Always Me

  Hello everyone!  Today I'm sharing my wrap up and mini reviews for my second round of the  Trope-ical Readathon  which was hosted by  @jenjenreviews  and  @bookrob13  and ran for entire month of August.  You can check out my original tbr here . Of the 16 total books I had on my original tbr (2 team challenges, 1 team book, and 13 common challenges), I managed to get to 13 of them.  I earned 200 points for the team challenges, 550 points for the common challenges, and 4,925 points per page for a grand total of 5,675 points!  I'd say I did a pretty good job this time around!  Without further ado, let's get to mini reviews: Team Challenges: 1. There Be Dragons!! (Read a book featuring dragons) ❋  ❋  ❋  A Feast For Crows  was previously my least favorite installment of  A Song of Ice and Fire , but now that honor goes to  A Dance with Dragons  ( A Song of Ice and Fire  #5) by George R.R. Martin . It's way too long and a lot of the characters I was really looking forward t

Happy Tuesday everyone!  Welcome to the Top Ten Tuesday now hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl .  This week's topic is Fictional Crushes, but I don't have those so instead I'm featuring the Characters I Want To Be Best Friends With.  Here we go, in no particular order: Clint Barton and Kate Bishop from Matt Fraction's Hawkeye Kamala Khan from G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel The Doctor and Donna Noble from Doctor Who Blue, Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Noah from The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater Inej, Kaz, Jesper, Wylan, Nina, and Matthias from Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien Inigo, Fezzick, and Westley from The Princess Bride by William Goldman Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur Parnassus and Linus Baker from The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune Malcolm Bright, Edrisa Tanaka, Gil Arroyo, Dani Powell, and J.T. Tarmel from Prodigal Son What character

Welcome back to Music Monday! Let's share some songs we've been enjoying lately!  If you would like to play and I really hope you do, please see the rules and link up below. Rules: Every Monday share a few songs you've been enjoying lately.  It doesn't have to be a specific genre, new, or one of your favorites - just something you'd like to share with others.  If possible, share a music or lyric video of the song and your thoughts on the song(s), artist(s), and/or music video(s). If you would like to participate in Music Monday, please join the link up by sharing your post's url. Happy Monday everyone!  This week I'm sharing a couple of unexpected radio favorites.  These two are totally different from one another, but regardless I turn up the radio each time I hear them come on!  I'm not all that familiar with either artist before now, so I think I'm going to have to check out more of their stuff.  Give a listen to: My Ex's Best Friend from Machi

Happy Saturday everyone!  I hope everyone's been staying healthy and happy.  I can't believe it's almost September.  Anyway, that means that I've now completed 16 tasks of  Book Riot's 2021 Read Harder Challenge .  The tasks I completed this month required me to read a genre novel by an Indigenous, First Nations, or Native American author  and  a children's book that centers on a disabled character but not their disability.   I selected  Future Home of the Living God  by Louise Erdrich  and  Forget Me Not  by Ellie Terry .   Read on to see my mini reviews and what's coming up for October: ❋  ❋  ❋ Future Home of the Living God  by Louise Erdrich  is a dsytopian novel with a lot of potential.  Louise Erdrich is an incredibly talented author and while I appreciated this, it didn't quite pull me in as much as her other novels I've read.  I suppose I was looking forward to a little more in terms of the dystopian element, but I did like the idea of the de-

Happy Friday everyone!  Today, I'm sharing four ARC mini reviews - Army of the Cursed ( War of the Last Day #1) by Karim Soliman  (released February 23rd, 2021), The Endless Skies by Shannon Price  (released August 17th, 2021), Paper & Blood ( Ink & Sigil #2) Kevin Hearne  (released August 10th, 2021), and Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia  (released August 17th, 2021).  I received Army of the Cursed from the author in exchange for an honest honest review and the rest of these ARCs   from NetGalley in exchange for honest reviews.  Read on to see my thoughts: ❋   ❋  ❋   ❋ Army of the Cursed  ( War of the Last Day  #1) by Karim Soliman   is a fantasy series opener that I'm so glad I decided to take a chance on. I wasn't at all familiar with the author before going into this book, but this impressed me enough that I'm going to have to try more of his past works soon. His character work is excellent. I feel like everyone including the side characters

On Friday's I take part in three weekly link ups - The Friday 56, hosted by  Freda's Voice , and Book Beginnings, hosted by  Rose City Reader .  For The Friday 56, you choose a book, a book you have just finished, a book you are about to start, your current read, and share a line or a few lines that grab you (but don't spoil anything) from page 56 or 56% of the way through the ebook. Post it and share your post's url on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post. As for Book Beginnings, you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires, and then link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.  Happy Friday everyone!  This week I'm spotlighting one of my Trope-ical Readathon  reads,  The Seal of Solomon  ( Alfred Kropp  #2) by Rick Yancey .  I just finished it and it was a great sequel.  This series is one of this author's lesser known, but it's definitely worth trying if you're into the magic and adven

Happy Wednesday everyone!  This September marks an all new iteration of the Magical Readathon , hosted by G. @ Book Roast .  You can visit Twitter account for it here .  Instead of being a Harry Potter themed readathon, this is features and all new world and story that our wonderful host has created for us.  It is based around a magical academy (Orilium), but taking the Novice Path during month of September focuses on our journey to the academy.  We'll also get to learn more about the world and begin to create our characters.  Next year, we'll have the opportunity to study magic at the academy as a part of a 2 month readathon (potentially in April and August of 2022).  In order to successfully complete the Novice Path, you only need to complete two prompts, but you can do as many as you like.  The character creation aspect (the Scholar's Key) of this readathon is open to complete up until April 2022.  You can come up with several aspects of your character's story yourse