Winter is going by so quickly!! I can’t believe January is already over, and we are in February. Winter is my favorite season and I feel like it’s whizzing by 🙁 We are supposed to get a major snowstorm today though, so that’s a bit of a pick me up!! Outside of the blog nothing exciting happened, I’ve been super busy at work all month and I have been sick for what feels like the entire month of January. Seriously, nothing exciting 😛 It’s been SO cold here, and then gets warmer for two days, then insanely cold again… my body just cannot handle it!
As far as books go, I didn’t get a lot read but I what I did read was so good (with the exception of one :/). I’m finally starting to want to read ALL the time again, which I am happy about… now if I can only stop watching Gossip Girl long enough to get it done 😛
*Click for review (Goodreads link for all unreviewed books)
Into the Still Blue by Veronica Rossi ★★★★
The Opportunist by Tarryn Fisher ★★★★★
Witch Finder by Ruth Warburton ★★
The Unseemly Education of Anne Merchant by Joanna Wiebe ★★★★
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo ★★★★★
The Witch of Duva by Leigh Bardugo ★★★★★
The Tailor by Leigh Bardugo ★★★★★
My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick ★★★★★
Goodreads Challenge: My goal is higher this year at 150 books. Since I exceeded my challenges last year of 115 books I decided to up the amount! Here’s to hoping 🙂 I only read 8 books in January but I’m hoping to pick up the pace in February.
2014 Debut Author Challenge: I just actually realized I forgot to do my DAC post and sign up, oops… fail! But, I still am participating and I’ve read one book for my goal of 20!
2014 TBR Pile Challenge: Again, I’m participating in this! I hated not reading as many books from my TBR pile as I wanted to last year so I’ve decided that I do it again, and have the same goal: 30. I am off to a good start as I have read 3!
2014 Prequel and Sequel Challenge: I want to get to 50 points and I’m making a good start. I completed one series technically by finishing Into the Still Blue (although I still have to read the novella’s) and I read the two Grisha Trilogy novellas.
2014 Series Challenge: I am also off to a good start on this one. I’ve started the Love Me With Lies trilogy (and I will be finishing this in February if all goes well) as well as the Grisha Trilogy!
I posted by my Top Ten Tuesday picks for My Bookish Goals and Resolutions, Debuts I’m Looking Forward To, Things on My Reading Wishlist and Worlds I’d Never Want to Live In
In addition to my January read and reviewed books I also posted by reviews for Pawn by Aimee Carter, Heartbeat by Elizabeth Scott, and Here After by Kate Brian
I participated in the winter mini Bloggiesta which turned out my be a minor fail (gain) for me because I was also participating in the My Life Next Door Read Along! I got a few things done, but because of the storm I will most likely not be going out this weekend so hopefully I can get more of the list accomplished.
I started back with my discussion posts! My first topic of the new year was about the deal breakers I have in books! I’m happy to get this ball rolling again and now I just have to get my organization posts finalized. I’m currently working on three, they take a lot of work and patience so hopefully I will have those ready to go for next week!
Judith and Cass finally convinced me to read My Life Next Door, so I participated in their read along they were hosting. It WAS a week long event, but of course I fell in love and couldn’t put it down, thus spending the entire weekend consumed by the wonderful Garretts! Needless to say I loved it 🙂
Everyone was starting off the new year with AMAZING posts! I have a few that were left over from this week so I will include those in next months wrap up as I haven’t been able to completely go through my Feedly today for the last few days.
- 10 Things I Never Want to Read Again at Notebook Sisters
- Cover Changes at In Italics
- Why I Don’t Mind Insta-Love at Falling For YA
- How to Keep Track at Snuggly Oranges
- 30 Hilarious Search Terms of 2013 at Book Rock Betty
- The Best Way to Track RSS & Provide Email Subscriptions at Nose Graze
- Let’s Speculate: When It’s Hard to Support Indie Bookstores at Effortlessly Reading
- Does a Book’s Layout Matter to You? at Gypsy Reviews
- Does You Mood Affect Your Reviews? at Christy’s Book Addiction
- Second Book Syndrome at Writer of Wrongs
- Favorite Posts at The Library Canary
- There’s an App For That at The Paper Sea
- Books Made Into Movies: A Love-Hate Relationship at Buckling Books
- Double Standards On Reading at Thoughts and Pens
- Suggested Blog Tips for 2014 at Parajunkee
- Has Blogging Changes the Way You Read? at Katie’s Book Blog
- How Do You Treat Your Books? at Belle of the Literati
- The Difference Between Bold and Strong in HTML at Nose Graze
- Animal Murder in Books at Novel Heartbeat
- Comment Replies at Another Novel Read
- How Do You Rate Books? at My Friends are Fiction
- Saving books for later at Between My Lines
- What Does the Bookworm Say? at The Reader’s Antidote
- Paperbacks, Hardbacks, or ebooks? at Istyria Book Blog
- ARC Envy at Book Nerd Reviews
- How to Deal With Plagiarism at send DMCA Complaints at Nose Graze
- Does Size Matter? at The Library Canary
- Are We Killing Quality with Kindness at For What It’s Worth
- Pet Peeve: Title & Series at The Daily Prophecy
- Anticipated Releases at Starlight Book Reviews
- The Deal With Courtesy Comments at The Runaway Reader
- Blogger Etiquette at Novel Heartbeat
- Why Giveaways Won’t Give You More Followers at Nose Graze
- How Unemployment Has Changed My Life as a Reader at The Perpetual Page Turner
- How Web Design Has Changed at Rinn Reads
- My Relationship with Book Ratings at Stay Bookish
- The Misunderstood 3 Star Rating at Xpresso Reads
- Hey Stranger! I Like Books at The Perpetual Page Turner
- Pinterest & Book Blogging at Book.Blog.Bake
- To Read or Not to Read Books Before Their Movie Premiere at The Reader’s Antidote
- I’m a Sheep! at Book.Blog.Bake
- Your Go-To Pick Me Ups at Starlight Book Reviews
- Where Do You Post Your Reviews at Another Novel Read
- The Hype Monster at Novel Heartbeat
- Swaggin’ or Braggin’ at Book Rock Betty
- I’m Bad at Commenting at Paper Riot
- The Best Way to Turn Down Review Requests at Nose Graze
- Is There a Right Way to Rate? at What Comes Next
- How to get your NetGalley Feedback to approval ratio up to 80% at Student Spyglass
- Keeping Yourself Unbiased at Snuggly Oranges
- I’m Not a Real Reader at The Paper Sea
- Celebrity Doppelgangers on YA Covers at The Book Addict’s Guide
- Why Do We Buy Books? at Books with Cass
- The Fears of Starting a Blog at A Bookish Heart
- I’m Addicted to Novella’s at Another Novel Read
- Will Our Non Blogger Readers Please Stand Up at Cuddlebuggery
- Expectations and Deviations at Sash & Em
- Mentally Processing Books While Writing Reviews at The Librarian Who Doesn’t Say Shhh
- Guide to Getting Approved on Edelweiss at On Starships and Dragonwings
- The Slow Start at The Book Addict’s Guide
- 10 Reasons I Love Your Blog at Nose Graze
- Blogger Tips and Tricks #15 at Caffeinated Book Reviewer
- Slow and Steady Wins the Race at The Paper Sea
- Yay or Nay: ARC’s at Rantings, Ravings and Ramblings
- Supporting Those Large Bookstores at Paper Cuts
- How Do You Feel About Pop Culture References in Books? at Another Novel Read
- I Don’t DNF at Readers in Wonderland
- Book Rockin’ with Betty: Veronica Rossi at Book Rock Betty
- Can You Request Finish Copies of Books at Nose Graze
Phew! I think for February I’m going to find a different way of listing these links because there are always a TON now… what do you guys think about splitting them into categories? Sound good or do you like the long list? Let me know!! Or if you have any other ideas of how to list them!
Have an awesome February everyone 🙂
Thanks for linking a post of mine! 🙂 And yeah, categories sound good, but they’re all kind of in the same one so. 😛 I think you’d still have a long list.
Your welcome Bieke 🙂 Yah, it’s still going to be a long list for sure. I was thinking like “HTML/Blog Help”, “Reading”… small ones like that to break it up maybe? Oh the woes of a book blogger, haha.
Wow, you have a huge list of discussion posts here, many of which I still have to check out! And many thanks for adding my post to the list, it is very kind of you!
Your welcome Stefanie 🙂
So many discussion posts right?! I haven’t even got to comment on a lot of them because there were SO many this month!!
Wow your discussion wrapup is epic! Going to check out a few of those. 🙂 Thanks for linking to some of mine! 😀
Your so welcome Ashley 🙂 You had a ton of great posts this month!!! I bookmark a lot of the blogger guides for later incase I need them 🙂
It rocks that so many books you read in Jan. are 4 or 5 stars
Great way to start the new year, eh? I loved it as well, especially since I had a crap book that I read so it was easily forgotten by the awesomeness 🙂
Great job with your challenges. Thanks for all of the links!
Thanks Pamela 🙂 And your so welcome, just a bit of Saturday of reading for everyone lol.
Thanks for linking up my post Lauren 🙂 I’ve ended up bookmarking your post so I can go through all the fabulous links. The long list doesn’t bother me at all, but you could always mix it up some months if you have a clear divide in topics.
You made much better progress than I did on the TBR pile challenge – I embarrassingly have yet to read any! Oops…
Here’s hoping February can have as many great books for you!
Oh don’t worry Faith! I’m sure that my progress will slow down a bit 😉 It always seems easier to pick up the new shiny copies than the ones in the TBR… even those appealed to us at the time. It’s a strange strange problem we all have, lol. I’m participating in the Review Copy Cleanup so most of February will be devoted to that. I really have a problem with that as well so hopefully that will help. (Hence the Netgalley issue, lol). I’m glad you enjoyed the links! I love when wrapups have those and I always end up bookmarking for later as well!
I can’t believe January is over, either!! It feels like just yesterday we were celebrating New Year’s. Where does the time go?!
And WAIT. You like winter? O_O Crazy woman haha! I am SO sick of the snow and ice and cold (I have to work outside in this crap) and driving in it and UGH. I just want winter to be over so we can have some sunshine and warmth. I want to move to Florida so bad!
Thanks for mentioning a few of my posts and I hope you feel better soon!
BAHAHAH *hides*. I do like winter!! But I know you hate it because you reference it in your posts a lot 🙁 But honestly.. if I had to walk dogs in the freezing ass cold all day I would probably hate it to. I work in an office so all my outdoor activities are by my choice only. I DO hate driving in it though *shudders*.
I am feeling fabulous now, thanks 🙂 that is ONE thing I hate about winter though is the cold and the headaches and UGH lol.
Great post! Thank you so much for all these amazing blog post links! (and thank you for linking to our ARC envy post)
Your welcome 🙂 Thank YOU for stopping by!!
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