The prompt for Top Ten Tuesday today is Cozy Reads! With these instructions: "Share books that give off a cozy vibe, whether through atmosphere, setting, or some other factor. Please tell us why they’re cozy for you, too!"
I just finished a cozy read...Not Going There by Terri Osburn. All her books (the ones I've read so far anyway) are cozy! Lovely romances. I need to read more in her Anchor Island series, because I feel like the setting in those would really add to the coziness.
Whenever I'm trying to think of "cozy" books, I think of Anne of Green Gables. Pretty sure there's nothing that's quite as cozy as that one!
One of my favorite authors is Kasie West and think of all her books as cozy, simply because they are fun fluffy cute romances. I am getting behind and need to read her latest ones!
Tweet Cute by Emma Lord is another fun and cozy book. I mean of course there are problems and issues, but mostly it's... cute!
Miracle Creek Christmas by Krista Lynne Jensen is a sweet cozy Christmas romance.
All of Trish Milburn's kpop and kdrama series are cozy... despite all the problems and issues she addresses within the kpop industry.
Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell is SOOOO cute and cozy! What a fun fall/autumn/Halloween story!
Scrolling through my Goodreads and realizing that I could use more cozy in my life. And it appea rs that my definition of cozy is a cute fun romance. I don't really do cozy mysteries, so there's nothing like that on my list. But I love fun cute romances and so you'd think I'd have a ton more on my read list, but seriously, scrolling through it and it's mostly rough and wild stories!
What's cozy to you all? I look forward to look at your posts and getting suggestions!
One of my new favorite groups is called TRENDZ... here is the "dance practice" of their latest song. I wanted you to see their amazing choreography, should you happen to choose to click on it! They blow me away with this talent! AHH!
And for something totally different that I'm loving from this week:
Watching: Just keeping up with the Survivor and Amazing Race episodes. I finally got invested in a kdrama from last year called From a Distance, Spring is Green. It tackles some heavy subjects, but stars an adorable kpop idol named Park Jihoon. I'm loving his acting in this one.
Reading: I actually finished several books over the past couple of weeks! It's a miracle! Fingersmith, The Maid, and People We Meet on Vacation. I really enjoyed all of them. You should be able to find my thoughts on all of them here on the blog, or over on the Booktube channel.
Writing: I've been doing pretty awful at my 10,000 word Nano goal, but I did add another 1000 the other day, for a total of almost 3000. Better than nothing, right?
Blogging: The Struggle!
YouTubing:
The Booktube channel is growing fast thanks to the Book Shelf Tour video I shared here last time. I have since uploaded the video where I reorganized the mess and tried to get rid of some things. Here's that one if you missed it:
On the Kpop channel I'm gearing up for all the year end video compilations I love to do. Maybe I'll have a cool one to share next time.
Health Watch: Ugh. It's still terrible in this category of my life. I dug out all my fat pants that I was wearing three years ago before I lost the weight. Most of it is back on now. Just like everyone said it would be. I am learning that "normal" eating won't work at all for sure. (Normal eating meaning normal carbs... not even out of control carbs.)
We all had a bit of a cold at this house since last I wrote. But we never tested for the covid, so who knows?
Misc:
* I'm anxious about what's going to happen with Twitter since I'm quite addicted to that spot. I don't think many of you follow me over there, so it probably won't affect our little interaction here. I am embracing Discord and finding some places there. If you are in a Discord that you find is cool let me know!
* I had a birthday this past week! Is that reason to celebrate? I'm not sure any more!
* We are going to see Mandy Patinkin in concert this weekend. We saw him once upon a time years ago and I'm excited to see him again. He's quite the goofball! And an amazing singer.
A book I read for my own October reading, from my shelves, since I'm attempting to only read things from my own shelves. And wow, this was very different from what I expected! But I quite enjoyed it anyway!
It's about a girl who is raised in a shady environment in Victorian England. This place appears to be a locksmith shop, but is really employing people to steal things for them, that they pawn or otherwise sale. The lady in this house is into infant farming. Which quite curdled my blood. But yeah. And one of these babies is our girl. But the lady ends up keeping this girl to raise as her own daughter.
One day a dude that also has ties to this house comes in with a plot to scam the lady of a house he's been working at. He thinks they can get our girl to pretend to be her maid, and then they will convince the rich girl to marry him at which point they will put her in a madhouse and run off with all her money. Our girl is convinced to do it and off they go to carry forth with their plans.
But if of course things do NOT go as planned. And then the twists and turns start coming! And they just keep coming after that!
There are some disturbing scenes at the madhouse, and other... interesting.... scenes I was not expecting. But I did very much get wrapped up in the story, even if I didn't fall much for these characters. Despite being a long book, I was quite engaged and reading it at every chance I got.
I must say that this should have been a book on my reading list for Pride Month instead of Spooky Month though...
Anyway, wow. I can't say a whole lot more about it for fear of spoiling everything, so if it sounds intriguing, just go for it!
Well this prompt is timely since I just declared my participation in Booktuber challenge that's kind of right along these lines!
That challenge is to read (insert your choice of amount of books here) books from your own shelves before you BUY ANY MORE BOOKS! It's called #ReadWhatYouOwnChallenge. You know we've all done this kind of challenge before, but it's something I've been particularly thinking I need to do anyway. Like TRULY concentrate on doing it and see if I can feel just slightly less guilty about all the unread books around this house.
So I've been reorganizing my hoard of books and as part of that I pared down my TBR to the books I REALLY want to read next... here's that view now:
And so there are books on this shelf that are first or seconds (maybe even thirds and fourths?) in series... and so it's THOSE that I want to catch up on first. Do you see them? Firefight, Goliath, Son, The Young Elites, Shadow Scale, The Gray Wolf Throne, Magic Study and Fire Study, Oathbringer (ha!), just to name a few.
If you are interested in my video declaring my participation in the other challenge, here you go. Of course anyone can do this, so join in if you want!!
I'll also be reading Atomic Habits for Nonfiction November as part of this challenge. WAH! I have too many goals, I hope I can accomplish at least some of them!
Sorry I've been so MIA lately! So much is going on here... well, it's slowed down a bit now but wow, October was INTENSE! We literally had some sort of party or travel, or thing every night for two weeks straight. It was fun, but so very crazy. Anyway. Here's my report!
LISTENING:
I had fun making a Thanksgiving playlist on Spotify. Here's the link if you're interested:
One of my favorite songs from the past month is this from a boy group now called TFN (formerly T1419) and they are a less well known, new-ish group. We got to see them at the festival we went to in October (see below) and then they come out with this new song shortly after. I love love love the choreography! And it's so fun to know them better now after seeing them all in person. They are awesome!
If you want something a little more mellow, I'm in love with this guy's debut solo album. Seriously so good. He's the dude from a brother sister duo group called AKMU. Anyway, this is the title track:
WATCHING:
Doing pretty well at keeping up with Survivor and Amazing Race. Finished Young Actor's Retreat (which I reviewed here) and trying to find a kdrama that captures my attention. Struggling in that department. I haven't really watched much else lately.
READING:
I finished Feed by Mira Grant (reviewed here) and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters... review to come soon. Both strange books. I started The Maid by Nita Prose for book club. I can tell I'm not quite in the mood for it. I may wait another week and read something more... fun... for a minute. I really need something fun right now. What should it be??
WRITING:
I pledged to write 10,000 words as a NANOWRIMO rebel! So far I've done 1000! Woot! I haven't done much this weekend though, so that's not good. But seriously, having this bite-sized goal feels so awesome... and I don't know what it is about doing a big community event like this that makes writing more fun... but there's something there that drives me.
BLOGGING:
I uploaded two posts this week lol! And I already linked to them... my review of Feed and of Young Actors' Retreat. This week I hope to review Fingersmith, maybe do a Top Ten Tuesday, and not sure what else.
YOUTUBING:
I've posted several videos on the new booktube channel. The most popular one so far is a tour of my bookshelves. Go check it out if you haven't yet!
We are now working on a video of us organizing the books. Look for that one to come soon!
The kpop channel has my favorites of the month compilation. So check that one out for some awesome songs that you might fall in love with! There's a bunch of mellow ones on the list this time, if that's your style:
In mid October we went to a thing called KAMP LA 2022... it was a brand new kpop festival that we were so excited about, but it turned out to be quite the fiasco. Half of the artists that were promised to come, didn't come because of visa issues, which is the fault of the festival organizer. We think they didn't have enough money because people didn't buy tickets like they thought and so they messed up the visas on purpose since they wouldn't have money to pay them. In they end they were giving away free tickets (that I paid hundreds of dollars for) and begging people to show up. It was crazy. But still we went because we just wanted to see Super Junior and thankfully they showed up! So... after six years of being into this kpop thing, I finally got to see the group that started it all for me. It was amazing. We did a vlog about the whole experience, with clips from the shows... here:
EATING/EXERCISING:
Struggling. Always struggling. I finished the first month of doTerra's Metapowr stuff and it was all good, but I didn't lose weight or anything miraculous like that. I plan to at least continue with the collagen drink.
MISC:
* I've been so devastated by the tragedy that happened in Seoul last weekend. My sister was there with her friends (in Seoul) but chose to go to a concert that night instead of partying with her friends. Her friends were in the area (Itaewon) where the crush of people happened, but hunkered down in a bar until it was safe to go. It took them hours to get back to their airbnb they were all staying in. They are very traumatized by everything. But I'm so glad that they, and my sister are okay. This is an area my daughter was in just a few months ago and one I've visited myself when we went to Seoul. It's crazy to imagine such a tragedy happening there where everyone is so happy and having fun normally. It will never be the same again.
* Some of the craziness that's happened in the family since I last wrote: a trip to LA for the crazy kpop festival (see above), a trip to Oregon to look at houses and visit my daughter (we decided not to buy a house for now,) a birthday celebration for my husband, a wedding for my nephew, book club, church parties, work parties, an author event, Halloween, cheering on runners for a half marathon... and I can't remember what else.
Seeing the grandkids while in Oregon.
* Oh, and the hot water heater broke, so we have been with out that until just yesterday.
* Now the holiday season is here, so things will just keep being crazy, yes? We might be hosting Thanksgiving at our house, so that should be interesting. Wish me luck!
So, obviously this is technically not a drama. It's a very fun variety show that stars drama actors. I started watching not really knowing what it was all about, but dang.. this has been one of the most fun things I've watched all year! My face seriously got sore for laughing so much!
The dude that directed three different dramas took the main actors from those dramas, and managed to get them together for this retreat where they played games, competed with each other, had missions and just hung out together. At the end, they had them do a pop up restaurant to cook and serve their fans. So much fun!
The actors came from these three dramas:
Love in the Moonlight: Park Bo Gum, Kim Yoo Jung, Jinyoung, Chae Soo Bin, Kwak Dong Yeon
Itaewon Class: Park Seo Joon, Ahn Bo Hyun, Kwon Nara, Ryu Kyung Soo, Lee Joo Young
The Sound of Magic: Ji Chang Wook, Hwang In Yeop, Choi Sung Eun, Kim Bo Yoon, Chi Hae Won
And then seeing what their personalities are "in real life" (of course we'll never know for certain!) but dang In Yeop is so "cool" in his dramas, but so freaking quiet and shy as himself. And I had no idea how old he is... having so many others calling him Hyung and Oppa was so weird, I feel like he should have been a maknae of the group. (He's like 31 or something.) Dong Yeon was surprisingly quiet too. I fell so much more in love with those two actors than I even was before.
And JCW... like.. is he TRULY that adorable all the time? His facial expressions are ALWAYS spot on, and he can portray emotion constantly, just from his face. I am sure some of that is intentional, but it seems so seamless that I feel like he must be a bit like this as his normal self? I am dying to know! He blows me way seriously.
And Bo Gum... dang that boy is cute. And so sweet and nice to everyone.
Getting know Kyung Soo, someone a bit more unfamiliar to me, was fun. I need to look up more of his dramas. And the girls from Itaewon Class are freaking adorable... makes me want to actually watch this one once and for all! (This drama seems a bit ruthless for me, but these actors all really make me want to check it out now.)
Anyway, the are all so enjoyable and so funny and so... just... cool. I'm sure some of my love of this watching experience stems from my knowledge of their dramas and their normal acting selves, so I don't know what a person with no prior experience with them would think, but truly, you'd all probably die laughing too and then want to go catch up on everything they've done!
This was another book club read! The premise is quite intriguing... it takes place several years after a zombie virus outbreak, and the world has come to learn how to deal with the aftermath. Even though this book was written in 2010 (or published then I should say) it has so many similarities to our world now with the whole virus fear and constant testing and everyone staying in and social distancing... AND... the political fall out.
Yes, this book got a bit heavy on the politics for me. Our main characters end up on the campaign trail of a presidential candidate. They are bloggers and in this world, bloggers are the main news source. The ones brave enough to go out and face the zombie threat and bring people news. Another intriguing premise for sure.
But, I had a lot of issues with the delivery of this story. It's very info dumpy, a lot of telling about how this world works instead of just jumping into the story and showing us. It took a lot of time for something to actually happen. The writing style was a bit dry and just not my favorite. The characters also not so very much my favorite.
That being said, when the story actually started to get going, there were enough crazy things that happen to keep me going. A couple of unseen twists and turns. And I am just a touch curious about what might happen in the next books.
Another interesting thing is the relationship between our main characters. They are brother and sister but dang... they sure don't act like it! And we do learn they are adopted, but I still wondered about whether they are biological or not. That might come out in future books, or I missed it. I don't know. But that whole thing is intriguing to me too.
We did talk about some stuff that goes on in the next books during book club and it actually does make me want to read more. Even with all the issues I had. Go figure!
