September Reading Wrap Up

This was another short month for me, but I feel like I read a lot!  I think that it looks short because a couple of the books I read were SUPER long.  Monsters took me over a week to read since it was almost 850 pages.  I am not doing too bad though, I just went over the 102 mark for 2013 on my Goodreads challenge.  I have 125 books on there so I am well on my way to hitting my target.  I have also now read 3 of the 25 books on my Challenge Bookshelf.  You can see those books here.

So here is a look at the books I managed to add to my "Read" shelf in September. 

There you have it!  I have a couple of video reviews coming up, but I am waiting on my new HD webcam to get here before I record them.  Also, I have been sick for the past week so my voice has been pretty scary and the coughing kinda ruins the videos!  I am going to be working on promoting my YouTube Channel so hopefully I can start to build my following over there.  I may also be posting videos over there on the days that I don't post here so if you don't want to miss those be sure to follow me over on YouTube.

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Reading!

YA Paranormal VIDEO Review "Alice in Zombieland" by Gena Showalter

Alice in Zombieland by Gena Showalter
YA Paranormal released 9/25/12

Author's website  |  Goodreads  |  Buy the Book on Amazon

Synopsis from Goodreads:
She won’t rest until she’s sent every walking corpse back to its grave. Forever.

Had anyone told Alice Bell that her entire life would change course between one heartbeat and the next, she would have laughed. From blissful to tragic, innocent to ruined? Please. But that’s all it took. One heartbeat. A blink, a breath, a second, and everything she knew and loved was gone.

Her father was right. The monsters are real….

To avenge her family, Ali must learn to fight the undead. To survive, she must learn to trust the baddest of the bad boys, Cole Holland. But Cole has secrets of his own, and if Ali isn’t careful, those secrets might just prove to be more dangerous than the zombies….

I wish I could go back and do a thousand things differently.
I'd tell my sister no.
I'd never beg my mother to talk to my dad.
I'd zip my lips and swallow those hateful words.
Or, barring all of that, I'd hug my sister, my mom and my dad one last time.
I'd tell them I love them.
I wish... Yeah, I wish.

My Thoughts...

So, I am changing the format here just a bit as you can see by what I have going on up there.  It's a little less cluttered and hopefully will make things a little easier for me when it comes time to post.  Also, you can see by the post title that this is a video blog!  It's something new I am trying and I may go to a mostly video format if time (and a quiet house) permits.  I kind of like it, it's easier to put my thoughts into words, sometimes.  We will see how it goes... 

So here it my very first video review...I hope you enjoy it.  Sorry about the crummy quality, I am still learning the whole process and hopefully they will just get better and better.  I may have to get a better camera for that to happen so please bear with me until then!

Thanks for watching!

Reading Challenge Update

I finally took a little time today to look at my shelves and decide what books I want to read for this challenge.  At this point in time I have 8 books on my "to be reviewed pile", not counting kindle books, and I am keeping those on my list, but I also added 20 books that I have had on my shelves, some for a long time, that I haven't read.  So here is my list of 20 books that I bought on my own that I plan to read before the end of this year. These are in no particular order.

1. Divergent
2. Alice in Zombieland
3. Sweet Evil
4. 7 Years to Sin
5. Shatter Me
6. The Club Dumas
7. Venom
8. The Passage
9. Suttree
10. The Redbreast
11. For Darkness Shows the Stars
12. Shadow's Claim
13. Heart of Atlantis
14. Eon
15. The Dark & Hollow Places
16. Wake
17. Beautiful Creatures
18. Falling Kingdoms
19. Heart Shaped Box
20. Claire De Lune
21. The Moon Dwellers
22. Graveminder
23. The Luxe
24. The Pillars of The Earth
25. Insurgent

My plan is to come back here and mark these off as I get them read.  I tried to get a nice mix of genres and whatnot.  This isn't even 1/4 of the books on my "need to read" shelves!  I am just going to try to mix these books in with my "need to review"  books and hopefully I will get them all marked off by the time January rolls around.

Are you doing this challenge?  If so link me up and I will go follow your blog!

Happy Reading!

Bookshelf tour

Ok, the messy shelves were driving me nuts so I had to get that all under control!  I spread over into the new bookcase and I pretty much filled it up so I am going to have to put a hold on the book buying for awhile.  At least until I have a place to put another shelf!  So here is a little bookshelf tour for you...

This is my unread shelf.

There are 124 books in this bookcase that I haven't read!!  That's a lot of books.  They aren't in any particular order, but I do have a section on the 3rd shelf with the books I have received from authors and publishers for review.

This is a read shelf and the 2nd shelf holds the bulk of my signed books, but I did split those up to add the unread ones to the right shelf.  I am pretty sure that I need to add Jane's Melody to that shelf...I guess I need to plead with Ryan to send me one!!  The bottom shelf is all review books that were sent to me, some I have reviewed some are ones that I just couldn't get in to so I haven't read them all.

This is my my new shelf.  This really should be part of my unread shelf because I still haven't read any of the Buffy books even though I have been collecting them for probably 10 years now!  There are actually a few more of those that I haven't read, but someday I will get to them.  I have started collecting the books in the series that I have on kindle that I really enjoy.  I have parts of several series and I just buy them as I see them at used bookstores or when they get put in bargain bins.

So this is what I have now and it's nice and organized so maybe I will actually get more of them read!!  I am working on a list of the ones I want to read for the challenge.  I will post that soon!

August Reading Wrap Up and A Reading Challenge

This was kind of a short month in the reading department and part of that is due to the fact that I am back working.  Another reason is that I have been sewing again and that takes time away from my reading, but I love it so much so it's a good trade off.  Now, I would be set if I were like Heather and I could listen to books on my MP3 while I sew, but I have a weird thing about listening to books and it just doesn't work for me.  I am one of those who, while reading, is totally in the zone to the point that I don't remember whole conversations with my husband and kids!  When I listen to books I have to concentrate too much on listening...sounds weird, but my mind wanders while I am sewing and I miss parts of the book.  I can listen to books that I have already read but I miss out on too much good stuff when it's something new.  It sucks for me because doing 2 of the things I love so much at once would be pretty dang awesome!

So...here is a quick look at what I did manage to add to my "read" shelf in August.

I still have to review most of these!  Actually I know that I will review For Nick, The Gargoyle and probably Ashes, but I don't know that I will review the others.  It will just depend on how my time goes.  I tend not to review every book I read anyway because I only have 3 posts a week and some weeks I do read more than that!  If there is one here that you would like me to review feel free to shoot me a comment and I will write something up.

I have decided to take part in a Reading Challenge that Nette's Bookshelf Reviews has issued.  This couldn't come at a better time too, because I have a TON of books that I have been adding to my shelves that I haven't read.  I tend to buy books nearly every time I go to town.  I get them at The Dollar Tree for $1, I get them at a local used bookstore 3/$1, I do a lot of buy 2 used books get one free, etc....  So here is a shot am my TO BE READ shelves and just a quick warning....it's a HOT mess right now.  

As you can see they are just crammed in there!  They are stacked in front of full shelves so there are a ton there and I think I have probably 10 more books on the top shelf stacked in front of others that I have read!  I have a real problem here!  I actually have an empty bookshelf that I need to fill so all my read books are going to be moved there and this whole shelf will be just for books that still need to be read. I have another shelf that is full of review books that I haven't read for some reason or another, but those are ones that were cold sends, etc... and chances are I won't ever read them.  I may need to do a giveaway so I can pass them on to someone who will enjoy them.

SO...my goal is to read at least 25 of these books (NOT new ones that I add) by the end of this year.  I am realistic enough to know that I am going to get new books and I am going to read those too, but this is in addition to the ones that I have for tours, etc...  I may actually go so far as to pick 25 books out and stick to reading just those from my unread shelf.  When I do I will make sure and post an update with the titles and all that fun stuff.  Oh and once I clean up this mess and get my shelves back in order I will post a picture for you as well.

Happy Reading!