Book Haul: Half Price Books Booklover's Weekend Sale Part 1

Over Valentine's weekend, Half Price Books emailed out a coupon for 20% off, calling it the Booklover's Weekend Sale. My family planned to go to the three different stores in central Columbus, so we printed three coupons (just in case we had to surrender them! Always be prepared) and went to each of them, and had lunch at Tee Jay's. It was an awesome day with my family, with new books and good food.

Love For Books Readathon Wrapup

My goal was to read 50 pages a day, which I did not manage to do. My boyfriend was in the hospital from Wednesday to Sunday during the Readathon week, and while I did have a lot of time to read, I did not take advantage of it. 

Updates: on life, the blog, and Love For Books Readathon

If you're wiggly and squirmy about body/health/hospital stuff, this is a warning for the next four paragraphs. A quick summary is that my boyfriend is in the hospital and I've been seeing him everyday, not reading for the readathon like I should be, as well as not blogging.

Review: Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer

Smart Girls Get What They Want by Sarah Strohmeyer

Young Adult

Published 2012 by Balzer and Bray

E-book of 224 pages

Gigi, Bea, and Neerja are best friends and total overachievers. Even if they aren't the most popular girls in school, they aren't too worried. They know their real lives will begin once they get to their Ivy League colleges. There will be ivy, and there will be cute guys in the libraries (hopefully with English accents)! But when an unexpected event shows them they're missing out on the full high school experience, it's time to come out of the honors lounge and into the spotlight. They make a pact: They will each take on their greatest challenge—and they will totally rock it.

Gigi decides to run for student rep, but she'll have to get over her fear of public speaking—and go head-to-head with gorgeous California Will. Bea used to be one of the best skiers around, until she was derailed. It could be time for her to take the plunge again. And Neerja loves the drama club but has always stayed behind the scenes—until now.

These friends are determined to show the world that smart girls really can get what they want—but that could mean getting way more attention than they ever bargained for. . . .

I bought this in e-book format randomly one night and read it in four days, which is a short time to finish a book for me. I am not counting the pages I read of this book toward the Love For Books Readathon because my goal for that is to read 50 non ebook pages a day.

Love for Books Readathon

This is my first ever readathon signup! The Love for Books Readathon is hosted by Novel Heartbeat and Confessions of a Bookie Monster, and the button there will take you to the post with the information about it :) 

Super Six Sunday: Six books that warmed my heart

I have probably almost never finished a book and distinctly thought, 'woah! That was a heartwarming book!', but despite that I managed to pick six books off of my shelves that did indeed warm my heart.

Classics I want to read

I had this simple idea for a blog post, and it grew more and more complicated as I was outlining my thoughts. There are a lot of classic books out there, and while the ultimate goal is to read as many as possible, the short term goal is to read the ones I really want to first. So, I was going through my bookshelf, my to-read and read shelves on Goodreads, and my e-book library for the classic books I want to read. It sounded easy enough, until I ran into a few books that I am still unsure if they count as a classic book.

Life Log #3

It's been over two weeks since the last Life Log, but to be honest not much has happened. I'll share the books I've been reading and a couple of life events so I don't expect this post to be too long :) Then I'll queue my Waiting on Wednesday here soon after!!

Some Thoughts on: Books I wasn't allowed to read as a kid

When Harry Potter was making his way in the literature world and all of my school friends were reading about him, I wasn't allowed to. My family was living with my grandma, and we were waking up every Sunday, going to church and studying the bible. Mom and grandma would talk about the aspects of Harry Potter and the magic related themes about the books that they didn't want me reading or getting too interested in. So I never did.

Waiting on Wednesday: The Sound of Letting Go by Stasia Ward Kehoe

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine.

The moment I read the synopsis for this book, I knew I was going to feature it in my Waiting on Wednesday post this week. It's going to be released tomorrow, the sixth of February!

Month in Review: January 2014

I hope I'm not too late to the party, but I'm finally doing my January month in review. This is my first sort of recap of any month ever because I made this blog just a month ago! For these, I will include all sorts of bookish things, as well as a little bit of personal things.

Itty Bitty Apologetic Blog Update

I haven't blogged in almost a week, with every intention every day since my last blog to post a January wrap up or recap of sorts. It's been a tough, weird, uncharted-territory-type weekend in my personal life and I feel like the last five days went as fast as quickly as five minutes can. I went to my first funeral today, for my great aunt Suzie and I love her and I'll miss her and think about her every day of my life for the rest of forever, and blogging wasn't a priority this weekend. I apologize, but I'm sure you can understand.

Waiting on Wednesday: Alienated by Melissa Landers

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine.

It was hard to pick this week what I am waiting for, because as I read more and more Waiting on Wednesday posts, the more books I am excited about.

Review: The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson

Young Adult

Published 2014 by Viking Juvenile

E-book of 400 pages

For the past five years, Hayley Kincaid and her father, Andy, have been on the road, never staying long in one place as he struggles to escape the demons that have tortured him since his return from Iraq. Now they are back in the town where he grew up so Hayley can attend school. Perhaps, for the first time, Hayley can have a normal life, put aside her own painful memories, even have a relationship with Finn, the hot guy who obviously likes her but is hiding secrets of his own. Will being back home help Andy’s PTSD, or will his terrible memories drag him to the edge of hell, and drugs push him over?

My motivation to buy this was the Reblog Book Club on Tumblr is reading it. I haven't participated by way of making posts on my thoughts of this book on Tumblr, but I might eventually. I read through it all even though the schedule for reading it is 30 chapters each week, and right now the Reblog Book Club is on chapters 62-94. If you're on Tumblr, I recommend that blog! :@)

Life Log #2

I meant to make this post last Wednesday but it's ok, this is just a filler sort of feature here on my book blog that has not too much to do with bookish things, and I do it for mostly myself. I hope the few views I might get on this post are readers who read it and like it, but if not, that's one hundred percent ok. Here are some events of my past two weeks, either way!

Waiting On Wednesday: A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Breaking the Spine.

Finally I decided this week to start doing the Waiting On Wednesday meme, and I'm pretty excited to keep this up and do it every week. I'm absolutely pumped for the book I'm waiting on this week, and it comes out in two days! It's hard to say when I'll be able to get a copy though, but you better believe I'll be reading every spoiler-free review of it until I do.

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Young Adult

Published 2009 by Hyperion

Paperback of 345 pages

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14:
Debate Club.
Her father's "bunny rabbit." 
A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.

Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15:
A knockout figure. 
A sharp tongue.
A chip on her shoulder.
And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.

Frankie Landau-Banks. 
No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. 
Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society.
Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places.
Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them.
When she knows Matthew's lying to her. 
And when there are so many, many pranks to be done. 

Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16:
Possibly a criminal mastermind. 

This is the story of how she got that way.

I bought this in paperback when I was a sophomore in high school, and started reading but never finished. I decided I wanted to retry reading it this year, which I did, and I'm glad. It's an interesting story and Frankie is easy to like.

Super Six Sunday: Favorite books to recommend to others

Super Six Sunday is a weekend meme hosted by Bewitched Bookworms.

This is my first week participating in Super Six Sunday! I'm not sure if I'll do it every single Sunday, but I definitely wanted to do this week's theme :) All but two of these books were recommended to me, so I'm sharing the love and recommending them to you. 

Book haul: Half Price Books

A week ago I went to the used bookstore called Half Price Books. I got some things from the young adult section and did pretty well in the clearance section. The clearance section is categorized by genre, which I didn't know before so I never looked around in it because I thought it would be overwhelming and full of uninteresting books. Yea, I was wrong!

Review: The Diary of Mattie Spenser by Sandra Dallas

The Diary of Mattie Spenser by Sandra Dallas

Historical Fiction

Published 1997 by St. Martin's Press

Paperback of 229 pages

No one is more surprised than Mattie Spenser herself when Luke Spenser, considered the great catch of their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later, they are off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie's only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations not just of frontier life, but also of a new marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As she and Luke make life together on the harsh and beautiful plains, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the girl he left behind and finds love where she least expects it. Dramatic and suspenseful, this is an unforgettable story of hardship, friendship and survival.

I bought this book for a dollar at a Half Price Book clearance sale last year, as well as Dallas's Buster Midnight Cafe. I picked it up because it's in diary format and had a pretty cover. :) Even though it felt like a month, I finished this book in five days, which is fast for me. It was hard to put down because there is never a slow moment in Mattie Spencer's life.

Book haul: hand-me-downs from my parents and other finds

My mom and I got the inspiration to go through the closet of boxes of books the other day, and I made out with some books that my mom and dad owned, read, and love.

When we moving into where we live now, my mom and dad had all of their boxes of books in a storage unit. The day we moved in, we had tons of sorting of boxes to do. When on of our movers would ask where to put yet another box of books, my mom and dad had them put them in the linen closet. They've been there since October until just now.

Review: Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett

Undiscovered Gyrl by Allison Burnett

Young Adult

Published 2009 by Vintage Contemporaries

Paperback of 304 pages

Only on the internet can you have so many friends and be so lonely. Beautiful, wild, funny, and lost, Katie Kampenfelt is taking a year off before college to find her passion. Ambitious in her own way, Katie intends to do more than just smoke weed with her boyfriend, Rory, and work at the bookstore. She plans to seduce Dan, a thirty-two-year-old film professor. Katie chronicles her adventures in an anonymous blog, telling strangers her innermost desires, shames, and thrills. But when Dan stops taking her calls, when her alcoholic father suffers a terrible fall, and when she finds herself drawn into a dangerous new relationship, Katie's fearless narrative begins to crack, and dark pieces of her past emerge. Sexually frank, often heartbreaking, and bursting with devilish humor, Undiscovered Gyrl is an extraordinarily accomplished novel of identity, voyeurism, and deceit.

When I picked this up, I had good expectations for it, because I love a book in diary or journal format. Katie writes in a blog, and records every daring detail of her life's events to the internet. It's very well done, as she even sometimes will respond to comments or emails she receives in some of the entries. I started this book about six months ago but put it down due to a reading slump and I wasn't liking the character. But, her and her blog stuck in my mind and the more I thought about this book the more I wanted to finish it. I'm glad I did because I ended up loving to hate her, and strangely enough connected with her.

Life Log #1

Every two weeks I want to do a personal post for this blog. I have been keeping a little memo on my phone of a list of things that have happened or that I've done so far this year, and I'm excited to finally share them!

Books I began reading but never finished

I have eight books in my bookshelf I began reading but never finished, and of those are six books I really want to start again with a clean slate and finish them.

These are in alphabetical order by title, because I honestly have no idea which order I'll be reading them in. I want to read them all equally, and it is my goal to read each of them this year.

2014 resolutions and book goals

For my resolutions this year, I decided to just loosely list some things I want to do, rather than set exact goals for exact things. For example, instead of taking pictures every day of the year, my resolution is to just take pictures more often than I did before. I don't want to pressure myself, but I do want to push myself.

Obligatory first post

This is mostly a test post so I can edit my template and layout of this blog and make it as pretty as possible, but it is an introductory post as well I suppose :)

One of my new years resolutions was to make and keep a book blog. I have no idea what kind of posts I'll be making yet or how often I'll blog here, but at least I've got one now.

I guess we'll find out where this ends up in due time!