Top 5 Saturday: Books with Diverse Characters

April 3, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads20 Comments

Welcome back to another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: books with diverse characters.

Well, this is gonna be tough because I can pick way more than five books with diverse characters off my TBR, and I’m looking forward to reading all of them soon! In recent years, I’ve made an active effort to diversify my reads because I realised that many of the books I had access to in the main bookstores in Indonesia tended to feature mostly white authors writing white characters. I also never questioned what I was reading and never actively sought out diverse reads—well, not anymore! It has been amazing to read more stories with characters of different ethnicities, nationalities, religions, LGBTQ+ and abilities in contemporaries, romances, and even SFF and I can’t wait to read even more in the future! For this prompt I decided to focus on books with Asian characters because I love to see the Asian rep! So without further ado, here are five books with diverse characters that I’m really excited for.

First Lines Friday – 02 April

April 2, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads7 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:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a brilliant idea, conceived and executed by a clever young woman, must be claimed by a man.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#TopTenTuesday: Places in Books I’d Love to Live!

March 30, 2021August 12, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads26 Comments

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Places In Books I’d Love to Live

I honestly thought that this topic would be much easier than it ended up being but that could possibly be because I am dead exhausted right now but of course, I can never plan posts ahead 😂 We also don’t need to read me harping on in this post so I’m gonna keep it as short and sweet as possible! Most of these places are fantastical/fictional worlds but some places are real and they’re on my bucket list to at least visit in this lifetime! Also, there’s a very good chance that I’d die very quickly in most of these worlds but … they’re also too amazing to pass up. Without further ado, here are ten places I’d love to live in!

Top 5 Saturday: Books Set in the Desert

March 27, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads23 Comments

I’ve missed a couple Saturday posts but last week’s topic was love triangles and I would’ve struggled hard to have come up with any books cos love triangles are not my jam. It is one of my most hated tropes because the angst is so real and I’m not for that. But I digress! I’m glad be back and posting for today’s desert prompt. All of these are on my TBR although I’ve heard great things about the books and am looking forward to checking them out. They’re all (unsurprisingly) of the fantasy genre and surprisingly, none of them are retellings of the one thousand and one nights (at least I don’t think so but please let me know in the comments if I’m wrong)! I’m not particularly fussed about desert settings–I don’t seek out books with this setting but I also don’t mind reading stories set in the desert. Admittedly, I can actually only recall one desert fantasy and that’s The Kinder Poison (which is awesome and I would highly recommend btw)! On that note, here are five books with desert settings that I’d love to read (soonish):

First Lines Friday – 26 March

March 26, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

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:

“There’s blood on my hands, blood between my toes, blood speckled in my hair. It’s splashed across my chest, and to my horror, I can taste a few droplets on my lips.
There’s far too much of it staining the kitchen’s polished floors. No one can survive that much blood loss, not even the monster at my feet.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#TopTenTuesday: I Liked It… But I Can’t Remember Much About It…

March 23, 2021August 12, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads21 Comments

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Books I Really Liked but Can’t Remember Anything/Much About

Today’s topic is actually books with funny titles but I wasn’t feeling it so I’ve decided to go rogue and do prompt #374 (just for reference today’s prompt is somewhere in the 540s!) from 2018.

I go on about how my memory really fails me a lot and well, it’s true. Prior to writing reviews and having a book blog, I read a lot of popular titles that I remember loving at the time but that I cannot for the life of me remember much about now. There are books I read maybe 5-6 years ago? I mean, you’d think that since I loved them so much, enough to rate them 4-5 stars, I’d remember more about them right? So very wrong. 😂 I’d probably be able to tell you the gist of what happens and maybe even something of what I loved about the book but if you ask me about plot or character specifics, it’s very likely I’ll draw a blank! There are maybe one or two titles on here that I remember more bits about but I think if I were to pick any of these up again it might almost be like reading them for the first time (maybe, almost, likely)! On that note… Here are the books!

#TopTenTuesday: Spring Possibility Pile!

March 16, 2021August 12, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads30 Comments

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Books On My Spring 2021 TBR.

Oh, how wonderful would it be to experience spring… 🤔 I miss having four seasons, but I digress! If you’re not new to my blog you know by now that I don’t do TBRs, rather I try to stick with possibility piles (and even then they don’t go 90% of the time lol)! That said, it’s always fun to think of the books that I want to read soon, and actually, a few of these are blog tour reads, buddy reads, and ARCs so I *will* be reading them soon enough! Needless to say, I’m super excited for all of these titles 😍 And on that note, here are the reads I’m hoping to pick up in the coming month(s):

First Lines Friday – 12 March

March 13, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads2 Comments

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:

“I saw my mother raise a man from the dead. “It still didn’t help him much, my love,” she told me. But I saw her do it all the same. That’s how I knew she was magic.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#TopTenTuesday: Cutting Down That Backlist!

March 9, 2021August 12, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads44 Comments

So, we’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt is: Spring Cleaning Freebie (for example, books you’re planning to get rid of for whatever reason, books you’d like to clean off your TBR by either reading them or deciding you’re not interested, books that feel fresh and clean to you after winter is over, etc.)

I’m sure many of you can relate when I say that I have a ton of backlist books that have been sat on my physical and digital shelves for quite some time. Many have been on countless “I want to read this one very soon” lists over the years and continue to be on those lists even until today (literally). One of my goals this year is to focus less on buying all the new books thanks to FOMO and instead focus on the many–the very very many–of my already owned and unread books. I know I tend to say that a lot on my blog posts but this year I am a determined bull. I will get this done *picture that kid with the determined face and raised fist here* 😉 So without further ado, here are ten backlist books that I am definitely going to read this year (and I’ll be focusing on titles that I don’t mention as often as other more popular ones)!

Top 5 Saturday: Books I’d Gift Others!

March 7, 2021June 23, 2021 Dini @ dinipandareads22 Comments

This prompt has made me realise that… I’ve never really been gifted books before! Hmm… 🤔 I mean, I’ve won giveaways, I’ve had books given to me based on request but I’ve only received a book as a gift three times that I can recall. I’m finding that a little hard to believe and we know my memory is terrible, but I really can’t think of any other times other than a random Secret Santa (Doctor Zhivago), a random “you-like-to-read?!” gift from a family friend (Catch-22), and a summer reunion gift from my bestie (a Nora Roberts book)! That’s a little sad…? LOL, but I digress! 😂 Since it is what it is, I’ve decided to focus today’s post on five books I’d love to gift people! Most of these will come as no surprise to many since I’ve gushed about these books quite often but I’d love for others to also experience the magic of these books ❤️