And This Is Why I Love Social Media

Everyone knows I'm a fiend for a good paranormal romance. I make no apologies-- it's just one of my favorite genres, and I can't seem to ever get enough. I'm always on the lookout for a new, enthralling read, whether it be about vampires, werewolves, fallen angels, faeries, witches, ghosts, psychics... the list goes on. Vampire lit., YA or otherwise, will always hold a special place in my heart though, thanks to the summer of 2008, when I was introduced to the PNR genre. I read the entire Twilight series three times in a row back-to-back, I was that obsessed.

For the past week, I've been deep in Jeaniene Frost's world of the Night Huntress series, and it is chock-full of vampire goodness. I picked up the first book, Halfway to the Grave, with low expectations (the book titles of this series leave much to be desired, in my opinion), and I was quickly blown away. It took about 3 whole pages for me to decide that it's just my cuppa tea. The second book, One Foot in the Grave, is surprisingly even better. I've just finished the third book, At Grave's End, and now I'm jonesing for the next three. I'm excited that the 7th & final book of the series comes out this January, so I don't have to wait too long to see how it all wraps up.

Now, back to the title of this post, "And This Is Why I Love Social Media." Most Fridays, I use my Twitter account to post about my #FridayReads and #WeekendGoodReads. Yesterday, I tweeted about the Night Huntress series, and Jeaniene Frost herself actually tweeted me back. I love that I can connect and interact with authors of beloved books this way when I otherwise wouldn't be heard. Some people won't think it's much of a big deal, but it appeals to the fangirl within me.

Click the image to enlarge.

This post was supposed to be a short and sweet little screenshot, but it turns out I am feeling wordy today. Have a great weekend!

Sylvia Plath: A Few Favorites

Over the past six months or so, I've been sporadically reading an Everyman's Library Pocket Poets collection of Sylvia Plath's poetry.

 What a brilliant yet tortured soul. I studied and wrote about her work a bit during my undergrad days, but I honestly hadn't thought of her since. It was nice, perhaps even more rewarding than before, to read her poetry at my leisure without the pressures of academia breathing down my neck. In fact, I actually enjoyed her earlier works best, despite what most of her critics say. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Song For A Summer's Day
Through fen and farmland walking
With my own country love
I saw slow flocked cows move
White hulks on their day's cruising;
Sweet grass sprang for their grazing.

The air was bright for looking:
Most far in blue, aloft,
Clouds steered a burnished drift;
Larks' nip and tuck arising
Came in for my love's praising.

Sheen of the noonsun striking
Took my heart as if
It were a green-tipped leaf
Kindled by my love's pleasing
Into an ardent blazing.

And so, together, talking,
Through Sunday's honey-air
We walked (and still walk there---
Out of the sun's bruising)
Till the night mists came rising.

---

Letter To A Purist
That grandiose colossus who
Stood astride
The envious assaults of sea
(Essaying, wave by wave,
Tide by tide,
To undo him, perpetually),
Has nothing on you,
O my love,
O my great idiot, who
With one foot
Caught (as it were) in the muck-trap
Of skin and bone,
Dithers with the other way out
In preposterous provinces of the madcap
Cloud-cuckoo,
Agawp at the impeccable moon.

---

Metaphors
I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.

Literary Snobbery

My kitten has become quite the literature snob.

She took great satisfaction in systematically knocking over book after book on my vampire lit. shelf.

Hmph.

Contemplating "From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books"

Not to toot my own horn, but I like to think I am a well-read individual, so when I came across Book Riot's "From Zero to Well-Read in 100 Books" post, I was intrigued.

I wanted to see if I fell under the definition of "well-read" that's listed:

“Well-read” for this person then has a number of connotations: a familiarity with the monuments of Western literature, an at least passing interest in the high-points of world literature, a willingness to experience a breadth of genres, a special interest in the work of one’s immediate culture, a desire to share in the same reading experiences of many other readers, and an emphasis on the writing of the current day.

I think that sums up my reading philosophy pretty well. Now, let's see how many of the books I've read out of the comprehensive list of 100 books (all books I've read are in bold, all the books I own but have not read are italicized).

1.     The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2.     The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3.     The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4.     All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
5.     The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay  by Michael Chabon
6.     American Pastoral by Philip Roth
7.     Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8.     Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
9.     Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
10.     The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11.     Beloved by Toni Morrison
12.     Beowulf
13.     The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14.     Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
15.     The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
16.     Call of the Wild  by Jack London
17.     Candide by Voltaire
18.     The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
19.     Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
20.     Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21.     The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22.     Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23.     Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
24.     The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
25.     The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
26.     The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor
27.     The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
28.     Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
29.     The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
30.     Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
31.     Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32.     Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
33.     Dune by Frank Herbert
34.     Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
35.     Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36.     The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
37.     Faust by Goethe
38.     Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39.     A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
40.     The Golden Bowl by Henry James
41.     The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
42.     Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
43.     The Gospels
44.     The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
45.     Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
46.     The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
47.     Hamlet by William Shakespeare
48.     The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49.     Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
50.     Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
51.     The Help by Kathryn Stockett
52.     The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
53.     The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
54.     House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
55.     Howl by Allen Ginsberg
56.     The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
57.     if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
58.     The Iliad by Homer
59.     Inferno by Dante
60.     Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
61.     Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
62.     Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
63.     Life of Pi by Yann Martel
64.     The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
65.     The Little Prince by Antoine  de Saint-Exepury
66.     Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
67.     Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68.     Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
69.     Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70.     Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
71.     Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
72.     Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
73.     The Odyssey by Homer
74.     Oedipus the King by Sophocles
75.     On the Road by Jack Kerouac
76.     A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
77.     The Pentateuch
78.     Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
79.     Rabbit, Run by John Updike
80.     The Road by Cormac McCarthy
81.     Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
82.     The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
83.     Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
84.     The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
85.     The Stand by Stephen King
86.     The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
87.     Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
88.     Their Eyes Were Watching by Zora Neale Hurston
89.     Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
90.     The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
91.     To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
92.     Ulysses by James Joyce
93.     The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
94.     A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
95.     Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
96.     Watchmen by Alan Moore
97.     The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
98.     Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
99.     1984 by George Orwell
100.     Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

I've read 36 of 100, and I own but have not read 25. It looks like I have a lot of reading to do to be considered well-read by Book Riot's standards. Still, I've read well over 500 books in my young life, so that has to count for something, right?

A to Z Bookish Survey

I stumbled across this book meme on Musings of a Bookshop Girl, and it looked like so much fun that I just had to play too. Props to The Perpetual Page-Turner for thinking this survey up.

 

Author you’ve read the most books from:
Nora Roberts. She was all I read in high school. I've read all of her stand-alones, trilogies, and most of her anthologies up until publish date 2010 (I've read over 60 of her books, and I'm behind on about 5).

Best Sequel Ever:
Maybe it's because I've read it so recently, but I'm gonna go with Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves, which is a sequel to The Raven Boys. Otherwise, the Harry Potter books take this one.

Currently Reading:
P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley

Drink of Choice While Reading:
Tea. Iced or hot, green or black, lemon or milk, honey or sugar. I love me some tea.

E-reader or Physical Book?
Physical book, of course! I pledge to read the printed word.

Fictional Character You Probably Would Have Actually Dated In High School:
Quirky, literary, clever Dash, from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

Glad You Gave This Book A Chance:
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer. I was turned off by the title and cover art, actually. To me, it came off a bit boring and targeted to an older reader. The story, however, captivated me, and it's become one of my favorite books of all time.

Hidden Gem Book:
Heartbeat by Sharon Creech. Written entirely in free-verse. One of my greatest reading discoveries.

Important Moment in your Reading Life:
In the 5th grade when I read Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Up until that point, all books I'd read had a happy and predictable ending. It was the first book that took me by surprise and made me look inside myself. I'll honestly never forget how I felt upon finishing that book.

Just Finished:
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. It was not at all what I was expecting. SUCH A GREAT READ!

Kinds of Books You Won’t Read:
I don't think there's a genre I will ever rule out and simply won't read, but I just tend not to pick them up at the bookstore: crime & mystery, political, religious, and non-biography nonfiction.

Longest Book You’ve Read:
The Stand by Stephen King at a whopping 1,440 pages. A major disappointment and my biggest waste of precious reading time to date.

Major book hangover because of:
George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. I read all 5 books back to back, and it burnt me out so much that I couldn't pick up another book until a month afterward.

Number of Bookcases You Own:
Eleven!

One Book You Have Read Multiple Times:
Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery. I've loved it since I was a little girl. Every time I read it, I get all warm and fuzzy inside.

Preferred Place To Read:
I prefer to read in the comfort of my own home. You can find me reading somewhere comfy within my house like my library armchair, the hanging swing in the screenroom, in bed or on the sofa...

Quote that inspires you/gives you all the feels from a book you’ve read:
“Stuff your eyes with wonder,” he said, “live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,” he said, “Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”  -Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Reading Regret:
Missing out on a ton of great children's lit growing up. I read really sporadically until I hit high school, so I missed out on some of the greats like Charlotte's Web, the Little House series, Roald Dahl's books... I'm catching up now, though.

Series You Started And Need To Finish (all books are out in series):
Ender's Saga by Orson Scott Card. I probably won't finish this series though, because the sequel was so thoroughly boring.

Three of your All-Time Favorite Books:
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
J.D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey
Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Unapologetic Fangirl For:
The Hunger Games series. I read it and loved it years before the hype started, so I don't feel bad fangirling over it.

Very Excited For This Release More Than All The Others:
I don't keep up with upcoming releases too much. Nora Robert's Dark Witch is coming out later this month.

Worst Bookish Habit:
I peel off any price or recommendation stickers on book covers and spines, which then leaves a gross, lint-attracting, sticky residue behind. But I HATE stickers on my books.

X Marks The Spot- Start at the top left of your shelf and pick the 27th book:
Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

Your latest book purchase:
Alison Goodman's Eon: Dragoneye Reborn

ZZZ-snatcher book (last book that kept you up WAY late):
Oh, hmm... it's been a really long time since I've read something compulsively. I think it may have been Cynthia Hand's Unearthly.

 

Quick-and-Dirty September 2013 Wrap-Up

It's been a while since I've put my thoughts about the books I've read to paper screen. I don't have a reason as to why that is other than the fact that I just didn't feel like writing, which is a shame because most of the books I've read this year are greatly deserving of thorough analysis and praise. My month of September was filled with works of Young Adult Fantasy, and they are all very original in their own right.

 

• Garth Nix's Sabriel [read 9.14.13] 2/5 Stars
  My fellow GoodReaders gave this book fantastic reviews and ratings, so I had high hopes. A young necromancer goes on a quest to look for her missing father. Too bad this quest bored me to tears. The premise had such promise, but the pacing, the characterization, and the writing itself is just... poor. Such odd word choices and repetitive action scenes. Sadly, I wasn't a fan, and I won't be reading anything else by Nix.
  
• Shannon Hale's Princess Academy [read 9.15.13] 4/5 Stars
  Don't let the silly title of this book fool you-- it's such a breath of fresh air.  I can see why it won a Newbery Honor Award. It falls between children's and young adult lit., and the story is so original and sophisticated that I didn't want to put it down. A young mountain girl attends an academy to learn how to be a proper lady to contend for the heart of the prince. Miri shows such cleverness and strength of character; she's a perfect example of a strong heroine without being one-dimensional. Also, the magic and romance factors aren't forced. They're quite subtle actually, which is so important for the feeling of authenticity. There's a sequel to the book, and Hale also wrote Austenland, which I'd like to eventually read, so I'll keep an eye out for them at the used bookstore.
  
  
• Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty [read 9.22.13] 3/5 Stars
  This book was recommended to me by several friends over the years, and it's been so hyped up to me that I suppose it was only doomed to let me down. The pacing is sporadic, the characters aren't at all convincing as Victorian-era teens, and there's very little romance to it if any, so I'm confused as to why it's so often marketed as a paranormal romance. I was so sure I'd love it, too. I really wanted to. Hmph.
  
• Janet Taylor Lisle's Afternoon of the Elves [read 9.26.13] 3/5 stars
  A short, quick, and moving children's chapter book about bittersweet friendship. I found this little gem at a community garage sale among a bunch of other Scholastic books of yore (I bought up nearly all of them for just $.25 a piece!). What I loved most about it is that it's neither confirmed nor denied whether magic is really at play. Another Newbery Honor Award winner that captivated me.
  
• Maggie Stiefvater's The Dream Thieves [read 9.28.13] 4.5/5 Stars
  Ahh, saving the best for last. I loved The Raven Boys, and now I love The Dream Thieves even more. It's pretty damn near perfect. All the storylines are touched upon, all the details are fleshed out nicely, there's constant action and revelations, and there's just the right touch of horror thrown into the mix. I really can't say enough good things. This series is quickly becoming my favorite PN Romance series. I've read almost all of Stiefvater's work, and I think this is her best book yet. YA PN fans-- get to reading!

As you can see, I'm easing myself back into journaling about books by just giving little, condensed reviews. Maybe I'll have a full-fledged entry for the next book I read. Stay tuned.

Some Housekeeping

RKG had a little face-lift recently-- the blog, not me, in case that had to be said. I made some design changes that I think improve the overall tone of the blog. As pretty as it was, the previous header was looking a bit busy and amateurish. I'm not a graphic designer (though I'd like to add that title as one of my many hats one day), and I try my best to keep things looking professional and approachable at the same time.

Adieu, flowery header.

Hello, streamlined layout.

Summer 2013 Reads

Can we all pretend that I didn't set Reading Goals for the Summer 2013 season? Because I didn't follow my own plan of action. I mean, I did read a decent amount in the months of June, July, and August, but I kindof just went with my own reading flow. Usually, this means that I devoured a bunch of YA Paranormal Romances back-to-back, and this time, unfortunately, was no exception.

My goals were as follows:

• 2 Classics
• 2 Contemporary
• 3 Young Adult
• 2 Poetry
• 1 Drama
• 10 Graphic Novels

I read the following books:

1. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow (YA)
2. Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (Classic)
3. J.R. Ward's Dark Lover (PN Romance)
4. Sharon Creech's Pleasing the Ghost (YA)
5. C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe (Classic)
6. Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone (PN Romance)
7. Richelle Mead's Vampire Academy (PN Romance)
8. P.C. Cast's Marked (PN Romance)
9. Alan Moore's Watchmen (Graphic Novel)
10. Scott Westerfield's Uglies (Contemporary)
11. Maggie Stiefvater's Linger (PN Romance)
12. Koushun Takami's Battle Royale (Contemporary)
13. Laurell K. Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures  (PN Romance)

As you can see, I exceeded my genre goals in some areas and completely failed in others. I did not read poetry and drama like I intended to. Instead, I read 6 PN romances. Same difference, right? Wrong. Bad, English Major.

I shouldn't judge myself too harshly, though, since I have been consistently reading either way. I think I'll give up on these lists and just let my bookish heart take me where it will. Feeling guilty over reading the "wrong" books is getting very old, and, when I think about it, it's pretty ridiculous.

Pixel doesn't care that I like YA. In fact, she seems pretty impressed with my reading prowess this summer, no?

Hi!

If you were wondering why I've been missing, here's the reason:

I adopted a little kitten from a local shelter, and I've been too busy lavishing her with affection to regularly post here. I'll be back soon, though!

Spring 2013 Reading Goals: Achieved!

Two months ago, I decided to set reading goals for myself in lieu of a Spring reading list, figuring that more generalized goals would be less restricting than a list with specific titles on it.

You see, for the past year, I overzealously created reading lists, some 20+ titles deep. Obviously, I was only setting myself up for failure, but I am a diehard list maker. I'm not sure which is more fun for me-- forming the lists or crossing things off them.

Anyway, as it turns out, I was right in that I respond very well to reading goals; I ended up reading every genre that I intended to.
 

My overarching mission was (and still is) to read eclectically and often, and I did indeed accomplish just that by setting out to read the following:

The Great Book Purge of 2013

So. A funny thing has happened to me and my library... I've run out of room on my book shelves. Yes, I have an entire room with wall to wall shelving for my books, and yet, somehow, I no longer have any shelf space. How did that happen? Beats me. I totally have my book addiction under control. It's a mystery.

I suppose one must do what one must. In this case, I've made the incredibly difficult decision to get rid of some books. Though I have to admit, once I got started, it got easier and easier as I moved from shelf to shelf.

As I went along, deciding which of my books to orphan, I asked myself several questions:

Emily Dickinson: A Few Favorites

Last night before bed, I read a collection of Emily Dickinson's poems. I had sweet dreams. Coincidence? I think not.

---

Pain has an element of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.

It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.

---

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

---

A word is dead
     When it is said,
     Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
     That day.

Spring Pinterest Challenge: Book Page & Paint Chip Art

It's Spring Pinterest Challenge Time! The bloggers behind Young House Love and Bower Power dreamed this challenge up, and I was thrilled to participate again. I played along last summer when I created Repurposed Book Page art and this past winter when I created Personalized Bookmarks.

This time, I was inspired by paint chip art a la this pin and this pin, but of course I had to put my own bookish spin on it. I accomplished this by adding some book pages into the mix.

Take a gander at this beauty:

It was super easy to accomplish. Allow me to break it down for ya:

1. Go to your local home improvement store and scour the paint chip aisle for your desired colors. Don't let the judgmental  looks from the salespeople get to you-- so what you are snatching up colors for a good 20 minutes. Last time I checked, it's a free country and paint chips are free.
2. Cut out triangles from the chips and the book pages. I opted to take the pages out of the same book carcass I used for a previous craft project. As any true book lover should, I will use all parts of a book until there is no more.
3. Arrange and rearrange and rearrange your cut-outs some more until you are ready to pull your hair out. Then, take a break-- reading break, tea break, Doctor Who break, what have you. Finally, settle on a design already, you're taking forever.
4. Glue your pieces down, slap it in a frame, take a few pictures for bragging rights, and call it a day.

Here's some shots of my work-in-progress:

 As you can see, half the fun of the creative process is making a nice big ol' mess on the kitchen table.

My book page and paint chip art has yet to take up permanent residence anywhere, but I envision it as a part of my future frame gallery in the living room. I'll keep you updated :)

 

I am linking this project up here, here, here, and here if you are curious about other bloggers' Spring Pinterest Challenge projects.

GEEK Out! Le Geek, C'est Chic

I had a major book nerd moment at the bookstore a few days ago. A kind of moment only rivaled by those observed at trekkie conventions or Comic Con.  A nerd moment probably comical to others to watch, but very profound to me.

I found THE book. My own personal Holy Grail. A book I thought I'd never, ever find...

"Spring" into Reading!...

...Tell me that post title doesn't remind you of the glorious elementary school bulletin boards of yore.

Winter ended some time ago, so I suppose it's way past time to retire the Winter 2013 Reading List.

Winter Pinterest Challenge: Personalized Bookmarks

It's Winter Pinterest Challenge Time! The bloggers behind Young House Love and Bower Power dreamed this challenge up, and I was thrilled to participate again-- I also played along this past summer when I created repurposed book page art.

This time, I was very much inspired by handmade bookmarks, as can be found on Pinterest here, here, and here.

Like my bookmark project of yore, I wanted to create something simple, modern, and of course, personalized. Bonus points for something quick to whip up without costing me a dime. So, I only used supplies I already had hidden deep within my crafting hoard: glue stick, craft paper, and card stock.

All I did was find quotes and fonts that I love, married the two together, and printed 'em out. Easy as pie.

 In case you were dying of curiosity or want to replicate what I've done, here are the quotes I used. Copy and paste these quotes to your hearts content.

“When I think of all the books still left for me to read, I am certain of further happiness.”
-Jules Renard

“I only read what I am hungry for at the moment when I have an appetite for it, and then I do not read, I eat.”
-Simone Weil

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
- Franz Kafka

“Woke up this morning with a terrific urge to lie in bed all day and read.”
-Raymond Carver

As usual, I had a ton of fun letting my creative juices flow. The project required little thought or concentration, which made for a nice stress reliever. I highly recommend this activity to all of my fellow bookworms out there!

I am linking this post up over at YHL, Bower Power,  Remodeled Life, and Decor and the Dog.

Valentine's Day

My sweet, sweet boyfriend got me an incredibly generous Valentine's Day gift this weekend-- a gift card to my favorite local used book store. He knows better than to pick me out books himself, even though he did buy me a beautiful Easton Press leather-bound copy of Dickens' Great Expectations to hide the gift card in. He also hid the gift-card-hiding book on my bookshelf for me to find, and I hate to admit that it took me an embarrassingly long time to find it.

So, now I get to have fun fantasizing over which books I might use my gift card towards. I'm thinking the following are a few potential options:

• Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
• Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret
• Susan Cooper's Over Sea, Under Stone
• Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant
• J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood 
• Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
• Charles Bukowski's Ham on Rye
• Frank Herbert's Dune
• Anything at all written by Tennessee Williams 

Jeff, if you are reading this, thanks again, my love! You are the best.

"Pain demands to be felt."

My Favorite Quotes from John Green's The Fault in Our Stars

Click the link to read more

Hi. My Name is Rosie, and I am a Biblioholic.

I fell off the wagon this weekend and purchased some more books during a sale at my local used bookstore. I hear the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, but I don't think I have one, really. I suppose I'm not actually on the road to recovery after all. And I'm okay with that.

Top to Bottom: John Green's Paper Towns Audiobook, Sharon Creech's Love That Dog, Ransom Riggs' Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, & P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley

2012 By The Numbers

After avidly reading all year round, admittedly with some lulls throughout, I thought I should break down my 2012 reading habits into some cute and concise charts for easy viewing.  I created these charts over a month ago, but I never got around to sharing them, so this post is long over-due. Let's just get to it, shall we?

I didn't listen to any audiobooks or read any e-books this year. I'm 100% fine with not reading an e-book, but I wouldn't mind listening to some audiobooks in 2013.
 

 
My favorite chart to make was the one displaying how many books I read by publication year. It opened my eyes to the fact that I did not read even one book published before the year 1950. Oh, I was all about the 20th and 21st centuries this year. I mean, that's fine since I was only reading for pleasure and challenging myself very little with what I read. However, 2013 will be the year I start introducing older texts back into my life. I was a huge fan of 18th century British literature during my undergrad days, and I wouldn't mind revisiting that time period again.

Also, while going through the list of books I read this year, I noticed they were all predominantly American lit., with a bit of Brit. lit. scattered here and there. The only multicultural literature I read was in graphic novel form. So, another one of my reading resolutions is to read some multicultural lit. in addition to older works.

I personally think I had an admirably strong reading year, though I feel there is always room to improve one's habits. Let's see what 2013 holds in store...