Happy Friday, all! I’m moving away from the 5 for Friday format because I honestly have trouble thinking up five distinct things to write about! So this is my new Friday post: the weekly wrap up of all things book- and life-related.
Books
I’m falling behind on my reading. Both my TBR pile and my collection of ARCs are silently judging me — I need to come up with some way of organising them. How do you all keep up with advance copies? Obviously steering clear of Netgalley is the best way of doing that, but…no. I think my biggest problem is adjusting to reading on a Kindle again, something I haven’t done in a long time.
As far as recent reads go, I finished 1666: Plague, War, and Hellfire and enjoyed it. I liked it, but felt it was a bit scattered — it’s a short book so I guess this doesn’t matter too much. I wish it went into its events a little further, but her final chapters on The Great Fire were fantastic. It’s just a shame that it came at the end! I’m lending it to my father to see what he thinks, as he’s a pro with nonfiction history books.
I’m still plugging away on Red Sister, which is great but quite long. I’m at about 73% through as of this morning. It’s a funny one — it feels more like a series of long vignettes rather than a linear story, which has its upsides and downsides. Sometimes I’m completely drawn in and the pages fly by and other times I’m just trudging along. I’m sad that I couldn’t review it before the publication date, but better late than never! I’m aiming to finish by this weekend so I can move along to more advance copies.
I’m trying to decide what I’ll pick up next from my physical TBR pile. I’m thinking The Girl of Ink and Stars will be a quick and light read and then I’ll move on to Caraval or A Court of Thorns and Roses. I’d like to be caught up before A Court of Mist and Fury comes out in May(is that right?), but this of course depends on whether or not I like the first one. Everyone and their mother seems to love this series.
I need to win this family TBR race, and my sister is kicking my butt!
Blog
This blog has been running for over 3 months! How crazy is that? I had the idea to start it up when a friend of mine told me she trusts my book recommendations (to be fair, I’m pretty sure I started her Outlander obsession). Ever since then, I’ve been working hard on producing reviews and such for you guys and am now posting almost every single day. Hooray! I’m so pleased and thank you all so much for your support, I’m really loving this.
Since I now have a good idea of where I’d like this to go, I’m currently working on revamping the design of this blog. After a lot of frustration and the desire to throw my laptop out the window, I decided to teach myself HTML so I can make it look exactly how I want. That may be an extreme solution to a fairly simple problem, but whatever. Does anyone have any tips for improving the look of a WordPress blog?
Life
Life is good! I’m nearly six months into my new job and I’m really thrilled by how well things are going. Oxford is a lovely place to live and now that it’s springtime it is getting really gorgeous (although my allergies are not happy). I’ve started walking to and from work again, something I stopped doing in the cold weather, and I have to say it’s a pretty pleasant journey.
I’ve been trying to up my game on Instagram, and my cat models really aren’t helping. Never work with cats. Here’s some behind the scenes shots:
Happy weekend! What are you reading? Got anything good planned? Give me a shout!
I Should Read That 
A Court of Mist and Fury is book 2. A Court of Wings and Ruin is the new one out in May. I’ll be picking up ACOMAF soonish, so we should buddy read! 😉 …Though it’s probably wise to see how you feel after the first one before committing to series……. But I would also not deter you from starting Caraval, because I’m pretty darn excited about starting it at some point myself!
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I’ve fallen for the ‘THIS SERIES LOOKS AWESOME’ move and bought the first two or three expecting to love them and putting them aside. I’ll reserve judgement! Absolutely yes to reading buddies regardless!
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That’s why I tend to check series out at the library first because I don’t trust the hype 75% of the time… Come message me any time if/when you start ACOTAR and you need to !!! or ??? at someone. 😉
Also, I tend to cheat when it comes to falling behind on ARCs. I’ll relegate things I know I probably won’t be as psyched to read to Sneak Peek Weekends and only review based on the first chapter or so. I’ve had to be really choosy about books I request published in certain months though because they tend to stack up real quick! :O I’ve considered taking a break from NetGalley for at least a little while several times now because I find I don’t get to read as much of things I absolutely love as often…
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I had assumed I wouldn’t get chosen for any books so I requested a TON of them. Now I have a big backlog and am obsessed with checking Netgalley every day. Oops.
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Me too! I’ll have a running list of 25 ARCs, put a dent in it, only to be approved for 5 more the next day… 😂
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The BEST never ending cycle.
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