume four a guys chucked a shark over his head. It’s. ridiculous. But I can’t stop, hahahaaa

Books

The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince by Robin Hobb – The trek I had to go through to get a copy of this damned book, man. I ordered it in early December, and it never came. Never came, never came. Then, I get a message from the seller going ‘so…. we received this book back – USPS returned it to us because it was damaged.’ and I was all ‘oh no, can you send me another’ and they went, ‘No 😦 that was our only copy’.

Cue me finding another seller, ordering it, aaaaaand…. it never came. Eventually, I contacted this seller, too, saying ‘what gives’. They respond with ‘we’re having trouble getting a copy of this from our supplier. Would you like to cancel or wait?’

As soon as I finished being mopey about it, I responded saying that if they can confirm the supplier is working on it, I’ll wait, but otherwise, I’ll cancel. Then I get an email with shipping confirmation, and the seller replies with ‘well it just shipped, so’.

It arrived. It’s above. That’s it. Goodness. I’ll eventually buddy read this with Zezee @Zezeewithbooks and it’ll be neat.

The Wolf by Leo Carew – My buddy got me this book! And then I dropped it twice and bent it up. Whoops. I’m still digging it though – I’m in the middle of it right now.

Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi – Jumped on the bandwagon with this one. Honestly I’m not sure if I’m gonna like it or not. I hope I do, but we’ll see.

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo – Bandwagon buy. Might be neat!

Jerusalem by Alan Moore – This is a bucketlist book. One of those ‘I’ll read it some day’ books, but I saw it for cheap, and I knew I wouldn’t see it that cheap again. PS I can’t get the damned sticker off without ripping the cover. So there’s that.

Windwitch and Sightwitch by Susan Dennard – These aren’t actually going on my TBR, as I’ve read both of them at this point via audio. But I saw them for cheap so I got’em. All I need is Bloodwitch now.

And that’s it! As you can see from above, I got a decent amount. On the plus side though, I paid list price for 0 of them, so pbtbtbt. Ban for me, then fun manga things which I’ll get into later. Peace!

2020 Reading Goals

2020Goals (2).png

Happy New Year!

These are the goals I hope to achieve reading-wise this year. I have an iffy track record with goals – I tend to only complete two out of every three or so, so hopefully I’ll do better this year:

Read 50 books

I make this goal every year, and some years I struggle and others I fly past 50 books in 3 months. Really just depends.

Maintain a consistent posting schedule

Right now my schedule is Sunday-Wednesday-Saturday, but I’m thinking about switching it up. I’m going to keep it at two to three times per week, but I might change the days. To be decided. As long as I’m continuously posting though, I’ll be happy.

Keep track of reading statistics

Same goal as last year. Yesterday, I posted a 2019 reading statistics post, and I thought it turned out really neat. So I wanna do the same thing this year. To keep track of everything, I use the reading spreadsheet made by Brock @Let’s Read, and then I go into it and fiddle with the formulas a bit to handle quarter stars and extra stuff that I want to track that’s not in there already. But the base spread sheet is pretty in-depth as it is, so if you’re looking for something neat to track your reading, I recommend this one.

Reduce physical TBR to 200

Right now, while writing this, my physical TBR is 252. I did have it down to 249 on Christmas, but then Christmas happened, soooo.

Last year, I started at 280 and wanted to get it to 250… this year, I’m starting at 252 and want to get it to 200. Why the change? Well if you notice on last year’s goals post, I made additional resolutions like ‘go on a buying ban’ and ‘keep buying limited’ and stuff like that. This year, I’m not making either of those goals, but I am increasing how much I wanna cut my TBR by. Basically, I’m telling myself to have self-control and to use my best judgement when it comes to buying and self-banning to hit this goal. Do purges count? Yes! I can purge, too.

But basically the over-arching goal is 200 TBR books, and I wanna have the freedom to use buying/not-buying/banning as I see fit, instead of finding myself locked into numbers every month. This way sometimes I can get 0 books and other times I can get 12 books and just go with the flow, as long as the end result is good. We’ll see how it goes: If it fails terribly, the 2021 goals will be similar to 2019’s, haha. But 2020 is my year to show my self-discipline. Wish me luck!

And that’s it! What are your goals for this year? Lemme know, and if you have little mental things you do to keep yourself from over-purchasing, lemme know those too! Happy reading!

December Book Haul! |#35

Blogmas 2019

Happy Monday! This is the only time I’ll say that because I’m still on vacation this Monday, so a happy Monday it is indeed, people. Next Monday is different and we’re denying it’s existence right now.

So for December, I received two books as gifts, bought three on my own, and then used gift cards I received as gifts to get the rest. So technically I went over my five, but hey, they’re gifts and we’re about to enter a new decade. I do not caaaaare.

This is what I got!

Harry Potter: A History of Magic – This book I got from my husband, and man, did he get creative with it. He’s the type of person who buys and wraps everything a day or two before Christmas, so all of the 23rd, he’s hiding in his office, and there are paper sounds and curses and thuds and all that and I’m in the next room reading, just listening to all this, right.

So he finally comes out with a pile of gifts for me, and there’s one that’s about three feet long, two and a half feet wide, and about eight inches thick. And I’m looking at it like ‘there’s nothing I asked for that’s that big, he has to have been creative and got me something else’. So he’s putting it under the tree and I’m looking at it and go, ‘Wow, I have no idea what that could be!’ and he looks at me and goes, ‘It’s a book, obviously!’ and I laugh and he laughs and the cat laughs and we move on.

Christmas morning, I open the honking huge package to find… two giant sheets of styrofoam, sandwiching paper towel tubes that have been taped between them. And on this inside of the paper towel tubes? This book. He had told me it was a book and we all laughed and it was actually a book. What a nerd.

Rave Master vols 7-9 by Hiro Mashima – These three I bought myself. I picked them up second hand at Half Price Books! I’ve been collecting this series as I see it. It’s hard, as it’s out of print, but as of now, I think I have 1-9 and then 12!

The Inheritance and Other Stories by Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm – These are the same people, both pen names. But I picked up this in tangent with picking up The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince, which…. never arrived, waah. The seller contacted me and told me it was damaged in the mail and that they didn’t have a second copy to send me. Sad 😦 So I’ve re-ordered it from another seller, and it’s on its way, but it’s gonna be a bit. In the meantime though, I’m excited about this one.

Jade City by Fonda Lee– My parents got me this! 😀 It was on my books I hope Santa brings list, so I was v happy to get it. I’m pumped about it too!

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden – Second book in the series! I read the first earlier this year and really liked it, so I’m hoping to like this too. I got this for myself at Hpb.

Blackwing by Ed McDonald – Another Hpb purchase, I got this because I saw it and I had heard good things, soo…. it’s mine now.

5 Centimeters Per Second by Makoto Shinkai – Picked this up with giftcards, so thanks, aunts and uncles! Honestly the only thing I know about this is that it’ll rip my heart, and I kinda wanna no nothing else until I jump into it.

Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin – Another giftcard buy. I’m jumping on the train, whaddya want.

Ouran High School Host Club vols 1 and 2 by Bisco Hatori – Hpb buy! These are actually still in print. I’ve been meaning to pick them up for like… forever, and when I saw them for cheap I couldn’t refuse. I read this originally when I was in high school, so I’ve got the nostalgic factor going for them, big time.

Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa – This is a gift card buy, and super nostalgic. A friend I had in high school loved this series, and I’ve since lost contact with her. I remember reading them and liking them, but honestly… I got this series just so I can remember her better. I literally have zero way to contact her. She had no social media that I can find and moved away from the area. -_- MELANIE, I MISS YOU. This is the bind up edition of the entire series and it is thiiiiick.

Dragon Ball bind up vol 1 by Akira Toriyama – I’ve decided to collect the original Dragon Ball series. I grew up watching Dragon Ball Z and loved it, and recently I watched Super and thought it was okay. But the original Dragon Ball, I’ve seen bits and pieces of. So I figured why not collect the manga? As the original editions are out of print, and because I don’t own any already, I decided to collect this edition. Gift card!

And that’s it! A total of six books, eight manga. I’m pretty pumped, honestly.

Also, when I was trying to take pictures of all these yesterday under the tree, my cat came over and reminded me why I can’t have nice things:

Sigh.

Happy reading!

10 in 2020

Blogmas 2019

It’s time to make a new list! As I write this, I’m on track to complete my 10 in 2019, and unless something goes horribly wrong, I should do so. That means it’s new-list time!

Technically this is still my blogmas, as I posted that I’d be doing it through early January, so get ready to keep seeing me pop into your feed for the next week or two.

Anyways, these are the top ten books I want to read in 2020. They will (mostly) align to my Fantasy Bingo, in the hopes that I get them done early this year and not racing the clock at the last minute, so wish me luck:

The Rage of Dragons by Evan Winter
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
Pestilence by Laura Thalassa
The Scar by China Mieville
Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson
The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemison
Heaven’s Devil by William C. Dietz
That Time I Was Reincarnated by a Slime vol 1 by Fuse
The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

And that’s it! I think I have a good mix in there – light novels, sci-fis, fantasies, and even a classic. The classic is intimidating me honestly, but that’s why I chose it.

Lemme know what your top reads for 2020 are! Happy reading!