Bout of Books Day 7 Update

We did it guys, we climbed the whole mountain.

Bout of Books 10.0 was more than a success. It was awesome and far better than the other three times I've tried to do this damn readathon. Honestly, I crushed it. But there's a whoooole video coming up about how spectacular I was during this readathon. My ego can only take so much before it threatens to inflate my entire body Aunt Marge style.

I didn't think I was going to finish Ella Enchanted but I ended up finishing it before 10 pm! I enjoyed it a lot, especially the rather in your face lesson at the end (it's been inside of you the whole time! you can do it! you are powerful!), but I felt like it lacked the magic of my memory of the movie. People did break out into song in this book but the entire half of the book was different from the movie so it makes sense that it felt different to me. I did feel like the Cinderella plot points were just thrown in just for the hell of it. I didn't think the glass slipper part was necessary. Overall I liked it.

I had an hour and a half until midnight so it was pretty obvious, out of my pile of BB10 TBR books, what I was going to pick up. I was saving it. Oh man. It was worth it. What a great prize for doing super well at the readathon. I think this is the first time I've read a graphic novel where I enjoyed every single aspect of it. The art is what got me to bring it home from the store, so I knew I was already sold on that. But it's just so damn pretty. The colors!! But then!! The characters!! Clint got me from the first page. The dog. The banter. The nicknames. The running gags. I can't. Just perfect.

Number of books I've finished today: 2
Total number of books I've finished: 12
Books left on my goal TBR: ZERO!!!
Pages I've read today: 346
Total pages I've read: 1817

Now that Bout of Books is over, this blog will go back to being pretty boring. It's mostly where I post any secondary material to my videos, which basically means things I write that are better staying in written form than spoken in video form. To stay update on what I'm reading, friend me on Goodreads, watch my videos, and follow me on twitter!

Bout of Books Update Day 6

What did I even do today? I don't even know. I feel like I didn't do anything. But I'm sure I did things. I'm sure I didn't just sit at the kitchen table on my laptop...right?

"You're...half correct I guess. I mean you mostly sat at the kitchen table doing nothing, but sometimes you sat at the kitchen table reading very short books. One can't even be considered a "book." Then you got up, put away dishes and sat on the couch for several hours watching movies."

Shit.

At least I put away dishes.

-

Last night I tried to read a bit of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland blah blah long title but it was...not good. Everything that I know about this books points at me loving it but the writing style is not for me. If it was toned down a bit I would be all over it. I know I use this phrase a lot but the only way I can describe it is that it's trying way way way way too hard. It's working too hard to be quirky, to imitate other people's writing style (Lewis Carroll? Neil Gaiman and Douglas Addams love child? I don't know). I'll get to it when I have a longer time to read it, when I can put it down often and roll my eyes but also when I have opened my mind to this particular writing style.

So this morning I knew I was going to fall into a reading slump if I didn't get something good in me fast. Cue Marissa Meyer! It is no secret that I love the Lunar Chronicles. Like, a lot. It shouldn't be surprising, I devour fairy tale retellings and science fiction is my favorite genre. Unfortunately there's a huge wait for the fourth book, but thankfully she has several novellas out! This one is based on the original (well, the non-disney) Little Mermaid story and it was pretty damn good. I think the original The Little Mermaid fairy tale is my favorite out of the slightly more adult fairy tale pot that Disney has dipped into (it should be known that Beauty & the Beast is my favorite watered down Disney tale) so I was practically giddy at all the nods to the original tale in this novella. I had no idea if she was going to end it as tragically as the fairy tale does so there was some major suspense, which I normally don't get with novellas. 

One thing I just noticed about the world Meyer has created in this novella is the comparison between mental illness and android glitches. I never had that thought with Iko in the main novels, but in this novella they kept talking about how Stars was dangerous and unpredictable and how scary that possibility was to Stars. I'm not entirely sure I liked the ending when you're reading it through that lens. I might  talk about that later but I don't want to spoil anyone in this update post that shouldn't even have in depth reviews in it!

I was still feeling a little slumpy so I gave in to the 3rd volume of Scott Pilgrim that I just got in the mail, like 4 days ago. I never buy graphic novels myself at full price so it's always huge gaps of time between volumes for me which is why I like to save them. Nope, it was in the house for 4 days before I read it in one sitting. I love the humor in these books (obviously. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is my favorite movie) and how & where the flashbacks are placed. It did take me until this volume to realize that the pages with the black background are the flashbacks. Duh. It feels like a movie (which makes sense since Edgar Wright really captured the feel of the books), with the cuts perfectly placed. My only complaint is the casual racism. Although it doesn't forgive it, Bryan has said that if he could re-do it that would be the thing he would change.

So I have no idea if I read this book back in the day but I can tell you this: the movie is a fucking masterpiece and should be required watching for all film students. Maybe I just think this because it introduced me to Hugh Dancy, but I remember POC rep, singing and talking snakes so I think I'm correct in my assumption that it is a piece of art.  So it's time to either do a reread of the source material or read it for the first time because I know it's 100% magical and amazing and I WILL get this done by tomorrow night I swear. I'm going to make it happen. I only read like 3 chapters today but I'm gonna do it. Let's not talk about responsibilities like house work or friends or youtube let's just talk about Ella Enchanted.  

Number of books I've finished today: 2
Total number of books I've finished: 10
Books left on my goal TBR: ZERO!!!
Pages I've read today: 241
Total pages I've read: 1471

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Bout of Books day 5 Update (FIVE?!! ALREADY?!)

I can't believe that as I type it's already day 6! This readathon has flown by. I'm pretty sure there's a 48 hour readathon in June so no need to be too sad.

I obviously finished the last 74 pages of Persepolis today (I read it all in one sitting but midnight hit in the middle of that sitting) and I really enjoyed reading it. It had the format of a graphic novel,  the personal charm of a memoir about childhood and the smarts of a history lesson. This was vastly different from anything I've ever read.

Then I did a lot of video related stuff, like filming a haul and uploading my review of Far From You.

I planned on reading The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland but I had to take some books back to the library so I exchanged Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood for the second bind up, The Story of a Return.

This one was just as endearing, if not more. For most of the book Marjane is around my age, so I could relate to her a bit more. She went off to school far from her family and ended up having to come back to live home before she was done, so I mean relating to her definitely wasn't an issue in this one. I also was spurred on by wanting to know what, ya know, actually happened in Iran during this time because I honestly had no idea. Even if history was my subject, we were never taught about Iran or any middle-eastern countries. I loved that she kept coming back to self education, that reading is the key to happiness and understanding. I think I have to take a page out of her book and start reading more books about things that my education neglected. 

Number of books I've finished today: 2
Total number of books I've finished: 8
Books left on my goal TBR: ZERO!!!
Pages I've read today: 261
Total pages I've read: 1230 (finally broke 1K booyah!)

As always, out my twitter for pictures of books I shouldn't be buying, television recs and me being mad about something irrelevant in the media.

Bout of Books Day 4 Update

Despite not getting up until around 2 pm, I still managed to complete my entire goal TBR today!! On day 4! I'm amazed at myself, too.

So I started Chopsticks a tiny bit after midnight, because my evenings are booked with television. In my timezone @midnight is on at 11, and then I got to catch The Soup so I mean you see why I didn't get this done on day 3. It only took 30 minutes for my first read through with me googling the playlists to listen to, but I had to go back and do a reread immediately because it was that good.

Chopsticks is a book told entirely in pictures (there's text but it's like letters, notes, and IMs) and lemme tell you THIS BOOK FUCKED ME UP. I'm not even going to say what is about other than the main character is a piano prodigy. I think I may film a video tomorrow,  starting out with how gorgeous and genius this book is and then tell everyone who hasn't read the book to click away and then discuss my many,  many,  many thoughts. This is a book to go into completely blind for MULTIPLE reasons. I just...wow.

I READ A DC COMIC THAT I ACTUALLY REALLY LIKED. SOMEONE ALERT THE PRESSES. I read the first volume in J.H. Willam's new 52 Batwoman this evening, around 9 to 10 pm. This tells the tale of Kate Kane, our ghostly white punk rocker red headed lesbian main character who of course has some family deaths to avenge (cue Bruce angsting in the background). In her crime fighting antics she encounters (are you ready for it) A GHOST BASED ON AN URBAN LEGEND ABOUT A CRYING SEA DWELLING WOMAN THAT STEALS CHILDREN THAT SEEMINGLY INTERTWINES WITH KATE'S PAST. That's right. She fights a ghost AND her own mental battle. She has daddy issues and a fiery sidekick who seems to be friends with Dick. So let's be honest, if I was gonna fall for a DC comic it was gonna be this one. I'm definitely going to get around to buying the second volume, hoping this one breaks the curse I seem to have with second volumes of the new 52.

And I read some of Persepolis before midnight! More on that tomorrow <3

Number of books I've finished today: 2
Total number of books I've finished: 6
Books left on my goal TBR: ZERO!!!
Pages I've read today: 230
Total pages I've read: 969

Remember to check out my twitter for various pics of what I'm reading next to mugs of coffee. Oh and make sure to check my booktube channel because a review video I'm hella excited for is going up tomorrow morning!!

Bout of Books Day 3 Update

Today sucked, emotion wise. Like, okay, you need to realize that I hate roller coasters with a fiery passion. The only thing I hate more than roller coasters is driving, vague instructions and hard core conservative children. Today was like a roller coaster but worse. 

What I'm getting at here is that I didn't feel like reading most of the day. I felt like sitting in front of the TV and moaning. So that's what I did until I realized that reading would, you know, get my mind off my own anxieties. So I read about someone else's!

I finished the last ~45% of The Key to the Golden Firebird and man oh man I was pleasantly surprised! I think I already used that phrase with this book but it was GOOD. I mean, I had low standards for it since Maureen's contemporary gets 3 stars from me on average, but this was like a solid-ish 4 star book (although I totally gave it 3 stars but then changed it like 5 minutes after putting the book down). It's about sisterhood and driving and grief. It's probably my second favorite of her books after Name of the Star. There wasn't anything AMAZING that I will remember FOREVER because WOW and some of the language used (multiple slurs, even some used by the main characters) made me uncomfortable. But overall a really solid book.

And technically that's it. I finished Chopsticks but that was after midnight so you'll get all of my thoughts (AND HOLY HELL I HAVE SO MANY HOLY FUCK, THAT BOOK WAS A RIDE) and pages for that in tomorrows update. I'm trying to be organized this time around.

Saying that, I totally forgot to do any challenges today. There was emotional drama, y'all understand.

Number of books I've finished today: 1
Total number of books I've finished: 4Books left on my goal TBR: 2Pages I've read today: 108 Total pages I've read: 739

(stats as of 11:59 pm)

Make sure to follow my twitter for vague emotional live tweets during my reading.

Bout of Books Day 2 Update

I know that today I've technically read more pages than I did yesterday, but I only finished one book (a graphic novel, at that!) today which makes me feel like I wasn't as productive. But I mean, it was the Agents of SHIELD finale today so I should be glad I got anything done.

I started this graphic novel (if you can even call it that) at like 11:55 pm on Monday and finished it around 12:30 am on Tuesday. Overall it was entertaining and enjoyable. I obviously love Harley and Ivy together and there was even a one-sided crush mention which made me ecstatic. The art was good, especially the middle bonus comic done in a painted style. However as I have come to just accept when it comes to comics about ladies written about men (especially Harley), it was a touch sexist and gross. I don't need to see Ivy being beaten up, her legs spread wide, while her bra falls off.

I started this when I got up this morning (around noon. yeah). This is widely accepted as Maureen's worst novel but I have to say I'm surprisingly delighted by it! I think it's because I relate to it so much, what with the main character having to learn how to drive by hating it and being terrified of it. It's also about sisters more than it is about romantic love, which is awesome. AND they talk about SEX. YEAH. SEX. No sex scenes but the side characters talk about it casually (even though, yeah, the main girls find it scary and gross and awkward). I didn't end up finishing this today (got about 65% of the way through), but will definitely finish it up tomorrow. 

Number of books I've finished today: 1
Total number of books I've finished: 3
Books left on my goal TBR: 3
Pages I've read today: 325
Total pages I've read: 631

I forgot to do a challenge...oops.

Remember to follow my tweets for micro updates and live tweeting of my reading.

Bout of Books Day 1 Update

Hello friends! I should definitely be sleeping right now but instead we're gonna wrap up day one of the readathon! 

I started Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? at ~12:30 am and finished it around ~ 6 pm. It was certainly no Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lewis by it's probably my second favorite "memoir" type book I've ever read. I loved The Office, especially the scripts, and I love Mindy in general so of course I was going to love this book. I liked finally hearing about show biz (especially the writing aspect) from someone who didn't already have family in the business and isn't tiny and blonde. However I did think that her comedy was a bit more raunchy than I would have liked. I let the fat jokes slide since she has also a problem with her weight, but I wasn't sure why there was unnecessary midget jokes. At least she learned something from the rape joke chapter.

I've been trying to get through this short story collection by a Geek & Sundry vlogger for months and finally finished it this evening around 8 pm. I have so many things to say about this collection and a lot of them are bad, which makes me so sad. I have enough thoughts to warrant a whole review video but I would feel really bad since I believe this is self-published and only has 36 ratings and like 6 reviews on Goodreads. Let's just say, it seemed like she was trying so hard. Way too hard for it to be comfortable for the reader. However, she obviously has a lot of potential. The stories were really good, some real Ray Bradbury level plots. It was the prose that made me roll my eyes.

Number of books I've read today: 2
Total number of books I've read: 2
Books left on my goal TBR: 4 (technically as I write this it's 3, but I read it past midnight)
Pages I've read today: 306
Total pages I've read: 306

I felt that I could have read more today, I took quite a bit of breaks because while I didn't have any work to do, I still felt weird just reading all day. I don't know why I thought watching movies was more constructive than reading.

I also totally did the 'If You Like X, The Try Y' challenge! I get super proud of myself when I do something semi-social during these.

Remember to follow my twitter for my HILARIOUS live tweets that only make sense to myself.

If You Like X, Try Y

I've already been planning a video series recommending books based on your favorite television shows and vis versa, so today's challenge comes as a piece of cake! This challenge is hosted over at The Book Barbies. It's a fairly simple concept, but you can go there to check out the rules!


If you like Disney or Once Upon a Time, try The Land of Stories series by Chris Colfer

If you like super heroes like Young Justice, try Hero by Perry Moore

If you like Buffy but prefer aliens to vampires, try The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

If you like Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, try The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor

If you like middle grade with ghosts and making fun of the American education system try Story Time by Edward Bloor (also a good one for Coraline fans)

If you like super indie underground music or  Will Grayson, Will Grayson, try Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohen (and David Levithan duh I wonder why they're so similar)

If you like your classics to have zero plot but an abundance of hilarious British humor try Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

If you like YA scifi with some major diversity thrown in try Adaptation by Malinda Lo

If you like Hark! a Vagrant, Oliver Twist, history or any episode of Doctor Who when they met historical figures only to find out they were a bit camp try, Dodger by Terry Pratchett

If you like John Green but sometimes wished he was a less problematic lady, try The Beginning of Everything by Robin Scheinder or The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay
(although if you like The Sea of Tranquility why not try out Far From You by Tess Sharpe)

If you like awesome female historical figures, magical realism, and books try The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna von Pregg

If you ever wished Shel Silverstein or Dr. Suess wrote things for adults (or very dirtied minded young adults) try Egghead by Bo Burnham

and one more for hilarity:
If you like olive garden, sad bathes and Tina Fey or Mindy Kaling but hate yourself and don't want to be faced with decent literature and read their books try My Boyfriend Wrote a Book About Me by Hilary Winston and then try not to burn it (or 'If you like Lena Dunham try Hilary Winston or maybe get a better taste in female role models')

Bout of Books 10.0 TBR + Goals

Goal Books (aka books I'm definitely going to read! It'll be a success if I read all of these!):

• 40% of Cat's Cradle unless I get it done before midnight!
• 35% of Echoes of Old Souls by Nika Harper
• Chopsticks by Jessica Anthony 
• Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling
• The Key to the Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson
• Harley and Ivy by Paul Dini
• Batwaman vol 1, Hydrology by J.H. Williams

Books I Plan to Read After my Goal Books:

• Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine
• Hawkeye vol. 1, My Life as a Weapon by Matt Fraction
• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making  by Catherynne M. Valente
• Howl, Kaddish, and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg
• Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
• Empress of the World by Sara Ryan (not pcitured)
• Timebound by Rysa Walker (not pictured)
• The Little Android by Marissa Meyer

With all of them written out like that, it looks like A LOT. Like, I won't get through those in three months let alone a week. However, I need to keep in mind that only 2 of my goal books are actual novels, with 6 actual novels in total with 2 of THOSE being middle grade. There isn't any dense fiction here unless you count what I have left to read of Cat's Cradle tonight. I just want to get all of these little books outta my TBR list on Goodreads so this summer can be The Summer of the Scary, Big books.

Make sure to follow me on Twitter for my micro updates!

I'M DOING BOUT OF BOOKS 10.0. FOR REAL.

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, May 12th and runs through Sunday, May 18th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 10 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

I swear to Merlin, I'm going to do this correctly this time. I've done the Bout of Books read-a-thon THREE TIMES and I've never followed all the rules because I always, always forget. But this time I'm going to be on top of it. In fact, check back in a few days for my read-a-thon TBR.

Series I'm Reading

As always, this is more for myself than you.

Series with books out that I haven't read:

Adaption series by Malinda Lo (Inheritance and Natural Selection)
Time Quartet by Madeline L'Engle (half of Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters,An Acceptable Time)
Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley (3-6)
Miss Peregrine's Home by Ransom Riggs (Hollow City)
Shades of London by Maureen Johnson (The Madness Underneath, but waiting until the 3rd is closer)


Series that I'm waiting on the next book:

The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer (3rd is out July 8)
Lunar Chronicles (4th book out Feb 3, 2015)
Stephanie Perkin's tie-in series (Isla out August 14)
THE MOTHERFUCKING HOST SERIES BY STEPHANIE MEYER???

Dropped series:

Scarlet series by AC Gaughen
Cormoran Strike series by JK Rowling
The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare (possibly)
The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein series by Kenneth Oppel