Tag: reading challenges

March TBR | Reading Plans

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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!

February TBR | Reading Plans

DeAnneLeave a comment

Hey everyone! Well, another month has pretty much passed us by. Where did January go? It’s been a pretty good reading month and with a couple more reads I’m trying to get a couple more reads in, but I’ll discuss that in my wrap up (yes, wrap ups are coming back!). As of writing this post I have read four of the six books that I picked for January and I’m hoping to finish at least one more before the month ends. As a reminder I’m not punishing myself if any are unfinished – I am carrying them over and picking them up as I can, but I’m not pressuring myself with any punishments or anything. My wrap up will come in a few days, but for now let’s get to what the cards determined for February.

4 of Diamonds – Netgalley
2 of Spades – Kindle + YA
Jack of Clubs – Under 300 Pages
King of Clubs – Rich’s Stack of 5
10 of Hearts – Historical
2 of Clubs – Classic

Most of these made me sigh with relief as I was hoping for a slightly lighter month – especially since I’m always playing catch up due to the century that was 2020. For the most part I was really happy with what the cards revealed.

For my NetGalley pick I went with the next blog tour I have scheduled, so This Golden Flame will be covering that card pick. For the Kindle + YA I have a collection on my kindle that is just YA, so I decided to be kind to myself and chose a short story/novella, which was The Automaton’s Treasure.

Under 300 pages did make me cheer just a bit and I was super excited to grab Kiki’s Delivery Service right off my book cart. Rich got it for me for Christmas and I have been dying to read it ever since, so I jumped at the chance to squeeze it into the TBR.

I groaned just slightly when that king card came up, just because most of the books Rich chose when I started this challenge are a bit on the larger size and I had already had one of the stack of 5 on January’s TBR. For this one I ended up going with Kill Creek.

Historical is one that will probably be removed from the board at some point just because I don’t have a ton of historical books – but for this category I’m including other genres that may have a historical setting, so I went with Stalking Jack the Ripper since I really need to get to that series.

Finally we landed on classic and I won’t lie, I was cringing just because I haven’t been in the mood for classics, but then I remembered that I still have some Shirley Jackson that I haven’t read so I leapt at the chance to pick up Let Me Tell You by her. Even though it was released only a few years ago, it’s previously unreleased work by her, so I’m counting it.

So there we have it! I think this months picks will be mostly easy to handle and if nothing else, fun to read!

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!

Flashback Friday Challenge: Update 1

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So it’s been a little over a month since I concocted this challenge. I was hoping to finish four a month, but that didn’t quite happen. So I’m going to update you on what I was able to read, which was two of the four books I picked.

First I read The Forever House, which I hadn’t read since I was a teenager. It definitely isn’t as teenage me remembered it, but still entertaining. I didn’t remember it taking so long to really get to the action. Now would this stand up today? Maybe. It’s definitely white washed, which was usual for the 90s in a lot of ways. Plus, some of the descriptions of characters probably would be frowned upon. My nostalgia definitely made it a fun book but my perception of it has definitely changed.

Next I picked up The Clue of the Broken Locket. I always love Nancy Drew books. To me they are classic and timeless and I know that part of that is because I’ve read and re-read them multiple times. Nancy Drew books are always great when I’m in a reading slump or just need something to cleanse my palette.

So that’s the update for now, I still have two more books left from the original pick, and I’ll pick more after that. It’s fun to revisit these and see how my feelings change towards these books.

Happy reading!

Flashback Friday Challenge

DeAnne1 Comment

After writing my #FlashbackFriday post last week I got to thinking that I would really like to do some rereading of those favorites, so what better way to do it than to incorporate it into a challenge! With all the books I need to read this year this is probably going to be a form of torture, but I also think it’s going to be fun. Each month (or so) I’ll pick a few titles from my shelves that are specifically tied to when I was younger and give them a reread. We’ll just have to see how it goes, fingers crossed!

Now let’s get to the ones I picked for the first round of this. I’m pretty much always in some stage of a Nancy Drew reread, so I picked up the next original mystery I’m on in my reread, #11 – The Clue of the Broken Locket, and I picked up the next one in the files that I need to get through #3 – Smile and Say Murder.

Next is a reread of L.J. Smith’s Night World series, though I’m still salty about the fact that Strange Fate, the finale has never been released. At think point I’d just like an outline to see how things end. This month I’m going to start with book one, which used to be titled Secret Vampire (not my favorite in the series, but the starting point).

The other one I’m going to pick up is probably not known by anyone, it came out at the same time R.L. Stine’s Fear Street series was out and from another similar series that was being started. This one is The Forever House by Mark Rivers. My best friend and I both have fond memories of this one and I haven’t read it since I was a teenager, so I figured it was time for a reread.

So, that’s going to be the first group of books I pick up and reread. We’ll see if they still hold their places in my heart as they did when I was younger. I’m sure some opinions and feelings may change, but we’ll see!

Happy reading!

2020 Reading Challenges I Want to Participate In

DeAnneLeave a comment

There are so many different reading challenges that it can be hard to decide which ones you want to participate in. Typically I have trouble sticking to them, or I find a ton I want to do and then am too unorganized or too much of a mood reader. This coming year I want to pick a few that I definitely participate in, then fill in where I can or where I feel like it.

Clearing the Hoard – My backlist is pretty enormous and it is something I would like to improve. I’m a little hesitant to make an actual list of all the books I have which are unread because, well, there are a lot, but I think it’s a great idea to tackle all those books which may not be at the top of the TBR.

TBR and Beyond – I’m a member of the TBR and Beyond facebook group, which has monthly and a yearly reading challenge, so I definitely plan on tackling those challenges as well.

20 For 2020 Reading Challenge – This one is based on prompts and it looks like a really good list, so I’m definitely going to try and tackle it. We’ll see how we do!

What reading challenges are you going to participate in next year?

Happy reading!