Red, White, and Books: An Independence Day Update

 Greetings, souls. Happy Independence Day to those of you in America. I'm giggling over here at some of the memes I've seen this year about our beloved day of all things red, white, and blue. I've been enjoying all the book stacks I've seen too, and the shelves reorganized to look like the American flag. Very clever.

    I'm spending the Fourth of July with my parents. Partially by choice but partially because I don't have a working AC in my apartment and they can't get it fixed for at least two weeks. It's been alright, but I've now been crashing with my parents for two weeks and sometimes I remember why I love having my own space. Big families are great but noisy and I feel like I'm in the way most of the time. 

    Anyway, it's 3:07 in the afternoon right now and my nephew has confiscated my phone to play PBS Kids while his brother takes a nap, so I thought I'd take this time to write an update. 

    I've been keeping track of all the books I've read this year and each month I list all the books that I've given a five-star rating to. Then, I pick my favorite book out of those to be my Book of the Month. Sadly, I haven't been spotlighting these, but I thought maybe I would on here. Make it something special for the blog and maybe Instagram. So, I just picked June's Book of the Month and it's been added to my list of other ones. 

    At the end of the year, I'll pick a Book of the Year and I may give away a copy of my pick. What do you think? 

    Want to see the standings so far? 




_______________________________________________________________________

    January 5 Star Ratings:

- Nire, The White Stag (YA, LQBTQ+, Fantasy), by Camille Collins

                        Book of the Month: Nire, The White Stag

February 5 Star Ratings:

- Little Critter at Scout Camp (Children's Lit), by Mercer Mayer

- Future Miss President: Inspiring Children to Dream Big (Children's Lit), by S.R.D. Harris

- Kindness is Cooler, Mrs. Ruler (Children's Lit),  by Margery Cuyler

- Blizzard (Children's Lit), by John Rocco

- Peppermint Kisses for the Omega (Mature, Romance, LQBTQ+, ABO Dynamics), by Lacey Daize 

- Luke Skywalker's Race Against Time (Children's Lit), by Killian Plunkett

- Hope for Valentine's Day (YA), by K.D. Hilt

- Twenty-One Postcards (Poetry), by Greg Watson

                        Book of the Month: Future Miss President: Inspiring Children to Dream Big

March 5 Star Ratings: 

- Girl, Stop Apologizing (Adult, Self-help), by Rachel Hollis

-Striving to Become a Proverbs 31 Woman (Devotional), by Heidi Lynn

- Mommy's Makeup (Children's Lit), by Ashley Madden 

- There's a Wocket in My Pocket (Children's Lit), by Dr. Seuss 

- Black Bears of Independence: Dylan and Caleb (Adult, Romance, LQBTQ+), by Karen Hall

- Ms. Infinity: Where Infinity Begins (Science Fiction), by Andrew Kirschner 

- My High School Christmas Boyfriend (YA, Christmas, Romance), by Kylie Key

- The Vampire's Mail Order Bride (Paranormal, Supernatural, Romance), by Kristen Painter

- Fated Kisses for the Omega (Romance, LQBTQ+, ABO Dynamics), by Lacey Daize 

- Melinda and the Unicorns (Children's Lit, Music), by Lilianna Lopez 

- T-Rex Trying (Comic Collection, Comedy), by Hugh Murphy 

                        Book of the Month: Girl, Stop Apologizing 

April 5 Star Ratings: 

- The Casebook of Sam Spallucci (Detective Fiction, Paranormal, Supernatural), by A.S. Chambers

- She's My Kind of Country (LQBTQ+, Romance, Adult), by Amber Kestner 

- Fools Kisses for the Omega (LQBTQ+, Romance, ABO Dynamics), by Lacey Daize

- Matched by Santa (Clean Romance, Christmas), by Angelina Kerner

- Heart Stopper: Volume One (LQBTQ+, Romance, YA, Graphic Novel), by Alice Oseman

- How to be Perfectly Unhappy (Illustrated/Comic, Self-Help), by Matthew Inman 

                    Book of the Month: How to be Perfectly Unhappy

May 5 Star Ratings: 

- Heart Stopper: Volume Two (LGBTQ+, Romance, YA, Graphic Novel), by Alice Oseman

- Poetic Ramblings (Poetry), by Alicia LaFontaine

- All My Friends Are Still Dead (Dark humor), by Avery Monsen 

- Heart Stopper: Volume Three (LGBTQ+, Romance, YA, Graphic Novel), by Alice Oseman

                Book of the Month: Heart Stopper: Volume Three

June's 5 Star Ratings: 

- Spring's Showers (Romance, Mythology), by C.A. King

- The Candy Corn Witch (Realistic Fiction, Halloween), by S.E. Winters

- Raemkai's Stairs (Fantasy, Mythology, Paranormal, Mystery), by Mary R. Woldering

- The Lost Apothecary (Historical Fiction, slight Fantasy), by Sarah Penner

- The Dead Boy's Club (Paranormal, YA, Romance), by Rue Volley 

- Fawn's School Day (Children's Lit), by Zoey Daniele

- The Mystery of Sir. Byron's Ghost (Paranormal, Mystery, Romance), by Suzanne Nemec 

- High Rise Love (Clean Romance), by Angelina Kerner

- Never Put a Cactus in the Bathroom (Nonfiction, Informational), by Emily L. Hay Hinsdale 

- All the Ways You Never Loved Me (YA, Romance, Mental Health), by Rue Volley 

                    Book of the Month: The Dead Boy's Club

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

AI - Is it Art or Plagiarism?

Image
      Artificial intelligence has been a big topic in the art world lately. Some people have won awards for AI-generated content, others use it as nothing more than a filter on their Tik Tok pages, and still, others use it to write entire books. The question is, when does this fun little device become plagiarism? Where is the line that indicates what belongs to the robot and what belongs to the human?      You may say, robots and AI don't have rites. No, I suppose they don't because they are not living breathing creatures. However, that brings up a discussion on what gives a creature rites? Is it breathing? Or is it having the ability to think? We are still a while away from needing to have this discussion, though we get closer every day as inventors try to create realistic-looking AIs (aka, androids). Avoiding the Star Wars conundrum of whether droids should have rites, there are things we need to be considering as artists.      Here's the d...
Read more

The Start of Something New: First Steps to Freelancing

Image
       On July 29, 2022, a 114-year-old newspaper ceased publishing. I worked on this paper for the last year and a half of its life and it was one of the greatest experiences of my existence. It taught me a lot of things. I learned a bunch of programs like InDesign and Adobe Photoshop. It taught me formatting and AP style of writing (which I had the basics of before I started but rarely used). To steal a description from John Green, the paper's end came upon us like sleep, slowly at first and then all at once. Those of us that worked there knew the paper was in trouble. There were times we'd compare it to a sinking ship and ourselves as sailors using buckets to scoop water out of the vessel. I loved that paper, though. With every fiber of my being.       The Gothenburg Times was the first place to give me a writing job full-time. I never met the owners, but I worked closing with its publisher, who mentored me and taught me a lot about publishing...
Read more

The Alphabet Ancestry (Part I)

Image
      I don't know how into video games you are, but there are four games I play with a dedication so strong that I've literally lost nights of sleep over them. One of these games is Sims. I played Sims 3 long ago, but I'm currently playing Sims 4, and if you're a Sim's player then you know that EA just keeps adding more expansions to this game.      I've played the game so much that I've beaten many of the challenges, yet there was one I have failed to complete several times. The Alphabet Family Challenge. The rules for this challenge are as follows:      1) You must play through 26 generations of the same household.     That's it. That's all the guidelines Sims gives players. Seems simple enough, right? WRONG! Sims is a time-consuming game. Getting to 26 generations takes a long time...and I may have neglected to consider what 'same household' might have meant until I was already a decent way into the challenge.    ...
Read more