Recently Read

Well I haven't written one of these in approximately forever! Really though, it's because my reading habit has seriously struggled in the last year or so. But thankfully, with all the traveling that I've been doing lately, I've had tons of time in planes or cars to sit around and read. Yay for that!

The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear

This totally isn't a new book to me and it's actually a children's book even though it's 700+ pages. I read it for the first time when I was 11 or 12 and I make a point to reread it every two or three years just because I love it so much. 

The book details the life of a blue bear (surprise, his name is Bluebear) through a make-believe world. It's really just such a weird, crazy imaginative book and it's plain delightful to read. It's full of stories about pirates who are six inches tall, living inside a giant's brain, a town inside a tornado and the city of Atlantis. I can't recommend this book enough!

Obviously, 5/5 stars. Read it.

Find it on Goodreads.

Shopaholic to the Stars

Total chick lit, I know. So this book is part of a series about Becky Bloomwood Brandon, a usually lovable shopaholic and all the antics she gets herself into. Usually, I love these books. They're easy to read, they're usually pretty funny and Becky is a fun character. I even really liked the movie, even though it was admittedly sort of dumb.

And this book wasn't really so bad, it just has a terrible ending (I won't spoil it!). Also Becky, is just selfish and childish throughout the whole book, and it's really hard to read a long book if you don't like the protagonist. But I still loved the earlier books so much that I'm holding out faith that the next one will be good.

My Rating: 2/5 stars.

That's all I've got for today! I'm working on another fun book (about cadavers! Totally not joking.) so hopefully I can do another one of these posts soon.

What have you been reading? Any all-time favorites that I need to read?

How to Spend More Time Reading

I've always been a pretty big reader. You know, when I was eight or nine, I was that kid who checked out a stack of books from the library so big that I had to use my chin to help me hold the stack. Yeah. But over the last couple years, and especially over the last semester, somehow I've just...stopped. Like totally. 

I think I went four months without reading for fun at all. That's scary to me. I love to read and I seriously believe that I'm a much more intelligent person for it. So over Christmas break, I was reading quite a bit and decided I wanted to change and make reading a priority.

But I'm busy. We're all so busy. It's easy for things that are optional to fall to the wayside when deadlines and exams and pressures come. When I made my goal for this year of reading twelve books, I wanted to make sure that I made reading convenient and fun, not just another thing to do. 

1. Always be in the middle of a book. For me, there's something oddly intimidating about starting a new book. So whenever I finish a book, I first of all try to have another book ready and then I do my best to start it as soon as possible or even right away. 

2. Always have a list of books to read. I use Goodreads for this, but you can use a notes app or pen and paper if you want. You're a free woman (or man); you can do whatever you want. But I always like having a couple books I'm excited about reading so that period of "Ughh, what do I read now?" doesn't set in. 

3. Always have reading material with you. If you read on a Kindle or Nook, that's easy enough to stick in a purse--so are small novels. Maybe toss a book in the car so you always have it in case you have an unexpected delay somewhere. And I'm not a fan of this next option, but you can also read books through the Kindle or Nook app on your phone (including free samples on every book!), but that just gets a little too small to read for long. 

4. Explore other formats. Think about the way you learn best in school. If you're an audio learner, you might enjoy listening to audio books while you exercise or drive. 

5. Read at the same time everyday. I'm specifically trying to make a habit of reading for 20-30 minutes every night before I go to bed. It's great for calming my brain (unless I'm reading true crime!!) and it helps me to set aside that time specifically for reading.

6. Keep a reading log. Like I said in #2, you can do this in whatever form you choose. I like using Goodreads because I can also save a rating or review along with the book once I'm finished. Then, if anyone ever asks for reading recommendations, I can easily flip through books I've read and rated highly to remind me.

7. Be familiar with your public library. The other day--oh my goodness, I'm so proud of myself--I spent time to look up a couple books I wanted to read, find out which of the seven campus libraries it was at, found the floor and the shelf, figured out how to move them (we have moving bookshelves!) and found my book. I was impressed with myself! Seriously though, libraries aren't usually that complicated, but just knowing the process of how your library works will make you that much more likely to read since you won't have to pay for every book. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go read! What are you reading these days? How often do you read?

6 Books I'd Like to Read in 2015

This Christmas season, without school taking up all my time, I decided to read two books. I love to read but I just don't get to much during the school year (which, yes, is a sort of lame excuse). Turns out, I totally failed with this and only read one book. But as I've been looking around for what books to read, I've been updating my to-read list. Here's what I'm thinking for the next few months! Please leave your own suggestions in the comments! :)

1 / Anything That Moves by Dana Goodyear

2 / The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert 

3 / Nowhere But Home by Liza Palmer

4 / We Only Know So Much by Elizabeth Crane

5 / Four Fish by Paul Greenberg

6 / Tigers in Red Weather / Liza Klaussmann

What are you reading these days? What was the best book you've read this year?

Weekly Goals #36

(photo)

Hey friends! I hope you've all had lovely weekends and are ready for a wonderful week! This week, I don't have a whole lot going on until SATURDAY. Saturday is the big day! My town holds a big fair where crafts, food, antiques and all kinds of stuff are sold. There's a pancake breakfast beforehand and it's always a really fun time to shop around, hang out with friends and of course, buy stuff. But! This year, I'm selling cards that I have been making (and haven't even shown you!). More on that in a bit. 

What do you have going on? I really love reading other people's weekly goals posts, and then seeing how your week goes! 

Last Week's Goals:

+ Finish tattoo calligraphy project. If you remember, a coworker of my sister hired me to design her tattoo for when she gets inked this fall. I was having a lot of trouble with it since the only capital letter in the design was 'C' and that's possibly my most boring and least pretty uppercase letter. But I finally finished it and sent it to her and she loved it! There's nothing like that feeling of nervously presenting your work to someone and having them appreciate it.

+ Do the 7-minute workout 14 times. So I was super flexible with this one, but I'm still checking it off my list. I only did the 7-minute workout six times, but I also went for two, 40-minute walk/jogs and a long walk yesterday. So I exercised enough. I will say that I am a fan of the 7-minute workout! I found one that I can do on a park bench with step ups, dips, push-ups and such. Yay for exercise!

+ Finish designs and print my cards for this weekend. Sort of success. 90% of my designs are finished but I'm waiting for my paper + envelopes to arrive. Unfortunately, there's not really any sort of printer/office supply store within half an hour of me, so I just have to wait. But I'm confident that they'll get here in time!

This Week's Goals:

+ Read for 30 minutes a day. I'm in the adult reading program at my library (me so nerdy) and I have to read a book each in the fiction, nonfiction, historical, western, romance, sci-fi, and mystery genres. I've got the fiction and non-fiction section covered easily and I read And Then There Were None this wee, so mystery's done too. This week, I'm working on Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card for the sci-fi category. Any historical/western/romance recommendations?

+ Put in 120 minutes of exercise over the week. This doesn't count by 15-minute walk to the beach everyday. If I'm wearing my heart-rate monitor, it counts!

That's really all I can think of for this week! Have a great week, lovebugs!

Planning Ahead: Goals for the Week, Month and Summer

Today is our regularly scheduled beginning-of-the-month goal-making sesh, with a little twist in that I'm also going to share a little bit about my goals for the summer as a whole! I know summer feels like it started a month ago but technically I'm only a little over a week late. Please forgive me. And I'm making the executive decision not to recap on my last set of weekly goals because they're boring and I pretty much failed at all of them. Whatever.

This week is suuuper exciting for me because my boyfriend H is coming to visit on Wednesday! To recap (in case you don't keep up with my life), I work in Michigan during the summers and H stays back home in NC. The last few years, we've just done long distance loving for two months but this year, he's finally coming to visit me! I want to make sure I am really intentional about spending time with him and showing him around my town. 

Secondly, I failed last week at writing thank you cards for all my graduation gifts--I didn't do any at all. And that's super embarrassing. I absolutely have to finish those this week.

This month is going to be pretty low-key. I don't have a lot of huge events or plans. I do have secret(ish) to share with you though. I've been working on a series of hand-lettered cards + prints that I can't wait to share with you all. Without giving away too much, I'll tell you that there is a fair in my town in late July that I am reserving a table at so that I can sell them and test out the waters for this new venture. I'm not sure if it's something that will stick or not but we'll see! So in short, my goal is to continue doing lettering for the fair and hopefully be all ready to sell them!

This summer, I would really, really, really like to get in good habits of exercise and reading. Both are things that I love to do, but I'm not always motivated to carve out time for them. My goal is to read six books before classes start, including my required reading book. Slightly more vague, I also aim to have developed an exercise regime that I can take with me to college in the fall.

I think that about does it! Oh! And I'm again linking up with The Nectar Collective on this post. What are your goals for the summer? What do you have planned that you're excited about?

Recently Read

You know what? I've been meaning to post a book recap for months. Months. But it's taken me that long to actually finish three books. It's actually pretty embarrassing. Almost as embarrassing as the fact that I still can't spell embarrassing and have to rely on spell check to remind me of that double-r.

But nevertheless, guys, I've read three books. I'm about to tell you about them + which ones you should read + which ones you should proceed to deposit in the nearest trash can (I kid, I kid).

Book #1: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Synopsis, adapted from Goodreads: On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect his family, he asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant and raises the child herself."

Someone recommended this book to me after I read The Light Between Oceans (which I mostly liked) and I can see why. Both books involve moral dilemmas involving children + are sort of sad. But in general, I hate sad books. Hate them. This book was well-written for sure and definitely kept me interested. But I didn't enjoy reading it. And even for a sad book, no one ended up really happy in the end. It told the two parallel stories of David and Caroline, one who screwed up and one who was sort of a savior. Understandably, the book documents David's guilt and unraveling over giving up his daughter. But it continually frustrated me that Caroline didn't get a happy ending.

I'd recommend if...you don't mind a sad book that will make you think, you have time to read it for decent chunks of time and you want a truly realistic (not romanticized) book.

My rating: 3/5 stars

Book #2: Reconstructing Amelia

In short: Kate Baron is called at her work as a high-powered lawyer and told that her high-achieving daughter Amelia has been suspended for cheating. Shocked and determined that the accusations are false, Kate drives to Amelia's school. But when she arrives, she finds that Amelia jumped off the school building and Kate is determined to find out why.

I expected this book to be pretty much a mystery novel, set in a NYC prep school. Instead, I felt it delved way too much into minute details of some characters and left others completely undeveloped, not to mention mostly unlikable (including Amelia). I never felt like I understood Amelia's girlfriend and while I felt the author wanted to make her seem mysterious, I just felt like she wasn't real. And speaking of Amelia's girlfriend, this was almost like two separate (and mostly unrelated) stories in one: one of the investigation behind Amelia's death, and one of her unexpected relationship. And in the end, there ended up being really boring answers to all the so-called mysteries. 

It felt like Gossip Girl and SVU tried to have a baby and it just wasn't happening. But then again, most people on Goodreads either gave it one star or five.

My rating: 2/5 stars.

Book #3: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Unemployment has send web designer Clay to work in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a mysterious store containing random assortments of books. But the customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything—instead, they “check out” large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store. Clay and his friends try to figure out the mystery behind the bookstore.

Welp. Sorry if I'm being Negative Nancy over here, but this book sucked too. So many people recommended it to me + the reviews looked promising, but I couldn't even finish it (and that rarely happens). I expected this book to be a great mystery set in an old bookstore, but you know what the first 100 pages were about? Web design. Programming. Weird art. I'm not even kidding you. It was just so weird. This book sounded so promising but it just wasn't worth the effort after awhile and I stopped reading. But if you're into reading about programming and installation art....go for it.

My rating: 1/5 stars.

Have you read any really good books lately? Pleeeeease share!

Weekly Goals #33

Happy Monday, dollface! It has been so long since I've made weekly goals because of my blog break towards the middle of the month. On the subject of that blog break, can I just say that it was exactly what I needed? I felt a little guilty taking a break + I think those of you who are bloggers understand the feeling of not wanting to let your readers down. But at the heart, blogging for me right now is a hobby, and I would be crazy to let a hobby take up valuable time that I didn't have during exam week. So thank you for allowing me to feel okay leaving the blog for a bit + thank you for welcoming me back!

Last Week's Goals:

(Otherwise known as, the goals I made more than a month ago and haven't followed up on.)

1. Finish my review book + exam prep. Done and done! Well, my exams are over so I sort of have to be! But I do feel like I ended up spending enough time reviewing...even for that devil of a class, European History! I feel pretty confident that I did well on all my exams, but I won't get my scores until July 7, which sucks a ton. Hey, at least by that point I won't care if I don't ace 'em.
2. Finish reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. You know what? I didn't do this, and I'm totally okay with that. This book sounded super interesting: old bookstore, mystery, crime. But you know what the first hundred pages were about? This random guy's computer programming. Whaaaa?! I just wasn't interested. I'm a big believer that if I'm 75 pages in and still not interested, it's not a good book for me. 

This Week's Goals:

1. Make a to-do list every morning + actually get things done. As of last week, I'm officially on vacation! This week (until my graduation on Saturday--yay!), I have almost nothing planned. I plan on spending this week exercising, cleaning, organizing, practicing calligraphy and generally doing productive things. But I'm totally one of those people that spends their first week of vacation lounging around eating Cheetos. Except I'm too broke to spend money on Cheetos. So I'm hoping that this goal will help me actually do stuff--even if it's fun stuff!
2. Read at least 15 minutes a day. During the school year, I really just don't have much time to read. So when summer rolls around, I have the time, but I'm not in the habit. When I was at the beach with my boyfriend H last weekend, I started a book that I've wanted to read for ages called When a Gene Makes You Smell Like a Fish. Yes, it's as awesome as it sounds. 

What are your goals for the week?!

Weekly Goals #32

Hello all! I hope you had a lovely Easter if you celebrate it or just a lovely weekend! I had Friday and Monday off and my weekend was oh-so-relaxing...I'm not looking forward to putting that nose back on the grindstone tomorrow. 

On Friday, H and I went out for lunch at a local Cajun place and tried to go golfing, only to find that the driving range was closed. After a quick google, we found out that the owners of the range just up and left a few weeks ago. So no golfing (I was not-so-secretly relieved)! On Saturday, I did lots of exam review + visited my long-neglected lover (aka, the library). Sunday was for church with my family and lunch with kids. Then yesterday, H and I went out again to get us some Genghis Grill (which is delish, by the way). It was just a very laid-back, happy weekend. Also, it should be noted that I watched approximately six episodes of Breaking Bad this weekend...

But even with all of that awesome quality time with Netflix, I still managed to kick butt on my weekly goal! Which, if we recall from last Monday, was to exercise for at least 45 minutes three times + my two soccer practices. Check, check! Well sort of. My first two workouts were about 35 and 40 minutes each because I procrastinated and had to get home for dinner. But yesterday, I got a solid hour and a half in, so that felt good! So I'm considering this week a success!

I have two goals this week: stay on track with my exam prep + finish my book! I've made a daily schedule of which sections to review for each course and I'm already behind! :/ I just need to focus on putting in the time so I'm not super stressed out the night before! Secondly, I'm reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and unfortunately, I'm not liking it as much as I hoped. But I've heard great things so I just need to keep working through it. As soon as I finish it, I'll post a recap with The Memory Keeper's Daughter and Reconstructing Amelia.

What are your weekly goals?