Category: Let’s Discuss

I’ve been seeing lots of these lists around since we’re coming to the end of the 2010s, and I thought I’d jump in! Here’s the thing, this list would be practically impossible to make if I thought about it too hard. So I didn’t. I made a vow to go with my gut when making it. (And, surprisingly, I managed that for the most part without second-guessing myself too much). So, this isn’t a thorough list of books I loved. Heck, if I made another list right now, it might be different. But this is definitely a list of books that impacted me over the last decade. So, how did I come up with the list? I scanned my Goodreads list (in year-published order) and … picked. I sort of randomly decided that I would choose two from each year. And then, like I said, I went with my gut… Read more »

It’s that time of year again. We’ve got the final rounds of the Goodreads Choice Awards going on now. I always like to look at the lists and see what books I’ve read or been eager to read. I saw Sam @ We Live and Breathe Books do just that, and I was inspired to write a post about it too! Then Roberta @ Utopia State of Mind posted about Paste’s 30 Best Young Adult Novels of the 2010s, and I decided I had to see how my reading has stacked up against that list too! I’ll start with the Paste list. This was curated by Eric Smith and the Paste Books staff. I ADORE Eric Smith. His Twitter feed is both hilarious and informative, and if you don’t follow him, you need to. Since he was involved in creating this list, I decided I needed to see it. Here’s their list… Read more »

Take a quick glance at my sidebar and you’ll see that the vast majority of my followers follow me via Bloglovin’. Of course, I’ve always known that my follower count doesn’t directly equate to active blog readers, but back in the day, I got a lot of my traffic from Bloglovin’. I always cared about that number above all other follower stats (besides email, I suppose—but I know that lots of people don’t follow via email because they don’t want their inboxes overwhelmed). But lately, I’ve noticed that Bloglovin’ doesn’t have the same activity level that it used to. Nowadays, I don’t get many new Bloglovin’ followers, and at least three-quarters of the ones I do get are outright spam accounts (often with some sort of pervy info in their bios—no thank you!) Moreover, I’ve noticed that a lot of newer bloggers (ones who’ve started blogging in the past couple… Read more »

If you read my recap of the SCBWI conference I went to, you know that one of my takeaways was that I really need my name to be more prominent on my website. Because of that, I’ve decided to add it to my header. BUT when I added my name, I felt inspired to possibly make another little change …   What do you guys think? I thought it might be fun if my fox girl looked a bit more like me since my name is going right there next to her. And now that I have my purple highlights I thought, why not include them? (Yeah, I know, if I really wanted to capture my current look I’d shorten her hair too, but I’m not doing that.) I’m still sort of on the fence because the yellow-blonde hair really pops, and I’m wondering if the brown blends in a… Read more »

For their celebration of YA Week, Goodreads once again created a few lists specific to YA. Last year I analyzed these lists and compared them to my own reading, and I thought that was a really interesting exercise. Thought I’d do the same again this year. CLICK ON THE CATEGORY HEADINGS TO SEE THE LISTS ON GOODREADS. 100 Top YA Books: This is an all-time list that Goodreads came up with using books that are most often on shelves and their ratings (it was updated for 2019). I’ve read 54. (Which happens to be the exact same number I’d read from last year’s list, though the books have changed slightly.) I have 17 of them on my Goodreads TBR (down from 19 last year). 11 of these I own but haven’t read yet (up from 10 last year). 17 books aren’t technically on my TBR, but I probably plan to… Read more »