Life + Reading Update

Hi guys.

I apologize for my weird disappearing yet not disappearing act that I’ve been doing these past few weeks.

It’s been a struggle and I finally am in the mood/have the time to tell you all about it.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!!

My family moved!! That’s pretty much the major thing that’s been taking up my time: cleaning the new house we got, packing, moving, unpacking, and then cleaning the old house as well.

It sounds like nothing when I type it, but it was a lot of work, and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for these past few weeks.

I also started a new class in college (Spanish!! Hola!!!) so I’m doing 4 classes there, besides my 3 HS classes. So I’m trying to figure out my schedule with all the homework and assignments that I’ve got to do.

My migraines also increased in frequency and I’m pretty sure it’s stress related. I haven’t had any this past week and I was on Spring Break from college. Still had HS classes though so not really much of a break lol, but there is a correlation between my migraines and my college classes (I learned about correlation in Psychology and I’ve been so excited to use it 🤦🏽‍♀️😂). College classes = stress and there seems to be a connection between the stress and migraines.

Migraines are truly the worst.

And with COVID-19 knocking on everyone’s doors, I’m also trying not to be paranoid or nervous about it, but it’s a little hard to not do that. Hopefully no one will get sick and please stay safe guys!!

Again, this all doesn’t seem like much, and it’s probably nothing compared to what so many other people have been going through, but for me, it was kind of a lot and I was just really drained. I didn’t feel like blogging, I didn’t feel like reading, I don’t even feel like doing my assignments right now.

I’ve just been a big uncoordinated mess and I’m really trying to get back on track. So please bear with me!

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Haha.

I haven’t read as much as normal with all the things going on and I’m really sad about that.

What I hate the most is the fact that by the time I pick up a book and finally start reading it, I don’t get to finish because my hold is up and it’s returned to the library. That’s happened like 3 times already, and honestly I don’t really care/it doesn’t upset me as much as it normally would.

I think this is the definition of a slump.

I just don’t feel motivated to read anymore. Reading just feels like another thing that I have to do, and it’s so ANNOYING because I’m getting all these books that I’ve been waiting for forever to read and I’m not in the mood to read them.

But I’m trying, I’m moving, I finally finished my second book this month, and I’m about to push myself to read another. Hopefully the book will be good because lately, everything’s just been a mixture of awesome!!, then underwhelming, and then disappointment. It’s not helping at all.

Oh, and I’m 6 books behind on my GR reading challenge. Yay me.

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So the books that I read in February are:

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2020 Historical Fiction RC = ⏳ | YARC = 🍚

2020 Cloak & Dagger RC = 🔍 | E-book = 📱 | Hardcover = 📕 | For Review = ⏱

The Storm Crow by Kalyn Josephson – 📱 – 5 stars | I LOVED this book and the rep. From the first chapter I knew I was going to love it and I did. Though the plot was kind of typical YA fantasy, I loved the characters and the depression rep so much.

Love From A to Z by S. K. Ali – 🍚 📱 – 4 stars | This is probably the best Muslim rep book that I’ve read. I loved Adam, I loved how real the story felt, and I was so glad that their religion was a big part of the book and not just something that they mention every once in a while. I didn’t like Zayneb much, but this book was wonderful!!

This Time Will Be Different by Misa Sugiura – 🍚 📱 – 4 stars | I loved the diversity in this book and how CJ was not perfect at all. She made so many mistakes, but she fixed them, and she learned from them. That’s really what was truly amazing about this; everybody made mistakes and learned from them rather than be annoying and strong-headed.

Our Wayward Fate by Gloria Chao – 🍚 📗 – 2.5 | This started out great, but went downhill super fast. I felt super lukewarm towards the characters, and I just didn’t care. The only person who I would have loved to see more of was Yun, but he barely got any time in the book. Overall, this was really disappointing.

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha – 🍚 📱 – 5 stars | This was amazing. I learned so much from it, and I truly wish the world wasn’t like this but it is. Racism exists. And it results in so much pain and suffering. The history of this “awesome” country is awful, bloody, and filled with so many injustices that we continue to gloss over everyday. This book was just really eye-opening for me. I really loved it.

I once again picked up Hungry Hearts. If you remember, I started reading it before but didn’t finish. Again, I started reading it, but I once again did not finish, so I’m waiting for a copy again.

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So far in March, I’ve read:

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Darius The Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram – 🍚 📱 – 3.5 stars | This was good. I liked it, however I didn’t love it. Which was disappointing. At a point, it felt like a chore to read, but I still really liked the Persian representation and the cast of characters.

If You Leave Me by Crystal Hana Kim – 🍚 ⏳ 📱 – 2 stars | I don’t even know why I gave this book 2 stars. It was so so annoying. At first I liked it. I liked Hyunki and Jisoo and Kyunghwan and Haemi. I wanted to see what would happen. But then the men grew up and became these totally horrible guys and I’m just like UGH, and then Haemi started, idk. I feel like she has some sort of personality/mental health disorder. Otherwise, she’s just plain old manipulative and mean. By the end, I didn’t care at all, and I was seriously annoyed and upset at all the men in this book. None of them were even close to possibly being a good guy. UGH. I’m so glad I’m done with it. Maybe I just didn’t “get” this book.

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So that’s it for the books that I’ve read. The books that I’m currently reading and the ones that I have to get to soon are:

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The Color of Bee Larkham’s Murder by Sarah J. Harris – 🔍 📗 – Currently Reading

Deceptive Waters by Carolyn Courtney Lauman – 🔍 ⏱ 📱 – Due: April 3rd

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim – 🍚 🔍 📱 – Due: April 2nd

Butterfly Yellow by Thanhha Lai – 🍚 ⏳ 📱 – Due: April 4th

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters – ⏳ 📱 – Due: April 5th

The Sisters Grimm: The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley – 📱 – Due: April 5th

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson – 📱 – Due: April 11th

The Whisper Man by Alex North – 🔍 📱 – Due: April 11th

I’m screwed. So many books! So little time!! I really need to get a move on and start reading them (especially Sanderson since it’s going to be huge!).

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Here’s a look at how far I’ve gotten in my reading challenges:

• YARC: 6 out of 20
• 2020 HistFic: 1 out of 10
• 2020 Cloak & Dagger: 0 out of 35
• GoodReads: 18 out of 110

Let’s stay optimistic. Hopefully these numbers will become much better over the summer.

These past two months have been not the best. My life and routine has just been thrown out of balance, and it’s left me falling behind and just not being my best self.

But I’m finally done with the move, I’ve got one more week off college thanks to COVID-19, and I’m getting all these books that will hopefully be awesome. I’m feeling more motivated to try and get back to some normalcy and that includes writing more blog posts which I’m pretty excited to do!!

I have so many backed up books to review, and instead of doing them in the order that I read them, I’m going to pick and choose which books I feel strongly about that I’d like to review first before tackling the books that I don’t really care so much about. Hopefully that’ll make me motivated to finish writing those review.

Also thank you so so much to all of you lovely people who have been tagging me!!!! I’m going to try and work on doing a tag a week, so that way I can get rid of the tags that have been waiting for me since November last year sorry!!.

Let’s Talk Bookish will continue as always. I need to set up next month’s topics, so if you’d like your topic to be featured, be sure to fill out this google form here with your suggestions!! (Thank you so much to Dani and Aria for suggesting!!)

And I think that’s it!!

How has February and March been for you? Can we please get a chance to start 2020 over again? How are you coping with social distancing? Any book recommendations you’d like to share? Chat with me in the comments below!!

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