ARC Apocalypse Announcement & TBR

January 12, 2020January 13, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads12 Comments

As I mentioned in my bookish and blogging goals, I’ve joined quite a few challenges this year! Last year I (very loosely) joined one year-long challenge outside from Goodreads and that was the 2019 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge. I was complete trash at keeping track of what I read and basically gave up before I even started. That was fun 🙄 I guess I must be feeling more optimistic in 2020 because I joined a whopping FIVE challenges, and first up is the ARC Apocalypse!

This challenge was created by Destiny @ Howling Libraries in an effort to tackle those ARCs! And what’s better than tackling these reads with a bunch of other book lovers with the same goal, right? There are fun chats and buddy reads if you don’t think you can go it alone. Head on over to Destiny’s page (linked above) to find out more and join the challenge! I’ve mentioned it before but as an international book blogger I unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) don’t get as much access to all the reads on NetGalley, Edelweiss and from publishers, so my overall list isn’t as long as everyone else’s. Still, there are a few 2020 titles I’d like to stay on top of . but most importantly there are quite a few overdue titles I want to finish this year! Here are my current stats:

2020 eARCs: 12
Overdue eARCs: 10

Ten overdue titles doesn’t look so bad right? But overdue is overdue and there’s no making excuses! My game plan is to prioritise my 2020 deadlines (while I’m still ahead of the game!) and alternate with reading the overdue titles. Sounds doable. Seeing as these have deadlines this is going to be my actual TBR for the coming months (January-early March):

~~After some thought I think I’ll be sharing my progress at the end of every three months along with what’s next on my TBR for the following three months~~*. I hope that my progress will basically be me saying: I’VE READ THEM ALL! 😍

*After some more thinking I decided to share a monthly progress updates for all my challenges, so you’ll be getting an update from me soon! I still hope that I’ll have made some progress 😂

Are you also joining ARC Apocalypse?
How do you plan to tackle your ARCs?

Friday Favourites: Winter Reads

January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads11 Comments

Hello, hello and welcome back to another Friday Favourites, dear friends! This’ll be the first Friday Favourites of the year and there are some small changes to note. Last year this weekly meme was hosted by the wonderful Kibby @ Something of the Book! However, this year Kibby has passed the torch on to Lorraine @ Geeky Galaxy. I’ve enjoyed participating weekly and I was sad when Kibby announced she was no longer hosting, but I’m very happy that Lorraine has decided to keep it going! Now with that out of the way it’s time to look at this week’s prompt: winter reads.

By now we all know I’m a total mood reader so seasonal reading just isn’t my thing. There’s also the fact that I live in the tropics and winter is really not a thing for us 😅 It’d definitely be something to give me cozy, contented feelings. Although I probably also wouldn’t mind reading something a little thrilling since I’m safely tucked away in my cocoon… Here are some favourites that

First Lines Friday – 10 January

January 10, 2020January 10, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads10 Comments

Yayaya, HAPPY FRIYAY, book lovers and friends 😍We’re back with another First Lines Friday! This is 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:

“Mom is still alive, but she’s going to be murdered at midnight on Good Friday,” Amanda Martín told the deputy chief, who didn’t even think to question the girl; she’d already proved she knew more than he and all of his colleagues in Homicide put together.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

Down the TBR Hole – 11

January 6, 2020January 12, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads15 Comments

It’s 2020 and I’m back with my first Down the TBR Hole post of the year! As of right now, my Goodreads TBR is a whopping 1,034 books and I thought I’d make it clear that just because it’s on my Goodreads TBR, that doesn’t actually mean it’s on my physical or Kindle shelves (I wish I could afford to own that many books)! With that out of the way, I’m hoping to start the year off strong and dismiss a few more books on my list. Let’s see how I do today!

Down the TBR Hole is a weekly book meme created by the wonderful Lia @ Lost in a Story that attempts to organize our ridiculously long Goodreads TBR list by choosing either to keep or eliminate the books we’ve saved on there. Here’s how it works:

Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
Order on ascending date added.
Take the first 5 (or 10 (or even more!) if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
Read the synopses of the books
Decide: keep it or should it go

Verdict: Keep

December Monthly Wrap Up!

January 3, 2020January 5, 2020 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Oh what a month December turned out to be! With the end of the year activities at work combined with family flying in for the holidays, and my sister staying with me, there turned out to be a lot less time to read than I anticipated. Silly me for thinking I’d have more quiet time this month 😅 Now that everyone is on their way home, I’m back alone at my place and although I still feel slightly frazzled, I can also tell that my mind is calming down some. With that, I managed to read 17 books in December.

Goodreads Monday – 30 December

December 30, 2019December 30, 2019 Dini @ dinipandareads4 Comments

It’s the last Goodreads Monday in 2019! 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 I Hope You Get This Message by Farah Naz Rishi. This was added to my Goodreads TBR in April this year. I admit the cover is what drew me in at first but the synopsis also caught my attention. This book is a young adult science fiction that was released this past October and has 3.67 stars with 881 ratings and 246 reviews.

Sadie by Courtney Summers – #BookReview

December 29, 2019December 27, 2019 Dini @ dinipandareads6 Comments

Goodreads: Sadie
Genre: Young Adult Thriller, Mystery, Audiobook
Panda Rating:

A missing girl on a journey of revenge. A Serial―like podcast following the clues she’s left behind. And an ending you won’t be able to stop talking about.

Sadie hasn’t had an easy life. Growing up on her own, she’s been raising her sister Mattie in an isolated small town, trying her best to provide a normal life and keep their heads above water.

But when Mattie is found dead, Sadie’s entire world crumbles. After a somewhat botched police investigation, Sadie is determined to bring her sister’s killer to justice and hits the road following a few meager clues to find him.

When West McCray―a radio personality working on a segment about small, forgotten towns in America―overhears Sadie’s story at a local gas station, he becomes obsessed with finding the missing girl. He starts his own podcast as he tracks Sadie’s journey, trying to figure out what happened, hoping to find her before it’s too late.

I’m really surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this story. I had seen very mixed reviews and the more people said they were disappointed by it, the more I hesitated to read it, but I started it on a whim and I certainly don’t regret the decision! Sadie is a young adult mystery/crime thriller told through an interesting format: a mix of podcast and first person POV. It delves into pretty dark topics including child abuse (off page) and drug/alcohol abuse and addiction. It’s not a happy story by any means and there isn’t much of a happy ending (though tbh, I’m still a little salty about that ending!), but I think it’s worth the read.

Friday Favorites: Top Reads of 2019!

December 27, 2019December 27, 2019 Dini @ dinipandareads14 Comments

It’s time for another Friday Favorites hosted by Kibby @ Something of the Book! This weekly meme is where you get to share a list of all your favourites based on the list of prompts on Kibby’s page. Sounds fun, right? This week’s prompt is: favorite reads of 2019! Well, I guess I can no longer afford to keep avoiding thinking about this question because… The year is very quickly drawing to a close. It’s the last Friday of 2019 (!!!) and I guess there’s a slim chance of more contenders for my top spot! I’m wondering if I should divvy this up into genres just like I did last week because I honestly don’t know if I can narrow it down to just 10 books in total? So I’m going to look at the top five (max) reads for these genres: Contemporary, Thrillers/Horrors, Fantasy, Romance, Non-Fiction, Graphic Novels… Let’s get to it…

Goodreads Monday – 23 December

December 23, 2019December 23, 2019 Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

We’re back with another Goodreads Monday, a weekly meme started by @Lauren’s Page Turners. This meme 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 Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage. I believe that this may also be known as “Bad Apple” in some countries or editions. I added this book to my TBR list about a year ago. I can’t remember when I first heard about it but the cover is actually what really caught my eye. It’s simple but there’s something about it that I really like. It’s a mystery, thriller, and I guess part horror and it has 3.63 stars rating on Goodreads.

Sundays in Bed With… #MyWeeklyWrapUp [35]

December 23, 2019December 4, 2022 Dini @ dinipandareads3 Comments

Yes, I’m well aware it’s no longer Sunday but wow, this weekend went by so quickly and didn’t feel like a weekend at all… So we’re back with another ~~Sundays~~Mondays 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 been you’ve spent time curled up reading in bed with, or which book you wish you had time to read today!

I spent yesterday stuck in a car for about 9 hours because of roadwork that caused major traffic. Fun times. But that meant I got to spend more time with Sadie. So glad I decided to follow this one on audiobook because the full-cast was really great and helped me build a deeper connection with the characters, which I feel wouldn’t have happened had I only read the book.