Life of a Blogger: Dreams (The Sleeping Kind)

Life of a Blogger is a weekly meme hosted by Novel Heartbeat. This feature is designed to let readers and other bloggers get to know us on a more personal level by discussing non-bookish topics. This week's topic is...

Dreams (the sleeping kind)!

 Kiersten

I almost never dream when I sleep - rather, since I'm usually corrected that everyone always dreams, I almost never remember my dreams. If I do, it's usually more of an odd impression of discomfort that goes away after a few minutes. It's a very strange phenomena. I don't know why I almost never remember my dreams but it doesn't especially bother me either.

 Marlon

If I dream, I don't remember them when I'm coming out of my sleepy times. Rarely though, I do have dreams intense enough that I remember; in times of duress or discomfort, I will have seriously vivid dreams where I wake up and I have to figure out during the day what reality is. Like the time I dreamed I was running away with a friend of mine to some village somewhere and we had this whole life together and when I woke up I called him . . . at like 7am . . . to confirm that that didn't happen.

 Noor

I find that in general, when I remember my dreams, they're always very strange -- usually in-depth stories or very trippy disconnected scenes. They're pretty entertaining to think about after, although some of them aren't so fun while they're happening. The last dream I remember was two nights ago (well technically I remember last night's dream but only a little) and all my friends and I were in this weird casino-type setting and the people owning the place told us "you have to do all these things or we will shoot you" and we were broken into groups, so I was playing a board game with my friend and this girl I strongly dislike and whoever lost would be either evicted or shot but if we left we would also be shot and somewhere in the corner they were forcing someone else I knew to drink an enormous bottle of questionable liquid or suffer the aforementioned consequences. And then my roommate mentioned how we wouldn't be back in time for Board Games (a fellowship that occurs at 7:30 every Tuesday in which board games are played) and everyone got panicked and went into a frenzy but then we said "It's okay, we'll just move it to later" and it was fine. Yeah, I don't know, it was weird. Not as weird as that time a few weeks ago when I dreamt I got kicked out of Walmart because I destroyed the cheesecake aisle and started a war. (Follow me on Twitter for more updates about my weird dreams) (And my weird life) 

 Amrutha

Okay so when I remember my dreams, like Noor, they're always crazy weird. A lot of my dreams are really repetitive and all the weirdest tropes tend to repeat themselves. There is one particular symbol in a lot of my dreams and I'm still not sure what exactly it means -- if you know what dreams mean and can analyze them, please tell me what this is about in the comments below! Okay, so in a lot of my dreams, when I say/do something wrong/awkward, whoever happens to be present in the dream with me throws lettuce at me. Yep, just like out of a bowl or a bag or whatever, I literally get it tossed at me and literally I think if someone were to throw lettuce at me in real life they might actually manage to convince me that I was dreaming. I also have a repeating theme in dreams where I travel to North Korea (a North Korea that looks like Santorini, Greece) and I have to make my way back to China. Another repeating symbol is this couch that was at an event I went to once. For whatever reason, a lot of my conversational dreams/dreams where I'm playing cards/board games with friends all happen on that couch. Okay so now you know about weird repetitive themes in my dreams and they don't get much weirder than this so I think I'll stop here.

Do you have any interesting dreams while you're sleeping?

Let us know in the comments!

Top Ten Tuesday - Books From My Childhood that I Would Love to Revisit

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Here at We Live and Breathe Books, the bloggers rotate so that two of us choose five books each week. This weeks topic is...

Books from my childhood that I would love to revisit!

Noor's Picks

Junie B. Jones
Barbara Park
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I loved these books so so so much as little kid. In fact, these were the first chapter books I remember reading and I was absolutely obsessed with them, and I honestly couldn't even tell you if I devoured book after book because I loved to read or if I developed a love of reading because I found a series that I latched on to like this. My little cousin asked me to read one of them to her two days ago and as I was reading it I just remembered why I loved them so much (and essentially did revisit the series, keeping with the theme of the post). How could one not? From Lucille's frilly socks to Junie B.'s crazy behavior, I feel like these were a childhood staple.

How To Be Popular
Meg Cabot

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I know I picked How To Be Popular here (which is a great book, honestly) but what I'd really like to visit is Meg Cabot's entire collection of books. I remember so clearly the middle school days where I'd go to the library and find the section with her books and half the stack I brought home would just be Meg Cabot books. They honestly were such quality pieces of literature and I'd love to revisit them and just experience them as a 19 year old rather than a 12 year old.

Nancy Drew
Carolyn Keene

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I used to be super into reading Nancy Drew books and I would always try to figure out what was happening or who the shady characters were before they were revealed to us. I got a lot of joy out of reading these books and I feel like I just have thing for this type of theme because I was really into Sherlock Holmes too, like even before the good quality adaptations started happening (or at least before any came into my life). Anyway, I've played the Nancy Drew interactive computer games as well and I can tell you they aren't nearly as fun as reading these books were (at least, for me) and I totally want to dig through my shelves for them and give them a good re-read.

The Clique
Lisi Harrison 
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

This was another series I totally loved in my pre-teen years. The books were pure entertainment value -- there wasn't a prepackaged lesson about inner beauty or personality thrown in there. From what I recall, the girls in the clique were straight up catty and snarky and I think the one girl who was "uncool" ends up joining them anyway? (That might be wrong but in any case I don't think there's any "accept all friends who cares what brand your sweater is" turning point or anything) Sometimes, all you want is to read about some mean girls and the things they do with their parents' money. The books were entertaining and I think I'd like them as much today as I did back then.

Coraline
Neil Gaiman

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I read Coraline in 4th grade and I absolutely loved it. I really like dolls and puppets and things and I feel like I'm just into creepy things in general which shouldn't surprise anyone to be honest. Anyway, I remember talking about it for a solid period of time because I thought it was just so great. I never forgot the book, of course, just kept it catalogues in the back of my mind, but I don't think I ever registered the author so it really clicked. Of course, years later, when I was a teen (an adult even) and I claimed Neil Gaiman as my favorite author, I rediscovered Coraline and realized that my favorite author goes back to when I was nine years old. Which, of course, coupled with the fact that I just love(d) the book so much as it is, is why I think it's one of the first ones I'd revisit if I ever have the time to sit down and read old books (which will probably be when I'm packing them to move, because I always end up doing that).

Amrutha's Picks

The Baby-Sitters Club
Ann M. Martin
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

While Noor listed some pre-teen girly reads of mine, this series was probably my coming of age for a second grader. This is what I imagined growing up to be like, and to be honest, I've read every book in this series and I seriously used to just sit in the library next to the entire shelf of these and spend years of my life reading them. I just wonder how I would feel about these books now.

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret 
Judy Blume 
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Oh my god, this book was literally everything, and while I only listed this one (because let's be real, this book is iconic) everything by Judy Blume was so core to my growing up experience. This book was everything to me in middle school, along with other classics like Deenie, Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself, Blubber, and of course, all the Fudge books. Judy Blume's writing followed me from the first grade up until eighth, and I literally cannot imagine having grown up without the influence of her writing.

Roald Dhal Books
Roald Dhal
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I literally could not pick one because literally every book Roald Dhal has ever written is perfect. These books preached morals in a way that actually forced kids to listen, and Quentin Blake's illustrations were perfection. Roald Dhal's writing forced me to look at the world in a new way and because my mom loved his writing too, we were always reading his books and talking about them together. 10/10 would recommend to everyone again.

Dragon Rider
Cornelia Funke
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Omg, okay. So I read this book, along with Inkheart and that whole series and The Thief Lord and they were really my first real foray into fantasy. Growing up (I mean until I was like 7 or 8) I wasn't a big fantasy fan, but it was this book, along with the rest of Cornelia Funke's writing, that really changed that. This book just opened fantasy up to me in a whole new way that I had never really experienced up until that point, just because seven year old me had never read a book over 400 pages long before. Needless to say, I loved fantasy after that.

The Harry Potter Series
J.K. Rowling
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I'm putting this on the list, not because I want to revisit it now (because let me be honest, I've read these books so many times over the years and they've never really been left for me to need to revisit them). But, I'd love to revisit these are a kid again, and experience Harry Potter for the first time. I started reading these books in the third grade after Cornelia Funke entered my life because prior to that, I just had no interest in fantasy. Boy, was I wrong. Anyway, I actually owned all the Harry Potter books already (actually, I owned multiple copies of each books) because they were given to me every year for my birthday. I kid you not, at one time in my life I owned 7 copies of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. These books were such a corner stone of my childhood and even my young-adult-hood, they're really one of the most phenomenal collections of literature I've ever read, and I'd really give anything to experience that again for the first time.

What are some books from your childhood that you'd love to revisit?

Let us know in the comments!

Review: Honeybee - Trista Mateer

Honeybee
Trista Mateer
Series: N/A
Genre: Poetry
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

If you saw my Stuffed Animal Saturday last month, you'd know I was reading Honeybee, a poetry collection by the lovely Trista Mateer. Where we last left off, I told you I hadn't had time to read besides between classes and had only gotten a small fraction of the book done. Well, soon after that, I decided to avoid all my responsibilities and just devour the rest of the book in one sitting because it was just so phenomenal. It didn't take too long. At 99 pages, the book is easy to breeze through and light enough to carry around whenever you need a good dose of heavy poetry.

I've been following Trista Mateer on Tumblr for quite some time, which is how I found out she had a book out, and so I had seen glimpses of some of the poems before, but seeing all the new ones and seeing everything presented in the order and manner it was, was a very powerful reading experience.

The writing was evocative, full of Mateer's personal insights and experiences. The way she incorporated herself into her poetry while still making it relatable to those reading was one of the aspects I appreciated most. She put so much of herself into her writing but, as a reader, I was also able to put so much of myself into the words too. A lot of the poems resonated with me on a personal level and reading those was such an excellent experience because I could feel her words pulling at my experiences and expressing them in ways I hadn't thought to. Even the poems I couldn't necessarily relate to personally still struck a chord with me.

She also wrote with very well-crafted words and phrases and there were so many lines that stuck out to me and not only hit home but that I thought were just overall good writing. Some of my favorite lines include:

"I swear I am no longer looking for ways to apologize to the hungry parts of you that I could never satiate." - LOUD, LOUD, LOUD (pg 88) 

"Sometimes I think I might always have a little bit of you stuck in my teeth, you might always have a little of my heart on your sleeve." - EMILY (pg. 77) 

"You cannot build your home like a house of cards / in the mouth of a lover who breathes too hard at night." - ASK YOUR MOTHER ABOUT SALIVATION; ASK YOUR MOTHER ABOUT STARVING (pg. 73) 

I could list my favorite poems from the book but that would be an exceptionally difficult task and I don't think I'm quite up to the challenge. Overall, I think it's an excellently crafted piece of work and I would recommend her book to anyone looking for poetry to read, whether it's for emotional rebounding or just for pure entertainment value.

- Noor

Who or what have you had to let go of?
Let us know in the comments!

Life of a Blogger: Nature

Life of a Blogger is a weekly meme hosted by Novel Heartbeat. This feature is designed to let readers and other bloggers get to know us on a more personal level by discussing non-bookish topics. This week's topic is...

Nature!

 Kiersten

I do not like nature. Being outside makes me sad. Pictures of nature are ok, though. This is basically all I have to say about nature... So, yea.

 Marlon

Most people discuss nature as synonymous with the "outdoors" or anything green-ish. In that definition there is a strong love-hate relationship. It's pretty but godamn I suck at handling insects of any kinds and humidity makes me want to curl up into a ball and die. But anyway, I consider nature as synonymous with the universe - not to be pretentious, it's just what I've been taught. And I love the universe as a whole. It's existence, the random bits that make it work like gravity, all of the awesome things that terrify me about it. Go space.

 Noor

Nature is pretty rad. I'm not gonna deny that I spend most of my time indoors either at a computer, with my phone, or behind the pages of a book (none of which are mutually exclusive). However, I do generally like nature despite not spending too much engulfed in it. I like taking photos and not only are photos of outdoor things often very lovely, but there are also some very nice photoshoot locations that are all natural and outdoorsy. Also, if the weather is nice, I like reading outdoors, especially in secluded-type areas. And I enjoy hiking and stuff in moderation, especially if it involves lakes because I dig lakes. However, I usually like doing these things in optimal weather conditions when there are no visible bugs -- especially ones that can fly or like really annoying ones like mosquitos or really terrifying unnamed ones -- and it's not gross and humid and I won't feel like dying.  

 Amrutha

I really do like nature when I don't need to interact with it too often and I interact with it on my terms. I enjoy being in the rain and appreciating nice scenic things but do I enjoy being in the pouring rain when I need to get to class and the busses are late and it happens to be the one day in like 14 years I've chosen to to do my hair? No. I do not. Nature is beautiful in moderation and when I choose to experience it.

What do you think about nature?

Let us know in the comments!

Top Ten Tuesday - Books On My Spring TBR List

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Here at We Live and Breathe Books, the bloggers rotate so that two of us choose five books each week. This weeks topic is...

Books on my spring TBR list!

Kiersten's Picks

I typically don't pick out books to read based on the season, but these are the books I'm most looking forward to reading right now!

The Story of Awkward
R.K. Ryals
Goodreads | Amazon 

The Story of Awkward is my March TBR Jar pick for read a book that's free for Kindle on Amazon. The title is awesome on its own but the blurb also sounds really interesting. I'm hoping it's as good as it sounds!

Cinder
Marissa Meyer
The Lunar Chronicles, #1

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I've had this book for a while (I got it as a Kindle Daily Deal) and I have also acquired Scarlet and Cress into my possession. I'm starting to think that I really need to read these books, especially with the release of the final book, Winter, later this year. Hopefully I'll be able to use The Lunar Chronicles as one of my completed series in my series reading challenge this year!

The Winner's Curse
Marie Rutkoski
The Winner's Trilogy, #1
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I got The Winner's Curse at the Fierce Reads Tour event I went to over the summer, but I've been wanting to read The Winner's Curse since I first saw the cover last year. It has been way too long and I really need to read this.

Claimed
Sarah Fine
Servants of Fate, #2
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I read Marked earlier this year (review here) and Claimed is coming out on the 24th. Since Claimed will be available through Kindle Unlimited, it only makes sense that I would read this as soon as it is released! I can't wait to see where this story goes next.

Free Souls
Susan Kaye Quinn
Mindjack Trilogy, #3

Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I read the first two books in this series long ago (well, not really that long ago) before the final book came out, and, for some reason, I still haven't finished this series. I absolutely love all of Susan Kaye Quinn's work and I'm sure this finale will be awesome, so I'm determined to read it this year as part of my series challenge!

Amrutha's Picks

Maximum Ride Forever
James Patterson 
Maximum Ride, #9
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

This doesn't come out until May but I have been following this series from the very beginning (until its very terrifying) (what we thought was) final novel. Of course, James Patterson wouldn't leave us with that AWFUL ending to the series and is providing us readers with another book where he goes "haha jk that never happened here is the real ending." Here's to hoping.

And the Mountains Echoed
Khaled Hosseini
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

I truly loved The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns -- these books were just so beautifully written and to say that they are two of my favorite books of all time wouldn't be doing them justice. These two novels are to be cherished and I think they would be enjoyed by anyone. That being said, I really should get on this book, which I have been meaning to read for a while (also, conveniently, my roommate has a copy, so I might just borrow it from her for a bit).

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)
Mindy Kaling
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

MINDY KALING IS GOING TO BE AT BOOKCON THIS YEAR AND I HAVEN'T EVEN READ HER 2011 BOOK AND THERES GOING TO BE A 2015 SEQUEL AND WORDS CANNOT EXPRESS HOW DISAPPOINTED I AM WITH MYSELF. Yes, that did warrant an all caps tirade about my love of Mindy. Now you know.

Landline
Rainbow Rowell
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository

Rainbow Rowell is just one of those authors, who come around so rarely and is so poignant it makes you want to cry. I love love loved the other two Rainbow Rowell books I read that it only seems fitting that I bond with this one as well. I'm still really upset that I didn't get to first hand meet Rainbow Rowell and get a copy of the book then (but you can read all about that excursion (and a review!) here!) Needless to say, I'm super excited about this and hopefully it'll blow my mind just like the other books have.

One of the Guys
Lisa Aldin
Goodreads | Amazon 

This book was in our Top Ten Tuesday -- Most Anticipated Debut Novels of 2015 post (can be found here). I haven't gotten a chance to read it yet, but it still looks quirky and adorable and its a trope I'm always looking for to be done right, so fingers crossed for this!

What's on your spring TBR?

Let us know in the comments!