This Year's Firsts! (NaBloPoMo)

Ok! Final day of NaBloPoMo!! Whooo hooo!!! I’ve decided to make my final post about FIRSTS in honor of the #BHPChat last night. Congrats to BHPChat for the chattaversary!!

Here are the questions and my answers from the chat. HOWEVER!! You can’t understand the fun of twitter chats based on this watered down, dumb regurgitation of the questions!! You gotta get your chat on! There are plenty of bookish chats, though BHPCHats is probably one of the more active ones lately. Check out Emily’s calendar here.

I’m Not Worried about Your Kool Aid (Blogiversary Musings)

Technically, I’ve been blogging since 2008, but there were a few years of starts and stops. But not only is October the month of my first blog post but it’s also my favorite month, so there you go. Sometimes arbitrary isn’t so arbitrary. Of course, usually it is.

Anyhooo… For the rest of my blogiversary month, I’m posting about some stuff I’ve been thinking about over the past year. Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts if you want.

I’m Not Worried about Your Kool Aid:

You know what it means to be up in someone’s Kool Aid? It means you are minding their business, worried about what flavor they are drinking instead of paying attention to your own stuff. Well, there are a LOT of book bloggers on the internet and some of them do this for a living or at least for fame and free books. They post almost every day. They run giveaways and blog tours and all kinds of stuff. I have some goals but they are loose and just to keep me motivated and meeting people. I try not to get caught up in the Book Blogger Business, but chill out over here with my little blog and books and just do my own thing. (Did you know that in Old English, the connotation for the word “business” was anxiety. I’m not sure that that is no longer the case. No Thanks.)

Link: Goals I set for myself this year

Have your blog goals changed over time?

How do you decide on your blog goals?

Related Posts:

  

Book Blogger Blind Date

The Idea:

Book Blogger Blind Date is a feature hosted by Jillian over at Rant and Rave about Books. The basic concept is pretty simple. Jill got a bunch of people to sign up and then she paired us up to get to know each other and post about each other! Done!

The Blog:

My blind date is with Cindy at My Book File. Cindy does book reviews and has a cute feature called Double Reviews, where she and Anne from Inked Brownies review a book together. I LOVE THIS IDEA and if I ever got my shit together enough to coordinate schedules with a whole other person, I would totally steal it!

So, Cindy and I decided to exchange brief little blurbs about ourselves and then do questions and answers. Here's Cindy's intro:

I like books (fantasy and historical fiction are my favorite genres), history (not 20th century history, though), writing, photography and medieval languages (Germanic languages mostly). Dutch is my mother language. I speak English, German and have some knowledge of French, Spanish and Norwegian.

Since some time ago, I stopped doing sports, but I really want to try something new in the future, the last 12 years I did horseback riding. 

I'm really addicted to coffee [WELL, WHO ISN’T, CINDY!?] and chocolate, olives with garlic are really close to the top as well :')

Cindy lives in the Netherlands which I'm pretty sure, that for the majority of my life, I thought was where Peter Pan lived. But lookie here, it's an actual place!! She lives where the red thingy is. She's about half my age (ahem) and is an English student. 

We were only going to ask a certain number of questions but each of the questions I wrote was like a bunch all in one, so I failed the first task of the whole assignment!! During the little intro, I learned that Cindy has pets which is pretty much all you need to know about a person.

 

Anyway, here’s

July 2016 Recap (Outbox)

I’m determined to do a July recap, because I totally missed doing one for June, it’s like the days were just flying by!

I did an Outbox post about 10 days ago (click). I’ve read 3 books since then, bringing my total for the month to a measly 9 books. Ok. It’s not that measly, but I like to end on an even number! I tried to finish the book I’m in the middle of before bed last night but it wasn’t worth it.

I'm kicking butt! (2016 Blog Challenges and Goals update)

Yep. It’s still almost July. Which is basically crazy.

My blog goals for 2016 were focused on increasing the consistency of my posting and getting more involved with other bloggers and bookish peeps. And really, feeling more connected with the book blog community has been awesome!

Here's my mid- year goal update: 

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Feel Differently About Now

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by Broke and Bookish

May 24:  Ten Books I Feel Differently About After Time Has Passed (less love, more love, complicated feelings, indifference, thought it was great in a genre until you became more well read in that genre etc.)

I love this topic!! But once again I am going to split it up a little bit because I’m not sure I can think of ten things.

For me, because I read so much, I lose details of books pretty quickly so I’m mostly left with how I FEEL about a book: good or yuck?

Book Review: The Double by Alison Brodie

One of my blog goals for 2016 is to do more “book community” stuff. Ergo. I signed up with I Heart All the Books to participate in a couple of book tours! Yay, me. Isn’t it amazing how easy it is to get involved with writers and their work these days!? Anyway, I received a free copy of the book in order to provide a book review and to participate.

  

Here's the book's official (and much too detailed) blurb:

A night she can’t remember. A week she won’t forget. 

Beth is mistaken for rock star, Sonita La Cruz, and ends up on a billionaire-dollar yacht. As a shift-worker in Glasgow, Beth has only known hardship. Now she's in a world of uniformed stewards, French cuisine and rows of gorgeous designer frocks. Beth keeps quiet about the mix-up, determined to wear every outfit in her wardrobe before she's sent home. What's wrong with a little play-acting? Beth takes to the role of rock diva like a duck takes to water.

The captain arrives. Aleksandr sees a raven-haired girl in tiara and diamond-studded bikini lying on deck issuing orders through a megaphone. Aleksandr realizes what’s happened: His smuggling pals, knowing he needs to speak to Sonita about a kid’s crisis, have grabbed this lookalike and brought her here to meet him. Sadly, the girl is not Sonita. Aleksandr is desperate. Sonita promised to help the children but she’s disappeared.

Beth rises to the challenge. She looks like Sonita, so why not BE Sonita? Beth does a magazine interview for one million dollars, and ransoms herself for another million. Beth saves the children but can she save herself? Too late, Beth discovers the reason why Sonita disappeared.

 *

A full-bodied romance that sweeps across the globe, from a civil war in the Eastern Bloc, to a luxury yacht on the Côte d'Azur, to a poor housing estate in Glasgow.

  

Here’s what I had to say about it: