Happy Sunday, bibliophiles, and happy first day of August! I hope this week has treated you all well.
I feel like this week has been nice and productive – I read a lot, I finished up Camp NaNoWriMo and passed my word count goal, and I’m almost done with all my summer homework! As far as the reading itself, it’s all been in the 3-4 star range, which I’m not complaining about.
I had a lot of fun blogging this week too – I loved making my Popular YA Books that I Couldn’t Get on Board With post (linked under “Posts and Such”), and I had a lot of fun reviewing and cataloguing some of my books.
Other than that, I did some hiking on Friday, drew, and watched Yellow Submarine! (OKAY BUT THE “LUCY IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS” SEQUENCE AAAAH) I’m also going to go see The Green Knight this evening, which I’m pretty excited about!
Second month of summer? Hotter than I would’ve liked for it to be, but summer is summer. And this July was a good one, so I’m not complaining. (Except for when it’s 80 degrees in my room, even with the fan on and all the windows open…)
GENERAL THOUGHTS:
It’s been a fairly productive July for me, I’d say! I have nearly all of my summer homework done, and I had a lot of time to blog and do the things I like to do.
I got back into Camp NaNoWriMo this month as well! After a little trouble with fixing up my word count goal, I got back on track and reached my goal a few days ago! As far as that WIP goes, I’m nearing 250 pages, and I’m just past 66,000 words! It’s already a lot shorter than my first draft, which is…most certainly a good thing, because my first draft was nearly 600 pages long, and a good portion of it was filler. Guess I’ve learned from that…
This is also the first July that I had any idea that it was disability pride month! I looked around my TBR for some books with disability rep to read (and I’ll continue to look – always on the hunt for good disability rep!), and I’ve found some fantastic books as a result. And as always: AMPLIFY DISABLED VOICES 24/7/365. 💗
Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, watching Loki (AAAAAAAH) and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, going to the movies for the first time in ages, doing a little hiking, and attempting to cool down my room before I go to sleep. Also, after several years and at least 3-4 people begging that I watch it, I finally started watching Gravity Falls! Good stuff so far, I’m only about a quarter of the way through season 1, but I’m liking it, for the most part.
And it’s nearly August now! Leo season…
Also, I finally watched Yellow Submarine last night, and I LOVED IT! My eyes kinda hurt, but it was worth it for all the Beatles goodness.
READING AND BLOGGING:
I read 25 books this month! I think July has been my best reading month of the year, but at the cost of the first two DNFs of the year being among the ranks. At least I got to write a rant review about one of them. That was fun.
I also reached 450 followers recently, so thank you all!! 💗
I’ve been wanting to do a post like this for a little while, so here goes nothing…
We all know the feeling. We’ve picked up a book because of the seemingly endless 4 and 5 star reviews and the high praise from friends and fellow readers and book bloggers, and then it turns out to be a steaming disappointment. For me, popular YA books live up to the hype about 50% of the time for me, and the other 50% is either just…not feeling anything from it, or not liking it at all. And there’s plenty of hyped books that I’ve loved! But sometimes, a lot of these books just haven’t worked for me.
And before I start, I just wanted to say this – if you liked any of these books, this post isn’t meant to shame anybody’s reading preferences at all. If you liked them, good for you! These are just my opinions here, and as per the Latin proverb, to each, their own is beautiful. I just wasn’t a fan of these books.
It’s been about three years since I’ve read this one, but it was a pretty quick DNF for me. Red Queen felt like every bad YA trope melted into a single book – an unoriginal dystopian world with the “plain heroine that doesn’t realize how beautiful she is and is THE CHOSEN ONE” and gets into an insta-love romance…gah, I forget how long it took before I put it down, but this was just painful.
Holly Black is a hit-or-miss author for me, but The Cruel Prince definitely fell among the misses for me. The worldbuilding was great here (and I loved the little ink drawings at the beginnings of the chapters!), but all of the characters were astronomically unlikable. Everybody just seemed intent on bullying and backstabbing everybody else, and there wasn’t any balance with a character with a slightly better moral compass. And don’t get me started on Jude and Cardan being a thing…WHY? If I remember correctly, Cardan spends about 3/4 of the book relentlessly degrading Jude, and then gets down on his knees and tells her that he loves her…HUH?
HOW MUCH MORE TOXIC CAN YOU GET? And somehow, Cardan’s up there with Kaz Brekker and that dude from ACOTAR (I don’t remember his name, I haven’t read the books and don’t intend to) with the brooding YA dudes that everybody fawns over? Makes me lose a little faith in humanity sometimes…
Here’s one that everybody recommended to me…should of listened to that guy in my class in middle school who did a book report on this one and didn’t like it
Okay. Maybe this one’s a little skewed. I read most of Throne of Glass when I was home sick with a stomachache, but even then, I think I wouldn’t have been a fan. The ✨fantasy names✨ were a pain to pronounce, Calaena came off as a very static character with very little development, if any, and everything seemed to worked out a little *too* well for her in the end. The worldbuilding was interesting, though. I guess. Probably not gonna pick this one up, but I don’t think I’ll go for ACOTAR or Crescent City either. Meh.
My main problem was the same one I had with The Cruel Prince – the toxicity of the main relationship. Mirnatius spends about 3/4 of the book being borderline abusive towards Miryem, and then, ✨poof!✨ Happy relationship!
Yeah, no, that’s just weird. Also, wasn’t there a significant age gap between the two of them? Final nail in the coffin, really…
This one lured me in with a gorgeous cover and the promise of mermaids, and…well, we got a mermaid, but the rest of the book didn’t make up for it.
All the Stars and Teeth felt very formulaic for me, right down to the conveniently-placed puppet show to explain the worldbuilding. We’ve got a protagonist with dangerous magic, the mysterious love interest…it just felt like every other YA fantasy in the last few years. Not much to distinguish it from the others, if anything at all.
Out of all of the books here, Cinderella is Dead is probably the one that I had the highest expectations for. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with a book with a sapphic, POC lead taking down the patriarchy in a world sculpted from the myth of Cinderella?
…several things, as it turned out.
I found the worldbuilding to be full of holes, none of the characters were very distinct, the villain was an irredeemable caricature, and all of the attempts commentary on abuse and misogyny and such relied way too much on telling, as opposed to showing. For me Cinderella is Dead was just a case of a great idea, but poor execution. Shame…
This one was another DNF for me about two years ago. I still really appreciate that Kemmerer chose to have a disabled character at the forefront of a YA fantasy (Harper has cerebral palsy – not sure how accurate the rep is, though), but otherwise…meh. On top of the obvious attempt to make this Beauty and the Beast retelling as Dark And Gritty™️ as possible, the love triangle (and both love interests, if memory serves) put me off in the end.
This was my first exposure to Jennifer L. Armentrout, and I don’t think I’ll be reading anything of hers after this. Again, this falls into almost every YA trope that I hate – the Chosen One who is so very clearly Not Like Other Girls, the Sarcastic Bad Boy Love Interest (Zayne still makes me squirm)…I forget where I DNF’d this one, but I just could not take another page. Yikes.
Instant Karma was a sore disappointment…I’ve loved almost everything else of Marissa Meyer’s, but I just didn’t click with this one. I loved the premise of a magical-realism rom-com and all of the Beatles references were great, but Pru really got on my nerves, and the romance never made me feel anything.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! What were your thoughts on these books? What’s a popular YA book that you didn’t like?
Today’s song:
That’s it for this post! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
I figured that I should scour my TBR for books for disability pride month (and to read beyond that, of course), and I found this one that I had shelved back in 2019. The cover immediately caught my eye (AAH THE COLOR SCHEME), but I still have mixed feelings about the book itself – not ragingly bad, or anything, but not amazing either.
Jenna has lived her whole life believing that she was born with cerebral palsy, and she’s never let it stop her from doing what she wants to do. But after discovering that her parents hid the fact that her CP was caused by an injury at birth, she’s infuriated with them – and the fact that she hasn’t been able to make her own decisions regarding the surgeries she gets. With the help of her lawyer uncle, she decides to push for medical emancipation.
All the while, Jenna’s childhood crush, Julian, has moved back into town. She reconnects with him over text with an anonymous persona, but will she have the courage to reveal her true self to him?
eh what the heck, I’m putting this here bc a) adequately describes said mixed feelings and b) I can’t think of any gifs to put in
WARNING: this review may contain some minor spoilers, so tread lightly!
This is…complicated. I picked this book up for disability pride month, and while I can’t speak to the representation itself (as I don’t have cerebral palsy), there were good and bad parts of this book, in terms of how disability was represented and the plot itself.
Let’s start off with the good stuff. Jenna as a character was definitely a great protagonist – she’s not perfect, but she’s incredibly determined and a very independent thinker. She’s a little messy at worst, but I really didn’t mind. She had a great personality, for the most part, and her struggle with getting medical emancipation was incredibly eye-opening.
Again, I can’t speak to how accurate the CP rep was, but for the most part, it seemed well researched. The author mentions in a note at the back of the book that she worked with kids with CP, which seems to have informed part of Jenna’s story. A good portion of it seemed to work – there was clearly a lot of research put into the different kinds of mobility aids that Jenna uses and the kinds of surgeries she went through. It also deftly defied the dreaded “cure narrative” – Jenna’s attitude towards her disability was more one of reaching for freedom than seeking to “overcome” it in anyway. It’s not often that we get this kind of story from abled authors, so I appreciated that.
However, I’m still a little miffed by how they represented Jenna’s disabled identity. At a point in the book, she reaches out to someone who went through a surgery that her parents want her to have (part of why she seeks to be medically emancipated). This person responds to Jenna later in the book via email, and explains that she leads a “differently-abled” club at her school; she explains how she prefers that term, even though most of the disabled community doesn’t. (For those of you who don’t know: it’s generally accepted that the majority of the disabled community prefers not to use the term “differently abled,” as the terminology is seen as sugarcoating or patronizing them and their experiences. Some disabled people may use the term, but when referring to the community, it’s good to just stick with “disabled.”)
Now, if this had come from a disabled author, I might have passed it by; as I said, not everybody in the disabled community dislikes the term “differently abled,” but disabled is usually the more accepted term. But since this is coming from an abled author, I’m really not sure how to feel about it; it’s generally abled people that have used started using the term (which is where the discourse comes from), so putting that on disabled people in a book – especially someone who Jenna looks to for advice – doesn’t sit right with me. Additionally, Jenna never explicitly says that she’s disabled; maybe I’m reading into it too much, but it just seems a little strange, coming from an abled writer writing a disabled character. (And on the subject of the club…did everybody in said club actually agree to call it the “differently abled club?” I find that hard to believe…)
this gif comes to mind…
Other than that, there were a lot of hospitalization scenes that felt a little too much like plot devices, and the scene with the rival hockey team (this is where the ableist slurs TW comes in) didn’t need to happen; all it did was give a bit of “I love my girlfriend!” points for Julian (he punches the guy who yells ableist slurs at Jenna), which created some conflict that I felt was completely unnecessary. It’s My Life certainly had a rom-com feel to some of it, so why not just keep it that way? CAN I GET SOME MORE DISABLED BOOKS THAT DON’T CENTER AROUND THE PROTAGONIST GETTING SLURS YELLED AT THEM, PLEASE?
My only other complaints were that some of the high school scenes weren’t super authentic, and I didn’t care a whole lot about the romance, but that’s the most minor of my issues. But overall, mixed feelings on this one – the themes of medical emancipation and Jenna’s character were great, but the disability representation, while I can’t speak to the CP accuracy, had some good intentions and research, but uncomfortable messages surrounding the identity itself. 3 stars.
It’s My Life is a standalone, but Stacie Ramey is also the author of The Sister Pact, The Homecoming, The Secrets We Bury, and Switching Fates.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme created by Lauren’s Page Turners. All you have to do to participate is pick a book from your Goodreads TBR, and explain why you want to read it.
I’m always on the hunt for a good space opera book, and so this one immediately caught my eye. It’s drawn a couple comparisons to The Mandalorian (which wasn’t perfect, but I liked it a lot), which should be promising…
Let’s begin, shall we?
GOODREADS MONDAY (7/26/21) – PERSEPHONE STATION by Stina Leicht
Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has largely been ignored by the United Republic of Worlds, becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.
Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner—caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drink at Monk’s back bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who seek to employ them.
Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing—is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are rearing for a fight with the Serrao-Orlov Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t try.
So why do I want to read this?
please tell me somebody else can HEAR this image
This one has lowish ratings on Goodreads as of now (about 3.49 at present), but from the reviews, there really isn’t anything that’s making me want to kick it off my TBR. Maybe it’s that gorgeous cover, maybe it’s because it’s space opera, but either way, I can’t wait to read Persephone Station!
The synopsis is absolutely giving me Mandalorian vibes; I love the potential setting of Persephone Station itself, and I’m getting the feeling that I’ll see a strange cast of characters. (Fingers crossed!) Plus, it apparently has lesbian, bisexual, and nonbinary rep throughout, which makes me even MORE excited! (There’s only one thing better than space opera…and that’s QUEER SPACE OPERA.) Plus, the cover is so pretty! Whoever did the illustrations for it did such a great job.
In short: you sold me at queer space opera and Mandalorian vibes.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Goodreads Monday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
This week…could’ve been better for me, if I’m being honest, but it picked up in the end. It was mostly just Tuesday that bogged me down. Remember that writing contest I entered back in April? I ended up checking back on it (they didn’t send an email for some reason??) and the short story I wrote didn’t end up placing. I specifically remember saying that I was expecting not to win, and yeah, I tried not to get my hopes up, but…yeah, well, I’m not very good at handling these things.
Eh, well, all I can do is tweak that short story, keep on writing, and try again. I’m at least proud of myself for putting myself out there…
Reading-wise, I’ve mostly been reading some books that family friends lent to us (thank you!) and some stuff from the comic shop. I got a nice library haul yesterday, so it looks like next week will be promising!
Writing-wise, I’ve mostly stayed on track with Camp NaNoWriMo (I’m almost to my goal now!!), even though being depressed all Tuesday sapped my energy. I’m getting to a good place in my WIP though – I just passed about 220ish pages last night!
Other than that, I’ve been drawing a bit, getting the last of my summer homework done, learning some new songs on guitar, obsessing over my new bees in Minecraft, watching The Devil’s Backbone (Guillermo del Toro likes his Tennyson, huh?), picking back up in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and volunteering at the library.
Two Gob gifs in a row…oops
And I just got to 450 followers! Jeez, I can’t believe it…THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH 💗
I thought it’d be another good day to do a tag, and I found this one recently over at Rania’s Rambling Reads. (Go give her blog a read, she’s great!) The tag was originally created by Krisha’s Cosy Corner.
Rules
Thank the blogger who nominated you and give a link to the blog. (I wasn’t tagged, but thanks, Rania!)
Answer the 5 feelings given to you.
Write the reason in 5 to 6 lines of why does that particular book come under that feeling. (dunno if I’ll manage all that but we’ll see)
Nominate between 5-12 other bloggers.
Give your nominees 5 feelings too.
Notify your nominees once you’ve uploaded your post.
Let’s begin, shall we?
😅THE FEELINGS BOOK TAG😑
A BOOK THAT YOU HAD TO STOP READING BECAUSE YOU GOT SECONDHAND EMBARRASSMENT
Unpopular opinion time…
I read An Absolutely Remarkable Thing during the first couple of weeks of the pandemic, and I had to DNF at about the 30% mark because it was just PAINFUL. The writing was just fine, but all of the characters felt like walking stereotypes. What ultimately made me put it down altogether was how blatantly offensive the bisexual rep felt for me…there was this one monologue by April where it looked like Hank Green was just trying to say “hey! Look at me! I did my research!” but NO. HANK. YOU GOTTA STOP. YOU JUST PERPETUATED ALMOST EVERY BISEXUAL STEREOTYPE KNOWN TO MAN.
So there’s my rant. Hank Green, you may have helped me pass AP Bio, but I will never forgive you for that.
[ahem] excuse me while I step off my soapbox, moving on…
A BOOK THAT GAVE YOU BUTTERFLIES
I suppose there’s multiple ways to interpret this prompt, but When the Moon was Ours just made me so fluttery inside. Anna-Marie McLemore is the true master of magical realism, and their writing never fails to make me feel like there’s hope and magic left in this world.
A BOOK WITH A SHIP THAT YOU WILL SUPPORT UNTIL THE DAY YOU DIE
Aurora Burning, because I will absolutely ship KalAuri until the day I die. MY LOVES
A BOOK YOU KNEW YOU WOULD LOVE AFTER READING THE FIRST CHAPTER
Right away, How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse struck me with how witty and tongue-in-cheek the writing was. I love reading a book that pokes fun of tropes every once in a while, and this one 100% delivered!
A BOOK YOU KNEW YOU WOULD HATE BUT READ IT ANYWAYS
I wanted to give The Lie Treea chance because the premise looked interesting, but I read The Lost Conspiracy a few years prior and hated it, so…yeah, it didn’t work out for me. I didn’t hate it as much as The Lost Conspiracy, but it still wasn’t my cup of tea.
MY PROMPTS:
A book with a character that made you angry
A book with the perfect setting for you to daydream about
A book that made you feel better after a long slump
A book that you couldn’t stop thinking about for weeks after reading it
+ anyone else who wants to participate! If you see this tag and want to do it, I can’t wait to see your answers! And if I tagged you and you’ve already done it/don’t want to do it, no worries!
Today’s song:
wanted to mix things up today so I learned this on guitar…I started messing around with it and I realized it was in the same key as “Poor Places” so I guess I’ll be learning that tomorrow –
That’s it for this book tag! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
For the most part, I really enjoyed reading Off Planet, the first book in Aileen Erin’s Aunare Chronicles; I read it on vacation, and I loved the fast-paced action. So on a whim (and because it was pretty cheap), I bought book 2 on my Kindle and read it between library hauls.
But…
[heavy sigh]
Oh god, I can’t believe that these books are from the same series…Off Balance took everything that I didn’t like about book 1 and made it the main focus of the plot, making for a mess of a sequel that I had neither the will nor the patience to finish.
(find my mini-review of book 1, Off Planet, here!)
On the run from Earth and SpaceTech, Amihanna di Aetes flees to the other half of her heritage, the powerful, spacefaring Aunare. Even surrounded by the riches of her father’s estate, her life is one of constant fear – fear of Spacetech, and fear of the aliens who look at her like vermin for her half-human heritage. But as tensions within the royal family begin to rise surrounding her, she must think on her feet to make it out alive.
TW/CW: discrimination, trauma-related nightmares, frightening situations, violence, bombing, 10+ year age gap between protagonist and love interest*
*yeah, you heard me right…see the fourth paragraph for me freaking out about that
DNF at 68%
Oh god…where do I begin with this one? It pains me to write DNF reviews these days. Really. It’s so rare for my ratings for a series to drop this much…I gave Off Planet a solid 3.5 stars, and here we have Off Balance with a measly 1…I feel pretty bad about it, but YIKES.
I really wanted to like Off Balance. I really did. But it just kept getting more and more frustrating with every page, and with around 500 pages, there came a point where I couldn’t take any more of it. It’s like everything that I didn’t care about in book 1 was emphasized, and then made 10 times worse…
First off, let me talk about the Aunare for a second. I was excited to see what their culture and physiology and such was like, but…there were hardly any differences from humans. I tried to brush off the fact that Lorne looked like an ordinary human in book 1, but, alas, here we have the “aliens that look exactly like humans but with ✨pretty eye colors✨ and they’re all ✨ridiculously attractive✨” trope. And they glow this time. Oh, joy. Furthermore, other than some of the food and the whole glowing business, all of the culture that we got was just…wild parties in ballrooms and messy stuff with the royal family? If nobody had told me that this was a space opera, I could have passed this off as a fully human cast. All those parties got mind-numbing eventually, which…maybe that was the point? I don’t even know…
And then there’s the issue of Lorne. I don’t judge love interests by whether or not I’m attracted to them, which, I’ll admit, doesn’t happen a whole lot to me in books. He already put me off a bit because of my association of his name from Lorne Malvo from Fargo (oops), buthe was just all kinds of frustrating in this book. He was just such a startlingly bland character – there was nothing that distinguished him from any other YA love interest. And the whole thing with him and Amihanna…I just felt…nothing? I wasn’t invested in their relationship in any way, and all of the lines that were supposed to be tender or heartwarming just made me roll my eyes. And…IS NOBODY GONNA TALK ABOUT THE FACT THAT THERE’S AN 11-YEAR AGE GAP BETWEEN HIM AND AMIHANNA?
WHY IS NOBODY ADDRESSING THIS??
WHY?
ALL KINDS OF CREEPY. AND NOBODY SEEMS TO BE BATTING AN EYE. WHY?
[waves hands around] okay, okay. Lemme cool off a minute.
Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest…
Other than that, the plot just seemed to be completely absent. It was an endless cycle of Amihanna doing some training, drama with the royal family, drama with Dylan, drama with Lorne…just drama. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought that this was a book from an entirely different series than the first book. I’m still so puzzled as to how we got from such an action-packed first book to…whatever this was.
In the end, I just couldn’t stand to read another page. The plot started to pick up a little, but by that point, I’d lost all will to read Off Balance. So it was a DNF for me.
All in all, a bitter, messy disappointment of a sequel that lacked in everything that made Off Planet a reasonably compelling read. Off Planet is still worth a read, but…maybe just stop at book 1. 1, sad little star.
Off Balance is the second book in the Aunare Chronicles, preceded by Off Planet and succeeded by In Command (#2.5, a novella) and On Mission (#3).
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Goodreads Monday is a weekly meme created by Lauren’s Page Turners. All you have to do to participate is pick a book from your Goodreads TBR, and explain why you want to read it.
I’ve been a huge fan of Tricia Levenseller for years after how much I adored her Daughter of the Pirate King duology, but I haven’t gotten around to reading anything else of hers. This one came shortly after the duology, but I haven’t read it yet – but given how well she handled fantasy, I bet this one will be just as good!
Let’s begin, shall we?
GOODREADS MONDAY (7/19/21) – WARRIOR OF THE WILD by Tricia Levenseller
As her father’s chosen heir, eighteen-year-old Rasmira has trained her whole life to become a warrior and lead her village. But when her coming-of-age trial is sabotaged and she fails the test, her father banishes her to the monster-filled wilderness with an impossible quest: To win back her honor, she must kill the oppressive god who claims tribute from the villages each year—or die trying.
So why do I want to read this?
Looking back, I’m really not sure if I would even read this if not for the fact that it was written by Tricia Levenseller. From the synopsis, it looks like your standard YA fantasy – botched coming-of-age ritual, impossible tasks, strange realms. But after how much I enjoyed Daughter of the Pirate King and Daughter of the Siren Queen, I have utmost faith in this novel.
With how well Levenseller handled both her compelling and determined female protagonists to her lush worlds filled with unique characters, Warrior of the Wild would be so exciting in her hands! I’m not sure how Rasmira will measure up to how wonderful Alosa Kalligan was, but I trust Tricia Levenseller enough to make her as compelling as the former.
In short: Tricia Levenseller sold me on this one, but I’ll absolutely see this one through.
Today’s song:
That’s it for this week’s Goodreads Monday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.
I’ve had another quiet week this week, for the most part. Just some summer homework, reading, all that. It’s been getting super hot over here, but I’ve been reading inside and outside.
Reading-wise, I’d say I had a pretty good week. I’ve only had one read that I didn’t like, and I finished the book that my English class assigned for summer homework (Native Son). I also got to go to the comic shop, so I got through a few single issues too! I have a really big one waiting as well…
As far as writing goes, I finally figured out the deal with the word count for my NaNoWriMo goal, so I fixed that up to a manageable level. I’ve been making a whole lot of progress with my sci-fi WIP though! It’s getting close to 200 pages now…
Other than that, I’ve just been drawing, screaming with my friend about Fargo, finishing Loki (AAAH THAT FINALE), and volunteering at the library. I’m going to see Black Widow this afternoon too! I’m proud of myself for avoiding spoilers up until now…guess I’ve learned my lesson from Infinity War…
The Bookish Mutant 