February Wrap-Up/March TBR

My Monthly Wrap-Up posts are a place for me to talk about what I've read during the month as well as everything that has been going on at Project to be Read (including my reviews). It also provides a space for me to share this month's Best of the Bunch book and look forward to next month with my TBR pile :)

Looking back...

I had a pretty slow month in February between not being well, rushing about to appointments and knitting for Nerd Wars. I read 6 full books which came to a total of 2197 pages and I reviewed only one book - Bite Me If You Can by Lynsay Sands.

I also took part in the Wicked Valentines read-a-thon which was really enjoyable, and I had the best time taking part in the Book Blogger Love-a-Thon. I've also posted a couple of Showcase Sundays.

Best of the Bunch

Best of the Bunch is an awesome end-of-month meme created at Lyrical Reviews and now hosted by Sally at Always Lost in Stories. All you have to do is pick your favourite book of all the books you've read that month and share it with everyone.

My favourite book for February is The Indigo Spell by Richelle Mead.

In the aftermath of a forbidden moment that rocked Sydney to her core, she finds herself struggling to draw the line between her Alchemist teachings and what her heart is urging her to do. Then she meets alluring, rebellious Marcus Finch--a former Alchemist who escaped against all odds, and is now on the run. Marcus wants to teach Sydney the secrets he claims the Alchemists are hiding from her. But as he pushes her to rebel against the people who raised her, Sydney finds that breaking free is harder than she thought. There is an old and mysterious magic rooted deeply within her. And as she searches for an evil magic user targeting powerful young witches, she realizes that her only hope is to embrace her magical blood--or else she might be next.

Last month I read the entire Vampire Academy series as well as Bloodlines, so this month I continued on reading both The Golden Lily and The Indigo Spell. I loved Adrian in the Vampire Academy books so I was thrilled to see him continue on and I've even come to prefer the Bloodlines books to the first series.

 

I adored The Indigo Spell! I loved Sydney's character development and choices and pretty much every scene with Adrian was epic. I really like the focus on magic and the way the Alchemist society is being revealed. This series is getting better and better with every installment and I am so happy with everything that happened here. I can't wait for The Fiery Heart later this year :)

My review for The Indigo Spell will be posted next week :)

Looking forward...

In March, I'm hoping to read a bit more than this month but given my epic fail of February's TBR pile, I'm only including one book. My pick is Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas which I'm buddy reading with a Goodreads group around the 5th. I've heard good things and its been a while since I read any fantasy so I'm looking forward to it :)

Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Wrap Up (#LoveAThon)

I've had an awesome day taking part in the Love-a-Thon! I'm writing this a bit early as it'll post around 5 am my time when I will be snuggled up in bed fast asleep...unless The Archived forces me to keep reading late into the night in which case I'll either be reading or passed out with a book on my face again.

I've found so many epic blogs and been recommended soooooo many others. I've stashed all the addresses in a spreadsheet because it's going to take me ages to check them all out. I'm blown away by the epicness of all the bloggers taking part and I'm looking forward to hanging out on their blogs a bit more and staying in touch with them.

I've loved all the challenge answers I've seen - from creative poems to heartfelt letters - every one has been epic. I've picked up so many tips and added more books to my "perfect for book poetry" mental list, not to mention a massive list of books I really need to read :)

Anyways, it's late and I'm running out of brain power and positive adjectives so I'm going to sign off here. It's been a blast guys!

Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Mini Challenge 5 (#LoveAThon)

And it's time for the final Love-a-Thon mini challenge!!!

Mini Challenge #5! It's relatively simple, this challenge. All you have to do is share about your top blogging moments so far! It can be the events you’ve gone to, the reviews you’ve written, the connections you’ve made because of blogging, or whatever else comes to mind. Once you have your post go live at 8 P.M., link up on either of our blogs and visit everyone else’s posts to see what their favorite blogging moments were!

There have been so many awesome blogging moments for me. It's hard to think of all of them because I get caught up in remembering how great each one was and then I get distracted lol :) So here are some of my highlights:

My first unsolicited review book. It was an interesting read but when I received a later review book that I adored that I tightened up my review policy. I'm fussy about leaving my bookish comfort zone and I don't want to negatively impact review books.

My first follower! I purposefully didn't tell anyone I knew about my blog until I had a follower purely because I wanted that first person to be following because of the blog, rather than because of knowing me.

My first comment was cool, but my second blew me away. It was on my review of Shiver so I wasn't expecting it at all. It was really polite and chatty and I was astounded anyone would choose to leave such an awesome comment on my shiny new blog :)

Taking part in the Magnificently Magic Read-a-Thon. This wasn't my first read-a-thon, but it was the first one I adored every minute of. I loved the twitter chat, met loads of awesome bloggy people and got a a little bit of reading done. I also managed to post daily updates which help when I'm looking back.

Getting my custom design done! I had my blog design done by Lori @ Imagination Designs and I absolutely love it. Lori was brilliant about getting things exactly as I wanted them and I love my design as much today as I did when I first saw the completed version, maybe even more given all the compliments!

Getting picked by Vicky @ Books, Biscuits and Tea as her favourite discovered blog of 2012. I pretty much ran around the room alternating between happy dancing and screaming. My Mum may need therapy lol :)

My first twitter chat. It was incredible, intense, insane...and introduced me to the joys of tweet chat :) I chatted with loads of bloggers about books, blogging, life, snacks and pretty much everything. I love twitter chats!

Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Mini Challenge 4 (#LoveAThon)

We're heading towards the end of the Love-a-Thon now. Here's challenge number 4:

Mini Challenge #4! Write a letter to your blogging self and post it on your blog at 4 P.M. For the blogging oldies, you can write about whatever you’d like - advice you would give your younger self, things you would tell yourself to stop doing, things you’d tell yourself to continue doing, or things you’d tell yourself to start doing. If you're a newbie blogger, your directions are a little different. Write a letter to yourself in the future. Talk about the stuff you like so far and what you hope to accomplish in the future. Once you have this posted, you can link up on either of our sites and then go around and check out everyone else’s letters!

Dear Claire,

It looks like you've made it through a bunch of Love-a-Thon challenges today! Go you! Here are some tips to help you keep up this streak:

When it comes to blogging, it's really easy to get overwhelmed which is why you need to schedule more posts in advance. So it means you won't be posting as soon as you've read a book - so what? It is pushing you waaaaaay past your limits trying to read and post like that and as awesome as blogging is, your health is more important.

Don't worry about gaps. The more you get used to scheduling, the less gaps will bother you because you will choose when they are. You can't change the past so let those past gaps go and move forward with a positive attitude.

Start keeping a closer eye on your review backlog. Yes that review backlog. The one that is almost at 20 books. Start chipping away at it - you've read the books, so organize your thoughts and get them all typed up. This will also help you with the scheduling thing!

Keep a closer eye on your comments - they are there, they are awesome! Respond to people who've taken the time to comment, and try and comment back on their blogs more whenever you can.

Try to tweet more. You've met some incredible bloggers on twitter so try using it to connect. Plus if you're having a bad health day/week/month, twitter is a quick and easy way to let people know you are still around.

Above all, remember why you love blogging!
Me

Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Mini Challenge 3 (#LoveAThon)

It's time for another Love-a-Thon Mini Challenge :)

Mini Challenge #3! For this mini-challenge, we are going to ask you to pump up the music with a book playlist post! Book playlists can be done in any number of ways. First, they can be made up using Spotify, YouTube, or just a list of song titles on your blog. Second, they can be one you made up for a certain book, one you made up for A LOT of certain books, or it can be one that an author made up for their book that you happen to be a fan of. Regardless of which way it is done, share your book playlist with us on a post set to go live at 12 P.M. As always, there will be a special place on both blogs for you to link up. Feel free to visit the other participant’s blogs to see what playlists they came up with!

I pretty much suck at putting playlists together because I have weird muscial tastes. My MP3 player has almost every kind of music on and what I listen to on any given day really depends on my mood. The idea of putting music to a book scares me, which is ironic because most of my music is from movie soundtracks. I do love reading the playlists put together by authors though!

I first came across the idea of a book playlist with Ill Wind by Rachel Caine and I adore that every book of hers includes a playlist so what better to pimp here?! Below is her playlist for the most recent Morganville book Bitter Blood (playlist belongs to Rachel Caine, all links lead to youtube where available - videos belong to youtubers, songs and lyrics to the musicians):

'Seven Devils' by Florence + The Machine
'Haunted' by Kelley Clarkson
'Cold Morning' by Kitty Kat Stew (couldn't find)
'Sonata Rapidus Revamp' by b.hantoot (couldn't find)
'I Disappear' by The Faint
'Big Wheel' by The Bridge
'Black' by Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi (feat. Norah Jones)
'Fresh Blood' by Eels
'Killing My Dreams' by Elysion
'Good Idea' by Peter Himmelman
'Immigrant Song' by Karen O, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
'The Recluse' by Cursive
'Oblivion' by Winter in Eden
'Haunted' by Evanescence
'Things Have Changed' by Bob Dylan
'Afraid' by Sarah Fimm
'What If I Were Talkin' to Me' by Louise Goffin (couldn't find)
'Victoria' by Krypteria
'Snow White Queen' by Evanescence
'Somebody That I Used to Know' by Gotye (feat. Kimbra)
'Young Blood' by The Naked and Famous
'Stare into the Sun' by Graffiti6
'Second Chance' by Peter Bjorn and John
'Who Wants to Live Forever' by Queen
'Bullet in My Hand' by Redlight King
'Dark Horses' by Switchfoot
'Soldiers' by Otherwise
'Strangeness and Charm' by Florence + The Machine
'Ease My Pain' by Declan Flynn
'Gold on the Ceiling' by The Black Keys
'In My Veins' by Andrew Belle (feat. Erin McCarley)
'Natives' by blink-182

Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Mini Challenge 2 (#LoveAThon)

It's now time for the second mini challenge of the Love-a-Thon.

Mini Challenge #2! This is your second opportunity to win something from us! For this challenge, we ask that you get deep and poetic (or not-so-deep but still poetic!) This is how the challenge will work: Grab some of your favorite books (it can be any amount) and make up a poem with the titles alone! That’s right people, we are doing some book spine poetry. We ask that you have this post set to go up at 7 A.M. There will be a place for you to link up this challenge, just like the previous one. If you have time, please go around and look at what others did for their book spine poems!

Insatiable killer hair

looking for Alaska.

A Breath of Magic,

no humans involved.



Book Blogger Love-a-Thon: Mini Challenge 1 (#LoveAThon)

So we are three hours into the Love-a-Thon and it's time for the first mini challenge :)

Mini Challenge #1! It's time for the first mini-challenge (and your first chance to win an awesome prize!). Since it's a bit early on in the day, we'll make it easy for you. Here's how it will work: There are four categories - best reviews, best book discussion posts, best blog design/layout and best random category (which you get to make up!). Your post should go live at 3 A.M. with 3-5 favorite blogs for each of these categories. There will be a place for you to link up to these posts on my blog and Katelyn's blog (and it's the same linky, so feel free to link on just one of our blogs!). You can then hop around and see who everyone else picked out for this challenge!

The award for best reviews goes to Mist @ Bookaholics Book Club. Mist always has awesome reviews. She manages to be fair and explain what she did and didn't like about the book, adding in her favourite quotes and thoughts on the cover. My favourite reviews of hers are Fever, Under the Never Sky and Need.

The award for best book discussion posts goes to Jenni @ Jenni Elyse! Jenni always has the best discussion posts on everything book related. Some of my favourite posts of hers are Distractions, Audio Books (Love Them or Hate Them) and Time to Move On. She's even inspired me to have the confidence to do my own discussion posts!

The award for best blog design/layout goes to Vicky @ Books, Biscuits and Tea. She recently revamped her blog and I adore her new design. It really fits with her personality, it looks professional and it's easy to navigate and use.

The award for best blog for making me smile goes to April @ Good Books and Good Wine. April has the best writing style ever and visiting her blog always makes my day. She balances snark, sarcasm and raving about awesome books perfectly :)