Top 5 Saturday: 2021 Releases

December 26, 2020December 25, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads26 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: 2021 Releases.

Unlike last year when I spent a good amount of time populating my 2020 releases list on Goodreads, I haven’t really done much of that this year so I know that what’s on my radar is fairly limited to mostly romance and some YA fantasy. These are the two genres I read most of anyway but I know I’m still missing out on *a lot* of what’s coming out next year, so I can’t wait to get caught up with that in the coming week as work slows down and I have more “free” time 😉 But I digress… Here are some books that made it onto my radar and that I’m stupid excited for!

First Lines Friday – 25 December

December 25, 2020December 25, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

🎄 Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all friends who celebrate! 🎄

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:

“I’ve never understood why the heart always reacts. A shot of adrenaline is all it takes, triggered by a thought. A word. A memory. And every time the reaction is singular, a fingerprint of a moment.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#TopTenTuesday: Books I Hope Santa Brings

December 22, 2020December 22, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads35 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 Hope Santa Brings

The only reason this top ten list will be difficult is because I have to limit myself to just ten 😂 Kidding, I’m not trying to be greedy but I mean, c’mon, it’s books! We all know the feeling about limiting ourselves…. Right? 🙃 But I digress… Most of these are books that I haven’t read yet but would love to add to my TBR but there are a few that I’ve read digitally and want to add to my physical shelves. Since my family and I don’t celebrate Christmas, I’ll be my own Santa and I’ll probably end up buying these at some point in the hopefully near future. It’s good to have a list organised already for when the time comes 😉

#5OnMyTBR: Winter Love!

December 22, 2020December 21, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

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 or in the post announcing it. You can find the full list of prompts (past and future) at the end of this post!

This week’s prompt is: Winter Celebrations.

Goodreads Monday – Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston

December 21, 2020December 21, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads17 Comments

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 Among the Beasts & Briars by Ashley Poston. This is a fairy tale inspired YA fantasy that was published in October 2020 and has a 3.88 rating on Goodreads with 600+ reviews.

Top 5 Saturday: Celebrity Authors!

December 19, 2020December 19, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

I’m not really sure what this week’s prompt means with ‘famous authors’ but I’ve decided to interpret it as literal famous authors, so celebrities and the like! Most of these are memoirs that I’ve been looking forward to for a while, especially JVN’s because while he can be so extra sometimes, I absolutely love him to death! I’m also really looking forward to checking out the poetry book on this list as I’m a big Halsey fan. 🥰 So without further ado, let’s get to it!

(book covers are linked to the Goodreads pages!)

First Lines Friday – 18 December

December 18, 2020December 18, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads10 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:

“We came to Birchwood Manor because Edward said that it was haunted. It wasn’t, not then, but it’s a dull man who lets truth stand in the way of a good story, and Edward was never that.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

#TopTenTuesday: December’s Likely Possibility Pile

December 15, 2020December 15, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads36 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 Winter 2020-2021 TBR (or summer if you live in the southern hemisphere)!

I’m generally terrible with TBRs and tend to half-stick to possibility piles but 2020 has seen my moods become even wilder and whackier than normal, which has resulted in me straying from all the books that I think I possibly want to read over a given period. As much as I have been reading, its still been a tough year for the books 😂 I can’t believe the year is already coming to an end and well, a lot of my bookish reading plans this year kind of got thrown to the wayside! While this prompt does include 2021, I’m focusing on December specifically as I have a few titles that I think I want to read before the year ends… But (again) it’ll depend on my mood when it comes time to pick them up! So here are some possible possibilities for the pile and yes, I’m probably being more than a little ambitious! 😜

#5OnMyTBR: Animals

December 15, 2020December 14, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads9 Comments

This week’s prompt is: Animals.

Goodreads Monday – The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees

December 14, 2020December 14, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads5 Comments

*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 The Waking Forest by Alyssa Wees. This is a YA paranormal fantasy that was published in 2019 and has a 3.35 rating on Goodreads with 300+ reviews. Hmm… Not that great?