I buy books faster than I can read them. I know I’m going to read them… eventually. Plus there is always a new book out that just looks interesting, so I pick it up and I add it to the stack. And I do it again, and again, and again until suddenly there’s a book at the bottom of the pile I bought months ago and still haven’t opened.
So I’ve decided October is going to be my stack buster month. By the end of it, all of the books in my physical To Be Read stack will be finished. (My digital TBR stack is a problem for future me). The goal is to read all the books on this list before the clock strikes twelve on Halloween. Trick or treat, give me something good to read?
Today is the birthday of one of my favorite authors — F. Scott Fitzgerald! So for fun (and because he is endlessly quotable) here are 18 of my favorite Fitzgerald quotes from across his bibliography. “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.” — Notebook E “That is part of the beauty […]
“She had read enough stories to know the princess and the monster were never the same. She had been alone long enough to know which one she was.”
I thought I had figured out exactly where Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl, Serpent, Thorn was going while I was reading the first few chapters. And then it went where I thought I would go… and there was still half the book left!
It’s fall book season! The time of year when books lean into the mysterious and fantastical, two of my favorite genres. Here are six of the books I can’t wait to get my hands on over the next couple months.
I turn 25 today which is a terrifying thought, but it also means I get to start using the phrase “the last quarter century” in regards to myself which is a wonderful turn of phrase. So on that note, I thought I’d spent my birthday reminiscing on some of the books that influenced me during the first quarter century of my life.
Getting a job is hard. Getting a job during a global pandemic is even harder. I know I’m qualified. I know I have some modicum of talent. But every rejection or no response just makes me question those beliefs.
When I was an undergraduate, I had these dreams of working for a magazine, writing about culture and reviewing books, tv shows, movies, anything like that. And I still have those dreams. But lately I’ve been thinking about how I don’t have to be hired by anyone to do all those things.
I started this blog a while back as a way to talk about pop culture and hone my review skills. But I’ve never given it the attention or dedication it deserves. I prioritized school and other things over this space I made for myself.
Okay so…. life went way off the rails this week so I didn’t get to do a daily post about Game of Thrones the way I wanted to. But I’ve still got a little bit of time before the final season premieres so let’s do one more as the clock ticks down! If you missed […]
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge” or if A Girl is to remember all the Game of Thrones lore necessary to understand the final season after the show took a year off. I spent the first couple months of the year finally sinking my […]
“I want to be the person who reads like a small library’s worth of books in a year. I used to be that person.”
That’s what I texted my boyfriend the other day after longingly scrolling through book-related posts on Instagram.
When I was a child I used to carry around books like they were permanently attached to my hand. I devoured multiple books a month. I could read around 1000 pages in a week without batting an eye. And then I hit that age in high school where I felt too old for YA lit but too young for adult literature. Then I got to college and I was being required to read academic literature like I was trying to memorize the library of Alexandria before it burned.
But I would still buy books… and then never read them. They stacked up and looked pretty on the shelf as I stared at them longingly while I was supposed to be reading a chapter on social capital for a media theory class. But over the past couple of years, I’ve slowly been reclaiming my bookshelf and in 2019, my New Year’s resolution is to read an hour a night. Which, if I’m being honest with myself, shouldn’t be hard. I usually spend an hour a night scrolling mindlessly through social media, so I’m going to try and replace that with reading.
In December 2017, I set a goal to read 12 books in 2018. Senior year of college and grad school seemed determined to keep me from that goal. But when the semester ended in early December, I realized I was only 2 books away from my goal. And lucky me, I had two books on standby I’d been trying to read all year. Goal Meeting Book Twelve was finished on December 29, two days before the end of the year!
Looking at the list of books I read, it turns out that undergrad and grad school weren’t working against me. One-third of the books I read start to finish were for class purposes (though I didn’t read all the books my undergrad professors wanted me too…) and I even read a classic that I’d been meaning to read for three or so years.
serenaspeaking.com 