Monthly Wrap-Up: March 2024

April 4, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

I feel like I just wrote my February wrap-up and now it’s time to write one for March. This month passed by so quickly, lol! It was a month of travel and get-togethers but sadly, it ended with illnesses in the family. Thankfully, everyone is now well on the road to recovery but it certainly wasn’t the ending we expected, especially since we had big plans to celebrate dad’s 70th on the 30th, but couldn’t due to him being sick.

Other than that, I actually don’t have much clue what went on this month. 😂 I feel like I spent half of it getting back into the groove of things after my Japan holiday, while the other half was spent passing days at work counting down to the Eid holidays next week, which is a big deal here in Indonesia.

If any of you reading this celebrate: ✨ Eid Mubarak! ✨ I hope you have a wonderful celebration with your family and friends! 😊

#WWWWednesday: 3 April 2024

April 3, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads28 Comments

Hello, hello and welcome back to another episode of WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words, which means I’ll be answering these questions:

What did you read last?
What are you currently reading?
What will you read next?

#TopTenTuesday: Rain, Rain, Rain…

April 2, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads51 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is April Showers — Pick your own title for this one to reflect the direction you choose to go with this prompt (books with rain on the cover/in the title, that have rainstorms in the story, or that have anything to do with rain)

Book Review: The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot by Marianne Cronin

April 1, 2024March 31, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot
Publisher: Random House UK
Pub Date: 1 June 2021
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Panda Rating:

_{(4.5 pandas)}

📖 SYNOPSIS

Life is short.

No-one knows that better than seventeen-year-old Lenni. But as she is about to learn, it’s not only what you make of life that matters, but who you share it with.

Dodging doctor’s orders, she joins an art class where she bumps into fellow patient Margot, a rebel-hearted eight-three-year-old from the next ward. Their bond is instant as they realize that together they have lived an astonishing one hundred years.

To celebrate their shared century, they decide to paint their life stories: of growing old and staying young, of giving joy, of receiving kindness, of losing love, of finding the person who is everything.

As their friendship deepens, it becomes vividly clear that life is not done with Lenni and Margot yet.

An extraordinary friendship. A lifetime of stories. Their last one begins here.

⚠️ CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNINGS

Cancer, child death (recounted), war, PTSD, Alzheimer’s, death of loved ones

TL;DR: For some reason, I feel like this is an underrated book… It’s one of those reads that’ll pull on your heartstrings. It’s simple but beautifully written and packs quite an emotional punch. It’ll make you appreciate life and wonder at death, it’ll make you cry but it’ll also make you laugh and feel joy. It’s heartbreaking at the end—after all, it is set in a hospital and tells the story of two terminally ill people who form an unlikely friendship that spans their combined lifetime of 100 years. While the ending may be predictable and the story didn’t wow me with wild plot twists and turns, it did leave me with a sense of peace and gratitude.

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [227]

March 31, 2024March 31, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

We’re back with another Sundays in Bed With… meme! This meme dares to ask you what book has been in your bed this morning and is hosted by Midnight Book Girl. Come share what book you’ve spent your time reading in bed or wish you had time to read today!

I’ll be spending my Sunday night in bed with Last of the Talons by Sophie Kim. This is an overdue ARC that I had previously tried reading but couldn’t get into. I picked it up on the plane ride back to Jakarta and made decent progress! It’s interesting. I can’t figure out if it’s really YA or not cos it doesn’t necessarily read like it!

Let’s Talk Bookish: Do Tropes Count As Spoilers?

March 29, 2024March 29, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads16 Comments

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme created by Rukky @Eternity Books and hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits, and it’s where we get to discuss certain topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts! Check out the March 2024 Topics if you want to join in the bookish discussion fun.

This week’s topic is actually a Freebie so I’m doing last week’s topic and answering:

Do Tropes Count As Spoilers?

Prompts: A lot of the time, books will be promoted on social media books with their tropes. For example, a book might be advertised as being enemies to lovers, having found family, or starring a ‘chosen one’. Can those tropes be spoilers, giving away parts of the plot? What do you think about marketing books based on tropes?

#TopTenTuesday: Let’s Make It A Movie/Show! 🎬

March 26, 2024March 25, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads43 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is Movies/TV Shows That Would Have Made Amazing Books (Submitted by Sabrina @ Notes From a Paper Plane Nomad).

The Magical Readathon: Orilium Spring Equinox 2024

March 25, 2024April 1, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads26 Comments

Get excited—it’s almost time to return to the Orilium Academy for ✨The Magical Readathon: Orilium Spring Equinox 2024!✨

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, our lovely host G @Book Roast created this Beginners Guide to the Magical Readathon, just in case you’re interested in starting your own journey to Orilium!

As someone who’s generally terrible at completing reading challenges, this is one challenge I join without hesitation every year because not only is it very fun but it’s also very relaxed and low-key, which means less pressure and as a notorious mood reader, this makes it easy for me to keep up!

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [226]

March 24, 2024March 24, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

I’ll be spending the rest of my Sunday night in bed (hopefully) finishing The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. This is a pretty sad book and since I’ve (for some reason) been feeling a little more emo than usual lately, it has worked its way deep into my feelings and made me weepy a couple of times. 😂 I’m loving it though!

#FirstLinesFriday: 22 March 2024

March 22, 2024March 22, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

Fingers of mist curled around Bastien’s father as he walked away from his only child. The boy lifted up on his knees in their stalled handcart. “Where are you going, Papa?”
His father didn’t answer. The light of the full moon shone on Lucien’s chestnut hair, and the mist swallowed him from sight.”