Weekly Recap #129: Week of 11/3 – 11/9

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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 I finally got the quiet week I’ve been craving and I immediately came down with a cold and haven’t felt well all week. LOL!  I think it’s our crazy up and down weather. We’re having highs of 70s one day, followed by two or three days of highs in the 40s, then right back up to the 70s.  Last weekend’s soccer game was played in the 40 degree weather and I think that might be what did me in.  Oh well, the game was fun and I’ll live.  I spent most of yesterday curled up in bed reading Ruth Ware’s The Turn of the Key (which is fabulous, by the way) and today I woke up feeling a little better.

My reading week was kind of a mixed bag.  As I already mentioned, the Ware book was a winner.  I also finally read Scythe and loved that so much that I started reading Thunderhead last night.  The biggest disappointment of the week was The Guinevere Deception.  It was one of my most anticipated reads and it unfortunately fell flat for me for the most part.  I’ll be reviewing that tomorrow once I settle on a rating for it. I’m waffling between a 2 and 3 right now.  I actually only have one more November ARC to read so I’m focusing on books I own for the next couple of weeks.  In addition to starting Thunderhead, I have also started Leigh Bardugo’s King of Scars, which has been sitting on my shelf since January.  I was taking stock of my reading challenges while I’ve been under the weather and while I’ve failed on most of them, I think I’ll actually meet my backlist goal of reading 35 books. I’m working on my 31st now.

Not too much else went on this week.  Election night was a big deal here in my state.  The Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate for the first time in well over 20 years and in my county, we elected our first African American to the Board of Supervisors.  The lady who won was my son’s Elementary School Principal and she was fantastic there so I can’t wait to see how she does on the County Board.  We also elected a 22-year old to the School Board.  It will be nice to have someone who has actually been in school in recent years add his perspective to what has historically been a board of old white men.

I looked outside last night and see that one of my neighbors has already decorated for Christmas.  I’m not quite feeling it yet so I may have to turn on some Hallmark movies to start getting myself in the spirit.  We were originally planning to take a big trip over Christmas so I wasn’t going to do much in the way of decorating.  That trip has now been cancelled so I’m not sure what we’ll be doing.  I’m thinking I still want to at least take a long weekend and maybe go up to NYC and catch some shows I’ve been wanting to see (Dear Evan Hansen, Come From Away, To Kill a Mockingbird, Hadestown – my wishlist is always so long, lol), but we’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

  
    
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
 
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #128: Week of 10/27 – 11/2

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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 past week started out on a quiet and relaxing note but went off the rails about midweek when I got a phone call from my son’s Principal.  I won’t go into all of the gory details, but it involved a fight he got in the middle of at school between his girlfriend and some ‘Mean Girl’ type. While discussing his behavior with him and digging a little deeper into what he has been up to lately overall, I discovered that he had been lying to me for several days about doing his homework and about several other things.  Needless to say, blogging took a backseat to getting him back on track with his school work and having the same conversation for what feels like the hundredth time about fighting other people’s battles and about how lying leads to mistrust, which in turn, leads to him having less freedom and privileges.  I guess one of these days, those lessons will finally sink in.  The worst part of this is that he’s only just turned 12.  We haven’t even officially hit the teen years yet. I’m really hoping he’s getting it out of his system early and that this isn’t going to continue for years and years.  Probably wishful thinking, but a mom can dream, right?

Anyway, apologies to all whose posts I missed.  I’m so far behind on blog hopping right now that I’ll probably just start with fresh posts and move forward. Otherwise I’m going to end up in a hole I can’t get out of.  I also only finished one book this week, Scythe by Neal Shusterman. That one was recommended to me by my son and it was amazing. I’m glad I already have a copy of the next book in the series because I can’t wait to continue the story.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
  
    
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #127: Week of 10/20 – 10/26

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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.

First, I just want to say a big thanks to everyone who wished me a Happy Birthday. I took the day off from work and just had a quiet day filled with “me time,” which I think was exactly what I needed after the busy schedule I’ve had for so long.  So far I’ve only purchased one book with the gift cards my friends and family sent me, Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, but I’m sure more will follow shortly.

The rest of the week was back to business as usual as my son prepared to play his first game with his new travel team.  That took place yesterday and unfortunately they didn’t win, but it was still a great game.  My son is still getting used to playing with this new group of kids, but he still played pretty well overall and he had fun, which is the most important thing.

On the reading front, it was a mixed bag for me. I ended up DNFing Life and Limb by Jennifer Roberson because it took me 4 days to get to the 8% mark. I just couldn’t get into the story at all. I’m having similar mixed results with Sisters of Shadow and Light, although I have managed to make it to the 40% mark.  My best read so far has been a backlist book, Slightly South of Simple by Kristy Woodson Harvey, which was just a delightful read about sisters and family.  I also started reading Scythe based on a recommendation from my son.  He hasn’t been reading much lately, so I decided a recommendation from him was important enough to reshuffle my TBR.  I’m hoping that it will be a bonding moment and that it will encourage him to get back into reading a bit.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
  
    
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #126: Week of 10/13 – 10/19

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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, I survived our tax and audit deadlines and I made it through my son’s first full week as a travel soccer player.  And as I’m sure you can guess by the fact I pretty much disappeared after Tuesday, I got exhausted quickly, lol. I spent whatever free time I had, either napping or parked on the couch like a slug, occasionally doing some reading and unfortunately didn’t visit a single blog.  I feel much better now though so I’ll be getting caught up on my blog hopping throughout the day today, especially since it’s cold, rainy, and we therefore don’t have a soccer game or practice.  Free day!

Even though I totally slacked on the blog this week, I was thrilled to see that I finally got my very first approval from Disney on Netgalley. After three years of trying without success, it put a big smile on my face to get approved, especially since it’s a book I’m really excited about.  Blogging life has been pretty quiet otherwise, although I did notice that I reached 1,000 followers on Instagram so as soon as my brain is fully functioning and I can figure out the ins and outs of IG giveaways, I want to run a giveaway on there to celebrate.

Reading-wise, it has been pretty slow going as well. I’ve pretty much abandoned the IronThrone readalong for now, just because my schedule has been so hectic.  I may try to get caught back up at some point, but if not, since this was a re-read aside from the fifth book, I may just pick it back up when everyone else gets to the that one. We’ll see how it goes though. I started Lisa Jewell’s latest book last night and although it took me a few chapters to really get hooked, I’m loving it now and already almost halfway done with it.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
    
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #125: Week of 10/6 – 10/12

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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, remember last week when I said soccer was over and I was excited that we would have a little break before it gears up again?  Yeah, that didn’t happen.  One of my son’s friends convinced him that he should try out for one of the local travel soccer teams.  After talking about the pros and cons of it with him, we finally agreed to at least let him try out and see what happened.  Well, he ended up making the team.  This is obviously a YAY! because of course I’m proud of him and want him to continue to up his game, but at the same time, my poor old tired self is just like *sigh*.  I’ve spent the past few days frantically filling out paperwork, buying him new gears, and taking him to as many practices as possible because their season has already started and he needs to catch up ASAP and be ready to play his first game on October 20th. He’s happy though and I think it has given his self-confidence a boost so that’s really the most important thing. Everything else will work out in the end and I’ll adjust to this new schedule of practices and to traveling to games, which apparently are sometimes out of state so that will be new for us.

In addition to soccer, this week is also another big deadline week at work. We have both a tax deadline and an audit deadline so everybody’s jumping and working overtime. As soon as I finish this post, I’ll actually be jumping online because I have to work today.  Thankfully it’s only for half a day though so that I can still get outside and enjoy the beautiful fall weather that has finally arrived.  I’m hoping to get out there and relax and get some reading done.

I got a fair amount of reading done this past week, although my reactions to some of what I read was mixed.  I finished How to Hang a Witch and thoroughly enjoyed that, but then I read Katie Lowe’s The Furies and found that pretty disappointing.  I won’t be doing a full review for it on the blog but it was a 2.5 star read for me.  The writing itself was good, but the story just didn’t hold my attention and I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters.  I skimmed a lot, thought about DNFing, and was ultimately just glad to finally be done with it. I also finished Fireborne by Rosaria Munda, which I quite enjoyed and will be reviewing on the blog tomorrow, and I also finally started Christina Lauren’s Twice in a Blue Moon, which I’m enjoying so far.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
  
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  
      
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #124: Week of 9/29 – 10/5

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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 week, another blur of work, after school activities, and soccer.  I went into the week feeling like I had things under control, but then soccer playoffs happened.  We thought the County wouldn’t schedule them until the weekend to make sure most people could attend.  When we got the unexpected text from the coach Tuesday night saying that playoffs would start on Thursday night, all my plans for the week got thrown off kilter with unscheduled practices and an unplanned trip to the soccer fields.  On the bright side, even with our flaky coach and never having enough kids to play, we still managed to make it to the semi-final round where we then lost against the number 1 seeded team, 4-0.  The kids still looked good in that game and I was especially proud of the way my son played, but two of our three strikers didn’t show up and you just can’t win a game with only 1 striker.  So a disappointing end to the season, but I’m just glad it’s over at this point so that’s one less thing on my plate for a while.

Elsewhere in life, our garage door spring decided it would be a great time to break at 9:00pm last Sunday night.  Once we recovered from our near heart attacks because of the ridiculously loud sound it made, the three of us tried to lift the door together and couldn’t budge it.  My car was therefore trapped in there until we could find someone to come out and fix it so I worked from home on Monday.  We managed to get someone out pretty quickly to take care of it, but the most comical/frustrating part of it was how much more work I got done at home, even with the dog and the cat running around and all of the garage commotion, than I have since we switched to this open floor plan at work.  Go figure!

Reading and blogging were not all that great this week because of the distractions.  I did finish The Grace Year, which I’ll be reviewing tomorrow, but Cursed, the King Arthur retelling, ended up being a DNF for me. I just couldn’t get into it at all.  I ditched that and moved on to Bodies in the Library, a fun cozy mystery that I hope to finish today, and to How to Hang a Witch, a long-time backlist title that I’m listening to on audio.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
  
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
  
    
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #123: Week of 9/22 – 9/28

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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.

All in all, not much happened this week.  The only thing that really stands out to me is that we’re in the middle of major renovations at work and have been switched to an open floor plan.  They took down a bunch of offices and replaced them with cubicles with frosted glass partitions.  I can’t really say that I’m a big fan of this so far either.  The partitions are short so I can see everyone else in my work area as well as everyone else who walks up and down the hallways.  It’s loud, distracting, and there’s no privacy at all.  The cubicles are also much smaller than what we had so there’s less workspace overall.  I don’t know if it’s an introvert thing or what but I found myself just mentally exhausted by the time I got home from work each day and craving alone time.

Aside from the work drama, soccer dominated the week.  We had our last three games of the regular season and playoffs will start this upcoming week.  We went 3-5 during the regular season, lost our final game 1-10, and I don’t think any of the kids are excited about the playoffs.  Our coach was the sister of one of the players and she constantly cancelled practice and didn’t even show up for two of our games and her mother had to coach in her place.  We’ve decided that we’re not doing this Parks and Rec soccer anymore and so I’m now researching travel teams, etc. to see what other options are out there.  The other options are way more expensive but we need real coaches and real training.

On a brighter note, the weather has been lovely. I should have been inside blog hopping all day yesterday but instead sat outside getting caught up on my reading.  I’ve finished all but one of my October 1 ARCs. I had been putting off reading Cursed because I saw so many mixed reviews for it, but I’m starting that today.  I also dove into my backlist again and finally started reading The Wrath and the Dawn, which I love. I can’t believe I left it sitting on my TBR for three years, lol.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
  
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
  
               
    
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #122: Week of 9/15 – 9/21

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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 took an unplanned mini break from blogging the second half of last week.  Between work, soccer, and planning for my son’s birthday, I just ran out of time and energy for everything else.  My son got to go to an amusement park yesterday with a friend to celebrate and then we’re having a family party for him today.  The pre-teen attitude has also kicked in in full force this weekend, so it has just been a delightful time for all, lol.

Anyway, once the party is over today, I’ll be back to blogging on my normal schedule with a review post tomorrow for Alice Hoffman’s new book, The World That We Knew.  I won’t be reviewing Renia’s Diary as planned because that unfortunately ended up being a DNF for me.  It was compared to Anne Frank’s diary, but this one just lacked the depth and reflection that we got with Anne’s and instead truly read mostly as a regular teen diary with bits here and there about Poland during WWII.  It was fine, and of course an important account since Renia did not survive the war, but it just wasn’t what I thought it would be.  Aside from that, the only other thing I read was A Storm of Swords for the IronThrone readalong.  I was several hundred pages behind in my reading but finally got caught back up this week.  This week I’ll be working on all of my October 1 ARCs, starting with Royal Holiday, which I started yesterday and am already over halfway finished with.  It reads like a Hallmark Christmas movie so I’m really enjoying it.

Aside from that, I’m hoping for a quiet week. I’ll probably watch the Emmy’s tonight.  I don’t watch much TV but I am curious to see how many awards Game of Thrones wins for its final season.  The main one I’m rooting for is Gwendolyn Christie.  Brienne of Tarth has been a favorite of mine throughout the series and I think her best season was the final so I’d love to see her take home a trophy.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
    
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
  
             
    
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #121: Week of 9/8 – 9/14

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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.

Same stuff, different week around here for the most part.  The phone drama has thankfully died down and now my son wants contact lenses for his birthday.  He took a soccer ball to the face while wearing his glasses at Saturday’s game so I can definitely see the practicality of making that switch and will be calling to make him an eye doctor appointment this week.  I also learned that he now has his first girlfriend, which may explain some of his more dramatic behaviors over the last few weeks.  I thought/hoped I still had a while before we hit the girlfriend stage but apparently not, lol.

Not much else has gone on this week. We had three soccer games so I’m yet again behind in my blogging.  I tried implementing my plan of taking my laptop to his practices but I don’t get a strong enough internet signal to get much done. It works like dial-up so that’s kind of a bust so I’ll be playing catch up today.  Since I couldn’t blog, I switched to reading and got a lot done last week.  I finished another backlist book, Dorothy Must Die.  It was a fun enough read but I don’t know if I’ll continue the series. I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that the first book is the high point of the series so I hate to waste time reading mediocre follow up books.  I also DNF’ed The Doll Factory. It was creepy and Gothic and I liked the premise, but I tried to start it three times and just couldn’t get into it. Plus it has these taxidermy scenes that were just not my thing.  I’m stilling plugging along with the IronThrone Readalong. Pretty sure I’m still at least a week behind on that but I’m about one-third of the way through the third book.  The other read I’m working on this weekend is Alice Hoffman’s latest The World That We Knew.  I started it yesterday and am already 60% of the way through.  I just love her writing so much.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
 storm swords   
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
             
    
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #120: Week of 9/1 – 9/7

/40 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 has been the week of parental woes.  I feel like I’ve spent most of this week arguing with my son about smart phones.  He’s turning 12 in a couple of weeks and currently has an old iPhone 5.  I thought we were being generous by letting him have a phone at all at his age, but apparently we’re old stick-in-the-mud parents because all of his friends have the latest and greatest phones out there and he wants what they have.  I personally don’t think he needs a new top-of-the-line phone. Hell, I have a full-time job and I’m still using an iPhone 6, but this child thinks he’s entitled to a brand-new iPhone XR, price $749. On top of the fact that he’s not even a teenager yet, he also drops his phone and loses it on a regular basis.  He places no value on taking care of it, so I just refuse to invest the money on a much more expensive phone.  We’ve debated this every night this week and at one point, I even offered to upgrade my own phone and give him my iPhone 6 so that he would at least have a bigger phone with more storage on it, etc. and he turned his nose up at that.  So incredibly frustrating.

Aside from that, it was a pretty uneventful week.  We ended up getting no rain at all from Dorian but did end up with some nice overcast, breezy days, so I spent a lot of time outside reading and working with Winston on his obedience lessons.  He is supposed to graduate from Puppy Level 1 Class today if he is able to do everything that he has been learning.  Fingers crossed!

On the reading front, I finally made it through all of my September 3rd ARCs and am finishing my last September 10th ARC, hopefully this weekend, so I’m feeling pretty good about those.  I also finally managed to squeeze in another book from the backlist, Spinning Silver from Naomi Novik.  I didn’t love that one as much as I had hoped too, but it was still a pretty good read. I doubt I’ll do a full review for it, but it was a solid 3.5 star read for me and probably would have been 4 stars if the POV changes weren’t so confusing at times.  They changed abruptly in the middle of chapters and weren’t clearly labeled as POV changes, and I just wasn’t a fan of that.

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
 
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
                       
    
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM