Hey y’all! I’ve got a plan for this month for what I’m going to read, and I’m really excited about it! I feel like there are a lot of books I have available right now that I’ve been anticipating reading for a while. They cover a bit of a spectrum of genres which I like to get a bit of variety, but that also means there’s not much that ties them together besides “I want to read them.” xD
Outside factors to read these!
As I’ve mentioned probably several times now, I’ve got Addie LaRue finally on my list. I’m giving Schwab this one more chance… and then I’ll just stop bothering. 😅 But in this case, I’m doing a buddy read with Nicole at BookWyrm Knits, so even if I hate the book I’ll have the fun of collaborating with someone else during it. 🙂
Hey y’all! In contrast to Throwback Thursday, I like to use Fridays to look forward to an upcoming release that I’m excited about! Today’s is Expected Release:
Why wait on this one?
Queer romance! Especially when set in college, I love stories that are a more positive view on queer coming out, romance, and life in general as a nice break from some of the other bleaker realities that can come along with it. This sounds like it’ll be wholesome and sweet and just make me smile a lot 😊
I’ve read a few other books by Becky Albertalli, and have a few others on my TBR. I think it’s safe to say that I generally enjoy her style and approach to various topics.
And, okay, I admit I’m already a little swoony at the base plotline of the “totally straight” girl coming into her own awareness of a friend who starts to seem like maybe more. I admit the element of Lilli telling people she and Imogen used to date seems weird, but I’m assuming it’ll be easier to get behind and suspend my disbelief when I actually start reading it.
Summary
With humor and insight, #1 New York Times bestseller Becky Albertalli explores the nuances of sexuality, identity, and friendship.
Imogen Scott may be hopelessly heterosexual, but she’s got the World’s Greatest Ally title locked down.
She’s never missed a Pride Alliance meeting. She knows more about queer media discourse than her very queer little sister. She even has two queer best friends. There’s Gretchen, a fellow high school senior, who helps keep Imogen’s biases in check. And then there’s Lili—newly out and newly thriving with a cool new squad of queer college friends.
Imogen’s thrilled for Lili. Any ally would be. And now that she’s finally visiting Lili on campus, she’s bringing her ally A game. Any support Lili needs, Imogen’s all in.
Even if that means bending the truth, just a little.
Like when Lili drops a tiny queer bombshell: she’s told all her college friends that Imogen and Lili used to date. And none of them know that Imogen is a raging hetero—not even Lili’s best friend, Tessa.
Of course, the more time Imogen spends with chaotic, freckle-faced Tessa, the more she starts to wonder if her truth was ever all that straight to begin with. . .
Alright y’all, I’ve abruptly gotten fed up with myself. I have all these books that I’ve been various degrees of excited about (from not at all to extremely) that are just taking up room on my shelves and NOT BEING READ! AUGH! It’s really starting to get to me — maybe as an early spring-cleaning frenzy is taking hold of me.
So my new abrupt reading goal for the foreseeable future is to read a bunch of books that I’ve actually spent money on. Then I can decide if I want to keep them, or get them off my shelves and make room for others! Gah! I’m running out of room, and if these are duds then I need them OUT!
Hey y’all! Most of my planned reading this month is pretty unstructured, and is largely dictated by what I’m finishing from last month and books I’ve bought on a whim. Buying books itself is honestly really rare for me, as I’m usually plenty able to get what I want and need from the library, but I’ve wanted to support some of my local stores so I’ve been going and choosing one book each month from a local place. Even though I have no more shelf space…. oops.
Anyway, this month is kind of formless! I have mostly books that are in progress already below, and otherwise I have no idea what I’ll end up reading in March.
In progress!
Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni is an LGBTQ+ romance with an Armenian protagonist, and I love me a story that can teach me something about a culture I’m not very familiar with. Plus, love! Self-discovery! All about it. 🙂
Darling Girl by Liz Michalski is a peter-pan inspired story that takes it to the real world. It’s solidly okay, but I put it down a week or so ago and haven’t been really inspired to read it again so I guess it hasn’t totally sucked me in. Still, I do want to finish it and see the resolution.
Just Because
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot is a book that’s been on my shelf for a long time and I’m finally getting around to reading it. Prompted by the Kindle Reading Challenge, sure, but I’m glad to have some motivation to force me into this one. 🙂
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue by V.E. Schwab is a book I’ve avoided for two reasons: I didn’t like Schwab’s other books I attempted, and I don’t generally enjoy France as a setting. However, this is the book I got at the bookstore yesterday and I had a method: I got a fancy special edition so if I do like it I can enjoy a really nice version, and if I DON’T like it, I might have a better chance at selling it. At the very least if I end up keeping it anyway, I can have a pretty item to decorate my shelf. 😅
So it’s a pretty short list for this month, but chances are high I won’t even finish some of these because that’s just how it goes. xD
Hey y’all! I only have a few books specifically planned for this month, and the rest is going to be a lot of mood reading. Here’s what I have in mind!
Miscellaneous united!
Her Name Is Knight by Yasmin Angoe is a book I got from Kindle First Reads a while back, but didn’t end up reading yet. It’s part of the current Kindle Challenge as an option for Black History Month, so I figured now was the time! Unfortunately, it’s incredibly graphic and violent and covers some really terrible things. So far I’ve been really struggling to read it because it’s just so incredibly grim, even though it’s also interesting and compelling and intriguing. I think I’m past the worst of it though (god willing…) so I’ll continue on… slowly.
Hero in a Halfling by William Tyler Davis is my answer to the book above, and some of the others I’ve finished recently that were on the darker side. I really needed a light fantasy where no one was worried about suicide or rape or financial ruin. So far, none of those have come up. I have a feeling this is a bit similar in vibe to the wildly popular Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, though I haven’t read that one (yet). It’s lightly parodying and makes me smile a lot.
Divide Me By Zero by Lara Vapnyar is a book I had not heard of until I found it on a shelf at the bookstore today where I treated myself to picking one book out. This was the winner! It’s a reflective book with a Russian immigrant who was raised on math as the MC. It’s also by Tin House Books, which I’ve been recently introduced to through Aardvark Book Club and have enjoyed their unusual subject range in their titles. Maybe this is another winner?
Honestly, that’s it. This is all the energy I have for planning right now. I haven’t even posted in a week, which is extremely uncommon for me. This is what I could manage. Back to reading….
Hey y’all! Just sharing some excitement and good luck I’ve had with getting in holds for newer books lately at my library. Have you heard of any of these?
From Borrower to wizard, Tom Felton’s adolescence was anything but ordinary. His early rise to fame saw him catapulted into the limelight aged just twelve when he landed the iconic role of Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
Speaking with candour and his own trademark humour, Tom shares his experience of growing up on screen and as part of the wizarding world for the very first time. He tells all about his big break, what filming was really like and the lasting friendships he made during ten years as part of the franchise, as well as the highs and lows of fame and the reality of navigating adult life after filming finished.
Prepare to meet a real-life wizard.
Good people can be bad at relationships.
One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a call with a phone-in-therapist who told him to “journal his feelings,” Matthew Fray started a blog. He needed to figure out how his ex-wife went from the eighteen-year-old college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole and left him. As he pieced together the story of his marriage and its end, Matthew began to realize a hard truth: even though he was a decent guy, he was a bad husband.
As he shared raw, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous first-person stories about the lessons he’d learned from his failed marriage, a peculiar thing happened. Matthew started to gain a following. In January 2016 a post he wrote–“She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink”–went viral and was read over four million times.
Filtered through the lens of his own surprising, life-changing experience and his years counseling couples, This Is How Your Marriage Ends exposes the root problem of so many relationships that go wrong. We simply haven’t been taught any of the necessary skills, Matthew explains. In fact, it is sometimes the assumption that we are acting on good intentions that causes us to alienate our partners and foment mistrust.
Maggie is fine. She’s doing really good, actually. Sure, she’s broke, her graduate thesis on something obscure is going nowhere, and her marriage only lasted 608 days, but at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Maggie is determined to embrace her new life as a Surprisingly Young Divorcée™.
Now she has time to take up nine hobbies, eat hamburgers at 4 am, and “get back out there” sex-wise. With the support of her tough-loving academic advisor, Merris; her newly divorced friend, Amy; and her group chat (naturally), Maggie barrels through her first year of single life, intermittently dating, occasionally waking up on the floor and asking herself tough questions along the way.
Hey y’all! It’s the first TBR of 2023, and I’m coming in hot by having set a plan in December for how I wanted to start the new year and then immediately doing something different!Here’s to living wildly in 2023! 😅
My original intention was to read a lot of the books that are in my physical library, because I own a lot of books and it’s actually kind of annoying me. I want to read more of them so I can decide if I like them enough to keep them, or if they should be donated, sold on PangoBooks (currently 44 books listed!!), or otherwise swapped out of my collection.
Of course, then I had a few books gifted to me that I wanted to read. And I also had a few library holds come in that have had super long waits, so I don’t want to miss my chance. And then I have an ARC or two to finish in January. So that plan to read only from my shelves is out the window for the month! But that’s okay. I’ll use those as my filler books when I’m in between titles or mood-reader swerving into something different.
So with all of that in mind, here’s my first TBR for the year and what I’m hoping to read in January.
If you insist…
Each of these books has something that is kind of making me have to read it this month. None of that is bad, but it does force them onto my list!
Before The Coffee Gets Cold is the choice for my book club in January. I’m a little on the fence about that because it’s a book that I’ve looked at many times and ended up deciding that it would probably be too intellectual for what I really want. However, now that it’s a book club pick, I guess I’m giving it a shot! I really hope that my impression previously was wrong, and I end up falling in love with it.
Hey y’all! It’s November, and that means 2022 is almost over. Luckily I think I’m in a pretty good spot with my various reading challenges I’m working on this year. The main one I’m focusing on is nonfiction, which is great because I still have a pile of them that I’m ready to read an excited about! There are a few other miscellaneous titles on my list too, as always. And also as always, I’m sure I will add a bunch, and end up not reading a bunch of the planned ones. xD
Since this is also already a week into the month, you can bet that I’ve finished several books already so I’ll just, uh, tactfully ignore those I guess? 😅
MORE BOOK CLUBS!!
Yes, two of these were planned for last month. But hey, I went away for a while and didn’t get around to reading much. I bet they’ll still be good a month later. 🙂
Hey y’all! I’ve got my TBR rip raring and ready to go for October, and it actually has no planned spookiness or anything “Halloween” themed. I guess there might be some that could fit it, but that wasn’t the intention, you know? Anyway. Here’s my non-spooky TBR with my attempts at making them spooky-fied. xD
Book club choices
Oh, you know, actually… okay, maybe there’s some spookishery going on here. But I swear, it was unplanned spookishery! *ahem* moving on…
Sign Here I grabbed from Book of the Month because, despite how leery I was of all the hype I’d seen around it, it does actually sound like a book I’d like. It’s about a demon trying to get a whole family to trade their souls to him, so uh… I guess demons and Hell are pretty Halloweeny.
The Night Ship came from Aardvark Book Club, which just launched! This one is a dual-timeline story about two kids who end up on an island off Western Australia and they’re looking at old shipwrecks and monsters and maybe ghosts which actually kind of sounds like it fits October reading too.
Hey y’all! This month’s TBR is very very short, because that’s just where I’m at. It’s totally possible that I’ll read more than these, but I’m not looking ahead too much. Anyway, here are the 4 books I’m planning on reading/finishing.
September’s Books
The North Wind by Alexandria Warwick – I splurged on a gorgeous physical copy and have been slowly making my way through
Take It From Me by Jamie Beck – an ARC I’m really excited about ^.^
City of Bones by Clarissa Clare – a re-read I’m looking forward to as I just picked up a new set of the series at a library book sale. I’m not sure I’ll ever get my old set back, so I’m delighted to have a new one of this series I really enjoyed.
So that’s it for this month, very gentle. I’m feeling like some slower paced books, and/or ones I’m familiar with and can sink into a bit.
My Book Joy 