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.

WWW Wednesday – 2/17

Hello, lovelies! Time for another rousing rendition of WWW Wednesday (and yes, I’m squeezing this one in right at the last second, but hey–it’s still Wednesday, so it counts, right?). WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Taking On a World of Words. Every Wednesday, bloggers present our answers to the 3 W’s:

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you’ll read next?

I know you’re all just dying to know what I’m reading now, so let’s go:

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?

Hiatus and me: self-imposed pressure in the blogosphere

As some of you may have noticed, I ended up taking a hiatus (inadvertently, might I add) for most of February and March this year. This was due to a large number of factors, including stress about law school (by which I mean I was spending every free moment refreshing my application status checkers and checking r/lawschooladmissions to see which schools were sending waves of decisions), added responsibilities from my new position as a moderator in the TBR and Beyond Facebook group (big shoutout to everyone there–y’all are wonderful and I love it so much), general coronavirus anxiety (yeah, we’re all in that headspace now), and a family vacation to California (which was super fun until the coronavirus things started majorly blowing up during our last 2-ish days there, and then was a tad more stressful).

But there was one other thing that I think was keeping me from making blog posts, and it wasn’t just being generally busy, because let’s face it–even when I was really stressed and had a lot going on, I still had time to watch TV with my family, idly scroll through social media, and keep reading books. No, the real problem was that I was starting to dread making posts because of the time commitment involved.

Top Ten Tuesday 2/4 – predicted perfection

It’s ya girl, back at it with another Top Ten Tuesday! TTT is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, and this week’s prompt is “Books On My TBR I Predict Will Be 5-Star Reads.” Honestly, I could have made a list of 20 (or more) titles for this list, because my TBR is crazy-long and I have quite a few books that I’m certain I would love, if I just had the time to enjoy them! To that end, this list is just a sample, but hopefully the point still comes across.

Side note: I do realize most of these are fantasy titles. Those just happened to be the ones that first came to mind as I was working on this.

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:

New Year, New Goals – my 2020 reading plans

It’s hard to believe that 2019 has come and gone. We are officially in a new decade (does this count as the Roaring 20’s all over again?), and like so many others, I’ve got a couple goals for myself in the coming year. Currently, those goals are mostly book- and blog-related, but that’s largely because any fitness goals will be hard to figure out reasonable limits for until my heart surgery is done–and there are now under two weeks until that day, which is pretty exciting.

All that said, here are my plans and goals for the upcoming year: