April 2020 Monthly Goals | Excited to read all books for O.W.L.s Magical Readathon!

Hello, fellow booklovers! I hope all of you are doing great and are ready to dive right into O.W.L.s Magical Readathon in April! 

O.W.L.s and Booktube-a-thon are my favorite read-a-thons out there and I always make time for them. This year I wasn’t sure about OWLs as I had a deadline for the deliverance of reports at the end of April, but with COVID, social isolation and Courts not working full time, the deadline and my exams are pushed for the end of this year (maybe?). We don’t know quite yet what will happen, there have been a few decisions here and there from the Lawyers’ Bar but nothing concrete just yet. This definitely gives me more time to read and blog, and also gives me more time to study. I can now include some books I was planning to read for the internship but didn’t think I would have time for them. 

How to Find Motivation & Fight your way out of a Reading Slump!

Hi, friends! As promised in my yesterday’s post – March 2020 Wrap Up, where I talked about the reading slump that has been haunting me since the end of February, here is a list of things I’ve been doing to try and fight my way out of this horrible feeling! 

This is still work in progress, but considering that I’m planning to finish my 11th and 12th books of this month, I think it’s actually going well and I hope that before OWLs begin I will be fully excited to emerge myself in numerous magical worlds! 

March 2020 Wrap Up | The month I fought my way out of a reading slump!

The first two weeks of March and the last 10 days of the month feel like they belong in completely different months, times, worlds… Not only because of the COVID and social isolation but just workload and how I’ve been feeling in general (and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people who went or going through the same thing). To summarize my state of mind in March: (1) reading slump, (2) unable to focus, (3) overwhelmed by daily tasks, and (4) not feeling my usual self. 

It’s been a rough time for everyone, and I constantly felt like I was doing too many things at the same time, my mind kept wandering everywhere and I even skipped a couple of weeks of blog posts because I couldn’t find the motivation to write anything, even though I love my blog and all of you, guys. 

Life & Reading Update | Staying at home, Scribd free trial & Clearing my mind!

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts. I don’t usually make weekly wrap ups, although I love reading yours so so much! [talking about you, guys! – Emer @A Little Haze Book Blog, Dini @Dini Panda Reads, and Stephanie @ Adventures of a Bibliophile – three of the most consistent bloggers who post their weekly wrap ups on Sundays!]

The Diviners (The Diviners, #1) by Libba Bray | An amazing cast of characters & entertaining roaring twenties!

Oh, man! «The Diviners» was such a roller coaster of emotions! 

The beginning of the book wasn’t as exciting as I hoped it would be, which translated into me starting this book twice. For the second time as I passed that first chapter (prologue) about the party and spirit summoning, I met Evie and fell in love with her character. The book just kept getting better and better from there. However, by the end, I was started to feel tired of reading the same story and the last 100 pages took me a couple of days to finish.

O.W.L. Magical Readathon 2020 | A very analytical approach!

Following one of my New Year’s resolutions (i.e. read less study more), I planned to skip as many read-a-thons this year as I could, but I couldn’t make myself skip O.W.L.s Magical Readathon that takes place in April! O.W.L.s and Booktubeathon are the only two reading events I usually participate, and it felt wrong breaking the traditions.

To make my life a little bit easier, I decided to go through each career guide and pick one profession that requires fewer books. This resulted in me doing all the math so you wouldn’t have to! 😀 My career choice will also impact my “Spring TBR”, so I will be joining Top Ten Tuesday theme (partially) as well!

My Blogging Routine (Part 1) | The Tools I can’t live without!

Considering the latest development with Covid-19 in Europe and all over the world, I hope you’re staying safe and healthy! I won’t dwell much on this subject as I feel like it’s all people are talking about nowadays, so let’s dive into a less sad subject: Organization!

As the book blogger, of course, I love talking about books and reading, but I also love seeing how everyone else organizes their reading and blogging routines. What tools do you use? How do you manage to work/study/read books AND blog about it on the Internet? These are the subjects I love reading about.

Today, I’ll be sharing with you my blogging routine (basically my whole life organization routine). This is the system I used for a couple of years now. At the beginning of 2020, I made a couple of tweaks to it, which greatly improved my productivity (let’s hope that it stays this way for the rest of the year!). 

Wicked Saints (Something Dark and Holy, #1) by Emily A. Duncan | Feeling disappointed by my most anticipated book of last year!

«Wicked Saints», the first book in Something Dark and Holy trilogy, was published in April last year. I remember it being one of my most anticipated releases at the time when I first saw it on NetGalley and the fact that it was inspired by Eastern European culture immediately drew my attention. As someone from Eastern Europe, I often find these books very nostalgic to read, as they tend to reference a lot of Slavic folklore or events that I used to study in my history classes. 

Emily A. Duncan said in one of her interviews that Leigh Bardugo was her favorite YA author, and you can easily see by the way the book is written where she drew her inspiration from.  «Wicked Saints» reminded me of the Darkling, Mal and Alina – not the plot of events but the characters and their interactions. 

Maybe every single YA fantasy inspired by Eastern European culture will always remind me of The Grisha trilogy now? 

March 2020 Monthly Goals | Keeping up with ARCs and Book clubs!

The third month of the year (that literally just started!) is already upon us. Do you feel as unprepared as I do? Time has been passing quicker and quicker each year and I need to learn some tricks on how to slow it down, maybe enjoy and capture more moments. 

February wasn’t the best month reading-wise, but I hope to find my pace again this month, so I’m not planning to make my TBR any smaller, especially because the books I haven’t read in February are going to migrate to March. 

Unread books on my shelves with single word title | This would make a great reading challenge!

It’s been too long since my last Top Ten Tuesday post! Hi, everyone, and hope you’re loving this week’s TTT theme. As I was preparing my post, I found a lot of books with single word titles. And apparently, Sci-Fi books are all about the single-word titles! I was even planning to make a list of Sci-Fi books with a one-word title that I really want to read, but some of them I don’t own and I wanted this list to be more realistic. 

February Wrap Up 2020 | The month I was too busy to learn anything new!

One of my goals this year is to learn something new every single month. In January I learned how to stay on top of things. February on the other hand…

No matter how hard I tried to plan ahead, every single weekend in February we had something going on – some things were rather pleasant though. 🙂 

I really hope that this was the busiest month of the year and that things will start slowing down from here onward, but I don’t really believe that. As we are getting closer to my deadlines and exams, life is getting busier and busier. 

Starsight (Skyward, #2) by Brandon Sanderson | Continuing my journey through Brandon Sanderson YA books!

Here we go again, talking about yet another Brandon Sanderson book! 2020 is going to be a very Sanderson heavy year and I’m loving it so far. I’m yet to dip my toes into the Cosmere world, but I will be starting «Elantris» very soon as I want it read before the live show of Cosmerealong, which should take place sometime mid-March. 

I have now successfully read and loved all of his YA Sci-Fi books, starting with the Reckoners trilogy and finishing with the 2nd installment in the Skyward series. It feels good to finally be able to cross these books off my never-ending TBR list. 

This review might contain minor spoilers for the first book – «Skyward», so if you haven’t read that one, I’d recommend reading the book (and my review *cheeky self-promotion included*) first and then come back to this post! 🙂

In an Instant by Suzanne Redfearn | I haven’t cried that much in a long time

I love it when the ARCs I choose end up on my favorites of the year list. It doesn’t matter how many of them might not be the best, and how many I might DNF during the year, because there are always a couple that will stand out in the best way possible. 

After reading «In an Instant», I will read anything Suzanne Redfearn publishes in the future. Atmospheric and utterly heartbreaking, the story of the Millers family made me cry multiple times, the tears of sadness and joy. 

The Reasons why I don’t Re-Read books anymore!

Every time I see someone re-reading their favorite books, I get transported to my teens when all I did was re-read books over and over again. To the point that I knew them all by heart. The most notable re-reads back then were (1) the Harry Potter series, (2) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, (3) children’s detective novels and (4) some witty and funny adult crime fiction. 

I wanted to justify my re-reading phase with the fact that I didn’t have that many unread books on my shelves, but that’s not entirely true. My grandfather spent most of his life collecting books, which was very difficult to do in the URSS. Most of the available books were propaganda, and foreign authors were forbidden for many years. There even was an “underground” book trade business. 

Elevation by Stephen King | One of the best short books!

I’m slowly dipping my toes into Stephen King’s works. Last year I tried his dystopian novel «Cell» and this year I decided to start with one of the shorter books – «Elevation». I’m still avoiding his horror books, even though «Elevation» is classified as Horror and even won Goodreads awards in the horror category (shocking!) you’re safe to read it because it’s nothing more than a Fiction book with elements of fantasy? sci-fi? something out of the ordinary. 

This was an outstanding story and it instantly made it to my “favorites of 2020” list!