Category Archives: Blog

Top Ten Tuesday (August 28) – Bookish Confessions

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Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by our friends over at The Broke and the Bookish!

Today’s topic is dangerous. I’m nervous. But here you go. In no particular order.

Top Ten Bookish Confessions

1. I dog ear pages. Not in my lovely new hardbacks, but in my old, well-worn paperbacks? You betcha.

2. I’ve been known to use books as coasters. Again, not the shiny new ones. But my old books have taken their share of abuse.

3. I check books out of the library ALL THE TIME without setting aside time to actually read them, and they wind up going back either unread or half finished. Yes. I am that annoying person who has the book you want. And I’m not even reading it.

4. I prefer Jane Austen movies to Jane Austen books. Love her characters and her stories. The books don’t hold my attention the way I wish they did.

5. I read while I eat lunch. I try my best not to get food on my books. Sometimes I fail. (Basically what we’re learning in these confessions is that I am disgusting.)

6. I can’t read Shakespeare. I love to see it dramatized, but when I see it on the page, I just get bored. My brain can’t turn the words on the page into this:

7. I didn’t like The Great Gatsby. At all. I don’t even want to see the movie.

8. Although I love all things supernatural in my stories, and I love many of his other books, I’ve tried reading Stephen King’s Dark Tower series twice, and failed both times. Can’t seem to make it past Book 4.

9. I enjoy a well-done love triangle.

10. While I’m not a fan of the actual writing and do think the story is intellectually absurd, I really enjoyed Twilight. And Breaking Dawn was my favorite, even though it makes the least amount of sense and has the worst ending.

Feature & Follow (August 24) – Worst Cover on a Great Book

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Welcome to the Feature & Follow Hop, hosted by Parajunkee’s View and Alison Can Read!

If you’re here for the first time, I’d love if you could follow via email, RSS, LinkyFollowers or Networked Blogs. Just let me know your follow method of choice in the comments, and I’ll be happy to return the favor.

And if you’re not new, welcome back! Repeat visitors are better than a Snuggie on a cold night. (Come on. You know Snuggies are awesome.)

This week’s question:

Q: Worst cover? What is the worst cover of a book that you’ve read and loved?

Oh good, this one’s easy. I really, really loved this book. I hate the cover. So much that I will never buy a physical copy of this book, even though I am all about physical copies, because I don’t want it on my shelves. Digital only for me.

1. I understand that the tear of blood is actually very  relevant to the plot, but ewwwww.

2. WHY IS SHE WHITE? NO. Unacceptable. (If you haven’t read it, the main character is Asian.)

(Seriously though, it’s an awesome book).

 

#SYTYCD Book Pitch – Season 9, Week 5 (@DANCEonFOX)

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I skipped this feature last week because all the routines were rehashes of old routines (which…not a giant fan of that, gotta be honest). Plus, one of the routines already inspired a book. If you want to see the re-interpretation, here you go.

But anyway, after the two-week hiatus and then skipping last week, I feel like I haven’t done one of these in forever. Fortunately, last night’s episode had several fantastic dances to pick from.

[Getting away from the point of this post for a second, I just want to go on record as saying that I. Love. All-Stars. Especially after my favorite dancer was eliminated last week, and I now don’t have a serious emotional investment in the competition, the main reason I was looking forward to this week’s episode was to see who they brought back as All-Stars. And oh my goodness. Kathryn McCormick. Jakob Karr. Brandon Bryant. Alex Wong. Yes yes yes YES.]

So there were a lot of fantastic and emotional routines last night, and the one I’m picking wasn’t necessarily the best one (although I really enjoyed it), but it’s the one that most screamed “story!” to me. And it doesn’t hurt that the All-Star was one of my top 3 guys to ever compete on this show. I could watch him dance every day for the rest of my life and never get tired of it. Seriously.

Song: Dancin’ Dan (Me and My Shadow) (Fosse Original Broadway Cast)

Choreographer: Spencer Liff

Dancers: Lindsay and Jakob Karr (Season 6)

Book Pitch: When a teenage outcast stumbles upon a spell to bring her shadow to life, she begins to plan the perfect crime. But when her shadow develops a conscience, her plot may be thwarted by…herself?

(I honestly don’t know how my brain went from that dance to “crime,” but there it is. My mind is a strange, strange place).

Suggested Author: This one kind of needs a creative genius because the concept is so weird, so I’m going to play the J.K. Rowling card. I may wind up regretting using a lifeline so early, but we’ll see in the coming weeks.

You know what other video goes really well with that dance? This one. 

If So You Think You Can Dance and Lindsey Stirling ever want to combine forces, I think the universe may explode, in a good way.

Week 3 Book Pitch

Week 2 Book Pitch

Week 1 Book Pitch

The original SYTYCD Book Pitch post

Throwback Thursday (August 23) – Into Thin Air

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Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books!

It’s the nature of book blogging to focus mainly on new releases, but there are thousands of great books out there that haven’t seen the “New Releases” shelf in years. We hope to be able to bring attention to some older titles that may not be at the top of the current bestseller list, but still deserve a spot in your To-Be-Read pile.

You don’t have to be a book blogger to participate! You can put up a Throwback Thursday post on your non-bookish blog; or if you don’t have a blog at all, just use the comments to tell us about a book you remember fondly.

Here’s how it works:
1. Pick any book released more than 5 years ago. Adult, YA, Children’s; doesn’t matter. Any great book will do.
2. Write up a short summary of the book (include the title, author, and cover art) and an explanation of why you love it. Make sure to link back to The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books in your post.
3. Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
4. Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list!

Feel free to grab the Throwback Thursday button code from the sidebar to use in your posts.

Thanks for participating, and we look forward to seeing which books you choose to remember!

My Throwback this week is…

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Yes, I’m picking another non-fiction book. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

Into Thin Air may be non-fiction, but it reads like a thriller. It is the true story of the ill-fated 1996 expedition to climb Mt. Everest, when a terrible storm and some bad judgement calls resulted in the deaths of five people and the terrible peril of the rest of the party. Krakauer was part of the expedition as a journalist, and his first-hand account of his party’s fear and struggle to survive in extreme conditions is in turns suspenseful, gripping, exciting, and haunting.

Krakauer writes with not a small amount of survivor’s guilt, like he’s trying to make up for what happened on the mountain. It’s sometimes hard to read, not because it is in any way bad, but because his emotions are so raw and real.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t read a lot of non-fiction. A non-fiction book has to be pretty darn interesting for me to even pick it up in the first place. But this is easily the most thrilling non-fiction I’ve ever read, and I tore through it the first time I picked it up in high school. Honestly, if you didn’t know it was a recount of Krakauer’s actual experience, it would be easy to believe its fictional, because the course of events is just that intense, and Krakauer tells the story like a seasoned novelist.

Maybe you’re like me and you don’t read a lot of non-fiction. Maybe you adore non-fiction and can’t get enough of it. Either way, I think this book will appeal to you, because it’s kind of amazing.

This is a blog hop! Link up your Throwback Thursday post below!

Top Ten Tuesday (August 21) – Best Books Since I’ve Been Blogging

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Welcome to another Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by our friends over at The Broke and the Bookish! And a special congratulations to one of their contributors, Jamie, who got married last weekend! Huzzah!

Today’s topic is actually pretty easy for me, since I’ve only been blogging about five months and therefore don’t have hundreds of books to pick from. For those of you who have been at this for years, you have my sympathies.

So here’s tonight’s topic:

Top Ten Favorite Books You’ve Read During The Lifespan Of Your Blog 

With the exception of the first two (which will link to Amazon because I haven’t posted my reviews yet), I’ll just link the title to my review of each book. Because if I had to summarize what I loved about each of these in just a sentence or two, they’d all say the same thing (“THIS BOOK IS AWESOME”) and it would get boring.

Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

Pushing the Limits by Katie McGarry

Defiance by C.J. Redwine

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

The Selection by Kiera Cass

The Maze Runner by James Dashner

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Timepiece by Myra McEntire

The False Prince by Jennifer Nielsen

The Immortal Rules by Julie Kagawa

And let me just say, I’m glad I started this blog and discovered so many other fantastic blogs, because if I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have read any of these, much less conversed merrily with several of these lovely authors on Twitter and even met two of them in person.

LET’S ALL CELEBRATE BLOGGING.