If you're a dreamer, a wisher, a liar
A hoper, a prayer, a magic-bean buyer
If you're a pretender come sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin
Come in...come in...
~Shel Silverstein

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Happy News and Fall Into Reading

So, today was a very good day. First of all, I made it over one-hundred followers. Woo-hoo!! My blog has been up less than a month, so this feels like a big accomplishment. I will be having some kind of 100 follower giveaway. I promise I will post the details on soon, but I'm still thinking of some cool way to say THANK YOU GUYS!!

Also, earlier tonight, I made it into the top two final kissing scenes over at LUV YA. Next week me and other final "Kissing" entry go head to head with the "Kiss Off" entries. I'm SO excited. I can't believe I made it this far. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.

And, it was an awesome day because H (my husband) bought me the cutest golden snitch earrings along with a golden snitch necklace to match. He is awesome!!

So, now that my happy news is out of the way, I'd like to post my "Fall into Reading" list. This is a challenge hosted over at Callapidder Days. I'll let you guys head over there to read the details, since I don't want to inadvertently break blogger etiquette rules. I read about someone doing that the other day and realized I've come perilously close a couple of times now. Oops!

So, here are the books I hope to read from now through the first day of winter.  I really want to complete this challenge because I set another goal for myself in January, to read 100 books this year and I have fallen pretty behind. I think reading is truly the best path to becoming a better writer. It's easy to get caught up in blogging, tweeting, revising, critiquing etc...and forget to make time. So no more! I am going to post twenty books, so I can pick and choose. I'm challenging myself to read twelve of them by Dec. 21


The Perks of Being a Wallflower I'm the only person in the whole YA world who hasn't read this

The Shining One of the only Stephen King books I have yet to read.

The Demon Trappers Daughter This one has been on my TBR list for way too long.

A Beautiful Evil I read the first book (Darkness Becomes Her)  and really liked it. Not sure why I keep putting off the sequel. 

Girl of Nightmares I loved Anna Dressed in Blood so I'm super excited for this one. 

Torn  If I like it I will continue with the next two books in the series, Tangled and Bound.

A Need So Beautiful If I like this, I will continue with A Want So Wicked

Reached The final book in the Matched series. It's coming out Nov. 13th YAY

UnWholly I loved Unwind, so I can't wait to read this!

What's Left of Me I've been following Kat Zhang's blog since I heard about this book. The concept is amazing and I'm psyched to read it. 

Beautiful Chaos  I was waiting to read this until Beautiful Redemption came out. I didn't want to wait forever between the two books. Since Beautiful Redemption comes out Oct. 23 I can safely read this one now. :)

Days of Blood and Starlight. This is coming out of Nov. 6th and I CAN'T WAIT

Destroy Me This comes out Oct. 2nd. It's a novella set in Warner's POV--from Shatter Me. Since that was one of my favorite books,  I'm really looking forward to it. 

The Evolution of Mara Dyer I wasn't as crazy about The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer book as the rest of the YA world, but I definitely liked it enough to want to read the sequel, which is coming out Oct. 23

Pushing the Limits I'm not normally too much of a contemporary reader but, for some reason, I am dying to read this book. There have been a few contemporaries that I've truly loved, (The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight and Anna and the French Kiss come to mind, so I'm hoping I'll like this as much!)


So that's it. Phew. My whole list.  Anyone else out there plan on doing the challenge? I'm trying to do this and Nanowrimo this year, so I think I've lost my mind. ;)

As far as what I've recently read, I just got done Angelfall and it was AMAZING. Like, the most amazing book I've read since Hunger Games. I loved it. Can't wait for the next one!! Anyone looking for an action-packed thrill ride with just enough romance to keep you wanting more, pick this book up!!

Let me know if you've loved/hated anything on my challenge list. Especially if you hated it. WARN ME NOW!! haha.  And please tell me what you're reading!! Books are my number one fave thing to talk about. :)

20 comments:

  1. Twenty books! That's ambitious. Bet you can do it though.
    Congratulations on a hundred followers. And in one month? Took me over six months to hit that number.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I was really surprised, but I started my blog right at the start of GUTGAA, and that REALLY helped. I mean, a ton of people came over from that. And I'm reading twelve books. Not twenty. haha. I mean, I posted twenty, so I could pick and choose out of them, but I'll be perfectly happy if I reach my goal of reading twelve of them. :)

      Delete
  2. First off - congrats on the Kiss Off! I hope I voted for your entry. :)

    Second - can't wait to see what which books you read and what you think of them. I have The Evolution Of Mara Dyer on my "to-read" list, too. Like you, I liked the first one but didn't love it, so I wonder if book 2 will be better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, me too! You should tell me which one you voted for. haha. I'm curious. I still can't tell you if its me cause the contest has one more week, but I shall know. haha.

      I'm glad to find another person who wasn't blown away by The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. I heard people rave about that book, but when I was done I was just like..yeah, that was decent. The next one won't be out for a month yet, but I'll be keeping you guys posted. :)

      Delete
    2. Ok, I'm going to preface this with all the entries were good. So even if I didn't vote for you, I really did think they all were worthy. I voted for #4.

      Yeah, my friend Krystal gave me the book tell me it was amazing and yeah...it was just ok. I don't know, the story kind of didn't seem to go anywhere. I'm interested in the 2nd book, but not enough to have even checked up to see when it was coming out.

      Delete
  3. Wow- I haven't read so many of those books. Must add them to my list!

    Also, you should probably post pictures of your cute earrings and necklace :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. haha...you're right. I should do that! I'm out but I'll take a pic of my new jewelry later :)

      I have a list on my laptop of how many books I've read since January and, reading through it, I was surprised at how long its gotten. Like 64 books. I didn't realize it was so many. But there's still SO many books people talk about that I've never gotten to. I think I'm the only person who loves YA who has never read a single book by Richelle Mead. I also don't like a lot of the more popular series. Hush Hush. The Immortals. The Fallen series. The Iron Fae series--None of them did anything for me. Truthfully, I only read the first book of each series, so--in all fairness--they may have gotten better. Have you read any of them? What kind of stuff do you like?

      Delete
  4. I'm at 97 books as of today. What can I say? My 2012 has been kind of slow in the social department.
    I've read only two (kind of three) of your list though. Maybe I'll add some of your picks to my pile, too. I can say The Perks of being a Wallflower, Beautiful Chaos and Shatter me (see, sort of) are all awesome books. The unbecoming of Mara Dyer has been in my to-watch list for a while now. I'll probably tap that after I'm done with the ones I've got now.
    And Congrats on the Kiss-off, by the way :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. WOW. Ninety-seven books. Now I feel like a slacker. haha. Glad to know you liked those books. I'm really enjoying The Perks of Being a Wallflower so far. :) And I LOVED Shatter Me. I'm excited for the novella from Warner's POV. :)

      Thanks for the congrats. Next week is the last one. I'd have to beat three other people to win the whole thing, but their scenes are all amazing, so it's gonna be tough!!

      Delete
  5. A huge big congrats for the Kiss Off finals!! Woopty Doo!!!!! I'm hoping you win!!!!

    I'm sorry about the agent contest. Love your premise, your query, and your writing!!

    Best wishes for today's entry! I hope you made it in!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks, me too! And I appreciate you loving it! haha. I did make it into the small press pitch, so I'm excited about that.

    I'm curious though--about the agent contest. There's twelve agents looking at the pitches. Does that mean that I shouldn't query any of them when this is over? I mean, I guess I should just assume that they've seen my pitch and they aren't interested, right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm not for sure. Just wondering if maybe all the agents didn't read all the pitches? Idk?
      But I would think if they did look at them all they would have asked to see at least a partial if interested. Remember, sweetie, that's only 12 agents out of hundreds in the world. I've come to understand if an agent doesn't request your manuscript it may just be because they don't represent that type of manuscript, and not just genre, but also because maybe they already have something similar they are trying to sell.

      Keep your chin up:)

      Delete
    2. Oh, believe me--my chin is up! I just told my husband the other day that I've decided the more times I get rejected, the better story I'll have to tell when I'm a best-seller. :)

      In the meantime, I'm still polishing Against the Falling Moons based on some awesome feedback from a new beta-reader. I'm also gearing up for a new project--which is always exciting. Especially since I'm doing something totally new this book and writing with my son. He's really talented and our styles are similar so they'll mesh really well but--at the same time--his sixteen year old brain goes places mine would never think of so I can't wait to see what the merger of the two of us will bring. Thanks for the pep-talk though! Always appreciated. Hopefully I have some good luck next week with the small presses. :)

      Delete
  7. Wow! What a great challenge! Best of luck! Keep us informed!
    Heather

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, Heather! I'm halfway through Perks of Being a Wallflower and LOVING it. :)

      Delete
  8. Happy reading!! Good luck making your goals!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hey,

    Congrats on getting to 100, that is great news - I bet it's due to your kind, bubbly nature :)

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear from everyone! Thanks for the comment. :)