Have you heard the rumor around campus about the locker room? If you haven’t, let me enlighten you: Legend has it if you bring a girl into the sacred after-game domain of the baseball locker room, it will end with a walk down the aisle. One rowdy and naked encounter against the lockers with the girl of your dreams will make her your wife. Translation: baseball players are stupidly superstitious and believe the locker room has magical powers.
But not all baseball players are superstitious, me included. So when the girl I’ve fallen for brushes me off, I start to question if I need to switch my way of thinking. Maybe it’s time I finally hand out a coveted invitation to the locker room. The only question is, will she accept?
Ooh, I quite like this topic and I don’t think I’ve ever made a list of books that made me LOL before (although maybe I have and my memory is just that bad)! To be honest, I’m an easily amused person and I tend to laugh out loud quite a lot especially if something’s cheeky or cheesy. If you ask my family and friends they’ll tell you that I love to laugh, and usually at things people don’t often laugh at–not in an inappropriate way though, it just really doesn’t take much to get a full-on laugh out of me! I don’t even know where to begin with this list because I’m not kidding when I say that books make me LOL quite often! 😂 I looked through my 20/21 reads and I already have a list that’s overwhelmingly large, so to make it easy on myself I chose some books at random from the big list. These books didn’t just have me giggling, some of them had me breathless with laughter for a while! I do so love to laugh 😉
Hello Mondays, welcome back to #5OnMyTBR, a meme created by the wonderful E @ The Local Bee Hunter’s Nook. This bookish meme gets us to dig even further into our TBRs by simply posting about five books on our TBR! You can learn more about it here. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!
Welcome back to Goodreads Monday! It’s been a very hot minute since I did one but I figured I might as well get back into it! 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.*
*Sorry if a book has been featured twice. I need to make better note of which ones I’ve done already!
This week’s featured book is Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. This is a YA LGBTQ+ historical fiction that was released just last month (January 2021) and it has some a pretty high rating!
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 time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!
It’s 10:30PM on Sunday as I write this and I haven’t touched a book all day, but I plan to spend the rest of my evening before my sleeping pills kick in reading Mr Right Across the Street. This is for an upcoming blog tour and I’m really looking forward to diving into this sweet-sounding romance!
Mia Abbott’s move to Manchester was supposed to give her time and space from all the disastrous romantic choices she’s made in her past. But then the hot guy who lives opposite – the one who works out every day at exactly 10 a.m., not that Mia has noticed thank-you-very-much – starts leaving notes in his window…for her.
Bar owner Luke Doyle has his own issues to deal with but as he shows Mia the sites of her new city he also shows her what real romance looks like for the first time. And when he cooks up a signature cocktail in her honour, she realises that the man behind the bar is even more enticing than any of his creations. And once she’s had a taste she knows it will never be enough!
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 Family Relationship in the Title (Mother, Father, Daughter, Brother, etc.)
I was hoping this week’s list would be a good mix of family relationship titles but apparently the mothers, daughters, wives, and sisters are incredibly popular while there was a surprising dearth of titles with husband, father, and brother on both my TBR and read list! It’s funny, now that I think about it, it’s always about the woman and mostly in relation to the man? I actually never noticed this before and now I’m wondering why 🤔 In any case, I decided to focus my list on books with ‘daughter’ in the title since this relationship is the one that had the most hits on my TBR (which is usually the focus of my Top 5 lists)~! So on that note, here are five books that I’m looking forward to reading:
(SUGGESTED BY JILLIAN @ JILLIAN THE BOOKISH BUTTERFLY) Prompts: Do you have abibliophobia? Do you add books to your TBR to keep it big, or is it a place where you keep books that seem interesting? Do you have multiple TBRs? If you don’t have a TBR, how do you find your next read?
WHAT IS ABIBLIOPHOBIA AND DO I HAVE IT?
If you’re sitting there scratching your head and wondering what ‘abibliophobia‘ is and thinking that it sounds kinda scary, you’re definitely not alone!
‘Abibliophobia’ is the fear of running out of reading material.
This isn’t something I’ve ever thought about it but right off the bat, I’d say no, I don’t have a fear of running out of reading material. Aside from having a large bookshelf that’s comprised mostly of unread books, I’m also very lucky to be able to buy new (physical and digital) books when the mood strikes, thanks to having a well-paying job and also thanks not having any financial responsibilities outside of paying monthly rent and bills. I know I’m definitely lucky in this respect, especially since I come from a country that doesn’t have libraries or other public resources, and where imported books generally cost 2-3 times more than local books.
DO I ADD BOOKS TO MY TBR TO KEEP IT BIG OR IS IT A PLACE WHERE I KEEP BOOKS THAT SEEM INTERESTING?
Since joining the book community 2 years ago, my Goodreads TBR has grown at a frightening pace and I’m actually a bit embarrassed at times to admit that my list is 1,000+ books long. Yeah, you read that right. That said, my GR TBR is mostly full of books that I find interesting and that I want to keep my eye on, and they’re not necessarily books that I will ever end up reading or buying. I feel like I always have to make that distinction because I certainly don’t own even close to 1,000 books even after adding up my digital and physical bookshelves!
I also have a terrible memory so adding to books to my list really helps me when I’m looking to buy books and I can check back to see if I’ve already marked something or not. Short answer: I definitely don’t add to my TBR to keep it big, and in fact I really struggle to keep it small and need to get better at periodically culling the list! As I’ve said in previous posts, I have a semi-problematic relationship with that ‘want-to-read’ button–it’s just too easy to click! 😂
Do I HAVE MULTIPLE TBRs?
I have two TBRs: my Goodreads TBR, with all the books under the sun whether they’re owned or not, and my Owned TBR books that consist of the physical and digital books that I have in my personal library. That said, unlike my Goodreads TBR, I don’t actually *have* a catalogued list of all the books I own and one of my goals this year is to actually start the list (I haven’t yet)! Meep… 🙈 Surprisingly (or maybe not) I don’t always look to my TBR to see what I want to read next. I have a irritatingly bad habit of buying new books instead of reading the ones that I already own, and I know being able to do that is definitely a privilege, and this year I’m working hard to slow down the spending roll and tackling the many (many 😫) books on my shelves!
Do you have abibliophobia? Do you have multiple TBRs and how do you use them? If you don’t have a TBR, how do you find your next read?
Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly featurefor 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:
“As she woke up in bed, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file.”
Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?
There is a Wild Man who lives in the deep quiet of Greenhollow, and he listens to the wood. Tobias, tethered to the forest, does not dwell on his past life, but he lives a perfectly unremarkable existence with his cottage, his cat, and his dryads. When Greenhollow Hall acquires a handsome, intensely curious new owner in Henry Silver, everything changes. Old secrets better left buried are dug up, and Tobias is forced to reckon with his troubled past—both the green magic of the woods, and the dark things that rest in its heart.
It has been a super duper long ass hot minute since I did a tag or award post on a Thursday so I thought that it’s high time I kick my butt into gear and tackle some of these posts because the pile just keeps growing! I honestly still find it surprising when I get nominated because from the very beginning I never dreamed that it’d happen and to have bloggers that I really admire nominating me? *Mind blown!* So, I’m very sorry for taking forever and a year to get around to doing these tags! 🙏🏽 I have absolutely zero excuse I am just panda… 🐼
At some point in the very distant past I was nominated for the Liebster Award by Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog. Becky is one of my favourite bloggers who I’m so happy to have to discovered and interacted with more frequently over the last year. Her reviews are so insightful, her bookish posts are fun and creative and she’s such a sweet person! If you haven’t already, please check out her blog–you won’t regret it! 😉 Thanks for the nomination, lovely! 🥰
The Rules
Acknowledge the blog that gave it to you and display the award
Answer 11 questions that the blogger gives you
Give 11 random facts about yourself
Nominate 11 blogs and notify them of their nomination
Give these blogs 11 questions to answer
BECKY’s Questions
WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR FAVOURITE READ OF 2020 SO FAR?
Well… Since it’s 2021 now… 👀*crickets* 👀 I guess I get to share my favourite read of 2020 with all of you (again)! It’s no hardship because I can always gush about the amazingness that is this book but if you’ve been on my blog before you’ll definitely already know what I’m gonna say: The House in the Cerulean Sea! All I’m saying is, don’t be sleeping on this book cos you’re definitely missing out! 😍
WHAT GOT YOU INTERESTED IN BLOGGING IN THE FIRST PLACE?
I’ve always been a blogger and prior to starting this book blog I had a personal blog for about 10 years? My interest in starting a book blog happened after I joined bookstagram, and I thought it’d be fun to have a space where I could share reviews and engage more with the bookish community. I wrote a bit more about it in this post(sorry for the shameless self-plug, I couldn’t resist) if you want to check it out! 😉
IF YOU COULD MOVE TO A LITERARY WORLD WHICH WOULD IT BE AND WHY?
I suck at answering questions like this but the first one that popped into my mind was the supernatural world that exists in parallel to our own from Amari and the Night Brothers. This world was all kinds of wonderful and scary but also magical! It’d be so amazing to have a supernatural ability like these characters do.
WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE KIND OF BLOG POST TO WRITE?
If you haven’t noticed, a lot of my book blog is about the weekly memes like #5OnMyTBR, #TopTenTuesday and #Top5Saturday that involve making bookish lists and honestly? I love doing them! Sure, it’s not the most creative content but it’s definitely a lot of fun, especially when I rediscover books on my TBR that I’d long forgotten! 🙈
WHAT IS ONE BOOK/SERIES THAT YOU’RE CONSTANTLY RECOMMENDING?
There are SO MANY that I can’t stop gushing about and from different genres, too. I mean, I could easily say The House in the Cerulean Sea (again…) but a fun series that I love is the Illuminae Files and I always recommend it when someone asks for YA SFF/fun book recs! This came to mind cos I’m planning to re-read it soon!
ARE THERE ANY LITERARY TROPES THAT YOU LOVE/HATE?
There are so many tropes and it’s a terminology that I only became aware about when I joined the book community–I used to just ‘read to read because I enjoyed it’. There are several that I feel strongly enough about to love/hate. Some I absolutely do not jam with are: love triangles, insta-love, forced romances, ‘not-like-other-girls’, the super special chosen ones who are miraculously good at everything after one try… Some tropes I love are: found family, underdogs, quests, enemies-to-lovers, ‘there’s-only-one-bed’ (most times), friends-to-lovers…
DO YOU SNACK WHILST READING? AND IF SO, WHAT IS YOUR GO TO TREAT?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I usually make sure I have a drink with me (mostly coffee, sometimes milk tea)! Most of the time I snack with cookies or crisps. Something I’ve been obsessed with lately is the Flaming Hot Munchies snack mix. It’s dangerous, my friends. I can’t get enough (and they’re so easy to munch on while reading)!
DO YOU HAVE ANY HOBBIES OUTSIDE OF READING?
Outside of reading I love gaming! I feel like that’s so cliché but it is what it is! Since the start of the pandemic I have been obsessively playing Animal Crossing but I also love playing Story of Seasons, Bravely Default, Fire Emblem, Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, FF7, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima…. And so many others!
Oof, this question always stumps me! Part of me is tempted to say I’d pick the longest book on my TBR (Les Mis) cos at least I’ll have ample time to read it? 😅 I think in the end though I’d have to pick from my all time favourites and would probably take either my giant collection of seven Jane Austen novels or The Shadow of the Wind.
DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS? (IF YES, PICS AND NAMES REQUIRED!)
Tripper on my his reading chair
Cookie monster
Trip likes to nap here often and hates being disturbed
I have two fluffy babies, who are technically no longer babies as they’re now both 11, but will still always be my babies. Their names are Tripper and Cookie. Cookie is more my ‘sisters’ dog though Tripper, my floof monster, is more mine! Both are really camera shy but Cookie more so than Tripper so I don’t have many shots of him…
IF YOU COULD HAVE ONE 2021 RELEASE IN YOUR HANDS RIGHT NOW WHAT WOULD IT BE?
Hmm… Another toughie because just ONE? There are loads! Honestly, the first one that came to mind, and one I’ve been highly anticipating for quite some time, is The Heart Principle. Pretty sure I’ve come across this question a few times and my answer has always been the same 😂 I just really want Quan’s story now, please!
MY Questions
What has been your favourite read of 2021 so far?
What genre(s) would you like to read less of?
What’s a book that you wish you could read again for the first time?
What trope do you wish you’d stop seeing/reading in books?
If you could choose for any book or series to be adapted for TV/movie, which would it be?
Can you describe your current read in three words?
How long have you been blogging and what makes you keep blogging?
Would you survive in the world of your last read? (For curiosity’s sake, what was the world?)
What hyped book do you think is overrated?
What underrated book do you think deserves more hype?
If you could gift one book for anyone to read, which would it be and why?
I’M TAGGING:
A few lovelies here but if tags aren’t your thing then please don’t feel pressured to do this! It’s all good 🙂
dinipandareads 