#WWWWednesday: 15 January

January 15, 2020January 20, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads16 Comments

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?

I don’t know what’s going on so far this year but I’m not reading half as much as I’d normally do. Since last Wednesday I’ve only managed to finish two books and one was a eARC of a graphic novel that I read yesterday. I finally finished my re-read of Scythe and contrary to what my slow reading pace would indicate, I did enjoy it just as much as the first time I read it.

Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) by Neal Shusterman ★★★★½
Like I said, I loved this re-read. The world building blew me away and the characters really grew on me. I thought it would be difficult to imagine a world where mortality is a thing of the past but Shusterman builds it up nicely and we learn more about it through chapters split with journal entries and various POVs. My little twisted cinnamon roll, Rowan, is by far my favorite character but I loved Scythes Faraday and Curie almost as much! I loved that Shusterman makes you think about how maybe immortality isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Check out my full review!

(eARC) Doctor Mirage (2019) by Magdalene Visaggio, Nick Robles ★★★★☆
I’ve never actually read a superhero comic and maybe that’s why I enjoyed this one so much. The name Doctor Mirage rang a small bell in my head but I really went into it blind and not knowing what to expect. I loved the illustration style and colour combination of the story; much of our time in the other world felt a bit like what I’d imagine an acid trip would be like! 🤣 There was a slight cliffhanger of an ending to continue the series but this can also be read as a standalone as the main conflict and storyline was nicely resolved. Review coming soon!

#TopTenTuesday: Best Bookish Discoveries of 2019

January 14, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads37 Comments

It’s that time of the week again, friends! We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: bookish discoveries I made in 2019 (these could be books, authors, blogs, websites, apps, products etc.).

I know I’m sounding like a broken record every time I say that 2019 was an insane bookish year but it really was. The number of bookish discoveries were plentiful, which makes choosing a focus for this week just a little tough. In the end, I decided to share a random mix of a very small number of my new favourite things!

Year of the Asian 2020 Reading Challenge Announcement & Possibility Pile

January 14, 2020March 15, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads19 Comments

I was waffling on whether I wanted to join this challenge but then I finally caved because #FOMO and I really just want to read more of the Asian authors that exist on my shelves. Seeing as one of my main bookish goals this year is to also read diversely I thought it’d be perfect to join The Year of the Asian 2020 Reading Challenge to hold myself accountable! #YARC is hosted by CW @ The Quiet Pond, Vicky @ Vicky Who Reads, Shealea @ Shut Up, Shealea and Lily @ Sprinkles of Dreams and the idea of it is pretty simple: read as many books written by Asian authors as you can! These books can be backlist titles (i.e. released in 2019 or earlier), new releases, and ARCs, and they can be books of any genre, format, and length. You can find out more information and sign up here.

There are quite a few levels that you can aim for (including a panda!) and I’ve decided to aim for the Indian Cobra (11-20 books). I have a surprising amount of books written by Asian authors just sitting on my shelves and I don’t really have a reason for why I haven’t read them yet, so I’m more than happy to have a great reason to prioritise them now. Here’s what I got:

Young Adult

Adult

I know I have other books by Asian authors sitting on my book shelf but I can’t recall them off the top of my head right now. But I think this is a pretty solid list of 20 to start with. I hope that I’ll be able to get my ass in gear and read all of these–I know some have been languishing on my shelves for way. too. long. #forshame. On that note, I’ll post my progress on my monthly Reading Challenge Updates post that I’ve literally just this second decided to schedule. Hopefully I’ll already have something to update by the end of this month!

Are you participating in the Year of the Asian 2020 Reading Challenge too?
Do we have any of the same books to read? What’s on your list?

Down the TBR Hole – 12

January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads17 Comments

It’s 2020 and I’m back with my first Down the TBR Hole post of the year! As of right now, my Goodreads TBR is a whopping 1,052 books and I thought I’d make it clear that just because it’s on my Goodreads TBR doesn’t actually mean all these books are on my physical or Kindle shelves (I wish I could afford to own that many books)! With that out of the way, I’m hoping to start the year off strong and boot a few more books off my list. Let’s see how I do today!

Down the TBR Hole is a weekly book meme created by the wonderful Lia @ Lost in a Story that attempts to organize our ridiculously long Goodreads TBR list by choosing either to keep or eliminate the books we’ve saved on there. Here’s how it works:

Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
Order on ascending date added.
Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
Read the synopses of the books
Decide: keep it or should it go

Verdict: Keep

Goodreads Monday – Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

January 13, 2020January 26, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

It’s the first Goodreads Monday of 2020, friends! This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and it invites you to pick a book from your TBR and explain why you want to read it. Easy enough, right? Feel free to join in if you want to! I’ll be using a random number generator to pick my books from my insanely long GR Want-to-read list.

This week’s book is Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. I think this is a pretty well known novel that was originally published in 1979 and is classified as a mix of historical fiction and science fiction (time travel)! I added it to my Goodreads TBR in January 2018. On Goodreads it has an impressive 4.24 average stars with 80k+ ratings and 9k+ reviews.

#ARMEDWITHABINGO Announcement & Possibility Pile

January 13, 2020February 6, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

This year I also joined the #ARMEDWITHABINGO reading challenge hosted by Kriti and Ariel @ Armed with a Book. I thought this sounded cool as it’s a personalised book bingo challenge with regular check-ins, book giveaways, guest posts and more! The challenge has 24 prompts that require individual books for each square (except for the book over 500 pages long, which counts for two!) and it runs throughout the year.

The sign up is open until 15 March, so if this sounds like a fun challenge to you, head on over to their page and let’s BINGO! 😃

So what’s in the bingo? My personalised card below has all the prompts:

I know my announcement is coming in pretty late into January *cough* so I’ve actually managed to already cross of four of the squares so I’m just a tiny bit closer to bingo 🤣

A book in the middle of a series
A book from the last decade (2010-2019)
A young adult novel
A dystopian novel

I still haven’t figured out the books I’m reading for all of the prompts but I do have some ideas. Part of me wants to just “wing it” and see if what I read throughout the year will fit any of the prompts, but that attitude is what caused me to bomb hard last year? So I’ve already started identifying options for some of the prompts 😅 Consider this my mostly “loose” possibility pile. Since I’m trying to cut down on spending most of these are books I already have on my shelves–though I’ma be nice to myself and allow for some of this years’ releases because I mean… I’m only human riiiiiiight? 😬

A book that’s published in 2020
An anthology or poetry collection
A book that a friend recommends
A book that has a number in the title
A fantasty/science fiction

A book by an Indie author
A book with a beautiful cover
A book you saw someone else reading
A book which was gifted/borrowed
A book longer than 500 pages (2 spaces!)

I’ll be sharing progress updates for this along with all the other challenges I’m doing this year in a monthly reading challenges recap post, so be on the look out to see if I’ve managed to cross any other boxes by the end of this month!

Are you joining this reading challenge too? What do you think of my choices? Do you have any suggestions for any of these spaces that you think I must read?

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [38]

January 12, 2020December 4, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads8 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 been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

Today I spent the day in bed re-reading Thunderhead (Arc of Scythe #2) by Neal Shusterman. I’m eager to continue on with this series so that I can finally read The Toll! My memory is so bad but all I remember is feeling heartbroken after I finished this book when I read it a few years back. It was wonderful and painful 😂

Rowan has gone rogue, and has taken it upon himself to put the Scythedom through a trial by fire. Literally. In the year since Winter Conclave, he has gone off-grid, and has been striking out against corrupt scythes—not only in MidMerica, but across the entire continent. He is a dark folk hero now—“Scythe Lucifer”—a vigilante taking down corrupt scythes in flames.

Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?

ARC Apocalypse Announcement & TBR

January 12, 2020January 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads12 Comments

As I mentioned in my bookish and blogging goals, I’ve joined quite a few challenges this year! Last year I (very loosely) joined one year-long challenge outside from Goodreads and that was the 2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge. I was complete trash at keeping track of what I read and basically gave up before I even started. That was fun 🙄 I guess I must be feeling more optimistic in 2020 because I joined a whopping FIVE challenges, and first up is the ARC Apocalypse!

This challenge was created by Destiny @ Howling Libraries in an effort to tackle those ARCs! And what’s better than tackling these reads with a bunch of other book lovers with the same goal, right? There are fun chats and buddy reads if you don’t think you can go it alone. Head on over to Destiny’s page (linked above) to find out more and join the challenge! I’ve mentioned it before but as an international book blogger I unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) don’t get as much access to all the reads on NetGalley, Edelweiss and from publishers, so my overall list isn’t as long as everyone else’s. Still, there are a few 2020 titles I’d like to stay on top of . but most importantly there are quite a few overdue titles I want to finish this year! Here are my current stats:

2020 eARCs: 12
Overdue eARCs: 10

Ten overdue titles doesn’t look so bad right? But overdue is overdue and there’s no making excuses! My game plan is to prioritise my 2020 deadlines (while I’m still ahead of the game!) and alternate with reading the overdue titles. Sounds doable. Seeing as these have deadlines this is going to be my actual TBR for the coming months (January-early March):

~~After some thought I think I’ll be sharing my progress at the end of every three months along with what’s next on my TBR for the following three months~~*. I hope that my progress will basically be me saying: I’VE READ THEM ALL! 😍

*After some more thinking I decided to share a monthly progress updates for all my challenges, so you’ll be getting an update from me soon! I still hope that I’ll have made some progress 😂

Are you also joining ARC Apocalypse?
How do you plan to tackle your ARCs?

Top 5 Saturday: Books Over 5 Years Old

January 11, 2020January 12, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

I skipped last week’s prompt because I wasn’t feeling it but I’m back this week for another Top 5 Saturday, a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books. This week’s topic is: books over five years old! Unless it’s a new release, I don’t usually pay attention to publication dates but thank goodness for handy dandy Goodreads because now I can look at what books were released before 2015 that are high on my TBR. I’m going to try to pick one book for each year so let’s see what we have:

2014

I’ve been wanting to read this one for a while now. It sounds so interesting and I love the cover!

Scythe (Arc of a Scythe #1) by Neal Shusterman – #BookReview

January 11, 2020January 11, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

Goodreads: Scythe
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopia
Panda Rating:

Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery. Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes are the only ones who can end life—and they are commanded to do so, in order to keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of failure could mean losing their own.

Having just finished my first re-read of Scythe I’m reminded of just how much I freaking love this series. I didn’t write a review after the first time I read the book and there was actually a lot that I actually forgot (not surprising considering my trash memory). In a way it kind of felt like I was reading it for the first time and wow, it was just as crazy a ride as the first time!

“The growth of civilization was complete. Everyone knew it. When it came to the human race, there was no more left to learn. Nothing about our own existence to decipher. Which meant that no one person was more important than any other. In fact, in the grand scheme of things, everyone was equally useless.”