Characters I’d Follow On Social Media

Spoiler: I’m not on social media. There’s so much toxicity that I chose just to stay in my little corner of the interwebs with you nice people and I’m completely fine with that. On occasion I’ve entertained the idea of signing up for Twitter or Instagram for the sole purpose of following a lot of authors, musicians, and actors, but then I remember the world is a dark, ugly place, and even the most carefully curated “following” list is bound to cast a shadow at times.

It’s been a long winter, and I am rather tired of shadows.

But in a fictional world full of fictional people, what would it be like to follow some of my favorite heroes and villains online? Probably awesome, right? Let’s find out.

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by That Artsy Reader Girl.

 

 

Taming my TBR

I’ve mentioned it before, but my to-be-read list is out of control. It’s not so far gone as some peoples- I’ve heard of them being a thousand books deep and growing, so at 244 I feel like I’m not doing too bad.

Of course, that doesn’t change how many times I gone on a book adding spree, throwing books willy-nilly onto it as though I’d never have another chance. It’s happened before, it will happen again, what I need to do is to start being more demanding, to take the time to read excerpts and reviews before I decide if it’s another book I want to add to the list.

So, I’m starting a series where I return to 2016, the year I started using Goodreads, and checking out five books at a time from my list. I’ll read the excerpt, look at high and low reviews, and decide based on rationality instead of impulse whether to keep it or kick it.

Books: The Hangover Edition

I don’t drink very often, and it’s been well over a decade since I drank so heavily that I even felt the slightest hint of a hangover, but that doesn’t mean I don’t remember. I won’t get into details, but lets just say there was a lot of red velvet cupcakes and Midori Sours and and it took me many years to want to have either again.

Books, on the other hand, have left me feeling hungover many times since my 23rd birthday. As far as I’m concerned there are two types of literary hangovers- there’s the good ones that leave you feeling weary at heart, but changed for the better. The ones that alter your perspective and weigh on your thoughts for weeks afterward.

Then there’s the books that give you a splitting headache. The ones that leave you slightly ill. The ones that make you cry out in anguish and hurl them against the wall.

Let’s take a look at both, starting with the good, and ending with the bad.

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by That Artsy Reader Girl.

(Apparently Urban Dictionary has a definition for the term “book hangover”, ignore this)

Literary Date Night

Happy almost Lupercalia everyone! Time for fertility rites and auctioning women off by lottery… *checks notes* Wait… wait… It’s a time for romance, and tiny paper cards, and people waiting till the last second to buy gifts despite the day always happening on the fourteenth. You can tell I work in retail, can’t you?

This weeks TTT was a “love freebie” which I decided to interpret as what characters would I absolutely try and date presented with the opportunity. And to top it off, we’re taking them to different places for the big night, because why stop at one thing when we can do two? Will I regret this half way into the list? Maybe! I’ll let you know!

(Also pretend these are all the adult versions of any characters that might have been children in their respective novels, I want a fun date, not several hours of babysitting)

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Books I Predict Will be Five Star Reads

Wow! I’m writing this Monday morning, a full 10 days after I got sick, and it’s the first day I actually feel like maybe I’ll be fine. Thank you so much to everyone for your kind words and recovery wishes, you made being home bound and wiped out a touch more tolerable.

This weeks TTT has us turning out eyes once more to the future, hazy and turbulent though it may be, and predicting which books from my TBR will be five star reads. This is a loaded subject, really- am I just setting myself up for future disappointment? Is that just part of life?

Have I mentioned it’s cold? It was 28 degrees this morning, -2 if you use the Celsius Way. I grew up in lower elevations then this, my friends, mornings like this make me wish I was still down on the edge of the Central Valley, instead of up here in Gold Country. Ah, California, you paradox of climates and tempetures and people, I love you.

I’m getting distracted, bound to happen considering my brain can finally form coherent (for me) sentences and thoughts. Right! Books, it’s why we’re all here, right? So here’s me throwing down the guantlet and proclaiming I will love these books.

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Blue on the Books

Guys I am so sick. I AM SO SICK. I have strep throat and an ear infection and I’ve missed two days at work and honestly I’m lucky I even remembered it was Tuesday today because my life has been nothing but pain and suffering and fevers for the last four days. That is why you get a weird title this week and the summaries are gonna be…

Well, I’m sick.

*wails quietly*

Top Ten Tuesday is brought to you by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Ten Thousand Doors of January

It is done. After yearning to read this since it’s release, I finally got the chance to after the holidays. And I… have thoughts. Most of them a little muddled and confused right now because I’m attempting to write this after a night of excellent food and lavender labyrinths, and without any tea.

Like… augh… argh… how to even start this? I mean, I suppose at the beginning…

January is a precocious girl; rambunctious, a little wild and a little rude- in spite of being raised up to this point by a mysterious benefactor and the various nurses he has hired over the years, as well as having a soft spoken father. We meet her on a hot summers day, while the aforementioned benefactor, Mr. Locke, (his names a metaphor, clever!) makes some business arrangements. January grows bored, and decided that waiting around in a stuffy foyer is not acceptable, and she lets herself out, but not before pointlessly attempting to destroy an expensive vase…

What happens when you are looking for a portal fantasy and instead find… something else?

…Let’s find out!