A few weeks ago, I was able to celebrate my third blog anniversary, and honestly it is so incredible that I have made it this far over three years. In order to celebrate, I decided to do a Q and A and answer all the amazing questions that you guys can come up with! I didn’t get a ton of questions, but the ones I did get were all super unique and I cannot wait to answer them. Since this is a shorter post, you’re welcome to ask more questions about me in the comments and I’ll answer them there – if I get enough, I may even do a second Q and A post! But let’s get right into what we have here.
1) Which three places are currently at the top of your travel bucket list?
Wow, I don’t really have a travel bucket list, now that I think about it! I love cities, and I love mountains, but I don’t actively seek out places to visit to find those things. I think for my top choice, I would say San Francisco, because I’ve technically been there twice, but the first time I was too young to remember, and the second time we were there for a total of 6 hours (during the nighttime) so I didn’t get to see any of the city. But it sounds like a super cool city, plus I really want to visit the ballpark they have!!
For my second choice, I would say somewhere in Europe, but I don’t actually know a ton about Europe so I’m not sure where. The only time I’ve ever been out of the United States was when I went to Toronto, which is incredibly close to the US, but I would love to visit some of the mountains in Europe, especially after Naemi @A Book Owl’s Corner’s post about them (and thank you to Naemi for this question!).
For choice three, I might go with Japan, because that is obviously a very advanced and amazing country, as well as a place with lots of beautiful sights! Not only that, but Japan has a really good baseball league, so I’d love to go see some baseball and experience what baseball culture is like in a different country.
2) If you could choose any author to write the book of your dreams, who would you pick and what would the book be about?
Oof, this one is tough. First of all, I think the book of my dreams would probably involve baseball, and an aroace female main character (sounds like self-insert, but whatever). Queer rep in sports is incredibly difficult to come by, and aroace rep regardless of the situation is needed, so it would be amazing to see aroace rep in a baseball book! As for who I want to write it, I think I would probably choose Racquel Marie, because I loved both of her first two books, especially the friend groups within them, and her second book is about sports so she can clearly write sports books too. Not sure how well she could write an aroace baseball book, but this is all hypothetical. The other choice I would love to go with would be Taylor Jenkins Reid, but I think she’d make my novel way too dramatic, and a lot of her stories are also centered on romance drama which obviously would not occur in an aroace book (or…could it???). But TJR’s writing is fantastic, so it would be an honor for her to write my book.
3) What kinds of content would you love to see more of around the blogosphere?
I’m gonna be honest – I love the content that’s in the blogosphere right now! I guess one thing it might be fun to see a little more of are book lists, because I love the number of recommendations that I can get from just one book list post, but there are already a lot of those.
4) How did you start blogging and become active in the online book community?
I turned to the online world at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, as many people did, and found a great little community of book lovers on goodreads. From there, I met some people who had started blogs and it inspired me to do the same! Books With Wings is also actually my second blog – I started a small one during the very first few days of the pandemic with two of my friends, and although that one died out pretty fast, I’m happy with the experience it gave me to start this one!
5) Which author would you choose to narrate your life story?
This one’s pretty similar to #3, but I think specifically for my life story instead of the story of my dreams, I would go with Taylor Jenkins Reid because all of her books seem so realistic, as if we are actually reading someone’s biography. I think my life is going to have to become a bit more dramatic for that to actually happen, though…
6) If you could only eat one fruit for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?
What a question!!! Definitely not something that I have revealed on here before, but I LOVE fruit. There are so many types of fruits that are so delicious. Some of my favorites are mango, nectarine, kiwi, and the classic apple, but if I had to eat only one, I would probably go with mango. You can eat mango in a ton of different ways (just today I ate a bowl of frozen mango pieces AND a mango popsicle) and I love basically all of them. Frozen mango is one of my favorite snacks, and I also love snagging a few strips of dried mango. Having fresh mango is a delicious treat, though I don’t actually get to eat it very often.
7) A genre that you’re convinced you couldn’t ever like no matter how hard you tried?
My first thought upon reading this was ‘romance’ because I have a general dislike towards romance books. But there are, surprisingly, romances that I do enjoy reading, and I realized there are genres I dislike more. Unfortunately, for this one I think I’m going to have to say science fiction. Sci fi is one of the main genres these days, so it feels weird to say this, but I’ve actually never really enjoyed these books, especially if they’re extra science-y. I don’t understand most of the science in the books, and they just get confusing and convoluted when some of the concepts don’t make sense to me.
That’s it from me for this post! I hope you enjoyed learning a little more about me, and I’m super thankful for everyone who asked questions! They were very creative and I had a lot of fun answering them.
Where would you like to travel? Is there an author you’d like to write your dream story? What are your thoughts on mangos? Let me know in the comments!
Lately, I have not been giving myself time to read. ‘Slump’ isn’t exactly the right word – there are still books that I want to read, and I have been making fairly steady process on those books. It is simply a matter of what time I have – my life has been busy, and I have other things to do, most of which I feel are more ‘productive’ than reading. At these times, for me, it can often feel like a waste of time to do anything other than what I need to do, so anytime I sit down to read a book, I feel like I should be doing work instead.
That being said, there are some books that you just can’t put down. Regardless of how much work you have, you just need to get back to reading that book, and finishing it as fast as you can. I’ve had several of those experiences in the past few months, and today I wanted to share with you the books that I couldn’t stop reading, despite my busy schedule.
You Don’t Have a Shot, by Racquel Marie
If you’ve been on my blog for more than two posts, you have probably heard something about how I hate reading romance books. I just think that there are far too many of them, and I don’t enjoy reading them in general. And yet, there are just some romance books that I can’t stay away from.
The main pull of You Don’t Have a Shot was primarily the banter. This was a romcom at its finest – there were so many parts that I just couldn’t help but laugh at, and the book itself was just such a joy to read. Not only was the banter top-notch, though, but the slow burn romance was probably the best that I have ever read. The reason I found this book un-put-down-able was truly because I couldn’t wait to see when the two characters would get together – it all felt so close, but just out of reach.
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World was a shock for me. I’d read the first book in the duology several years ago and it didn’t really resonate with me – Ari’s personality didn’t really come through, and the book felt very emotionless. I wasn’t expecting to like this one any more, but picked it up on a whim when I didn’t want to read anything else.
The reason I really liked this book more, and I couldn’t put it down, was because of the friend group. In the first book, the only two characters are Ari and Dante, and I found that to be a little boring because they were just always together, and there was no one else. This book, however, saw Ari opening up to some of his friends and slowly forming this group of people who he could trust and confide in. Each of these characters and their own unique personalities made me want to see what they were going to do next.
I’ve read a few of Becky Albertalli’s books before, but haven’t enjoyed any of them nearly as much as I liked Imogen, Obviously. I picked this one up after finding it in my house mysteriously (aka my mom randomly got it from the library), and I literally did not put it down until I was finished.
I liked this book in ways similar to the other two – the characters and their friend group was amazing. I also loved the text conversations happening in this book – I’m not sure why, but I really like reading texts within books. Similar to You Don’t Have a Shot, this was a slow burn which kept me rooting for the characters the whole book.
I have wanted to read Icebreaker ever since I heard about it in 2021, before it was published. I’ll pick up nearly any book about sports, and especially a queer one. This one is a bit of an outlier on this book, mainly because I actually didn’t enjoy it as much as I was expecting to, and yet I still sped through it and couldn’t put it down.
The main reason I didn’t enjoy Icebreaker as much as I was expecting is that it felt like it moved too fast and so I didn’t get to see the romance develop as much as I would have liked to. Moreover, once the characters got together there still wasn’t many scenes involving them actually being in a relationship, something that was confusing given that it was a romance book. Regardless, all the side characters (especially Mickey’s sisters!!) were amazing and I loved the integration of sports, especially college sports, into the book!!
Another one that materialized in my house one day, I was not expecting to get much from this one. The MC is asexual, which I’m always glad to see, but it was primarily a romance, so once again I wasn’t sure what I was going to get from it.
Love Letters For Joy, however, manages to perfectly blend important discussions about love and identity, a slow burn romance, and amazing friends (plus some not so great ones). I loved the disabled, queer representation in this book, and I also loved Nathaniel’s relationship with his siblings. Plus, the email exchanges were super fun to read!
The one non-contemporary book on this list, Last Violent Call was such a joy to pick up. You’ll have to read Chloe Gong’s other books before you get to this one – it centers around characters from These Violent Delights, while focusing on issues happening in Foul Lady Fortune – but these two novellas were really fun to read in the wait before Foul Heart Huntsman comes out.
Chloe Gong has this amazing ability to make such fantastic, engaging plot lines, while continuing to allow her characters to shine brightly. It seems like most fantasy books I read are centered around the plots, and while Gong’s books are no different, her characters still shine so strong. That’s why reading these novellas, whose plots I felt weren’t as powerful as those of her other books, was still so fun – I got to see all the old characters I had missed from TVD.
I recently published my first post since returning from my hiatus, a tag that circulates yearly called the ‘mid-year freak out tag’. I got comments on the books that I had read, and more likes than I would have guessed, given that I had been mostly absent from this community for over a year. The next thing that I posted was a book review, of Carrie Soto is Back, one of the books that I had raved about in that first post, and many people had commented on. Two days later I had gotten five likes, and zero comments.
I’m not telling this to you in order to make you pity me, or to advertise that you should go read that book review. It was simply an observation that I had made, and one that continues a trend that I’ve seen in the past: book reviews just don’t get as many likes and views as other types of posts in this community. I’m certainly not any different – when scrolling through my WordPress feed, I often jump right past the reviews that people have posted, instead clicking on the tags, or discussion posts. But that struck me as fascinating, given that we are, after all, a group of book bloggers – we are literally blogging about books. So why don’t people want to read reviews of them?
One possibility for why book reviews are just less read than any other post is what the post has to offer. A book review title tells you exactly what the post is going to be about: you’re just reviewing the book. Even if there’s an epic plot twist inside the book, or you reveal a shocking piece of information, the reviews are generally fairly self explanatory. Compare this with a tag, or a discussion: the contents of those could go any way. Maybe your response to a tag question is completely out of the blue. Maybe you’re shocked by one of the questions asked, something creative that makes your own ideas start to spin. The same goes with discussion posts – those are people’s straight up opinions. They are generally seen as more creative posts than book reviews, because although book reviews are based off of thoughts from a book, discussions are more free-for-all, with less content to base off of, and more of your own thoughts.
Moreover, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter by the year. Most people just don’t have the interest in stopping to read an entire post about one book – in a post such as a tag, multiple books are discussed and short overviews are given of each of them, letting a reader peruse multiple books in a shorter period of time.
But shouldn’t we be encouraging ourselves to learn about that next book, looking for our next great read? Yes, but people subconsciously don’t see book reviews as the best way to do it. On a platform like goodreads, or any other book reviewing platform, you rarely read a review unless you’re interested in the book. Personally, even if I see that one of my friends reviewed a book on my goodreads stream, I will only actually read the review if I’ve already marked the book as TBR, or if I read the synopsis and it sounds interesting. The purpose of book reviews on goodreads is to further encourage or discourage readers to pick up a book once they are already interested in it, and this has leaked into the world of blogging. Similar to my situation with goodreads, if I see that one of the blogs that I follow has written a review of a book, I will only click on the review if it is about a book that I am actively interested in, or one that I have already read and want to see someone else’s opinions on. Book reviews are no longer tools to discover new books – they are tools to provide further information to someone who is already aware of the book, limiting the audience of the reviews.
So, as book bloggers, should we begin making an effort to read more book reviews as they pop up? Obviously, that is entirely up to you, and I’m not here to demand that you start reading mine, or anyone’s reviews. But what are the pros of a random book review you stumble across? First of all, it can help you learn about a new book. Book reviews almost always begin with a synopsis of the book in question, so even just reading the first few lines will provide you with a lot of information about a book you may never have heard of. Sticking around and reading a little further is even better, because not only do you get a more complete idea of what the book is like, you get a more complete idea of what the blogger is like. Book reviews are some of the most opinionated posts that a blogger will publish, giving you a peek into their own thoughts, likes and dislikes, and wholehearted opinions. Even if you don’t come out of the review looking for the nearest place to get your hands on the book, you’ve discovered something new about the person behind these posts, which can make for a great way to connect with a new bookish friend.
But lastly, reading a book review is honestly just a great way to support a book blogger you enjoy. The original idea of book blogs was purely to provide a place for people to review and discuss books with others that have similar tastes, and these blogs have definitely drifted away, to posting tags, discussions, and other quasi-related posts. Of course, I’m not saying that these are bad types of posts – in fact they’re incredibly important and provide a lot of fun ways to interact with the community. But book reviews, as the original intention of book blogs, should get no less attention than other posts. Writing blog posts is not, and never should be, about the attention you receive after posting them, but the feeling of support and community should not be diminished depending on what type of post arrives in your feed.
What are your thoughts on book reviews? Do you read them? Do you have any other ideas for why book reviews may be less read than other posts? Let me know what you think in the comments!
I figured it was time to get back to doing some tags, so I scrolled down to the very bottom of my drafted posts to find the tag from the longest amount of time ago that I hadn’t done, and this is what I came up with!
Personally, I’ve never really believed in zodiac signs – I’m a pisces, and I’m a terrible swimmer (I’ve been told that I think about this far too literally). But how could everyone from one month’s worth of time have the same personality and traits? Still, they’re interesting ideas to think about, and I’m super excited to get into this tag, so let’s go!
I was tagged for this over two years ago (whoops) by Ritz @Living, Loving, Reading. There’s a book tag and a music tag, and I’m going to do just the book tag because I don’t listen to much music.
Rules:
Link back to the creator, i.e, Swift Walker @Just Dreamland
Link back to the person who tagged you!
Answer all the prompts.
If you use the original graphics, credit the creator (i.e., Swift Walker)
Tag at least 5 bloggers and provide links to their blogs.
Name your Zodiac sign!!!!
Don’t forget to add #ItsAZodiacThing tag.
You can either do the zodiac book tag /the zodiac music tag or both them. Graphics for separate tags should be given at the end.
Enjoy doing the post
Aries: a wild and compelling book – from start to finish. Every page intoxicated your mind and heart with incredible imagery
I’m not sure if this is exactly what the prompt had in mind, but the imagery in The Beast Player was fantastic – I really got an amazing idea of what the world was like, and what was happening at the time. It was a more character based book, and it was a little slower than most, but that just let you appreciate the imagery more.
Taurus: A heart wrenching story of a forbidden love that could tear the family apart
Wow, I wasn’t actually expecting to choose this book at any point in this tag, and yet it just fit really well. The Song of Us came out pretty recently, and it’s a middle grade book in verse that follows two girls who start dating, but they end up breaking up because of one bad incident, and spend the rest of the book trying to get back to each other. It was surprisingly sad for a middle grade book. It’s also a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice.
I read this book about a year and a half after it was a big deal among those on goodreads, but I was very happy I picked it up, and now I understand the hype. This book was just truly funny, and fun to read. The banter and talk between Meddy and her aunts was outrageously entertaining.
Cancer: A bittersweet book that spoke to your sensitive heart
Friday I’m in Love is a little bit of a weird answer, because ultimately this book is about joy, and celebration, but the underside of this book focuses on money worries, as well as medical scares, which made me think of this book as more ‘bittersweet’.
Self Made Boys, by Anna Marie McLemore. This is a retelling of The Great Gatsby, so already you have the fancy wear and love down easily, but this book also has a good amount of hope, unlike its original. This was a pretty fun retelling, especially the ending, which deviated from the original. I will say, though, that most of the rest of the book was a little too similar to The Great Gatsby – it just felt like I was reading TGG for most of it.
Virgo: a tender story about self love, self discovery, perseverance, friendship, romance, and family
I literally just read this book, and it fits the prompt perfectly. The first book in this duology, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, had self discovery, romance and family, but this one just checks all the boxes. In Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World, they begin opening up to a few more people, and by the end they have a fantastic friend group that I just love reading about.
Libra: A book that has a remarkably frank look on life. One of the realest books you’ve ever read
I don’t really read frank books I guess? I read books to escape my world, not think more about it.
Scorpio: A book with a good plot twist. A book that is psychologically thrilling and emotionally chilling. Haunted you from the first page to the last
I’m shocked that Ace of Spades was the first book that came to mind here, because I read it well over a year ago, but this book was truly shocking in its plot twists, as well as frightening and a real wake up call. Reading this book was terrifying, but it certainly fits the prompts of ‘good plot twist’ and ‘psychologically thrilling.’
Why not go with the book that I just read? I devoured Imogen, Obviously, in under a day, and it was a fantastic read. I always think of contemporary books as ‘summer’ reads, so this one felt perfect for the warm weather. It’s not much of an adventure, unless you count questioning your sexuality as an adventure, which it is, so this book still fits perfectly.
Capricorn: A book that has everything to do with friendship
How could I choose anything other than Loveless for this one? Loveless has been one of my favorite books ever since I read it for the first time, and the friendships in it are one of my favorite things ever. The best display of friendship in this book is that long monologue that Rooney says to Georgia near the end, about how she’ll always be her friend and they’ll grow old together, etc. It’s just perfect. Here’s a link to my goodreads review, where I put the entire monologue.
If I had to describe The Foxhole Court in one way, ‘unique’ would probably work well. I avoided this book for years because of the incredibly mixed reviews, but given that it was a sports book, I decided to pick it up, thinking that I would probably like it because I enjoy sports books. I was definitely wrong. This book largely felt very uncomfortable and toxic, and I was not a fan. Still, it was one of the more unique books I’ve read – the author invented a whole sport, after all – so it works for my pick here.
Pisces: A book that bewitched and enchanted you with its lyrical words, and transmuted your imaginative brain.
Maybe not exactly what the prompt had in mind, but I personally love Taylor Jenkins Reid’s writing. I think that she just conveys scenes and drama so well, and it really makes me love her books because it keeps me very invested. I chose Carrie Soto is Back because it’s the TJR book that I read most recently, and it’s easily my favorite TJR book as well. Her writing really lends itself to the contents of this book, because it’s about tennis, and the action scenes are written really well.
I went back and forth on whether to tag people or not – I wanted to revitalize the tag since it’s been so long since anyone did it, but I eventually decided against this because I have been out of the blogging world for so long that I’m not sure who’s doing tags, or how active any of the people I follow are. But if you’re interested in this tag, please go ahead and do it! It was really fun and I’d highly encourage you to try!
What better way to take a quick moment back from my ongoing blogging hiatus to talk about how my year’s going so far! I’ve seen the Mid Year Freakout Tag multiple times throughout my time as a blogger, but never got around to trying it myself until now. I know I haven’t been very active on my blog lately, but I have been reading a fair amount. Let’s see what I’ve thought about the books I’ve read so far this year!
Best book you’ve read so far this year
Clearly I’ve been enjoying several of the books I’ve read – my only post so far this year was the best books I’d read this year. And yet, none of those books is my choice – instead, I’m going with Carrie Soto is Back, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which I finished just a few days ago. This is a book about a tennis player and I always love sports books (I wrote a post on that a few years ago!!!), but I especially loved the character development in this one.
And now is when my terrible memory fails me, because I cannot remember the plots of any of the sequels I’ve read this year. I’m going to go with The Beast Warrior, sequel to The Beast Player, because I really enjoyed TBP, and I think that TBW was very similar to that enjoyment, since it was kind of a (much later) continuation of the same plot line.
I’ve thought You Don’t Have A Shot, by Raquel Marie, sounds awesome since I first heard of it. Marie’s first book, Ophelia After All, is one of my favorites, and YDHAS is about sports!!!
Edit: I’ve read it since writing this blog post (but not before publishing it). It is amazing. Racquel Marie is amazing. My review.
Most anticipated release for the second half of the year
There’s only one book I can think of when I think ‘anticipated release,’ and that one doesn’t come out until next year. But I am just so, so excited for Dear Wendy, by Ann Zhao, a book about two aroace college students who run rival relationship advice blogs, but become best friends in real life without knowing the other is behind the screen.
Edit: I just read May @Forever and Everly’s list of anticipated releases and now I have a lot more anticipated releases.
Biggest disappointment
I read Skin of the Sea after the book sat on my shelf for over a year, and really enjoyed it. So you’ll have to imagine my disappointment when I read its sequel, Soul of the Deep, and it was…fine. I was slow to get through it because I didn’t want to pick it up since I didn’t enjoy it, and it just made me not want to read at times, which was really disappointing.
Since I already used Carrie Soto is Back for one of my answers, I’m going to go with Foul Lady Fortune. I certainly enjoyed Chloe Gong’s other books, the These Violent Delights series, but FLF was just on another level. I loved the characters, I loved the story, I just loved everything about it, and it surpassed my expectations completely.
I had read books by Taylor Jenkins Reid before I picked up Carrie Soto Is Back, but I think that CSIB really confirmed my love for TJR’s books. She has this writing style that is just really easy for me to read, but that really keeps me hooked the entire book. She has a way of writing characters and conveying stories and emotions in a way that makes me fall absolutely in love with her books.
Newest fictional crush
N/A, obviously.
Newest favorite character
I’m going to go with Elin, from The Beast Player and its sequel, for this one. I loved TBP because of its characters and its world, and Elin is one of my favorites. She is so curious, and determined, and driven to do what she thinks is right. She spends a lot of time contemplating if what she is doing is the right thing to do, and the morals of these things, and she always makes her decisions with lots of thought put into them. She’s a much slower, more considerate character than many others that you read about, who just jump into action without considering the consequences.
I… don’t cry when reading books. I just don’t. Sometimes they make me tear up a little, but I honestly cannot think of which books made me do that, because sometimes it’s the most random books that otherwise would not make me feel anything.
Book that made you happy
Ummm…Carrie Soto is Back is the only correct response I can give here. This book is just about the love for a sport, and its character development as it follows Carrie through one last year in tennis, as she rediscovers her enjoyment of the game, was just beautiful. It made me so happy to witness Carrie’s growth and the friends she made along the way.
What books do you need to read before the end of the year?
I’ve turned into much more of a mood reader these days. I don’t want to force myself to read any specific book, and I’ll just pick up what I think looks good in the moment. So I’m sure there’s books that I want to read, but I’ve been terrible with adding things to my TBR, and I don’t feel like going searching for the books at the moment, so here’s my answer. If YOU have any suggestions for books I should read before the end of the year, please let me know! (and recommend them to me on goodreads so I actually mark them as tbr).
Have you read any of these books? What are some of your favorite books of the year? Do you have any recommendations for books I should read in the second half of this year?
Recently, I was reading a book, and it was that type of book that makes me feel like I can’t put it down, not because I needed to know what happens next, but because I just loved the world and the story and wanted to be surrounded by that. And my next thought after this was that I wanted to share it with other people, thus introducing my first post of 2023: books that I’ve loved so much that I just want to talk about them.
The reason I created this blog in the first place was to establish a place that I could talk about books and share my love for them with other people who feel the same way. And although I haven’t been doing much of that lately (in fact, it’s been just over a year since I stopped posting consistently), I really just wanted to make a straightforward post about books that I love in the hopes that I can talk about them with you. Let’s get to it.
A Thousand Steps into Night, by Traci Chee
There’s fantasy books, and then there’s fantasy books. I don’t know what it is about a good old epic fantasy, but I just love a solid adventure filled with a lovable cast of characters and a fantastic journey. In A Thousand Steps into Night, the main character Miuko gets cursed to slowly turn into a demon and must venture to get rid of this curse with the aid o a magpie spirit, all while having a treacherous demon prince hot on her tail. Miuko’s character development through the story is fantastic as she begins to realize that everything she knows about her world may not be completely accurate, and her slow acceptance to who she is. The characters who she meets on the way, too, all have wonderful personalities, and the plot is riveting – especially since it has a side of time travel (not just a ‘side’. Time travel plays a big part, which makes it all the more confusing and fun).
I wasn’t actually expecting to enjoy Foul Lady Fortune very much, which makes it all the more exciting that I did. When I read These Violent Delights and its sequel, I found them to be good books, but I was certainly not the hype machine that everyone seemed to have turned into upon the publication of TVD. I thought that I would enjoy FLF around the same amount, and yet something about it just spoke to me so much more. When someone asked me why I liked it so much once I finished, I couldn’t exactly put my finger on it until a few days later, when I realized that it was, without a doubt, the characters who I loved so much. Several of the characters were definitely in TVD, but seeing them shine as main characters or characters who were more central to the plot was fantastic. Their dynamics and their actions were all perfect, and they were just so much fun to read. (PS: Alisa is aroace!!!)
The Beast Player is one of those books that has sat on my shelf for ages, and I only picked it up when I was in a lull of reading and didn’t have any books from the library or anything like that. I was not expecting to enjoy it nearly as much as I did, and yet as I got farther into it, I found myself pulled into the story, following the characters so closely that I couldn’t put it down. The Beast Player examines the intricate relationship between human and animal through the story of the main character, Elin, and her bond with a mythical beast named Leelan. Like the other two books on this list, this is a very character driven story – there’s not much action, but it instead follows Elin’s life from the age of 10 through her early twenties. The relationship between Elin and Leelan was written fabulously and the thoughts and ideas that Elin grappled with were marvelously communicated. I would absolutely recommend this to anyone looking to read a character driven book that explores a lot of deep ideas, set in a wonderfully written fantasy world.
As I was writing out this post, I noticed something odd. When I read, I generally prefer plot driven books. I like the fast paced stories that keep me gripped onto every word. And yet the things that drew me to each of these three books were the characters. A Thousand Steps into Night and Foul Lady Fortune certainly had their fair share of action and plot, but it was still the characters that I loved most about those stories. Character driven books are very much a hit or miss for me – either they’re too boring, or, apparently, they become my new favorite book. This being said, does anyone have any character driven books that they love and would recommend to me?
Thanks for stopping by to read this random post! Have you read any of these books? Do you have any recommendations for me? Let me know in the comments!
It was completely unplanned that I dropped off the face of the blogging world in April of 2022, with no goodbye or anything, but I wanted to come back quickly to talk about my reading over the rest of 2022 and maybe provide a little bit of explanation for vanishing. (By the way, I have kind of forgotten a lot of things about using WordPress and aesthetics and stuff, so if this post is horribly boring and/or messed up, you will have to forgive me).
I remember the end of last year, and reading everyone’s awesome yearly wrap ups and seeing the super cool graphs (the graphs are literally the coolest)! I had never kept track of my reading so closely, but I decided to try it out in 2022 and although some things didn’t come out quite as planned, there were a few things I was pretty happy about. Let’s look at my year!
Honestly, I’m not super happy with how my reading turned out this year. At the same time that I went on an accidental blog hiatus, in April, I also went into a book slump that not only involved me reading very few books, but also meant that I wasn’t logging my books on goodreads much, because I was just staying away from the book world in general. At around September or October, I began to mark books as read again, and attempted to put down any books I’d read over the summer as well, but I’m probably missing some. Regardless, my reading was down tremendously this year. When I started logging books on goodreads in 2020, I read 183 books. In 2021, I read only slightly less, with 157. So 67 books is a huge dip for me, which I’m kind of upset about. Of course, I have to take into account the fact that my 2020 year was almost entirely virtual, and I had quite a bit of online school in 2021 as well, which gave me more time to read, but I’m still sad about my reading this year.
Onto the statistics! (aka the part I have been waiting a year to write about)
(My graphs are kind of messy, as I put all the text on them manually, and I’ve never been a technology/design person, so please forgive me)
Rating:
As usual, I rated most of my books 4 or 3.5 stars (almost all books that I rated 3.5 stars here were rated 4 stars on goodreads). I did rate 5 books 5 stars, which is nice, and I didn’t rate any book below 2.5 stars because I really hate rating books badly, so I usually need to have very strong feelings on a book to give it that rating.
Genre:
This graph made me laugh when I saw it, because there’s just so many different genres! There was a point in my life when I read almost exclusively fantasy, and although fantasy is still excellent, I branched out a lot this year, and I’m really happy with the results! I found a love for realistic fiction/contemporary books, and I also read quite a few historical fiction books as well! I read less sci fi and dystopian this year, which is also something I’m kind of happy about, because I’ve never loved those genres and I’m glad that I’m learning my lessons and reading less genres I dislike! (note: the ‘thriller’ section encompasses thrillers, mystery books, and horror books, and the ‘memoir’ section encompasses both memoirs and nonfiction books).
Age Range:
As expected, I read more YA books than anything else, but I was surprised at the lack of middle grade books I read. Usually I read a fair amount of middle grade, but not this year! And I’m happy about the number of books in the adult category I read, as well – I’ve always found adult books to be slow and more difficult to get through, but I enjoyed several that I read this year!
Type of Book:
This one is not at all a surprise, but I find it funny nonetheless. I…basically only read novels. Part of this is also that I rarely count graphic novels as books that I read because I can read them so fast that I almost feel like I’m ‘cheating’ my reading challenge – but I do really enjoy graphic novels and I’m certain that I have read more than three of them this year. Short story collections and plays, as well as other types of content, are just not things that I am very interested in (the one play that I did read this year was for school, too).
Publication year:
Over half the books I read were from either 2022 or 2021, which is completely unsurprising. If there’s a book I’m interested in that was published two years ago, I’ve probably already read it (that sentence doesn’t make a ton of sense, but whatever). I am interested that my second highest category after 2022 and 2021 was books from before 2016. Now granted, there are a ton of years before 2016, and a ton of books published in those years, but it’s still pretty surprising to be (I think about 4 or 5 of those books, however, were ones I had to read for school).
Format:
Over the height of the COVID-19 quarantine, I read a lot of books on my kindle. So I was pretty surprised when I looked at this graph and the very vast majority of books that I read were physical instead of ebooks. Over this year, I’ve regained my love for reading physical books, either from the library or books I owned, which is pretty interesting to see. I also listened to a few audiobooks during the beginning of the year, but that died out pretty quickly because I’ve just never been a huge fan of audiobooks.
Diversity/Representation
I am not a huge fan of the way that I set up this part of my reading graphs, and I plan to do a little changing things up for next year, but I still think this is pretty cool to see! Out of all the books I read, 77.2% of them had some kind of representation, and more than half the books I read had LGBTQ+ rep! Obviously I hope to keep improving the amount of representation that I read, but I also think it’s especially important to read ownvoices authors, so next year I definitely want to make sure that I make it easier to mark that..
(Special thanks to May@Forever and Everly and her 2021 wrap up who I took a lot of inspiration from for what graphs to include).
Favorite books this year:
Of course I can’t go one post without talking about my favorite books. Loveless and Ophelia After All are established favorites which I read earlier in the year, but I also gained a new favorite which I got at Christmas: One for All by Lillie Lainoff. One for All is a retelling of The Three Musketeers (and I didn’t know anything about The Three Musketeers aside from the fact that it’s a candy bar) following a girl in France at around the 1650s. The girl, Tania de Batz, gets sent to what she believes is a finishing school once her father dies, only to learn that it is actually a training school for female muskateers. Tania has POTS, a chronic illness categorized by near-constant dizziness, and I think that the author (who also has POTS) wrapped it into the story really well – it was always present and never forgotten about, but it also did not define Tania and she had tons of other character traits. I loved the found family in this book (one of my favorite tropes!!) and overall it was just a fantastic story with plenty of action but also some really heartfelt moments. As for Loveless and Ophelia After All, I think I’ve spent enough time talking about them, but you can check out my review of Loveless on my blog here, and you can read my (very short) goodreads review of Ophelia After All here.
Looking Back on my 2022 Reading Goals
At the beginning of 2022, I published a post titled: “Welcome 2022: Reading Plans for the Year,” something that I completely forgot about until I stumbled upon it today. So, how did I do in my 2022 goals and plans?
Read 100 books: Well, that certainly did not occur. My reading this year was significantly worse than it has been in several years, so I only managed to read 67 books, and I think I’m going to be setting my goodreads goal a little lower next year.
I mentioned five books that I wanted to read this year and I’m happy to say that I read four of them! The last one, What We Devour by Linsey Miller, I unfortunately DNFed, but I did enjoy the others!
My anticipated releases section also lived up to my expectations. I loved three of my anticipated releases, but the other two are ones that I haven’t gotten around to yet, and hope to soon.
Where I’ve Been and Where We’re Going From Here
Time to address the elephant in the room: I haven’t posted since April of this year, more than six months ago. As I stated previously, it was completely unplanned that I vanished from the blogging world. I had kept up a consistent schedule of posting once a week until April, but around that time I was running out of posting ideas that I was excited to write, and school and my softball season was taking a lot of my time. Not only that, but I began to realize that I wasn’t enjoying blogging as much anymore. When I would sit down to write a blog post, it felt like more of a chore, something that I needed to get out for my readers and not actually an activity that I thought was fun. When I took a week, and then two, off from blogging, it didn’t feel like I was missing out on anything, and it just lifted one more thing I had to do every weekend off my chest.
Another thing that I realized was that I hated all the formatting and aesthetics of blogging. I was spending so much time making each of my posts look nice, and look uniform, when all I actually wanted to do was write about books. You might be able to tell from this post that I spent less time on the formatting – my section headers aren’t the same color as they used to be, and I’ve added less pictures and linked less things, because I never enjoyed doing that.
So, what’s next? Where am I going from here? I love the book blogging community, I love all the people, and I love reading everyone’s bookish posts. But I don’t know if I love writing those posts myself. So, I can’t tell you if I’m going to come back and post anything else. I think I want to play it by feel, and if one day I open up my computer and decide I want to write another post, then I’ll put one out. Is this likely to happen? Probably not. There were times over the past several months when I would wander onto WordPress to see how everyone is doing, and I would pop into my drafts folder, but I never had the motivation or the yearning to write a new post. Do I want to say that this is the definite end of Books With Wings? Absolutely not. Things change. Maybe I’ll find enjoyment in this once again after a few months. Maybe I’ll never really get back what I once had by posting here, but decide that every once in a while, I’ll come back. If I do come back, my posts will probably look a little different – less aesthetics and formatting, more words. Probably more discussions or random rambles instead of tags and book reviews.
All of this doesn’t mean I want to stop talking to everyone on here, though! I’ve met so many wonderful people through book blogging and I love talking to all of you. But, given that I’ll be on wordpress less, I’ll also probably be responding to comments slower, or not at all (there are five comments sitting in my comments section, waiting to be responded to…if that’s you, I apologize). If you do want to continue talking to me (and I would love to hear from you!) you can use the ‘contact me‘ section of my blog, or message me on goodreads.
Life Update:
So what’ve I been up to in the months that I’ve been gone?
A lot of softball. As I mentioned earlier, softball played a pretty significant part in why I vanished from the blogging world. In the spring, I was playing on both my school team and a town league team, so I was pretty much playing softball every day of the week.
School ended, summer happened, and then school started again. I feel like time has been going by SO fast and I cannot believe I’m already in the next grade and it’s already the end of December.
Over the summer I (kinda) got a job, and I also went on a roadtrip. I worked for exactly 1 week over the summer (whoops). But I’d never gone on a roadtrip before and it was actually very fun! I didn’t expect to enjoy it so much because it was a lot of time in the car (10.5 hours of driving in one day, anyone?) but it was just a cool thing to do!
I would love to hear what everyone’s been up to in the months that I’ve been gone! Please drop a comment so I can hear how you’ve been and what you’ve been up to! (PS: if anyone can tell me how to change the font color in ‘list’ blocks, I would appreciate that greatly. It appears wordpress has undergone some changes in the time I’ve been gone).
Say you’re reading a book. And then suddenly you have to get up and do something…and there aren’t any bookmarks nearby. This happens to me way more than I’d like to admit, and usually I just end up picking the nearest thing to me. Which…is not always the best shape or size to mark my book.
I recently did the Three Bookish Things tag, and one of the questions was about different things that I’ve used as bookmarks. Now, my family and I have used SO many different things as bookmarks, many of them quite ridiculous, that I wanted to do a whole post on it! So I just want to thank the Three Bookish Things tag for the idea (and Madeline @The Bookish Mutant for tagging me to do that tag) and now here we go!
Candy Wrapper
I’m pretty sure this was only once or twice, it’s definitely not a common occurrence, but yes, I have picked up a candy wrapper from a table or wherever and just stuck it in my book as a placemarker. Why do we have candy wrappers just sitting around our house? Also definitely not a common occurrence but. Yeah.
A Pencil
Pencils are kind of like bookmarks already. They’re long, so they work to stick out of the top of a book so you can save your place. Plus, if you put it pointy side up, then you get a built in defense mechanism against anyone who might be foolish enough to attempt to steal your book. Only problem is, of course, that pencils do have a bit of dimension that bookmarks don’t have, and this can be a little frustrating in your book. I guess there is, in fact, a reason that bookmarks are basically flat.
A Playing Card
This one actually scares me a little. Look. Decks of playing cards come with 52 cards. 4 suits, with 13 cards in each suit. Numbers 2 through 10, and then jack, queen, king ace. What decks of playing cards do NOT come with is backups in case you lose a card. Or, in this case, when you use one for a bookmark. And once one card is gone, the entire deck is literally unusable. Honestly though, if it weren’t for the whole ruining-the-entire-deck thing, playing cards are actually pretty nice bookmarks. They’re flat. That’s kinda the main criteria for a bookmark.
My iPhone
My phone is kinda-sorta attached to me. Not literally, of course, but if there’s one thing you can trust me to have on my person or next to me at all times, it’s my phone. And so because of that, I’m always going to have my phone on my while reading. Which means, if I ever need to really quickly save my place in a book I’m reading, sticking my phone in my book is a pretty easy way to do so. It’s usually pretty temporary, for when I just need to quickly get up and do something, but I’ve briefly lost my phone more than once in this way.
A Hair Tie
This is actually one that I JUST found. I was moving a book that my sibling had been reading, and happened to look inside and saw that there was a hair tie holding the place. This one doesn’t work super well, I mean it’s a weird shape, it doesn’t stick out of the book and it leaves a weird lump in the middle of the book that bookmarks don’t usually leave, but ah well.
Math Homework
I actually have no idea how a sheet of paper with a bunch of math equations covering it found its way into my book as a bookmark, but I picked up a book that I hadn’t read in a while, and there it was. I assume that I do not need this particular piece of paper with math on it anymore (let’s hope) so it’s definitely going to stay in my book until I finish it. Or until I need it, I suppose.
Gift card/student ID card
Okay, the student ID was from last year. It was not my current student ID, I don’t think. The gift card…I actually have no idea how much money was on the gift card, because I’m really bad at using up gift cards so maybe there was none on it and I just happened to have it, or maybe there was a billion dollars on it and I just used a billion dollar gift card in my book. (okay, no, I am not rich and so do not just leave billion dollar gift cards lying around, and no one I know is rich enough to just give me a billion dollar gift card. I do not actually own a billion dollar gift card.)
Paper Crane
To be honest, paper cranes are great bookmarks. If you put them in so their tail is at the spine of the book, so the crane’s body is like the same way as the pages, it looks adorable because then the crane’s tail and head are just sticking out of the book. If I had to recommend any one of these things to be used as bookmarks, it would definitely be the paper crane.
Another Book
If I’m in a room with a book, there is probably going to be another book in said room with me. Just because how could I possibly only have one book? My house is filled with books. There’s gonna be another one nearby somewhere. So…if you need a bookmark, use a LITERAL one. A book to mark your place! Similar to the iPhone book mark, this one doesn’t work super well because of it’s size and shape, but just like the iPhone, it’s probably one of the things I can most expect to have around me at all times. I recommend a skinnier book, so that the book whose place needs marking doesn’t just flop open because of the size of the book, but other than that, there’s not much to say here.
What are some crazy things that you’ve used as bookmarks? What do you think of the things that I’ve used?
I actually first published this post way back in September of 2020, only a few weeks after I started my blog. I totally forgot about it until I went looking back to my old posts searching for something else and stumbled upon this gem instead. It’s a pretty cool post, and honestly the original wasn’t written that badly, but I decided to spruce it up and publish again, since very few people got to see it given how new the blog was back then. So, I hope you enjoy, and if you are one of the few people who’ve already read this one, well…give it a reread?
There are so many books out there–too many to be able to read in an entire lifetime, no matter how much you try. Once you’ve read the book, you’ve absorbed the plot, the characters, the world. Reading books is like having a thousand different stories running through your head. So, why in the world would you pick up a book that you’ve already read? If you know the story, the characters, the world, why read it again? Why waste the time on this book when there are so many more new stories? Today, I wanted to discuss some of the reasons that I reread, plus a few reasons why rereading can be helpful in some scenarios.
So first of all, why do I reread books? There are a few reasons for this. One of them, which I feel like is fairly common for a lot of people, is just for comfort reading. If I’m in a book slump, or I just want to read something that I know that I’ll enjoy and am familiar with, rereading is definitely something that I’ll do. There’s definitely something nice about curling up on a cold day with a book that you already know you’re going to enjoy, ready to get immersed into that world again.
Probably the second most common reason that I’ll reread a book is if it’s in a series and the next book in said series is about to come out. My memory when it comes to books is woefully bad (as I’m sure you’ve heard many times before), so rereading is a big help so I’m not totally lost when I start the next book in the series. Sometimes, I’ll even have to do this more than once, if the NEXT book comes out (aka, one reread for the second book coming out, but then another one when the third book comes out)
And lastly, I’ll reread a book just if I have no other books to read. Almost always, I have access to a library and keep a pretty steady stream of books coming to me from that library, but sometimes, especially before Christmas or my birthday when I have been banned from getting books from the library so that I don’t accidentally read a book that I’m getting (my mom claims she doesn’t do this, but I know she said it to me once), I don’t have that, and so I end up rereading books that I have at home.
Now, why might rereading be fun or even useful at times? I think the best thing about rereading is to catch clever little tidbits that the author hid in the reading that you really don’t notice until it’s been revealed later on in the book! My best example of this is in Six of Crows, which I reread recently, and I noticed so many clever things that Leigh Bardugo added in hinting at how Wylan’s father really thought of Wylan that I absolutely would not have gotten the first time around.
When you reread, you could also focus on a different part of the story you’re reading from the first time around. Usually, the thing that I pay the most attention to is the plot, because that’s just what’s happening in the story, so it fascinates me most, but turns out that there are a lot of awesome other things, for example characters and character development, as well as worldbuilding, and by rereading, you’re able to appreciate some of the other elements of a story that you didn’t catch at first because you were focused on what was going on.
Books could also help to assist with your own writing, if you are a writer. In the past, I’ve found plenty of books that I use to help me with writing style as well as worldbuilding. Obviously I’m not suggesting you plagiarize or copy parts of the book, instead I’m simply recommending studying the book for techniques that an author used to make their book better. For example, how did they introduce their characters? What is their description like and what sorts of things do they describe? I remember at one point being obsessed with and reading over and over the first chapter of Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, just because of how much I loved the description, and attempting to recreate that in my own writing. Anyone who’s book has been published has clearly done something right, so why not learn from them?
What are a few reasons that you reread? Do you find rereading useful? What are some books that you jump to as comfort reads?
Hey everyone! Today I’m here with an author who’ve I’d had visit my blog before – Rosiee Thor! The last time that Rosiee visited here, it was my very first author interview and we discussed their debut novel, Tarnished are the Stars. You can find that interview here. But Rosiee recently had another book published – their sophomore novel Fire Becomes Her came out on February 1, and today we’re here to discuss this new book! Let’s check out what Fire Becomes Her is about, first.
With only a drop of flare, one can light the night sky with fireworks . . . or burn a building to the ground — and seventeen-year-old Ingrid Ellis wants her fair share.
Ingrid doesn’t have a family fortune, monetary or magical, but at least she has a plan: Rise to the top on the arm of Linden Holt, heir to a hefty political legacy and the largest fortune of flare in all of Candesce. Her only obstacle is Linden’s father who refuses to acknowledge her.
So when Senator Holt announces his run for president, Ingrid uses the situation to her advantage. She strikes a deal to spy on the senator’s opposition in exchange for his approval and the status she so desperately craves. But the longer Ingrid wears two masks, the more she questions where her true allegiances lie.
Will she stand with the Holts, or will she forge her own path?
Summary from Goodreads
So first of all, just tell us a little about yourself!
Hello! I’m Rosiee, author of queer science fiction and fantasy novels. I have two published novels: Fire Becomes Her and Tarnished are the Stars. I’m also an avid gardener and mediocre gamer!
Fire Becomes Her is your sophomore novel, and it’s a fantasy, unlike your debut science fiction, Tarnished Are the Stars. What was different about writing a fantasy book this time, and why did you choose to do so?
It might be a little odd to say this but… not much was different. Science Fiction and Fantasy are really just two sides of the same coin. The difference is really just what you call it–technology or magic? So as far as genre, I still had a lot of the same considerations to make about how the magic/tech worked and how much of that was going to get explained. At the end of the day, it was more of a marketing decision than a clear distinction of genre, since they both contain elements of science and magic.
I think one of the biggest things in Fire Becomes Her was the extremely unique worldbuilding, as well as a government system that was a huge part of the book. The book centers around the use of magic called Flare. How did you come up with the idea of Flare and all its uses throughout the book?
Figuring out the magic system for this book was absolutely central to the world building. Basically, Flare is fire magic that you can drink, but it’s also so much more than that.
I wanted to play around with magic, but I wanted that magic to play a deep and inexorable role in the world. No one lives in that world without being impacted by magic in one way or another. I decided to tie it to multiple areas of society to make sure it was fully entrenched, so it’s the social equivalent of alcohol, the economic equivalent of oil, and the aesthetic equivalent of fire. This allowed me to play around with magic in every aspect of their society–wealth, status, politics, vibe…etc.
In FBH, you highlighted several different identities on the aromantic and asexual spectrums, and two of these characters also ended up in a queerplatonic relationship. Can you tell readers a little bit about these identities, and what it means for you to write them?
I knew from the beginning that I wanted to write about a character discovering her aromantic identity and what it means to her, but I didn’t really know what that was going to look like until I started writing. Ingrid’s a lot like me and her experiences with relationships and the discomfort she feels in romantic situations is drawn directly from my life. When I first started writing stories, I didn’t think characters like her would be well received by publishing at all, so to have my editor give me the go-ahead to write the story the way I wanted to was such a freeing experience. I got to follow my own emotional logic instead of trying to piece it together based on how I assumed others might feel. I always knew I wanted Ingrid to make a big decision about her relationship to romance, but the idea to center a queer platonic partnership in the story didn’t occur to me until I was a bit further into the draft. Originally, I had planned to write a sequel which would allow more time and space for that relationship to form, but when my publisher only bought one book, I realized I didn’t want to leave it out in hopes I’d get the opportunity to write the sequel. I didn’t want to leave that up to chance and not get to write this relationship, so I reconfigured the story and gave certain characters more page-time to make sure they got the story I intended.
The first time I interviewed you, I asked how you grew through writing Tarnished Are the Stars and I want to ask you the same question again. Do you think you grew more through writing Tarnished or FBH?
I definitely grew a lot while writing Fire Becomes Her. As a writer, certainly, but also as a person. I always find things out about myself through writing that I don’t really anticipate. With Tarnished, I learned a lot about my own identity on the ace and aro spectrums, but with Fire Becomes Her I was surprised to find some of my own feelings about gender, pronouns, and perception echoed in one of the other characters in the book, Alex. I knew I was a lot like Ingrid and her journey would mirror parts of my own, but I did not expect to see myself in him and his non-binary experience. It forced me to think a lot about myself and my relationship to gender in ways that deepened my understanding of my own identity.
How would you describe FBH in one sentence, to someone who hasn’t read it yet?
An ambitious girl must choose between her head and her heart during an election where magic buys votes.
What do you think would happen in an interaction between the main characters of Tarnished are the Stars, and Fire Becomes Her? Do you think your characters would get along?
I don’t think Ingrid would get along very well with any of the main characters of Tarnished, to be honest. She’s a little too prickly in a very specific way for them. She and Eliza might do okay, but I think Eliza would see right through her and Ingrid wouldn’t love that. I do think Charlotte and Nathaniel would get along swimmingly, and Louise and Anna would be like two angry peas in a pod.
And lastly, unrelated to your writing, but what are some books that you’ve enjoyed reading in the past few months?
The last year or so has brought some amazing books to my shelves. A few favorites are In The Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland, The Mermaid The Witch and The Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall, and The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath.
Ha you read Fire Becomes Her, or heard of the author? What did you think of the interview? Are you interested in picking up this book?
Books with Wings 