Top Ten Tuesday: Series I’ve Been Meaning to Start but Haven’t

Hey all! I’ve fallen into a blogging (and reading) slump of sorts hence why I haven’t been that active on here these past few weeks, but I hope that you all are doing well and having a swell June so far. Anyway, today I thought I’d make a brief comeback by posting a Top Ten Tuesday post because I find that bookish memes are perfect remedies for blogging slumps. Plus, the last time I participated in a Top Ten Tuesday feature was… back in October 2016.

And in case you haven’t heard of Top Ten Tuesday before, it’s a weekly feature created by the team at The Broke and the Bookish where book bloggers can share a list of books that pertain to a theme or prompt. This week’s topic is “Top Ten Series I’ve Been Meaning to Start but Haven’t.” But because my TBR pile is sky high I’ll actually be including more than 10 series in mine… Don’t judge. XD

Chaos Walking trilogy

I haven’t read any Patrick Ness but of all the sci-fi series on my TBR list the Chaos Walking trilogy is my most anticipated one to read since the reviews on Goodreads promise that this series is nothing short of superb. I’ve also heard that it induces a rollercoaster of feels for readers, too.

The Dark Artifices trilogy

To my great shock, I still haven’t started my copy of Lady Midnight. I preordered it back when it first came out in early 2016, but, unfortunately, I never made time for it. This is a big surprise to me since The Infernal Devices trilogy is my ALL TIME FAVORITE YA fantasy series. (Jem Carstairs is my bae.) And I loved The Mortal Instruments series when I read it as a teenager. (Believe it or not, I was Clary’s age then. Gee, time sure flies.) Anyway, I don’t plan to prolong returning to the shadowhunter world for much longer though. Lady Midnight is in my TBR pile for this summer!

Throne of Glass series

I didn’t exactly love A Court of Thorns and Roses and I found A Court of Mist and Fury problematic but way more enjoyable than book 1 all the sex scenes aside. (You guys know that I’m quite a prude and can’t appreciate NA or graphic sex in books… Those explicit, mature romances just aren’t for me apparently.) I know that the Throne of Glass series is Sarah J. Maas’ YA fantasy series so I believe there should be a more mild romance with. Despite the polarizing opinions I’ve seen surfacing around the blogosphere about this series, I’m looking forward to reading it sometime soon.

Bookshelf Tour (January 2017)

If you guys saw my Instagram story from last week, you might have noticed that I decided to reorganize my books once again. (At first, it sounded like a good idea due to my “new year, new changes” mentality, but then I soon realized how insane I was when a sea of books started to emerge as I began pulling books off the shelves.) Anyway, I thought I’d share these changes since it was quite a drastic transformation this time.

It’s been over a year that I’ve had my books arranged as a quasi rainbow shelf. Though it looked glorious for bookstagram pictures, I couldn’t stand that I had my series separated and it was impractical when I had to search for a title. Keeping that set up was also becoming tedious because I started to accumulate more manga series, which I couldn’t bear splitting up and having them together made the overall look of the scheme pretty wonky. I also now have so many books that I need to double stack shelves in order to conserve shelf space, which doesn’t look as great with the color coordinated trend either.

Therefore me and my dad had a talk and agreed that we were going to move his DVDs (which were at the time occupying the two side shelves that you guys seldom see in my photos) into an empty room we have upstairs. (In exchange for the extra space, the compromise is that he gets unlimited library access to all my books whenever he wants. It’s sort of always been an unbreakable rule that no one-no matter how long or strong of a tie/relationship you have with me-borrows my books. But considering how much shelf space he sacrificed for me, I think the trade is fair. XD) So, basically, now I have a total of five columns of shelves just for books, which is amazing!

With so much room to work with, I didn’t really know how I wanted my books… I just knew I wanted my series reunited once again. Anyhow, I ended up settling with how I had my books set up prior to my rainbow experiment, which was by genre.

So here’s the final look! I admit that it isn’t half as pretty compared to what I had before, but the logical person in me approves and loves this so much more than the former. Also, there’s still a small color coordinated section with my contemporary standalones. If I ever feel like I miss the previous arrangement, I at least have that last remnant of the epic rainbow shelf to stare at. Haha.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Read That Were Recommended by Fellow Bloggers

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

I usually have a lab on Tuesdays, so normally I wouldn’t be able to join in the fun… but because I don’t this week (because we have our fall break starting this Thursday-despite all the Hurricane Matthew madness), I thought I would create this post today!

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday feature is Ten Books I’ve Read Because Of Another Blogger.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. It was created to allow the book community to share ten books every week in response to a chosen theme.

Even without lab, it probably wasn’t the best idea for me to begin drafting this from scratch today since I have a chemistry exam tomorrow (on metabolites and metabolism), but I think I’ll manage! Plus, I really wanted to join in this week’s topic just because I knew I had plenty of material I could share and discuss. ^.^

Anyway, let’s get on with the actual post, shall we?

Below are all the books that I actually have read after recommendations. (I know right?! I’m pretty impressed with myself. pat on the back) I’m quite a slow reader which means that my main focus has been with ARCs, but when I do decide to pick up a book that I purchased… I want to make sure I’m reading one that is worthwhile and that I’ll hopefully like. And that’s when recommendations by my most trusted fellow book bloggers come in! 😉

For each book, I’ll include a link to Goodreads, my review, and the blogs (of the bloggers that recommended me the book). Also, I’m almost certain that under each book there are more folks that recommended me the title… primarily because my challenge question on Goodreads is actually something like, “Recommend me your favorite book.” But, of  course, I couldn’t remember everyone. Honestly, I’m pretty impressed that I could keep track of these many people. XD

A Darker Shade of Magic | A Little Life | Me Before You | More Happy Than Not | Sanctuary Bay (ebook, not pictured) | Shadow and Bone | Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda | Six of Crows | The Summer of Chasing Mermaids | The Winner’s Curse | The Wrath and the Dawn | Unteachable (ebook, not pictured)

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Plan to Read on the Beach (or This Summer)

Dreamology | When We Collided | Some of the Parts | Not If I See You First | The Serpent King | Fangirl | The Wrath and the Dawn | The Rose and the Dagger | Divergent | My Life Next Door

Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. It was created to allow the book community to share ten books every week in response to a chosen theme.

I had to participate in this week’s topic because I love summer related Top Ten Tuesday themes. 😉 In fact, I did last year’s equivalent to “beach reads”/”summer TBR” last summer. And the hilarious thing is that I didn’t read a single book from that supposed TBR pile. I’m not really surprised since I’m a big mood reader. That’s why I never make monthly or seasonal TBRs; I never would follow through, haha. However, I have a feeling I’ll work through this one closely because most of these titles are planned buddy reads and/or books I just have been dying to read for some time now.

Top Ten Tuesday: My BBFs (Best Blogger Friends)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday (a weekly bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish) topic, Ten Bookish People You Should Follow on Twitter/Instagram/Youtube/Snapchat/Facebook, was too unique to not do. So here I am, back in the blogosphere when I should be on my break. 😛

So my version of this topic is my best friends in the book blogging community!

It may not exactly be mutual because these people are popular and have a lot of friends within the blogosphere, but I would still consider them to be my best blogger friends. Only because they know so much about me (I think?) outside of book reviews and blogging. We’ve probably talked about different foods, animals, purchasing habits, etc. Our friendship may have even started out with me unloading a bunch of summer bombs on their blog and therefore creating endless threads of conversations. I don’t know, when I meet a special blogger where I know I’ll click very well with I do that sometimes. 😅

And a quirk that many of you probably don’t know about me is that I have a fear of commitment-big ones and small. I don’t follow a lot of blogs compared to most (~50) because I like to keep up with the content of those I do as frequently as I can. But I follow all the people on this list so that is saying a lot, in my opinion. I can promise that each of the bloggers I’ll mention are my favorites for their content, honesty, and creativity.

And the order is not by favoritism. It was hard enough to choose bloggers for this feature let alone order them as my “favorites.” That’s like ordering your kids by how much you like them instead of age-no can do, I can’t do that! So alphabetical it is!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I Really Love but Feel Like I Haven’t Talked About Enough

Hello, friends! As I was checking my WP reader’s feed this morning, I noticed this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme curated by The Broke and the Bookish. I thought I’d join in since I think the topic will allow me to share some different book recommendations that I haven’t spotlighted enough on Xingsings. Plus, it’s been a while and I sort of miss doing these posts. 😛

Oh and a lot of these books will probably be ones from my pre-teen and early teenage years. I read way faster and more when I was younger. Coupled with the fact that I wasn’t working and making money then, I didn’t buy most of my books like I do now. I went to the library instead. Therefore the photo below doesn’t have a lot of the books I’ll talk about shown since I don’t have them as part of my current book collection. Also, this list is in no particular order. And I’ll be linking Goodreads links to all the books I mention, so feel free to use them if you’d like!

Exploring My Bookshelves: December (and Announcing Some Changes to Xingsings)

First off, I wanted to wish you all a very merry and safe Christmas! And for those of you that don’t really celebrate the holiday (like myself), happy Friday! (Oh and this is a scheduled post, even though I don’t celebrate Xmas we still close the family business; I’m visiting my birth town, Atlanta, today. 😀 )

Anyway, so I’m guessing when you read “Announcing Some Changes to Xingsings” you thought I was going to go self hosted (or something along the lines of that) right? Haha, sorry for the false alarm, but actually it’s some news regarding future memes, tags, and awards.

After giving it much thought, I think I’m going to become tag and award free starting from the beginning of 2016. I know several people have different interpretations of what this means. For me and how this will be applied to Xingsings is that I’ll still continue to complete the tags and awards that are in the draft queue. But I will no longer be doing tag and award posts that I’m tagged/nominated in 2016 and onwards. And for the remaining tags and awards I still plan to do, I will continue to tag my usual blogging buddies and five bloggers I want to get to know each time. And it’s up to them if they want to do them. However, if you’re tagged/nominated by me but have also become tag/award free please let me know so I don’t unintentionally spam you.

Exploring My Bookshelves: November

Hi everyone! I’m back today with an Exploring My Bookshelves post. This weekly bookish meme (but adapted as a monthly one on here at Xingsings) was originally created by Victoria at Addlepates and Book Nerds and now she cohosts it with Shannon at For the Love of Words. Though Top Ten Tuesday lists are fun to make, this is probably my favorite bookish meme to partake in because I get to discover books I don’t really think about anymore and are collecting dust on my shelves. And it’s a great way to document the evolution of your shelves and shelf space. I started participating in this meme back in March and you can really tell how many books I’ve bought since then from my first Exploring My Bookshelves post. Someone please help with my book buying tendencies. OTL

Anyway, let’s get on with the post shall we?

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So this is how my shelves look currently. There’s some slight differences from last month and I have some books on “display.” I also started double shelfing, meaning I have two layers of books in some of the shelves. You can kind of see what I’m describing in the pink shelf, which is the second shelf from the top on the far right.

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November 6, 2015: Favorite Shelf/Shelves

It’s kind of hard to choose a favorite shelf so I chose multiple shelves. I like my blue/teal books the most because… well I like the color blue a lot. It’s my favorite color along with white. I’m so plain, lol. And I know the colors don’t really show that well in the photo… but in person they really do look blue!

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books I’m Thankful For

Hello friends! I hope you all have had a wonderful November so far. In case you missed it, this post explains my absence from the blogosphere pretty well. Even though finals are creeping up soon, I finally got back into bookish things (in other words, I’ve been reading again) and hopefully will have some book reviews up.

Anyways, in honor of Thanksgiving holiday and break, I wanted to share my list of Top Ten Books I’m Thankful For or special books that have some meaning to me or a period of my life. This week’s T10T, a bookish meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, was actually an open interpretation to allow readers to get creative but I just decided to share this simple list. It’s been months since I’ve participated in this meme. As some of you may know, I used to be pretty religious with keeping up T10T posts when I first started blogging  and I’ll direct you to this post as to why I stopped doing that. Anyhow, I wanted to join in this week’s fun since I thought I could add a variety of books I don’t usually talk about on Xingsings. I’m sure there’ll be a couple on here that will be a surprise for some.

(All links to Goodreads are under the photo.)

Tuck Everlasting | The Glass Castle | Half the Sky | City of Bones | The Truth About Forever | Twilight | Maximum Ride Forever | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows | Unbroken | A Little Life

Exploring My Bookshelves: October

Hello everyone! I hope you all have been doing well. As promised in my tweet on Twitter earlier this month, I had a couple of blog posts scheduled throughout October. So I stayed logged out of my social media accounts related to Xingsings and was quite absent around the blogosphere the majority of the time. I did do some blog hopping sporadically here and there, but honestly, those moments were just bouts of procrastination away from my studying. I still missed a lot; hopefully I’ll catch up to comments and replies tonight. Anyway, I’ve missed everyone and it’s time for a real, non-schedule post! Today is the last Friday of October so I’m back with an Exploring My Bookshelves post!

But let’s get onto this post, shall we? Oh and for those of you that aren’t as familiar with this lovely meme created by Victoria at Addlepates and Book Nerds and co-hosted with Shannon at For the Love of Words, it’s a weekly one (but adapted as a monthly here at Xingsings) where readers can share what’s on their shelves and/or discover a book collecting dust on their bookcase. Join in the fun if you want to add a Friday bookish meme to your blog!

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Part of the meme asks the blogger to share a recent photo of their bookshelf, so here’s mine. Honestly, my shelves haven’t changed in any orientation since the previous month when I shared three months worth of this meme. However, I noticed that I need to start double shelfing (as in having two layers of books per shelf) soon.

If you want to take a closer look, click the photo to enlarge it! (Haha, the top is so yellow because I had to turn on the lights; the natural lighting wasn’t really working out today. 😅)