I haven’t been nominated for an award since The Sunshine Blogger Award, so thank you Hannah from But First, Fiction for nominating me! It took a while, but I finally got around to doing this post 😁.
Continue reading “The Versatile Blogger Award”Even cooler. Imagine running, jumping, and interacting with the characters you read about on a paperback. Sure, you aren’t physically doing all those things—it’s your thumbs on the game controller doing the bulk of the action. But, being able to see and hear a world you could only conjure in your head, even if it’s only from a device, is an enterprise worth marveling. Here are five books I think would make good (if not great) video games:
I don’t go out of my way to hide it from people—I’ll admit to having one if someone asks—but it’s also something I don’t advertise. It’s not that I’m ashamed of it, I just prefer to keep it on the DL. I’ve narrowed my reasons for keeping my blog a ~leetle~ secret down to two, quick points that maybe you can relate to:
Continue reading “Is Your Blog A Secret?”
Title: Milk and Honey
Author: Rupi Kaur
Published: November 4, 2014
Pages: 204
Genre: Poetry, Feminism, Nonfiction
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads
Goodreads Description: milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival. It is about the experience of violence, abuse, love, loss, and femininity. It is split into four chapters, and each chapter serves a different purpose, deals with a different pain, heals a different heartache. milk and honey takes readers through a journey of the most bitter moments in life and finds sweetness in them because there is sweetness everywhere if you are just willing to look
I’ve never been able to stomach poetry. Maybe I’m not good with my emotions, too judgmental, or just don’t understand it, but a lot of poetry tends to make me feel uncomfortable. My impression of poetry has been skewed by poems in Tumblr posts and Instagram captions that always seemed more cringey than “𝓭𝓮𝓮𝓹”. So, even though everyone under the sun had already read Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur, I never had any intention of reading 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐭’𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐨𝐞𝐦𝐬.
Continue reading “Mini Book Review: Milk and Honey by Rupi Kaur // never thought I would read this book”
Title: Wildcard
Author: Marie Lu
Published: September 18, 2018
Pages: 352
Genre: Young Adult, Science Fiction
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads
Goodreads Description: Emika Chen barely made it out of the Warcross Championships alive. Now that she knows the truth behind Hideo’s new NeuroLink algorithm, she can no longer trust the one person she’s always looked up to, who she once thought was on her side.
Determined to put a stop to Hideo’s grim plans, Emika and the Phoenix Riders band together, only to find a new threat lurking on the neon-lit streets of Tokyo. Someone’s put a bounty on Emika’s head, and her sole chance for survival lies with Zero and the Blackcoats, his ruthless crew. But Emika soon learns that Zero isn’t all that he seems–and his protection comes at a price.
Caught in a web of betrayal, with the future of free will at risk, just how far will Emika go to take down the man she loves?
Wildcard was the much-anticipated, second book in the Warcross duology by Marie Lu. It bums me out that I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I thought I would because I was so blown away by the first book, Warcross. The technology, asian american representation, and eventual shocking plot twist in Warcross had me itching for Wildcard’s release. Needless to say, I had high expectations—and that’s my fault.
I’m sure some of you have also caught yourself in the same loop. You’re searching for a new book to read, watch some book recommendation videos, find a book to read (!!), and… continue to watch booktube videos.
The cycle is inevitable.
Anyways, here are some of my favorite booktubers to watch while I procrastinate 🎉:
Continue reading “My Favorite Booktubers”
Title: Station Eleven
Author: Emily St. John Mandel
Published: September 9, 2014
Pages: 336
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads
Goodreads Description:An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse, Station Eleven tells the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.
One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor’s early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as the Traveling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor’s first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet.
Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.
First off, it was not what I was expecting at all. I committed the age-old crime of judging Station Eleven by its cover and, based off the (truly minimal) stars on the front, I assumed the story would take place in space. That, plus the fact that Station Eleven sounded like a space station (which I technically wasn’t wrong to believe), the book gave me the impression of being a space opera. While that wasn’t the case, I was pleasantly surprised that the book was so much better than my initial estimation of it.
Sometime between scrolling through all the book blogs and seeing many similar-themed posts, my brain reached a tipping point and was rewired to think more like the rest of the blogging community (🐑 <— me, a sheep). There were some bookish things that I refused to accept until you all, without meaning to, knocked some sense into me. Here are five bookish things I’ve changed my mind about (thanks to you all 🥂!):
Continue reading “5 Bookish Things I’ve Changed My Mind About”I learned that she’s long overdue for a re-watch of The Emperor’s New Groove and The Princess and the Frog (which, let’s be honest, we all are). Also, she taught me that there’s a word for sidekick?!
It’s hard for me to get behind zodiacs especially when, as a Virgo, I’m painted as perfectionist—something that’s only true about me in a limited number of cases. ᴡʜɪʟᴇ ɪ ᴀᴍ ᴀɴ ᴀsᴛʀᴏʟᴏɢʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴢᴏᴅɪᴀᴄ sᴋᴇᴘᴛɪᴄ, I am a Disney fanatic and will gladly take this opportunity to share Disneyish facts about me ᵀᴴᴬᵀ ᵞᴼᵁ ᴾᴿᴼᴮᴬᴮᴸᵞ ᴰᴼᴺ’ᵀ ᴿᴱᴬᴸᴸᵞ ᶜᴬᴿᴱ ᶠᴼᴿ. So, let’s get started!
Continue reading “The Zodiac Challenge Tag”
Title: Sourdough
Author: Robin Sloan
Published: September 5, 2017
Pages: 259
Genre: Fiction, Magical Realism, Contemporary
Amazon / Barnes & Nobles / Goodreads
Goodreads Description: Lois Clary, a software engineer at a San Francisco robotics company, codes all day and collapses at night. When her favourite sandwich shop closes up, the owners leave her with the starter for their mouthwatering sourdough bread.
Lois becomes the unlikely hero tasked to care for it, bake with it and keep this needy colony of microorganisms alive. Soon she is baking loaves daily and taking them to the farmer’s market, where an exclusive close-knit club runs the show.
When Lois discovers another, more secret market, aiming to fuse food and technology, a whole other world opens up. But who are these people, exactly?
The most basic and superficial description of this novel is that it is a book about baking bread. Your initial reaction to this statement might be to dismiss this book, and I get it—who wants to read a story about bread? Nonetheless, Sourdough won the 2017 Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction, a point that prevented me from disregarding the novel and ultimately made me decide to give it a shot.
Continue reading “Book Review: Sourdough by Robin Sloan // wtf did I just read”
Belle Can Read 