Thursday, September 3, 2015

Previously on WLABB: August 2015

Previously On We Live and Breathe Books is an end of the month wrap up post. Previously allows us to recap all our posts from the past month and discuss what's going on in our lives, including what books we're reading, any fun things we've been doing, and a TBR for the next month. Our inspiration for this meme comes from Midnight Madness Newsletters created by Melanie at YA Midnight Reads.

Posts from August

Previously on WLABB: July 2015
Double ARC Review: Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid
Top Ten Tuesday - Fairytale Retellings I Want to Read
ARC Review: The Dead House: Dawn Kurtagich
ARC Review + Interview: The Girl Who Ignored Ghosts - K.C. Tansley
Stuffed Animal Saturday: Downcast - Cait Reynolds
ARC Review: George - Alex Gino
Top Ten Tuesday - Authors I've Read the Most Books From
Waiting on Wednesday: Why Not Me? - Mindy Kaling
Double ARC Review: Court of Fives - Kate Elliott
Double ARC Review: Another Day - David Levithan
ARC Review: The Accident Season - Moïra Fowley-Doyle
Guest Post: Writing for a Series by Christina Benjamin
Double ARC Review: Lair of Dreams - Libba Bray
Stuffed Animal Saturday: Infinite in Between - Carolyn Mackler
ARC Review: Legacy of Kings - Eleanor Herman
Top Ten Tuesday - Books that Would Be on Your Syllabus If You Taught YA Dystopians 101
Waiting on Wednesday: The Fate of Ten - Pittacus Lore
Double ARC Review: Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between - Jennifer E. Smith
ARC Review: Infinite in Between - Carolyn Mackler


Keeping Up with the WLABBers

Kiersten

August is kind of a blur for me. Since the beginning of August, I've packed up all my things and unpacked them into my new apartment for the beginning of my junior year at Syracuse. It's very strange to be an upperclassman. Besides that, this week is my first week of classes for the semester, and I can already tell that I'll be very busy with work. Hopefully I'll still find time to read!


The only real highlight in August is that I got to meet my new littles! In the drama department at SU, the current students get into groups of bigs and act as mentors/friends to the freshmen/transfers who become their littles. I got one fabulous little last year, and this year I got two more amazing littles! My group decided to do a Greek gods theme, so the bigs wore Camp Half-Blood t-shirts, and I transformed the littles' shirts to look like togas. (If you don't recognize me/don't know what I look like, I'm the one on the right end!)


If you read my section of last month's Previously, then you know I sort of cheated and included Red Queen and Never Always Sometimes when I wasn't entirely done with them yet. Well, I decided to cheat again (I know, I'm only cheating myself or whatever) and include them in my August reads since technically I finished them in August. I'm also cheating with The Copper Gauntlet since I haven't entirely finished that one yet. But it's going to happen soon. For The Bane Chronicles, I had read the first four when they were coming out, so I read the last six when I got the book from the elibrary. Instead of putting all the covers of the six stories I read, I decided to just include the main cover. Similarly, I read a bunch of the Shadowhunter Academy Chronicles in August from the elibrary, but I only included one cover. My other reads were The Accident Season, which was absolutely incredible, and Voice of Gods, which I was reading in anticipation of reading Legacy of Kings, but I just didn't get to it. Wow, this was a really novella heavy month for me.


Now that I'm back at school, there will be less time than ever to read, which is quite sad. Hopefully I can get some better time management skills this year, and I'll still be able to read! The first five of these are September releases that I got at BEA, and I got A Thousand Nights, which comes out in the beginning of October, on Netgalley. I think, at the bare minimum, I'll be able to read A Thousand Nights since I'm much quicker at reading ebooks than print copies.


Marlon

I'm amazed I got to read as much as I did: nearly all of the books on my last TBR! The beginning of the month was pretty slow, marked by (starting to) teaching my sister to play tennis, going to a few poetry slams, and trying to figure out my schedule for the fall. The last ten to fifteen days, however, have kept me on my toes trying to get all the pre-school things done. I'm now the only treasurer for NYU's Slam poetry team, and so I've had to do all of the budgeting stuff by myself, which is scary because I'd rather face Chuthulu-Godzilla-Voldemort than math, event organizing, and contracts. I'm a commuter, so packing hasn't kicked my butt, but getting back into the swing of things and spending much of my day in the city made reading all day a little harder.

Anyway, that's basically it for me!


Holy crap Heather Demetrios has destroyed my life. I was going to read Young World first, but Exquisite Captive had such a pretty cover . . . and I was tempted. At first, I wasn't sure, but it quickly became one of the best books I've read this past year. The same goes for The School for Good and Evil #2: A World Without Princes. The Diviners and Lair of Dreams felt like mountains: it was easy to lose myself in them, because they went on. I had read some of Zeroes back in June, and it too was quite long. Same as the rest, it was awesome. George and Post Traumatic Church Syndrome took three train rides, in contrast. There were a lot of books I started during this time: Young World, Six of Crows, and Fairest, but I haven't finished any of them, so I'll have to leave that for next time.

A World Without Princes - Soman Chainani


I am cheating the heck out of Blood Passage here as I have nearly finished it. Gosdamn incredible.

The Young World - Christ Weitz
Blood Passage - Heather Demetrios
The Scorpion Rules - Erin Bow
Illuminae - Jay Kristoff
Dumplin - Julie Murphy
Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo


Noor

Did August actually happen or did I just imagine it? I 'm going with the second option. August was full of not unpacking my clothes and repeating the same 12 outfits all the time (I mean I did more unpacking than that but there's the whole laundry issue too) and sending out emails and finally checking my grades from last spring (Amrutha if you're reading this I know I told you I already checked them but I lied) and buying things online and doing a bunch of stressful things that I don't feel like talking about and then some not so stressful things like kayaking and finally getting some bookshelves!! Let's look at the shelves, shall we?

First, we have the main shelf, which is supposed to be a vertical shelf but I put it horizontal in the space under my loft bed because its width was the perfect amount for the back wall and it fits there nicely without taking up excess space in my room. Ignore the two piles of books on top of the shelf, those are books that I couldn't make room for in my shelves, but they're books I don't read anyway -- textbooks and old books and such -- so they're going in the shelves in my closet. And that third stack is books I have to prop up on the top of the shelf once I put other things up there.


Next, I've got a ladder shelf, which I really love as well because it's such a fun, aesthetically appealing display, and it has so much more room than it lets on. Also, it fit nicely into a corner of my room next to my closet, but doesn't get in the way of the door, and doesn't look like it's stuck in a corner so it's great with the space thing.


And lastly, this is my favorite one of all, though it isn't exactly a shelf. I was in a furniture/home decor store -- the same one I got the ladder shelf from -- shopping for shelves when I spotted it and I fell in love with it and I immediately had to have it, whether I used it for books or not. I love the wooden baskets and the vintage feel and the way they swing and everything about it. I ultimately ended up using them as sort of TBR baskets and I just put books I'd like to read in the near future in the baskets because I have a habit of thinking "oh I'll read that next" and then when I finish a book I forget completely so now I'll have little baskets reminding me.


I still have a lot to do before I'm done with my room but it was still fun watching my room go from this to this: 



My next step is definitely taking care of the dreadful blankness of that wall. The only reason I haven't yet is a. I have a weird process I like to do things in so I have to finish a few other things before I can do decorations and b. I did start to put up a map one of my best friends gave me but then I ordered some other prints and a tapestry and things online so I'm going to wait until I have all my decor things before I figure out placement. Anyway, now that I've bored you with furniture talk, let's discuss what I've been reading this month!


So this has definitely been a better month for reading than last, in which I only read four things, two of which were not a lot of pages. Anyway, I already reviewed the first six books you see on this list, so if you want to know my thoughts you can read them in full detail. The other three, I have reviews scheduled for so you'll get the same detailed analyses (I knew you were worried but fret not) but in case you want to know some of my thoughts right now, I think August was a very good month for me, book-wise. I think Everything, Everything might be my favorite of the books I read and that means a lot because one of these books is a Cassandra Clare/Holly Black combo and one of them is a series of satirical short stories by the lead actor in my all-time favorite movie. And yet, in my opinion, it trumps them both. I just loved it so much and I can't wait to share my review. I'm also excited to review Dumplin', which was a fun book to read and also had me thinking in a southern accent for a little while after. Does that ever happen to any of you, where you spend a lot of time watching a TV show or reading a book and you just start thinking in that character's voice instead of your own? I do it all the time, right now I'm writing this as Gossip Girl. It was really nice to read those two books though, because Firewalker left me kindof confused. I liked the first book but I felt like this book just didn't hit the mark, and I kinda need to stew over it a little, but it's ruining my theory about second books, which is that if it's a three book series, they're the best book, and if it's more than that, they're a really strong pillar in the structure. Anyway, it was still a great month for books, and I hope September is even better.



I am honestly so excited to read all these books. I especially have my heart ready for Black Widow because if Marvel won't give us a movie, at least Margaret Stohl gave us a book. I'm also super hella planning to read Zeroes because Scott Westerfeld has been my home skillet since scholastic book fairs were a thing in my life (I mentioned this in another post) and I feel like the fact that I've owned it since June and haven't read it yet is an issue that needs to be remedied this month. Really, all of these books are books I really want to read, and I hope I read a lot more than just these six!!



Awesome Blog Posts I Read:

This Is Not How You Put Someone In The Mood by Meg @ Cuddlebuggery - While this might not sound book related, have you ever been reading a scene in a book where an author just uses a completely weird and misplaced word in a scene that it should definitely not be used in? A word like moist, for example? This post is a fun discussion about that.
When You Need to Cry Over a Book In Public by Melanie @ YA Midnight Reads

Amrutha

Hi guys!! This month started off pretty slow, with goodbye dinners and work and frantically packing one day before moving in for school. The last ten days however, have been hectic beyond belief. With moving in, training for the club I’m in, classes starting, work, still trying to be social, turning 19, and going home to see family, I’ve had literally no time to breathe (which, to be honest, is how I like it most of the time). I’m really excited about this year and it’s honestly off to a really great start, so I hope its an indicator for the year as a whole. Also I hope I don't just avoid checking my sophomore year grades until the next September (COUGH COUGH I HATE YOU NOOR). 

So this month, I read some books on my July TBR

Because this month has been super busy, I haven’t done a whole lot of reading (*covers eyes in shame*). However, I did read Hello, Goodbye, and Everything In Between, The Accident Season, Court of Fives, and It's About Love. Everything here I have either reviewed/will review/someone has reviewed so look out for those! I liked pretty much every book I read this month so August has been pretty good over all. 


Surprise, I still haven't read And the Mountains Echoed. It's still on the list. I also really want to read a lot of the BEA books I got (which are also some of the only books I brought with me to school when I was frantically throwing things into boxes). I've heard nothing but good things about The Copper Gauntlet, Everything Everything, Dumplin', and Illuminae. Can't wait to settle into school and start reading lots again.

What have you been up to last month?
Let us know in the comments!
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