Hello friends! I said I was back to blogging and then didn’t post for weeks – classic. Haha well you know, life just gets busy sometimes! But since it is now December – dang!! – I thought I’d get back to it and share a wrap-up of my reads and etc from the past month.

Do you ever set monthly TBRs? I used to, but I kinda feel like that puts too much pressure on me to read certain things, so I don’t do it anymore. I’ve been working on reading all of my owned books, so really what I’ve been doing is trying to read books I have and not buy too many new ones. This proves difficult since I’m fortunate enough to have easy library access 😂so I cheat on my “owned books” goal with library books.

This month, I read 4 books that I owned and 3 books from the library! Over all of those, I read 2986 pages, and had an average rating of 4.1. I also have now read 101 books this year! I wasn’t expecting to hit that so early, since the past few years I’ve reached around 100ish right at the end of the year. So let’s get to the good stuff – the books themselves!

Have any of you heard of Book Outlet? I think it’s most useful for those living in the US and Canada but basically they have VERY discounted books with good shipping prices. The best part is they have EVERYTHING. Classics, adult fiction (sci-fi and fantasy and mystery and literary fiction), and TONS of young adult books. There are a lot of popular releases, but also a ton of lesser known books.

Anyway the point is I was on the Book Outlet website, as I frequently am, and I came across this book. It sounded pretty good, and had pretty good Goodreads reviews so I thought why not.

AND I’M SO GLAD I BOUGHT IT. This book!!! Was so!! Good!!! Whip-smart and disabled main character! Stalwart bodyguard who acts as her father figure! Skyships!!! Floating islands that make up the world!!! YES.

I wanted to share with you some of my favorite first lines from various novels. By definition, the first line of a book is the first thing we read. From them we can get a hint about the story and the feeling of the book. They’re the kind of thing that can be SUPER impactful if done well, but never hurts the story if they’re not a “blow-you-away” kind of line.

Some of them I like because they are funny, others because they are jarring, and others because they’re just damn beautiful.

Fun fact: Garth Nix is one of my top 5 favorite authors. I have loved his Old Kingdom series and Keys to the Kingdom series for soooo long. I’ve talked a bit more in detail about his books in my Libraries in Literature post and Rainy Day Reads post, and have definitely mentioned him in a few others. When I heard he was publishing his first adult fantasy (Angel Mage) I was SO EXCITED. Like, this book has been on my TBR since it was announced basically.

So I preordered it, but naturally didn’t get to reading it until now, a month later. Which tbh is pretty good for my track record this year, seeing as how I preordered The Priory of the Orange Tree which came out in the beginning of February and I still haven’t read that… oops.

Back to Angel Mage…haha. It’s easy for me to get off track.

Yes you are reading this correctly – an actual blog post after 2.5ish months. Seeing as this is a hobby for both me and Shari, I don’t feel guilty about taking some time away but I do miss blogging! It’s fun 🙂

So it’s time to come back! For me at least haha. Shari, as you may or may not know, is a BOSS who is following her dreams at animation school!! How cool is that?!? But that also means she’s quite busy with projects and art and all that incredible stuff. I have no such excuse – I just got out of the habit of blogging lol.

What have I been up to these past 2.5ish months? Well, I’m glad you asked. If you didn’t, too bad. I’m gonna tell you anyway.