Weekly Recap #109: Week of 6/16 – 6/22

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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’ve been on vacation (well, stay-cation) all week and I really don’t want to go back to work tomorrow.  It has been a relaxing and productive week and I’ve had tons of fun with our new puppy, who is settling in so well already.

Aside from enjoying my time off and getting some projects done around the house, I’ve also been watching the FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer matches all week.  I love watching soccer anyway but these matches are intense and really keep me on the edge of my seat.

I’ll be spending today finishing up my reading of Something Like Gravity because tomorrow is my stop on the blog tour for this book.  I’m really enjoying it, just got a little distracted by the puppy and soccer and got behind in my reading.  I’m also still plugging away on the Iron Throne readalong.  I’m getting sucked into the story all over again and finished last week’s reading as well as part of the upcoming week’s reading.

This week I’m finishing up my last June ARC and getting started on my July ARCs.  If I make good progress on those, then it will be back to reading some books from my backlist.  I had been doing so well on that but haven’t read much of anything backlist in June.

I guess that it’s 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 #108: Week of 6/9 – 6/15

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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.

Happy Father’s Day to all who are celebrating today.  I’m posting my recap a little later than usual because I wanted to share a photo of the newest addition to our family and we just picked him up this morning.  Meet Winston, everyone!  I’m on vacation all this coming week so I look forward to spending lots of time bonding with this little guy and getting him settled into a routine with us.  I’ve also picked up all of my stacks of books off the floor in my office so that they don’t inadvertently become puppy chew toys, lol.

Most of my week was taken up with final preparations for the puppy and with getting everything at work ready for me to head out on vacation.  I didn’t get as much reading done as I would have liked but I did finish Christina Henry’s The Girl in Red and the second week’s reading for the Iron Throne readalong I’m taking part in.  I also finished The Rumor by Lesley Kara, but I’m not going to review it on the blog.  It was an okay read for me, but it’s another thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train and I just don’t have much else to say about it.  If you like books like those and aren’t tired of unlikable/unreliable narrators yet, you’ll probably enjoy this one.

This week I’ve got several contemporaries I’m hoping to get through, including one of my most anticipated 2019 reads, Brigid Kemmerer’s Call It What You Will.  I’m planning to start that tonight and I’m so excited!

On the blog front, my giveaway for a copy of Kit Frick’s All Eyes On Us ends tonight so if you haven’t entered yet and are interested. enter HERE.

Not too much else has gone on. I did sign up for a 30-day trial of Hulu and immediately fell down a Will & Grace rabbit hole. I can’t believe I never watched that show when it was originally on the air. It’s hilarious!

I guess that it’s 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 #107: Week of 6/2 – 6/8

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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 quiet week here for me.  With the exception of continuing to puppy-proof the house and do a little last minute DIY fence repair, I feel like I haven’t really done much of anything at all. We pick up the puppy this coming weekend and are all so excited about it.  Still haven’t settled on a name yet, but we’ll get there eventually, lol.

Work is still good overall, although my one trainee who wasn’t performing got fired this week and the workload got reshuffled so now I have two other trainees.  Both of those are performing well though so I won’t complain too much.  The two new trainees are already working pretty independently so I’m more of a mentor as they have questions and then I just review their work before they move it forward in our workflow.  It feels good knowing that once they’re both fully independent, we should be in a good position for the next time it gets busy.

On the blog front, I’m forever behind on commenting but continue to plug away and get visits in every time I have a few minutes.  I did get a lot of reading done this week and managed to finish all but one of my June 4 ARCs, The Chosen, so I hope to finish up that one this week.  Somehow I actually bypassed that one and read my June 11 ARCs instead, so I’m ready for June 11 but behind on June 4.  I’m also taking part in the Iron Throne Readalong and finished the first week’s reading last night.  I don’t re-read often, but it always amazes me how many little details I pick up on the second time around that weren’t even on my radar the first time through.  I loved book 1 the first time around but am enjoying it even more now.  The readalong is great too because the way, the organizers have broken out the reading assignments for each week, they’re easily manageable without getting in the way of other things I have going on and my ARCs, etc.

Oh well, that’s it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
 
       
 

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

      
 
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

I went a little overboard this week with new books.  I blame Amazon and their $1.99 deals though because they had so many books from my TBR on sale this week.  Resistance was futile.
   
 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #106: Week of 5/26 – 6/1

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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 really have much news to share this week. Work has been pretty quiet lately, which is always nice.  All of our current trainees are doing very well, so it looks like our staffing issues may be coming to an end soon, and  and we’re getting ready to start summer hours this week, which means half-day Fridays!

This week’s main events have revolved around finishing up my son’s new bedroom and puppy proofing our house because we have a new arrival coming in a couple of weeks.  We lost our last Golden Retriever to cancer about 4 years old and have finally decided that we’re ready to bring a new little guy into our home.  We met him yesterday and can’t wait to bring him home in a couple of weeks.  We don’t have a name picked out yet, but we have several contenders that we keep debating between:  Winston, Hamilton (after my favorite musical), Bailey (after George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life), Oliver or Ollie, and Loki (my son’s pick because he’s obsessed with the Avengers right now).  I think Winston is going to be the winner, but we’ll see…

Not too much else is going on.  I’m still reading my June 4th ARCs. I’ll get most of them read and reviewed on time, but I’m going to come up 1 or 2 short.  I thought I was going to make it but one of the books ended up being kind of a meh read and really slowed me down.

About the only other news I have is that I’m planning to take part in the Iron Throne Readalong.  It’s a readathon for those who want to read or re-read the A Song of Ice and Fire series.  I’ve read the first four books and still need to read the fifth, but it has taken me so long to read them that I barely remember anything about them and would like to refresh my memory before jumping into the fifth book.  I’ll have an official sign up post with the details later today, but the readathon also starts today so I figured I’d mention it.

Oh well, that’s it for me.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

 
       
 

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

      
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

   

NONE!

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Weekly Recap #105: Week of 5/19 – 5/25

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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.

Happy Memorial Day weekend to all who are celebrating and a huge thanks for all who serve our country!  I don’t have much to talk about this week, which is why this post is so late going up.  My son finished school this week so his summer has officially begun.  We’re kicking it off by redoing his bedroom this weekend because he’s tired of his Star Wars theme and wants something gamer-related and orange, which is apparently his favorite color.  Thank goodness for places like Etsy and Society6 where you can easily find lots of gamer-themed bedding and wall art!

The weather has also been really nice so far this weekend, so we’re hoping to get outside and do some grilling and relax on our deck, which we barely got to use last summer since it was so constantly rainy.  Other than that, everything else is pretty much same old, same old.

Game of Thrones ended last weekend and I’m still not sure how I feel about it.  It definitely didn’t end how I was expecting it to, but I guess I’m okay overall with the explanation for why it went the way it did.  I do hope we’ll get the rest of the book series someday though because I’d really like to see George R.R. Martin’s version of how it should end.

I had a mini meltdown this week over spam on my blog and installed a math captcha to try to get rid of some of the incessant spammers.   I don’t know if others are experiencing this too, but what set me off was a page long spam comment that keeps getting posted over and over again (6-10 times a day, all from different IP addresses which made it impossible to just block them outright), that’s filled with this word salad of Trump loving, Bible thumping comments.  Normally I just delete spam and move on but after 2-3 months of seeing this rambling b.s. showing up daily in my blog comments, I was just over it.  It’s a double-edged sword though because while the Trump/Bible spam disappeared for a few days after I installed the captcha, so did many of my regular comments.  I’ve removed it for now but if anyone has a better way to get rid of spambots on a self-hosted WP blog, I’m all ears.

Aside from fighting the good fight against spam, I’ve been reading a lot this week too.  I finished my 15th backlist read, An Ember in the Ashes, and have started my 16th, Lily and the Octopus.  I’m also still working on my June 4th ARCs so wish me luck on that.  I also bought a few books, including The Priory of the Orange Tree, which is the Deal of the Day on Amazon today. I got it for $1.99!

Oh well, that’s 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 #104: Week of 5/12 – 5/18

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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 has been a week of “lasts” on my calendar.  Last band concert of the year, last soccer game of the season, last after school Math Club meeting.  I’ve probably been a little too excited to mark those things off my schedule, but every little window of downtime that opens up makes me happy these days.  The upcoming week is my son’s last week of 6th grade and I honestly can’t believe how fast this school year has flown by. Seems like yesterday we were just arriving at the school for the first time for middle school orientation and now he’s almost a 7th grader.  He had a great year, aside from a couple of behavioral challenges that he has hopefully learned from, and will finish on the Honor Roll.  He also did a great job in Pre-Algebra and has been invited to enroll in Algebra I next year, which is very exciting!

Not too much else has been going on.  Work hasn’t been too bad for the past couple of weeks and it’s going well with all of the new people we’re training so I’m really hoping we’re moving in a better, less stressful direction.  I actually came home every night and didn’t immediately crash and burn for a change, which was nice, lol. I even got 4 and a half books read, which hasn’t happened in months!  I’m currently working my way through my June ARCs with my next four reads all having a publication date of June 4.  I can’t decide which of them I want to start first, but am leaning toward the Jane Green book.  I swear one of these days I’m going to get better about not requesting so many with the same pub date!

On the backlist front, after finally finishing (and loving!) The Raven Cycle a few days ago, I decided to go ahead and tackle another series that has been on my TBR for ages and started reading An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir. I’m doing the audio version and loving it so far, and I’m also excited because it’s my 15th backlist read of the year.  My goal is to read at least 35, so as of now, I’m on track to meet or surpass that goal if I can keep up the same pace.

On my agenda for today is to get caught up on my blog hopping, go see A Dog’s Journey with my son, and then to watch the series finale of Game of Thrones.  I feel like my jaw is still hanging open in shock (and disappointment?) after last week’s episode and I can’t even begin to hazard a guess as to how it will end tonight.  I’m sure no matter what happens though, I’ll be sitting there crying by the end.  It has been a wild, if at times uneven, ride!

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 #103: Week of 5/5 – 5/11

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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 and most importantly, I want to wish a Happy Mother’s Day to all of the moms out there.  I hope you’re all having a wonderful day.  My husband and son gifted me with a year’s subscription to the Book of the Month Club this morning so I’m pretty excited. 🙂

Second, I wanted to let everyone know that while I’ll still be visiting and commenting on blogs, for the next couple of weeks, I might be a little delayed in doing that.  I’m training two people at work right now, which is surprisingly draining, and then because we’re fast closing in on the end of the school year, we have field trips, award ceremonies, band concerts, etc. taking up every free minute.  Throw in soccer make up games, immediately followed by the start of playoffs, plus my son’s private training sessions, and I’ve just been fried by the time I get home every day.  I don’t multitask well enough to have a schedule this busy, lol!

With all of that going on, I really didn’t have much time for reading or reviewing this week so all of the reviews I thought I would be posting last week will start going up tomorrow when I’ll be reviewing two YA contemporaries, There’s Something About Sweetie and Red, White, and Royal Blue.  These were both such lovely reads and I can’t wait to share my thoughts on them with you.  Later in the week I’ll be switching gears and reviewing a thriller from Wendy Walker, The Night Before., which had me up late last night because I was dying to see how it turned out.  I also started No Place Like Here this morning.  This is my first read from Christina June so I’m really excited about it.

On the TV front, I finally watched the first two episodes of the new season of The 100.  They were a wild ride but I have mixed feelings, or maybe I was just tired and cranky while I was watching because I had a similar reaction to the season premiere of Marvel: Agents of SHIELD, lol.

Game of Thrones is still keeping me on the edge of my seat, of course.  I still can’t even begin to guess who’s going to end up on the Iron Throne or for that matter, who is even going to survive.  The journey to the series end is exciting though and I loved last week’s episode.  I did have a couple of issues with it though.  Hopefully these comments are vague enough not to be considered spoilers, but avert your eyes now just in case if you haven’t seen the episode but plan to watch it.  I absolutely hate Euron Greyjoy and hope he bites it soon, I’m not a big fan of the direction Dany’s character took because it felt a little cliche, and damn it, Jon Snow, you could have at least pet Ghost before you left!  I’m actually to the point where I’d love it if Tyrion ended up on the throne.

Anyway, enough of my whining and rambling.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
 

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

      
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: Pinterest

Weekly Recap #102: Week of 4/28 – 5/4

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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 was a pretty quiet week, both at home and at work, which is nice after the hectic pace that dogged me for months.  There were a couple of soccer games but even one of those was postponed due to rain, so I actually had quite a few extra hours to myself.

I’ve been using that extra free time to get through my May ARCs (only have 3 left) and to continue to work on my backlist reading and finishing up series that have been on my TBR forever.  I just checked the final book of the Raven Circle out of the library and hope to finish that series this week.  That has been on my TBR since 2016 so I’m thrilled to finally see the finish line in sight.  Thank goodness for audiobooks!

I finally made it to the theater this weekend to see Avengers: Endgame.  It was pretty amazing and I managed to avoid spoilers all the way up until the movie actually started when some asshole who had obviously just watched the earlier showing of the film came running into our showing, yelled out the biggest spoiler of the entire film, ruining it for all of us, and then ran out.  I kind of hope she got hit by a bus as she left the theater.  Just kidding…not really.

But the real highlight of the week for me was, by far, Game of Thrones and the Battle of Winterfell!  I don’t want to be like the asshole above and spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, but OMG!  First of all, all of my theories about how it could possibly go were dead wrong, lol.  I was totally okay with that though because the way it did play out was so much better than I ever could have imagined.  I know there were some complaints about it being too dark and that certain characters were dispatched way too easily, but honestly, I loved all 82 minutes of it and can’t wait for tonight’s episode.

Now that I’ve started babbling about GoT again, everything else I was going to write about went right out of my head so I guess I’m done, lol.  Have a great week, everyone!

 

WHAT I POSTED LAST WEEK

 

 

WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK

 

       
 

 

 UPCOMING REVIEWS

      
 
 

 

 STACKING THE SHELVES

 

 

TOTALLY RANDOM

 

Source: Pinterest

Weekly Recap #101: Week of 4/21 – 4/27

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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 woke up at 7 this morning so that I could write this post and a couple of reviews in peace and quiet.  I tiptoed downstairs as quietly as I could, sat down to write, and within 30 seconds, everyone else in the house was awake and hasn’t stopped talking and banging around since.  Annoying, much? LOL!

In spite of my annoyance this morning, this has actually been a pretty relaxing week for me.  It was spring break at my son’s school so there were no after school activities or soccer games to deal with.  Most people at work took vacation this week so it was super quiet for those of us who didn’t.  I was able to get a fair amount of reading done and got mostly caught up on the blog hopping I was so far behind on.  Middlegame actually ate up most of my reading time this week.  It was my first Seanan McGuire read and I unfortunately didn’t love it as much as I had hoped I would so it was a chore to get through all 528 pages.  I’ll have a review up sometime soon to share my thoughts.

What else?  I have not seen Endgame yet and have been trying to avoid spoilers.  So far I’ve been successful and hope to see the film next weekend.  I really did want to see it this weekend but the only tickets available were for the front row and I just can’t watch a movie that close to the screen.  Silly me hadn’t realized people would start buying them so far in advance, lol.  Tickets for next weekend haven’t been released yet so I’m hoping I’ll get decent seats then.

And of course you know I’m going to mention Game of Thrones.  I loved the second episode of this season so much. I think it’s one of my all-time favorites.  No spoilers but a couple of scenes made me cry, and I’m sitting here on this Sunday morning just wishing the hours away until 9pm so I can watch episode 3.  I have a feeling I’ll be crying again but for completely different reasons, lol.

Well, that’s 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 #100: Week of 4/14 – 4/20

/38 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!  Thank goodness, April 15th has come and gone and work has slowed to a more normal pace.  This week was all about relaxing and recharging for me and for all of my coworkers.  I didn’t actually take off any days from work but it was so slow there that it didn’t feel like I was even working. I also got caught up on my sleep and on my chores too, so now my house doesn’t look like a tornado blew through it.

Getting completely caught up and hopefully even a little ahead on the blog is my next big task.  I’ve got a bunch of blog hopping to do, several reviews to write, and then I need to get back on track with my discussion posts, as well as do a recap my 1st quarter progress on my backlist, audiobook, and retellings challenges.  I haven’t reviewed any of the backlist books I’ve read this year so I’d like to at least do something to quickly let you know what I’ve read so far and what I liked and didn’t like. Thanks to audiobooks, I’m actually on track at this point to at least meet my goal and possibly even exceed it, which is exciting. 🙂

I still find myself shying away from fantasy reads and reaching for contemporaries and thrillers, so we’ll see how long that continues.  Now that Game of Thrones is back(!), I have a feeling that I’ll soon be craving those fantasy reads again or maybe I’ll even finally pull A Dance with Dragons off my shelf and start reading it, lol.

Speaking of Game of Thrones, I had a somewhat mixed reaction to the first episode.  I thought it was great of course, but at the same time, I wanted more.  I’m guessing that’s just because we’ve waited so long and because of the way Season 7 ended.  I went in expecting tons of action and was a little surprised at how mostly quiet the episode was.  I think Greg put it nicely when he said the episode felt like it was setting the stage for the action that is sure to come.  Anyway, I’m very much looking forward to tonight’s episode.  I still can’t believe that it will all be over in just a few more episodes!

Well, that’s 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

 

Source: Pinterest