Rainy Day Reads

I am a bit of a Youtube junkie when it comes to TBR challenges. I love watching other people get their TBR under control and The Closet Unhaul series on BooksandLala's channel was some of my favorite content last year. Basically she had an entire closet full of books she had bought when she first started doing Youtube and hadn't gotten around to reading yet. So she would watch her hauls from the same month 2 years earlier and any books she hadn't read she would have to read or get rid of. Sadly she isn't really doing that anymore but I have found another creator who does something similar - Drinking By My Shelf does Balancing the Books and is all about balancing the books she brings onto her TBR and the books she removes from it (by reading or unhauling). Anyway...I love watching that type of video (if you have any recommendations please let me know) and I thought I would try something similar myself. I'm starting out slow because I'm super lazy and don't...

So in order to get cracking on my newfound reading resolutions I went to the library today and picked up a bunch of books. To be completely honest I had some of these books lying around from my last trip to the library, but I figured I would just make one big haul.   I’ve divided the books into 3 groups; Diversity Bingo, Around the Year in 52 books and others.  Let’s start with the books I’ve managed to get for Diversity Bingo:  First up we have “NIght” by Elie Wiesel. This will go towards the challenge of a book with a Jewish Main Character. It’s part of an autobiographical novel trilogy about the author’s experiences during WWII. I have high expectations for this one, since some of my favorite books are set during wartime and I have heard good things about this book.  Then we have “P.S. I Still Love You” by Jenny Han. This will be my book with a person of color on the cover. This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”...

It’s a good job libraries are free, because otherwise I would be broke! I went for a little browse around my library because I had a few books to return. And it’s a rare day that I manage to leave the library without (a few) new books in hand.  This time I browsed with no particular plan in mind and I came across a couple of books that took my fancy.  First I found “Mistborn” by Brandon Sanderson. I’ve heard Regan at PeruseProject rave about this series and this author and I have been meaning to get around to reading a book by him. So when I came across this one I decided to pick it up. It’s about world ruled by a supreme lord and two unlikely companions planning the ultimate revolt. That’s really as much as I can get from any synopsis, but a classic fantasy story like this should be interesting and it comes highly recommended, so I will give it a go.  Next I came across Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake”. Again the synopsis is extremely vague, ...

Spoiler: I may have gone overboard…. I went to the library a few days ago and decided to really browse the shelves and pick up a good selection. And I feel like I succeeded… I picked up both fiction and non-fiction to give myself a wide selection to choose from.  Let’s start with non-fiction.  I picked up a couple of books on ways to go more green. “1001 Ways You Can Save the Planet” by Joanna Yarrow and “Green Makeover” by Maria Cuculiza. I have actually read “Green Makeover” before a number of years ago, but I just remember thinking it all seemed a bit of a hassle and I was too lazy to really implement any of the ideas given in this book. But as I have aged I have become more invested in living a less wasteful life and more dedicated to the environment and sustainability. I am still lazy, but I hope to find a few ways to clean up my act in these two books.  Then I picked up “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I’ve h...

Seeing as I am on a book buying ban, I am making great use of my local library, and I thought “Why not do a haul?” So here are the books I currently have from the library.   First up we have “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. This is part of my “Reading the Classics” project and I have just finished it. I actually really enjoyed it and I think it is one of the few classics (so far) that I feel still have relevance today. Plotwise it’s not perhaps the best book I’ve read, simply because I don’t enjoy violence and made-up slang, but it really makes you think about free will, inherent “badness” and government control.   Then I have “Across the Universe” by Beth Revis. This is a YA book set in space. Amy is frozen cryogenically along with her parents and a number of people who are sent off to colonize a new planet. The journey will take 300 years, and the spaceship is inhabited by other people who keep it running. Somehow Amy is woken up before the spaceship l...

It's that time of year again! Favorites time! Like everyone else, I can't believe half the year has passed already. It's such a cliche but time does really move so fast! Below are a few things that I have been enjoying these past 6 months.  Naked Nibbles Coconut Bliss - these little nibble balls are made of dates and raisins flavored with coconut. They are a great snack and they come in a variety of flavors, but coconut is definitely my favorite so far. They are glutenfree, which is a necessity for me, and dairy free too. It’s a great alternative to more unhealthy snacks, and a life saver in situations where glutenfree foods are not available. I usually keep a bag of these with me whenever I go somewhere, where I am not sure of the selection of food. Just in case.  Palmer’s Coconut Oil Body Lotion - this was a random purchase, but a very nice surprise. It was one of those ordering-stuff-online-I-need-to-buy-more-to-get-free-shipping things and as I was in...

I have pretty much equal love for libraries and bookstores. I even considered becoming a librarian for a short amount of time, but I ended up choosing a different path.   Libraries and bookstores both have their pros and cons. In libraries you can browse and pick between endless amounts of books and you don’t have to worry about your budget. However, you do have to worry about getting all the books read before they are due back on the library shelves, and if you are looking for specific books they might no be available from the library. Similarly you often have to wait quite a while for new releases to become available.  In bookstores you can also browse through a good selection and pick whatever suits your fancy. However, here you do have to worry about your budget (I assume you are not a millionaire with endless funds to spend on books). And sometimes you will be disappointed by the book and feel like you have wasted your money. I know I do sometimes, when a book...