February 2021 monthly wrap-up

Alright, friends: I’m finally getting back on my game with blogging and Bookstagram. I posted on more than half of the days in February, which is about the ratio I’m trying to go for. February was a great reading month for me, in both quantity and quality. To prevent making this post overly long, let’s dive right in:

First Line Fridays – 2/19

Hello, friends! It’s ya girl K-Specks, back at it again with a round of First Line Friday on this delightfully freezing day (currently feels like 3 degrees Fahrenheit near me, which actually isn’t bad, but it’s supposed to get colder as the day goes on). First Line Fridays is hosted by Wandering Words and encourages us to judge books not by their covers, but by their first lines! The rules are simple:

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

Without further ado, here’s today’s first line:

It was late afternoon, on the very last Wednesday of August, when I realized Disney had been lying to me for quite some time about Happily Ever Afters.

Because, you see, I was four days into mine, and my prince was nowhere to be found.

Let’s Talk Bookish 2/12 – beauty is in the eye of the book-holder

Hello, lovelies! Very excited to be trying out this new weekly meme, Let’s Talk Bookish, hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books & Dani @ Literary Lion, where bloggers get to talk about all sorts of bookish topics and (hopefully) open up some interesting dialogue! This week’s prompt includes a couple questions centered around the larger topic: What makes a book beautiful? I’m going to address each of the sub-questions individually, so let’s get started!

First Line Fridays – 2/5

This week has been rough, and my bad shoulder has me in a fair amount of pain right now, so thank god for these weekly memes that make it easier to write posts! This is actually my first time participating in this one, even though it’s one that I love seeing other people post. First Line Fridays is hosted by Wandering Words and encourages us to judge books not by their covers, but by their first lines! The rules are simple:

• Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
• Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
• Finally… reveal the book!

Now, the book closest to me right now is actually my Constitutional Law textbook, and I’m pretty sure nobody cares about the first sentence of that one. (But, if you’re curious: “It is traditional to begin the examination of American constitutional law with opinions from the Supreme Court presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall early in the nineteenth century.” Yikes.) So we are going to go with the next-closest title instead. Here’s the first line:

At seven, Regan Lewis was perfectly normal according to every measurement she knew, which meant she was normal in every way that counted.

Ready to find out what this one is?

January 2021 monthly wrap-up

I’ll be the first to admit, this year did not start as nicely as I would have liked. I’m extremely behind on putting up my reviews (though they are all written in my planner), I didn’t finish the book that I most wanted to read this month (it was due back at the library and I was only halfway done), and I only finished seven books (usually I’m closer to 9 or 10?). Still, I did have a couple of really good reads this month, and I’m trying to get back into the habit of regular blogging. With that said, here’s a roundup of what I read this month, and maybe some bits and pieces of other stuff?

Christmas gifts for bookworms (that aren’t books!) – Part 1

Let’s face it: sometimes, it’s hard to know what to get for the book-lover in your life. The seemingly-obvious answer–“Just buy them books!”–is often less-than-helpful. If you don’t know their taste that well, how can you be sure that you’re getting them something they’ll actually like? If you don’t read much yourself (and just want to make your bookdragon buddy feel appreciated), how do you start selecting titles? What if they’ve already read it? Or–perhaps worse?–what if they already own it but haven’t read it yet?

Fear not! There are so many other options for gifts that will warm the cockles of your bibliophile pal’s heart, acknowledging their fanatical obsession love of reading without running the risk of getting them something they won’t appreciate. In fact, I’ve come up with so many that I’ve split them across two posts. Here are a few:

Title reveal: Cursebreakers #3!

Hey there, fans of A Curse So Dark and Lonely! (And anyone else who happens to be reading this post…) Just a quick, fun little update for y’all. As of this morning, the captains of the street team for Brigid Kemmerer’s Cursebreakers series have granted us the title of the third book, which will be coming in January. And the name is… *drumroll*

January 2020 Wrap-Up

This just in: January was a crazy month for me. A lot happened that kept me away from the blog (namely, a heart surgery), but I managed to finish reading 11 books (across a staggering variety of genres, though only including two ARCs…yikes) and wrote a couple more posts besides.

Now I’m getting back into my groove, hopefully kicking off a killer February and getting going with the rest of what is sure to be a great year! Here is a quick rundown on what I read/watched/wrote/thought about this past month:

December 2019 Wrap-Up

Yeah, yeah, we’re a solid 6 days into 2020 already, but I’ve had other posts for y’all. Now seemed as good a time as any to give a quick rundown on everything I read, posted, watched, and/or did last month.

December was a good month, reading-wise–between print and audio, I finished 12 books (even if two were fairly short). 7 of those were ARCs, which is even better because I’m actually relatively on track with those for once (and I nailed the 50/50 ARC/owned book split) and was able to boost my NetGalley percentage a little bit. So…yay for that! Without further ado, here’s my list:

Spilling the Tea: in defense of the Goodreads Challenge

These days, I’ve been seeing a lot of people talking about the Goodreads challenge and why it’s bad. The most common arguments are about the idea of imposing stress and competition onto reading, which is supposed to be a fun activity, and how trying to get your numbers up just makes the task into a chore. There is, of course, something to be said for this; the process of turning “games” into work has been well-documented. (For a cool take on this, check out this piece from The Atlantic about the problems with the Untitled Goose Game!) Far be it from me to condemn those who seek to remove the numerical insanity from their reading habits; as I like to say, read what and how you want to, because life is too short to do otherwise.

But, with that in mind, there is no need to vilify those (myself included) who do enjoy counting the books they read. We have perfectly valid reasons to want to keep track of those numbers. Here are a few of mine: