December 2014 Reading Goals

Oh, look at that! I haven't posted in a month and my last post was another reading goal!!! Yea, I still have lots of goals and I'm still reading lots of book I've just lost my interest in reviewing. Reading has always been my passion and the writing is obviously not my strength. I may bounce back with the New Year, but I also may not. Whatever.

First off, we review last month's, just like always:

Read:
The Descendants
The Killing Moon
The Maze Runner
Ender's Game
The Silver Lining's Playbook
Magic Hour
Matched

Currently Reading:
Monuments Men
Mr. Mercedes
More Than This

So-- I hit my goals for last much with the exception of Monuments Men. I've discovered that this is a very dry book and it's taking me a while to get into/through it. As for which movies I've watched, I think I only watched Ender's Game and let me tell you, it was one of the worst movie adaptations I've ever seen. I really enjoyed the book but the movie was such a bust. There was no character development, no real plot, and I hated it. The hubby thought the special effects were cool but I couldn't get over how crappy the movie was to give it a chance.

You may also notice that I added some books to my readings of this month and I was very happy overall with the books I read. I look forward to watching the movies that are associated with them and now my husband can't complain about me not reading enough (just kidding, he's never claimed this unless it keeps him from seeing a movie he wants to see.)

For next month, I think I'm going to play it by ear. I perused my yearly goals for 2014 and haven't done too bad but I'm at 86 out of 100 and have a month to finish plus I still want to get my TBR list under 200. So I'm going to wing it this month. I'm going to read as many TBR books that I can to hit two goals by the end of the year and round out a few more. Wish me luck!

Maybe you'll hear from me before 2015 but maybe not. Happy Holidays everyone!!!

November 2014 Reading Goals

Hello? Anybody still here? I know things have been quiet around here and I'm just going to stop apologizing for it. Life has changed significantly with my new job and I have zero free time at work these days which limits my blogging life. This is great because I'm way more efficient and getting paid for every second I work, but sad for little old bloggy. I'm satisfied doing what I can and I hope you continue to enjoy the sporadic posts that will pop up from time to time.

With that being said, you know it's time for our monthly goals. I did just ok in October with goals. I got more reading in than I expected but didn't quite get to everything I wanted to read.

Read:
Beach Music
Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World
A Rogue by Any Other Name
Please Ignore Vera Dietz

Currently Reading:
The Killing Moon

And didn't even attempt:
Matched
Land of Love and Drowning
Magic Hour

Ehhhh, not my best month. I'll obviously finish Killing Moon this month and I'm sure I'll get around to my other TBR books as wel,l but for November, I'm taking a little different route. I hereby declare November book goals-

 The DVR Goals!!!

What the heck is a DVR goal? Oh, let me tell you! This list consists solely of movies I have had on my DVR (I'm not even going to admit how long they have been on there) that I refuse to watch until I've read the books-- much to my husbands dismay. So I'm finally going to read and then watch. Maybe you'll get lucky and I'll 1) actually review the book but 2) also review the movie. A two-fer as my dad likes to say! I also don't have my hot little hands on all of these books quite yet but I'm going to try and acquire as the month goes on.

  The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings

 The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

 Ender's Game (The Ender Quartet #1) by Orson Scott Card

 The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

 The Monuments Me: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves, and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History by Robert M. Edsel

Pretty good lineup. Wish me luck for my husband's sake :) 

October 2014 Reading Goals

In September, I literally posted twice. Bad blogger! But I have very good reasons for that and I will explain myself now! Number one, I didn't write even one review. I read a lot but never sat down to review which makes it hard to post. Oops. That being said, I guess I didn't even read a lot... I'll get into that a little later with my goals but it has been embarrasingly limited. Now for the real reason that I haven't been active on the blogger community: I QUIT MY JOB!!!!! Don't worry, I had another one lined up. Here's a little background: I'm a child and adolescent therapist and in June I earned my full license as a professional counselor which I have been working on for 2.5 years. Pretty big deal. Then over vacation (August) I was contacted about a job which I interviewed for when I returned from NY and I was offered the job the next day. It's in private practice which is where I've always wanted to be and a huge step for my career so I had to break it to my supervisor (as well as 60+ clients) that I was leaving and I've officially made the switch. I'm in the middle of my second full week at the new job and while there will be a lot to get used to, I'm sure it's the right decision for me. So-- hopefully that explains why I've been MIA. I don't know if y'all were aware but I did a lot of my blogging while at work in between clients and lots of reading during lunch. That free time has been missing for a while now but I'm hoping I'll get back on the blogging horse, starting now!

Now let's get back to bookish things and goals. First up, my progress last month:

Read:
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery
Joyland
Looking For Alaska
The Second Time Around
Hearts in Atlantis
Table for Two (Summer Desserts and Lessons Learned)

Didn't Finish:
Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World
Beach Music

For this month, I'm going to finish those two from above as well as focus on some of my subscription box books (from the one post last month) and fill in with ebooks. So for my reading pleasure I have these:

minus Landline because I already devoured that fab book

A Rogue by Any Other Name (The Rules of Scoundrels #1) By Sarah MacLean
Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King
The Killing Moon (Dreamblood #1) by N.K. Jemisin
Land of Love and Drowning by Tiphanie Yanique

Ebooks:

Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah

Matched (Matched #1) by Ally Condie

So this month is a little bit of a hodge podge but I hope to get some good reviewing and posts done in addition to some good reading. Here's hoping!

September 2014 Reading Goals

Well hello old friends! Here I am! A week late and a few goals short but I'm here! And with a rare but glorious book haul! I'm going to go full old school this month and focus mostly on real books for my goals but I will supplement with ebooks at work during lunch. But before I get into all of that, I'll check in with last months progress. 

Read: 

Landline 

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

The Interestings

Legend

Lexicon

(and as of today, a week later, I've completed)

Life After Life

The Light Between Oceans

Didn't Read: 

Lost Girls (either one but they will both be my ebooks for this month)

And guess what, I haven't written a damn review all month! Sorry about that, but I'll pick up speed soon. As you have probably noticed, I've taken my sweet time getting back into the swing of things around here since my vacation. I'm also making some big changes in my work life which has kept me on my toes. Luckily, it is now football season which means lots of time on the couch with the hubby (which I love) and provides good reading/blogging time. I'm coming back my lovelies, I promise!

So for this month, let's take a look at my book haul (below.) I have made the best worst discovery of my life. It's called 2nd and Charles and it's a HUGE used book store. They also have tons of comics and musical instruments and all sorts of stuff but it's like Barnes and Noble sized used book store. Talk about heaven!!! This is a great discovery because BOOKS! but not such a good thing because I can easily find 50 books I need because they are a good price and still drop major bucks. 

The below books all came from 2nd and Charles and get this, at least 5 of them were free. Free books, my people. Can't go wrong. So yes, they aren't really on my TBR list but I love Nora and a good beach read, so I grabbed them up and will be exploring this month. There's also some good King on there and you know I love him. I highly doubt I'll read all of these but you know I love a challenge! 

Ebooks

These are leftovers from last month and I'll only be reading them when not at home (i.e. work, which I've mentioned is crazy) so they may rollover next month too...

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery  

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World                 

How about that sexy iPhone picture?!?!

Table for Two by Nora Roberts (Great Chefs #1-2): This a two-for-one which was really free so it feels kind of like stealing books and I'm ok with it.

Inner Harbor by Nora Roberts (Chesapeake Bay #3): So I literally just realized this is the third in a series which means that I won't be reading this until I read the first two. I'm going to include this only because it's in the picture but I have just realized that it will be shelved in the meantime. Oh well. 

Joyland by Stephen King (Hard Case Crime 112): I've actually started this one and really enjoying it so far. And who knew this was a "series." Unlike the last one, I'm not concerned with reading the 111 before this. Don't think they are relevant to this story...

Folly Beach by Dorothea Benton Frank (Lowcountry Tales #8): And another book I've picked up in the middle of a series. This is what I get for taking free books all willy nilly. 

Beach Music by Pat Conroy: Love Pat so I'm looking forward to this chunk of a book.

Looking for Alaska by John Green: This will be my second Green book and I've heard good things!

The Second Time Around by Mary Higgins Clark: Love a good suspense novel

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King: Another chunk but I'm interested in how these four stories come together. My husband informs me this is a movie as well so I'm sure I'll have to follow up with that. 

Through writing this list, I have realized that there are two books I actually won't attempt to read from my book haul this month. I'm very OCD about series and like to read them in order so I'll put those two off until I catch up but you'll see them again in the future. All in all, my goals for this month add up to 9 books (counting the 2-in-1 separately.) Let's see how I do!

August 2014 Reading List

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It's that time again! This year is flying by and every month I do my goals and can't believe how quickly everything is going. And to tell you the truth, it's not a bad thing. First of all, August is my birthday month (Aug 5, holla holla.) And while I'm not one of those girls who require an entire month of celebrations, I still tend to enjoy the whole month more than others. It's also the month I'm going on vacation which I can't even tell you how much I'm looking forward to. Sad my husband will not be able to come but excited for him to start his new job. At the end of this month, the hubs and I will be celebrating our one year anniversary as well which blows my mind. Do we officially graduate out of "newlyweds" after year one or does it last until year 5 or something? I don't know but I'm definitely looking forward to eating our cake. 

I'm also ok with this year flying by because my husband and I are kind of in limbo with our future. He is trying to figure out what the next step is and it requires a lot of moving pieces which I'm waiting to fall into place. I would be nice to know what the future may resemble but even if we don't get that lucky, we are getting pretty good at this fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants thing. And that will work until babies. No more flying and lack of plans when babies come. That would kill this mama. Alas, I have completely drifted off into bookish and not so bookish thoughts a la Christine but let's rear it back in to focus on reading goals for this month!

Read:

Little Altars Everywhere

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Gated

The Girl You Left Behind

Horns

Inferno

How I Live Now

Currently Read: 

Helter Skelter: Close to finishing off this book but the 800ish pages slowed me down a little. 

Look at that, I actually achieved my goals! It always feels nice to look back and feel good that I stuck with it and even managed to review a big chunk of them before this post. Go me! Now for August: 

Real Books

Landline 

Got this in my BookRiot monthly box and am super excited to read it. It will be my first Rainbow book and after a couple other bloggers recently reviewed this, I think that if I like this one, I will love her others. Yay!

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Even though I didn't really like this movie, I'm really looking forward to reading this. It also nails one of my challenge prompts so win-win.  

E-Books

 The Interestings

Legend (Legend #1)

 

 Lexicon 

Life After Life

 The Lifeboat

The Light Between Oceans

 Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery 

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World. 

Yes, I'm working through my TBR list alphabetically and I have two books of similar names on this month. Adding these books I realize I know almost nothing about most of them. I add them to my TBR for various reasons and just trust myself that I wouldn't have added them if I didn't have a reason at the time. All of these look vaguely familiar and I'm looking forward to them but not entirely sure of the premises. I also decided to include 10 books this month because I'm going on vacation and hoping to get an extremely large amount of reading done (if I have any say in it.) Woo Hoo for new books!!!! 

July 2014 Reading List

It's officially the middle of summer and good ole' 

That means it's time for another round of reading goals. But first, our recap!

Re-read: 

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- I'm still amazed at the epicness of this series and this book. Loved it!

Read: 

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Empty Mansions

The Daughter He Never Knew

The Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Feed

Didn't read:

The First Warm Evening of the Year- I actually DNF'd this one. This would be one of maybe 3 DNF books in my entire life. About 30 pages in, I decided that life is too short to read crappy books like that and quit. So I attempted, and could have read if I didn't mind being miserable, but chose not to.

Overall, I read all of my books (other than the DNF but I'm not holding that against me) and reviewed almost all of them as well. Pretty good! I also had time, for the first time in months, to read books not on my TBR shelf. To clarify, all of the other books in my library I obviously intend on reading, but haven't officially added to the TBR list on goodreads. If you remember, my monthly goals are pretty much only pulled from this list so I can try and make a dent in it this year. For next month, I have the following lined up:

Real books

 Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

This movie is phenomenal and I always wanted to read the book. 

Little Altars Everywhere

I bought this set recently and since they're both pretty short, they're both going on the list of real books. 

E-books

Gated 

Don't know much about this one but summary looks interesting.

The Girl You Left Behind

This will be my first Jo Jo Moyes book and I'm excited!

Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders

I don't know a lot about this story but am looking forward to this one, even though it's sure to be dark. 

Horns

I'm a huge Stephen King fan, let's see if Joe can follow in dad's footsteps. 

How I Live Now

Heard lots of good things about this one in the blogosphere!

Inferno (Robert Langdon #4)

I'm not ashamed to admit I like Dan Brown but I haven't read any of his books in a long time. The last Robert Langdon I read was probably 4 years ago. 

So I have 8 books lined up for July and I'm pretty excited about of them. Bring on the books!!!

June 2014 Reading List

It's almost June, people! When did that happen? Down here in the South, we are in full fledged summer by this time and won't see temperatures south of 80 for a solid 5-6 months. Might sound lovely to you Midwestern or Northern folks but let me tell you, humidity is a bitch and the temps just keep rising. What I'm trying to say is, happy summer to most of you and my condolences to my fellow sufferers (is it Fall/football season yet?!?!)

Let's get down to it. First, the review for May! I actually did pretty well this month! I'm even going to say I hit my goals because the only book I didn't read was in a wonky e-book format and I wasn't about to try and decipher a story through the random spacing.

Read:
Allegiant
Breathe
The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Columbine
Coming Clean
The Cuckoo's Calling

Didn't Read:
Blackmoore (See above and I will probably check this one out of the library at some point. Still want to read it.)

And for my next trick, I'm going to read:

Real Book:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Re-read the rest of the series last year, going to finish up!

E-books:

 The Daughter He Never Knew

Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #1)

I've heard great things about this series so I'm excited to check it out.

 Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune
Secrets, mansions, and fortunes? Count me in!

Feed (Newsflesh Trilogy #1)

Yes, I may be the only blogger to not have read this yet. Remedying ASAP.

 The First Warm Evening of the Year
As you can see above, we've had plenty of these in SC but maybe the book will be nice this time of year

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Heard phenomenal things about this book, excited to finally read it!

What are you reading this month?

May 2014 Reading List

It's that time again! Happy May Day to everyone! I hope you go dance around a pole. With ribbons, duh.

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You know the deal, first we recap, then we set goals. So, for the month of April I did awesome! I read all of my books and then ten more! Um, just kidding. It felt good to lie about for a second though. I once again, failed at my goals. Here it is:

Read:
Beyond Belief
Burn for Burn
Chosen Ones
The Burgess Boys

Currently Reading:
Dragonfly in Amber

Sidenote: I started reading Lolita this month to participate in the Insatiable Booksluts read-a-long but I fell way behind... This may be part of the reason I didn't hit my goals. I'll finish this book this month but I'm not adding it to my goals.

Didn't Read:
Blackmoore
Breathe

I got about halfway through... Whatever. Onward and upward or something like that. I'm hoping May goes better because I didn't have any really enjoyable reads this month. Don't get me wrong, I love Dragonfly but I've read it before and it's not my favorite in the series. Let's see what we have on deck this month:

Reading List for May

Real Book: 

 Allegiant (Divergent #3)

I'm going to finish the trilogy! 

Ebooks:  

Leftovers from last month: 

Blackmoore

Breathe (Breathe #1)

Newbies:

 The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
I've heard awesome things about this one!

 Columbine 

I grew up in Colorado and have a lot of memories of when Columbine happened. Just looking at the cover gives me chills so this may be a really hard read.

 Coming Clean
I'm very interested in hearing about how a child lives through a house full of hoarders

 The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1)

I'm obviously a huge J.K. fan and I'm sad for her that she was found out prior to this being published but I look forward to a new writing style from her. Hoping for something different from Harry and A Casual Vacancy. 

I've got some great books lined up for May if I do say so myself. It's going to be hard to finish the ones I'm on (and the leftovers) before diving into my new ones. Cheers to some good reading? What's on your list for May?

April 2014 Reading List

Happy April Fool's Day!!! I love a good prank but I'm not the best at coming up with them. I can pull them off if someone sets them up for me but I'm not very creative... Do you pull April Fool's? I love a good story so share if you do!

Well, it's that time again for some more reading goals. But first, let's take a look back at March. I actually did pretty good last month even though I technically didn't finish them all.

Read:
The Republic of Thieves
Hyperbole and a Half
In The Woods
The Leftovers
Beautiful Darkness
All the Summer Girls
The House Girl

Currently reading
The Astronaut Wives Club

I at least read part of ALL of them and I'm sure I'll finish the final one within the next couple of days. Not bad. I'll also work on some more of these reviews. I'm participating in the The Fellowship of the Worms later this week with The House Girl so you can look forward to that!

Reading List for April

Real book:

 Dragonfly in Amber

I'm going to re-read this one and because of it's size, probably only read one real book this month. 

Ebooks (going to stick with 6 this month): 

Beyond Belief: My secret life inside Scientology and my narrowing escape

If that title doesn't get you, I don't know what will!

 Blackmoore

This book is clarified with-- (A proper romance). Excited to find out what that means. 

Breathe (Breathe #1)

Don't know much about the rest of these...

 The Burgess Boys

 Burn for Burn (Burn for Burn #1) 

 The Chosen Ones (The Lost Souls #1)

Looks like I'm starting a lot of new series this month so I look forward to seeing how many are good enough to stick with! What are you reading for April? 

Remember, now that it's April a new College Students! challenge starts so keep an eye out for the new goals!