Wow, so this month really sucked reading wise. I managed to finish a whopping two books!!
Anyway, the books I read are:
1. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
2. Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
Yeah, it's been a crappy month... I'm literally torn between like five different books at the moment. It's super annoying. Hopefully August will be better!
Don't forget to join me August 3-10 for the Last Blast Readathon!
Until next time,
xox
Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Review #9- Virgin by Radhika Sanghani
*Goodreads Page*
*NetGalley Page* I received and read a proof copy of this book from NetGalley.
This book comes out August 5, 2014
Goodreads synopsis- Okay, I admit it…I didn’t do it.
Yet.
This is normal, right? I mean, just because everyone I know has talked like they’ve already done it doesn’t mean that they’re telling the truth…right?
It’s not like I’m asking for that much. I don’t need the perfect guy. I don’t need candlelight or roses. Honestly, I don’t even need a real bed.
The guys I know complain that girls are always looking for Mr. Right—do I have to wear a sign that says I’m only looking for Mr. Right Now?
Sooooo…anyone out there want sex? Anyone? Hello? Just for fun?
I am not going to die a virgin. One way or another I am going to make this happen.
Hey, what have I got to lose? Besides the obvious.
*NetGalley Page* I received and read a proof copy of this book from NetGalley.
This book comes out August 5, 2014
Goodreads synopsis- Okay, I admit it…I didn’t do it.
Yet.
This is normal, right? I mean, just because everyone I know has talked like they’ve already done it doesn’t mean that they’re telling the truth…right?
It’s not like I’m asking for that much. I don’t need the perfect guy. I don’t need candlelight or roses. Honestly, I don’t even need a real bed.
The guys I know complain that girls are always looking for Mr. Right—do I have to wear a sign that says I’m only looking for Mr. Right Now?
Sooooo…anyone out there want sex? Anyone? Hello? Just for fun?
I am not going to die a virgin. One way or another I am going to make this happen.
Hey, what have I got to lose? Besides the obvious.
I picked this book up after being in a reading slump, hoping to find a nice light read to bring me back into the mood to read, and let me tell you this book worked like a charm! It was so easy to get through, I read it in one sitting. I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud while reading this book! It was such a witty and relatable novel about a subject that many are unwilling to talk about. The way in which Ms. Sanghani wrote this book would make even the most squeamish of readers completely comfortable reading this book.
I think one of my favorite parts about this book was how realistic the situations were. There was no real 'insta-love', the protagonist didn't necessarily find the love of her life and live happily ever after in the end at only 21 years old, and the reader is shown that life isn't all sugar and biscuits, you can get an STD after giving a blow-job one time.
Another thing I loved about this book is that unlike basically every book/movie/TV show ever, this book doesn't make losing your virginity seem like an exciting and perfect experience. It shows it how it is- an awkward, frightening, messy and embarrassing experience, which I think is super unique and another really relatable aspect that I think many readers will be able to connect to.
Also, as a young woman, also in college, who often struggles with the issue of how to not look like an ogre and not come off as a completely dull humanoid plant, I found this book incredibly relatable, and at risk of not getting too personal and TMI, many of the thoughts that Ellie had, I've had as well, and it was such a relief to find a metaphorical book-version of my mind (well, an almost version- I don't share all of Ellie's ideas).
I also think that this book will be an important one in women's literature, empowering young women to think of themselves and their relationships in a new light, especially for women like myself who never necessarily realised that we should view the world in this light. I mean, I'm not super clear on feminism, but I feel like this book is exactly what feminists are looking for- actually, I think this book is exactly what any young woman trying to figure herself out is look for.
So, I give this book my stamp of approval, and recommend it to any and all, women and men alike (Come on guys, it wouldn't hurt to see just what us girls go through to impress you).
Until next time,
xox
Monday, July 21, 2014
Last Blast Readathon Details!
Alright guys, I promised you some details, and here they are!
1- As you may or may not know, I'm hosting a readathon from midnight August 3- midnight August 10.
2- I've got some super fun photo challenges for all of us to do! I think I'm going to have you post them to either Instagram or Twitter under #lilysreadsreadathon
3- I've also decided to take a page out of the Booktubeathon readathon book and have come up with a few reading challenges that I'll post down below!
4- That's really all there is! If you plan on participating, do me a favor and take a picture of you planned stack of reads and tag me on Twitter and/or Instagram @lilysreads
Okay, so here are the reading challenges! I like numbers that end in 0 and 5, so I decided to pick 5 categories, giving you a total of five books to try to complete during this week, which should be totally doable!
1. Read a classic
2. Read a book by an author you've never read before
3. Read a nonfiction book! (A memoir, biography, science textbook, etc.!)
4. Read a book that has fewer than 250 pages
5. Read a book outside your preferred genre
Alrighty! That's all there is! I hope to see at least a few of you participating!
Until next time,
xox
1- As you may or may not know, I'm hosting a readathon from midnight August 3- midnight August 10.
2- I've got some super fun photo challenges for all of us to do! I think I'm going to have you post them to either Instagram or Twitter under #lilysreadsreadathon
3- I've also decided to take a page out of the Booktubeathon readathon book and have come up with a few reading challenges that I'll post down below!
4- That's really all there is! If you plan on participating, do me a favor and take a picture of you planned stack of reads and tag me on Twitter and/or Instagram @lilysreads
Okay, so here are the reading challenges! I like numbers that end in 0 and 5, so I decided to pick 5 categories, giving you a total of five books to try to complete during this week, which should be totally doable!
1. Read a classic
2. Read a book by an author you've never read before
3. Read a nonfiction book! (A memoir, biography, science textbook, etc.!)
4. Read a book that has fewer than 250 pages
5. Read a book outside your preferred genre
Alrighty! That's all there is! I hope to see at least a few of you participating!
Until next time,
xox
Thursday, July 10, 2014
A Late Night Rant on the Banning of Books
*Let me apologize ahead of time for any incoherency and/or rambling.*
I was just doing my nightly browse of Facebook, when I stumbled upon a Book Riot article discussing banned books in schools, and honestly, it's put me in a rage.
This issue has come up many times before, and it will come up many times again. That still doesn't make it okay. Anymore, the main reason many books are banned from school reading lists is because of a disgruntled parent or an ignorant school official. Most of the books mentioned in the article I unfortunately haven't read myself, but I did read John Green's Paper Towns, and the reasoning behind why this book was taken off the reading list is completely ridiculous- sexual content and language? Okay, lady, if you're afraid of a JOHN GREEN book ruining your child's innocence, you had best just lock her in a cement box for the rest of her life. Seriously. By time kids get into junior high these days, they know more about sex and swearing than I did in my senior year of high school.
I don't even know. The mere idea of preventing any child from reading any book for whatever reason just makes me so angry! I mean, yes, there are some books that some kids shouldn't read until later points in their lives, but there are also many kids who are mature enough to handle and understand the subject matter.
I think my main issue with this is that I never had any rules as to what I was allowed and not allowed to read. If it was a book, and it struck my fancy, I read it, no matter what age level it was geared toward. And the great thing about that is I learned SO MUCH! Books are more than just stories. They help you learn things about life that you might not have otherwise learned, or might have learned far too late in life. Books also help mold you into the person you are. A person isn't just a culmination of all their life experiences- a person is also the culmination of all the life experiences of all the characters of all the books they've ever read.
I can't even explain to you all the books that have helped make me who I am, helped me understand difficult things about myself, been the friend I needed when I had no one else or didn't feel like I could go to anyone else.
Jill Guccini, the author of the Book Riot article says it best, I think : "There are 10 kids whose lives could be saved by that book. That book might annoy or offend one parent. But it could literally SAVE. THE. LIFE. of a child."
Seriously, there are a number of books that have saved my life, and depriving any child of a book just because one person finds it offensive is the worst crime I can think of.
Alright, end of rant, for the most part. There is definitely more I can say, but I'll leave it at this.
Again, I apologize for the crazyness of this post...
Until next time,
xox
I was just doing my nightly browse of Facebook, when I stumbled upon a Book Riot article discussing banned books in schools, and honestly, it's put me in a rage.
This issue has come up many times before, and it will come up many times again. That still doesn't make it okay. Anymore, the main reason many books are banned from school reading lists is because of a disgruntled parent or an ignorant school official. Most of the books mentioned in the article I unfortunately haven't read myself, but I did read John Green's Paper Towns, and the reasoning behind why this book was taken off the reading list is completely ridiculous- sexual content and language? Okay, lady, if you're afraid of a JOHN GREEN book ruining your child's innocence, you had best just lock her in a cement box for the rest of her life. Seriously. By time kids get into junior high these days, they know more about sex and swearing than I did in my senior year of high school.
I don't even know. The mere idea of preventing any child from reading any book for whatever reason just makes me so angry! I mean, yes, there are some books that some kids shouldn't read until later points in their lives, but there are also many kids who are mature enough to handle and understand the subject matter.
I think my main issue with this is that I never had any rules as to what I was allowed and not allowed to read. If it was a book, and it struck my fancy, I read it, no matter what age level it was geared toward. And the great thing about that is I learned SO MUCH! Books are more than just stories. They help you learn things about life that you might not have otherwise learned, or might have learned far too late in life. Books also help mold you into the person you are. A person isn't just a culmination of all their life experiences- a person is also the culmination of all the life experiences of all the characters of all the books they've ever read.
I can't even explain to you all the books that have helped make me who I am, helped me understand difficult things about myself, been the friend I needed when I had no one else or didn't feel like I could go to anyone else.
Jill Guccini, the author of the Book Riot article says it best, I think : "There are 10 kids whose lives could be saved by that book. That book might annoy or offend one parent. But it could literally SAVE. THE. LIFE. of a child."
Seriously, there are a number of books that have saved my life, and depriving any child of a book just because one person finds it offensive is the worst crime I can think of.
Alright, end of rant, for the most part. There is definitely more I can say, but I'll leave it at this.
Again, I apologize for the crazyness of this post...
Until next time,
xox
Last Blast Readathon!
Hello everyone! Even though I really didn't get much of a response about the possibility of a readathon, I've decided to host one anyway! Worse case scenario, I'll end up participating by myself. :)
I've decided that it'll be from midnight August 3 to midnight August 10- midnight from whatever time zone you live in. This readathon will give you a week of recovery after the BookTubeAThon, and a week recovery before Boutofbooks.
I'll give more details in the coming week. I do have a few daily challenges lined up, and I really hope you all find them fun!
Until next time,
xox
I've decided that it'll be from midnight August 3 to midnight August 10- midnight from whatever time zone you live in. This readathon will give you a week of recovery after the BookTubeAThon, and a week recovery before Boutofbooks.
I'll give more details in the coming week. I do have a few daily challenges lined up, and I really hope you all find them fun!
Until next time,
xox
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Possible Read-a-thon?
Hey guys! So, it's getting pretty close to the time when we (or I, at any rate) start heading back to college. Now, I don't know about any of you, but I personally have a TBR pile a mile high. It would be so amazing to knock that pile down before I head back to school.
So, what I'm proposing is a week long read-a-thon. I know Boutofbooks is the week of August 18th, but that's my first week back on campus and also my band camp, so I'm not too sure how well my participation will be. I was really hoping to get a bunch of people together and try to do a read-a-thon a couple of weeks prior, either the week of July 27, or the week of August 3.
Let me know what you think in the comments below or on twitter if you'd be interested!
Until next time,
xox
So, what I'm proposing is a week long read-a-thon. I know Boutofbooks is the week of August 18th, but that's my first week back on campus and also my band camp, so I'm not too sure how well my participation will be. I was really hoping to get a bunch of people together and try to do a read-a-thon a couple of weeks prior, either the week of July 27, or the week of August 3.
Let me know what you think in the comments below or on twitter if you'd be interested!
Until next time,
xox
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
June Wrap-Up
Hello ladies and gentlemen! So, this month was terrible, reading-wise, but according to Goodreads, I managed to read 4 books, which is about 3 more than I thought I finished. So I can't complain too much, right? Anyway, here's what I read!
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini- I feaking loved this book! If you haven't read it yet, get on it!
Charm and Stange by Stephanie Kuehn- This book was an amazing rollercoaster of everything. I literally had no idea what was going on until the last few pages, but like, in a good way! Again, read it!
Virgin by Radhika Sanghani- I read an ARC version of this book that I recieved from NetGalley. I believe it comes out sometime in early August. I'll have a review up on it in a few weeks, so look out for that! I will say that I really enjoyed this book, though!
Black City by Elizabeth Richards- Surprisingly, I really liked this book. It's by far not the best book I've ever read, but it was good nonetheless.
Total pages read this month: 1346
Not too bad, I suppose. Here's hopoing July will be a better reading month!
Until next time,
xox
It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini- I feaking loved this book! If you haven't read it yet, get on it!
Charm and Stange by Stephanie Kuehn- This book was an amazing rollercoaster of everything. I literally had no idea what was going on until the last few pages, but like, in a good way! Again, read it!
Virgin by Radhika Sanghani- I read an ARC version of this book that I recieved from NetGalley. I believe it comes out sometime in early August. I'll have a review up on it in a few weeks, so look out for that! I will say that I really enjoyed this book, though!
Black City by Elizabeth Richards- Surprisingly, I really liked this book. It's by far not the best book I've ever read, but it was good nonetheless.
Total pages read this month: 1346
Not too bad, I suppose. Here's hopoing July will be a better reading month!
Until next time,
xox
5 of My Not-So-Shameful Unread Books
If you get on YouTube and look at any BookTuber's channel, you might end up finding a video of their "most shameful unread books". This blog post is inspired by those videos, except, unlike these numerous people, I'm not really all that ashamed to have not read any of these books on this list.
Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with having books that you're ashamed you've never read. I have several of those. But the books below are books that basically everyone on earth has read, but I just have no desire to read, and can't be bothered to pretend I want to read because let's face it, I have about a billion other books I want to read more. I can't sit around and read a pile of books just because everyone else is reading them.
Besides, who knows, maybe one day I will read these books. As of right now though, none of them are at the top of my TBR.
1. The Hunger Games- I'm not sure why, but I never really felt the desire to read these books, even when I saw my friends who don't really read much reading them. The story just never appealed to me.
2. The Fault in Our Stars- Okay, don't hate on me for not reading this one! Also, please don't hate on me for what I'm about to say (er, write)- I'm not the hugest fan of John Green in general (I do really like him as a human though, and would love to meet him!). I've read a couple of his books (Look for Alaska and Paper Towns), but neither of them are on the top of my "Best books I've ever read" list, and so I've kind of put off reading any of his other stuff. This is, however, one the books that I feel like I might pick up one day. Not not anytime soon.
3. The Divergent Trilogy- Okay, I do actually own the first one on my Kindle, and I started to read it, but I don't know. I just wasn't that into the book. I'm just not the hugest fan of dystopians or anything like them.
4. The Shatter Me Trilogy- Again, I don't know why, but these books just don't call me in any immediate way. (Although, can I say that Tahereh Mafi if freaking gorgeous???)
5. The Lunar Chronicles- These books are on this list mostly because I'm not the hugest fan of cyborg stuff. However, the fact that they are fairy tale retellings is super tempting, so I really might actually read these books.
Okay guys, these are just a few of the books that I haven't read, and might never read. Do you have any books that you feel the same way about?
Until next time,
xox
Now don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with having books that you're ashamed you've never read. I have several of those. But the books below are books that basically everyone on earth has read, but I just have no desire to read, and can't be bothered to pretend I want to read because let's face it, I have about a billion other books I want to read more. I can't sit around and read a pile of books just because everyone else is reading them.
Besides, who knows, maybe one day I will read these books. As of right now though, none of them are at the top of my TBR.
1. The Hunger Games- I'm not sure why, but I never really felt the desire to read these books, even when I saw my friends who don't really read much reading them. The story just never appealed to me.
2. The Fault in Our Stars- Okay, don't hate on me for not reading this one! Also, please don't hate on me for what I'm about to say (er, write)- I'm not the hugest fan of John Green in general (I do really like him as a human though, and would love to meet him!). I've read a couple of his books (Look for Alaska and Paper Towns), but neither of them are on the top of my "Best books I've ever read" list, and so I've kind of put off reading any of his other stuff. This is, however, one the books that I feel like I might pick up one day. Not not anytime soon.
3. The Divergent Trilogy- Okay, I do actually own the first one on my Kindle, and I started to read it, but I don't know. I just wasn't that into the book. I'm just not the hugest fan of dystopians or anything like them.
4. The Shatter Me Trilogy- Again, I don't know why, but these books just don't call me in any immediate way. (Although, can I say that Tahereh Mafi if freaking gorgeous???)
5. The Lunar Chronicles- These books are on this list mostly because I'm not the hugest fan of cyborg stuff. However, the fact that they are fairy tale retellings is super tempting, so I really might actually read these books.
Okay guys, these are just a few of the books that I haven't read, and might never read. Do you have any books that you feel the same way about?
Until next time,
xox
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