E. Menozzi's Blog, page 18

Bookish Friends are Gold (and a TBR for March)

I got to hangout with my “Camp Book Club” friends (L. & S.) this morning over video chat. We talked about the books we’ve been reading, the two series we’ve been working our way through as a group (The Queens of Renthia and The Innkeeper Chronicles), and the books we want to read next. We also talked about current events and politics (“as you do”). It was the best. I love my Camp Book Club friends, and not just because I now have a plan that might extract me from my reading slump, but that...

February 2020: Reading Wrap Up

February went by in a flash, even with the extra day. Since I’m already a little late with this post, let’s dive in and talk about what I read in February.

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You may remember from my January wrap-up post, that my in-progress book at the start of February was Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. This was such a fun book, and totally different than anything else I’ve been reading recently. While I really enjoyed the characters and the mystery aspect of the plot, I did have a lot of questions...

My TBR for the #TomeTopple Readathon

Round ten of Tome Topple starts on 7 February (officially begins at 00:00 in your timezone), and it’s time for me to decide which tomes I want to topple this time around. As I mentioned in my post on series I want to finish this year, I have several books I’ve been saving just for this event. Unfortunately, I doubt I’m going to get through all of them before 11:59pm on 20 February.

I started by narrowing my list of eligible books and coming up with the following options.

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I’d originally...

January 2020: Reading Wrap Up

Wow! The first month of the year flew by so fast, I can hardly believe it’s already February! Ready for a recap of what I read (“Outbox”), what I bought/borrowed (“Inbox”), and what I’m currently reading? Cool. Let’s talk about books!

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First accomplishment of the New Year: I finished all the books I needed to read to complete all my prompts for the Winter Magical Readathon! Hooray!

I started the year with The Reluctant Queen by Sarah Beth Durst. This is the second book in a trilogy,...

Happy Book Birthday to Will of the Fae!

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Book three in my Modern Fae series is out today!

Wondering if this is a book you might like? Well, it’s a snowed-in, contemporary fantasy, with a f/f romance, set in Alaska, with humans learning magic, three factions of supernatural creatures vying for control of magic, and a complete “happily ever after” even though the plot of the series continues for at least two more books.

Want to know more? Awesome! Here’s the full cover copy:

Families are complicated. Magic can’t fix everything. And...

Series to Finish in 2020

It’s been snowing here on Orcas Island for the past few days, and I’ve been enjoying some excellent quality reading time. Now that I’m almost done with the books I wanted to finish reading for the Winter Magical Readathon, I’ve started thinking about the series I’d like to finish this year.

I mentioned in my 2020 reading goals post that I want to finish at least 5 series that I’ve started but not yet finished. I’m focusing on series that are now complete. So, most of these are older series....

2020 Reading Goals

Now that I’ve pretty much reviewed all aspects of my 2019 reading life, it’s time to focus on the year ahead. I decided a couple of things while reflecting on 2019. The first was that I am tracking my reading in way too many places. I know. I say this every year. Or at least, I definitely said it last year, and then went and did pretty much the exact same thing I’d been doing. I am making a few changes this year, and I’ll talk about that at the end of this post.

The other thing I decided was...

Top Five Surprise Favorite Reads of 2019

I was going to make this my top five favorite reads of 2019, but as I looked through my five star reads from 2019, trying to narrow them down to a top five, I noticed a few things. One is that I need a new rating system. The generic star rating system sucks at helping me decide on which were actually favorites.

So, I started thinking about which books stuck with me the most. Which were the ones I was still thinking about and recommending to others? That’s when I started to realize that the...

Most disappointing reads of 2019

All right. Let’s get this post out of the way. I hate talking about things I didn’t like because writing books is hard work. Publishing books is hard work. Truly bad books are just not that common. Problematic books are much more common, but that’s a different topic. Every year I argue with myself over whether or not to do this post. But, after looking through the books that received the lowest ratings on my spreadsheet, I decided to put this out there because the books that made my list...

January 2020 Bullet Journal Set-Up

And now a break from the reading summaries, stats, and updates to share my bullet journal spreads for 2020. Unlike most, I don’t bother starting a new notebook at the start of a new year. If I still have pages left in my current notebook, I just keep going.

Before diving into my 2020 spreads, I used almost ten pages planning my 2020 writing schedule and goals which I’m not showing here. In general, I laid out a future log for the entire year, four months to a page, divided horizontally so I...