February Wrap Up

I really wanted to write an intro to this post that did NOT talk about how fast time has gone, but I then spent a good five minutes (it was more like half a minute, but it felt like five) thinking of what I could start this post by saying, and having not thought of anything, you get this. I successfully avoided talking about the speed of time! Kind of!

• Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland. I picked this one up on a whim, and it was a quick middle grade read. It’s interesting to read a middle grade that’s set in the earlier 1900s and I like how the author incorporated that in there. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. This book was very good for the first 100 and last 100 pages. It kept me reading and I really enjoyed the awareness that it spread. I did feel like the middle dragged considerably, however. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Thornhill by Pam Smy. This book was half told in drawings, half in diary entries, and it was a fascinating concept, but I did not end up enjoying it much. It was a dark story, and it had an inconclusive and sad ending. ⭐⭐

• Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki. This was such a nice story, with found family and also lots of violins. I am definitely nowhere near as good at violin as two of the main characters of this story (nor do I wish to be) but it was still cool to see all the violin terms and techniques. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• White Smoke by Tiffany Jackson. Shockingly enough, this was my first book by Tiffany Jackson??? It was also horror, which I don’t read much, but I found this to be a really gripping and enjoyable book. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. This book was a memoir in graphic novel form, and it was really interesting to see Maia’s journey to figuring out eir sexuality and gender. [no rating]

• Fire Becomes Her by Rosiee Thor. FBH was my most anticipated release of 2022, and I have to say, it was not what I expected. There were a lot of politics and just talking, but I did really enjoy the worldbuilding and!!! the!!! aroace spec!!! rep!!! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• A Season of Daring Greatly by Ellen Emerson White. Woman playing professional baseball. Do I need to say anything else? This book was great for anyone who loves baseball, it’s a fiction story about a girl who becomes the first woman in professional baseball. You do have to love baseball to read it though, because there’s a lot of baseball game scenes. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Love and Other Natural Disasters by Misa Sugiura. At the time that I read this, it was just what I needed, a nice realistic fiction that I just enjoyed all the way through. This one also has the fake dating trope which has been coming out more and more and is always so fun. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

• The Keeper of the Night by Kylie Lee Baker. This was a super unique story and was really fun to read. I loved a lot of the characters as well as the story itself, but I do think that the pacing was off at the ending and that the ending overall could have been better. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Given the popularity of this book, I cannot believe that I haven’t picked it up until now. That being said, I found it to be an awesome world and an altogether enjoyable book. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• These Feathered Flames by Alexandra Overy. Magical politics was most of this book. Still, I felt like it picked up a lot near the end and really interested me; I just wish there were more plots before then. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Bookish Brews interviewed Rosiee Thor (author of Fire Becomes Her) about queerplatonic relationships in books and it was so awesome to read about qprs!
• Maddie @Inking and Thinking shared some new releases by Black authors that you should look out for and it’s such an extensive list that you’re sure to find some new books to add to your TBR!
• May @Forever and Everly created the 666 Reading Challenge and I’m excited to see how she does throughout the year!
• Naemi @A Book Owl’s Corner shared what popular books would be like if she were the protagonist of them, and it was absolutely hilarious
• Rachel @A Bookworm’s Paradise gave us a look into why bookworms lead dangerous lives and it’s such a relatable post; we are in mortal danger at every moment.
• Maria @The Character Study wrote a response to my own ‘Pressure to Write Book Reviews’ post with one of her own and it was really fascinating to read someone else’s opinions on this topic!
• The Human Book Club gained a new team and I’m so excited to read more advice with these very talented bloggers!
• The Quiet Pond interviewed Lillie Lainoff in advance of her debut, One for All and it was such a great interview!

I posted four times this month and I’m very happy about this! And I mention it at least once more in this post because I’m going to keep talking about it! I have a good posting schedule! Anyways, these were all really fun posts and I hope that you enjoyed them too!

The Best Books of 2021 Tag

The Book Blogging Pressure to Review Books

The Evermore Book Tag

4 Awesome, Underhyped Authors

February Goals:

• Keep up with my posting! ✅
• Drink. Water.

I was able to keep up with my posting schedule, in which I posted once each week, every Sunday, and I’m really happy about this because I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep going with this due to school!

• Keep up with posting schedule (yes I will just keep writing this goal)
• Organize my goodreads shelves
• Do a little blog editing

I started to do a few things with blog editing and goodreads shelves and I hope to continue doing so when I have time!

If I’m being honest, nothing much really happened in February. We had a week long break from school, and my family went on a vacation to a farm, where we got to meet some animals, which was a very nice break from school.
Valentine’s Day also happens in February, and there’s a bunch of ways to sort of show your appreciation for your friends (and I suppose romantic partners if you have them) at my school on Valentine’s Day. The biggest way is that there’s a way to send carnations to people, so I ended up with a bunch of carnations, and it’s really just a fun day to see all the carnations and trade treats with people and just have fun!
The other thing that happens in February is aromantic awareness week! Aro awareness week starts the Sunday after Valentine’s Day (I think) and I’m a little sad that I didn’t get any posts out about aro rep or anything of the sort during this week, but I did just want to let everyone know about this! If you’ve seen any great posts about aro rep or anything of the sort, please let me know in the comments because I would love to read them, and you can also look back at my own post that I published last pride month about why aroace spec rep is so important in books!
Oh yeah the other thing that happened this month was that I DNFed a book haha. Not a super huge achievement, but I find it very hard to leave books half read, even if I’m not enjoying them, so the fact that I was able to step away from this book that was boring me was good for me. Now I will just live with the knowledge that I am probably missing an extremely interesting plot in the last half of the book.

What did you read this month? Were there any posts that you enjoyed? What are some of your goals for March?

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4 Awesome, Underhyped Authors

Hey everyone! Today I wanted to write a really simple post, but one that I’m also very excited for. There are a lot of authors out there whose books get insanely hyped up, whose new releases are anticipated by what seems like everyone, and those books are awesome, and absolutely rightfully hyped and anticipated. But there’s also several authors whose books I have loved, but who I really don’t see read around the blogosphere or on goodreads. So, today I wanted to bring some awareness to these authors and their books, since they’re totally awesome and you should definitely read them!

As it turns out, you probably actually have heard of most, if not all, of these authors, simply because I love their books and hype them on my blog a lot. But I still wanted to take the time to write an entire post dedicated to them, because they deserve it and I wanted my time to sing their praises again.
Also, I will only be including authors who have published at least two books (and I have read at least two books by these authors, as well) given that debut novels sometimes are not as hyped as other books just because people don’t know of the author as well. So, these are authors who’ve gone through a debut novel and then another book and I still want to talk about them.

Buttons lead to goodreads pages for each book.

Rosiee Thor

Rosiee Thor’s second book, Fire Becomes Her, just came out on February first. I did see some hype for this book, but definitely not as much as I would have hoped. Rosiee’s first book, Tarnished are the Stars, was published in 2019 and it is a really unique science fiction book. Meanwhile, Fire Becomes Her is a fantasy with amazing worldbuilding. I think that the worldbuilding in Rosiee’s books is really what shines through, with a unique world forming the setting of Tarnished as well. Rosiee’s books also highlight aroace characters and characters on the aroace spectrum, which is always a win for me, and Tarnished are the Stars is actually very important to me because that was the book where I first learned of the terms aromantic and asexual. Not only are their books great, but Rosiee Thor themself is a really great person, who has an awesome personality and is definitely the nicest author who I, myself, have talked to. I wrote a book review of Tarnished are the Stars a very long time ago, and also interviewed Rosiee Thor about it, and you can check out the review here and the interview here, but please keep in mind that this was my very first book review on my blog 🙂 (by which I mean, it might be bad). And look out for another interview with Rosiee coming very soon!

Tarnished are the stars

Fire Becomes Her

Darcie Little Badger

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache author with two published books, both of which are magical realism. Darcie’s first book, Elatsoe, was published in 2020, and her second book, A Snake Falls to Earth came the next year in 2021. Both her books center around Lipan Apache main characters, and draw on Lipan Apache legends and stories. Darcie’s writing style is awesome as well! Another thing that was great about Elatsoe and A Snake Falls to Earth is that they’re not super fast books, but in a great way. There’s not a whole lot of action, but they both feel like they’re more an exploration of the world, and of the characters, especially A Snake Falls to Earth. Definitely do not go into these books expecting a fast paced adventure, but just let yourself get pulled along with the story and the characters!
Plus, and I always have to bring this up, the main characters in both Darcie’s books are asexual, as is she, and it’s some great casual ace rep – it’s mentioned on page both times, but it’s never made a big deal of; it’s just there!

Elatsoe

A Snake Falls to Earth

Margaret Owen

Margaret Owen may be my favorite fantasy author, which is saying quite a bit. The first thing you have to notice when you read her books is just the worldbuilding. Her Merciful Crow duology as well as her newest book, Little Thieves are both set in fantasy worlds, and they’re honestly just like any other high fantasy worlds, but there’s something about the way that they’re written that’s just so great. And Margaret Owen’s books are just pure high fantasy which is absolutely something that I need every once in a while. There’s a lot of different types of fantasy books and worlds, and so many of them are great, but there’s just something about high fantasy that makes it so awesome to come back to once in a while.
The characters in Margaret’s books are also amazing, and they always end up coming together in the best way. Plus, her plots are sure to keep you hooked with their really unique stories that still manage to follow the high fantasy sort of plot structure feel! If you’re looking for a good fantasy, I would definitely recommend these books, and I will keep on recommending them until you read them (and maybe after, as well).

The Merciful Crow

The faithless hawk

Little Thieves

Justina Ireland

Justina Ireland is an author that I actually have not talked about as much on my blog, and I have no idea why! I’ve very rarely seen her book Dread Nation anywhere in the bookish community and this is a true oversight on all of your parts and I demand you fix it immediately. Dread Nation is a super unique book, set in an alternate timeline where zombies arose from the battlefields in America’s Civil War. I have honestly never read a book like this, and it may sound weird, but I promise you, it’s NOT. Both Dread Nation and it’s sequel kept me super hooked. The books also addressed some of the racial tensions of the time, and both of the main characters are black and queer (aroace rep!!!). dread Nation is NOT the only book that Justina Ireland has written, it’s simply my favorite of hers. She’s written quite a few books, but the only one that I have read other than this duology is her middle grade, Ophie’s Ghosts. I don’t delve into middle grade too much anymore because I’m not at that age range and it can affect my ability to enjoy a book, so while I definitely didn’t enjoy Ophie’s Ghosts as much as I did Dread Nation, it was still very enjoyable for a middle grade book, which really cements my love for Justina Ireland as an author!

Dread Nation

Deathless Divide

Ophie’s Ghosts

Have you read anything by these authors? What are some authors you think are underhyped?

Evermore Book Tag

We’re at that time of year where I try to do all the tags that I’m way behind on. I promised I’d get to this one, so here I am, completing this tag over a year after I was tagged for it. Thank you so much to Ahaana @Windows to Worlds and Karla @Another Bookworm for tagging me to do this!

The first thing I do want to confess is that I don’t listen to a lot of music, and therefore do not listen to a lot of Taylor Swift. I have listened to Evermore once or twice but I’m not a huge fan of Taylor Swift or anything. Because I don’t listen to much music, NOT because I actively don’t like her music. Still, I wanted to do this tag because the prompts sound really cool!

Rules

• Link back to the original creator’s post: Ahaana’s at Windows to Worlds
• Tag at least 5 people
• Thank the person who tagged you and link back to their post!!

Willow: A book with a character you can’t help but fall in love with

A Snake Falls to Earth is a very recent read (at the time that I’m writing this post) but honestly I loved both Nina and Oli. Nina was really smart and I don’t know what it was about her that I loved, but I did. And Oli was just a total ‘bean’ character who I just wanted to protect with my whole heart.

Champagne Problems: A book with a broken relationship

In Girl Made of Stars, the relationship between Mara and her twin brother Owen breaks once Mara’s friend accuses Owen of rape. The twins were super close before this happens, so it was definitely a big break, but Mara chose to support and believe her friend, despite Owen’s denials and her parents’ insistence that the family stand beside Owen.

Gold Rush: A book you love with all your heart

This one is easily Felix Ever After, I just LOVED so many things about this book, and it just stuck with me long after I finished it. Definitely one of my favorite books, if not my favorite over all.

Tis the Damn Season: A book in which a character reconnects with their family/hometown

Darius the Great is Not Okay is a good one for this one. Darius lives in the USA, but travels to Iran, where his Mom is from, to be with and meet for the first time his grandparents. So he’s connecting with his family for the first time, and though Iran isn’t his hometown, it is where his Mom is from and he learns a lot about Persian culture while he’s there.

Tolerate it: A book with a suffering relationship

I feel like the relationships among the members of the band in Daisy Jones and the Six are suffering a lot of the time, as they work through everything that they talk about in this book. Like, there may have been one point when there was a good relationship between all of them, but a lot of the time, at least some of them were fighting.

No body, no crime: A book about murder

A pretty popular one in the murder mystery department, but Truly Devious is definitely a book about murder, albeit one that happened a long time ago that the main character is now trying to solve. A lot of people love this book, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected to, unfortunately.

Happiness: A book that’s an old favorite, but you just can’t relate to it anymore

Ah…I’m going with Harry Potter for this one. I mean, I really did love Harry Potter when I was younger, but turns out when the author ends up being a transphobe that really changes opinions.

Dorothea: A book featuring old (or strong) friendships

I really cannot go a tag post without mentioning Loveless (and Felix Ever After in that case). But the friendships in Loveless really are sooo good. Rooney’s whole friendship dialogue at the end is just *amazing*

Coney Island: A book that made you cry/completely destroyed you

We all know that I don’t cry when reading very often. I’m going with Mockingjay for this one, because the first time that I read it, back in like fifth grade or something, I did cry. Mainly because of Prim (that’s her name, right? Is that Katniss’s sister’s name?). But also because I didn’t really want Katniss to end up with Peeta (to be fair, I didn’t want her to end up with Gale either. I just don’t think that either of them was a good fit for her).

Ivy: A book that was an unexpected favorite

I hate repeats in tags, but I really did not expect to enjoy A Snake Falls to Earth as much as I did. I enjoyed the author’s first book, Elatsoe, but it wasn’t my favorite and it read a little young. And I definitely was looking forward to reading ASFTE, but it absolutely surpassed all my expectations.

Cowboy like me: A book about thieves or criminals

I want to say Six of Crows, but in an effort to use some less popular books in this tag, I’m going with Into the Crooked Place. Which, in my opinion, was kind of a less-well-written version of Six of Crows. Given that one of the main characters is a gangster, and two of the other main characters work for him, I’d say that this one is about thieves and criminals, though I’m not gonna lie, I can’t remember a particular time when they thieved or criminal-ed.

Long Story Short: A book that made up your childhood

Didn’t the Percy Jackson books make up most people’s childhood? (and I just mentioned how I wanted to use less popular books, whoops) I started reading these in third grade and I really think that Percy Jackson is when my reading really started to take off.

Marjorie: A book with a moving message

I really wanted to go with A Snake Falls to Earth again, but instead I’m going with The Edge of Anything, which is not a book that I talk about a whole lot on here. This book deals with mental health issues and overall it is a bit of a heavier book, but there are just so few books out there that discuss so in depth about mental health that I thought this would be a good fit because it’s very educational.

Closure: A series in which you NEED the next book

I actually don’t read very many serieses (that is a word. I’m calling it a word. Deal with it.) anymore, so I’m not sure what to put, but I’ll go with Little Thieves, since I loved the world and the characters, and even though the first book didn’t end in a cliffhanger and wrapped up pretty well, I’d love to see the characters and world again since I enjoyed it so much!

Evermore: The perfect conclusion to an extremely long (but worth it) series

When I do book tags, I really try to find a book for every single tag question, even if I have to stretch it, but here, the honest truth is that I just don’t read a lot of very long book serieses. After a while, I find that they get rather repetitive and I just lose interest in what’s going on. Either that, or my terrible memory forgets what happens in all the other books, and I don’t want to reread all of them just to read one that’s just been published, so I just sort of…stop reading the series. What I’m basically trying to say is that there are not really any long serieses that I am invested in.

I was tagged for this one a very long time ago, and I don’t really see it around anymore, but nevertheless, I’m going to tag several people. I tag:

• Rachel @A Bookworm’s Paradise
• Susana @Susana Loves Books
• Rania @Rania’s Rambling Reads
• Saniya @Sunnyside Reviews

What do you think about Evermore? Do you agree/disagree with any of my answers to this tag? What would you say for any of these answers?

January 2022 Wrap Up

It’s still so weird to write ‘2022’ right there, because it’s not 2021 anymore. It’s not 2021 anymore. How is this possible? (it’s also weird for me to write ‘2022’ there because I really only just started acknowledging that I have to put the year, because I have more than one January wrap up now).

Can we also just acknowledge that it’s now been a year since my ridiculous, insanely long January 2021 wrap up? Like that happened a year ago, and that consists of like…90% of my bookish fame. Right there. (joking, I don’t have bookish fame).

I read fifteen books this month, which is very good for me, and definitely the best reading month I’ve had since school started this year! This month, my reviews were all over the place, and I had more than one rating of 2, 3, 4 and 5 stars.

• The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf. I got this book for Christmas, but don’t know much about it, but it was really interesting and I enjoyed about! It’s about the 1969 race riots in Malaysia, something I’d never heard before, but it was good to learn about! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Into the Crooked Place by Alexandra Christo. I’d read a book by Christo before and enjoyed it, though I don’t see much hype around her books. This book gave off pretty big Six of Crows vibes, it felt like a slightly less-good version of Six of Crows until the climax hit, but I still liked it! ⭐⭐⭐
• A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger. I loved this one so much. There’s not much a plot for a big part of the book, but honestly I was enjoying the story enough that I didn’t care. The characters are awesome! ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson. Multiverse books are always interesting and I’m never entirely sure what to think. I enjoyed parts of this story, but I always feel like multiverse books will have plot holes or at least worldbuilding holes. ⭐⭐⭐
• Down Comes the Night by Allison Saft. I was not entirely sure what I was going to think of this one, because I found the beginning really slow, but it picked up and I ended up enjoying this one! ⭐⭐⭐
• Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse. This book was awesome. It’s been a while since I read such a high-fantasy-esq book (I’m aware I’ve read at least one high fantasy this month…but this one just had such a vibe you know?) and the world and characters in this book were so vibrant. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. My first book by Schwab! Finally! I can definitely see where the hype came from on this one, though I didn’t really feel the hype myself. It was an enjoyable book, though. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Crier’s War by Nina Varela. This one got better progressively, and I ended up really enjoying it! I’m not a huge fan of sci fi (I say, having read two this month) but this one was super cool. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• The Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi. This is a graphic novel series, and I usually don’t put graphic novels up here, but it was an entire 8 book series, so I thought I should. This is a super fun series, I’ve read the first few books in the past, but never the entire series straight through. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber. Given that I wasn’t a huge fan of Caraval, I didn’t have super high hopes going into this one, and unfortunately I was right and didn’t enjoy this a whole lot. There were definitely aspects of the story that were fun, but overall it was eh. ⭐⭐
• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. This is one that everyone’s been raving about. I did end up enjoying it, but less than I expected, which was a little bit of a disappointment to me, since I’d really been anticipating loving this one. ⭐⭐⭐
• Fable by Adrienne Young. A classic pirate adventure (not a literal classic, for the record). This one felt a bit bland to me, and I also did not like the romance, it came out of nowhere. ⭐⭐⭐

• Witches Steeped in Gold by Ciannon Smart. This was a book that I was very much reading on again off again, so I’m not sure that I’m the best person to talk about it, but personally I felt like it was kind of confusing (read above before you take my opinion with a grain of salt) and just overall did not enjoy it very much. ⭐⭐
• Furia by Yamile Saeid Mendez. Aaah, I love sports books so it’s always a treat to read one! This one was awesome, I’m not a soccer fan but I still enjoy reading about it and I really liked a lot of the plot! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Iron Heart by Nina Varela. Sequel to Crier’s War, I think I enjoyed this one more than the first, actually! It felt like a very different book, but it was still really enjoyable. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Madeline @The Bookish Mutant wrote a super interesting discussion post about the second book in trilogies and why they’re so often less good than books 1 and 3!
• Riddhi @Whispering Stories does a follow-up to her discussion about types of followers with one about the different types of bloggers that exist!
• The Pondathon started! And I am super excited to be participating in this, my garden is looking AWESOME so far.
• Ritz @Living, Loving and Reading wrote a discussion about banned book lists and it was such a great and interesting post to read.
• Rachel @A Bookworm’s Paradise guessed the zodiac signs of her favorite book characters and I don’t know much about zodiacs, but I have to agree that these fit perfectly.
• Maria @The Character Study focused on what is a favorite book and it was a really fascinating discussion post!

January’s goals:

• Read at least 5 books✅
• Drink water
• Keep up with your book google form thing✅

It was January 10th when I finished five books this month, so that was definitely nice. I didn’t end up drinking as much water as I was kinda going for, but I definitely drank some, and I have been keeping up with tracking my books! Hooray!

February goals:

• Keep up with my posting!
• Drink. Water.

I don’t have many goals for February, mainly because I don’t want to force myself to create goals that I don’t actually want to do/don’t think I need to do. But I would love to keep posting every weekend as I’ve done this month, so that’s definitely a goal of mine.

• I finished my English project! I had a giant group project in English that we’ve been working on since November and we finally had our presentation in the middle of January. It went pretty well, despite a slight freak out at the beginning of the day because two of my group members were unable to show up and we had to reconfigure the script.
• We also had our first snow day of the year, and got quite a bit of snow, which was pretty nice because snow is always fun.
• The last week of January was finals week, which was semi-stressful but not a whole lot, because I didn’t actually have that many tests. I also got really ahead in homework on the first few days so it was actually kind of chill.
• COVID kinda blew up at the beginning of January, which I think is pretty much what happened all over, and my school had a lot of cases, but I myself did not get it and I think it’s dying down now!
• I also started listening to audiobooks again this month, which is not something that I do very often, but so far I’ve been enjoying what I hear! If anyone has any audiobook recommendations, I would definitely enjoy hearing them!
• Wordle. Do I need to say anymore? Because Wordle has kind of taken over everything, like EVERYONE plays it now. If you don’t, it’s a word game where you have to guess a five letter word in six tries, and there’s one word per day.

How was your month? Have you read any of these books? Do you have any audiobook recommendations?

Christmas 2021 Book Haul

Christmas is the time of year when I get the most books, without a doubt. It turns out I’m very hard to shop for, because the three things on my list are just books, chocolate and money. Not a very comprehensive list. But because of this, I end up getting a LOT of books. It’s been several weeks since Christmas actually happened (and I’ve read all but one of the books), but here I am with my book haul (hey, at least I didn’t get it out in March).

This Christmas I ended up getting 12 books! Here are all of the books together:

featuring little trees made from corks and knit tops

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

I actually don’t know much about Once Upon a Broken Heart. It looks like the Prince of Hearts is in here, and he showed up in the Caraval series, but I don’t remember particularly liking him much. I read the Caraval series long enough ago that I don’t exactly remember what happened, so we’ll see what I think when I finally start this one!

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab

Now, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one that I’ve been after for a while. I actually first asked for this one last Christmas, but I’ve finally got it! Not only will I be reading this extremely hyped book for the first time, but this will be my first time reading any book by VE Schwab (now that I think of it, I’ve read one of her middle grade books, though she goes by Victoria Schwab when she writes those)

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

I put The Space Between Worlds on my list because it seemed like people enjoyed it, and it sounded interesting to me. I’m not a super big fan of sci fi anymore, so we’ll see what I end up thinking of it, but it still does sound very interesting. Hoping it’s good!!!

Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong

I reread These Violent Delights a few weeks before Christmas just so I could read the sequel with a fresh memory of book one and so I’m very happy I got Our Violent Ends for Christmas (especially because I forgot to put it on my list–oops). Anyone who’s read TVD, or who knows the story of Romeo and Juliet knows that this book is terrifying and will probably hurt.

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

I loved Margaret Owen’s other series, the Merciful Crow series (severely underhyped. Go read it now.), so I’m super excited for Little Thieves! It’s a retelling of The Goose Girl, which I know nothing about, and I don’t usually pick up retellings of stories I don’t know much about, but I’m so excited for this one that I’m pushing aside that rule for now!

Six Crimson Cranes by Elizabeth Lim

Speaking of retellings I don’t know much about. I can tell you the basic plot of the story that Six Crimson Cranes is based off of, but really nothing concrete. Still, I’ve heard a lot about this one and I’m eager to get into it!

A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

I read Darcie Little Badger’s first book, Elatsoe, a little while ago and thought it to be a really interesting book, so I’m excited to read A Snake Falls to Earth! I’ve read reviews that say that ASFTE is a very different type of book than Elatsoe (different structure/type of story) so I’m curious to see what goes on here!

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

I feel like there was a lot of hype for Black Sun a while ago, and maybe it’s died down or I’m just not looking in the right places, but this one still seems super interesting! I’ve heard there’s a lot of diversity and people seem to love it in general. Though–help, I read that it ends on a cliffhanger and book 2 doesn’t come out until April.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Okay a lot of the books I got have cool covers but I really think that Black Water Sister tops them all here. That being said, I’m very interested in this book, it has a very unique idea (at least that’s what I think from the summary), and I’m excited to learn more, especially because it’s set in Malaysia and deals with spirits and gods!

Into the Crooked Place by Alexandra Christo

I actually know…nothing about Into the Crooked Place. Like, I’m pretty sure the first time I read the summary was Christmas morning when I got it. I did read and enjoy another of the author’s books, so I’m hopeful for this one! Also, the summary is kinda giving me Six of Crows vibes?
(and am I the only one who just finds it a little hard to read that title?)

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake

Girl Made of Stars sounds amazing and devastating and most of all very important. I’ve read one other book by this author, but it was a middle grade book, so I’m kind of on new ground, here! And reading through a few of my goodreads friends’ reviews, they seem to like it a lot!

The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

The Weight of Our Sky is another book that I really do not know much about. I’ve seen it once or twice, but I never stopped to look at it or anything. Still, it sounds really interesting and it’s also about a period of history that I know nothing about – I’ve literally never heard of the 1969 race riots in Malaysia – so I’m excited!

Have you read any of these books? Do you celebrate Christmas? If so, what books did you get?

Welcome 2022: Reading Plans for the Year

It’s now been 2022 for a few days now, and I wanted to do a post on a few books I wanted to read, goals I have, and more for 2022! This post is basically just miscellaneous beginning-of-year things, but I figured I may as well write it. Let’s get into it!

The Goodreads Reading Challenge

I started doing the Goodreads reading challenge in 2020 for the first time, when I actually started using Goodreads more. Personally, I don’t actually pay much attention to this throughout the year; it’s just something for me to keep in the corner of my brain. I have, for the past two years, set my goal to 100 books, and though I surpassed that goal easily both times, I’m going to keep it at 100 this year, too. First of all 100 is just a nice round number and I like it, but second of all because we were in a pandemic and in quarantine for the last two years, and though the quarantine was not fun, it did allow me a lot more time for reading. Since in person school has started this year, I’ve had much less time for reading, so I actually think that 100 books is a very reasonable goal for me right now.

Books I want to read in 2022

Last year, I published a post where I named 21 books that I wanted to read in 2021. It was a pretty interesting post, with a lot of great books on there, but I’ve decided not to do that again for two reasons. First of all, I only actually ended up reading 10 of the books on that list. I am absolutely terrible at sticking to TBRs, and the fact that I had an entire 365 days to read 21 books (especially given that in all, I read 157 books in 2021) really proves that. The other reason that I didn’t want to do this list again is because I think that it mostly ended up being a lot of books that are popular and/or very hyped, and so it was more books that I felt like I SHOULD read, but not books that I necessarily wanted to read. Obviously, there are a lot of books that I do want to read, out there, but I’m just awful at thinking of them off the top of my head, and more often than not, the books that I want to read are ones that I see somewhere and then immediately go off to request from the library.
So, instead of writing an entire post about the books I want to read, I just thought I’d share a few books that I’m really excited to pick up. Not any fixed number, just however many books there ends up being.

• What We Devour by Linsey Miller. This one, I honestly just want to read because of the ace rep, which I’m super excited for! Unfortunately, I’ve seen some less than glowing reviews about this book, so we’ll see what I think.
• The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. This is a book that it seems like everyone knows about by now, because it was all the hype last year. I finally got this one for Christmas this year, so I’m excited to read it!
• Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. Another one that people seem to love! And I’m really interested in this; I don’t read much historical fiction, but I find that I really enjoy it, so I hope this one’s great, too!
• Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley. Honestly, that goodreads summary covers so much, I don’t really know where to start. But I’m excited for the indigenous rep, and it sounds like a great mystery as well!
• Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao. I’ve seen this one EVERYWHERE, and I’m super excited for it, I can’t wait to pick it up!

Anticipated Releases

I do not pay as close attention to upcoming releases as a lot of other people do, so this is going to be another pretty short list, but there are several upcoming releases that I’m very excited for, so I thought I’d share them here, as well!
(By the way, I’d highly suggest you go check out the post that May @Forever and Everly did on upcoming releases, it’s a much more comprehensive list than mine!)

• Fire Becomes Her by Rosiee Thor. Rosiee Thor is an author that I’ve followed for a while now, and I’ve talked to her a bit as well, and I am SO excited for her second book! I mean, people say it has a 1920’s vibe, plus there’s magic (that you drink, if I remember correctly?) and overtaking the rich, so…what more could you need? (oh plus it’s queer, very very queer)
• Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie. I’ve heard about this book so much that I’m honestly surprised it’s not already published? It’s a debut book about a girl who starts to question her sexuality and I’ve read many reviews already that say it’s wonderful, so I really cannot wait for this one.
• Loveless by Alice Oseman. Technically Loveless is already published in some places, but it comes out in the US on March 1 (though the release date has been pushed back several times so who knows if this is true). And I am SO EXCITED to finally hold this wonderful book in my hands!!! (by the way – thoughts on the US cover? I’m really not sure what to think).
• Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves, by Meg Long. I actually don’t know very much about this book, but it sounds really interesting and unique. Plus, dogsledding! We don’t see that in books very often!
• Icebreaker by AL Graziadei. Queer sports will ALWAYS be something for me to be excited for, and I’m especially excited for this one because it’s about professional sports, and there are very few out people in professional sports (in men’s professional sports)
• Aces Wild by Amanda DeWitt (no cover yet). This book has an entire cast of asexual characters. Plus, it’s a heist book, and the main character is described as ‘modern asexual Kaz Brekker.’ What more could I need?
• Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix by Anna-Marie McLemore (no cover yet). I am SO excited about this book, because I read Gatsby earlier this (school) year and have been trying to get my hands on Gatsby retellings now (of which there are very few). And this one has transgender Nick AND transgender Gatsby.

What’s your goodreads reading challenge goal? Have you read any of the books I want to read this year? What are some releases that you’re looking forwards to?

My 5 Favorite Books of the Year

It’s the end of 2021. And I literally cannot believe that I’m writing these words so soon.
It feels like just yesterday that I posted my massive January of 2021 wrap up, reading 26 books and talking about how the new year has just started. This entire year has gone by way too fast, and so many things have happened, some good, some bad. But one constant is that I still read a lot and that I’m still bad at keeping track of my books.

Last year, my first end-of-year in the blogging community, I remember being so impressed with all the graphs and charts and lovely posts that everyone rolled out talking about their spreadsheets they kept of the books they read, and how much data they had, and everything like that. It was something I really really wanted to do, and I started a new spreadsheet for 2021 immediately, looking forwards to creating those lovely graphs at the end of the year.

I got exactly 4 books into the spreadsheet before I gave up.
So, unfortunately for both me and everyone here who’s reading this and really wanted to see some pretty graphs, there will be none in this post. Instead, I will do my best to talk about my favorite books of 2021 without the aid of graphs, using simply my own terrible memory for help.

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender

Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender was without a doubt my favorite book of 2021. I read this book right at the beginning of the year, back in January when I had that phenomenal reading month (26 books, I truly do not understand my own power). And wow, I remember loving this so much. I just talked about it over and over on my blog, to my friends, to everyone.

I do not remember books. I’ll read one book, and the next week, the plot will have totally slipped from my mind. But Felix Ever After is a book that I remembered. It was just such an amazing book that brought to light so many issues, gave so much amazing representation, and just wove a totally awesome story, that I’ve thought about this thing ever since I read it, even asking for it for Christmas despite the fact that I’ve read it before (this is a rare occurrence; if I read a book from the library, I almost never then request to own it).

Loveless by Alice Oseman

This book, you guys. Like honestly, just this book. It is so amazing, so beautiful that I just don’t know what to say. Loveless, by Alice Oseman, follows Georgia as she starts University and learns some new terms, and begins questioning her own sexuality. Throughout the book, she realizes that she is aromantic and asexual and comes to terms with this.

Loveless is such an important book to the aroace community (okay I can’t speak for everyone, but at least for me). It is so hard to find aroace rep of any kind in books, and to have this one come out and not only have an aroace main character but to follow that main character’s questioning journey and journey with coming to terms with herself is just so important to have in books. And not only was this book great for the representation, but the characters were the literal best, I mean Oseman went above and beyond with all the side characters in this one, and the plot was extremely interesting throughout the whole book.

Not My Problem by Ciara Smyth

Not only was Not My Problem one of my favorite’s of the year, but it was probably also the funniest book that I read all year. There are books whose plot is funny, but then there are books whose character is actually funny, the main character actually has that type of personality that makes you laugh, and actually having that woven into the character and making it authentic is not something that many books are able to pull off.

Humor aside, this was an awesome book. The characters–I feel like I’ve been talking about characters a lot–were absolutely amazing, they each had their own unique personalities and did their own things and it all felt very real. Besides, there was some more great representation in this book (seems like representation=favorite books) and another thing that was interesting to read about was how Aideen, the main character, was poor because really, this is not at all something that is addressed in YA books, and it was good to see.

A Clash of Steel by CB Lee

When I started A Clash of Steel, I did not expect it to make it onto my favorites of the year list. The thing about this book is that it starts out slow. It’s a bit over 400 pages I think (I actually don’t remember, it could be anywhere from 300 to 500 for all I know, but goodreads says 432), but the inciting incident, which is mentioned in the synopsis, doesn’t happen until over 100 pages in.

But wow, once this book picks up, it certainly picks up, and while I don’t read many pirate adventures, this one was certainly one of the best. A Clash of Steel is a Treasure Island retelling, and I actually have not read Treasure Island before, nor do I know much about it (I assume there is some kind of treasure involved, correct?), I’m beginning to wonder if I should pick it up. It’d been a while since I last read a full blown adventure book, and I do believe that I forgot how much I enjoyed these kinds of things.

Perfect on Paper by Sophie Gonzales

I read Perfect on Paper at the peak of my realistic fiction reading binge, and if any of the books that I read stood out, it was this one. It had a really unique plot and the characters were great and the representation was great and EVERYTHING WAS GREAT (you’re welcome for that 10/10 analysis).

Okay, but if you’d like me to be a little bit calmer: probably the best thing about this book was the deep dive it takes into biphobia, especially internalized biphobia. There have been more or more books recently that have bi characters, but rarely does a book look so deeply into the way that bi people are sometimes treated by the rest of the LGBTQ+ community (particularly gay and lesbian people, more specifically).
But while this book does have stellar representation, I mean it’s also just a great book. Like I mentioned before, the characters are really well written and they all have their own personalities, the plot stays interesting and progresses nicely and, of course, there’s plenty of banter.

Well, that’s it for my 2021 books of the year! Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books of this year? Let’s talk in the comments!

The 2021 Book Tag: an Original Tag

Hey everyone! I’m back, with a SUPER exciting post! I introduce to you, my 2021 book tag!!!

To be honest, when I made my 2020 book tag last year, I did not expect to make one again this year. The 2020 book tag was to reflect a crazy year that none of us expected and none of us ever hoped to relive. But, while 2021 has been better in a lot of ways, we are still definitely not out of this mess. A lot of things still happened this year, and so I did end up choosing to make another book tag.

Disclaimer: As I, Phoenix, live in the United States of America, the events that these tags reflect are mainly based off of my own experience of things happening directly around me. Therefore, I won’t be including significant events that have happened elsewhere in the world in this tag. HOWEVER, if you are from another country and think of an event that was impactful around you, feel free to add another question to this tag that you think goes with that event!

Here are the rules and announcements for this tag! (Please copy and paste at the beginning of the tag!)

• Link back to the original creator, Phoenix @Books With Wings
• Thank the person who tagged you
• Answer all the questions
• Tag at least 3 people
• While the events covered in this tag are mainly centered around the going-ons in the United States of America, if you live in another country feel free to add another question or two to this tag that you think goes with an important event that happened elsewhere!
• PLEASE NOTE: While this tag discusses events that happened in 2021, it does not at all need to be completed in 2021. This is NOT a time-restricted tag and you may do it whenever you want. (you also do not need to talk about books that you read in 2021! It can be books you read whenever!)
• Some of these questions are rather vague; these are totally up for interpretation!

Below is a list of the questions and their corresponding events in 2021:
Please note: while I tried my best, not all of these may be in chronological order.

1. A sequel that did not live up to expectations (general 2021)
2. A book where everything immediately went badly (Attack on the USA capital)
3. A book where things seemed to change for the better (President Joe Biden’s inauguration)
4. A book where science/some kind of sci fi thing plays a major role (Vaccines)
5. A book where the characters get a reprieve (general, middle of the year)
6. A book about sports/centered around competition (Summer Olympics 2021 2020)
7. A book with a terrifying plot twist (Delta Variant)
8. A book with awesome behind-the-scenes characters (eg side characters) (THANK YOU ESSENTIAL WORKERS)
9. A book where there are HUGE consequences to an event/action/etc. (supply chain backups due to covid)

My answers:

A sequel that did not live up to expectations

After spending a bit of a ridiculous amount of time looking through my goodreads ‘read’ shelf, and determining that I no longer read many book serieses (that’s a word, definitely), I’ve decided on Children of Virtue and Vengeance. I really enjoyed book one, Children of Blood and Bone; in fact, it was one of my favorite books of whatever year I read it. And sure, the second book was good…it just wasn’t as good as I expected, compared to the first book.

A book where everything immediately went badly

I mean, honestly the whole beginning of She Who Became the Sun is pretty harsh. I mean, Zhu is left with…nothing and kinda has to remake her whole life (which of course she then does quite successfully).

A book where things seemed to change for the better

There were definitely some light parts in Act Cool, but there were also several times when it dealt with some much harsher topics, especially as it got closer to the end of the book (please check trigger warnings before reading!!!). While in the end, things weren’t totally resolved and happily-ever-after etc, it did seem to be a more hopeful ending.

A book where some kind of science/sci fi plays a major role

Not gonna lie, I was absolutely thinking about this book when I wrote this prompt. I mean, it kind of fits…perfectly. In The Ones We’re Meant to Find, it’s a futuristic world where a bunch of cities are literally in the sky because of flooding stuff and climate change, and tech plays a HUGE role overall in the story.

A book where characters get a reprieve

The fact that it actually took me quite a bit to think of a good response to this really says something about authors…when I think ‘get a reprieve’ I more imagine a pause in the actions near the middle of the book, but that just doesn’t happen much!!! In the end, I’m going with Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune, because there’s one point when the two main characters just kinda go off on their own and chat which is always nice when characters get away from everything like that.

A book about sports/centered around competition

As a sports fan and someone who plays sports and someone who reads as well, I’ve read several books about sports (though books are rather lacking in the sports department honestly). But I’ve chosen Mo’ne Davis: Remember My Name for this prompt, because I actually got this book when I was much younger but just wasn’t very interested! I finally read it in August and sped through it, absolutely loving it!

A book with a terrifying plot twist

This book had the kind of plot twist to make me go, ‘wait, no!’ out loud. What the heck??? The River Has Teeth is one that I took an entire Sunday and just read it straight through, barely putting it down. It was spooky and enticing and, of course, shocking.

A book with awesome behind-the-scene characters (if you can’t think of anything, then side characters)

Honestly, I’m going with good old Hunger Games here. When I say ‘behind the scenes’ I kind of mean characters who don’t get a lot of page time but are always still helping, and in Hunger Games the people who stand out to me are Portia and Flavius. They were just kind of background supports that were pretty great. There was also a lot of things in the Hunger Games with behind the scenes characters, with the whole games; though of course not all of the other people were ‘awesome’.

A book where there were HUGE consequences to an event/decision/etc

It most certainly did not take me long to find a book for this prompt. I’m going with The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl, which I read just last month. The huge consequence is kind of the main plot; Holly chooses to get turned into a vampire by her boyfriend. But then he dumps her, and she’s left as a 16 year old forever. She’s also connected to him, as he’s her maker, so she’s required to follow him wherever he goes. Also, she’ll have crimped hair forever.

Well, there are my answers to my 2021 book tag!!! I’m so excited to be doing this again, and I cannot wait to see everyone’s answers! This tag is open to anyone who wants to do it, as it’s an original tag, but I will tag a few people just to get things going:

Madeline @The Bookish Mutant
Alex @The Scribe Owl
Maria @The Character Study
Ashmita @The Fictional Journal
April @Booked Till Midnight

What did you think of my 2021 book tag? Have you checked out my 2020 book tag? What are some of your favorite books from 2021?

October Wrap Up

I feel like the months are finally slowing down.
I mean, it’s still totally crazy that it’s already the end of October. November is upon us, there are only two more months of 2021. But it feels like school has finally slowed things down, so now I’m at a…normal pace, for how fast the months are going. Not whatever the rest of the year has felt like.

Well, I’m not back to my normal level of reading, which I’m not sure I will be given school just gets harder and harder, but I have managed to read several books this month which I’m super happy about! Here’s what I read.

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Shocking no one, I read this for school. And like yeah, it was a school book, so not super interesting. But honestly, as far as school books go? Not totally bad (I know, I’m filled with high praise). Amazingly enough, I feel like the analysis etc that we did (we spent like 1.5 months on this thing) actually made me like the book MORE. Who woulda guessed? ⭐⭐⭐
• Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. My mom won this in a goodreads giveaway because apparently she’s really good at doing that, and this was an overall enjoyable book! It felt like a more comforting vibe, just a very soft book which is really nice sometimes! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I…think the hype might have been a little too high on this one. I definitely enjoyed the overall story, but just the way its told, it gets a little boring. Also, how do the characters remember exactly what happened like 40 years ago? Like, I don’t remember the main plot of a book I read last week, how do you remember what restaurant you went to for lunch that one time way back when? ⭐⭐⭐

• The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo. I read this because I read The Great Gatsby and it was pretty good! I enjoyed the new perspective from Jordan’s point of view, and though it did follow the original story almost exactly, it was still cool to see the small sort of embellishments and such. ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram. This is one of those books that you see everywhere. Like they’ve kinda just become mainstream YA or whatever. So I finally decided to read it, and it was very enjoyable! I love these contemporaries that are pretty easy to get through and are also so entertaining! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• The River Has Teeth by Erica Waters. Wow! This one was definitely different than basically any other book I have read before and I loved it! It was written so well, it totally kept my attention, and it was just so fascinating! Would definitely recommend to anyone looking for a sort of spookier book. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

• Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko. This is one that has been everywhere and I just haven’t gotten around to reading it! But dang, this one was definitely something that held my attention through the entire book and it just felt like a new, fresh breath of air! I immediately got the sequel and can’t wait to start reading! ⭐⭐⭐⭐
• Much Ado About Baseball by Rajani LaRocca. I was pretty excited about this one because baseball and magic, but overall…it wasn’t super great for me. There were some aspects that were cool like the baseball stuff and even the math, but overall the magical element made things really iffy for me, because despite what the characters might have claimed, they were indeed cheating using magic. And I don’t like that at all. ⭐⭐
• Not Your Villain by CB Lee. It is about time I pick this one up. I read book one back in January or February and kept meaning to get around to this one and kept not getting around to it until now. This one was also fun, but overall just didn’t really feel as good or the same. The first 100 pages of the book were kind of a fast recap of the last book but from Bells’s point of view, and it was kind of a weird way to start the book (though I needed the recap). SUPER excited for Emma’s book and some hopefully super new fresh aroace spec rep!!! ⭐⭐⭐

• Maria @The Character Study shared a post with tips to get out of a reading slump which we all need at times!
• Riddhi @Whispering Stories announced a new project that she’s doing which sounds excellent and is going great so far!
• May @Forever and Everly shared 10 books she wants to read by the end of the year
• The Quiet Pond interviewed Xiran Jay Zhao, the author of Iron Widow and I was already super excited for this book; this interview just made it something to look even more forwards to!
• Cherelle @A Bolt Out of the Book celebrated her one year blogiversary and she and her blog deserve all the love!
• Katie @Whispering Pages IS BACK. Katie is one of my favoritest bloggers, and actually the person who got me into blogging. I love her content so much, but she took a break from blogging for several months this summer! She posted her first post a few weeks ago AND IM SO HAPPY HI KATIE.
• April @Booked Till Midnight wrote her second post about books as things she’s been told in the drivethrough and it’s just as hilarious and odd as the first!

I wrote one measly post this month but its a good one in my opinion! In honor of my one year blogiversary (which actually happened at the end of September) I wrote a post of five reasons why I’m so grateful for blogging!

5 Reasons I’m So Grateful For Blogging

October Goals:

• Stay on top of school ✅
• Try to write something you want to write. Don’t think of everything else. Just what you would find enjoyable to write. ❌
• Don’t make your entire life revolve around baseball ❌
• Please try to do some exercises if you actually want to go anywhere in softball.❌
• In your free time, just do what you feel like (with some boundaries obviously; just don’t force yourself to do anything).✅

I think I did a really good job of staying on top of school! Things are definitely picking up, we’ve had a lot of projects, a lot of quizzes and tests and stuff but I think I’m doing a good job!
With writing, honestly my problem is just that I didn’t have time to write, and I also have really big writers’ block right now. However, I did come up with a story that I’m actually excited to write, once I get the motivation back!
Baseball is my life and we will all just have to accept it.
But I think that I did a pretty good job of just doing what I feel like! Like, even if I didn’t do a lot of writing, I was definitely able to read and just…it was nice. In my free time I did what I wanted.

November Goals:

• Stay on top of school!
• STUDY FOR QUIZZES AND TESTS
• Enjoy your weekends and off days. (don’t just think about school!)
• Talk/hang out with your friends more

• School exists so my entire life is just school. I kid, but I don’t kid. I definitely do have my weekends a little bit free, but there’s still plenty of homework and on the weeks I really don’t do anything but go to school and do homework.
• We had several more fall ball games and then the season ended! Overall, we only played five games, and we won 3, lost 2, but no matter our record it was really fun to be playing! In my last game, I played against a few people who go to my school which was actually pretty fun, even if we don’t really know each other and also one of them caught me stealing second and also we lost.
• The baseball season ended! In truth, it ended in early November, but it basically ended in October. October is postseason baseball. The postseason is like a bracket tournament, with 10 teams playing at the beginning and finishing with the final two teams playing in the world series. This year, the world series was between the Atlanta Braves and the Houston Astros, and the Braves ended up winning for the first time in I think 26 years. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t care for either team, but congrats to the Braves!
• Halloween! I didn’t actually do anything for Halloweeen (I didn’t even dress up) but it’s still a fun holiday with candy haha

I…guess that’s it? There’s not really much else to do with school taking over everything, I suppose.

Well, not the most interesting of wrap ups but it’s here nontheless! How was your October? Do you have any plans for November? How are you doing?
That’s all for today! As always, stay safe and keep on reading!

September Wrap Up

Hey all! First of all, I am so sorry for my disappearance this month! I was absolutely planning to keep writing posts but then…school. School also extremely decreased how much I read this month, which means this wrap up is going to be MUCH shorter than normal, but here we go.

• She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan. I mean…what am I supposed to say? This book has been hyped and then the hype has been hyped and then that hype has been hyped, too (okay maybe I’m over exaggerating a little bit) and I was finally able to read it! And it IS good! I honestly had no idea where it was going and it felt slow at first but I really enjoyed it!
• Where We Used to Roam by Jenn Bishop. Picked this one up on a whim during a weekend because it was lying around at my house, and it was pretty good! I liked the way it dealt with addiction and drugs in a way that middle grade readers could read it, however, I found the summary to be super misleading and it made the pacing feel super off to me.
• The Prince of Los Cocuyos by Richard Blanco. Summer reading that I read right before school started–it was an interesting memoir, but I honestly don’t have much to say about it. All the chapters were separate stories about Blanco’s life, but the ending was super abrupt and kind of made me shocked. Not like anything super bad happened, I just…didn’t expect it to end like that.

• Fast Pitch by Nic Stone. I have played softball for I don’t even know how long and yet this is the first book with a main plot featuring softball that I have EVER read. We need more softball books!!! (I say as I write a book about baseball). I absolutely loved this book, it was a super fast and fun read that as well as featuring softball, also taught us some history about black baseball!
• Flash Fire by TJ Klune. Book one was much better. Honestly, despite the fact that for the entire time in book one I was rooting for the characters to get together, I think I liked the slow burn better than the relationship. I mean, the relationship was great, but maybe it was just the sense of book one being better overall.
• In the Same Boat by Holly Green. I am astonished and impressed by the author’s ability to keep my attention through the entire book when the whole thing is just canoeing down a river. I don’t even like canoeing. But a LOT happens in a 265 mile canoe race, turns out. This book was so good I almost wanted to try it myself, despite the aforementioned statement of disliking canoeing (there are actually a LOT of reasons that I’d hate that).

Despite my not posting at ALL, I was in fact still reading all of your posts! There was a lot of great posts this month, and here’s a few of my favorite.

• The Quiet Pond celebrated their 100th ‘Book News’ post! I absolutely LOVE the book news and look forwards to it every week, so congratulations to them!
• Riddhi @Whispering Stories reacted to poor goodreads reviews of books she loved and it was so entertaining to read!
• Bertie @Luminosity Library made a list of 10 fantasy books with asexual characters and I always love to get more recommendations of books that have ace characters because it’s still fairly rare in the bookish community!
• Madeline @The Bookish Mutant recommended YA Reads for Latinx Heritage Month!

My first thoughts when writing this section was just, ‘lol I did none’ but in my much more sophisticated blog (can’t you tell how sophisticated it is) I will say, ‘Unfortunately, this month I was unable to write any blog posts’.

September goals:

• School first! ✅
• Choose sleep over anything you want to do. (remember, you have to wake up really early again!!!)✅
• Stop thinking about what you want to do in the far, far future. It’s affecting what you want to do now. ❌
• Try to improve your softball skills!✅
• Get back into violin some more✅

All in all, honestly, not bad. School did start this month and I have been doing a pretty good job of staying on top of my work, if I may say so myself. And I’ve continued to have a good sleep schedule, which is pretty impressive for someone at my school (and honestly just anyone who’s in high school). As for the third goal, I don’t think I improved much on that but I guess I’ll keep working on it. Softball…haha well I didn’t do well in the single game I had, but I did make some tweaks to my swing and I think I did improve my power, if only I were able to improve my timing. And having orchestra in school really did allow me to play more violin! I’m still not practicing much but I’m playing.

October goals:

• Stay on top of school
• Try to write something you want to write. Don’t think of everything else. Just what you would find enjoyable to write.
• Don’t make your entire life revolve around baseball
• Please try to do some exercises if you actually want to go anywhere in softball.
• In your free time, just do what you feel like (with some boundaries obviously; just don’t force yourself to do anything).

• As I’ve already said several times, school started, for me! It’s been…interesting, I mean it’s school. You all know what school is like. It’s nice to have a routine but also I have no free time which is less nice and I’m not super enjoying some of my classes (but I am enjoying two of my classes and the teachers of those classes are very nice (possibly a big part of why I’m enjoying them…))
• Fall ball started for me, but we’ve only played one game because it keeps raining the day before the games which means that the field gets all muddy. Still, it’s good to play softball again, even if I did totally terribly on my first game.
• I’ve gotten to see a lot more of my friends again now that school has started, and a bunch of people who I’m friendly with but not close enough to talk to over covid and it’s so nice to talk to everyone again! I forgot how good school is at that. How do adults ever stay in touch with anyone they don’t have a torture system keeping them close (joking, I understand that school is important, sometimes it just needs to be dialed back a little).

I would also like to let everyone know that I have no idea when I’ll be able to publish my next post. It could be tomorrow (extremely doubtful) or it could be my October wrap up. Maybe it won’t even be that. School has just been so time consuming and blogging just isn’t something that I feel like doing even when I’m not doing school, so I’ll write something when I have time and feel like it, and I don’t know when that will be.

How was your month? Has school been a pain for you? I’d love to hear what you’ve been up to in all the time that I’ve been gone! As always, stay safe and keep on reading!