If you’ve been on Twitter lately, you might have seen me get very excited about a package that arrived from Amazon yesterday.
You know what was inside?
Books!
Of course they’re books–why else would I be posting about it?
Clockwise from left:
Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy by Laini Taylor–I’ve heard good things and I’ve heard bad, so we’ll see what I think.
Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson–Only good things. I’ve been waiting forever to finally read it!
Anna and the French Kiss trilogy by Stephanie Perkins–OMG!!!!
I am super stoked and excited and everything, so I cannot wait to read them!
Also: I am postponing my read of The Scorch Trials and the rest of The Maze Runner series until a closer time to the next movie. I’m also getting very grossed out by them…
Recently, I got a new bookshelf and moved all my books and stuff, so I decided to do a tour of my bookshelves. Let’s get to it!
This is my bookshelf. [Actually, bookshelves.] I have 131-ish bookies, I believe. AND I LOVE THEM; THEY ARE MY CHILDREN.
Do you see that??? My TMI books, all together and pretty. :)
So, I’m not going to write down all the books, so I shall show you pictures and possibly little words.
LOTS OF BOOKIES. <3
My PERSONALLY SIGNED TO ME Lunar Chronicles books. *dies of happiness*
Yes, that is the Dork Diaries series, my [not so] guilty pleasure reading…
Lots of hardbacks…
My TBR…
And my junk: notebooks, old magazines [Cricket or Stone Soup, anyone?], and papers and other junk. XD
I hope you enjoyed my book haul and bookshelf tour. How many books do you have? Tell me in the comments below.
So…I bought some books. And I got uber-excited. So I did a photo shoot. It was really fun. :)
This haul is dedicated to finishing up series. I got the last three books in The Maze Runner series by James Dashner, the last two books in the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield, and Four by Veronica Roth.
My dad was feeling really nice today for no reason, and he bought all of my books. :) Thank you, Daddy!
Yes, I call my father “Daddy.”
I also bought office supplies!
I was going to buy a mechanical pencil because my other one broke, and then this happened:
I now have two more notebooks to add to my ever-growing collection, these sticky-note things I’ve wanted ever since I started marking pages in books, and, of course, a mechanical pencil.
See? I DID buy what I went into that store for. :)
Today I’d like to discuss shopping. And not just any old shopping. Book shopping.*
*And office supply shopping. But that’s much too long.
When I walk into a book store, sometimes I know what I’m going to buy. Sometimes I don’t know what I’m going to buy. But, regardless, I’ll probably end up finding a billion books I “need” yet am unable to buy because:
a) my dad won’t let me get that many
or
b) I don’t have enough money
Even though I am aware of this, why does my body still seem to pretend as if that information was never given to me? I don’t know. But I think lots of bibliophiles experience this, so I think it needs to be noted.
I know I already have 600 books. I know there is a library. I know that I should wait for the paperback copy.* BUT I DON’T WANT TO. I WANT MORE AND MORE AND MORE. >:)
*But hardbacks are so much prettier and shinier. <3
This also happens to me with journals.
I have many many many many many notebooks/journals that are empty in my bedroom. Yet I buy more. It’s kind of an obsession…? I just cannot use a journal once part of it is filed. I either use it completely, or not at all.
Do you compulsively want books/notebooks? Tell me in the comments below. I hope you enjoyed this GIF-tastic Book Haul and discussion! :)
Deck the halls with boughs of holly… fa la la la la la la la la!
It’s Christmas time, and yule be rockin’!
Well, I’ve been rocking ever since November first. That’s when the holidays start, right? Who cares about Thanksgiving!
It is December–“The wonders of the winter, the silent shimmering snow”–and that means…CHRISTMAS!!! Even though it’s early in the month, I decided to do a Christmas post because:
a) It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas everywhere you go…
b) It’s raining today. [IDK.]
and
c) We have the heater on, and whenever the heater starts to be needed, it feels like the holidays to me. :P
Before we jump into my very early festivities, I’d like to clear up the fact that while I am not Christian [I’m atheist], I still celebrate Christmas, just not religiously. Also, if you don’t celebrate Christmas, that’s cool. You don’t have to read this post. :)
What I will be featuring in this post:
My Christmas list!
My favorite holiday music!
My favorite wintery things!
Books to read for the holidays/in winter!
A Christmas blog tag!
GIFs! [probably]
If I run out of time, I’ll do a part 2 of this post on Sunday. :) Hopefully, I’ll finish today, though. Let’s get started!
As you may know, I’m in a choir [We just had our concert!] and we sang holiday music this semester. I have been singing carols and religious Christmas songs since September. I am a bit burned out on caroling and such, but here goes, anyway.
Some of my favorite Christmas carols are…
12 Days of Christmas [Straight No Chaser has a hilarious version!]
Deck the Halls
Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
All I Want for Christmas Is You [Cimorelli cover]
Jingle Bells
And some of my favorite Christmas-themed choir songs are…
Carol of the Bells
Angel’s Gloria
December
Here is a video of Cimorelli performing a cover of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”:
My Favorite Wintery Things
This is now on my list of must-have’s for winter.
It doesn’t snow in winter where I live but Christmas is still pretty awesome. Here are some of the things that make it that way:
Break from school!
Hot chocolate
Apple cider
Peppermint bark
Christmas carols
Lights
Heating
Cold weather
Family
Evergreen trees
Decorating the Christmas tree [Now that I think about it, this is actually really weird. You cut a tree down and put it in your house. Then you put little paper and cloth things on its branches and wrap Christmas lights around it. Ta-da!]
The scent of cloves in oranges/lemons
Our annual ornament-making party [Although we may not do it this year!]
The thrill of Christmas Eve
The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”
Rain/thunderstorms
Top Five Books to Read For the Holidays/Winter
I compiled a list of wintery and Christmas-ey books to read during winter break. You’ll have a lot of extra time on your hands because of…no school!
These books just make me think of winter. I don’t really know why.
It’s set in the wintery north. It may look like a children’s book, but it is actually adult-ish. Emily @ The Loony Teen Writer loves this series!
These books are just adorable, easy reads. This one is about Christmas, so…
The sequel to Geek High. I haven’t read it, but I want to. During Christmas. In LONDON.
If you haven’t read these, then…I don’t know what you’ve been doing with you’re life. I am disappointed. But they have very awesome Christmas scenes. Memorable ones for me are Book 4 [the Yule Ball!!!] and Book 7 [in the graveyard…].
So, yeah. Some book ideas. :)
The Christmas Tag
Rules:
1. Post the picture on your blog.
2. Answer the questions.
3. Tag up to 12 bloggers.
Questions:
1. What is your favorite book to read during Christmas?
2. What is your favorite Christmas movie?
3. What is your favorite Christmas memory?
4. What is your favorite Christmas scene from a book?
5. What is on your Christmas list this year?
6. If you could travel to a place to spend Christmas, where would it be? It can be fictional or real.
7. What is your favorite Christmas food?
8. Are you a good Christmas shopper/do you like Christmas shopping?
9. When does your family/you buy a tree?
10. Do you decorate your house [inside and out] for Christmas? To what degree?
1. What is your favorite book to read during Christmas?
During Christmas, I think I would like to read Harry Potter. But I usually just read what’s next on my TBR.
2. What is your favorite Christmas movie?
I love “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It sends a great message. I also like the Charlie Brown movies. :D
3. What is your favorite Christmas memory?
I think it was two or three years ago, I spent Christmas at my cousin’s house. I remember on Christmas day everyone sitting on the couch or floor, knitting, me writing in my journal, and watching “It’s a Wonderful Life.” It was really fun and peaceful.
4. What is your favorite Christmas scene from a book?
I just love love love love love the Yule Ball at Hogwarts in Book 4 of Harry Potter. And, not to brag or anything, but the epilogue to my novel, Bloggish, is on Christmas Eve and I love that part to pieces. <3
5. What is on your Christmas list this year?
See above.
6. If you could travel to a place to spend Christmas, where would it be? It can be fictional or real.
I would go to London, hands down. Oh my god, that would be so amazing.
7. What is your favorite Christmas food?
I LIVE for peppermint bark. It is the best candy ever.
8. Are you a good Christmas shopper/do you like Christmas shopping?
I either love Christmas shopping or hate it, I think. I usually buy my mom a scarf, my dad a wallet, and my sister some type of toy. Then I head to the dollar section of Target and buy a bunch of stocking stuffers, like candy and pencils and assorted junk.
I’ve never gone shopping really last minute before, like on Christmas Eve, so I guess I’m good at it…?
9. When does your family/you buy a tree?
My family buys a tree usually in the beginning to middle of December. We go out to this farm and cut it down ourselves. And we squabble about the tree. FUN!
10. Do you decorate your house [inside and out] for Christmas? To what degree?
On the outside, we do almost nothing. Because want to include all religions, our only outdoor decoration is a giant plywood peace sign my dad cut out that and we cover it in lights. It’s really pretty.
Usually, we have a Christmas ornament-making party every year, so we have a lot of decorations on the inside. I guess, compared to other houses, it’s not a lot…
And anyone who wants to participate! Just put the link in the comments below so I can check it out. :)
I will be doing a Beautiful Books linkup soon. I will also be starting to edit Bloggish. And I will hopefully get Twitter soon, too. Have a happy December, blogglings. :)
The Bane Chronicles by Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Maureen Johnson
So, yeah. I’m excited! My dad said I could only get three books (and only one hardback!!!), so it was very hard for me to choose. I will hopefully read The Scorch Trials next, if my classmate lets me borrow it, then Pretties, then The Bane Chronicles, and then Looking for Alaska.
I haven’t been posting as frequently as I’d prefer to, mainly because life (and YouTube) have been grabbing me and not letting go. If you missed me, I missed you, too! *hug* And if you didn’t, well, that’s FINE. Anyway, I just thought I’d do a quick update on my life.
School just started up again after Thanksgiving break, and I am feeling the workload. Homework and projects and studying for tests have caught up with me. In math, we have a test next week, I just finished a project in humanities, and we’re doing a project in science tomorrow. AND I have to memorize my monologue for English. [It’s about this girl who is lesbian and her girlfriend committed suicide two months ago. Every day she wakes up, not sure if she wants to live.] Thankfully, I only have two weeks of school and then we have winter break! YAY!
I had my choir concert on Tuesday night, and we. Freaking. Killed it. It was so much fun and I think we sounded great! We performed in a church, and one pew was made up entirely of people who came to see moi. So awesome. I’ll be starting choir again in January 2015. We’re going to perform at Great America! [For those of you who don’t know, Great America is an amusement park with rollercoasters and lots of fried food. Fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, fried funnel cake–you name it, you can fry it. (Sadly, I don’t like rollercoasters. Or fried food.)]
We will be beginning the mandatory science fair soon, so I am bound to be slammed with work. One of the ideas I had for my project is how sustainable ereaders versus paper books are. Fun?
As you probably know, I wrote a [short] novel during NaNoWriMo, and I am planning to edit it. I thought I’d share with you some of my ideas for revisions!
My order of editing/revising:
1. Look at scenes and figure out which ones to keep, edit, and trash. Also add scenes as needed.
2. Pick apart scenes and get to the technical stuff.
3. Focus on wording and how it flows.
4. Repeat until perfect.
I think I’m going to be cutting some characters. There are some who just don’t move the plot along and don’t really say anything, and I can easily delete them. I will be keeping Cait, Jaz, Belle, Brandon, Kai, and Dean, though. :)
That’s all for now, my lovelies. Happy December and soon-to-be-official winter! Have you read any of the books I bought? Do you want to read them? Tell me in the comments below.
Hello there! Another week’s gone by, and I am tired. A lot has happened this week, and not just in the blogosphere.
I started to [finally] feel the weight of projects and homework. At my school, we have this one period of about one to two weeks where we get a bunch of end-of-the-unit projects that count for a majority of a grade. As you can probably conclude from this statement, life at school gets a little hectic during this time. Not only did we have about a project per class [or more!], our teachers also decided to pile up the homework.
We got new songs in my choir! As you may know, I am in a choir, and yesterday we just got new music! I am a soprano II. We are singing Christmas songs! In September! Which is crazy! In Carol of the Bells, the soprano II’s mostly sing “ding…dong…ding…dong…” over and over. Fun stuff. :) But I still love choir.
I have concluded that I will probably get a new phone soon. Why? Because my phone sucks. It’s three years old. Its battery life is unbelievable. It hardly has any space. Need I say more? Hopefully I’ll get an iPhone 5c soon-ish. :D
I am going to give The Hunger Games a second chance. I guess this is a bit bloggish, but whatever. Thanks to Engie and the Mockingjay Part 1 trailer, I am going to reread the books and catch up on the movies before Mockingjay Part 1 comes out. It’s my mission!
I found out that I will be gone on October 7th. Which is just short of a tragedy. Or maybe it is a tragedy. Because I will be camping in a cabin in the woods with NO WiFi and NO heating and, worst of all, NO mail service to deliver my beautiful copy of The Blood of Olympus, which will be arriving that day. Which means I can’t read it, fangirl about it, or post about it. :'( So I will have to read and review and fangirl about it some days after. Which sucks.
That’s all that’s happened in my world. Now, let’s get to the bloggy stuff.
Here are some of my attempts to use Emily’s ideas for book space:
Clockwise, from top left. Books in the dryer [I mean, who needs dry clothes when you can have books?!], book in corner [When they’re bad; it’s not okay!], books in the toaster [Don’t toast them!], books on the floor [Floors are not made for walking on; they’re made for books! Duh.].
I’m not trying to steal Emily’s genius; I just wanted to try it for myself. :) I encourage you to, too! It’s really fun to take pictures of books in toasters. ;) Also, my cat and dog were not available at the time of this photo shoot, but if I get the chance, I *might* do pics with them, too.
No books were harmed in the making of this. Except when I dropped them. But they’re okay!
After this post, I will put up a review of The Book Thief, which I finished today. In science class. And I cried. And screamed. And my friends thought I was weird. ;) Oh, the joys of being bookish.
On another note, I’m still going strong on the 100-4-100! Is anyone else doing it? If so, how are you doing?
Stay on the lookout for a page with my Bucket List, a post about how to please a blogger, and ideas for a birthday party page!
What did you do this week? And since my poll-thingy is malfunctioning, which posting day was your favorite? Tell me in the comments below.
Free As a Girl With Wings 
