Category: Reading Challenge

March TBR | Reading Plans

DeAnneLeave a comment

How is it already the end of February?! I know it’s the shortest month, but it went by SUPER fast. Still, I find that when I get towards the end of the month I’m really excited to draw my cards to figure out my stack of six books that I put on my TBR. As a refresher I did take inspiration for this from others, but made the rules my own. If I don’t complete the books I don’t punish myself, I’m simply using this as a fun way to try and tackle my (mostly) physical TBR. Any books not finished do get carried over and I can pick them up in following months if I am in the mood to.

With that, here’s how March’s cards came out:

2 of Spades – Kindle + YA
9 of Clubs – Anthologies
5 of Diamonds – YA
10 of Hearts – Historical
9 of Spades – YA + Color
7 of Clubs – Contemporary

For the first challenge I browsed my Kindle for something that was calling to me and decided to finally finish A Tyranny of Petticoats, which has been on my currently reading shelf longer than I would like to admit. The anthology I grabbed from my stack is Color Between the Lines which I’m super excited for.

Next I decided to go with Pet for my YA pick since it’s something I picked up recently and want to pick up sooner rather than later. Historical is a hard category with me and I’ve pretty much decided I’m going to switch out the Historical prompts for something else in the future – I just don’t have enough books to choose from for this prompt. My pick is definitely stretching it, The Saturday Night Ghost Club – but I decided it counted since it’s set in the 80s.

For YA + Color I turned to the random color generator and came up with a very unique mustard yellow/gold color. For this one I had some difficulties, but my boyfriend agreed that the balloons on 10 Blind Dates were close enough to count.

Again, the last choice was a stretch – when I pick Contemporary I don’t necessarily need contemporary to be the main focus, I just consider it something set in the contemporary setting, so because I wanted something a bit spooky in my TBR I went with The Haunted since people do have it shelved as contemporary on Goodreads (hey! my game, my rules haha).

So those are my plans for March (besides review books and mood reading) and I’m excited. Hopefully I’ll make my way through them!

Happy reading!

Series I Want to Finish in 2021

DeAnne4 Comments

I’m pretty sure we’ve all been guilty of starting series and then letting them sit on our shelves waiting for us to pick them up again. I decided to pick a few series that I will try to finish this year and we’ll just see how we go.

Locke and Key – I’ve heard the entire story through audiobook, but I would like to read it in its original format. This one I’m actually almost done with as I’m currently working on volume 5 – so I’m pretty confident I’ll be able to knock this one out.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians – This one I’m a little more behind on, I’ve read through book three. I know that outing myself as being way behind on such a popular series is dangerous, but it’s one of those series I have and I told myself I would always get around to – so now I’d really like to.

Fruits Basket – I’ve been collecting the collector’s editions of this manga and so far have read through volume four. This is another one that is going to be easy to complete, I just have to buckle down and do it. I really have no excuse since manga tend to be such a quick read.

The Kane Chronicles – This one is right up there with Percy Jackson, as in I should have read it by now, especially since it all ties into that universe. I’ve read the first book and have the audiobook of the second, so if I can just devote some time to it, then I shouldn’t have an issue.

So there you have it, those are the four series I’m setting a goal of finishing by the end of the year. Hopefully when I revisit this in a year I’ll be able to say that I completely most if not all of them and be able to pick another group to finish.

Happy reading!

Reading Project | Nancy Drew

DeAnneLeave a comment

Hey everyone! You may not know this about me, but for the last couple years I have been working on completing my Nancy Drew collection. Nancy Drew is one of my nostalgic childhood series which I will never tire of reading not just because I enjoy the mysteries and characters, but because of the stage of my life at which I originally read them.

A note – Nancy Drew is definitely a product of its time and if examined closely definitely has problematic elements when compared to today’s standards. A number of the stories have actually been modified from their original versions to remove some content that was inappropriate (I can’t give specific instances as I don’t have that information handy, but I know the info is out there). It’s still a series that holds a place in my heart and I’m ok with that, I can still read them and love them while acknowledging that fact.

Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to give you a very quick glimpse of my Nancy Drew shelves. They are messy and out of order, so no judgement please, part of going through them will be actually putting them in some semblance of order (and removing all those stickers).

Those books are triple stacked. To be fair I need an entire bookcase devoted to Nancy Drew, but space is limited where I am, so we work with it. There are almost 300 Nancy Drew books there, with 175 original and extended mysteries, plus over 100 Nancy Drew files books (separate series). I have slowly been collecting them through second hand sellers (shoutout to Thriftbooks.com) and have finally collected everything I wanted to. I have everything in the original line, and most of the Files (I stopped a bit past 100 because I didn’t like how much they were changing the characters etc at that point).

Story time – I originally read these books at a stage in my life where I had read everything considered suitable for my age, but was still too young to be allowed to read more adult books (it’s a long story that I don’t need to go into, but it was a frustrating time for me because I was reading and reaching for books outside of my age group, but then being told I couldn’t). My mom, seeing my frustration, suggested I check out the Nancy Drew books. She probably figured they would keep me busy for a long time, but I devoured the original 56 books in the matter of a few months – which my library thankfully had all of. From there I read as many of the ‘extended originals’ and Files that my library had. Occasionally my parents were able to buy me one here and there to add to my small collection – I was fully hooked. There was something about the mysteries, about Nancy and about the overall adventures that just always proved an enjoyable read. I’ve been collecting them here and there for years and I can’t tell you how happy it made me when I completed what I wanted to collect.

Now on to the challenge – there are definitely some of them that I never got to read, whether because my library didn’t have them or because we could afford or find them. Now that I have them all I definitely feel a reread/read is in order. Don’t get worried, I’m not expecting to get through all of them in 2021 – but I’d like to at least read a couple a month. If it doesn’t happen that’s ok, but I think it would be nice to slowly make my way through the series. I will mention which ones I read in monthly wrap ups if I do them, but I’m probably not going to actually do full on reviews.

I did start a reread not too long ago, so I’m starting where I left off with that – which is #12 The Message in the Hollow Oak. Right now I’m just going to concentrate on the original line of mysteries and not really read from the Files (that will be later haha).

Wish me luck and happy reading!