Weekly Recap #49: Week of 4/15 – 4/21

/30 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

I guess the big news of the week is obviously that I made it through the tax deadline that has had me working 6 day weeks for so many months!  It was exhausting and the IRS experienced an outage on deadline day that made it so we couldn’t check to see if our clients’ returns had actually been accepted, so that didn’t exactly help, but they ended up giving everyone a one-day extension and everything worked out in the end.  Woo Hoo!  We had our after-tax party on Friday night, which is always a lot of fun, and I’ve spent most of the rest of the week catching up on sleep, reading, and watching TV.  I did start getting caught up on my blog visits too, so if I haven’t made it to you yet, I’ll be there soon!

Aside from work, soccer once again dominated my week.  After our 0-4 loss last weekend, we bounced back on Monday night was a 1-1 tie against the toughest team in their league.  Our team had never won or tied against them before, so the tie this week felt like a victory!  We then went on to win our game yesterday 1-0 in another nail biter.  The team is looking better and better, and are passing more, so this passionate soccer mom is much more content than she was last weekend, lol.

I didn’t get nearly as much reading done this week as I would have liked, but Girl Made of Stars was the standout of what I did read.  I can’t wait to write and post my review for that one.  It was a super emotional read that made me shed a few tears on more than one occasion.

I think that’s about it for me.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

     

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

       
  
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #48: Week of 4/8 – 4/14

/34 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

It has been yet another of those oh-so-exciting weeks where I worked six days and then sat around like a lump or else fell asleep the rest of the time.  Deadline is Tuesday though so yay, I’m almost at the finish line!

Aside from work, the main focus of my week has been soccer and my son’s science fair project.  My son’s new team got off to a great start with a 7-0 victory in their first game, but then sadly lost the second game 4-0.  I’m not even sure what happened to them in the second game but they didn’t even look like the same team.  I tend to be a pretty passionate soccer mom so that was pretty frustrating, especially since they only took one shot on goal the entire game.  I kept my cool though, lol (although once I ride herd on him to wrap up his science project today, my son will be outside practicing more and inside playing video games less from this point forward.).

Soccer loss aside, it was nice to be able to get outside and enjoy the warm weather and get a little sun.  It was in the 80’s here yesterday so within the span of a week, we’ve gone from snow on the ground to flip flop weather!  I’m really hoping the warm weather is here to stay because I’m dying to spend some quality reading time out on my deck.

I think that’s about it for me.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

      

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

       
 
  

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #47: Week of 4/1 – 4/7

/34 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

Another quick write up for me today because I have reviews to write or else I won’t have any posts going up this week, lol.  Thank goodness I’m entering my last 6-day work week of the year! I’ve decided I’m just too old to work that many days in a row.

Aside from work, not too much else happened, nothing that I can remember anyway.  I did celebrate my 2-year blogoversary though and am hosting a giveaway for a free book from The Book Depository.  It ends tonight so make sure to enter if you haven’t already.  There’s a link on the front page of my site.

I forgot to mention it in last week’s wrap up, but I did complete the Take Control of Your TBR Challenge in March.  I managed to get 10 pre-March 1 books off of my TBR, which I was very happy about.  The Belles, which I’m reviewing tomorrow on the blog, is the final book that I read for that challenge, so once that review posts, I’ll be back to reviewing the ARCs that I have coming up.  I apparently went request happy again on Netgalley because I have a bunch of April/May ARCs to get through. I don’t think I’ll be touching my backlist again until June.  Oops!

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

          
   

 

UPCOMING REVIEWS

       
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

           
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #46: Week of 3/25 – 3/31

/47 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

Happy Easter to all who are celebrating today!  I’m keeping it short and sweet today because my 6-day work weeks have me so behind on everything, both on and off the blog.  I need to get caught up on blog comments and on my reviews so that I actually have something to post next week.  I’m quite literally counting down the days until our deadline and the freedom that will follow!

I didn’t get much reading done this week, but I did celebrate my 2-year blogoversary.  Thanks for all of the blogoversary wishes from those who have already seen my post.  There’s a giveaway for a free book so make sure you check that out if you haven’t already.  I still can’t believe it has been two years already!

The only other exciting thing that happened was that after nearly a year of trying, I finally managed to score a couple of tickets to Springsteen on Broadway.  He extended his show’s run a fourth time and I was finally lucky enough to get one of those elusive verified fan codes and have the opportunity to buy tickets.  I won’t be going until October but Springsteen is my favorite musician so I really can’t wait. I’ll also finally be seeing Hamilton that week so needless to say I’m broke, but extra Happy Birthday to me this year!

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
  

UPCOMING REVIEWS

       
  
  

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

    
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #45: Week of 3/18 – 3/24

/56 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

So last week was the first week of Spring, but apparently Winter wasn’t quite ready to say goodbye because we had 4-5 inches of snow here and two more snow days for my son.  All I can say at this point is “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Winter!”  Anyway, here’s hoping that the warm and sunny days will begin soon, especially since I got a call from my son’s soccer coach yesterday and practice starts tomorrow.  I’m excited to get back to watching him play but wondering how it will be this time around since my family isn’t involved with any of the coaching duties at all and will only be spectators.  With my father-in-law’s recently diagnosed condition, we made the decision that coaching soccer was just not an option this year.  My son also decided he wanted to waver up to a new league with kids that closer to his age and grade.  (Our county sets July 31 as the cut off to determine what age league kids should be placed in and my son’s September birthday always puts him with younger kids and he’s over it now that he’s about to go to middle school, lol.)  Anyway, lots of new things to expect this season.

Aside from that, it was all work and not much play for me.  I had to work yesterday so I didn’t get to participate in any of the marches, but wow, it was so incredible to see on TV.  When I left work yesterday, I saw that we even had a march going on here.  I was so touched by what I saw that I cried all the way home from work, lol.  The newspaper is estimating the crowd size at around 400 people but in my gun-loving town, that is incredible.  Those students have really started a movement!

I got a fair amount of reading done this week in spite of my busy work schedule. I devoured The Woman in the Window and I Was Anastasia and hope to finish up The Room on Rue Amelie today, although this one has been somewhat of a struggle for me so far.  It’s a WWII historical fiction but even though the blurb says fans of The Nightingale and The Lilac Girls should love it, I don’t think it has the same vibe as those two books.  It feels more like a romance novel with WWII as a backdrop rather than focusing on the war itself.  I still have a ways to go so I’m hoping that will change but so far I’m a little underwhelmed.

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
  

UPCOMING REVIEWS

       
   
   

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

   
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: Pinterest

Weekly Recap #44: Week of 3/11 – 3/17

/44 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

You ever have one of those weeks where everything is just a blur?  I’m sitting here trying to think of something to write and I honestly can’t remember a thing that happened all week, lol.  I blame it on the fact that I’m working six days a week from now until our mid-April deadline at work.  I think my schedule this week was pretty much just wake up, get ready for work, get my son ready for school, go to work, come home, make dinner, fall asleep in a chair while reading until bedtime, repeat…

I noticed yesterday that I had 12 episodes of The Big Bang Theory on the DVR that I hadn’t watched yet (Have I mentioned that my To Be Watched list is as bad as my TBR? LOL!), so I ended up watching about half of those last night before falling asleep in my chair.  I have an equal number of Young Sheldon episodes to watch but I can’t decide if I’m really into that show or not.  The first couple of episodes were okay but nothing to write home about.  We’ll see. They can sit on the DVR a while longer.

I did manage to squeeze in a bit of reading this week. I finally finished Gemina, which had been on my TBR forever, as well as an ARC of Every Note Played by Lisa Genova.  My review for that one posts tomorrow, and just wow, what a heart wrenching read that one is, especially if you’ve lost someone to ALS.  I’ve also got a couple of historical fiction ARCs that I need to read ASAP, including I Was Anastasia, which I started yesterday and am really enjoying so far, and The Room on Rue Amelie, which is advertised as perfect for fans of The Nightingale and The Lilac Girls, which are two of my favorite books so I’m really hoping this one lives up to that advertisement.

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

     
  

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

       
   
   

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

     
      
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: Pinterest

Weekly Recap #43: Week of 3/4 – 3/10

/44 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

I started off my week by going with my family to see Black Panther.  Wow, talk about a movie living up to the hype!  It was incredible and I’m so ready for a sequel!  I also saw trailers for the upcoming Christopher Robin and Mary Poppins Returns films and I’m just so excited for both of those since Winnie the Pooh and Mary Poppins were such big parts of my childhood.

The rest of the week was pretty quiet.  It’s busy season at work so I’m fried by the time I get home each day and lay around like a lump until it’s time to get up and do it all over again, lol.  I got a fair amount of reading done this week, including Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone, which was an amazing read.  I didn’t think she could top The Nightingale, but she got pretty darn close with this one and it had me sobbing by the end.  After that I needed some laughs so I binge watched season 1 of The Good Place on Netflix.  The first two episodes were average but after that it was hilarious.

I also had a random mishap on Thursday that has slowed down my blog commenting and review writing a little.  I was walking down the stairs and lost my footing when I was nearly all the way down.  I fell but somehow caught my underarm on the newel post.  I didn’t break or dislocate anything thankfully but being slightly airborne and then getting jammed up on the newel post really jerked around my upper body and shoulders so I’m very sore all over those areas and my right arm and wrist have some colorful bruises from where it smacked the post.  It has been a little uncomfortable to type a lot, but tonight it’s starting to finally ease up a bit.  Hopefully I’ll be good as new in the next day or so.  The best part of the whole experience was that my son was upstairs playing video games and remained completely oblivious to the entire incident.  I screamed, fell, and then cursed a blue streak for quite a while afterwards because it f-ing hurt like hell, and he never even came out of his room to see what had happened.  He didn’t know it had happened until later that night when he heard me telling his dad about it when he got home from work, lol.  Anyway,  lesson learned that day was that stockings and stairs don’t go well together!

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

    
 

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

       
  
   

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #42: Week of 2/25 – 3/3

/44 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

So the big excitement this week was the “Bombogenesis” wind storm that struck the East Coast Thursday in the overnight hours.  My week had been so nice and peaceful up until that point and then all heck broke loose.  As soon as that wind started howling, all hope of sleep was lost because I was so worried trees were going to come down on the house.  Almost as soon as the winds started, we received an automated phone message from the local school system saying that the schools would be closed on Friday because the National Weather Service was predicting hurricane force wind gusts.  Based on what I was hearing outside, I was completely fine with that decision even though it came it at nearly midnight, lol.  Thankfully though, aside from the lost sleep on Thursday and Friday nights, the only other damage we had were tons of limbs strewn across the yard.  We were very fortunate.  Many other areas around us didn’t fare as well with lots of downed trees and power lines.  The wind has finally slowed down but there are still a few thousand people without power in my city.

Needless to say, I didn’t go out much the latter part of the week or over the weekend, so I got tons of reading done.  I finished The Family Next Door and Little and Lion, both of which were fabulous, and I got a nice start on The Cruel Prince, which I’m also really enjoying so far.

I also finished Tarnished City by Vic James yesterday and probably won’t be writing a full review for it on the blog.  I’m pleased to have gotten it off my TBR as part of the March Take Control of Your TBR Challenge, but aside from feeling that sense of accomplishment, the book itself fell flat for me.  I was able to finish it but I didn’t feel like much of anything happened and I was much less invested in the characters this time around.  I’m sorry to say that I don’t think I care enough about them to continue on with the third book and see how it all ends.

Not too much else happened. That or else I’ve forgotten it because of the excitement of the storm.  I did finish the first season of Big Little LIes on HBO and am looking forward to seeing what they do with the second season.  I’m now looking for new shows to watch, so if anyone has any suggestions for shows either on basic cable, HBO, or Netflix, I’m all ears. 🙂

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

    
 

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

       
     
    

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: Book Lovers World Instagram

Weekly Recap #41: Week of 2/18 – 2/24

/34 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

So, for those who read last week’s post, you know I mentioned I’ve been experiencing some pretty awful headaches the past few weeks. Well, I went to the doctor to see if I could get some answers as to a possible cause.  After hearing me describe what I was feeling, she decided to send me for a head CT.  That of course freaked me out because it brings to mind so many worst case scenarios and so I scheduled the CT for Thursday afternoon because I didn’t want to wait any longer than necessary.  I got the results yesterday afternoon and the scan thankfully came back normal, although that means I still don’t have any answers to what is causing my head pain, which the doctor diagnosed as migraines with auras.  She gave me a prescription that she says should help with the pain, so we’ll see how that goes and then I think next up will be some bloodwork and/or a neurological consult if the headaches continue.

Thankfully I didn’t experience any headaches this week so I was able to get plenty of reading done again this week in between watching Olympic events on TV.  I finished 4 books and am starting a 5th tonight.  I also watched the U.S. men win the curling gold medal today and although I still can’t say that I 100% understand that sport, it was fascinating to watch.

Now that I’ve finished reading and reviewing most of my March 6th ARCs, I’m starting the first book of the Grishaverse trilogy in hopes of squeezing in one more book from my backlist before the end of the month.   It hasn’t been a great backlist month because of all of those ARCs but I did finally finish that massive Springsteen autobiography that I’ve been sitting on since October 2016.

I had planned to go see Black Panther this weekend too, but the hubby has been in bed all afternoon and says he doesn’t feel well. so I think those plans are probably on hold until next weekend unless he starts feeling a lot better very soon.  I keep hearing great things about the movie so I’m tempted to go without him but I’ll try to be patient and wait, lol.

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

     
  

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

       
      
    

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #40: Week of 2/11 – 2/17

/36 Comments/by

 

It’s time for another weekly recap post of all things happening on and off the blog. This week I’ll be linking to the Sunday Post, which is hosted by Caffeinated Book Reviewer and to Stacking the Shelves, which is hosted by Tynga’s Reviews.

This week was such a mixed bag weather-wise.  We started out with wintry temps but by Thursday and Friday, we had spring teaser temps in the 60s and 70s. Those two days were fantastic, but sadly, today we were right back to highs in the 30s and sleet.  Mother Nature just can’t seem to make up her mind, lol.

Aside from the weather roller coaster, it was a fairly typical week here.  Valentine’s Day was okay, not as romantic as I would have liked, but it seems to always be that way when the holiday falls during the week.  We’re both just too rushed and too tired to put much effort into it.  Heck, I even bought my own box of chocolates this year just to make sure I got what I really wanted.  That evening though, the hubby did manage to surprise me with tickets to see the Dave Matthews Band in concert.  We won’t be going until July, but I’m pretty excited about it.  I haven’t been to a concert of any kind in years and DMB is from Virginia so it’s always fun to support the local boys.

The whole week feels like a blur honestly, in part because I fought a headache all week long and just couldn’t focus on much else.  Nothing over the counter helped at all, and I was just miserable.  I’ve never had a migraine before but when I described what I was feeling to my husband, he seems to think that’s what it is.  I finally called my doctor on Friday and have an appointment to see her this coming week. I also fell behind on my blog visiting/commenting late in the week as my headache grew worse, but hopefully I’ll be able to get caught up this weekend since it has finally eased up a bit.

In spite of the headache that just wouldn’t go away, I did watch a lot of the Olympics coverage as predicted, and I also managed to get a lot of reading done too.  Out of those 5 March 6th ARCs I was fretting about a couple of weeks ago, I’ve finished reading 3 of them and have started the 4th.  I haven’t written a single review for them yet (still working on that procrastination goal obviously, lol), but at least I’m making good progress and should have them all reviewed prior to the publication date.  Because I’ve been so focused on those ARCs, my backlist reading has not been nearly as good as it was last month.  I did finally start a backlist book though, Bruce Springsteen’s 500+ page autobiography.  I’m about halfway through it now and It’s one that has been on my shelf since October 2016, so I’m happy to finally be working towards marking that one off the to read list.

I think that’s it for me for now.  I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

     
  

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

       
    
 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

    

TOTALLY RANDOM