July Wrap Up

Ok, as usual, book updates first. I'm a bit behind on my reading challenges. I have 20 left to do of my 50 books challenge, which is fine. But I have only read 39 toward my goal of 75 books for the year. According to Goodreads, I am four books behind schedule. In my defense, I have been reading one book since May, but it is not very good, but I am more than halfway through, so I am struggling to finish it anyway. Ugh. I may need to drop it and move on. Anyhow...

Books read this month:

• Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander (aka J.K. Rowling). Fun and silly.
• The Black Death: The World's Most Devastating Plague by The Great Courses/Dorsey Armstrong. Super interesting and exciting if you love the plague like I do.
• The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Josephine Leslie (aka R.A. Dick). An old favorite of mine.
• Wild Born by Brandon Mull. Fun story about people who have spirit animals and magic.
• The Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard. Interesting, vaguely dystopian story.

Challenges completed this month:

• A book under 100 pages: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
• A history book: The Black Death
• A book turned into a movie: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
• A book that takes place in another world: Wild Born
• A book with a lot of hype: The Red Queen

Favorite book read this month:

The Black Death or The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Least favorite book read this month:

I guess Wild Born, not because it was bad, but just because I enjoyed the other books more.

I participated in an interesting book exchange this month. It was informal via Facebook and I saw that one of my high school teachers had posted it. The deal is that anyone who liked her status received a message with details. What happens is that the people who like your status send books two people back. So I didn't send a book to my teacher, but to her friend whose status my teacher liked. Then I posted the message in my status and people who liked my status (hopefully) sent a book to my teacher and so on and so forth. So I sent a copy of The Eyre Affair to my teacher's friend, who is an English teacher, so I hope she will like it. Anyway, that is a very convoluted story, but I received a couple of books which I was very excited about:

Here is my book haul for the month. I was bad and replaced my paperback copies of the Raven Cycle with hardback copies with signed bookplates to match my beautiful copy of the Raven King (which is not a new purchase, but I wanted to showcase here. Because these books and the artwork (by the author, mind you) are SOOOOO pretty!

I may have bought a few too many books this month. And this doesn't include my audiobook purchases. Oops... Oh well.

Otherwise, not much has been going on. I'm still dancing (and trying to get into better shape so that I can actually do my routine in October). I am still going on dates with the guy I've been seeing. We've done a few fun things, including a Dinner Detective Mystery Theater dinner, which was very entertaining. Here is the link if anyone is interested: The Dinner Detective. It was fun and interactive (which almost deterred me. And since my hair is rainbow colored, I drew attention and I did have to participate in front of everyone. Which I wasn't wild about, but it was still enjoyable). We also did an escape room. I had no idea what to expect, but that was actually very fun and I would definitely do it again. Here is the link to the place we went: Denver Escape Room.

The first part of this month was very rough for me. I am happy to say that I have officially made it through one year since the break up. While I felt that it destroyed me (and still does, sometimes), and my heart is sometimes still broken, I am proud that I have made it. And it sucked and it was hard and I never want to do it again. But it keeps getting easier and I know that I can make it. They say the first year is the hardest and I am glad that that is now behind me.

June Wrap Up

As usual, book reviews can be found on my book blog, if you are interested.

Alright, books read this month:

Flawed by Cecelia Ahern. The first installment of a young adult dystopian series.

Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Awesome and funny sequel to The Eyre Affair.
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. A calssically-written story about restoring magic to England.

Challenges completed:

A book you recently bought: Flawed

A book that made you laugh: Lost in a Good Book
A book over 700 pages: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Favorite book read this month:
Lost in a Good Book

Least favorite book read this month:
Flawed

And my book haul for the month:

My copy of The Scorpio Races is signed by Maggie Stiefvater! So extra exciting.

And I feel like I need to defend myself for owning another book by Sarah J. Maas... I read (and seriously disliked) Throne of Glass. I hear that her books get better, but I was very skeptical and unwilling to read more to find out. Well, this copy came in a book box I subscribe to (The Best Damn Book Box) for last month's Beauty and the Beast themed box. So... there it is. I'm not sure if I will read it or not. It is very pretty. And maybe I can read it without reading any of the others? We will see. I don't have high hopes really.

I also bought a set of tarot cards that came with a book all made/written by Maggie Stiefvater, which is absolutely amazing! They are so pretty! I'm not sure if that counts in my book haul...

Anyway, I will leave it at that for this month.

Oh! And I dyed my hair rainbow colors! Which has been super fun and I am really enjoying it!

May Wrap Up

Books! So after I dropped everything to read The Raven King, the first Trials of Apollo book, The Hidden Oracle, by Rick Riordan came out. I left everything where I dropped it, more or less, to listen to that book. See where my priorities are? Apparently with The Raven Cycle and Rick Riordan's books... Sometimes I'm amazed that I make any progress on my TBR pile.

As usual, most of these have been reviewed on my book blog.

Books read this month:

• The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater. Oh my gosh. I am so in love with this series. I have no words. And Ronan and Adam's love story warms my heart.
• Demigods and Magicians by Rick Riordan. Collection of three short stories where Greek and Egyptian worlds collide.
• March by Geraldine Brooks. A take on Mr. March's story from the classic Little Women.
• The Hidden Oracle by Rick Riordan. New series starring mortal Apollo in all of his bisexual glorious-ness.
• Cress by Marissa Meyer. Took me forever to read, but really enjoyed it.
• Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo. Very good book set in the Grisha universe. Interesting characters.
• The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner. A book following three friends for their last year of high school--a much better read than I was expecting.
• The Selection by Kiera Cass. The story of 35 girls competing to win the hand of the crown prince.

Challenges completed this month:

• A book you've been highly anticipating: The Raven King
• A short story: Demigods and Magicians (it's three short stories, that counts right?)
• A stand alone book: March 
• A book someone recommended to you: Cress
• A book by an author from your country: The Hidden Oracle
• A book with multiple points of view: Six of Crows
• A book with a beautiful cover: The Selection

Favorite book read this month:
The Raven King, I just loved this series so much. 

Least favorite book read this month:
The Selection. I was less than impressed.

Book haul:

I was pretty good this month, only three books!

In other news, dance is going well, it is still fun and good exercise. I went on a couple of dates with one guy and I have been enjoying that. I trained in my new position at work and feel like an official lab tech now. Overall, things are pretty good!

December Reading List and Challenge

I am participating in a couple of things this December. First of all is an initiative I have been following on Tumblr called #ReadWomen in which we are reading books by women during the month of December.

There has been a generally positive response from the people I follow, but there have been some negative comments from some. Apparently people interpret it as "man hating." I want to clear up now that this is not the case. But there are a ton of books out there by white men who are usually cis and privileged. While women are not the least privileged group out there these days, they do not get as much notoriety as they should. Plus, reading books by someone different is good for you. You may just learn something and expand your world view. Not everyone sees the world the same way as a white male. So reading books by women, women of color, trans women, et cetera, will give you a different look at things. And how is that bad?

One person wrote up a good response to one of the people against the challenge (movement, initiative, whatever you want to call it). Here is their response to someone calling the movement sexist:

I didn’t want to get in this discussion, and after seeing other posts by you I can see you’re not even open to the possibility that you are wrong. No one is calling for the boycott of male or white writers, or talking about a conspiracy, if you don’t know there is an imbalance then you are severely [misinformed].
“We looked at fall 2010 catalogs from 13 publishing houses, big and small. Discarding the books that were unlikely to get reviewed—self-help, cooking, art—we tallied up how many were by men and how many were by women. Only one of the houses we investigated—the boutique Penguin imprint Riverhead—came close to parity, with 55 percent of its books by men and 45 percent by women. Random House came in second, with 37 percent by women. It was downhill from there, with three publishers scoring around 30 percent—Norton, Little Brown, and Harper—and the rest 25 percent and below, including the elite literary houses Knopf (23 percent) and FSG (21 percent). Harvard University Press, the sole academic press we considered, came in at just 15 percent.” A Literary Glass Ceiling? I recommend you read that article is analyzing a study that shows that the overwhelming amount of books that get review are by men review by men.
Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin. Where Are the People of Color in Children’s Books? only 57 by Latinos, 69 Asian Pacifics/Asian Pacific Americans X
I’m done with this discussion, I have nothing to say to a person that thinks that a black person reading only books by POCs is racist. X."

And who knows? Maybe in another month or two, we can read books written only by people of color or by people with disabilities. The point is to draw attention to the imbalance.

In this vein, I have complied my reading list for this month accordingly:

Books:
Soundless by Richelle Mead
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Visions of Sugar Plums by Janet Evanovich

Audiobooks:
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
And depending on time/how I feel either Cinder by Marissa Meyer or Hunter by Mercedes Lackey or a re-listen of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern because it is winter-y.

I have also complied some recommendations for books to read:
Tamora Pierce: anything she has written is great, strong women and POC
Diana Wynne Jones
Kate Forsyth
Anne McCaffrey
Janet Evanovich
Sue Harrison: several of her books are historical fiction about native people from Alaska and the islands in the Bering Sea
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
And there are so many more out there.

Lastly, I am going to attempt to participate in the December Reading Challenge by Books and Cupcakes:

So that is that! If anyone out there wants to participate in either of these challenges (or both!) I highly encourage it!

Day Thirty-One: Read This Month

I managed to meet and surpass my goals! The photo is of the physical books that I finished: Gone With the Wind and Reaper Man. I also started reading Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.

For audiobooks, I finished Night Circus, listened to A Wizard of Earthsea, Fablehaven, and started the second Fablehaven: Rise of the Evening Star.

Not too shabby! Thanks for reading and watching for my photos on this photo challenge!

Day Thirty: Freebie/Old Friend

I read this series via audiobook and absolutely fell in love. There is something really amazing and special about these books (to me). I first listened to them during my grad program, but then I kept listening to them over and over to keep me company because I was so often alone. So the characters became my friends and they were all near and dear to me. This narrator is one of the best I have encountered, too.

So here is The Thirteenth Child by Patricia Wrede (read by Amanda Ronconi):

And sorry it is a little late! Saturday was a crazy day for me!

Day Twenty-Nine: Trees

I don't think I have any books about trees, but here are a couple of books with trees on the cover!

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Andrews Edwards (yes, THE Julie Andrews) and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

Day Twenty-Eight: Book Soulmate

Wow, my book soul mate? That seems like a loaded question! And it was difficult for me to figure out.

First of all, I don't think I have any one book that is my soul mate because different books speak to me on different levels. I ended up selecting three of my very favorites, but it is certainly not a complete list of my favorites. I excluded books that I had already used in the course of this photo challenge, for one, and I did use many favorites on different days (like The Graveyard Book and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, which is actually an awesome choice for my book soul mate. Oh well).

So here they are:

How about book soul mates?

Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which I inexplicably love always. Tuesday's With Morrie by Mitch Albom, which I read at a point in my life that I really needed to hear his messages. Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce as another that had always been a favorite. I had to include the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder because I grew up reading them and they have meant so much to me. I also wanted to include Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, but my copy seems to have gone missing...

Day Twenty-Seven: Award Winning

I discovered that most of the books I own that have won awards are books for children... So here are some Newberry winners!

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi, The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth, and The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.

Day Twenty-Six: Plot Twist

The most recent book I read (or listened to, rather) that had several plot twists was this one, Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde:

Not to be confused with (the horrible, never touch with a ten foot pole) Fifty Shades of Grey. Totally different book here.

Jasper Fforde creates very interesting worlds and I definitely got lost in this one. I loved this book and all of its twists and turns. I can't wait for the next installment!

Day Twenty-Five: Mug

I don't think I have any books with a mug on the cover so here is my current book with my (Disney princess!) mug of coffee.

Good way to start the day!

Day Twenty-Four: Tearjerker

As a general rule, I don't go out of my way to read sad books, but I have read that make me cry for various reasons. Usually bitter sweet endings or touching moments. Here are a few:

In the Stone Circle by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Day Twenty-Three: Audiobook

I listen to a lot of audiobooks these days, since that is what I have the most time for. Here is a photo of my current audiobook!

Fablehaven by Brandon Muil, read by E.B. Stevens

Day Twenty-Two: Classic(s)

This is a little unconventional for this challenge, but I sort of inherited this lovely book set that includes nearly all of the most well-known classics:

And I love it. It really has just about everything you could want. Philosophies, sciences, plays, myths, and more. I think it is called The Great Ideas collection or something. I use it to for reference more than anything. It's totally awesome.

Day Twenty-One: POC Character

At first, I panicked and thought: I don't have any books about POC. Which is a total lie. I actually have tons, I just never thought about it much.

Hazel and Leo from the Heroes of Olympus sprang to mind, as did Daja and Frostpine from the Circle books by Tamora Pierce. The Graveyard Book came to mind because I always imagined Scarlett to be black, even though Neil Gaiman doesn't specify, to my knowledge.

I settled on a collection of books (I actually have more than can reasonably be put in a picture!), most of which I read during my Race and Ethnicity in American Literature class:

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe is one I read for a book club, but I think I chose it. The rest were from my class (a couple others we read I did not include like Maus I and II and Hunger of Memory). I enjoyed all of them except Native Son and I struggled with several parts of Jasmine. No-No Boy may have been my favorite of these, though I also liked Their Eyes Were Watching God. And Reservation Blues was very interesting. All of these are very interesting books from a cultural clash perspective. Good reads.

Day Twenty: Glasses

Glasses and books? Good thing I wear glasses!

Day Nineteen: Magazine

I don't really read magazines. The only ones I do read are Scientific American and this:

Nice and educational, right?

Day Eighteen: Indie Book

Wow. An Indie book? I wasn't entirely sure what that would entail. Not well known? Small publisher? Both?

Anyway, I did a little research (is that sad?) and discovered that it seemed to be a bit of both. Small publisher or self-published books that often stumble into a certain niche.

Apparently my book collection is a little too run-of-the-mill.

The book I used for my name is one, but I already used that and it's not fair to use it twice.

I have a few that are from small publishers, but most of them are ones that I used as references or have not read at all yet. Relics from my parents' "library" after we moved. (My parents collected TONS of books, like you would not believe, and they were stashed, crammed, and otherwise piled onto book cases in our basement. I took just about anything that sounded interesting).

As I was searching my shelves, I stumbled across one of my favorites:

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Josephine Leslie (aka R.A.Dick)

I had to look, and the publisher was not one I recognized. Of course, it was also published in 1945. I looked up the publisher and it is a small one and I know many people haven't read this book, so I decided it was good enough for the prompt!

Day Seventeen: Library/Book Store

I had already decided to do a bookstore. Part of this reason was that it is Sunday and libraries weren't open. And since I work nights, it was difficult to get a chance to go to a bookstore (I didn't manage it and wasn't sure what I would take a picture of if I had).

In my area there aren't tons of bookstores. The closest to me is Barnes and Noble, which I do frequent. There are a couple of Tattered Cover shops, which are great shops, but definitely out of my way.

My very favorite bookstore was the famous Powell's in Portland, Oregon, which I visited a few years back. It is amazingly huge! A book lover's dream! There was also a nice large book shop in Eugene, Oregon that I visited last year and loved, but I can't remember what it is called.

Since I live in Colorado and can't simply go over for a visit, I wasn't sure what to do. Then I remembered that I had merchandise from Powell's! So here is my Powell's tote bag!

A good friend of mine also got me a pint glass from Powell's. I couldn't find a good way to get a picture of it with the bag, so I went with the bag by itself. If anyone goes to Portland, I highly recommend visiting this shop!

Day Sixteen: Favorite Book Couple

I have been re-listening to the Heroes of Olympus series lately, so I really wanted to do Leo and Calypso. Since I don't own the books, I couldn't think of a way to do this. Nico and Will were also strong in my mind because I think that's the cutest (almost) couple ever right now!

So I went back to a very old favorite: Daine and Numair from The Immortals series by Tamora Pierce.

I was always in love with Numair myself, so it stands to reason that this would be an all time favorite!