15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 10

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.
Day 10: How do you choose what book to read next?

Ah so I haven't posted one of these in a few days and that's because I feel that I've been posting way too much in the past few weeks - last week especially. My blog was getting cluttered and it felt imbalanced as I usually don't post this much. It also takes away the value of a post when I post too frequently (me thinks anyway).

I actually don't know how I choose what book I read next. It's really an ad-hoc approach and haphazardly done. I have no actual process. If you read Day 6: How I buy books, then you'll know I've just got books lying around everywhere.

I pick whatever I feel like, whatever looks good from my shelf. I do try to vary - if I read a Dystopian, then my next book I try to go for contemporary, and then a paranormal. Change it up a little bit! Not only do I get sick of reading too much of the same genre, but I'll end up comparing them all to each other, being extremely snarky and judgemental and then my reading experience won't feel as good.

New release sequels to a series I love will instantly get moved to the top of the to-read list. So much so that upon receiving the book, I drop everything I'm currently reading (unless it's also a sequel to a book I love) and read that instead.

This is why I have so many books on my GR that are "currently-reading" and "will eventually finish". I just end up dropping the book and not going back to it for ages.

Paranormal/fantasy is also more likely to be my pick of next book, I'm more likely to NOT get sick of reading those successively. Sci-fi and dystopians I can only stand so much of. I'll usually read one and not pick up another for ages.

I'm weird I know.

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 9

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 9: Why do you blog about books?

• Because I love to read DUH
• I want to spread the love - free love for all woo~
• I want to meet new people who have the same tastes in books as me so we can discuss and fangirl together
• Through meeting people I get exposure to new books I haven't heard about and broaden my reading horizons
• It's a way of showing authors that not only have I read their book, but I've taken the effort to write a review of it and express my own opinion
• I don't even know... Yeah.

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 8

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 8: Quick! Write 15 bullet points of things that appeal to you on blogs!

1. No infinite scroll
2. Easy to read font - serif or sans serif, not that fancy/curly shit that hurts my eyes
3. Correct use of grammar
4. Nice colour scheme - around 4 or so colours
5. Pretty blog banner/header
6. Not too much clutter on the sidebars
7. A background image that doesn't clash with the blog/take my eyes away from the post. Something subtle
8. Minimal use of fonts - heading font, main text font and maybe one other for the blog banner if it's different
9. Easy commenting scheme - don't make me sign up for all those weird sites that make me sign in to comment. Google or Wordpress please
10. Links in easy to find places - if I want to follow you on Twitter I want to find it on your sidebar or in your Contact/About Me section
11. No excessive large images, if it takes forever to load it annoys me
12. Slider/sliding banner <3 jQuery
13. Use of whitespace - don't have everything clumped together
14. Content block centre aligned
15. Simple is best

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 7

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 7: Talk about your blogging quirks

I love talking. But I hate talking about myself. I really don't know what to write for this one as I'm going to end up over-analysing everything once I start thinking about it *sighs*

Well let's get this over with. My blogging quirks aye?

• I get really excited over things that I think other people wouldn't care about
• E.g. When I found out I'm a Throne of Glass Ambassador I was ecstatic but I think everybody's like "meh". I think I may have even freaked out the publisher with my enthusiasm O_O
• Going off the first point, I fangirl like mad
• I think this stems from my Korean pop and Japanese manga fangirling and it's passed over to my love of books. I get so many FEELS when I read that I just end up typing in caps and keyboard mash *flails*
• I spend a LOT of time writing my reviews
• I invest so much effort in a review which is why I take FOREVER to complete one
• My reviews are a minimum of 800 words and my longest one is about 1400 words. They're on average 1000 words
• They're more essays than reviews D:
• I go looking through the book for relevant quotes to backup my paragraphs - so I usually have about 6+ quotes and I always take awhile deciding which quote is the best to support my arguments
• This is the reason why I don't have time to review EVERY book I read. To invest that much time into every book, I just don't have it. So I just review ARCs/review copies I've requested. For books I bought, I usually give a 1 paragraph summary of my opinion on Goodreads
• I'm an absolute grammar Nazi. I always make sure my sentences make sense and that I haven't used the same word too many times
• Your, you're
• They're, there, their
• Then, than
• ^It really annoys me when people get those mixed up but I've stopped correcting them
• I don't post discussion posts because I don't think people will care LOL
• I'm OCD about my post formatting. I always have to have everything structured exactly the same as every other type of post like it (I think this is normal though)

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 6

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 6: Describe how you shop for books

Ha. Hahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHA. This is a funny one for me. I think the one word that would describe how I shop for books is compulsively. If you read my Day 1, my last confession was that at some point I went from reader to collector and that is certainly true.

Let me show you my books to accentuate my point.

My physical copies read-to-review pile:

Random books to-read including requested review copies:

Books I randomly bought on a whim two nights ago and arrived today:

And my bookshelf's current state:

There's actually a whole stack of books on the top shelf behind the mass-market paperback row.

Each shelf has about 3 layers of books - the initial layer at the back, a layer on top of that, and a layer at the front. The shelf second from the bottom is SO packed in you can't even see the initial layer in the back :P

So... I actually haven't read most of these books D:

The ones you see at the front are mostly ones I haven't read so I leave them at the front to remind myself to read them... and yet I still buy more books. (Don't even get me started on the number of eGalleys that are months old which I haven't gotten around to... I've banned myself from NG for the time being.)

I walk into a bookshop (95% of the time Kinokuniya Sydney) and I just have this urge to buy something. I love trolling through the YA section and looking for books I haven't heard of. If the cover and font is pretty, the title caught my eye and the blurb interests me, I'll jump onto GR on my phone and look up the rating. If the rating is >3.9 (or better yet >4) and friends on GR whose reviews I trust, have also given it a good rating, then that's about $18 gone from the bank account! I actually wrote a guest post on Cuddlebuggery Book Blog about my OCD book buying... READ MY RAMBLINGS HERE: The OCD of Picking a Book I also feel weird just buying 1 book... So I find something else to buy AHA.

If a book I love has a cover that gets redesigned and the sequels are all going to have this new cover, then I will buy book 1 etc. in the NEW cover so it matches (more on this later). I also buy physical copies if I liked the ARC. This is true in most cases. I hate when publishers have to redesign covers AND OMG WHEN THE BOOK IS A DIFFERENT SIZE THIS IRKS ME TO NO END (my TMI series is ruined because of this, but I don't love the series enough to re-buy the set LOL. BUT I WILL BE RE-BUYING ALL OF DIVERGENT IN THE AMERICAN HBS WHEN THEY COME OUT!!!).

You can imagine savings is not a term that exists in my vocabulary.

Sometimes, if I'm not TOO desperate for a book, I'll wait it out and buy it from The Book Depository when I go on fortnightly/monthly online book buying binges. This'll save me HEAPS as a book on The Book Depository that costs $9~$12 costs $16~$21 in Kino.

Then there's the time when I'm EXTREMELY desperate for a book that's not published in Australia (yet) and ordering through my bookstore's supplier will take like a month... I will hop onto TBD straight away and buy the book - 2 week wait versus 4 and it's cheaper so win-win. I should really do this more often and save money, however sometimes I get so excited when I see a book in-store and I just want it instantly.

As you can tell, I have like NO patience, especially when it comes to a book I'm eagerly anticipating.

Exhibit A: Impatience

This Girl (Slammed #3) by Colleen Hoover came out ONLY on the iBooks store, and it cost like $10 (that's an ouch for me in terms of eBooks). I was sitting in a lecture. I was on my iPad when I saw it on Twitter. It crossed my mind This Girl would probably be put onto NG. I bought it anyway and finished it that night. It was uploaded onto NetGalley 3 days later and I would have been approved (it was the first few hundred and I'm a REALLY fast clicker). My only consolation was that I'd already finished it before it was on NG.

Exhibit B: Series Obsession

The Gathering Dark (Shadow and Bone book 1 in The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo) had its cover redesigned and retitled for UK/Aussie release. For Siege and Storm, the cover and style followed that of the original US Shadow and Bone with only a few minor tweaks (the cover is blue instead of gray). I own The Gathering Dark and could have just bought the Aussie cover. I went onto TBD and bought Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm in the hardbacks so they match. I now have The Gathering Dark, the ARC of Siege and Storm (WITH The Gathering Dark), Shadow and Bone in hardback and Siege and Storm in hardback. Every time I pass Siege and Storm in bookstores I'm tempted to buy that too just so I have all the covers.

Exhibit C: Cover OCD

When I bought Veronica Rossi's Through the Ever Night with the redesigned UK/Aus covers, I also bought the redesigned Under the Never Sky. I already own Under the Never Sky... So I gave this to my friend instead :D

Exhibit D: Desperate for a Book

I'd been waiting for Anna Banks' Of Triton for AGES, and I'd requested it for review from the publisher. There was a little change up with the publisher so I assumed they'd forgotten about me. A friend told me she'd seen Of Triton in Big W (but I don't live near one) so I was at Kino the next day looking for it. I was devastated when they didn't have it... So I ventured into Dymocks and I literally RAN to the book when I saw they had it! I buy it and read it in 1 night. This is Saturday. Do you know what shows up on my doorstep from a certain publisher on Monday morning? You guessed it, a review copy of Of Triton *face palms*

I obviously have problems. Do you? I mean, how do you buy books?

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 5

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 5: Recommend a tear jerker

For this one I'm going to skip over The Fault in Our Stars because I'm sure everybody knows how much of a tear jerker that is, and has read it so there's no point recommending a book everybody knows and loves (:

Picking just ONE tear jerker was hard. A lot of books have made me cry at some point - quite a few at the end and a lot near the end of a series. But what made me pick the book I'm mentioning here today is the overall depth of the story, the characters, the plot, and how heart wrenching it was as a whole; there were so many bleak and heart breaking moments in this book balanced by hopeful ones that only got shattered - and this, THIS is the reason why Between the Lives by Jessica Shirvington (Sci-fi) is the tear jerker I recommend.

Synopsis:
"Above all else, though I try not to think about it, I know which life I prefer. And every night when I Cinderella myself from one life to the next a very small, but definite, piece of me dies. The hardest part is that nothing about my situation has ever changed. There is no loophole.

Until now, that is...

For as long as she can remember, Sabine has lived two lives. Every 24 hours she Shifts to her ′other′ life - a life where she is exactly the same, but absolutely everything else is different: different family, different friends, different social expectations. In one life she has a sister, in the other she does not. In one life she′s a straight-A student with the perfect boyfriend, in the other she′s considered a reckless delinquent. Nothing about her situation has ever changed, until the day when she discovers a glitch: the arm she breaks in one life is perfectly fine in the other.

With this new knowledge, Sabine begins a series of increasingly risky experiments which bring her dangerously close to the life she′s always wanted... But just what - and who - is she really risking?"

These are only the tissues I used up at the end! You can read my review here

I just adore Between the Lives so much <3

Other good tear jerkers I'd recommend:

If I Stay (If I Stay #1) by Gayle Forman - this book HURT so much. When 17-yo cellist Mia and her whole family are involved in a car crash, Mia is left in a critical condition and must decide if she wants to stay... Or move on. The book is set in a sort of limbo as Mia looks over her life and these memories impact on her choice. Its companion, Where She Went, is one of my favourite books of all time.

Slammed (Slammed #1) by Colleen Hoover - every one of the books in the Slammed series (there are 3, the last one came out not long ago) have made me cry at some point. I think the last 3/4 of Slammed had me in a blubbering mess. When Lake (Layken), her brother and mum move to a new state after the death of her father, Lake meets the handsome Will Cooper. They instantly share a connection but what ensues is a novel of heartbreak on so many levels.

The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark #1) by Shana Abe - oh my goodness the poetic writing in this added to the beauty and bittersweet feel of the story. I UGLY cried in this. Orphan Lora is accepted as a charity student by a prestigious English girl's boarding school at the beginning of WWI. Here she meets two boys that change her and who she is forever. Filled with so much love and uncertainty, this book made me cry so much I still can't bring myself to read the sequel.

Everything Left Unsaid by Jessica Davidson - An Aussie YA set in the final year of high school for best friends Juliet and Tai. They're just beginning to see something beyond high school when Tai finds out that he's sick. A book of first love, grief and living life to its fullest.

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta - It's Melina. Need I say more? This woman can do anything. My favourite book of hers actually. A story about a girl and how her past and present collide in a beautiful mystery, set amidst high school territory wars in the Australian countryside.

I got teary typing up the summaries for every one of these books.

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 4

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 4: What's the last book you flung across the room?

I'm too much of a book lover to actually throw my books. I'm so OCD with my books and their conditions I wouldn't dare throw a book across the room... BUT I have come very, VERY close.

It's very rarely that books elicit such a reaction from me that I even want to come close to throwing it across the room. So the fact that a book comes close? Well it had to have been pretty horrible. There have only ever been THREE books in my whole reading life I've ever wanted to do this to. And they were all this year. Even the Twilight saga didn't make me react this way. So you can imagine how bad I thought these books were.

Thus, the last book I WANTED to fling across the room was Crash by Nicole Williams. This book infuriated me so much I couldn't deal and ended up not finishing it at only page 53 on July 6th. The MC was just the most hypocritical girl I'd ever read. "I'm a total romantic and I want my Prince Charming to come riding in on his white horse because I'm all innocent, OH WAIT LET ME TAKE OFF MY BIKINI TOP AND RUN MY HANDS FLIRTATIOUSLY OVER MYSELF TO GET THIS BAD BOY'S ATTENTION".  I'm surprised I lasted that long. But finishing it would have been a wasted effort. Who knows, maybe one day I'll attempt to finish it and my wall will also have a dent in it.

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 3

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 3: Who are your blogging BFFS?

This is a really hard one because I talk to heaps of people about books on twitter, and the Aussie YA book blogging community is great but in terms of actual blogging BFFS...

Shirley from Shiirleyy's Bookshelf. I have bonded with this girl SO MUCH over books, and she is amazing. We USUALLY have the same taste books but there are some where we diverge and we love to have discussions/debates over this :P Shirley is one of the biggest reasons why I started book blogging. She has helped me tremendously with encouraging me to contact publishers. Shirley has given me great book blogging advice and I just heart this girl so much <3 We talk all the time!

It saddens me greatly that she doesn't blog anymore, but the girl that IS the reason my book blog is up and running is because of Saz from Saz101. She pimped my blog and twitter account when I first started and she really got my name out there. For this girl, I am FOREVER grateful. Sarah and I just spazz about everything, our gChats are filled with cap lock and hearts :P She also writes the most eloquent and beautiful reviews! Her review of Anna and the French Kiss is what tipped the scales and convinced me to read it. Even with everybody bugging me to read Anna it was her gorgeous review that did it and introduced me to the world of Anna and Etienne <3

Lovely Riya from The Teen Book Guru, she always makes an effort to read my blog/comment and tweets me <3 We bonded over our love for JLA's Covenant :D We have really similar tastes in books and we just spazz over all the hot book boyfriends :P

Braiden from Book Probe Reviews is one of the only guys I know that reads and blogs about YA. I don't even know what we bond over. Weird stuff. But we have Skyped! And I think that counts for something LOL.

It worries me that Shirley, Saz, Riya or Braids don't think of me as one of their book blogging BFFS. Even though I think we have something cool going on... This may not be the case... Oh dear. *Paranoid*

Other great bloggers I love who I talk to a lot on twitter:

• Keely from My Spin On Books [Aussie]- I probably talk to this girl at least once a day, and since meeting her at PTA Live Sydney we've gotten even closer! 
• Alice from That Kid in Wonderland [Aussie]- She just started her own book blog :D
• Eileen from Singing and Reading in the Rain [US] and Melanie from YA Midnight Reads [Aussie] - I put these two together because they're like twins. The way they way talk and spazz is so similar and I feel like their older sister a lot of the time <3
• Kim and Kerrie from Two Girls and a Novel [Aussie] - I talk to these two so much, they (along with Saz and Lisa from Badass Bookie) introduced me to the Guild Huntress series :D. We also share our love of VA <3

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 2

The 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 2: What is your bedtime reading ritual?

I love this one because bedtime is pretty much when I get most of my reading done!

My routine is always the same, when I'm tired or done with whatever I'm doing in front of the computer (I'm always in front of my computer, like glued to it all day if I'm home, or on it as soon as I get home from work/uni) I'll brush my teeth/get ready for bed. Then I'll turn off my light and turn on my reading lamp and spend HOURS reading. 

This can be from like 11pm/12am - 4am where I'll go from start to finish with a book! I've done this many times on Friday/Saturday nights and during my holidays. Otherwise if I've got an early start the next day, I'll read for about 1h and sleep at maybe 1-2am.

I will ALWAYS read before going to bed. No matter how tired and exhausted I am, how tired my eyes are, I WILL ensure I get in like 1/2h of reading or 1 or 2 chapters in. It's sort of like I owe it to myself you know? I've worked so hard all day and not done anything I enjoyed for myself, I need something to reward myself. And reading is my reward. It's my escape.

I actually leave a few books on my headboard (it's a shelf style) along with my iPad and Kindle Paperwhite so that when I finish a book, I will always have another to go to without needing to get out of bed :P the iPad is so I can update Goodreads with my progress!

15 Day Book Blogger Challenge: Day 1

So I'm a bit late to this but the 15 Day Book Blogger Challenge was started by April @ Good Books and Good Wine on a whim as she wanted to do a blogging challenge related to books and was in a bit of a slump.

Day 1: Make 15 Book Related Confessions

1. I pick my books based on their covers.
2. I despise eBooks. I know they're awesome in terms of being able to get them pretty much instantly on release day whereas we'd have wait for international shipping on physical copies but I just love the feeling of holding an actual book in my hands.
3. I love the bad boy. In a book where there is a bad boy I will pretty much always ship him and the MC even if I know they won't be end game ala the Darkling (Leigh Bardugo's Grisha Trilogy), Phoenix (Jessica Shirvington's The Violet Eden Chapters), Warner (Tahereh Mafi's Shatter Me series), Travis Maddox (Beautiful Disaster), Conrad (The Summer I Turned Pretty - I consider him a bad boy ok?)
4. I prefer paranormal/fantasy over contemporaries. I always find contemporaries unrelatable for some reason and I've definitely read more paranormals and given those higher ratings.
5. I have like 100 books on my bookshelf waiting to be read and I'm still buying
6. If a book has insta-love, my immediate rating is lowered to 3/5 regardless of how well it's written and the rating will NOT be raised beyond 3 by the end.
7. A book that I really loved and was well written makes it harder for me review because I need to find the words to describe my feels. I also write a MUCH more eloquent and flowing review if I loved the book.
8. I hate not finishing a book. I always try to go back to it in the end, this is because I buy all my books and by not finishing it, I deem it a waste of my money (THE ECONOMIC THEORY OF SUNK COSTS DO NOT APPLY TO ASIANS).
9. I'm scared to borrow books from people because even though I try to take care of my own books, I tend to shove them in my bag where they get jostled and damaged :/
10. I don't mind damaging ARCs - I dog ear pages, crack the spines and I'm even considering highlighting.
11. I don't lend out any of my books that have been signed or have bookplates. My level of trust only goes so far.
12. I feel guilty about authors following me on twitter and chatting to me if I haven't read their books.
13. When I see people at the bookstore I totally just want to jump in and recommend them books. If they're holding a book I loved I will totally go "omg that book is amazing, I loved it".
14. I get really annoyed when people look down on me reading YA and in my mind, my respect for them has been lowered a bit.
15. Book buying is an addiction for me. At one point I went from reader to collector.