Weekly Recap #39: Week of 2/4 – 2/10

/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.

I feel like I say this almost every week but I’ll be so glad when spring gets here.  The older I get the more I dislike winter and want nothing to do with it.  It’s not even that we get all that much snow here — it’s that everyone overreacts as soon as the first flake falls.  We’ve probably had less than 4 inches of snow total since Christmas, yet my son has only had 2 full weeks of school since then.  Endless 2 hour delays and cancellations, which he loves of course.  Me, not so much. LOL!

The only good thing about delays and cancellations is that I can squeeze in a few extra minutes of reading on those days, so I’ve had some pretty good reading weeks this winter.  I still need to write the reviews for them, but I finished reading all of my February ARCs this week and even finished one of the 5 ARCs that I need to read and review prior to March 6th.  I still don’t know that I’ll get to any of my backlisted books this month, but I’m feeling more optimistic about getting my Netgalley deadlines met anyway.

Aside from reading, I feel like I spent most of the week camped out in front of the TV, although I can’t remember much of anything that I actually watched the first half of the week.  Work was busy this week so I think I basically just came home and zoned out, lol.  I’ve been glued to coverage of the Olympics since Friday and expect that will continue for the next couple of weeks.

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 #38: Week of 1/28 – 2/3

/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.

As far as weeks go, I have to say this past one was a great reading one for me.  I finished 3 books and started a 4th, and am hoping I’ll have an equally good week this week.  Even though I did great with my backlist challenge last month, I don’t think February is going to be as good a month.  Why?  Because at some point I got request happy and requested 5 ARCs that all have publication dates of March 6th.  I didn’t anticipate getting approved for all of them, but now I have my hands full of ARCs that I need to get read between now and March 6th.  I’m still going to try to squeeze in a few older reads because I loved the progress I was making on  my backlist, but I definitely need to prioritize those ARCs.

Off the blog, it was a pretty quiet week.  After a brief warm up, we’re back to wintry weather again so I spent much of the week curled up under a pile of blankets wishing for Spring.  I did manage to watch a couple more episodes of Big Little Lies and I’m officially hooked on that show, which is probably a good thing since I’ve gotten bored with almost every other show I watch and actually deleted a bunch of my series passes off the DVR.  I’m on the hunt for new shows now.

Aside from that, I’ve just been busy with work and with keeping my son on track with his school work. He brought home his first semester report card this week and I was thrilled to see he had earned straight A’s.  We also had middle school orientation recently, so it’s really hitting me just how fast he’s growing up.  My baby is definitely not a baby anymore.

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

 

I think this may be a first for me, but I have acquired no new books this week.

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

Weekly Recap #37: Week of 1/21 – 1/27

/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.

Last week was a pretty good week all around. The drama at work has calmed down, and I was able to get a lot of blogging done.  I won’t say that I’m completely caught up, but I feel so much better about where I am right now versus where I was this time last week.  I also liked the feedback that I got from you guys regarding the mini book reviews for older books, so I’ll be trying those for the first time later this week.

I was checking out my progress on my challenges thus far and I’m feeling pretty good about all of those right now too, especially the Beat the Backlist challenge.  I’m reading Our Dark Duet right now, which is my 6th backlist book of the year.   I don’t know if I can maintain that pace long term since I do have quite a few ARCs coming up that I need to read and review first, but considering I only read about 25 backlist books all last year, I’m so stoked to have gotten off to such a good start.

It has also been a productive week for me on the series front. I don’t think I made it an official goal for 2018, but I have also been saying that I really want to finish up some series this year that have been lingering on my TBR for too long.  Well, I’m thrilled to say that I finally finished The Lunar Chronicles this morning and am already nearly halfway through Our Dark Duet so I’ll be finishing up the Monsters of Verity duology in the next few days too.  And because I’m on a roll, I also finished Nevernight too so now I just have to read Godsgrave to be all caught up in time for the third book in that series.

It wasn’t all reading for me this week either.  I also binge watched Season 4 of Grace and Frankie on Netflix.  Man, I love that show so much! I’m ready for season 5 already, which is the worst part about binge watching a series. You then have to wait FOREVER for more new episodes, lol. And with the news that Meryl Streep will be joining the cast for season 2, I also started watching Big Little Lies on HBO.  I’m only a couple of episodes in, but I’m completely hooked, which is kind of funny because I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book the series is based on.  It was just an okay read for me.

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 #36: Week of 1/14 – 1/20

/28 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.

Unfortunately I’m not off to the greatest start on my resolution to get more organized and schedule my posts far in advance.  Hopefully today will be productive, but as of right now, I have only two posts scheduled for the rest of the month.  Usually I’m a little better off than that, but someone unexpectedly quit at work last week and there was endless drama about it that followed me home each night and I just couldn’t focus on writing anything.  Thankfully we’ve come up with a game plan to move forward until her replacement is found, so hopefully now I can buckle down and really work on my goal.

That said, I have managed to finish reading all of my January ARCs and am writing the last of the reviews today so I guess I am doing better at staying on top of my ARCs so far, lol.

I’m thinking of following in the footsteps of several of my fellow bloggers and just doing mini reviews for most of the backlisted books I’m reading.  Unless I have a lot to say about a pre-2018 book, I like the idea of just making the review short and sweet and moving on, saving my lengthier reviews for ARCs and 2018 releases.  I’m thinking/hoping it will allow me a little more time to focus on things like discussion posts, which I really want to do more of this year.

On the non-blog front, I had this random nostalgic moment and started rewatching the old Party of Five series on Netflix.  I had forgotten how much of a crush I had on Matthew Fox, lol.  And the new season of Grace and Frankie dropped this weekend too, so I can’t wait to dive into that. Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda are just comedy gold in that series. Love it!

Oh well, time to start working on reviews and posts to schedule!  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 #35: Week of 1/6 – 1/13

/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’m a little late getting my Sunday post up today because I have family from Florida visiting this week.  I wish it was purely a social visit, but it’s because my father-in-law has been in the hospital since last weekend.  His initial diagnosis was congestive heart failure, which made the end sound near, so family near and far came rushing to town to offer their support and to be there to say their goodbyes, if necessary.  Thankfully, however, the initial diagnosis turned out to be only somewhat correct.  Yes, he had fluid that was forcing his heart to work too hard, but the fluid itself was being caused by a terrible case of bronchitis.  So it’s entirely treatable.  He’s responding well to the treatments and seems to be on the mend now, getting stronger everyday.  He came home yesterday so now we’ve just been using the time to visit with our relatives who we don’t see nearly as often as we would like.

In spite of all of that, or maybe because of it since I wasn’t sleeping well while waiting for news on his health, I’ve managed to somehow already read 5 books this year and have started on my 6th and 7th books.  It was a mix of backlist books and new releases so I’m off to a pretty good start on two of my reading challenges, which is exciting.  This week I’m hoping the reading streak will continue, and the writing streak as I’ve gotten mostly caught up writing reviews as well.

This week I’ll also be posting my list of bookish resolutions and goals for the upcoming year.  I’ve taken a couple of weeks to think about them and I’m feeling pretty good about the ones I’ve chosen and can’t wait to share them with you.

Oh well, I should probably stop being a bad host and get back to my guests.  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 #34: Week of 12/31 – 1/6

/21 Comments/by

 

Hey everyone! 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 hope that everyone’s new year is off to a great start!  We had our first major snowfall here this week, and by major, I mean about an inch, lol.  We don’t do snow well here though so an inch was enough to close my son’s school for two days and because it still hasn’t melted off the roads, we’re waiting to see if he will have school tomorrow.  We’ve also been in the single digits all week and we don’t do that well either.  As I’m typing, my back door is frozen shut and my cat, who normally loves to go outside and explore for a bit, is sitting here looking at me like “Please fix this, Mom. Make the cold white stuff go away!” It’s supposed to finally hit 40 degrees here tomorrow and I’m so excited. I think it will be the first time in my entire life when I’ve been happy to see a Monday, haha!

All of these cold and miserable temps made for a great reading week though.  I stay curled up in my reading chair for days and have already managed to read three books for 2018 and have gotten a pretty good start on a fourth.  That of course means that I’m now way behind in writing reviews and in visiting your blogs, but I’ll be blog hopping and writing reviews today so hopefully I’ll be all caught up by this evening.

Oh and, kind of random, but I also got hooked on the cutest new Netflix series.  It’s called The Worst Witch and is based on the book series of the same name by Jill Murphy.  I had never read the books before but I really enjoyed the first season and can’t wait for new episodes this March.  It’s a bit like Harry Potter except that the school is an all girls’ school.  It’s a lot of fun and I highly recommend it!

 

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

    

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

    
    
     

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

   

 

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #33: Week of 12/24 – 12/30

/22 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 hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.  We had a great Christmas here and since I was off the rest of the week, I’ve spent much of it relaxing, watching cheesy Christmas movies on Hallmark, and just have a good time in general.  I made it to the theater to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, and Pitch Perfect 3.  I thoroughly enjoyed all three films, with Jumani being the biggest surprise.  I was leery going in, just because the original had Robin Williams and how do you compete with that, but they did a surprisingly nice job with the movie, especially in terms of updating it with a more modern feel. My son absolutely loved it.

On the blog, you’ll also probably notice that my list of upcoming reviews is pretty much the same as it was for last week.  Since blog traffic usually seems to be pretty light during the holidays, I decided to stick with year-end type of posts and save my reviews for after the holidays.  I’ll be posting a new one tomorrow to kick off 2018 and will resume my normal blogging schedule this week as well.  I have several reviews ready to share as I did get a fair amount of reading done this week too.

As you’ll see from my Stacking The Shelves list, Santa was also pretty good to me this year too.   Based on the reviews of my fellow bloggers, I feel like I have a lot of great reads coming up in 2018.

I also took time this week to decide what reading challenges I’m going to take part in and shared those on Friday.  I picked a couple more than I usually do, but I’m hoping they’ll all be a good fit for me in terms of what my reading goals are for 2018.

Hope everyone has a Happy New Year and a wonderful first week of 2018!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

    

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 
     

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

   

   

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

A Look Back at My Year in Books

/34 Comments/by

 

 

I’m kind of a stats nerd, so I always love to look at my end of year reading recap on Goodreads.  I’ve never actually shared my stats on the blog before, but I enjoyed Birdie Bookworm’s 2017 Goodreads Year in Books post so much that I decided to follow her lead and share how I did reading-wise in 2017.

 

READING CHALLENGE AND OVERALL READING TOTALS

 

 

 

As you can see, I successfully completed my Goodreads Challenge this year.  I probably should have set my goal higher, but prior to blogging, I usually only read 40-50 books a year so I was hesitant to set the goal too high. The last thing I would want to do is make reading feel like a chore.  I will definitely be increasing my goal for 2018 though, probably to at least 80 but maybe even 90 or 100. We’ll see how I feel when it’s actually time to join the challenge, lol.

I think the stat that most impressed me this year was not so much my increase in number of books read, which was still a pretty impressive jump from 68 in 2016 to 104 in 2017, but rather my increase in the total number of pages I read.  In 2016, I read 25,412 pages and in 2017, that number jumped to 40,391!  I attribute both of these increases to becoming more dedicated to my blog this year and to just wanting to read more books because all of your reviews make so many books sound so appealing.  Knock on wood, but I don’t think I had any kind of a reading slump this year either, which definitely helped these numbers.

 

LENGTH OF BOOKS READ

 

 

At first I was surprised to see that my shortest read of 2017 was still 209 pages long, but then I remembered — now that my son reads independently, I’m not reading as many shorter novels with him as I typically do.  I also knew before I even looked at the stats that my longest book of the year would be A Storm of Swords.  At 1,177 pages, I honestly thought it was going to take me the entire year to read just that one book.  I’m planning to read the next book in that series in 2018 so I predict it will be my longest read of next year.

 

 

BOOK RATINGS

 

I guess I’m pretty consistent in terms of how I rate my reads because my average rating last year was 3.8.  I’m not sure if I just go too easy on books when I rate them or if I’ve just gotten better about selecting books that I’m pretty sure I’m going to enjoy.  I lean towards the second option, especially when I’m often relying on blogger recommendations to choose my next reads now. Prior to blogging, I almost always relied on those ‘Most Anticipated Reads’ list that appear on major entertainment sites like Entertainment Weekly.  My luck with their picks was always hit or miss.  These days I definitely trust the recs of my fellow bloggers way more than I trust those lists.

 

 

MOST POPULAR/LEAST POPULAR

 

Even though I read a lot of popular and hyped books this year, I’m not at all surprised to see a Harry Potter novel was the most popular book that I read.  I am surprised that only 134 other people have read Murder Over Mochas.  I thought it was a really cute cozy mystery and would definitely recommend the series if you’re into the cozies.

 

 

FIRST AND LAST REVIEWS OF 2017

 

 

I seem to have read more fantasies and thrillers this year than ever before, so it didn’t surprise me to see that my first review was a fantasy and my final review was a thriller.  In 2016, my first review was a historical fiction and my last was a mystery.

 

 

HIGHEST RATED 2017 READ

 

I guess this is probably considered more of a bit of trivia than a real stat, but the highest rated book on Goodreads I read in 2017 was A Court of Mist and Fury. Sarah J. Maas is such a popular author that this didn’t surprise me a bit, especially since I rated it 5 stars myself.  It’s my favorite book in that series.

 

 

MY 2017 JOURNEY IN BOOKS 

 

It’s kind of cool to see my year in books laid out in visual form.  I had actually forgotten about some of the books I read, plus it’s just pleasing to the eyes to see all of these gorgeous covers again.  It also reminds me that I still have several reviews to write for books that I read in December that I haven’t gotten around to yet.  (Goal for 2018 – To stop procrastinating when it comes to writing reviews!)  Anyway, 2017 was a great reading year for me overall and I’m looking forward to an even better year in 2018.

 

Weekly Recap #32: Week of 12/17 – 12/23

/20 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 post will be short and sweet as I’m trying to type it using an internet hotspot while riding in a car.  I’m heading home for a long day of spending Christmas Eve with my various relatives.  It should be a lot of fun but will be exhausting. Our first stop will be at my Dad’s to visit with him and my stepmom.  My second stop will be the nursing home to visit with my grandmother, and then my final stop will be my mother’s house to visit with her and with my sister.  Once all of the visiting is finished, then I’ll be in for a 2-hour drive home to put out all of my son’s gifts for tomorrow and then fall into bed.

Needless to say, I probably won’t be doing much reading or blogging for the next day or so, but thankfully I’m off for the rest of the week so I’ll be working on getting caught up on everything blog-related during that time frame.

Have a great week, everyone, and Happy Holidays to all who are celebrating!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

   

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
     

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
    

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

source: blaze press.com

 

Weekly Recap #31: Week of 12/10 – 12/16

/32 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 hope everyone’s holiday plans are coming together nicely.  I think I’m about as ready as I’m going to be.  I still have 2 or 3 small gifts to purchase for my son to give his grandparents but otherwise I’m good on that front.  Next up is more holiday baking.  Our cookie exchange at work was fun, but I still have a lot of cookies to make for the family.  My mom has volunteered to cook the Christmas Eve meal so I’m excited about that.  All I have to make is a dish of homemade mac and cheese and I’m off the hook for everything else.

My son is going with some friends to see the new Star Wars movie this morning.  I’m jealous since I’m dying to see it too but am hoping to get to it sometime later this week before he spoils it for me, lol.  I want to see both that and Pitch Perfect 3 while I’m off from work over the holidays.

On the blog it has mostly been a reading week for me.  I only got one review posted all week and am playing catch up with writing reviews this weekend.  I finished Dan Brown’s Origin last night.   I know some people think Brown’s books are overrated and formulaic, but I must just like his formula because I always enjoy them and Origin was no exception.  I’ll have my full review of Origin in a few days.  Once I finished Origin, I moved on to Nice Try, Jane Sinner because I’m participating in a blog tour for that the first week of January and want to make sure it doesn’t slip through the cracks in the holiday mayhem.  I also saved one winter-themed book to read over the holidays, Erin Hilderbrand’s Winter Solstice.

Anyway, I think that’s it for me.   Have a great week, everyone, and Happy Holidays!

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

    

UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
     

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

    
    

TOTALLY RANDOM