Hour 2 | Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon

It's officially hour 2 of the readathon! I woke up about 20 minutes into the first hour and after showering and putting clothes in the washer I haven't started reading yet. I've put water on for tea and I'm going to be eating frozen mangos (my breakfast) while I start my reading. I'm going to be starting with Mister Romance by Leisa Rayven.

Hour 1 Mini Challenge

Opening Survey

1. What fine part of the world are you reading from today? I'm reading from Texas in the US.

2. Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to? I'm most looking forward to finishing Mister Romance. Almost half way through the book and I'm in love with it! I can't wait to see where the story goes.

3. Which snack are you most looking forward to? Honestly, I'm not prepared and I don't have snacks prepared. I have some things around the house but I don't know how much snacking I'll be doing.

4. Tell us a little something about yourself! I've always suck when it comes to these things! I have been a reader for as long as I can remember. I'm willing to try almost any genre. Although I try to suppress it sometimes, I'm a hopeless romantic. 

5. If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to? This is my first official time taking part in this readathon. I'm looking to see how much I can get read when I set aside so much time for reading.

Alright I spent way more time of this than I planned. I'm off to go start reading!

Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon Introduction | April 2017

Wow! So I wasn't expecting to do this but I decided to officially participate in this round of Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon. I have attempted this readathon before but I'm pretty sure this is the first official time. Usually I'm doing a lot on Saturdays but for this weekend I'm going to try to spend my entire day reading.

If you watched the TBR video you will see the books I want to read. I know I want to finish at least two of theses books but I'm not going to restrict myself to only the ones I talked about since I am a huge mood reader. I will be doing updates here so make sure you guys check back to see how I'm doing and cheer me on if you're interested.

Alright I think that covers everything for now. I will be back in my first update. Wish me luck!

Dream Bookish Panel

Have you ever thought about who would be on your dream bookish panel? Eventbrite has inspired me to do just that. I've briefly though about it before but for this I decided to throw all constraints out the window.

I had a lot of different authors that I would want to see on a panel speaking about a variety of different things. I quickly realized that I didn't have enough people to put in all the smaller panels I would have wanted. However when I started trying to put authors together they didn't all fit into different categories. Since this is my dream panel I decided to just go all out!

Location

As for locations, I would love to have panels all over the world to give me more incentive to travel. Of course that would be if I could get an all expense paid trip to wherever the panel is taking place. Since that's very unlikely I would love if the panels were in Dallas, Texas or closer if possible because that's still about an hour away. 

Fantasy/Urban Fantasy/Paranormal/Sci-Fi

This would be one big panel of some of my favorite genres because I couldn't leave out authors or genres. A lot of these authors can fit into multiple categories so I figured why not just go for it.

Topics

• I would love for the authors to talk about research they've done for their works. 
• This includes talking about any favorite place to go for source material, and deciding what to pick out from research and use to fit their story.
• I would also like to hear about their character development process, how to make romance work between characters in their setting, and how to make sure characters fit/are believable in the world they're living in.

Authors

• Jennifer L. Armentrout
• Neal Shusterman
• Sarah J. Maas
• Rick Riordan
• Chloe Neil
• Amie Kaufman
• Jay Kristoff

Contemporary

I have a soft spot in my heart for contemporary, so I couldn't leave out this genre when thinking about dream panels. This is just another random mix of authors covering different types of contemporary.

Topics

• I would love to hear about the inspiration for characters and the process of developing characters
• How do you make sure your story stays engaging?
• What is your process of writing real world events in a fictional setting?
• I would also like to hear about how to write a believable romance without making it too cheesy.

Authors

• Nicola Yoon
• Angie Thomas
• Leisa Raven
• Elle Kennedy
• Becky Albertalli
• Adam Silvera

If you can't tell I'm a writer. I would love to hear all these authors speak in panels while also getting useful advice for my own work. If you could choose your dream bookish panel who would be on it? What would they talk about? Thanks Eventbrite for this amazing idea! If you are looking for a resource to plan and track online registrations or search for conferences near you, check out Eventbrite.

Case of the Rereads

I know I have disappeared from this blog before but I'm not sure if it's ever been this long. It might not have even been that long but I feel like it has been forever since I have even typed in the link to blog. I don't think I have talked to anyone personally who has read my blog but I figured I would make a post talking about why I stopped posting completely and where I would like to go from here.

Towards the end of November I got some not so great news. From that point until basically last weekend I wasn't in the best living situation. In order to try to make myself feel better about the situation and not being able to film videos as much I put effort into trying to get out blog post. It helped a little but then I started working more and I need something to help me relax and think about other things. I think that's part of why I read so much in January.

After reading so much in January I was feeling a little burnt out on reading so I stepped back from reading and decided to watch Netflix and play the Sims until I felt like reading again. After half a month of not having the urge to read, I decided to pick up the couple books I had started at the very beginning of February. We are almost through March now and I still haven't finished any of those books that I started at the beginning of February. I only finished 3 books in February, they were all audiobooks and two of them were rereads.

Since my family and I are once again in our own place, I finally have all of my books from storage. While unpacking my books I decided to try reread one of my favorites which pretty much led to me writing this post. Hopefully revisiting a favorite will get me back in the mood to read because I have been feeling completely unmotivated.

* * * * *

So after getting all of that out, let's talk about the series/books I would like to reread this year.

1. Lux series - Jennifer L. Armentrout: This is the series I decided to start with. I wanted to reread this series last year but I never got around to it. I actually started reading yesterday and it has held my interest so far. I'm looking forward to getting back to it once I'm done with this post.

2. Vampire Academy series - Richelle Mead
3. Blue Bloods series - Melissa de la Cruz
4. A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness
5. Off-Campus series - Elle Kennedy
6. Starcrossed sereis - Leisa Rayven
7. Blood of Eden series - Julie Kagawa
8. The Duff - Kody Keplinger
9. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

That's everything I can think of right now that I would like to read right now. If you guys have any suggestions of books I might really enjoy or might help me get back into the reading please let me know! My usual go to is New Adult!

January Wrap Up

Can you believe it? I can't! This wrap up is actually going up on time. January was a really productive month when it came to reading. I read more than I usually average in a month. I think I may have burnt myself out because I haven't felt like reading during the last week and a half of the month. With all that said, let's get into the wrap up.

New to My Shelves

Books I Read

Some Girls Bite (4 stars) | Twisted Palace (3.5 stars) | Friday Night Bites (4 stars)

Illuminae (5 stars) | Gemina (5 stars) | The Inflatable Woman (1 star)

The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil (3.5 stars) | Dating an Alien Pop Star (3 stars) | Said the Shotgun to the Head (5 stars)

Music

I've never talked about music on my blog before but I figured why not try something new. Usually I'm listening to an instrumental playlist on spotify because that's what I listen to while I'm reading but this month I rediscovered Banks. I recently found out she released her second album The Altar and I'm obsessed! I have been listening to it almost nonstop (I'm even listening as I type up this post) since I found out about it. There are 2 or 3 songs that I don't really care for but I love everything else!

Coming in February

Hopefully February is another good reading month. I wanted to mention a readathon I would like to participate in during this month. TBR Takedown 5.0 is happening February 6th-12th  and there are 5 challenges that go along with it. I'm really looking forward to this readathon!

Currently Reading

Gemina (Spoiler Free) | Review

2017 Reading Goals + Challenges

So I'm back and super late with this post. I told myself that I was going to get better with my blogging but with my current living situation I haven't really felt motivated to keep up it. I'm probably going to be in the same living space for at least a couple more months but it could end up being longer so I'm not going to make any promises about being consistent. In order to help myself have some content going up here I have been sharing some of my Youtube videos here. I'm here today to post about my reading goals and challenges I want to participate in this year.

Reading Goals

1. Goodreads Goal: I have set my goodreads goal to 20 books for the year. I decided to do this for two reasons. First, I want to focus in on my writing. I have been talking about how I want to be a professional writer but I haven't written anything in about a year now. I figure by cutting back on a set number of books I want to read this year I will be encouraged to write more. The second reason is I don't want to feel the pressure to read a lot of books. The last couple of years I feel like I've been focused on the amount of books I read so I'm just keeping my goal at a number that I know I will most likely surpass.

2. Read more of the books I already own: This goal is pretty self-explanatory. Last year I bought so many books. The amount of books I was buying and the pace at which I was reading was not balanced so I ended the year with a lot of unread books. In order to stay on track I would like to read at least 5 of my own books before I purchase another one.

3. Diversify my reading: I feel like this will probably be on a lot of people's list of goals this year. Not only do I want to read a range of diverse subjects but I want to read books that are marketed towards different age groups, genres, location of origin, etc (basically read more than just YA). I feel like so far this year I have been doing a good job with picking up different kinds of books and I want to keep it up.

4. Read at least 1/2 of the series I own: While I was packing up my books to put in storage I realized I owned a good number of complete series or series that would be ending this year. I would really like to get through the majority of those series if possible within this year. Since most of my books are currently in storage it's hard to do that right now but I do have some complete series with me so I will focus on those for now and hopefully later in the year I can make more progress.

5. Read all my past Owl Crate books: Another thing I realized while packing up my books is that I haven't read any of the books I received through Owl Crate. I have been subscribed to this box for a little over a year and I haven't read a single book that I received from them! Since this is the year I am trying to read more of the books I own this is definitely a goal I would like to fully complete.

Reading Challenges

Around the Year in 52 Books

I started this challenge halfway through last year and even though I didn't complete the full challenge I think I did really good. I thought this was a fun challenge and an easy way to get me reading some books that I might not normally read so I decided to try this challenge out again this year.

I found out about this challenge at the end of 2016. After doing a little research, I thought this challenge would be perfect since I wanted to focus on reading books I own and starting this year they would all be considered Backlist books. Since I have my goodreads goal set at 20 books I'm just going to say that I want to have the goal for this challenge be to read 20 backlist books. I'm sure I'll read more than that though! If you want to follow along with the books I end up reading check here.