Currently Reading, Blogging Thoughts, & More: September 2021 Edition

September 24, 2021September 23, 2021 fangirlfury7 Comments

Happy Friday! I wrote this post just last night. I knew I wanted to share a post on Friday & I 110% admit that I didn’t have any posts prepared. I debated on forcing myself to catch up on mini reviews, but instead just found myself wanting to talk about life lately & what I’ve been reading this week.

I have been reading a lot more than I have been blogging or writing reviews. You might know from wrap-ups and other posts that I am an English teacher in my first full-year/full-time position and I am LOVING teaching. However, blogging has been taking a back seat to work, life things, and honestly self-care type things like reading, exercising, catching up with friends, and resting. If I have a free afternoon, you’ll most likely find me curling up with a good book or going for a walk over writing blog posts. I’ve been blogging since February 2017 – aka through nearly four years of undergrad, my master’s program, part-time jobs & internships, a pandemic, and other life happenings – and aside from maybe a handful of weeks, pretty much consistently sticking to 3 blog posts a week (throwback to my I 2018 self where I shared 4 blog posts a week during the summer).

You probably know that I am a huge Bad on Paper Podcast fan & I also really enjoy reading co-host Grace Atwood’s blog, The Stripe. Sidenote that I love going for walks just to listen to BOP’s latest episode! Grace recently wrote a blog post about having a lack of stamina in many aspects of her life and found myself relating to her thoughts on productivity when it comes to book blogging.

Don’t get wrong, I LOVE blogging and by no means am I really taking a break. What I’ve been doing is trying not to mentally beat myself up for not posting 3 times a week (honestly the past 2 weeks I have had so much work & life stuff going on that I forgot I didn’t post one day until two days later). I’m also a believer in positing quality content over quantity. Ultimately, what all this means is that there will be some weeks where I am my usual Fangirl Fury self, and other weeks when you hear from me one or two times. I think not pressuring myself to write will also allow me to write when I genuinely want to write & share vs. feeling obligated to.

And today, I felt like sharing what I’ve been reading, watching TV wise, and listening to lately!

My First WWW Wednesday

July 14, 2021July 13, 2021 fangirlfury1 Comment

I’ve been blogging for almost four and a half years (!!!) and it’s so crazy to believe that this is my first WWW Wednesday. I think this meme feels especially appropriate this week because I feel like my reading has been all over the place (in the best way possible because I have been reading SO much in the past month). My reading is falling into primarily 3-4 categories right now: review books/ARCs for this summer & fall, library books, rereading, and Elin Hilderbrand – regarding that last one, you probably know I spend a ton of time in the pool & at the beach during the summer, so her books feel especially right for those settings.

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam of Taking on a World of Words. The Three Ws are: What are you currently reading? What did you recently finish reading? What do you think you’ll read next? Shoutout to Danielle of Life of a Literary Nerd because I love checking out her WWW posts each week

Currently Reading:

From Scratch by Tembi Locke and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

I’ve been doing well with my reading goal of reading at least 1 non-fiction book every 1-2 months in 2021. My current non-fiction read, From Scratch by Tembi Locke, is helping fulfill my wanderlust/travel wish to go to Italy, following Tembi Locke’s love story with her husband, Saro, and the struggles they faced as a couple (Saro’s Sicilian family disproved of him marrying a Black American woman), Saro’s struggles with cancer, and Tembi’s return to Sicily with her daughter after Saro’s death. I’m also currently (re)reading Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, since Any Way the Wind Blows just came out last week and I really needed a series refresh before diving into book #3. I wasn’t super in love with Wayward Son when I first read it in 2019, so I’m hoping I enjoy it and understand it more now especially since I just re-read Carry On.

Currently Reading, Mini Life Updates, & My Spring Break TBR

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 fangirlfury6 Comments

How are you doing? I’ll be completely honest, I’ve been super all over the place this past month! So many exciting things have been happening behind the scenes of the blog, both bookish and personal life wise – for example, I fortunately have quite a few spring & summer ARCs to dive into over the next few months, and I am in the home stretch of my grad school program, with graduation ahead in May. I realize I haven’t been too detailed about my grad school coursework, but you may know that I’m in a master’s in teaching program to receive my English teaching certification and I keep information about my clinical practicum super private. In the future though, I do want to write some sort of blog post about books I’d love to read with students or use in my classes.

That being said, this month has been super stressful between grad school assignments, including a major assessment that I’m so happy to be completed with but am nervously awaiting my final score, a dead car battery, and loss of a loved one in my family. Although I’ve been content with my blog content this month & I’m really excited sharing reviews for said spring releases in April & May, I feel so behind on blog post scheduling & editing and writing non-review posts. Fortunately, I’m on spring break next week, so I plan on using that time to get caught up on all the things AND read as much as possible. Today’s blog post is a bit of a ramble/life update-esque, but I wanted to talk about what I’m currently reading and what I want to read over the next 2 weeks.

Currently Reading: From Blood and Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout. I added this much loved high fantasy romance to my TBR last fall, but saved it for post-reading Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Silver Flames, rightfully realizing that I’d be in the mood for another fantasy read. At the time of writing this post on Thursday afternoon, I’m over 400 pages in and plan on finishing it ASAP (or hopefully even by the time this post is published). I’m going to have a full review posted on the blog sometime next week, but I have liked this book a lot so far. I feel like this book does a lot of world-building for the next two books, based on all the details and setting up, but I do admit that once I got to the Rite about halfway through, I have been absolutely HOOKED.