Category Archives: Areas of my mind

#May2021CalendarGirls

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Hosted by Flavia the Bibliophile, Dani @ Mousai Books, and Darque Reader Reads. Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event created by Melanie at MNBernard Books, and Flavia at Flavia the Bibliophile.  It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl. Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and I will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

The theme for May is It’s Gonna Be May: Favorite 90s novel/throwback novel.

My pick for this month is:

While there are others that I could have picked, this is the first book that came to my mind.

#FridayUpdate98

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If you are new to my blog, I have decided that I am no longer going to do Friday 56. Friday Update is a feature in which I provide an update on what I read during the week, sometimes what I’m currently reading and what book/books I plan on starting over the weekend.

Today’s Friday Update is for two weeks.

For the week of 3/5/2021-3/11/2021 I read:
What Beauty There Is by Corey Anderson– 236 pages which brought me to the end of the book
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes– 156 pages

Stats:

For the week of 3/12/2021-3/18/2021 I read:
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes– 212 pages which brought me to the end of the book
Persephone’s Orchard by Molly Ringle- 67 pages

Stats:

Weekend plans: finish reading Persephone’s Orchard

#March2021BookReview2

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Title: A Thousand Ships
Author: Natalie Haynes
Age Group/sub-genre/genre: Adult historical fiction
Source: Library
# of pages: 368

Review: I adored A Thousand Ships, which tells the story of the women from both sides of The Trojan War from the points of view of the women, this is their untold story.  I loved reading all the stories but my favorite was by far the story of Penelope.  The way that Penelope’s story was written was unique as it was letters addressed to Odysseus, her husband.  The stories are heartbreaking but beautifully written.  A Thousand Ships is a great take on The Trojan War.  If you want to read a different story about the war, I highly recommend this book.

#MyFavoriteSubgenres

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My past few discussion posts have been about genres and categories. You can read them here and here (Please comment on them too if you haven’t done so already). Today I am going to discuss my favorite sub-genres. I tend to read the same sub-genres across Middle-grade, Teen, YA, and Adult. Remember, Middle-grade, Teen, YA, and Adult are categories/age groups and not genres. Fiction and non-fiction are genres.

My favorite fiction sub-genres across all age groups are:
Contemporary– I love reading books set in the present day and how they can relate to current events. And yes, contemporary books, especially in the Teen/AY categories often have romance in them, but romance is more of a sub-plot and not the main plot.
Historical– I love reading about history. My favorite historical-fiction author is Fiona Davis.
Fantasy (Fantasy has its sub-genres that I’m not going to get into)- I’m very picky about the fantasy that I read.
Magical Realism– I love reading books where there are magical elements in the real world. A great example of a magical realism book is A Million Junes by Emily Henry or Lobizona by Romina Garber.
Literary Fiction

Non-fiction sub-genres:
Race/Social Justice
Autobiographies
Narrative
Journalistic

Poetry is a separate genre and can either be fiction or non-fiction. Poetry isn’t something that I read often, but I did pre-order a book of poetry this year!

*Please discuss your favorite sub-genres in the comments below.

#March2021GoalsandChallengesUpdate

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I’ve done these posts in the past to keep me accountable for my goals. However, seeing as how I decided to do things differently this year with my goals and challenges, I still thought it would be great to do these monthly updates.

You can read what my goals are and the challenges that I’m participating in here.

Reading goals:
Goodreads/Storygraph: Read one book. I’ve already accomplished this goal. I have no regrets about setting my goal of reading one book and not changing it once I reached it.  I feel much freer in my reading life.  I am up to 16 books on the year and I’m very happy with that number.
Read more backlist books: I am doing okay with this goal.
Read more books written by Black authors (this includes books about social justice and Antiracism): I’m doing a decent job with this goal.  

Challenges:
Modern Mrs. Darcy– I’ve done quite a few things from this challenge.  I’m having a lot of fun with this challenge.
Library Love– Dewey Decimal: Read 12 books. For this challenge, I have read 11 out of 12 books.

Blogging Goals:
Post weekly reading updates: I’m doing okay with this, there have been a couple of times I didn’t post, especially if I didn’t read a lot a certain week.
Post reviews weekly: I have to say, I’m doing pretty well with this goal.  Posting these has become dependent on when I finish a book, which I always review books as soon a possible after I finish it.
Try to post more discussion posts: I feel like I’m doing okay with this goal, I just need to find the time to draft and schedule all my discussions. I have now added to the list of discussion post ideas that I created at the beginning of the year.  By the time the year is over, I will have had a discussion post for every week.


#March2021BookReview1

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Today I bring you an eARC review of What Beauty There Is by Corey Anderson.

This book was out of my comfort zone.  I normally don’t read books like What Beauty There Is because I don’t usually read mystery/thriller.  I’m so glad that I read this book.  What Beauty There Is kept me on the edge of my seat wanting to know what happens next.  There are a lot of things that happen in this book, but they’re easy to keep track of.  The things and events that occur are all interconnected.  There are quite a few characters in this book, and the new characters were introduced perfectly.  While there are questions that were unanswered in this book, I’m very excited to read the sequel to see what happens next.

#FridayUpdate97

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If you are new to my blog, I have decided that I am no longer going to do Friday 56. Friday Update is a feature in which I provide an update on what I read during the week, sometimes what I’m currently reading and what book/books I plan on starting over the weekend.

Today’s Friday Update is for two weeks.

For the week of 2/19/2021-2/25/2021 I read:
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi- 48 pages

Stats:

For the week of 2/26/2021-3/4/2021 I read:
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi- 272 pages which brought me to the end of the book
What Beauty There Is by Corey Anderson- 132 pages

Stats:

Weekend plans:
Finish reading What Beauty There Is and hopefully start and finish A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

#BookCategories

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If you remember my discussion from last week, I discussed how YA is not a genre, it’s a category/age group. In this short post, I’m going to further that discussion and go a little deeper, and even break down what ages I feel belong to certain age groups.

Genre: “a category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.”

Category: category is defined as “a class or division of people or things regarded as having particular shared characteristics.”

Genres= Fiction and Non-fiction and the sub-genres of each. (I have a separate post coming soon about the subgenres).

Category= Age groups which include:
Baby= 0-3
Children= 4-7
Middle-grade/Tween= 8-12
Teen= 13-17
YA/NA= 18- 25
Adult= 18+
When someone says children’s fiction, they mean that children’s is the category/age group and fiction is the genre, this goes for every other age group too.  YA Fantasy (I’m using this as an example because I feel like YA Fantasy is one of the most popular subjects), YA is the age group and Fantasy is the subgenre of fiction.

These are my opinions on what ages correlate to the different age groups. It’s important to remember that books can be read by anyone even though books are marketed towards specific age groups.

Please discuss your thoughts in the comments, and if you haven’t commented on my post from last week, please do so, I would love to hear your thoughts.

*Disclaimer: I learned some of this working towards my Bachelor’s in Information Library Science degree.

#February2021ReadingWrapUp

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Today I bring you my February reading wrap up.

As always books are listed in the order that I read them and are linked to my StoryGraph reviews.  Screenshots are also from StoryGraph.

For the month of February, I read four books.
February Reads:
Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man by Emmanuel Acho- https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/ac39fa33-2745-42c1-b061-c64930a014e6
Across The Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire- https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/cf365eaf-23c0-4fba-8b67-ea149aee00d0
Everything That Burns by Gita Trelease-https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a0e709f7-3086-4866-8713-c135d37ccb3e
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi-https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/cc8b3dc4-4fb2-43f6-a8ea-747fb87d7a5c

Stats:
# of days that I read: 10

Book haul:
What Beauty There Is by Cory Anderson
Everything That Burns by Gita Trelease
How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America 1619-2019 by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

#March2021CalendarGirls

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Hosted by Flavia the Bibliophile, Dani @ Mousai Books, and Darque Reader Reads. Calendar Girls is a monthly blog event created by Melanie at MNBernard Books, and Flavia at Flavia the Bibliophile.  It is designed to ignite bookish discussions among readers, and was inspired by the 1961 Neil Sedaka song, Calendar Girl. Just like the song, each month has a different theme. Each blogger picks their favorite book from the theme, and on the first Monday of the month reveals their pick in a Calendar Girls post. Make sure to post back to the hostess’s post, and I will make a master list for the month. The master lists allow everyone to see the other Calendar Girls’ picks and to pop on over to their blogs. Thus, we all get to chat about books and even make some new friends!

The theme for March is Read Across America Day: Favorite Children’s Book.

My pick for this month is:

This was somewhat tough to pick because I have so many books that I have loved from my childhood.