Tag Archives: V.E. Schwab

March 4, 2020 · 12:00 pm

Personal: March TBR, February Recap, and other Updates


Happy March!

I recently started a “Bookstagram” Account and honestly it is so fun! I definitely needed a new platform and outlet for my creativity. Between the pictures and the captions, this new Instagram account definitely has new opportunities for my brain to play around. There are all sorts of different challenges you could participate in and so many other community members to follow. It also gives me a new way to share and track my TBR list. If you would like to come follow me, click on the link in the Social Media sidebar.

For my March TBR, I’ve decided to take one more attack on my old February TBR before setting them aside for a while to try and match my mood. So for the first two weeks I’m going to continue with Iron King, Hunting Prince Dracula, A Gathering of Shadows, and Bloodwitch. Now, I know most people would say if you have to take a break from a book, it’s not a good book. But as someone with an anxiety disorder that makes it hard to focus on one specific thing over time, I feel like that is a lot of responsibility to put on a book. That being said, these books are still very good, but my brain just can’t hold on to them right now. So I’m going to give them one more shot before moving on to one of these beautiful collections that are calling to my attention.

This month is also the first month that I have gotten to play with my new Keys and Curios journal from Wizarding World Gold. So that will be another fun little thing to go back to periodically through out the month.

I’ve also started using my bullet journal daily this year, and may have to start incorporating that into my posts and stories. It has been a good way to keep track of my to do list and my TBR. It’s also been a tactile way to let my brain and my hands work out what they need. It’s made budgeting easier. It’s made time management sort of easier, my brain still has its own limitations.

Really, for me this whole month is probably going to be about getting back to my creativity. I always seem to lose it over winter. And with the loss of my creativity, my focus and my mood both fluctuate. This month I want to get back to me and stop trying to focus on other people’s opinions of me. This month is all about me and my needs.

(As always, look for this post image on my business pages for any updates on Paparazzi or Younique.)

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February 3, 2020 · 10:00 am

Personal: February TBR/Monthly Update


Happy February!

Can you believe that it’s already the second month of 2020? A new month of a new year, and a new decade. Maybe your January didn’t kick off the year like you’d hoped. But who cares? Every month is a new opportunity to start your goals over. Every day is a new opportunity to start your goals over. Do I have a large list of things I didn’t accomplish this month? Yes. But were they essential? Not really. They didn’t impact my immediate health and well being, they didn’t impact my living situation, they really didn’t impact much at all. Does this mean that I’m not setting the right goals? Maybe. Or maybe it means that I’m setting exactly the right goals. Goals don’t have to always have to be working towards a long term change. Sometimes it’s okay to just work day by day.

That being said, I do have goals for the month, most of them are reading goals but some of them are not. For my reading goals, there are four series that I want to finish in the beginning of this year:

  1. The Iron Fey by Julie Kagawa
    1. January didn’t end as planned as far as this series was concerned. So I intend to finish Iron King by mid-February, and start Iron Daughter before the end. So far I’m 1/3 of the way through Iron King.
  2. Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco
    1. In January I finished my re-read of the first book in this series Stalking Jack the Ripper. So for this month I want to get at least halfway through Hunting Prince Dracula, hopefully I’ll finish it completely, but I’m aiming for halfway to be safe.
  3. Shades of Magic by V.E. Schwab
    1. In January I finished A Darker Shade of Magic and I hope to review it this month. While I’m reviewing the first one I hope to get to at least halfway through A Gathering of Shadows by the end of the month.
  4. The Witchlands by Susan Dennard
    1. As anyone who has seen my recent posts from last year knows; I went on a pretty big binge of Susan Dennard’s Witchland series over the summer. During those months I finished the first three parts of the series but I feel like I burned myself out, so I took a little bit of a break from Bloodwitch. So for this month I wanted to try and finish that in order to finish the latest piece of the series. (Sooz is currently writing more of the series so this isn’t the last book. Also, go check out my review for Truthwitch)

I definitely hope to finish these series by the end of the year, maybe even before June. But for now I’m just going to take it one day at a time. In addition to these reading goals I have some writing goals and money goals, but they are less concrete. I know I would like to edit one of the projects that I have started. But I also want to flesh out character cards for all of my projects and both are big undertakings so I don’t know which to start this month.

For money I know I would like to save double what I usually do for the month and I’m not sure if that’s possible. If I take advantage of the promotions this month for Younique or Paparazzi (check the links in the About Me for details) and hit the goals they set I could probably do it. But again, the goal is not concrete. Later today I will try and have fully updated pages. But for now, here are my goals for February, here’s to a productive month!

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September 4, 2019 · 7:42 am

Personal: September TBR/TTO


Now that I’m finally caught up with posts, and homework, and every other responsibility I have, I can finally organize myself enough to have a planned out TBR and TTO list. So here it is:

TBR

The first priorities for the month are probably my textbooks. The ones I have for this semester are:

  1. Biology (OER) by OpenStax
    1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39714668-biology-2e?ac=1&from_search=true
  2. Forensic Science by Richard Saferstein
    1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36948879-forensic-science

These books will take priority over any of the personal reading books on the list. So don’t be surprised if my Goodreads is flooded with textbook updates and my posts take on a more scientific nature again. I’ve definitely missed science discussions and topics. So my interests definitely are going to start swaying back towards science. That being said, the goals I set for myself last month are still on my list. With some slight changes for new releases and challenges.

So, TBFinished:

  1. Bloodwitch by Susan Dennard
    1. I am just so hooked on this series that I could not give it up no matter what else I have going on. I’m so invested in these characters. I need to know what happens to them! I have a feeling this one will take a majority of my down time.
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39863277-bloodwitch
  2. A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab
    1. V.E. Schwab is co-hosting a Schwab-tember challenge with some people. This challenges her readers, followers, and fans to read any of her books during September. And I can’t think of a better book to follow up the void left behind by finishing Bloodwitch.
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25667118-a-darker-shade-of-magic
  3. An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green
    1. I just really want to read this one too.
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24233708-an-absolutely-remarkable-thing?ac=1&from_search=true
  4. Dune by Frank Herbert
    1. I’m going to finish this someday.
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39970217-dune

TBStarted:

  1. A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab.
    1. I know I’m going to want to read the second book once I’ve finished the first.
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20764879-a-gathering-of-shadows?ac=1&from_search=true
  2. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi
    1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34728667-children-of-blood-and-bone?from_search=true
  3. Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson
    1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42201395-sorcery-of-thorns?ac=1&from_search=true

These haven’t changed from last month.

TBReRead:

  1. Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco
    1. We are getting so close to Captureing the Devil!
    2. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28962906-stalking-jack-the-ripper

These are what I’m excited about for September. As far as products go, I don’t really have any that I’m dying to try this month. If I find anything I’m super excited about I’ll probably post about it in a separate post. There have been some really cool new releases from Younique this month and a pretty exciting Kudos. But I will probably post about them separately on my Facebook page.

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March 6, 2019 · 12:00 am

Discovery: Tor Books


 It started with an advertisement on Facebook for Tor Books “Free eBook of the Month Club” and who could resist a free eBook every month? The first book of the month was V. E. Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic. I had heard about this book from friends and my Goodreads feed, but I hadn’t really heard much about it plot wise just that it was a good book. But then I started reading it and I was hooked. Not to mention look at this great cover:

The cover alone is like a summary of the book. And with this as my introduction to the imprint how could I not be excited to discover more books curated by them? So, I followed their Instagram.

I hadn’t really finished a book by them, or by anyone really, because I was in sort of a reading funk. But between Stephen King’s It which consumed most of last year, and Tamora Pierce’s Tempests and Slaughter I finally felt like my reading slump had ended. But what to read next? I didn’t want to pick up A Darker Shade of Magic again just yet. Not because it’s not a good book, just because it wasn’t the type of book I was craving. It was too real world still, I needed a complete escape. Enter Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, another book with an AMAZING cover:

This cover is just so gorgeous and interesting to look at that I couldn’t help but be drawn to it when I first saw it. But that’s not why I had picked up this book. I had first heard of Brandon Sanderson’s books from Critical Role and Tor Books sponsorship of them but I had never known where to start with them. Mistborn was exactly what I was looking for in a book because it was short enough to read in a couple of months (as opposed to taking me an entire year) and it was enough out of this world for me to escape into its setting. And that’s what I needed at the time.

A Darker Shade of Magic was just too grounded in reality still to accomplish that task. But that’s part of what makes Tor Books so perfect to me. They have books that cover every level of real-world grounded settings. Mistborn is one that has minor similarities to the real world where you can see the influences that historical background has had. But that’s about it as far as real-world similarities. A Darker Shade of Magic has London as its real-world tether with side worlds that are less connected but still based on the standard society.

But Tor also has books that just twist the real world slightly. I just received an ARC from a give away I entered called The Tesla Legacy by K.K. Perez and I am so excited to read it. It seems to treat Tesla like Sanctuary does, but with a twist and it is most definitely grounded in modern day America/World (I haven’t gotten far enough to determine a definite setting. Once I do, I will definitely do a review). The cover on this one is just as gorgeous as the rest:

And I just have the ARC. So I can’t wait to see what the finished product is like.

This book comes out March 16th, 2019 and it’s ARC give away and the free ebook are the only ways in which I was “compensated” for this review and they had no idea I was going to write this to begin with. As I’ve said in the past, nothing I write about on this blog ahs anything to do with sponsorship. They are all things I genuinely like and enjoy and Tor Books imprint is no different. They have books I love, they have great editors from what I’ve seen (you’d think this wasn’t important as long as the story is good but I’ve found that to be very untrue), and their cover designers are awesome!

So, in conclusion, I 10/10 would recommend Tor Books as an imprint to check out, as well as each of these books I have mentioned in this post.

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