Newbie – dinipandareads

Yay for my first Top Ten Tuesday! I’m excited to finally be spicing up my blog with more fun content, and I hope that I can keep it going every week. To be honest, I’m not so great with “Top Lists”. For some reason, seeing the call for top anything always freezes my brain. I also attribute that to my extremely shoddy memory 99.9% of the time, but let’s see how we go!

Today’s prompt is Audio Freebie (Any audio goes: audiobooks, music, podcasts, etc). I was going to post a Top 10 list of basically, all of the mentioned audio formats, but I decided to stick to Audiobooks. Since I haven’t actually listened to ten audiobooks yet, my list is going to be a combo of: Audiobooks that I love, that I’m currently listening to and that I’m looking forward to trying next!

LISTENED & LOVED

I’ve only managed to finish four audiobooks. That’s a very small portion of the many that I’ve accumulated in my Audible library, but I’ll get through them all eventually! The ones I’ve listened to didn’t disappoint me though, and I actually loved every minute of them!

1 Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. I am a huge Trevor Noah fan but I didn’t have any expectations when I chose this as my first audiobook. However, listening to Trevor Noah read us his life story was amazing–I laughed, I cried, I was shocked and appalled by some of the events in his life. I often found myself feeling mortified before bursting into laughter listening to some of the mischief he got up to as a kid. This was all around brilliant. If you want some relief, I highly recommend it!

2 Matchmaking for Beginners by Maddie Dawson. Perhaps the reason I fell so hard and quick for this book is because Joyce Bean voiced one of the characters; and if there’s any voice that can bring me comfort, it’s definitely hers! This was a cute little romantic-comedy of a book that had me feeling all the feels at the end. Amy McFadden does a wonderful job portraying the main character and I felt such an emotional connection with the characters, and I was rooting so hard for them all at the end. This was a sweet one!

3 The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. Who doesn’t love Neil Gaiman? His is a voice that I could listen to endlessly–I love the accent, I love how he pronounces words so eloquently and I love the cadences of his voice. I tried picking this one up as a book and I just couldn’t get into it, but the audiobook was great! I’m admittedly a wimp, so I thought this one was pretty creepy (how is it a book for kids?!), but it was also a fantastical story about a magical world, filled with the wickedest of monsters and demons, that lies just beyond the veil of our own.

4 Hunger: A Memoir of My Body by Roxane Gay. I recently reviewed Hunger on my blog and if you’ve read my post, you’ll know how much I loved it. Roxane Gay has such a soothing voice and listening to her tell her story was just like listening to a friend open up about all her intimate secrets. It’s also a fairly short listen, so I highly recommend it!

CURRENTLY LISTENING

5 Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz. The only thing I needed to know about this audiobook was that it’s narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Needless to say, I love him! LMM does such a fantastic job narrating all the characters (esp. Ari & Dante), and what makes it even better is that I can actually imagine his expressions when he’s narrating, and it’s awesome! The only reason I haven’t finished this yet is because audiobooks are l-o-n-g and I haven’t had the time to focus!

6 Becoming by Michelle Obama. This book is legendary in the bookstagram world. It’s so hyped up I’m a little scared to go into it, but there’s no way that I’m not reading it either. Michelle Obama has so much charisma and you can feel it when you listen to her narrate! I am waiting to get the physical book so I can follow along for this one.

7 I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara. I love true crime and I’ve been so excited to read this book! I started this but 1) it was too creepy to listen to when I got home at night after work, and 2) it’s so packed with details, it’s a little hard to follow at times. I think following along with the physical book is a must for this!

FUTURE LISTENS

8 Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James. This is another book that has gone through insane hype on bookstagram and while I’m honestly excited to read it, I’m also pretty intimidated by it. After listening to the excerpt, I already felt myself getting hooked, so I got it in the hopes that it would help me get through this epic fantasy!

9 The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I started reading the (physical) book in February but until now have yet to finish it. It’s not that I dislike it, I’ve actually really enjoyed it so far, it’s just that when I put it down, I don’t feel compelled to pick it up again. So, I’m hoping to finally finish the book along with the audio!

10 Milkman by Anna Burns. I’ve heard really mixed reviews about this book but when I listened to an excerpt of the audiobook I knew I had to get it. The narrator, Bríd Brennan, has a wonderful Irish accent and since this novel is set in Ireland (I think?) what better way is there to immerse yourself in the reading experience? I honestly didn’t want to stop listening to the excerpt and it has made me even more excited to read this book!

That’s a wrap folks! After writing this post, I realized once more just how “chatty” or wordy I am, so I hope that I haven’t bored you all to tears! 😂

Have you done a Top Ten Tuesday post? If you have, feel free to leave me a link in the comments and let’s chat!

This year, I’ve been trying to make an active effort in engaging more with the book community. This has definitely meant spending more time on #bookstagram, but I also wanted to start this blog to engage beyond Instagram. I have to admit, with a full time job and dealing with more mental health stress than in previous years, doing all of this has been a lot harder than I anticipated. I’ve been doing okay on the bookstagram front, but I’ve been struggling a lottle with the blog. Even though I’ve only been on the blogging scene for just under one month, and I’ve posted (very) sporadically, the more I think about creating daily content, the more I feel overwhelmed.

Lurking around the blogosphere, particularly WordPress, I realize that most people have been blogging for ages — and by that I mean they’ve been blogging for at least a few months, but most for several years! I see some bloggers posting twice per day, others every day, and I’m actually really amazed. I know there is a lot that I have to catch up on in the book blogging world, but I have zero clue where to start. There are certainly lots of book tag prompts that I see people posting about (i.e. WWW, TTT, Weekly Wrap Up etc.), and they sound like good, fun tags to follow and try, so maybe I will take some of those on and slowly increase my posts that way!

I thought I would also reach out to all the (book) bloggers out there — whether you’re a newbie or a veteran to blogging — how do you organize yourself with creating content/posts for your blog? Do you usually follow tags and where do you find them? Do you prepare all your posts for the week in one go or do you actually make time to sit down every day and post? I think these are the things that are overwhelming me the most right now. Especially finding the time to write with my full-time job and my need to unwind with a book after very long days sitting at the office! Any tips/tricks/pointers on making posts and content that’s engaging? Any advice you have to share would be MUCH appreciated!

By the way, I’d like to say a special thanks to all the bloggers who are already following me–it’s a small following but I didn’t think that there’d even be one person who’d be interested in reading what I have to say. Seriously. So, thank you. I absolutely love all the book spheres I’m part of (Instagram/FB/Blog)! 🥰