Monday, May 11, 2015

Monday 5/11 Update/Challenge | #BoutofBooks 13.0




Reading Update

I rapidly devoured the audiobook of Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer in the past 30 hours. I started it Sunday afternoon and continued listening throughout the day, picking up from the halfway point at the start of Bout of Books.

Surprisingly, I picked up My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga. I hadn't meant to start reading, but I found the writing quite addictive and flew threw all 300 pages in around four hours.

I also read a couple of pages of A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas and 15% of Ariel by Sylvia Plath.

Today's challenge is a bookish survey hosted by Writing is My Fairytale.

1. How do you organize your shelves?
I have an entire Bookshelf Tour where I go in-depth about the details of my organization. In short, it's organized by author's last name on every shelf dedicated to TBR, read, favorites, and ARCs.


2. What is one of your favorite book that’s not in one of your favorite genres?
I haven't read a good YA historical fiction novel in such a long time and this was a pleasant surprise, even if reading it felt like pulling teeth at some moments. In the end, it was al worth it and is now one of my favorite books of all time.

3. What is the last 5 star book you read?
While I didn't review this novel, I did my best to express all my feels related to My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I don't know want to go all fangirl on you, but it was incredibly thought provoking and well written.


4. What book are you most excited to read during the read-a-thon?
I finished listening to an audiobook of Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer which is a YA novel loosely based on the Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I downloaded Plath's last collection of poems because I am dying to read from the point of view of such an incredibly troubled, brilliant woman.

5. What book do you recommend the most?

This is the best fluffy contemporary romance I have read and I would most definitely recommend it for the upcoming summer.

#BoutofBooks 13.0 TBR/Updates


I was originally going to do update vlogs on my YouTube Channel and I may do a mid-week update, but I thought it would be simple and quick to do the challenges via blog post and to be honest, it will provide some fun content for Loving the Language of Literacy.


Goals

Read three books
Listen to one audiobook + start another

Updates

5/11. Monday
Pages Read ~ 455
Total Pages ~ 455
Total Books ~ 2
Books Read ~ Belzhar: Meg Wolitzer. Ariel: Sylvia Plath. My Heart and Other Black Holes: Jasmine Warga.

5/12. Tuesday
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Books Read

5/13. Wednesday 
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Books Read

5/14. Thursday 
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Books Read

5/15. Friday 
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Books Read

5/16. Saturday
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5/17. Sunday
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Books Read


Sunday, May 10, 2015

The Evolution of Labels | What's Been Going On? (4)


Wow, I haven't sat down to write a discussion post in several months.... maybe I won't actually ramble as much as I usually do. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking. And the fact that I haven't discussed something on Loving the Language of Literacy in so long is what I will be discussing today. 

Across the interwebs, established bloggers who have been doing this gig for years now, often want to change up what they've been doing, branch off into new realms, and don't want to stay boxed in with the same content year after year. Ashley from Nose Graze frequently talks about not wanting to be penned in by a specific spectrum of the internet to talk about coding, designing, books, and her overall life.

I have to admit in the past couple of months, basically since the year started, I have been struggling with my own identity as a blogger. This problem has increased exponentially since I begun vlogging on my eponymous YouTube Channel Loving the Language of Literacy. A lot of the times, turning on the camera and letting myself ramble is the better option stylistically for discussions because I can edit down to exactly I wanna say and my passion about a topic is clear.

In the past year, a lot has changed in my life. I have had three different places to call "home" and have met a lot of people as well as experienced different types of environments from what I had been previously used to. Through my struggle as teenager attempting to deal with life and my mom passing away, my priorities, passions, and perspectives have evolved. On top of that, I've been in a bad reading slump for the past three months. The desire to read and the time to do so hasn't been so prevalent as I've been questioning my identity as a reader as well in terms of what subject-matter and genre interest me. As I've grown older, life has happened. I have school five days a week, Track practice afterwards, homework to think about, creative writing I want to pursue, and a boyfriend - something I didn't think I would experience for quite some time. Consequently, my attitude towards the entire bookish world has changed. I haven't found a book I really want to fangirl about since 2013 when I read the Legend Trilogy.

So I've decided that it's time for some change here on Loving the Language of Literacy. 

Although this pains me to say,  the fact is that I'm not the same girl I was last year who could produce 20+ posts a month full of passionate memes, discussions, and reviews. What I've also concluded in the past few months is that I'm okay with that. I promise to post as frequently as possible, but I also want to take a bit of a step back and write more in-depth discussion posts about literary or even current topics I feel passionately about. My post count per month isn't going to matter as much anymore as long as I feel proud of what I have written. I would also love to comment more and network because I've felt a bit out of touch with the community for quite some time. So while I am most certainly not going to stop posting reviews and memes entirely and my passion for books is not something that's going to go away for another hundred years, I'm now going to be calling myself a literary blogger because I sincerely want to delve more into creative writing as well as continue with the original series I started in the beginning of 2015.

 Have you ever struggled with your blogging identity?
Have reading slumps made you question your validity? 
How do you prevent blogger burnout?

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