Showing posts with label previously. Show all posts
Showing posts with label previously. Show all posts

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Previously: August-December 2016

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 - December 2016


Normally, I would break these down into months, but, honestly, breaking it down by month looks really pitiful. But it's ok! Voila - five months of posts!

Review: Whatever. - S.J. Goslee
Waiting on Wednesday: Spontaneous - Aaron Starmer
Review: Seven Ways We Lie - Riley Redgate
Double Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne
Blogger Interview with Chayse from The Book Reaper (SBPT)
Review: Nevernight - Jay Kristoff
Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer - Michelle Hodkins
Stuffed Animal Saturday: Furthermore - Tahereh Mafi
Review: Boys of Summer - Jessica Brody
Review: The Smaller Evil - Stephanie Kuehn
Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set in a Fantasy World
Waiting on Wednesday: Furthermore - Tahereh Mafi
Review: The Geography of You and Me - Jennifer E. Smith
Review: Furthermore - Tahereh Mafi
Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Have Been on Your TBR Since Before You Started Blogging
Waiting on Wednesday: Empire of Storms - Sarah J. Maas
Review: The Wrath and the Dawn - Renee Ahdieh
Review: Mosquitoland - David Arnold
Review: Tales of the Peculiar - Ransom Riggs
Blog Tour + Cover Cosmetics + Giveaway: Nemesis - Anna Banks
Review: A Shadow Bright and Burning - Jessica Cluess
Review: Poisoned Blade - Kate Elliot
Blog Tour Review: Holding Up the Universe - Jennifer Niven
Review: Gemina - Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Review: Let It Snow - Maureen Johnson, John Green, Lauren Myracle
Review: The Sun is Also a Star - Nicola Yoon
Waiting on Wednesday: The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas

Keeping Up with the WLABBers 


WLABB has a new co-blogger!


Everyone please give a warm welcome to our new co-blogger, Sam!

Greetings! I am Sam, (Sam I am) and I am thrilled to be a contributor for WLABB. An avid reader and science nerd, I would describe myself as a fiction lover. I do tend to read a lot of contemporary romances, but I also like to mix it up. I also love discussing books in reader groups and on Instagram.

Find Sam on social media: Goodreads | Twitter | Instagram

Kiersten


When I was first thinking about writing this post, I was like, "What am I going to write? Oh, you know, another semester. It's senior year. Blah blah." But then I realized that actually I did a bunch of things? So I will talk about the things now.

Before going back to school, WLABB had a bit of a photoshoot hang out and we took some pretty cool photos (thanks to Noor's mad photo skillz). Me and Amrutha were in desperate need of new profile pictures.


I mean, our hangout wasn't entirely to have a photoshoot. We went for brunch at this cool dinner with amazing pierogies, and then we went to Asbury Park to walk around the boardwalk and eventually get ice cream in Ocean Grove. Asbury Park boardwalk is where we took all our photos since there are a ton of cool murals. Lots of Insta-worthy pics!!!




Once I got back to school, I was working on a hip-hop ballet called Le Diable Amoureux. In the show, Alvaro and his fiance Christelle challenge the devil to come between them. The Devil, intrigued by this challenge, with the help of her sidekick Raoul, travels to earth to try and seduce Alvaro using three different incarnations of herself: the Siren, the Exotic, and the Innocent. I got to play the Siren and dance as a part of the ensemble, and it was really awesome!


We even had a super cool photoshoot for promotional profile pictures and cover photos for the show! It was really fun going out into the city near school and finding cool places to pose. The one above was taken in this really random back alley that we found next to a building through a parking lot. It was seriously gorgeous, and such a great find.


In addition to dancing in the show, I was also the costume designer! It was seriously exhausting to be in rehearsal everyday, go to class, go to work, and work on all the costumes for the show at the same day. I didn't get a lot of sleep, but I managed to pull it off! Below is a picture of me as the Siren and the choreographer (who played Alvaro) in our costumes! If you want to check it out, a full recording of the show is posted on YouTube here (it's less than 45 minutes long, so not a huge time commitment, and it's really cool I promise)!


After the show was over, things ~sort of~ slowed down a bit, but school has a way of always giving you a lot to do. One fun highlight was making duct tape outfits for a party with my friend Ashlee. Peep the lyrics to Closer on the side since we're obsessed with that song.


Other than that, it was mostly just the same stuff as other years, except it's weird because it was my last fall semester of undergrad. I'm still a part of DanceWorks as a dancer, choreographer, and costume coordinator, but it's weird thinking "for the last time." Yikes. Anyway, I am excited for my final semester at Syracuse (although I am applying there for graduate school, so who knows). Although I know sorority recruitment is going to be exhausting at the beginning of the semester, I'm excited for the DanceWorks show as well as a play that I'm lighting designing. It should be a great semester!

2017 Reading Goals

I kind of did a pitiful job with reading in 2016, so I guess my goal this year is to just do better? I'd like to read some cool books. Some books that are definitely on my radar to read this year are Empire of Storms, which is seriously overdue, A Court of Wings and Ruin (obviously), and the final Illuminae Files book (I need this asap). I'd also like to get back into bookstagraming more often! The main reason I usually don't is because my room is messy, so if I clean my room, it's a double win.

Noor


Who am I???? Am I even a person???? Have I Ever done Anything in my entire Life?????? Literally never!!!!!!! (okay maybe 0.5 of a thing but like...barely)
I am going to divide this into sections!!! and lists!!!! amazing!!!

Life Things
I started school again after taking a year off and the semester actually went really well!!! I had some really amazing professors and met some hella cool people and didn't immediately feel disenchanted with the idea of higher education as I'd been feeling before so like...A+ to Fall 2016 (I hope I'm not jinxing myself for the spring)

Fun Things
In August, right before my semester started, I took a trip to New Jersey, which is when I took those pictures of Kiersten that she posted in her section, and now that it's winter break, I'm down in Dallas, writing this post from the sunny 70 degree Texas winter (disgusting, I know). I never miss an opportunity to plug my Instagram so if you want the cutest shots from all my trips follow @looonylovegood but for your convenience I will share a select few from the WLABB photoshoot here (mostly bc if I had to pick and choose from /all/ my photoshoots I would never get anything done ever and I gotta share something because y'all know I love attention)
This is Kiersten and I being angry (probably at Amrutha and/or Marlon)
(This is NOT the WLABB photoshoot but it's a fun mural during the same trip so like...fight me)

Also, a couple of pics from my ongoing Dallas trip including this beautiful one of my son and I (for more baby pics follow me on Twitter @abnoormality):


Birthday
My birthday is the most important day of the year so it gets its own category. I conquered my fear of skirts and did not look Terrible so 21 is looking like it's gonna be a good year. #wild


I tried not to be as rambly or as obessive with the photos as I feel like I often am, mostly because I am HELLA sick right not and have taken like three different cold and flu medicines and probably forgot to mention something and may or may not be dying so I'm not really sure if anything is even real but happy new year friends!!!!!

2017 Reading Goals

Listen. I feel like 2016 was not even a real year. Did I read a lot??? Did I read nothing???? Did anything even happen????? ANYWAY, I am going to just not think about this past year and think about this upcoming year instead!!!! Wooo!!!! #lit

I'm not really good at "goals" but, after reading Kiersten's section, the bookstagramming thing is definitely something I want to focus on a lot more!! The problem for me is that I always think about taking pictures but I''m often busy during the daytime and I don't really have good lighting after the sun sets so these winter months with 4pm sunsets are really doing me dirty. I really liked the month where we did bookstagram challenges and I definitely want to do at least one again this year!

As for specific books, there are like five million 2017 books I want to read and five million pre-2017 I need to catch up on so like my goal is to not fall into reading slumps and to keep reading and keep blogging while I'm busy with school and stuff.

This is probably as concrete as I'll be able to get but I wish you all a good reading year!


Amrutha


So like??? A lot of what Kiersten and Noor have are photos to be fair I am not nearly as aesthetic as either of them so I'm going to randomly intersperse (did I use that word right who knows) photos of my self in between random life updates so that things seem spaced out and well organized.


The pic above is from our WLABB photo shoot, the universe knows I can't take a picture I like without professional make up from Kiersten and aesthetic instagram pic taking from Noor. I've seen Kiersten like 2.5 times since our WLABB hang out but am still waiting on Noor's Next Visit 2k17.


Here is another pic of me being the nose because Amrutha "nose" best...yes I am that lame. So this year I'm doing a thing: I'm an RA now in these really nice new apartments at Rutgers so I spend a lot of time doing Reslife things. The good news is I actually like my staff and my building and my residents so it's been a pretty swell time. 

On the left you will see a group pic where we are standing under a cut off Ocean Avenue sign. #WeTried. In other news though, I am slowly but surely trying to figure out what I want to do post graduation which is looming in the horizon (Spring 2018). School has gotten a lot more exciting since I've been able to connect it to solid goals for the Future so we'll so where that takes me.

In terms of fun things I think I've actually learned to cook like an adult, thanks to my new kitchen in my aforementioned apartment. I've done some more of my monthly projects, which included how to make healthier(ish) versions of my favorite not so healthy foods and spending a month forcing people to register to vote. The last few months have been pretty interesting so look out 2017 new year same me is coming @ you.


2017 Reading Goals

Uh. So clearly, from my lack of posts, you can see that I haven't read much these past few months. Also, I didn't read much from January to May. Surprisingly, my reading goal of 2017 is to read more. Butttttttt, a specific goal I have is to read more classic award winning books and also read more magazine/newspaper/literary journal articles. I just want to learn hella things and be as cultured as possible. If you have suggestions hit me up @ruthlessram on twitter!!

Sam


The whole full-time job thing does not leave me as much time for fun as I would like, but my 3 hour commute does give me lots of QT for reading. 

I had set a GoodReads reading goal of 250 books, and well….


Mission accomplished. The biggest difference in my reading habits is that I added audiobooks to my repertoire. I listened to 105. (I hope to have a discussion post about this later.)

Other than reading, I went and saw “Le Diable Amoureux”, which I enjoyed very much. I am not a super-creative person, therefore, I am very impressed by those who can create and create well. I also was lucky enough to see a two shows at Paper Mill Playhouse as I have a subscription. I saw The Producers, which was hilarious, and The Bodyguard. The Bodyguard was such a nostalgic experience for me, and I thoroughly enjoyed the show. 

2017 Reading Goals

I set a goal of 5 books a week or 260 books for the year. In addition to the GoodReads challenge, I signed up for the Pop Sugar Reading Challenge, the Alphabet Soup Reading Challenge, and the Monthly Motif Reading Challenge. I was looking for a way to change up my reading habits, and I think these challenges will help. Keep an eye out for my Reading Challenge post. I will continue my reading goal of finishing series and reading books I own (why is this so hard!). I also hope to attend more bookish events. Before Kiersten left for college, we used to attend many signings and releases. Now, she is too far away (sad face), but at least I have tickets for BookCon and it’s back in NYC (applause, applause, applause). 

What have you been up to last month?
Let us know in the comments!
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Monday, August 1, 2016

Previously on WLABB: July 2016

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 July 2016


Stuffed Animal Saturday: Ghost Talkers - Mary Robinette Kowal
Emily from Emily Reads Everything Talks Baking (SBPT)
Waiting on Wednesday: Gemina - Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff
Review: The Memory Book - Lara Avery
Double Review: A Court of Mist and Fury - Sarah J. Maas
Series Review + Giveaway: The Lunar Chronicles - Marissa Meyer
Top Ten Tuesday: Facts About Me
Review: This Raging Light - Estelle Laure
Review: Vanishing Girls - Lauren Oliver
Pokémon Go Book Tag with Bayram from Never Ending Books (SBPT)
Review: Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies - Laura Stampler
Top Ten Tuesday: Books Set Outside of the US
Waiting on Wednesday: The Secret of a Heart Note - Stacey Lee
Review: I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson
Double Review: You Know Me Well - Nina LaCour & David Levithan
Bookish Scavenger Hunt with Tina from Tina the Bookworm (SBPT)
Double Review: How to Hang a Witch - Adriana Mather
Top Ten Tuesday: Things Books Have Made Me Want to Do or Learn About After Reading Them
Review: 99 Days - Katie Cotugno
ARC August & #ReadThemAllThon TBRs
Stuffed Animal Saturday: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer - Michelle Hodkin
Favorite Dances with Eli from The Silver Words (SBPT)

Kiersten's SBPT posts on other blogs
Cover Cosmetics: The King Slayer - Virginia Boecker @ The Book Reaper
Ghost Talkers Discussion with Eli @ The Silver Words
Bookish Scavenger Hunt @ Tina the Bookworm

Keeping Up with the WLABBers 


WLABB is on Instagram!



This past month, Noor and Kiersten decided to start a We Live and Breathe Books bookstagram account! We don't have many photos yet, but we'd love it if you checked us out. You can find us @wlabb. Here's what our feed looks like so far:


We like to keep to a pretty loose theme when it comes to photos. It's fun to be able to take pictures that look really different, so that's what we decided to stick with. We also decided to participate in three bookstagram challenges for August. We're going to be doing #BackToBooksAugust, #SerialTalesInAugust, and #EOSChallenge! It's going to be fun to have prompts to go off of and get creative to combine prompts.

If you bookstagram, let us know so we can check it out!

Kiersten


Hello, friends! I don't know why but July felt like a really long month to me. I mean, I'm not complaining - it just felt longer than June did.

I started out this month by taking the GRE, which went well! I ended up getting good scores, so I'm right on track for graduate school applications in the fall.

I didn't do a lot this month, but I did go into the city one day, which was really fun. First I went to the Fashion Institute of Technology museum, which had an exhibit about uniforms. I wasn't super interested in going at first (it's free so I figured why not go), but it ended up being really interesting! They showed uniforms for military, companies, and schools partnered with fashion designs inspired by the uniforms. After that, I went to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the Manus x Machina exhibit. The exhibit was absolutely gorgeous! It was amazing to see the way designers were using technology in their work. From laser cutting to 3D printing, everything was so cool. Since I was in the area, I decided to go to Central Park to Pokémon Go! Unfortunately, my phone wasn't able to connect to the server for most of the day. It was very disappointing. After that, I headed to Chinatown to get some onigiri for dinner, and then to see one of my friends in a play at Dixon Place. Overall it was a really fun day! It definitely would've been better if I had gotten credit on my Poké Eggs for all my walking though...

July was a great reading month! I really enjoyed everything I read this month except for Ghost Talkers, which was kind of "meh" for me. It was nice to finally finish off The Lunar Chronicles by reading Fairest and Winter, and I finally got to read Lady Midnight! It took me a while to really get invested in the story (I think because I got distracted by Jem and Tessa's mention in the prologue); I'm really looking forward to the next book! How to Hang a Witch came out last week, so you should definitely check that out, and Whatever. and Nevernight both come out soon, so look out for reviews in the next two weeks!

I decided that I'm going to participate in ARC August and #ReadThemAllThon this month, so my TBR is really ambitious. You can check out my full (overambitious) TBR on my ARC August and #ReadThemAllThon TBR post. For the sake of the photo collage, I decided to just show off my highest priority books for next month. I'm moving back to school on the 20th, starting rehearsal for a show on the 22nd, and starting classes on the 29th, so I probably won't even read all of these. BUT I WILL TRY!!! I'm going to have to obsess over my bullet journal and micromanage my time so I can be productive.

Noor


Sup home skillets. I'm with Kiersten, I feel like the beginning of July was years ago. I can hardly remember it. It was a more youthful, joyous time and now I am a frail, old woman made decrepit by time.

The month started off with some fun stuff: TWO of my friends from New Jersey were in North Carolina (not together, two separate occasions) so we did fun stuff like brunch and boating. When we went boating, our group of six split up into three boats, and my friend and I were unarguably the most uncoordinated. We kept failing to turn around and heading the wrong direction and were met with our friends yelling stupid jokes at us but in my defense, I was not the weak link. Anyway, we didn't flip over like that time in Oklahoma (still bitter) so it was still a Positive Experience.

There was also some not-so-fun stuff like my transfer orientation for NC State. I got to see the area where most of my classes were, which was cool, but other than that it was a rehashing of all the stuff you already know that they just tell you when your parents are there so they feel in-control. My biggest personal accomplishment of the month also falls in with the not-so-fun stuff. I finally went to the dentist for the first time since maybe age 12. I know you're all probably raising your eyebrows and silently judging, but I swear I'm not a decaying crone with two teeth left because I leave them in a state of negligence. I brush every day, they're perfectly straight, my friend even commented over FaceTime less than an hour ago that they were white. I've just had really awful terrible experiences with dentists in my youth and eventually I just refused to go out of sheer terror. I figured I'd ever go if I was dying or something but not unless I really needed to. Well, the other week I had some gum irritation and it seemed like an infection so my mom made me hit up our local dentist and it was actually a Pleasant Experience. I feel like this was a great stride toward personal growth and self-actualization.

As you can see, there's no coherency with my July reads, I just read whatever tickled my fancy at the moment, but here are some brief comments on my reads:

How to Hang a Witch: Kiersten and I reviewed this last week and both gave it 5 stars. This was so unexpectedly good and I definitely recommend it if you want something paranormal.

The Geography of You and Me: I usually love Jen E. Smith but I wasn't totally feeling this one. However, it was still a cutesy story and a nice concept.

You Know Me Well: I'm always here for a David Levithan book and while it wasn't my favorite of his works, it was a fun story and I'm definitely going to look out for Nina LaCour's work.

The Sun is Also a Star: I loved Nicola Yoon's debut -- Everything, Everything -- and couldn't wait to read her next book so I read the ARC Kiersten got me from BEA as soon as I received it and I was totally in love with every piece of this story. I can't wait to review it when the release date is close!

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer: Okay, so I cheated a little and I put this on my read list even though I'm not finished. I will be done by the time this posts but I got distracted reading Cursed Child today and didn't finish Mara Dyer. I have mixed feeling about what I've read but we'll see.

The Wrath and the Dawn: Another book I can't wait to review; this was so spectacular and riveting, the sequel is one of my top priority books right now.
So, I cheated again, just like in the last section. I actually have already finished Cursed Child but the graphics were already made when I did so now it's staying in my TBR. I guess I shouldn't have assumed it would take me past the release day to read it, but also in my head I was expecting to be like 700 pages and it was only 300 so. Anyway. as I mentioned, I seriously need to read The Rose and the Dagger because its predecessor had a very vague ending and I need to soak in every bit of information about these characters. I also have heard great things about The Last Boy and Girl in the World and I read a few pages when I was in Barnes & Noble waiting for my mom, so I'm intrigued. Lastly, I have an ARC of Holding up the Universe and it keeps staring at me.

Remember to follow our bookstagram and see the cool challenges we're doing!

Amrutha


So another month of summer, another month in which Noor & Kiersten lead far more exciting lives than lil ol' me. But worry not, anyone who actually reads these personal bits of my life! Next month I'll be back at school and while I'll still be boring, I'll be boring with slightly more interesting stories to tell you guys.

So for those of you who don't know (all of you) I danced Indian Classical dance for like 13 years of my life, so that was a thing. Anyway, because of ankle issues and the like I haven't been involved the last couple years. Anyway, a friend of mine who is a little younger was doing a big performance last week and so I spent my month being involved with that! I wound up making this my project of the month just because 1) her event was in July it wasn't something that could be pushed and 2) turns out wood work is an expensive hobby...lots of tools and things are involved. Not sure what I'm doing yet for August but I'll let ya'll know in next month's post!

So, July had its ups and downs in terms of reading. The Memory Book was STUNNING. I loved it so much, both the premise and the writing. I also, to an extent, enjoyed You Know Me Well & I'll Give You the Sun. I, like Noor, am also kind of fake because I put The Problem With Forever on here but I started it and have not finished it yet -- it does seem to have some promise though. I didn't really enjoy either Katie Cotugno book -- I reviewed 99 Days and said I'd like to read more from her to see if it was just a plot problem, but to be honest I think I just didn't jive too well with the writing style. 

Like always, half the books here are from last month's TBR because I am #theworst. Harry Potter is on here because Harry Potter. Girl in Pieces is on here because Kiersten declared that I would read it, and Kiersten's wish is my command.


What have you been up to last month?
Let us know in the comments!
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Friday, July 1, 2016

Previously on WLABB: June 2016

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 June 2016

Review: Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here - Anna Breslaw
Stuffed Animal Saturday: And I Darken - Kiersten White
Review: Museum of Heartbreak - Meg Leder
Waiting on Wednesday: Change Places with Me - Lois Metzger
Review: A Court of Thorns and Roses - Sarah J. Maas
Review: The Loose Ends List - Carrie Firestone
Review: The King Slayer - Virginia Boecker
Top Ten Tuesday: Most Anticipated Releases for the Second Half of 2016
Review: Not If I See You First - Eric Lindstrom
Review: The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
Stuffed Animal Saturday: Vanishing Girls - Lauren Oliver
Top Ten Tuesday: 2016 Releases We Promise to Read Soon
Waiting on Wednesday: You Know Me Well - Nina LaCour & David Levithan
Recap: BEA + BookCon 2016
Review: Did I Mention I Love You - Estelle Maskame
Recap: B-Fest 2016 / Ivory and Bone Launch
Top Ten Tuesday: Kiersten's Powerpoint Slides
Review: And I Darken - Kiersten White
Triple Review: Illuminae - Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff

Keeping Up with the WLABBers 

Kiersten

June has been a very calm month! I've spent most of my time relaxing, reading, and working on some costume design things for a show I'm working on in the fall. Other than that, I went to B-Fest and I also got to see Dashboard Confessional in concert again!

Oh, I also started bullet journaling! I really like it. I'm kind of neurotic so it's another thing I can obsess over for no particular reason. I don't really have anything to keep track of during the summer, but I'm hoping I'll keep up with it during the school year even when things get crazy.

I'd also just like to add in here that if you haven't read the Top Ten Tuesday post about my Powerpoint slides, it's a good laugh and you should read it. I'm not sure how people who don't know us feel about it when they read it; I really want to know.

Starting next month, I'll be taking part in the Summer Blog Promo Tour hosted by The Book Bratz. Basically, every Sunday for the rest of the summer, there will be a blogger from a different blog doing a guest post or collaborative post with me here on We Live and Breathe Books. It's a fun way to get to know other bloggers as a blogger, but also to share some other awesome blogs with readers!

I'll also be taking the GRE in a few days, so that'll be fun.

June was off to a rough start when it comes to reading. I attempted to read The Loose Ends List but decided that the concept just wasn't for me after about 20 pages. Then, I tried The Girls, which I was really excited about. Unfortunately, I just wasn't feeling the writing style. I think I'll try to read it again eventually, but I just wasn't in the mood for it. Next, I attempted to read And I Darken. I had such high hopes for this book, especially given all the good buzz around it, but I found it very slow and tedious, so I stopped a third of the way through.

Fortunately, the rest of the books I read this month were successes! I started off with the final book in the Grisha Trilogy, Ruin and Rising, and I absolutely loved it! It was such a great finale, and definitely my favorite book in the trilogy. After that, I read Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies, which was adorable. Next, I read The Sword of Summer, which I knew I would enjoy because Uncle Rick never lets me down. Magnus Chase made me want falafel even more than usual. And then, I decided to crush all my Feels with A Court of Mist and Fury, and I honestly can't get over how much I absolutely loved it. I also read Six of Crows this month, and now I'm dying to find out what happens in the next one because it was so good!


While I kind of want to abandon every other book I own to just reread A Court of Mist and Fury forever, I'll try to move on to other books. I got Fairest and Winter from the elibrary a few days ago, so those are a priority for my July TBR. As for ARCs this month, How to Hang a Witch and Ghost Talkers are the physical ones I want to tackle, in addition to Nevernight as an eARC. If I have more time, I might also tackle Thieving Weasels and/or Magonia. Hopefully this month's TBR will be more successful than last month!

Noor

Even though I took the past year off and I'm not on a school schedule, now that it's June it feels so much like ~~summer vacation~~. I think it's partially because my friends are summering now too so I'm picking up their vibes and partially because a lot of the major things that were stressing me out and gnawing a hole of anxiety inside me started to resolve. It was like a domino effect, one thing effecting one change effecting another. One of the things that happened this month is that I committed to a college to transfer into this fall: NC State University. The transfer process is annoying and weird and you don't hear back from schools until literally June and I tend to panic whenever someone asks me about my life so now I have Concrete Life Updates to give and not panic about. Look how cute and well-adjusted I look in this photo of myself after my advising appointment (picking classes was another stress because people already registered and therefore many classes were full but I persevered).

Another kinda big thing that happened this month was that I was admitted into the hospital for brain mapping. Basically, I was hooked up to electrodes for a week and my seizure medication was taken away so the doctors could measure where exactly in my brain my seizures come from, to see if medication is the best option for me or if I should consider surgery. It kinda sucked but on the second to last day, they intravenously gave me an antianxiety and mild sedative, and it felt like such a nice haze. I told my mom I wanted more and she told me that's how drug addictions start. I don't have any pictures from the hospital where I'm not hijabless but rest assured, I look adorable in a hospital gown.

Other than college and hospitalization, my month has been normal. I've been fasting for Ramadan but I couldn't do so in the hospital and right after release so I only really got to fast 10 days. I also had to go to my brother's high school graduation, no matter how hard I tried to get out of it. I did some shopping post-hospital and for the first time I magically found the perfect items without having to have three mental breakdowns first. I think the best thing that happened to me this month though was that I ordered Colourpop's Ultra Metallic Lipsticks and they were waiting for me when I came back from the hospital.
Okay, I think I've sufficiently rambled on about my life, so let's get down to business and talk about the books I've read this month.



June was such a good book month for me. I started the month with A Court of Thorns and Roses and ended it with its sequel, A Court of Mist and Fury. I absolutely loved ACOTAR, getting sucked into the world of the fae (which I've definitely mentioned before are my favorite kind of fantasy creature) and the interesting characters. While I still have a bit of ACOMAF left to go I can say pretty safely that I love it even more than ACOTAR. I highly recommend both books in this series and look out for a double review of ACOMAF soon. After ACOTAR, I read Illuminae and I legitimately woke up thinking about it the days after I finished reading. We just posted a triple review yesterday and all three of us gave it five stars, and I think it deserved every one of those 15 stars because it was wild in the best way. I needed something more contemporary after ACOTAR and Illuminae so I read Vanishing Girls. I really liked the book and I feel like Lauren Oliver refines her writing style more and more with every book, which I appreciate. I can't wait until her new book Replica comes out and I can read that too. Last on my list is And I Darken, and even though Kiersten stopped reading after the 1/3 mark, I thought it was a great book. I know I gave it 3.5 stars, which sounds a little on-the-fence, but I definitely enjoyed it and hope the sequel is even better.
Like last time, I intend to read more than three books but I'm awful at making decisions ahead of time (or at all) so these are just ones I definitely want to read. I can't believe I still haven't read You Know Me Well to be honest. David Levithan is one of my favorite authors and in my head we are casual homies who text each other about our problems (not in a weird obsessive way, just in an I-admire-your-work-and-think-you-are-a-rad-person way) so anything he's a part of is automatically high priority for me. This is Where it Ends was on my TBR last month and I figure when I go to B&N to buy You Know Me Well, I'll pick this up. It just sounds cool and I hear good things about it. Kiersten got me an ARC of The Sun is Also a Star from BEA and I just want to jump right in. I loved Everything, Everything so much that I've been waiting for Nicola Yoon's next novel and now that I have it, I want to read it ASAP.



Since I always subject you to long, rambling paragraphs about everything, let me know your own ramble-worthy summer shenanigans! Peace out cub scouts :* 

Amrutha

Noor and Kiersten seem to have a lot of fun life updates but because I am boring and my life is boring, I do not. June passed by real quickly with me just chilling. I started taking these kickboxing classes in an attempt to be slightly healthier and theres no update yet on whether or not its working, but if one day I magically sprout a celery stick on top of my head or something, I'll be sure to post a cute pic like Noor has done above.

Also, for those of you lucky souls who don't know me IRL, pretty much every month since September of my freshman year of high school (6 years ago because I am old and my bones are basically fossilizing as I type this), I've done like a lil personal learning project. I've done really ambitious things like learning morse code and some chill things like how to do my eyeliner without crying. Basically I'll spend all my free time (like whilst on busses or waiting for things or when ads are playing on youtube) dedicated to learning about whatever that month's project was. I've missed a couple months here and there (mostly because college is a struggle and a half) but I'm pretty good with it. June has really been all about cooking big girl adult foods -- I'm going to have my own apartment with no roommates or anything because I'll be working for ResLife at my school, so somehow I'm going to have to salvage some food for myself. I can follow directions as well as the next person and many summers ago, one of my projects was "learning to cook" in which I taught myself basically how to cook mac n' cheese from a box and oreo truffles. This June has been about /real/ food and not having to reference a recipe the next time I make it. My July project is going to be how to build crafts and such out of wood (?) I've been afraid of using drills for too long so I've been watching lots of DIY videos to prep. Some ideas do flop though, so if you have any ideas for July, or worst case August, let me know in the comments!

I've typed a lot for someone who did effectively nothing cool this month. On to the books.

Yo. So all of the books I read this month either someone here at WLABB has reviewed or I have reviewed or I will review really shortly. First of all, our review of Illuminae was posted yesterday and we all LIKE ALL OF US, gave it a 5/5. What a damn good book. Review hereeee. On a roll with me agreeing with Noor and Kiersten, I read both Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here and The Museum of Heartbreak after seeing the reviews posted here. Let me just say, Noor & Kiersten were SPOT ON with their reviews of those. The former made me want to die because I hated the protagonist so much (as touched upon by Noor here), and the latter made me want to die because it was SO GOOD. I'm basically known for disagreeing with books Kiersten thinks are amazing but I just couldn't disagree with her 5/5 for The Museum of Heartbreak (review here). DIMILY was interesting and questionable all at the same time, but to be fair even though I wasn't a huge fan I'm 100% going to read the next book in the series. The Loose Ends List wasn't that great and wasn't my style at all so I probably won't be reading another book like that for a long while. I'm like in the middle of Goodbye Stranger now so we'll see how that goes, but This Raging Light was seriously awesome and there is a review to come!

Half the books on here are books from last months TBR. Can you say I'm bad at this? Yes. But I'll try!!! I have 3/4 of these books currently in my possession so fingers crossed. Tell us about your summers! Tell us what books we should read! Give us guidance because I think we here at WLABB could use it.


What have you been up to last month?
Let us know in the comments!
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Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Previously on WLABB: April & May 2016

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 April & May 2016

Review: Tell Me Three Things - Julie Buxbaum
Waiting on Wednesday: Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here - Anna Breslaw
Review: I'll Give You the Sun - Jandy Nelson
Waiting on Wednesday: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, & John Tiffany
3rd Blogiversary Giveaway (Open through June 8th)
Review: The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson
Review: Into the Dim - Janet B. Taylor

Keeping Up with the WLABBers 

Kiersten

My April was pretty crazy given all the end of the school year work and assisting lighting design on a show - I kind of stopped being a person for a while. But May was a lot more fun and relaxing!

One of the biggest highlights of May was attending BookExpo America and BookCon in Chicago! I was pretty exhausted since I was still finishing up a final paper during my first days at BEA, but it was a lot of fun! I'll be doing a recap of my time there soon.

Since then, I've been relaxing, catching up on some TV, and reading! I'm excited to read a lot this summer, especially with all the awesome books I got at BEA, and I'll also be working on making costumes for a show I'm working on in September.

Because of all the school work, I had to take some time off from reading in April. I still got to read some awesome books though! I started out April by finishing Into the Dim, which I reviewed yesterday. I really enjoyed the time travel aspect in that book! I FINALLY read Illuminae, which was so incredible, and then after BEA, I read Gemina, which was ALSO INCREDIBLE. I'm dying to read book three even though it's a long ways away (insert sadface here). I also finally started the Grisha trilogy, and I've finished Shadow and Bone and Siege and Storm thus far. I cannot believe I waited so long to read this series - it's so good! My final read of May was Museum of Heartbreak, which I just finished and absolutely loved. It was kind of heartbreaking (as implied by the title) but also super sweet. I'll be reviewing that soon!


For June, I want to balance out my TBR with some BEA books as well as some ebooks I have. For BEA books, I have The Loose Ends List, The Girls, and And I Darken. I have eARCs of The King Slayer, which I'm really excited for since I loved The Witch Hunter (review here), and Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies. Lastly, I want to finish the Grisha trilogy with Ruin and Rising.


Noor

I lowkey don't even remember what I did the past two months because I'm so bad at placing time frames on events in my life (I can usually remember years, but months is way too specific). I feel like I went to the doctor a lot in April, not because I was sick like in the coughing sense, but because my brain is highkey tryna ruin my life and I gotta work on it so I saw a few doctors, got an MRI, scheduled some more doctor time, and lied to my sister about the bruises from my blown veins and told her I got in a fight. The usual.

In May I ate a lot of ice cream because my brother started working at Coldstone and he didn't have his own car at first so we'd pick him up and buy ice cream while we waited but then he bought a car so I don't swing by around there as much. Also I got to play with really cute cat at my friend's grad party which was probably the highlight of my year.

I mostly spent the month writing quotes from Hamilton with a quill and ink into a leather journal (really sloppily because if you think my handwriting is bad with a normal pen, try reading it with a quill) because my friend sent me said quill and ink as a birthday present five months after my actual birthday (December 23rd if u wanna hmu with gifts) and it was really exciting for me.









I couldn't go to BEA & Bookcon because my mom thought I wasn't medically sound enough so that was kinda sad but this past weekend I did go to Baltimore and met up with my best friends for this convention. It was such a wonderful weekend and honestly was not enough time with my Best Friends, but we made the most of it, going to brunch a few times. Baltimore's Inner Harbor area has the best cute, aesthetically pleasing, food spots. It was like heaven for us and we spent more time photographing our food and each other and cute angles than we did eating our food -- which was hella delicious too -- because of how nice it was. I even put my plate on a pile of rocks at one place for the aesthetic and I refuse to be ashamed. I think wearing heels the whole weekend was a bad idea in retrospect but also I think I will wear heels the whole weekend again next year because of who I am as a person. Also, I think I probably should have slept more than negative five hours the whole weekend, but again, I am a flawed person. Also, the second night, I would have slept significantly more if we all hadn't been woken up by the loud peal of an alarm telling the entire Hyatt to evacuate because of a fire at 5am (it was okay, it wasn't a real fire, but we still had to leave and the elevators were obviously not gonna work, and we were on the 12th floor). I always ramble a lot in these so I'm gonna cut myself off here but I wanna show you guys some pictures from Baltimore. I actually have a lot of really cute pictures but I'm planning to slowly Instagram them so I can't just post them here and ruin the surprise but here are a few that I either don't think I will Instagram or don't mind posting here as well in their unfiltered glory.

         
Follow me on Instagram (@looonylovegood) to see which pics were so cute I couldn't even post them here. Also, I cut all my hair off into a tapered bob and dyed it purple. Moving on for realsies. 

So I've been preoccupied by my general anxiety and hopes that I'll get sucked into the void and all that that stuff so it's been a slow time for reading. I read the Hamiltome when it came out and just died over it. I have a journal where I just have various lists and so I have about five billion pages of notes to myself about which annotations I'll want to look back on for future reference. I read The Night Circus right after because quite a few people recommended it to me a few years ago and I bought it but never read it so it was about time, and that was it for April. I started off May with Morgan Matson's The Unexpected Everything, which I reviewed very positively, so you can find my expanded ravings on that. After that, I read So Sad Today, which is actually a collection of personal essays, which might not sound like some people's cup of tea, but honestly it was so good and raw and well written. If you don't already follow the Twitter account @sosadtoday, the author runs the account, and the book reads like the tone of the tweets, so I was into it, and some of you could be too. Moving on, I didn't actually finish Scarlett Epstein Hates it Here yet so I don't wanna say anything because sometimes you like a book at first and then by the end totally hate it, but I brought it as my car book for Baltimore but didn't read it because I get a little carsick when I read but I still wanted to read it so I started when I got home and couldn't sleep because I slept in the car.


I only put three books because I'm really bad at planning what I want to read ahead of time so it's not that I only want to read three things all of June, but that these are the three books I'm surest I want to read, other than that it's up in the air. With A Court of Thorns and Roses and Illuminae, it's the same deal: the books came out a while ago, everyone raved about them, I kept planning to read them and I own them and everything, but still didn't, and now everyone is reading the second books, so I figure it's time to finally read the first before I get too far behind. In contrast, I only just head about This is Where it Ends when I saw a post about top recently released YA books and I was intrigued by the premise (and cover and title) so I hope I can read it this month.

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! xoxo, gossip girl

Amrutha

So I haven't posted in like basically forever because I am the worst. Sophomore year of college was so much more work and stress and a general struggle than anything else and I barely got time to read, much less write about what I did. I missed BEA & BookCon because I was moving out and taking finals and generally living my sophomore slump life, but next year it'll be back in New York and I'll be able to go without a plane ride. To be honest the last year kind of flew by and I don't have any major life updates other than that I decided to double major in Comparative Literature because reading makes me so happy and I might as well study that while I can. In other news, I'm supposed to get a puppy soon so if that happens expect that me and pup will review something together! Otherwise, I am still the potato that I once was back when I posted fourteen years ago. I'll be posting more over the summer so hopefully I can redeem myself a little bit! Hope everyone's summer has been fab so far or that school and jobs and things are going well. Drop your life update in the comments so we can talk about being potatoes together or I can be inspired by your lifestyle choices.


Yo, Not if I See You First was the bomb. Expect a review on that soon because genuinely, one of the best books I have read in a long time. It was not only diverse without being too obvious that it was diverse but also was written SO WELL. I reread Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, which I originally gave a 5 star rating here. When I reviewed it I guess I was being a bit sappy, but when I reread it I didn't even recall having read it the first time. Seriously, I forgot that I read it, so maybe the fact that it wasn't that memorable takes away from the 5. I think when I first read it I was at a point in my life where I was so full of sap and saw that within the book and empathized so deeply with it, but now upon reading it I was like "THIS IS SO MUCH FLUFF STOP." Looking back, its one of those books that you need to read at the right time. One Man Guy was okay as books go -- it had some interesting points but to be honest, the main character kind of annoyed me so I was never too into it (I'm usually not someone who gets bothered by how characters act unlike our girl Kiersten, but for some reason with this book it really bothered me). P.S. I Still Love You was, in my opinion, weak in comparison to the first book in the set, To All the Boys I Loved Before -- Jenny Han has been one of my favorites since she came out with Shug years and years ago, so this book was still good to me. The last book of Cammie McGovern's that I read, Say What You Will (reviewed here) was written well, but I hated how the book ended in terms of plot. I liked this one a lot more, but again, it just felt like something was missing at the end in terms of plot, not really sure why -- you can see Noor's review of A Step Toward Falling here! I finally finished Dumplin' which I started literally in like September, and I loved it even more than Noor and Marlon did. Finally got to read a bit more in the last couple months so I appreciate that a lot, and I can't wait for the summer!



I only really put four books here even though I'm sure I'll read more, as I always read more over the summer. The reason for that is because these are the books that I want to read literally now -- tbr's are hard for me because I don't really follow them, I just pick books and read them when I /feel/ I should read them. Quick anecdote: someone gave me a copy of A Thousand Splendid Suns (WHICH IS AMAZING GUYS) in May a couple years ago. All summer they asked me if I had read it yet and eventually asked for the book back because I hadn't read it. I finally decided to sit down and read it a couple months later, and it made a more profound impact on me because I feel like I waited until the right time to read it. In my opinion, like with Hello, Goodbye, and Everything in Between, a lot of books are meant to be experienced at the right time for you specifically, and if I can tell that about a book, I'll wait until I am overcome with the desire to read it. I'm really excited about these books though, I just started Illuminae and the hype surrounding it seems true so far. I'm also really excited for Walk the Edge, because I really enjoyed the first book in Katie McGarry's Thunder Road series. Also, ya'll know my JLA obsession so of course, I have that on here too.


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