Tag: TBR

Goodreads Monday – 19 August

Dini @ dinipandareads5 Comments

We’re back with another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners that 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’re feeling it!

The random number generator landed on book #470 so this week’s book is: Dry by Neal Shusterman & Jarrod Shusterman. I’m a little shocked/embarrassed to admit that I added this book to my GR TBR in September 2018, and since that time I’ve added another whopping 400+ books to my list! HOW INSANE?! I don’t own all the books on my list (thankfully 😅) but I think my fingers might be a little quick on the “Add to” list because that’s a ridiculous number of books!

When the California drought escalates to catastrophic proportions, one teen is forced to make life and death decisions for her family in this harrowing story of survival. The drought—or the Tap-Out, as everyone calls it—has been going on for a while now. Everyone’s lives have become an endless list of don’ts: don’t water the lawn, don’t fill up your pool, don’t take long showers. Until the taps run dry. Suddenly, Alyssa’s quiet suburban street spirals into a warzone of desperation; neighbors and families turned against each other on the hunt for water. And when her parents don’t return and her life—and the life of her brother—is threatened, Alyssa has to make impossible choices if she’s going to survive.

Why do I want to read it?

I’ve only read Neal Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series but I loved it so much that I knew that I wanted to read more by him! When I read the synopsis for Dry, it sounded really intriguing and frighteningly enough, this scenario isn’t impossible to imagine considering climate change and what’s been happening around the world. It’s a chilling prospect! Developing countries have been facing issues with access to clean water for decades already, but now water shortages are also becoming a problem that more developed countries are also facing too. How long will it take for us to end up in a situation where we’re fighting wars over resources such as water? And on that note, I’ll end it here before I get too serious and ramble on about the realities of the hole we’ve dug for ourselves 🙃Basically, I want to read this because I’m keen to read more by Shusterman, plus I’ve heard that they’re adapting it for the big screen?!

Have you read Dry? Is it on your TBR too?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

Goodreads Monday – 12 August

Dini @ dinipandareads2 Comments

It’s time for another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners that 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’re feeling it! I think from this week’s post onward, I will use a random number generator to choose the books for this weekly meme!

This week the random number generator picked #621 on my GR ‘to-read’ list, and the books is: Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Egan. Although this is #621 in a list of over 900 books, this is actually one of my more ‘recent-ish’ adds to my tbr, since I added it in December 2018! I guess I really add books quickly on GR don’t I? 😅This book has a rating of: 3.63 stars.

Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to visit Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family. She is mesmerized by the sea beyond the house and by some charged mystery between the two men.

‎Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that once belonged to men, now soldiers abroad. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. One evening at a nightclub, she meets Dexter Styles again, and begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.

With the atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel follows Anna and Styles into a world populated by gangsters, sailors, divers, bankers, and union men. Manhattan Beach is a deft, dazzling, propulsive exploration of a transformative moment in the lives and identities of women and men, of America and the world.

Why do I want to read it?

I’m pretty sure that I added this to my GR TBR after talking to my sister one day. She offhandedly mentioned that if I was looking for a book to read, one of her close friends had just finished reading Manhattan Beach and highly recommended it, so I should check it out too! I’m a big lover of historical fiction, I love being transported to past times, and when a mystery involving gangsters and divers and other intriguing elements, is thrown into the mix, I knew that I wanted to read this! If I’m not mistaken, this book won the 2018 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Fiction, so that’s also pretty cool. I’m definitely still keen to read this one and I’m looking forward to picking it up!

Have you read Manhattan Beach or is it also on your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

ARC August TBR

Dini @ dinipandareads13 Comments

It’s August. Can you believe? The nerve of this year to run away from me like this! I can’t even. Seriously though, can you believe?! Next thing you know we’re gonna waking up and it’ll be 2020 already! 🤦🏻‍♀️Yikes. But… I digress because that’s not what I’m here for!

Today I’m here to talk about ARC August. If you can’t tell from the name, ARC August is a month long reading challenge hosted by Octavia and Shelly over at Read. Sleep. Repeat. The goal is to cut down on the many ARCs that you may or may not be drowning under. All ARCs count–it can be a digital copy, a physical copy, an upcoming release, or a past due release… (*cough*). One thing that I’ve been repeating to myself for the last few months is: I WILL READ MORE ARCs. But it never happens. So what better time to do it than now when there’s an awesome month long challenge to help motivate me to kick ARC ass?

I’m well aware that we’re already into our first full week of August and I’m just now sharing my TBR, and a highly ambitious one at that, but everyone knows how bad I am at following TBRs anyway, so… Let’s see how this month goes 😅Right now though I am feeling pretty determined to get through the list below (made up of five past dues and seven upcoming releases).

Are you also participating in ARC August? If you are, will you try to get through all your ARCs or only a select few on your list? Let’s chat in the comments below!

Goodreads Monday – 05 August

Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

It’s time for another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners that 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’re feeling it! I think from this week’s post onward, I will use a random number generator to choose the books for this weekly meme!

This week the random number generator picked #151 on my GR ‘to-read’ list, which means the book this week is: The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O’Neill. I added this to my GR in 2017. It has a GR rating of: 3.77 stars.

The Lonely Hearts Hotel is a love story with the power of legend. An unparalleled tale of charismatic pianos, invisible dance partners, radicalized chorus girls, drug-addicted musicians, brooding clowns, and an underworld whose economy hinges on the price of a kiss. In a landscape like this, it takes great creative gifts to thwart one’s origins. It might also take true love.

Two babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1910. Before long, their talents emerge: Pierrot is a piano prodigy; Rose lights up even the dreariest room with her dancing and comedy. As they travel around the city performing clown routines, the children fall in love with each other and dream up a plan for the most extraordinary and seductive circus show the world has ever seen.

Separated as teenagers, sent off to work as servants during the Great Depression, both descend into the city’s underworld, dabbling in sex, drugs and theft in order to survive. But when Rose and Pierrot finally reunite beneath the snowflakes after years of searching and desperate poverty the possibilities of their childhood dreams are renewed, and they’ll go to extreme lengths to make them come true. Soon, Rose, Pierrot and their troupe of clowns and chorus girls have hit New York, commanding the stage as well as the alleys, and neither the theater nor the underworld will ever look the same.

Why do I want to read it?

I’d actually forgot what this book was about until I read the synopsis just now. While I can’t say that I remember reading this synopsis before, I can now say that I really want to read this book. It’s actually said to have ‘echoes of The Night Circus‘, so I think I must’ve added it to my list before I read The Night Circus because I don’t think I would’ve added it to my list after 🙊Not saying anything against that book but I felt a bit let down by it, and didn’t end up loving it as much as everyone else. After reading the synopsis of this one, you can already see some similarities, but I think The Lonely Hearts Hotel sounds like a darker and more sinister version of TNC, and I like the sound of that! Maybe I won’t get to this one in the very near future, but I hope to get to it eventually.

Have you read The Night Circus or is it also on your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

Goodreads Monday – 29 July

Dini @ dinipandareads8 Comments

It’s time for another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners that 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’re feeling it! I think from this week’s post onward, I will use a random number generator to choose the books for this weekly meme!

This week’s book is: What the Wind Knows by Amy Harmon. This is book #747 on my GR ‘to-read’ list and it’s actually one of the more recent additions to my list (01 March 2019).

Anne Gallagher grew up enchanted by her grandfather’s stories of Ireland. Heartbroken at his death, she travels to his childhood home to spread his ashes. There, overcome with memories of the man she adored and consumed by a history she never knew, she is pulled into another time.

The Ireland of 1921, teetering on the edge of war, is a dangerous place in which to awaken. But there Anne finds herself, hurt, disoriented, and under the care of Dr. Thomas Smith, guardian to a young boy who is oddly familiar. Mistaken for the boy’s long-missing mother, Anne adopts her identity, convinced the woman’s disappearance is connected to her own.

As tensions rise, Thomas joins the struggle for Ireland’s independence and Anne is drawn into the conflict beside him. Caught between history and her heart, she must decide whether she’s willing to let go of the life she knew for a love she never thought she’d find. But in the end, is the choice actually hers to make?

Why do I want to read it?

This is a romantic historical fiction with a big time travel twist. The time travel part of the synopsis vaguely reminds me of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, but I haven’t read that book yet so I can’t be sure. That said, I love a good romance and historical fiction, and the added element of time travel was a nice surprise because I wasn’t expecting to see that in the description! On top of that, I haven’t read many books set in Ireland but that’s one place that I’ve always been interested in reading more about it. I think this book represents a perfect combination of likes and wants!

Have you read What the Wind Knows or is it on your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

Goodreads Monday – 22 July

Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

It’s time for another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners that 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’re feeling it!

This week’s book is: The Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry. It has been on my Goodreads TBR shelf since 22 November 2017 😅

There is one version of my story that everyone knows. And then there is the truth. This is how it happened. How I went from being Peter Pan’s first—and favorite—lost boy to his greatest enemy. Peter brought me to his island because there were no rules and no grownups to make us mind. He brought boys from the Other Place to join in the fun, but Peter’s idea of fun is sharper than a pirate’s sword. Because it’s never been all fun and games on the island. Our neighbors are pirates and monsters. Our toys are knife and stick and rock—the kinds of playthings that bite. Peter promised we would all be young and happy forever. Peter will say I’m a villain, that I wronged him, that I never was his friend. Peter Lies.

Why do I want to read it?

The story of Peter Pan wasn’t necessarily my favorite growing up (because I remember it scared me a little lol) but I always found myself drawn back to the many movie adaptations of it over the years, even until now. Hook used to always creep me out a little but as I grew older, I became more curious about him. Where did he come from? Why did he hate Peter so much? And of course, his history with that croc! The movies don’t really cover it all that much, but also, they always show Peter off in the best light. The book blurb sounds like Henry exposes a sinister side to Peter Pan that I’m actually really interested in seeing. The Lost Boy sounds deliciously dark and I’m excited to read from a traditional ‘villain’s’ POV.

Have you read The Lost Boy or is it also on your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

Goodreads Monday – The Alice Network by Kate Quinn

Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

I’ve been looking for a weekly meme to do on Mondays and haven’t been able to find anything until now. YAY! Introducing: Goodreads Monday, which I just stumbled across on Emer’s page: A Little Haze Book Blog. This weekly meme was started by @Lauren’s Page Turners and 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’re feeling it!

This week’s book is: The Alice Network by Kate Quinn.

In an enthralling new historical novel from national bestselling author Kate Quinn, two women—a female spy recruited to the real-life Alice Network in France during World War I and an unconventional American socialite searching for her cousin in 1947—are brought together in a mesmerizing story of courage and redemption.

1947. In the chaotic aftermath of World War II, American college girl Charlie St. Clair is pregnant, unmarried, and on the verge of being thrown out of her very proper family. She’s also nursing a desperate hope that her beloved cousin Rose, who disappeared in Nazi-occupied France during the war, might still be alive. So when Charlie’s parents banish her to Europe to have her “little problem” taken care of, Charlie breaks free and heads to London, determined to find out what happened to the cousin she loves like a sister.

1915. A year into the Great War, Eve Gardiner burns to join the fight against the Germans and unexpectedly gets her chance when she’s recruited to work as a spy. Sent into enemy-occupied France, she’s trained by the mesmerizing Lili, the “Queen of Spies”, who manages a vast network of secret agents right under the enemy’s nose.

Thirty years later, haunted by the betrayal that ultimately tore apart the Alice Network, Eve spends her days drunk and secluded in her crumbling London house. Until a young American barges in uttering a name Eve hasn’t heard in decades, and launches them both on a mission to find the truth…no matter where it leads.

Why do I want to read it?

I am a sucker for historical fiction and especially ones that are set during the WWII period, so when I heard the rave reviews for this book, I knew I had to get my hands on it immediately. I don’t recall reading many books from an American’s perspective during this period, let alone an American woman, and I like the fact that it covers both WWI and WWII. The women also sound like they’d be good, tough characters and ever since reading The Nightingale earlier this year, I’m excited to read more about the role women played during the war(s). I don’t know why I haven’t picked read this yet, especially since after The Nightingale all I wanted to do was continue my historical journey. But I am hoping to read it this year and possibly next month because I’m already pretty booked out with a lot of buddy reads this July!

Have you read The Alice Network? Is it on your TBR?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let’s chat books!

#TopTenTuesday: My Summer 2019 TBR!

Dini @ dinipandareads25 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is: Books On My Summer 2019 TBR. YAY! I love these types of list and coincidentally, I’m also doing the Goodreads Summer Reading Challenge so this post is going to be fairly painless to write 😂 (lucky for me since my brain still isn’t at 100% capacity after last week’s insanity)!

Since I live on a tropical island it’s basically summer all year round, but this time of the year is actually the nicest time to visit Bali (FYI for any travel lovers out there), as it’s winter in Australia and we get nice cool winds coming up to temper the blazing heat of the southern sun! When I think of summer reads I picture something along the lines of “lighter” contemporary fiction, romantic comedies, and even some thrillers; although I’m not averse to “heavier” reads either. I’m sharing a question that I asked in my GR summer reading challenge post: What months make up summer for you? It’s fun to see what everyone says because it’s quite different worldwide. I’ve always thought of summer as June – August! Anyway, without further ado, here are some of the books I hope to tackle in the coming summer months that we have left!

The Flatshare Beth O’Leary. I’ll be reading this for the GR challenge prompt: In the friend zone: Read a book that a friend has recommended. I’ve heard some mixed reviews about this one, although still mostly positive. It honestly sounds like something I’ll love though (I have a feeling it’ll tug on my heartstrings), so I’m really keen to finally read it!

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim. Ok, so this one isn’t really a “light summer read” but it’s one of my most anticipated ones of this year! It’s still not out in Asia, and I don’t know when it’ll ever be, so when I won a giveaway last month, I didn’t hesitate to request it! It finally arrived in the mail two weeks ago and with work and other book ‘obligations’ (i.e. ARCs and book club reads) I haven’t got around to it. SOON THOUGH 😍

I’ll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson. I’ve been looking forward to this book for a while and it’s been on my TBR for some time too. I’ve heard many rave about it, and it’s on my pride month reading list, but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll get to it before June ends. So, summer it is!

The Girl He Used to Know by Tracey Garvis Graves. This has been a little hyped on bookstagram, but there’s something about this book that I feel like I’ll love–probably because it will rip my heart to shreds and I’m a crier and a total sucker for pain (Kidding! Sort of).

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine. Doesn’t this cover just scream summer? And also death, and possibly death in the water? But definitely summer vibes!

The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas. I started reading a bit of this the other day when I was lounging around on my couch and feeling too lazy to go into the bedroom to grab my current read. Not only did the blurb pull me in but what I read so far has me intrigued!

Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. This duo won me over with the Illuminae Files and honestly, I’m not expecting any different with this one. I’m ready for my feelings to get sucker punched–BRING IT ON!

More than Words by Jill Santopolo. Aside from being unable to take my eyes off the cover of this book, the blurb sounds like something that I’ll really enjoy. I’ve never read any Jill Santopolo before, but I’ve heard good things from quite a few people!

Field Notes on Love by Jennifer E. Smith. I adore this cover, the story sounds really sweet/cute, and it’s not a very thick book, which makes it perfect for light pool/beachside reading!

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. I’ll be reading this as a group/buddy read in July and I’m also reading it for one of the summer reading challenge prompts: Armchair traveler: Read a book set in a destination you want to visit. So, I’m lowkey obsessed with Alaska and I have no idea when that obsession started. But yeah, I want to go there. Definitely a bucket list location!

What are some of the books on your summer TBR?! If you’ve done a Top Ten Tuesday post for today’s prompt, leave your link in the comments below and let’s have a chat 🙂