2017.

I think we can all agree that moving forward from 2016 is for the best.

Last year, I didn't make any resolutions. I've always thought them kind of cheesy, although that's never stopped me before from setting goals that... let's face it... probably wouldn't have been made if it weren't for the human desire to follow the crowd. There's just something about the new year that makes you want to start over. If the calendar can do it, by golly so can you. 

This year is a little bit different. I've got some pretty big life changes ahead of me, the biggest being I'm heading back to college to get my degree in English literature. 

With that, I feel like I need structure. I need goals. I need something to strive for so I don't resort to lazy habits. So here they are, as cliché as it sounds. 

My 2017 New Year's Resolutions. 

1. Use my planner. My wonderful, insightful mother got me a planner for Christmas. I'll admit when I opened it I was a little confused. I had mentioned in the past liking the Erin Condren planners, but it was never something I had intended to ever get because of the price and... well... I didn't think I'd be INTO it. Oh boy. On Christmas morning, when I unwrapped my Happy Planner starter set, little did I know this was the beginning of something beautiful. I might do a whole post on this planner in the future because I'm just THAT into it.Seriously. It's great, and I think it will be perfect in helping me stay organized and give me a leg up to reaching my goals. 
2. Read 30 books. This looks like such a small number! I've always had so much pride for my amount of books read. I'm the resident reader in my family's lives, so thirty books isn't exactly great for me. However, with starting school and me really wanting to focus on that, I thought it might be safe to lower it. 
3. Start going to bed without my phone. This one seems a bit obvious, but I want to really try to stop relying on my phone to put me to sleep. I end up staying up way too late and sleeping in, which then makes me feel lazy and just not great... yeah. No more night time browsing. 
4. Be more active on social media. With social anxiety, even online interaction can be a bit debilitating. I have been hesitant to really put myself out there on all platforms because, well, it's just plain scary. This year, I would like to really strive to be better at having more of an online presence. Maybe that would even mean more blog posts? Why knows. This one will probably be the most challenging. 

So what do you guys think? DO you have any resolutions? Do you make then every year? Let me know what you think. 

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Learning to Love New Genres (And How Do You Even Start?!)

I had a friend throughout middle school and high school who LOVED historical fiction. She loved reading the Celia Rees books and anything about England's monarchs in particular, but all historical fiction was fair game to her. It's probably no wonder that she did exceedingly well in her history classes and actually ENJOYED sitting through daily lectures on the subject.

I, however, spent my time doodling and wishing I could be working on literally anything else. History was boring. I had exactly zero motivation to learn about the kings and queens, revolutions and wars, that went on in our past. Lucky for me, I was good at memorizing names and dates, so my lack of interest never hindered my academic performance in the subject. 

We've all heard that old saying that "we need to learn history or we're doomed to repeat it", but that doesn't really mean much when you're in high school and you can't think of how the knowledge of Lady Jane Grey's existence will ever allow you to make a life altering decision. I get it. I do. It seems like you need to have that special history loving gene to enjoy digging up the past and I just didn't have it. At least I didn't think so. 

I am a very nosey person and I feel a connection to people (even if I'm not so great at interacting with them IRL). It's a very similar sensation when I read fiction and I get completely engrossed in a character. I want to know everything about them, because 9 times out of 10, if I'm invested in a character it will make me ten times more excited to see how a character reacts when put in such and such situation. It's also peaks my interest in the situation itself because a character I've grown to love just went through it. 

I recently picked up The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory and it was an enchanting experience. It was a book that had been on my shelf for AGES and for some reason the mood just struck. I was engrossed from the start. I felt so connected to Anne's ambition, George felt like a friendly face in a sea of rivals and Mary... I just wanted to see her escape the life she so desperately hated and be reunited with her children. I began feeling curious about what life was really like back then. Of course I knew about Henry VIII and the Church of England, and who could forget that HE was the one with all the wives... One thing lead to another and after a solid two hours of research I came away with more knowledge of sixteenth century England than I ever cared to memorize in school. And I'm still learning! I'm still seeking out this information weeks after finishing the book by watching documentaries and reading research papers. I feel like I finally understand what my friend saw in all of that history mumbo jumbo.

During school my time in school, we were always taught to the test. We ended up learning just enough to get us through standardized tests or to earn the school some solid AP scores and then we moved on. (My thought on how awful is this system is another thing entirely.) That never gave us enough time to get invested in the people we were learning about, which to me is what it's all about.

So historical fiction. It's my new thing.

...but how do you even get started reading a new genre?

I am a fantasy reader. I've read the amazing and the cringy and when you're recommending something new for a first time fantasy reader, it's important not to start them with something that will inevitably leave them with a foul taste in their mouths. However, I think it's doing them a disservice offering them something that is at the peak of it's genre, because then it's all downhill from there.

So what do I do? I've heard mummers that The Other Boelyn Girl is Gregory's best work, but is Phillipa Gregory herself a master of the genre? Does it only go downhill from here?

I hope not because I never want to stop enjoying learning about the past in the ways that I have here.

So what now? What do I pick up next?

If you have any suggestions please don't hesitate to leave them in the comments. As for me, I'm off to explore! The only question is, where shall I go next?

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BookTube-A-Thon TBR!

How lame am I for not having uploaded a video about this, right?

Pretty lame. HOWEVER, I think I have a pretty good excuse considering my apartment is in shambles right now. And that's not to say I didn't try. I did, but the end result was something that I just wasn't proud of, so I decided to make this post, because I still very much want to be apart of the fantabulousness that is BookTube-A-Thon 2016!

(If you have no clue what I'm talking about, please allow yourself to be directed to Ariel Bissett's lovely video explaining everything here.)

There are seven challenges I'm hoping to complete, although realistically reading a book a day might not go over so well. Or maybe it will. I'm hoping to vlog my progress, just be prepared for some craziness because... well... you'll see when the time comes.

So. Without further adieu.... Here's my Summer BookTube-A-Thon 2016 TBR!

Okay. My partial TBR because a few of the books will be read on my kindle.

CHALLENGE #1 - Read a book with yellow on the cover.

For this, I'm starting off fairly simply with a graphic novel.

I Hate Fairyland by Skottie Young was sold to me as a sort of Alice in Wonderland meets Deadpool way. It's supposedly about a woman trapped in a six year old's body which, I think it's a side effect of being in Fairyland. You stop aging and in Gert's case (the aforementioned woman) she's been trying to escape for almost thirty years. I don't even want to think about how awful it would be to be 6 years old for that long. By the look of the cover, it doesn't look like it's going too well for her either.

But this book clearly has yellow on it in the form of Gert's bow, the mushroom caps and the turtles shell.

So one down coming in at 128 pages. That's more than doable!



CHALLENGE #2 - Read a book only after sunset. 

I'm going to be honest with you. This one is probably going to be a fail. Or maybe not. Maybe I can somehow restrain from reading a certain book after 9-10pm. Maybe, but probably not.

I will be trying to read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers which I've heard is a very literary science fiction novel. Character driven stories are among some of my favorites and that's what this is looking like to me so bring on the scifi! With 404 pages!

Challenge #3 - Read a book you discovered through BookTube.
./

I shall be listening to an audiobook for this one! I was pretty much pursing audible one might listening to some samples when I saw Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz. Pretty much everyone and their brother who has read this is in love it it. It also has some LGBTQIA themes, which I have been wanting to read more books like that so I thought, "What the heck?" and gave my ears a little listen.

And who do I hear? Whose voice has been my near constant companion for the past 8 months?

Lin-Manuel Miranda.

So obviously I used a credit. I'm sure that having Mr. Miranda read it to me will make this book all the more enjoyable considering I'm about 99.9% positive I'm going to enjoy it anyways. I'm trying not to let my expectations be too high, but, I'm not too worried.

And the page count is 359. In case you were wondering.

Challenge #4 - Read a book by one of your favorite authors.

Well... I'm altering this a bit and I'm going to shoot for a novella.

Perfect State by Brandon Sanderson 

Do I even need an explanation? No? Good. (a very large 87 pages.)

Challenge #5 - Read a book that is older than you. 

Here's where we're getting a bit tricky. As I mentioned before, my apartment is in shambles. All my beautiful books are packed away, including my classics, which mean, I really didn't know what to pick. So I was looking through some books on my kindle and I have settled on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. I was definitely born before 1894, so this counts!

And also, the cool thing about The Jungle Book (besides the fact that it's 134 pages) is....

Challenge #6 - Read a book and watch it's movie adaptation. 

It has TWO movie adaptations! I want to try and watch the newest one, but if that doesn't happen, I always have good ole animated Disney to save the day.

And last but not least....

Challenge #7 - Read SEVEN books.

But... Alli! There are only five books there! How are you going to complete this challenge?

I'm so glad you asked fellow human who can count! I am planning on also reading:

How to Ruin Everything: Essays by George Watsky

and 

Alcatraz Verses the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson

And if I can somehow finish all seven of these books, I will have completed BookTube-a-Thon with having read a total of... 1,530 pages!

At least that's the goal. Can I do it? I guess we'll find out. 

---

P.S. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb is also pictured up above and that's because I'm STILL reading it for the Hobb-a-Long Read-a-Long. Still. I'm so behind. But it's there because on the off chance I can keep up with said above challenges, you better believe that puppy is also getting read.  

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Review: Pax by Sara Pennypacker

I love foxes. That’s no secret. I don’t know where this fascination came from. Maybe it was countless hours watching YouTube videos of kits playing in the wild or adult foxes at play. Maybe because ever since I was teeny tiny and I first saw The Fox and the Hound, I always secretly wanted a fox companion to make mischief with.

So a sure fire way to get me to buy a book is to put a fox on the cover. Nine time out of ten I won’t even bother reading the synopsis and that’s exactly what happened with Pax.

I mean look at that cover.

I am familiar with Jon Klassen’s art, having encountered it online and in some children’s books I’m rather fond of, so basically this was an episode of throwing money at Barnes and Noble employees just for the cover art alone.

Luckily, that money wasn’t wasted.

This story was very emotional for me. The first chapter was basically that scene in The Fox and the Hound that turns me into a puddle of tears every time I watch it. I sure you know the one.

You can tell the author did her research as well, which is always a bonus. Throughout the novel it switches POV from Peter, a twelve year old boy, who is on a journey to find his pet fox, to Pax, the pet red fox who is learning to survive and socialize outside of his domestic environment. Reading Pax’s chapters, I really got a feel for just how smart and resourceful foxes are. And how territorial. I was at the edge of my seat reading through some of the situations they found themselves in. Especially since the backdrop was riddled with war.

Throughout the pages, Sara Pennypacker addressed a lot of issues that not many children’s books touch on. Peter is troubled with anxiety due to grief from the loss of his mother. A great character, possible one of my favorites, Vola, has PTSD from her time in the service. And possibly one of the most heart wrenching issues of all being the destruction left in the wake of war which we get to experience through Pax.

This book is important. Not because it’s beautifully written (which it is) or because it’s relatable (maybe that depends on the person?), but because this book makes you really look at yourself and the world. It makes you reflect on whether or not you’re making the best possible decisions for yourself and for the world you live in. I haven’t read a lot of children’s books that really make me ponder humanity, but this book has sparked a bit of mindfulness I now carry around with me wherever I go.  

5/5. Would recommend.

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