Goodreads Monday – NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

March 23, 2020March 23, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads20 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 NOS4A2 by Joe Hill. It’s easy to forget this book has been around for a few years considering it got a lot of hype last year and that’s how I discovered it in the first place. This horror/thriller has a 4.07 star average with 92.6k+ ratings and 11.1k+ reviews, which is pretty great!

First Lines Friday – 20 March

March 20, 2020March 18, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads19 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:

“As Sancia Grado lay facedown in the mud, stuffed underneath the wooden deck next to the old stone wall, she reflected that this evening was not going at all as she had wanted.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Reading Habits Book Tag

March 20, 2020October 22, 2024 Dini @ dinipandareads21 Comments

I was recently tagged to do the Reading Habits Book Tag*. For some reason, I’ve been distractable AF all of today so I thought I would do a short, fun and easy book tag and this one seemed to fit the bill! Thanks for the tag, Leah 😘

*This tag was originally created by TheBookJazz.

#TopTenTuesday: Spring Possibility Pile!

March 17, 2020March 17, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads48 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: spring ~~TBR~~ possibility pile!

To say that I’ve got a ton of eARCs that need to be read over the next few months would really be a mild understatement. Why do I keep requesting more books and why do I keep signing up for more blog tours after telling myself I’d take a nice long break from it for a while? *shrugs* I got problems. As fun as it’d be to list all those books here, there are a few others that have been sitting on my TBR that I’d like to get to soon as well, so this is my possibility pile for those reads!

First Lines Friday – 13 March

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads7 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:

“Most of life’s defining moments happen unexpectedly; sometimes they slide past you completely unnoticed until afterwards, if at all.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Would You Rather – Bookish Edition

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads27 Comments

I’ve been tagged by the wonderful Mani @ Mani’s Book Corner to do this post towards the end of last year and I’m finally getting around to it now! (Oops, sorry, I’m drowning in backlogged tags lol) Y’know, this type of post looks easy AF to do but for someone who’s notoriously bad at making decisions and who worries over the little things until they become big things, this took me much longer than expected to answer 😂 I always underestimate how my mind can kick off with its thoughts!

The Rules:

Answer the questions given to you by your nominator.
Make up your own questions and tag others.
Sounds easy, right? Well, let’s see…!

Would you rather have to read the last chapter of every new book first, or never read the last chapter?

Well, there are plenty of factors to consider here and one of the most important ones for me being an international blogger is $$$. I don’t have access to libraries in Indonesia (welp) so that means the majority of what I read, I have to buy! I just don’t know if I’ll always be rolling in the deep for the rest of my life so it’s gotta be standalones.

Would you rather have someone ruin the ending of a book for you or never finish a book you were reading?

Oh snap! I think… I’d rather have someone ruin the ending of a book for me than not know how it ends at all. OR BETTER YET: I’d rather never finish a book I was reading but have someone “ruin” the ending by telling me what happens. That totally counts, right?! 😏

Would you rather lose your place or get a paper cut every time you read a book?

OMG NO! I’d much rather lose my place than suffer the pain of a paper cut, thanks! 😅

Would you rather be friends with Hermione Granger or Matilda?

I would choose teenage Hermione towards the end of the series. As fun as it’d be to befriend Matilda, I think I could have a much better time with Hermione, especially as she’ll be closer in age at least to me 😅

Would you rather wait five years for the final installment in a series or get it now, but must read every spoiler before you can start reading it?

Oh, tough! Well, considering how many years I’ve been waiting for the final instalment of The Kingkiller Chronicles…. Lol I mean, it’s been SO LONG since the second book came out and although I’m impatient for the final, I’ve also been doing pretty well on holding out for the goods 🤣 so I think I’d survive waiting five years for a final instalment!

Would you rather reread your least favorite book monthly or never be able to read your favorite book again?

I’m really not much of a re-reader in the first place because I’m always wary about whether my thoughts/feelings on a book will change between reads. So I know this is gonna sound crazy but I’d pick never being able to read my favourite book again! 😱

Would you rather read in an isolated cabin that was infested with spiders or in a noisy coffee shop with bad music?

You lost me at isolated cabin but then you throw spiders into the mix and it’s just a completely big fabulously fat NO. I don’t care how distracted I’d get and how annoying the music would be, I’d always pick that noisy coffee shop over that nightmare 😂

Would you rather have the ability to read minds, but never able to read another book or live as you are now and keep reading?

Yeah, as cool as reading minds might seem, I would be so sad if I never got to read another book so I’ll keep living as I am now, thanks!

Would you rather read a novel based on a true story of someone you know or a fictional novel where a character is based on you?

Ooh, this is a great question! I think I’d be interesting to read a fiction with a character based on me! I don’t know if this sounds really weird but I think it’d be interesting to see how an author would perceive me and my experiences and write me into a book! 😂 I hope that doesn’t sound conceited!

Would you rather have a book where anything you write in it becomes true or have a book that contains all the knowledge of the universe?

Um, yes to the first please! I would obviously make sure that only positive things go into that book so that they’ll come true! Imagine all the amazing and wonderful things you could do for everyone and for mother earth?! It’d be amazing!

Now is the part where I cheat because I know I’m meant to make my own questions but I really enjoyed answering these ones, so I’m going to stick with them (hope you don’t mind, Mani)! Tagging a few people below but no worries if tags aren’t your jam! Also, even if you’re not tagged but want to do this, please do and don’t forget to tag back so I can check out your answers! 🙂

E @ LocalBeeHunter
Sammie @ The Writerly Way
Leah @ Leah’s Books and Cooks
Andie @ Books, Coffee & Passion
Joanna @ The Geekish Brunette

The Deep Blog Tour: Review & Favourite Quotes

March 12, 2020March 12, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Hello, friends! I’m back with another The Fantastic Flying Book Club blog tour today and this time it’s for The Deep! Every time I get picked to be part of any FFBC blog tour I die a little bit inside out of pure happiness because it’s always such a privilege 🥰 Huge thanks to FFBC for organising these amazing tours and to the authors as well for making the eARCs available to us.

Be sure to click on the banner above to see the other bloggers on tour! 😊

The Deep
Publisher: Transworld Digital
Release date: 10 March 2020
Genre: Historical Fiction, Horror, Mystery/Thriller

Panda Rating:

Someone, or something, is haunting the Titanic.

This is the only way to explain the series of misfortunes that have plagued the passengers of the ship from the moment they set sail: mysterious disappearances, sudden deaths. Now suspended in an eerie, unsettling twilight zone during the four days of the liner’s illustrious maiden voyage, a number of the passengers – including millionaires Madeleine Astor and Benjamin Guggenheim, the maid Annie Hebbley and Mark Fletcher – are convinced that something sinister is going on . . . And then, as the world knows, disaster strikes.

Years later and the world is at war. And a survivor of that fateful night, Annie, is working as a nurse on the sixth voyage of the Titanic’s sister ship, the Britannic, now refitted as a hospital ship. Plagued by the demons of her doomed first and near fatal journey across the Atlantic, Annie comes across an unconscious soldier she recognises while doing her rounds. It is the young man Mark. And she is convinced that he did not – could not – have survived the sinking of the Titanic . . .

#TopTenTuesday: Authors I Follow on Social Media

March 10, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads38 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: authors who have a fun social media presence.

I almost skipped this week’s TTT for the first time since joining in weekly because I honestly don’t follow that many authors on my social media accounts? Not for any particular reason other than the fact that I just don’t? 🤷🏻‍♀️ I think there’s only one author who I follow religiously on all platforms I’m on and he’ll be at the top of my list. There are a few other authors whose tweets I do enjoy reading whenever they come up on my feed though so they’ll be making up my list for today!

First Lines Friday – 06 March

March 6, 2020March 6, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads13 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:

“Sweet sixteen is when the claws come out. We’re all flash tonight. Jenny and Summer and Mads and me. Vodka and heels that we could never quite walk in before, but tonight we can.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

February Monthly Wrap Up!

March 5, 2020March 4, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads19 Comments

February was a month 🤯 My health issues continued to plague me but after seemingly endless rounds of medication, I’m starting to finally feel semi-human again. I’ve just felt constantly drained of energy the whole time but I had to push through especially since I also moved houses and did the majority of the cleaning and packing myself. I really need to start taking on Marie Kondo habits into my life and minimise (next time)! But I digress… Despite all the craziness this month I managed to read 22 books, mostly thanks to the crazy romance reading challenge I set for myself during Valentine’s week.