Tag: recap

Monthly Digest

Monthly Digest | January 2022

bookishluna5 Comments

Hello and welcome to the first Monthly Digest of 2022! This month was VERY chaotic personally with work, getting sick, and just a lot of stuff that needed my attention. Somehow I managed to find time to read, make, and do some other fun things.

Reading

My reading mojo is back! I was able to finish 9 books, which is a shock because I only read 1 last month. I really was afraid that trend was going to continue. I found some winners this month and unfortunately not so great ones, but I am glad I read them.

Crochet, Knitting and Crafting

Apiarist Cowl by Claire Borchardt in red.

The first project I finished this year was the Apiarist Cowl by Claire Borchardt. This was my first time needing a cable needle and I was very intimidated at first. As I worked through it, it became easier. Funny how that happens! lol. I really loved how this came out because I have been using it every day since. It is cute, warm, and soft as can be.

Musselburgh by Ysolda Teague in a gray.

The second item I finished was also a winter accessory, a Musselburgh by Ysolda Teague. This was an impulse make through and through. I had to put working on socks aside because I was unable to see the person I was making them for so I needed something else to work on. I ended up using fingering scraps from an old project. I love how this hat ended up coming out. I have not used it yet because I still need to block the hat, but I am waiting to have to block a few more things.

Life

This month was a really weird one to say the least. But, with that being said, I managed to make some pretty great memories. I went to a paint class with my friend and had a blast! I have not painted in a very long time so it was great to do something different and have some great conversation. I also somehow was able to order a new graphics card for my computer so once that arrives I can install it and hopefully finally finish my play through of Resident Evil Village and actually see what is going on. So, while January was really chaotic, some great things came out of it.

Sign Off 2020
Sign off, thanks for reading!

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Wrap Up

Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon Recap | October 2020

bookishluna7 Comments

Hello and welcome to my second post of the day. Yesterday I took part in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readahon and I wanted to share my experience and my reading progress. Throughout the day I updated on twitter and instagram, but I did not share anything on here. I thought a recap post would be best.

If you would like to know more about the readathon, you can visit their website, they have been around for a long time, their first readathon was in 2007! They host a readathon 2 times a year, generally in April and October. I have taken part in a few over the years and I have always enjoyed between the mini challenges, games, and reading sprints.

Updates

Starting off hour 1 of #deweys24hourreadathon with an audiobook.

screen shot of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me audiobook.
screen shot of Between the World and Me audiobook screen

Decided to take part a mini challenge for the #readathon.
Hers is my name in books! Now, back to the reading! P.S. I decided to just make this one big thread for the day.

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent The Hunger by Alma Katzu Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy All stacked and pictured surrounded by flowers.
Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent, The Hunger by Alma Katsu, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

#readathon update, I finished my first book. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rating: 5 stars.

Picture of Between the World and Me with 5 stars.

Quick #readathon update for #deweys24hourreadathon. I am 38% through my current read, which is Amityville Horror by Jay Anson.

Holding book open to Chapter 12 with text overlay describing current progress to 38%
picture of the heading of chapter 12 to show progress.

I finished my second book of the #readathon, now I need to figure out what to read next.

I decided my next read of the #readathon will be continuing Cemetery Boys, I am starting at page 41. Let's see how far I get before falling asleep. 😂 I am making more progress than I thought I would during Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon.

Picture of Cemetery yBoys and a green pen on covers.

Originally tweeted by bookishluna (@BookishLuna) on October 24, 2020.

Not pictured is a 8:30 run to go get some caffeine, I started getting really sleepy and my BF and myself took a reading break and went out in search of coffee and tea. Once back I came back and met my main goal of finishing Amityville Horror.

Wrap Up

I ended up finishing two books and 20% of another. The two books I finished were Between the World and Me, which was amazing, and The Amityville Horror. Both I really enjoyed both of these books for very different reasons, but I am really glad I picked them up.

  • Books Read: 2
  • Books Started: 1
  • Pages Read: 478

I had such a blast dedicating the day to reading, especially with all of the stuff going on in my life right now. At this point I plan on participating again in April!

What is your favorite readathon?

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Wrap Up

Wrap Up | #OWLsReadathon2019

bookishluna6 Comments

WrapUp12:17

The OWLS are complete! I am both very happy and very bummed out. I truly had a wonderful time reading for this readathon, G did a wonderful job creating it. I am happy because I am very happy with the OWLs that I have passed. In total I passed 7, which I did not expect to happen in the slightest because the last few months I have not been reading like I normally do. It seems like this readathon was the kick in the butt I needed.

-My Results-

OWLs Passed: 7

Required OWLs:

  • Potions: Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
  • Herbology: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
  • Care of Magical Creatures: Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill

Bonus OWLs:

  • Muggle Studies: Elevation by Stephen King
  • Charms: My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
  • Transfiguration: The Things I Would Tell You edited by Sabrina Mahfouz
  • Arithmancy: Classic Penguin

Final Score: Exceeded Expectations

Read 2
Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children, #3)Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This being the third book in a series I adore, I was expecting to finally hit a point where the story was going a little blah. I finally found that point in the series. I am not saying that this is a bad book, I still enjoyed it quite a lot. I just found it very different from the others and not in a good way. I would rather explore a single world specifically not see a glimpse of a few without really seeing anything.

The timeline used was interesting and I was happy about what happened to a particular character. Thew writing like the others was very poetic and the story was fast paced as the others. I just kinda found myself not as invested because we were jumping around so much.

Like I said, still a good reads, but so far is a “low” point in the series.

View all my reviews

Classic Penguin: Cover to CoverClassic Penguin: Cover to Cover by Paul Buckley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a very lovely look at all of the editions penguins has come out with for the classics. Not only did I enjoy looking at all of the artwork, but I also really enjoyed hearing the backstory behind design elements and the creators thoughts in some cases.

I think my favorite section was a look behind Penguin Threads. I loved seeing what the other side of the cover was in the original needle point/embroidery.

View all my reviews

The Priory of the Orange TreeThe Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

While I did enjoy reading this book, I was very neutral about it. I am having a hard time pinpointing why I am so neutral about it. The plot was fun, I enjoyed the characters, and while it is large it is not slow paced.

Maybe it is just because I am not in a fantasy mood like I thought I was?

View all my reviews

Middle Mark Books 2

If you want to see my reviews in full, please see the post, Middle Mark | #OWLsReadathon2019 Update. On that post I detailed the books I read in the first half of the month. 

Beat the Backlist 2

Current TBR: 30 books

Current Backlist TBR: 11 books

What was your favorite book you read this month?

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Reading Challenges

Reading Goals | 2018 Recap

bookishluna12 Comments

Reading Goals NEW

I cannot believe this year is coming to a close soon and it is time to reflect on the goals I set for myself back in December 2017. It feels like so long ago, but at the same time this year felt like it flew by. A few times this year I checked in with my goals, but I have not done so since the first half a the year. I honestly kinda lost track of my goals because one large one I realized was not going to happen. I will get more into that later in this post.

Earlier Posts

Reading Goals | 2018, Reading Goals | 2018 | 1st Quarter Review, and Reading Goals | 2018 | 2nd Quarter Review.

DividerThe Goals

  1. Update my blog post headers
    • I loved designing so I want to introduce a few new headers and give myself that time to be creative.
  2. Read 50 books
    • Every year I set my reading goal at 50. It is an average of a book in little over a week and I tend to not stress out about it.
  3. Read 30,000 pages
    • I though this page goal would be fun.
  4. Try new things
    • This year I want to experiment a little outside of what I normally post, spice things up a little bit.
  5. Complete the 2018 POPSUGAR reading challenge

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My Reflection

  1. I did this as soon as the year started and I am very happy with the graphics I created. I also like the fact that I made them in a way where I can change the background images if I ever feel like it and it would not be too much work.
  2. I am happy to say that I read more than 50 books this year, in fact I read 105 as of 12/9.
  3. Once again I can say that I read more than 30,000 page throughout the year. I ended up reading a grand total of 36,985 pages as of 12/9.
  4. This year I felt like I tried some new things on my blog such as posting about My life, DIYs, and Cooking as well as doing a few fun series such as _____ Picks my books, Annotating my Bookshelf , and introducing discussion posts. All of which I had a ton of fun doing. I know in the new year I want to do another round of Annotating my Bookshelf.
  5. This one is where the problem came in. While I love the idea of the pop sugar challenge, it really is not a good challenge for me. There are a 52 prompts and while I did do a majority of them. I am a book reader and I honestly have no interest in reading nordic noir currently. While my goal was to read 50 books, why would I pick a challenge that would assign me 52 books. On top of that a majority of the books on this challenge I did not own and this year I really wanted to read some of the books I had on my shelf the longest. Which I did and now the longest a book has been on myself has been 19 months, less than two years. So I was happy to give up on this goal because it did not line up with my other goals, which were a priority to me.

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Overall, I am very happy with how I did with my 2018 Reading and Blog goals. I achieve the ones that were the most important to me and I am proud of myself for putting aside one that really did not benefit me in reaching my other goals. Goals should be realistic and reachable. While I come up with my 2019 goals, this is going to be in my mind.

How did you do with your 2018 goals?

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Wrap Up

Weeks in Review | November 11th-November 17th

bookishluna1 Comment

a week in review

Wow, another week has passed, I can hardly believe it. I feel like since November has started the year is going faster and faster. This week I was only able to finish one book, but I made good progress in my buddy read and I did end up DNFing another book. Not because it was a bad book, but because I didn’t really feel like reading it currently. So I don’t want to mention it because I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading it. Without further wait, here are my stats and reading wrap up from the pervious week.

Pages Read: 426 pages

Time Read: 4 hours

Reading Speed: 93 pages and hour

DividerBooks I Finished

The Rules of Magic by Alice Hoffman

The Rules of Magic

I absolutely loved this book! When I first started reading this book, I did find it enjoyable, but I did not expect it to be a 5 star read for me. While it was interesting the first few parts of the book were missing that spark that Practical Magic had. The by part 3 I was really dedicated to this book. I teared up, I felt for this family greatly. Then the ending came and I saw what Alice Hoffman did and I gasped “WHAT!?” when I realized who these characters were and answered so many questions that I had when I read Practical Magic is a wonderful show and not tell kind of manner. If you loved Practical Magic I highly recommend reading this, it does the story justice in my eyes. If you never read Practical Magic, you can start with this novel if you want a wonderful witch and magic filled read.

5stars

DividerI am Still Reading

A Noise Downstairs by Linwood Barclay

A Noise Downstairs

I finally am caught up with this buddy read. So far I am on the fence as to what I think about it, but I am excited to see what happens next. The cliffhanger that I felt off on makes me want to read ahead, but I am going to control myself for the time being.

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Books Added

The Witch Elm by Tana French

The Witch Elm

I have been hearing an awful or about Tana French and more specifically about The Witch Elm. I don’t know if it was because of all the witch talk around Halloween or just that it is a great book, but either way it caught my interest. Funnily enough I went to a few bookstores to find this book, so I am far from the only one interested in it.

“Toby is a happy-go-lucky charmer who’s dodged a scrape at work and is celebrating with friends when the night takes a turn that will change his life – he surprises two burglars who beat him and leave him for dead. Struggling to recover from his injuries, beginning to understand that he might never be the same man again, he takes refuge at his family’s ancestral home to care for his dying uncle Hugo. Then a skull is found in the trunk of an elm tree in the garden – and as detectives close in, Toby is forced to face the possibility that his past may not be what he has always believed.

A spellbinding standalone from one of the best suspense writers working today, The Witch Elm asks what we become, and what we’re capable of, when we no longer know who we are. “-goodreads.com 

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Posts from the Week

Let’s Talk | TBR Jar Experiment

TAG | The Literary Dinner Part

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What was the last book you read?

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Tags

Tag | Mid-Year Book Freakout

bookishluna4 Comments

TagTimel12:17

I cannot believe that 2018 is almost already halfway over, where has the time gone? I have a sneaking suspicion that I have been just having too much fun and that is why time has gone by unnoticed. Whether that is the reason or not I want to check in on my reading regardless and make sure I am on track with my reading. So, here is what my reading has been like so far in 2018!

Books I Read in 2018

Stats

Questions

Best book you’ve read so far in 2018?

Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent, it was an absolutely wonderful thriller.

Best sequel you’ve read so far in 2018?

The Dire King by William Ritter, it was fun and wonderful just like every previous book in the series.

New release you haven’t read yet, but want to?

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, I have no idea why I have not read this book yet.

Most anticipated release for the second half of 2018?

Honestly, I am not too sure. Lately I have been focusing more on what I have.

Biggest disappointment?

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, it just was not for me.

Biggest surprise?

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, I did not expect to like this classic as much as I did. Now I keep telling everyone to get it and read it.

Favourite new author?

Liz Nugent, I have read two of her books this year and I loved them both.

Newest fictional crush?

I don’t  have one oddly, that usually happens a lot.

Newest favourite character?

I can’t decide! I found so many awesome ones this year.

Book that made you cry?

None made me cry, but some made me come very close.

Book that made you happy?

When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon, it just made me feel happy and I flew through it.

Favourite book to movie adaptation you saw this year?

I haven’t seen any so far, any recommendations?

Favourite review you’ve written this year?

REVIEW | Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent or REVIEW | The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

Most beautiful book you bought so far this year?

All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages

What books do you need to read by the end of the year? 

The Heart's Invisible FuriesUnder the DomeThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

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What book do you want to read by the end of 2018?

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