Emma’s Sunday Sum Up! May 22nd – 28th

I am super excited about today’s post because it is my first official instalment of my new segment, Emma’s Sunday Sum Up!
I don’t have too much to talk about today, this month in general hasn’t been great for reading, but I can update on what little reading I’ve done and some life things!

I finished my reread of A Court of Thorns and Roses in the middle of the week! Yes, I am one of the few people who still hasn’t read ACOWAR, but I own it! I just need to reread ACOMAF first, which I’m not really currently feeling like doing so who knows when that series will get finished. 🤷‍♀️ 

One reason why I haven’t been reading much this month, but mostly this past week, is because I get really, really, bad migraines. I’ve had four in the past week so that definitely reduced my reading time.

Today I did manage to start This Savage Song by V.E. Schwab though! It is on my summer tbr, and it was super nice out today so I decided to read outside on the porch. I’m not too far into it yet but I am planning on continuing it a bit more before bed tonight! I am a huge fan of Victoria’s Shades of Magic series so I have no doubt that I’ll enjoy TSS as well! 

This past week has actually been an awesome week here on the blog! Including this one, I’ve posted four times! I’ve also redone/updated my header and ender images which I talked about more in my ‘Some Changes Are Happening’ post last Monday.

Overall, this week was pretty average. I am getting more and more excited every day because I only have 4 more weeks of school until summer! Plus I only have one exam this semester, and it is English, so that’ll be a breeze. 

My birthday is also this coming Thursday, and I am turning 16! I will have a whole post up on that day but I am super pumped about it!

How has this past week been for you guys!? 

Did you start or finish any good books? 

Do you have anything exciting coming up in the next week!

Let me know in a comment, I’d love to chat!

  

Books On My Summer TBR!

With the summer approaching quickly I thought I’d make a quick post sharing some of the books I’ll be diving into this summer.

I’m planning (who knows if it’ll actually happen though), on reading 20 books during my summer break. *gasp* That seems like a lot right? Well, I want to get ahead on on my goodreads challenge, and if I am capable of reading up to 8 books in a normal school month, so I know I am more than capable of reading 10 books in July and 10 in August since there’s no school!

I am also going on a road trip with my family for vacation in August, and I don’t get car sick reading, so I will be able to read a bunch then!

Enough with my summer plans though, and on to the books!

The first few I want to knock out this summer are the whole entire Throne of Glass series!

I am a huge fan of Sarah’s ACOTAR series, and finally got around to buying her other series! I’m thinking that summer will be the perfect time to binge these books, especially since Tower of Dawn will be out in September!

I also want to finally conquer I’ll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson.

I feel like this is such a classic to have on my TBR lists since it has been appearing on them since I first started my blog in 2015! But I am determined to knock this off my TBR this summer! If I don’t… someone hold me to it and yell at me until I read it! 😂 

I also want to read This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab in the coming months.

  
I bought this one last summer, but never got around to it but now that I’ve read Victoria’s Shades of Magic seasons and know that I love her writing style I cannot wait to dive into this one soon, especially since the sequel is out soon too!

Those are the books that are highest on my tbr out of all the books I own! Of course I want to read more, but I’m trying to get myself to read all the tbr books that I own before I go off buying more. Also my birthday is in a week and I am bound to get some books for that, and I’m sure I’ll read those this summer as well.

What is one book that is on your summer TBR? 

Have you read any of these books? How did you like them?

Let me know in a comment! I’d love to chat!

Thank You For 600 WordPress Followers!

I know that follower count doesn’t matter, and that I blog because I enjoy it, not because I want people to follow me, but how could I not acknowledge the fact that I hit 600 wordpress followers!

Thank you so much! 🎉 ❤️ 

I truly love blogging. Thinking up post ideas, writing them and sharing them with you is so fun for me and I am so happy that I have a platform to come to and share my bookish with people who read just like me. 😊 

I am grateful that the book blogging community is so welcoming and open, and even though I’ve been blogging for almost two years now, everyone is just as nice as they were when I started.

Follower count is just a number but it is so reassuring and inspiring to hit milestones like this and think to myself, “Wow. People are actually enjoying what I put out there.”.

I don’t mean to be sappy but thank you to all of you who have followed me, read my posts, comment on my posts and interact with me! My blogging experience wouldn’t be the same without you and I am excited for all the posts I have coming your way in the future! ❤️ 

Some Changes Are Happening!

With summer approaching and more time on my hands, I was thinking about making a few changes around here! All of them are good changes, but I wanted to share them with you all, get feedback and just let you know what is going on! 

To start off, there are some changes that have already been made, ones that have to do with the design of my blog, pictures etc..

I made a new layout for my header images of each post! I just wanted to switch it up a bit. Also, the starter and ended to my posts have also been modified a bit to match!

Secondly, I want to be positive that I will have at least one post up a week, and to do that I have decided to start a new weekly segment on my blog! Every Sunday I will be posting “Emma’s Sunday Sum-Up” which will allow me to share what I read throught the week. I might add things like what music I have been listening to, or what books I bought, or anything I did during the week into those posts as well, but we will see! This segment will start next Sunday.

Of course I will post more times throught the week other than Sunday’s, it’ll be either lists, reviews, discussion posts etc., basically the usual, just with that added weekly scheduled segment!

Thirdly, I want to talk about a wider range of books here on my blog. I feel like on my blog, (unless it is a review), in tags and posts I am just constantly talking about the same books over and over. I want to widen the range of books I talk about with simple “Top 5 Favourite…” posts, but I need your opinion on which ones you would like to see!

If you wouldn’t mind picking three of these topics that you want to see top 5’s about, and leave a comment below it would be very helpful!

– Top 5 Favourite: Diverse Reads 

– Top 5 Favourite: First Books In A Series

– Top 5 Favourite: Feel Good Books

– Top 5 Favourite: Books Under 350 Pages

– Top 5 Favourite: (insert book/series here) Characters

– Top 5 Favourite: Bad*ss Female Leads

– Top 5 Favourite: TV Shows

– Top 5 Favourite: Underhyped Books

– Top 5 Favourite: Summer Reads

– Top 5 Favourite: Road Trip Reads

– Top 5 Books That Dissapoined Me

– Top 5 Songs To Listen To While Reading

Also, if you have any of your own ideas of top 5’s that I could do leave them below as well!

Lastly, I am think about starting to do feature posts of me interviewing other bloggers! I would do this through goodreads message and it would just be a chatty little interview of me asking questions about blogging, books, reading and stuff like that! I do need a few volunteers for this though so if you are interested leave a comment below, and make sure to add me on goodreads and I will contact you there if I choose you!

I think that the blogger interviews will be a good way to shout out some of my favourite bloggers and also bring a new voice onto my blog, even if it is just for one post!

That is it for the changes I have planned/have put in place! I hope you enjoy them, and make sure to leave comment letting me know some top 5’s that you want to see! Have a good rest of your day!

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I Went To A Sarah J. Maas Signing!

Today, I was lucky enough to go to a Sarah J. Maas signing! Although I wasn’t lucky enough to be one of the first 250 people and didn’t get a wrist band (therefore not able to get my boo signed), the Q&A was awesome to be at, and I got a ton of great pictures!

I thought as a fun little post, I would share how the day went!

So honestly, I didn’t know how many people would be at the signing. On Facebook 260 people had clicked that they were “going” to the event, so I knew there was a chance that I might not get a wrist band, but I brought books to get signed in hopes that I would.

My mom and I thought we would be super smart and get to the Chapters at 11, when the store opened and we would be sure to get a wrist band.

Boy, oh, boy were we wrong! As I walked into the bookstore at quarter past 11 there were hundreds of people lined up, way over 250, so I knew I wasn’t getting a wrist band but I still was excited for the Q&A! Me and my mom decided to not get in line to buy ACOWAR, because we were just going to buy it after the signing, and we headed upstairs.

Mind you we were still two hours early for the Q&A, and hungry, we decided to try to find a spot to sit for the Q&A. All of the space in front was already filled by people in roped lines, and they had wrist bands. My mom and I found a cozy spot in an isle right beside the line, still able to see Sarah, and camped for the next two hours. 

After two hours of eating scones from Starbucks and me finishing my reread of ACOTAR, it was finally time!

Amidst the screaming and cheering as Sarah walked out my mom managed to catch two super good pics of Sarah as she walked by!

The Q&A was honestly great. She talked about Throne of Glass, which is the highest on my TBR right now, ACOWAR of course, Rhys, her dog, growing up as a nerd, her lack of musical talent and so much more. I also wasn’t spoiled for any of Throne of Glass, which is what I was concearned about, so that’s good!

I talked to a lot of other bookworms, about ACOTAR, ToG, books in general, blogging, Hamilton and more! It was a really great time! It was so cool to see so many fans of the same book and author in the same spot! Everyone had their copies of the series, and were smiling, all surrounded by books, it was awesome.

Also, on the way out I got a picture with her husbad hahahaha. I mean I can’t say I’ve met Sarah J. Maas, but at least I can say that I’ve met her Rhys-look-a-like husband. 😹👌🏻🙌🏻

Overall, it was a fun day with my mom, and we also got to do a bit of shopping after, plus I finally got my hands on A Court of Wings and Ruin, so I would say it wasn’t too shabby for my first book signing ever!

Have any of you been to book signings? Which authors have you met? Which would you like to meet? Let me know in the comments!

April Wrap Up and Book Haul!

Although we are already into May, it’s never too late to post a wrap up and haul! I had a fine reading month, finishing four books, and adoring two of them which is good! I’m still a bit behind on my goodreads goal which I’m going to try to catch up on in May but I’m going to rely mostly on summer for that (less than two months till summer for me!)!!! 

Anyway, enough rambling about my inability to stay on track with reading, on with the books!

What I Read:

Wintersong by S. Jae-Jones – ★★★★

I finished this one up pretty close to the start of the month, and although I enjoyed it a lot it wasn’t as captivating as I though it would be. It was interesting and I loved the music aspect of it up I didn’t enjoy The Goblin Kings at all, he kind of just left a bed taste in my mouth. I’d highly suggest Wintersong for anyone who enjoys a mysterious and dark tone in books.

Alex and Eliza: A Love Story by Melissa De La Cruz – ★★★★★

I was super nervous about this one, but ultimately pre-ordered it because I am a crazy Hamilton fan and was so pleasently surprised. Alex and Eliza follows Alexander Hamilton and Eliza Schuyler as they fall in love, and although it isn;t based on the musical, I felt like I already knew the characters. It was heartwarming and fun, and made me fall in love even more with the three Schuyler sisters, and Eliza specifically.

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli – ★★★★★

Upside was my most anticipated release of this year and I have one word for it: perfect. I had pretty high hopes since Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda is my favourite YA contemporary of all time but Becky wowed me again! Upside is a witty, diverse and adorable story with awesome main and side character and also is interconnected with Simon, so if you were a fan of Simon and haven’t picked this up yet, get on it! You won’t be let down! 

Lord of the Flies by William Golding – ★★★

I hardly want to talk about this one because it bring up the memories from my horrible english class/teacher (how how my life even come to this? how am I in a bad english class!?) but we read, well more like listened since my teacher never gave us quite reading time (yes, I am salty about this), to Lord of the Flies in english class this month and it was fine. Not the worst book I’ve had to read for school but defiantly not close to the best. The characters were a bit annoying and I was literally falling asleep in some chapters but there was a good theme and I understand why we read it in school so meh, 3 stars.

What I Bought:

I had a GREAT haul of books this month!!! I finally bought the whole Throne of Glass series! Now there’s no excuse for me to not read them!

One thing though, I haven’t got A Court of Wings and Ruin yet. I am going to a Sarah J. Maas signing later this month and you have to buy the book to get a wrist band so I am patiently awaiting for May 21st to come. DO YOU KNOW HOW HARD IT HAS BEEN TO SEE EVERYONE’S PICTURES OF ACOWAR ON INSTAGRAM? I am pretty close to dead because I need to read it now but ya know, self control!!!

If you want to find me on bookstagram I’m @EmmaTheBookLover! I am super active on there so if you are longing to hear from me but I haven’t posted a blog post in a while, that is where you’ll find me!

I’m also on goodreads! Click here for that!

Now for you guys! What was the best book you read in April? Have you read ACOWAR yet? (IF ANYONE LEAVES A SPOILER FOR ACOWAR, SO HELP ME I WILL EXPLODE! And block you lol, this is spoiler free zone!!!)

Have a good rest of your Sunday!