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Book Titles That Would Make Great Song Titles

By Brookelorren on November 10, 2020November 9, 20207 Comments

Hello! Have the weeks been going by really fast for you? I think it might be just because I’m so damned busy with school right now. At least it’s my boy’s birthday so the only school he has tomorrow is our coop (which still is a lot of work for me). And after today, there’s only three more weeks of coop, so at least there will be a break soon. Anyway, it’s Tuesday again, and today we’re talking about “Book Titles That Would Make Great Song Titles.” We’ll see what I come up with.

Make Up Break Up – This seems like it would be a catchy pop tune. It kind of has a 80’s/90’s feel to it. Probably sung by a girl band. Something about a couple that breaks up and then gets back together (over and over and over again).

Chain of Gold – I imagine Chain of Gold as a love song. Something about two people being bonded together by a chain of gold, or something like that.

Sensational – This is another one of those songs that I’d imagine would have a catchy beat and fast tempo. That kind that would get you out on the dance floor.

Sparrow – I imagine Sparrow as this haunting love song, where the girl dies or something. Which would kind of be appropriate because this is a story about a girl that is abused by her boyfriend.

11/22/63 – This may be a weird choice, but I think this could make a song like Smashing Pumpkin’s “1979.” But this song would probably have been best if it was released in the 1970s. The guy could be singing about what he was doing the year Kennedy was shot, his love, that sort of thing. The date is too long ago to make a great contemporary song, but since this book involves time travel, I think we can allow the song to come out in a different time too.

Today Tonight Tomorrow – The whole book would make a great song. The first verse could be about how the main singer hates the girl, the second verse could be about how he spends a wonderful evening hanging out with the girl, and the third verse could be about the future he imagines with the girl.

Tell Me Everything – I think this would work as either a catchy pop song or a slower song where the main character caught his or her loved one cheating on them. The upbeat pop song might be about people getting to know each other that want to know everything about each other.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – I can’t remember–was this actually a song in the book? Either way, this would make a decent medium-tempo song. One that tells a story about a girl who was so lovely, she was the boy’s songbird, but he eventually finds out she’s behaving like a snake. Or it could be an instrumental song that tries to convey that same meaning.

Summer Days and Summer Nights – This song would remind me a little of “Summer Lovin'” from Grease. Maybe a duet, but not necessarily so.

Heartless – It wouldn’t surprise me if there actually was a song with this title already. This is another song that could fit into a variety of styles. It might work as a ballad where someone is weeping over their heartless lover that jilted them, or as a song with a heavy rock beat to it.

So there’s ten songs with titles that might double as song titles. I thought it would be harder than it turned out. What books did you choose this week? Next week we’re talking about “Characters I’d Name a Pet After.” Next week, half of these are going to be characters I actually have named a pet (or child) after, and the other five will be characters I would name a pet after.

October 2020 Monthly Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on November 1, 2020November 1, 20204 Comments

Hello! It’s November 1st, and time to say hello to the holiday season and hustle and bustle until the end of the year. But before we get there, what happened last month?

Books Read:

I realized this month why I was having such a hard time getting things read. My husband is home all. the. time. Don’t get me wrong, I love him, but when he had a job, I’d wake up, fling the curtains wide open, and read before or after (often both) teaching school. Now, I can’t fling the curtains open because he’s often sleeping. Then my boy comes in at 11 PM to write code on my dh’s computer, and after that, my boy comes and sits on my bed to watch a video by Jaiden Animations, and then they watch Cutthroat Kitchen. Who can read with all that going on?

Anyway, I only read 6 books this month. I don’t expect it to get any better with NaNoWriMo starting today. I need to read 19 more books to finish my Goodreads Challenge. Worst case scenario, I can squeeze in Life After Legend I and II in a half hour. While I don’t plan on reading a lot of short books to win my Goodreads challenge, since I know I’ll be close, I might choose to squeeze in a few books that way.

Hopefully my dh will get a job next year and I can get my reading on track.

Anyhoo, this is what I read:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – V.E. Schwab
The First Hostage – Joel C. Rosenberg
Make Up Break Up – Lily Menon
The Red Scrolls of Magic – Cassandra Clare
Mirror Gate – Jeff Wheeler
A Reaper at the Gates – Sabaa Tahir (reread)

I almost finished Julie Kagawa’s Talon in time to include it on this list, but I started NaNoWriMo instead. I had an hour left in the book and I had to go to sleep. I’m starting The Scorpio Races today, which is something I planned to do for nearly a year already (since it starts on November 1st, I’ll start reading it on that day).

Writing:

Woo! Time for NaNoWriMo! In the summer of 2019 I started to come up with the germ of this story: a girl, who is a lady-in-waiting to the princess, is being held as a prisoner in her enemy country after she was captured in a war. When she discovers that they intend to kill her, she ends up running off with the handsome gray ace son of a duke, and they end up getting shipwrecked on a deserted island.

I always thought it would be funny if I started querying my NaNoWriMo novel (from 2018) on December 1st. THE BRIGHTNESS OF SHADOW is not ready, and since I’m writing another novel now, it’s unlikely to get ready in the next 30 days. But you know what? It’s 95% ready. I’ve had someone say to me “Why isn’t this published already!?!” Will that last 5% make the difference between a rejection and an acceptance? Probably not. Especially since the first half of the book is completely ready to go, and the only pages I haven’t gone over for the last time (before querying) aren’t even pages an agent will see unless they request a full.

That last 5% is holding me back. It’s been sucking my motivation. It’s been keeping me from moving forward. So, on December 1st, I’m going to send it out into the world and see what happens. I will finish that last 5%, but I won’t let the fact that it’s not done yet stop me from querying. Because, although I know they say not to send out a novel until it’s as good as you can make it on your own, the tiny sliver of change that I can make myself is insignificant.

So December 1st, I’m sending out my first batch of queries. And if it gets accepted, I’ll have a funny story about how I started querying my NaNoWriMo novel on December 1st, which is something agents say never to do. They generally mean don’t send out the NaNoWriMo novel you just finished though, not the NaNoWriMo novel you started two years ago and have already edited it so much that–even though you love it–you want to move on to the next stage.

Life:

Not much is going on over here. It’s the same nearly every week. Sunday: church, then start getting ready for Tuesday’s Spanish and German classes. Monday: teach my boy school and finish preparing for Tuesday’s classes. Wednesday through Friday: recover from teaching language classes and teach my boy. Saturday: maybe do something different?

My dh and I went for a drive at the beginning of the month to go see the falling leaves; that was different. Then we went to Kansas because we’ve never been there before. I want to go somewhere new every month, because we’ve been here in Colorado for about six years and haven’t seen much yet. For November, I want to see the Denver Art Museum. Since dh doesn’t want to go to the art museum (I really don’t want to go with him and have him rush me anyway), we’ll also go on a drive somewhere nearby.

I don’t celebrate Halloween, but I started playing Animal Crossing and I went to an Animal Crossing Halloween party with my daughter. The characters were so adorable! My boy went trick-or-treating and dressed up as a plague doctor. I want to wear the plague mask to Walmart sometime. I took my mask today but chickened out. I’ll do it when I’m only going in for a couple things.

So that was October. Hopefully if you’re doing NaNoWriMo, you’ll get what you want out of it. I’m not holding my breath for the elections, but hopefully by the time I write my wrap-up of next month, we won’t be in the middle of a civil war and people are killing each other.

Creatures That Go Bump in the Night

By Brookelorren on October 27, 2020October 26, 202028 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means! Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today is supposed to be a “Halloween Freebie” but I don’t celebrate Halloween (I may include it in a book someday, but partly it involves my now dh’s former fiancée and a trip to Knott’s Scary Farm). So I decided to twist the topic and write about creatures that are in books I read that are often associated with Halloween. So let’s get started!

Shadowhunters books have all sorts of supernatural creatures: vampires, werewolves, warlocks, and even the occasional ghost! These aren’t scary books or anything like that though.

Stephen King is typically known for his scary stories, but 11/22/63 isn’t exactly one of them. It’s a time-traveling story where a man goes back and tries to prevent the shooting of JFK. There is a reference to a killer clown though.

So Chosen Ones wouldn’t be my go-to book for Halloween (then again, I don’t celebrate Halloween anyway), but this book does have zombies. So I guess it fits in this week’s theme.

The first line of Skyhunter is “Ghosts travel in packs.” They’re not exactly what you’re probably thinking of, but this is a ghost book like Chosen Ones is a zombie book.

Slasher Girls and Monster Boys is a book of horror stories. Some of these stories are scarier than others, and some do have some bona fide creatures that go bump in the night.

Vampires definitely count as creatures that go bump in the night. Twilight also has werewolves too, although those take a slightly less prominent role.

Happily, Renée Ahdieh’s book about vampires is going to be a trilogy. Goodreads still doesn’t reflect that a third book was picked up, but I saw it on Twitter.

While The Lady Rogue doesn’t exactly scream “scary!” it is a story that revolves around the real Count Dracula. Dracula reminds one of vampires, which fits into today’s topic.

And while we’re on the subject of the real Vlad the Impaler, Kiersten White’s And I Darken is a retelling of this historical era–with a twist. Dracula is female in this story. This book isn’t really paranormal, but it does give some of the background to our most famous spooky tales.

An Ember in the Ashes is also not a scary story, but it does contain some creatures that often only are seen wandering the streets on October 31st. There are ghosts, wights, efrits, and other fantastical creatures.

So that is this year’s Halloween Freebie on Top Ten Tuesday. There are a lot of similarities between this list and last year’s list; sorry about that. I don’t read a lot of scary books, I guess.

Next week, we’re going to take a completely different tack and talk about non-bookish hobbies. Those exist? Maybe I’ll just have to include things I’m interested in but don’t ever have time for. We’ll see.

So what did you write about this week? Since this is a freebie week, I’m sure we’ll see quite a variety.

Books I Read Because Someone Recommended them to Me

By Brookelorren on October 20, 2020October 19, 202026 Comments

Hello! Welcome again to Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today we’re talking about book recommendations. We seem to get them every week on Top Ten Tuesday. Some books I know exactly where I got the recommendations from. Most books, however, I get recommended from you fine folks. So today I’ll start with the ones I know where they were recommended, and I’ll finish off with some that I heard about from blogging.

After my grandma died, I went to her memorial “party.” It’s kind of weird to have a party, but that’s what she wanted. My former German teacher, Herr Taylor, was there. He was a good guy, and was more than just my German teacher; he was a friend of the family. We were talking, and he recommended The World is Flat to me. One of the things that stood out to me about that evening was I realized I probably was never going to see Herr Taylor again because my grandma was the main tie between us (he’s no longer with us, so I was right). The book turned out to be good.

Who says that libraries don’t sell books? I loved Divergent. One day at the library, I told that to the librarian, who recommended Legend to me. I have since purchased seven copies of this book (English, Spanish, German on Kindle, paperback, 1st printing hardback, and 2 as gifts). Not to mention I’ve purchased all of Marie Lu’s books since then (most of them in both hardback and Kindle versions).

When I was at the Penguin Teen Tour this March, Marie Lu said she had been reading Fallen Glory and thought it was really good. The day before the library shut down, I remembered the book and checked it out. It turns out, it was really good.

Back when I was working at Walmart, one of my coworkers was Lydia. When I discovered that she was a reader, well, that gave us a lot to talk about. She really loved The Vampire Academy, but I still haven’t gotten around to reading it yet. Her favorite author was P.C. Cast, so when I saw The Dysasters over on Netgalley, I had to request it.

Rebel by Beverly Jenkins was recommended by Bee on Twitter. I don’t know what happened to her–I haven’t seen her in a while, and when I searched for her, I couldn’t find her. I hope she’s okay. But she did recommend this book, which was one of two amazing books with the title Rebel that I read in 2019.

Back when I was listening to Underground Wellness, Sean Croxton, the host, always had different authors come on and talk about their books. One of the books that I read as a result of his recommendation was Deep Nutrition.

The Raven Boys is one of those books that I saw all the time in the book blogging world before I actually got around to reading it. And then of course, since I liked it, I have to go around and recommend it to other people.

And that’s all of the book recommendations I can say who I got the recommendation from. I heard about The Last Year of the War from one of my blogging friends. It was a beautiful book that I highly recommend to other people.

Fangirl is another one of those books that I ended up reading because everybody seemed to be raving about it. Although I checked this book out of the library, book bloggers deserve a lot of credit for spreading the word about all these amazing books that are out there.

The Grishaverse books are another set of books that were recommended by many of you fine people in the book blogging world. At the time I started reading these books, the Six of Crows duology was huge, but I decided to start at the very beginning, which I thought turned out to be a good choice.

So those are ten books that were either recommended to me personally, were recommended by someone who talked about books they liked, or were recommended by book bloggers. What books were recommended to you? Do you get a lot of personal recommendations from friends and librarians, or are you more like me, finding many of your books from bloggers that gush about their favorites, and then you just have to read them too?

Next week is a Halloween Freebie. I don’t celebrate that holiday, but I’ll try to find something to write about in the ballpark.

Books With 10+ Words in Their Titles

By Brookelorren on October 13, 2020October 13, 202022 Comments

Hello, and welcome to Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) where we talk about books! Today we’re talking about books with really long titles. While I’m sure I can find books with longer titles, I decided to stick with books I’ve already read, and I figured 10 or more words was long enough. So… all of these are books I’ve read, and they all have 10 or more words. They’re all nonfiction–I think that there’s just something about nonfiction that makes authors want long titles. Or publishers, at least.

10 Words

Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of History’s Greatest Buildings. Even though a book about buildings doesn’t sound like it’d be the most interesting, it actually was fascinating. Although it’s one of the shortest titles on today’s list, the alternate title of this book (from the 2015 edition) would be the longest, at 19 words: Fallen Glory: The Lives and Deaths of Twenty Lost Buildings from the Tower of Babel to the Twin Towers.

The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. This is another book with a ten-word title, although it’s contents are a little more controversial than the previous book. I’d recommend Murray’s other book (coming in at 9 words), Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which has more of the interesting parts, like how the wealthy have been segregating themselves into their own communities and don’t interact much with normal people, over this one.

12 Words

Hanger Management: Master Your Hunger and Improve Your Mood, Mind, and Relationships. I still need to review this book, which talks about how not getting the proper nutrition can have disastrous consequences on your state of mind.

Killing the SS: The Hunt for the Worst War Criminals in History. This book discusses the search for all the Nazis that fled after World War II. It’s amazing how so many got away with murder for so many years.

Father Of Lions: One Man’s Remarkable Quest to Save the Mosul Zoo. Several of these books with really long titles are history books, and most of those deal with history that happened decades (or even centuries) ago. This book also deals with history, but it’s a very recent book. It talks about how ISIS took over and how one man tried to save some zoo animals, which happened less than a decade ago.

13 Words

The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. I’ve read several of Boorstin’s books and they’ve all been fascinating. This one goes back to very early history all the way up to fairly recent times. I’ve reread this book, and might reread it again someday, even though it’s really long, just like its title.

Stop Missing Your Life: How to be Deeply Present in an Un-Present World. This is another book I should probably review someday. So many of us are distracted by various things. There’s so many different things to do, people are overworked, and our cell phones are a constant form of distraction. This book might help you learn to focus and pay more attention to the life going on around you. And it has a very long title.

14 Words

1453: The Holy War for Constantinople and the Clash of Islam and the West. One of the things I’ve found interesting over the last year-ish is that there are several authors whose fiction seems to be influenced by nonfiction. In the author’s note of And I Darken, Kiersten White mentions this book as one of the books she found helpful to write about the Ottoman Empire. I also don’t find it coincidental that Marie Lu has been talking about Fallen Glory for the past year and all these ruins of old buildings show up in Skyhunter. This book was on my radar for years before I read And I Darken, but I did think it was pretty cool seeing some of this book that had leeched into the Dracula book.

15 Words

The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. I love these books. There are three of them, corresponding to the Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance times. I just wish Ms. Bauer had written a fourth one corresponding to modern times, like her Story of the World books, which were written for homeschool children. This book has one of the longest titles I could find.

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. Eric Larson is another author who writes books with really long titles. Another book of his is called In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin. He’s also written The Devil in the White City: A Saga of Magic and Murder at the Fair that Changed America, which I haven’t read but sounds amazing (and has 18 words). This book gives more insight into World War II.

So those are ten books with some really long titles. Do you have books with longer titles? It’ll be interesting to see what other people come up with. Next week, we’re going to talk about books I read because someone recommended them to me.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By Brookelorren on October 10, 2020October 10, 20202 Comments

VE Schwab is one of those authors whom I own several books from, but I haven’t read many (before Addie LaRue, I had only read This Savage Song). The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of those books that you hear about long before you get the chance to read it. Ms. Schwab has been talking about this book on social media for a long time. It came out this week, and I highly recommend it.

What’s the Book About?

Addie was born in 1691 in the small village of Villon, France. She reminds me a lot of Belle from Beauty and the Beast, except instead of being a reader, she’s an artist. She wants more from life than that of a simple life being a wife and mother, never leaving her village, and dying without ever seeing or doing much else. The only trouble is, everyone expects her to carry out this role. This is how she finds herself in a wedding dress, being practically forced to marry someone she’s not in love with.

This is when she makes her “deal with the devil.” She asks to be free. Although she prayed and prayed and prayed to all the gods she can think of, the only one that answers is a god that answers after dark. She had been warned not to pray to them, but she’s out of options. He agrees to her deal, and she unwittingly agrees to a deal where she never dies or ages, but nobody ever remembers her.

Until one day–someone does remember her.

My Thoughts

This book is great. The story masterfully weaves the two timelines together: one that takes place in 2014, when she meets the man that remembers her, and the other starting in 1714, when she makes the deal with the devil. We learn about how she made the deal, how she survived, how she felt. Some things are hinted at, but we don’t learn the details of until well into the book. I didn’t find one timeline any more compelling than the other. They were both great.

As someone who enjoys history, I found it very interesting to see Addie live through three hundred years of it. Don’t worry, although the book is 448 pages, you don’t have to watch Addie live through all 300 years of her history; it only touches on the highlights. She lives through the French Revolution, World War II, and attends a speakeasy during the Roaring 20s. It’s not a history book, but you get to see a scene or two during these time periods, which I found interesting.

Addie as a person is great. She’s strong-willed like Belle, and I found her to be a likeable character. The man she meets in 2014 is also likeable, but does have some character development that he needs to work on. We do get to see that in the book, however.

This book made me cry because I missed my grandma, and call my mom. It must be difficult to live for so long and lose the people that are closest to you. In Addie’s case, since nobody could remember her, it was difficult to become close to anyone after she made her deal.

There’s a twist at the end which I’m not going to spoil. I don’t think it’s meant to be shocking–you see hints of what the twist is as the story progresses. As I read the very last section, I thought it was amazingly clever how the story was pieced together.

“Happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end,” he says, “everyone wants to be remembered.”
The Invisible life of Addie LaRue (ARC), loc. 5257

Conclusion

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was a great book, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up on my list of best books from 2020. Not only was it a very clever book, it kept me wanting to read more. Even though my reading has been way down this year, I’m super happy that I read this book. This is one of Ms. Schwab’s adult books, so I wouldn’t recommend it to her middle grade readers or her younger young adult readers, but if you’re 16 and up and looking for a story about time and what it’s like to go through a long life where nobody remembers you, I definitely recommend it.

Book Covers with Fall Colors/Vibes

By Brookelorren on October 6, 2020October 4, 202024 Comments

It’s Tuesday again, which means it’s time for another installment of Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl)! Other than that summer snow we had a few weeks ago, the weather is still warm, but the leaves are turning color (and our annual plants died in the garden).

Most books I read are either summery books, wintery books, or neutral books. In fact, I have a TBR lottery to help me pick out books, and for the winter I usually exclude summer book choices and vice versa. Since I don’t have too many books that remind me of fall, this might be a challenge, but that also allows me to add some books I might ordinarily not think of. So let’s go!

If there’s one book I would bet that I’d see on multiple lists this week, it would be Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell. If you’re going to read it this year, now would be the time to do so. The whole book is about people that work in a pumpkin patch!

The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree is one of those books that I don’t normally include on my lists, but I think it belongs here. Come to think of it, it has a really long title too, so it might get a spot on next week’s list too. But we’ll see.

Another book I haven’t thought about in a while is Where the Red Fern Grows. This cover is from an older edition (the newer one doesn’t seem as fall-like) but most of the covers over the years have given off fall vibes.

I haven’t read this book yet, but the orange and black on the cover of Call of the Raven seem to say fall to me. It just happened to be sitting around my pile of books waiting to be read, and that’s how it grabbed my attention.

A Spectacle of Souls by Jessica Julien isn’t orange and black, but it does have something of a creepy vibe to it.

Conquest has an orange and black cover and a dragon made out of flames. The book itself can be read at any time of year, but the cover definitely screams fall.

Chain of Gold is one of those covers that gives off both fall and spring vibes. The fall leaves in Cordelia’s hair remind me of autumn, but the gates in the background remind me of spring. I guess it’s only fitting, since the book was originally supposed to come out in the fall of 2019 and didn’t come out until this March.

Call Down the Hawk has an orange and black cover and a bird. Technically I’m sure it’s supposed to be a hawk, but if we want to, we can pretend it’s a creepy bird like the raven in Poe’s poem.

Normally when I think of camping, I think of summer, but I think there’s snow on the ground on this cover? Plus, having read the book, I know that Safe Harbour begins sometime in late summer or early fall and continues on into winter. So in my mind, it definitely doesn’t give off visions of s’mores by a warm campfire in the middle of July.

Another cover with some fall-like vibes is Frequency by Christopher Krovatin. It’s got the orange colors going on, even though it doesn’t exactly scream fall. I think it takes place in the fall too, but it’s been a couple years since I read it, so I’m not 100% sure.

Well, I did it! Ten covers with fall colors and/or vibes. This one was a little bit of a challenge for me, but one of the good things about challenging topics, I think, is that it causes me to go through Goodreads and find books that I haven’t talked about in a while. One of the great things about Top Ten Tuesday is that you get to see all these other books, and older books deserve some love from time to time too.

What did you come up with this week? Next week, we’re going to talk about books with really long titles. Time to break out all the books that we tend to abbreviate.

September 2020 Wrap-Up

By Brookelorren on September 30, 2020September 30, 20202 Comments

Hello! Hard to believe we’re already at the end of September. I hope you all had a wonderful month. Here is what I did:

Books Read:

The whole summer and spring has been awful for book reading. I’m amazed I’m still on-track for my Goodreads challenge. I only read 8 books this month:

The Opposite of Always – Justin A. Reynolds
The History of Wales – John Davies
Hanger Management – Susan Albers
Descendant of the Crane – Joan He
Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik
A Torch Against the Night – Sabaa Tahir (reread)
Skyhunter – Marie Lu
Macbeth – William Shakespeare (reread)

I almost forgot about Macbeth, but I read it in school with my boy and we finished today. It’s technically a reread since I read it when I was in high school.

I got to be a part of the Skyhunter Street Team and it was great! The people at Fierce Reads were so nice; they gave me a mask cover and a bookmark as a thank-you gift. I ended up getting two finished copies–I pre-ordered one and got another one from Bookish First–so I guess that means my niece gets an extra book from me for Christmas this year.

Writing:

School has started, and my critique partner has been pretty busy with teaching (as have I) and we haven’t worked on our books together lately. I have been working on Saving Adelinetta though. I have posted the first 26 chapters now. There’s five chapters left in the second section, which I’m currently posting, and then I probably won’t start posting the third section until 2021. I haven’t written most of the third section yet, and November is NaNoWriMo, where I’ll be working on an original project, so the third section is just going to have to wait.

Excited because tomorrow starts Preptober! But… if I want to start sending off my NaNoWriMo book (from 2018) out to agents on December 1st, I better get cracking. I’ve been dawdling on edits to The Brightness of Shadow so much that it might take that long. I always thought it would be funny to start querying my NaNoWriMo book on December 1st–although not from that year’s NaNo, obviouly.

Life:

My dh is still looking for work. For some reason we were denied for food benefits, even though unemployment pays $2000 a year below the poverty level. We reapplied, so hopefully they’ll say yes this time, otherwise we’re buying food this week with our credit card.

School started, and it’s been keeping my Mondays busy. I homeschool my boy 5 days a week (he started 9th grade) and I teach Spanish and German on Tuesdays. This year, I’m teaching via Zoom. The advantage to Zoom is that you can put all these nice pictures into your classes. The disadvantage is that it takes hours to put all these nice pictures into your classes. I was happy this Monday because I finished by 1 AM. Then I probably won’t use all this work next year.

My membership at the gym ends next week :-(. I paid for two years a little over two years ago, and they gave us an extension because they shut down for the Coronavirus. It’s been nice while it lasted. I’m going to miss swimming. I’ll have to find out a way to work out that isn’t too hard on my feet. Maybe yoga. I’m sure there’s some classes on YouTube or something I can cast to the TV. Does anybody know of any good (free) classes?

It snowed a couple of weeks ago, while it was still summer. I was worried about our plants. They lived through the snow, but died mysteriously this week. The strawberry plants are still fine though. We didn’t get any cantaloupes or watermelons, but we did get a cucumber.

That was a picture before all the plants died. We’re planting garlic next week; hopefully that will turn out well.

I made a mini-Olaf on our patio table when it snowed, so he could finally experience summer “and finally feel a summer breeze blow away a winter storm, and find out what happens to solid water when it gets warm.” This was from September 9th:

So that was my month. How was yours? Hopefully October will be wonderful for all of us!

Favorite Book Quotes

By Brookelorren on September 29, 2020September 28, 202022 Comments

Hello! It’s Tuesday again, which means it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday. This week, we’re talking about our favorite book quotes. Quotes are a popular topic, and if you want to see some of my other book quote topics, I previously posted about Extraordinary Book Quotes (from October 2019) and Book Quotes that Move Me (from April 2019). Even though we’ve done similar topics before, we’re always reading new books and coming up with some new, amazing quotes. One of the quotes I’m choosing this week are from books that aren’t even out yet (and one comes out today), and all of these quotes are ones we haven’t looked at before. Let’s look at today’s quotes!

“It was a good story, right?” he said. “Our story, I mean.”
“The best.”
“Inertia,” taken from The End and Other Beginnings, p. 38

I can’t believe I never used this in one of our quote TTTs before. These two lines almost always make me tear up. The story is about a girl and her former best friend, who is dying. They believe they are having their last conversation ever.

They escalate their demands. You first shoot a war criminal in the back. And then they tell you to kill a soldier who is innocent. And then they tell you to kill a civilian, and then a young girl. And you realize if you keep agreeing, it will keep spiraling down, down, down, until you’ve killed your own soul.
Skyhunter, ~Marie Lu, p. 206

I love how this quote talks about how the descent into evil can be slow. It’s not just applicable to war.

What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue ARC, ~VE Schwab, loc. 52

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is about a girl who, wanting a better life than the simple one in the village destinly has laid out for her, makes a deal with a god that causes her to live forever. The only problem is, nobody can remember her. I’m only 10% of the way through this book so far, so I’m sure there will be plenty of other great quotes in this book by the time I’m done (I’ve already highlighted several).

Life is funny, though; the most romantic moment of my life, and I’m at the top of a Ferris Wheel with a yearbook instead of the boy who wrote in it that he’s in love with me.
Today Tonight Tomorrow ARC, ~Rachel Lynn Solomon, loc. 3062

Anyone can be a saint until they’re hungry enough.
Sky Without Stars, ~Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell, p. 5

Chatine is one of the main characters in Sky Without Stars, and she grows up starving; in response, she turns to the criminal underworld her parents live in. She’s a sympathetic character because even though she does wrong, she does so out of desperation.

We live on through those who loved us.
Sparrow ARC, ~Mary Cecilia Jackson, p. 328

I don’t get the chance to talk about this book much, but going through this book of quotes, I came across this, and thought it was lovely.

the most worthy people are often the least likely to say so.
Broken Throne, ~Victoria Aveyard, p. 367

Doesn’t that always seem to be true?

“I’m smarter than you,” said Julian. “But I wouldn’t give myself big props. So is sawdust.”
Queen of Air and Darkness, ~Cassandra Clare, p. 161

I can’t remember who Julian was speaking to, but I thought this quote was funny.

“Oh, but what about all the exposure?” People die from exposure, don’t try using that line on me.
Don’t Read the Comments ARC, ~Eric Smith, loc. 2079

I’m sure a lot of writers and artists can identify with this comment.

She couldn’t make this boy fall in love with her. She couldn’t break his heart. Because if she did, it was her, not him, who was the beast.
Of Curses and Kisses, ~Sandhya Menon, p. 201

Of Curses and Kisses is a Beauty and the Beast retelling, so I loved how they worked this line in here.

What about you? Do you have any book quotes you really like? Let me know. Next week we’re going to talk about book covers with fall colors and vibes (although my southern hemisphere friends will be dreaming of spring).

Fall 2020 TBR

By Brookelorren on September 22, 2020September 21, 202022 Comments

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! And happy first day of fall too! Summer is my favorite time of year, which makes me sad, but I do love putting together my seasonal TBRs (even though my track record has been poor this last year; it might be do with having an unemployed husband who’s around all the time). Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

But first, let’s see how I did during the summer:

Conquest – Celest Harte: Read
Descendant of the Crane – Joan He: Read
Keeper – Kim Chance: Unread
Opposite of Always – Jason Reynolds: Read
Mirror Gate – Jeff Wheeler: Unread
The Bride Test – Helen Huang: Read
Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour – Morgan Matson: Read
The First Hostage – Joel C. Rosenberg: Unread
A Curse So Dark and Lonely – Brigid Kemmerer: Unread
Jo & Laurie – Melissa de La Cruz & Margaret Stohl: Read

It was only a 60% success rate. I did read finish the Twilight series during the summer and I had some ARCs. I’ve started to include some of my ARCs starting this list, because for now, I’m just not getting as much reading done, although I’m still caught up on my reading challenge.

So here’s what I hope to read this fall:

I don’t know if it’s considered cheating because I have the ARC and I’m already 43% done with the book, but Skyhunter was going to be on my fall TBR anyway (it comes out September 29th), so I figure I should put it up here. So far, it’s really good! I wasn’t a huge fan of the cover initially, but now that I’m reading it, it makes a lot more sense.

I didn’t finish Keeper this summer, so it’s carrying over to the fall. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to read it before winter.

The First Hostage is another carry-over from the summer. It’s been a couple of years since I read the first book in the series, so I might want to reread the first book. Maybe I’ll get this one on audiobook since I have a couple credits and I don’t have a physical copy of this book.

Mirror Gate is another book I didn’t read over the summer. It looks like a summery book, so maybe I’ll try to read this in October when the weather is still sometimes nice. It did snow a couple weeks ago, allowing Olaf to experience the summer, but the weather is nice again.

The final book I didn’t get the chance to read over the summer was A Curse So Dark and Lonely. Let’s see if I can get to all four of these books.

I have to wait until September to read A Sky Beyond the Storm, which doesn’t give me a lot of time to read this in the fall, but I pre-ordered this book and will probably start reading it on December 1st.

How I ended up with an ARC of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is beyond me. But it comes out on October 6, so I’m going to start this as soon as I finish Skyhunter. With the way I’ve been reading so slowly lately, I should finish it just prior to its release date.

I also have an ARC of Make Up Break Up, but I’m on Sandhya Menon’s street teams so I know why I got this. This book doesn’t come out until February, but if I put it here right on my Fall TBR, I’ll be able to read about it in plenty of time to gush about it prior to its release. She also has a Christmas novella coming out, Booked for Christmas, that sounds really cute.

Lucky me, I got a copy of The Red Scrolls of Magic for free! The Kindle version was on sale for $1.99 at Amazon.com, and I had a $5 credit on Amazon after they had a promotion where they gave you free money for reading on the Kindle. There were two slots open on the TBR lottery, and this was one of the books I drew. Cassandra Clare’s books are always good (if not long, haha).

Talon was the other book I drew out of the TBR lottery. This has an amazing cover! I got this one on sale too, a while back, which is pretty good, because my book budget is almost zero right now. Fortunately, our library is amazing and has bought every book I’ve recommended to them, but since I already own this, I don’t have to worry about that.

So that’s ten! Will I be able to read them all this quarter? Hopefully. Since I included most of the ARCs I have, there’s a better chance I’ll read these than the summer TBR books.

So what do you plan on reading this season? I’m sure I’ll discover many more books this week. Next week we’re going to talk about favorite book quotes. We’ve done topics like this before, so I’ll try to come up with some new ones.