Weekly Recap #119: Week of 8/25 – 8/31

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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 hope everyone who has a long Labor Day weekend is enjoying it.  I know Hurricane Dorian is bearing on the East Coast of the U.S. so I hope everyone who is potentially impacted has completed their storm prep and evacuated as needed.  I’m in Virginia so we’re just basically in wait-and-see mode as to how much rain, if any, we’ll get from the storm if it tracks further north.   Thankfully, the past couple of days have been gorgeous and today looks good too so at least our outdoor Labor Day activities should go off without a hitch.

I kind of fizzled on my blogging late in the week again, mainly because my son’s first soccer game was Thursday night and we had extra practices leading up to it.  I really should just start taking my laptop with me and blogging while he’s practicing. It would be a much better use of my time than sitting there watching the clock and wondering how much longer we have to stay there, lol. Sadly, his team did not win their first game, they lost 4-2, but I still thought they looked good and were competitive so hopefully they’ll have a good season overall.

I was also a blogging bum because I hunkered down into reading mode to get all of my September 3rd ARCs read.  I’m working on the last one now so not too bad considering how far behind I was this time last Sunday. As far as what I read, I haven’t decided if I’m going to do a full review for The Girl the Sea Gave Back.  I was really looking forward to that one because I enjoyed Sky in the Deep so much, but in a lot of ways, the second book fell flat for me.  I’m struggling to put my finger on exactly why, hence possibly no review because I just don’t know what to say.  Bringing Down the Duke was a great read though so I’m looking forward to reviewing that one and I also have an excerpt the publisher sent me that I’ll be sharing as well.  The Ann Cleeves book is the one I’m currently working on and so far I’m really enjoying it. I really like Cleeves writing and the murder mystery has already sucked me in so I’m expecting it to be a quick read.

While I was in reading mode, I also finished my re-read of the second book for the #IronThrone readalong.  I think I’m still a week behind but am getting ready to start A Storm of Swords so I’m pretty excited about that.

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 #118: Week of 8/18 – 8/24

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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 feel like I could pretty much just copy and paste what I wrote here last week because it pretty much was one of those wash, rinse, repeat kind of weeks.  Work, school, and soccer are still the dominant activities of the week, with me starting to attack my September ARCs rounding out what’s happening on the blog front.  September 3rd seems to be a big day for ARCs and I apparently still haven’t learned to check publication dates prior to requesting because I have 5 ARCs to read for that date.  I’ve read two, The Lady Rogue and Well Met, but I still need to read The Girl the Sea Gave Back, Bringing Down the Duke, and The Long Call.  Wish me luck getting them all done in time!

I got a little behind with my ARC reading because I was actually trying to get another backlist book off my list.  I’ve been reading Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik.  It’s a really good book but it’s so long, lol! I’ve been working on it for over two weeks now and am still only at 65%.  I’ll be setting that aside now until I get through the ARCs.

I also got a little distracted this week by all of the Disney news coming out of the D23 Expo.  I was originally on the fence about whether or not to purchase Disney’s streaming service, but after hearing what they have coming out for Star Wars and the Marvel Universe, I’m all in.  The trailer for The Mandalorian and the news that Ming Na Wen would be joining the cast was enough to seal the deal for me.  Love her!

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 #117: Week of 8/11 – 8/17

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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 week was all about back to school and thankfully it seems that my son quickly got over his case of back to school blues.  Once he saw he had plenty of friends in each of his classes, he settled right into his new routine.  The homework started quickly this year too so several of my evenings were taken up with Googling algebraic concepts that I’ve long since forgotten.  He actually has a pretty full schedule this year so I’m curious to see how he does with it. In addition to the algebra, he also has English, Science with Lab, Civics/Economics, Spanish I, STEM I, Health/P.E., and Band II.  Thankfully it’s a block schedule so he can’t have homework in all subjects every night, but 7th grade is definitely a big change from 6th.

Practices for his fall Parks & Rec soccer season started at 9:00 a.m. Saturday morning, which didn’t make anyone in this household very happy.  My husband decided not to coach this season and apparently the new coach is an early riser on the weekends, lol.  These practices are in addition to the ones we already attend during the week for futsol so we’re going to be busy, busy, busy.  I’ve thought about scaling back the number of practices that he goes to, but it’s a tough call because every spare moment my son has is spent glued to the Xbox.  I figure we’ll give it a few weeks to see how much homework, etc. he has and if it becomes too much, then we’ll scale back a little.

Trying to figure out all of that had the blog taking a backseat for the most part.  I did post my 200th review on Netgalley this week and got a new badge so that was exciting.  I also noticed that I’m just three books away from completing my Goodreads challenge for this year, so that’s also pretty cool.  I still have a lot of work to do on my other challenges but we’ll see how it goes.  I had also fallen behind on my IronThrone readalong but managed to get caught up this week and actually get ahead a couple of chapters.  We’re almost finished with the second book so things are really starting to get exciting now with all of the scheming and backstabbing, lol.

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 #116: Week of 8/4 – 8/10

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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.

It’s hard to believe my son’s summer vacation is over already and he’s headed back to school tomorrow.  It’s even harder to believe that he’s already a 7th grader. Where does the time go?  I don’t think he’s overly excited to go back either.  He was very mopey on Thursday when I took him to the back-to-school events to meet his teacher and see where all of his classes are.  Hopefully he’ll snap out of it once he’s back and with his friends again. If not, we’re in for a long school year, lol.

Aside from back-to-school stuff, it was a fairly average week. Work, soccer, play with the puppy (who is already 27 lbs, by the way, OMG!), read a little, eat, sleep, repeat.  We did go see the live action Lion King movie last Sunday.  It was better than I expected it to be, but at the same time, it was so close to the original cartoon that my main thoughts while I was watching were “Why did this need to be remade?  What does making it Live Action really add to the overall story?”  So basically, I enjoyed it overall but thought it was a little unnecessary.  That’s my take on most reboots and remakes though so I guess I’m not surprised at my reaction.  The music is great of course.  Can’t go wrong with Elton John and Tim Rice.

I had gotten a little behind again with my blogging and commenting, but I think I got all caught up yesterday. If I did miss your site though, give me a yell and I’ll swing by.  The bad part about spending all day yesterday getting caught up there is that I fell behind on my IronThrone readalong challenge again.  Hopefully I can get caught up on that today.  It’s a vicious cycle, lol!

Anyway, I think that’s pretty much it for me.  And here’s one final reminder that I have a giveaway running for a free book of your choice up to $20 in value from The Book Depository.  The giveaway is to celebrate the 12th blogoversary of ShootingStarsMag   It runs through August 16th and is open internationally as long as TBD ships to you, so be sure to enter if you haven’t already.

Have a great week, everyone!

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
   
 
   
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #115: Week of 7/28 – 8/3

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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.

It has been another fairly uneventful week around here, with back-to-school preparations taking up the bulk of my time outside of work.  It’s still a little hard to get to used the new school calendar since up until this past school year, we never went back before Labor Day and now August 12th is the first day of school.  My son seems ready to go back though so that’s good anyway.

We’ve also started puppy classes for Winston, so that has been fun.  I swear he’s the wildest puppy in the class and doesn’t want to sit still for a minute, no matter how much we exercise him before class starts, lol.  He’s smart though and catching on fast, which is great because we really want him fully trained before he’s too big to handle.  We took him to the vet on Friday and he’s already up to 27 pounds!

Not much else to report. I got a decent amount of reading done this week, although I was hoping for more.  I ran into a couple of books that weren’t as fast-paced as I would have liked so they slowed me down a bit.  I’m finally caught back up on my assignments for the IronThrone readalong, which puts me about 60% through the second book.  I still love the pacing of this readathon as it was relatively easy to get caught up after I fell behind.  I also read K.A. Tucker’s Say You’ll Still Love Me and J.P. Delaney’s The Perfect Wife, and have been listening to the audiobook for The Princess and the Fangirl.  Tucker’s book was great, but my reaction has been a bit mixed for the other two.  I also started I’m Not Dying with You Tonight last night and I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.

I think that’s pretty much it for me.  If you haven’t seen it yet, I have a giveaway running for a free book of your choice up to $20 in value from The Book Depository.  The giveaway is to celebrate the 12th blogoversary of ShootingStarsMag   It runs through August 16th and is open internationally as long as TBD ships to you, so be sure to enter if you haven’t already.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
   
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #114: Week of 7/21 – 7/27

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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 don’t have much to report this week.  I came down with a nasty summer cold a few days ago (congestion, body aches, sore throat, the whole nine yards), so aside from dragging myself to and from work each day, I’ve done nothing but lay in bed,  read, and watch Will & Grace on Hulu for days.  Thankfully I’m feeling better this weekend so I’ll be playing catch up in the blogosphere in between doing all of the chores I’ve neglected since I got sick.

I did check in with the blogosphere long enough to see the heartbreaking news about Grace.  My heart goes out to her family, especially her kids.  I hate that their mom was taken from them way too soon. Rest in peace, Grace. ♥

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
   
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #113: Week of 7/14 – 7/20

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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.

Not much to report this week. As I’m sure many of you are, we have been under an excessive heat warning here for a few days now.  I don’t even want to think about how hot it is out there and have spent most of my time inside either reading or working on indoor projects that needed to be done.  My sister-in-law is in town from Florida so I ventured out to visit with her, but other than that, I’m basically in a relationship with my A/C right now.

I got a lot of reading done this week, although most of it was not what I had planned to read.  I mostly ignored my ARCs and instead read a couple of books I own, Victoria Schwab’s City of Ghosts and Holly Black’s The Wicked King.  I don’t know that I’ll review either since I don’t feel like I have much to say about them, but I enjoyed both and rated them 4 stars each on Goodreads.  The ending of The Wicked King was outstanding though so I can’t wait to get my hands on the final book in that series.  I also fell behind in my reading for the IronThrone readalong for the first time.  I’ve only read 4 out of the 10 chapters we were supposed to read this week so I’m hoping to catch up on that today.

My giveaway for a copy of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill ended this week and Angela at Musings of a Literary Wanderer was the winner.  Congrats Angela!  I hope it’s a great read for you. 🙂

I can’t think of much else so I’m going to stop babbling now.  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 #112: Week of 7/7 – 7/13

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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 feel like this week was super busy but now that I’m sitting here trying to recap it, I’m not coming up with much of anything.  I took Winston to the vet this week for his next round of shots and a weigh-in.  The little ball of fluff is already up to 22 pounds and the vet says he’ll have a big growth spurt starting soon that will probably double his weight by his next appointment.  Thank goodness I signed him up for puppy obedience classes starting in a couple of weeks.  We need to get him fully trained before he’s too big to deal with, haha!

Aside from life with the puppy, the other big highlight of the week was finishing up our painting project and putting my room back together.  It’s hard to get a good picture because two whole walls are nothing but books so no paint and it’s hard to capture the true wall color since it’s such a muted shade, but here’s a general idea of the final product and a glimpse of my new purple rug. I’m really loving how soothing the whole room feels now.

 

 

 

I’m truly drawing a blank about the rest of the week so it must have been some really exciting stuff, lol.  I did get a bunch of reading done though.  I got this week’s reading done for the IronThrone readalong.  We’ve started the second book, A Clash of Kings.  I also ended up veering from my tentative TBR and reading a couple of backlist books instead.  Two of the ARCs I needed to get through ended up being duds that I DNF’ed, The Boy and Girl Who Broke the World and Please Send Help, so I was hesitant to try another ARC in case it was me.

My hold for the audiobook of Michelle Obama’s Becoming became available so I dove into that instead.  I won’t be doing a full review for it, but I’ll just say that if you like the Obama family and haven’t read this yet, you’ll definitely want to.  It was beautifully written, her narration is fantastic, and her journey is just so fascinating.  I loved every page of it and rated it 5 stars.  After I finished that, I headed back to my bookshelf and ended up reading the second book in Sarah J. Maas’ Throne of Glass series, Crown of Midnight.  Again, I won’t do a full review but I enjoyed this book as much as, if not more, than the first book in the series.  I love the growing complexity of the main character as well as the intricacies of the plot itself.  I flew through the book and look forward to continuing the series once I have more time to hit my backlist.  Last night I started reading Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane, a recent release that I’ve seen a lot of great reviews for.  It took me a couple of chapters to really get into it but now I’m really enjoying it.

I also spent a fair amount of time on Hulu since my free trial ended this week and I was trying to decide whether or not to keep it.  I’m on Season 4 of Will & Grace and really love it so I plan to keep Hulu at least long enough to finish that, but at $5.99/month, I may just keep it for a while since I did find a lot of shows and movies that I’d like to watch that aren’t on Netflix.  I’m actually seriously considering cancelling Netflix. It has gotten so expensive and almost everything I liked to watch on there has been cancelled or removed.

I think that’s pretty much it.  Oh, before I forget, today is the last day to enter my giveaway for a finished copy of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill.  It’s U.S. only but if you haven’t entered yet and want to, make sure you do it before midnight. (Click here to enter)

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 #111: Week of 6/30 – 7/6

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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 hope everyone who was celebrating July 4th had a wonderful holiday.  Ours was pretty lowkey but enjoyable.  My mom and sister visited and we went to see Spiderman: Far from Home, which was fabulous, and then had lunch at a new Italian deli and bakery that recently opened a 3-minute drive from my house (also fabulous, although it could be dangerous having such easy access to delicious Italian pastries!).  I had to work on July 5th so we didn’t do much with fireworks, etc. but I did settle in and get a ton of reading done and we started a new home improvement project, painting my office/library.  I’m changing it from an apple green to a pale lilac and I’m pretty excited for the finished result.  So far we’ve only done the ceiling and touched up the white trim, but the wall color will happen today!

I did have one fail once we decided to paint, however.  I got so excited about it and so eager to clean out the room and get started, that I packed up all of my electronics except my phone and kindle.  My computer has been stored offsite for the past few days.  Not a big deal except that I had this grand plan of spending part of the weekend blog hopping and that didn’t happen.  I did finally find my laptop charger though so I’m using that to write this post and will blog hop between coats today, lol.

As I mentioned, I got a lot of reading done this weekend.  I finished The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu, which I really enjoyed, and Wilder Girls, which I enjoyed overall but have some mixed feelings about.  Stay tuned for my reviews for those later this week.  I also finished the first book in the IronThrone Readalong and hope to start the second one tonight.  I also finished The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, which I absolutely adored.  I’ll be reviewing that and will also be hosting a giveaway for a finished copy so be sure to stop by tomorrow for that post and to enter the giveaway.

I think that’s about it for me.  Time to get back to painting!

Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

   
       
 
 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

 

 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

  Surprisingly enough, none!
  
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: interest.pics

 

Weekly Recap #110: Week of 6/23 – 6/29

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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 don’t have much of anything exciting to talk about this week.  I made it through my first post-vacation week even though it felt like the longest week ever, lol.  Hopefully next week will be better because by the end of this week, I was taking accidental naps almost as soon as I got home from work everyday.

Between watching the Women’s World Cup Soccer matches and the Democratic debates this week, I didn’t get nearly as much reading done as I had planned to.  I finished two books, The Chosen and The Last Collection, which I’ll be reviewing this week, and I also just finished this week’s reading for the Iron Throne readalong.  By this time next week, we’ll actually be finishing the first book so that’s exciting.  This week I’m excited about reading The Bookish Life of Nina Hill and Lock Every Door. These are two highly anticipated reads for me, so I have high hopes for them of them.

Life continues to go well with our new puppy. He is settling in very well and is already very attached to my son, which is actually what I was hoping would happen.  I just signed Winston up for puppy class, starting in July so that should be fun too.

I’m drawing a blank about the rest of my week, so I’m going to cut it short.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

   
       
 

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

      
 
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 
       
 

TOTALLY RANDOM