March 7, 2018 by Livlife

February 2018 Books

It is now the first week of March and my reading year is well underway. February, our shortest month of the year, is typically not a huge reading month for me. In the past five months of February, I have read 14, 2, 4, 13, & 12 books in the month. Last month? I read 24. Nearly a book a day in Feb. I’m even impressed with me.

February: (24 books)

Flat-Out Love – Jessica Park^
Man Hands – Sarina Bowen & Tanya Eby^
Ready to Run – Lauren Layne^
Fallen Heir – Erin Watt^
Poison Princess – Kresley Cole*
The Love Experiment – Ainslie Paton^
Trophy Husband – Lauren Blakely^
The Difference Between Us – Rachel Higginson^
Temporary – Sarina Bowen & Sarah Mayberry^
Christmas at Two Love Lane – Keiran Kramer^
Endless Knight – Kresley Cole*
Dead of Winter – Kresley Cole*
Day Zero – Kresley Cole*
Arcana Rising – Kresley Cole*
The Dark Calling – Kresley Cole
Brooklynaire – Sarina Bowen^
The Smallest Part – Amy Harmon^
The Law of Moses – Amy Harmon^
Sincerely, Carter – Whitney G. ^
Being Brooke – Emma Hart^
All I Ask – Nicole McLaughlin^
The Lovely Reckless – Kami Garcia^
The Idea of You – Robinne Lee^
Different Kind of Forever – Dee Ernst^

So that’s a good list. I reread the Kresley Cole Arcana Chronicles series in anticipation of the new book, the first in almost two years. It was very good, the new one. As a whole, possibly my favorite series of all-time.

Man Hands is a funny book. The Love Experiment is a great read, I really liked it a lot. The Smallest Part was great, but The Law of Moses, part of the same series is excellent. A contender for book of the year. My favorite read of the month? Brooklynaire. Goodness I love Sarina Bowen. Excellent installment in her Brooklyn Bruisers series, but written so that it does not need to be read in order. Just great.

Not so great? The Idea of You. I loved the concept of this book, but the writing is bad. It is so pretentious and unrealistic that I kind of want to smack the author on principle. Different Kind of Forever I read literally because a review of The Idea of You said that it was the same concept done better. So I thought I’d find out. It is a very similar concept. And it is better, yes, but still not good. Finally, Christmas at Two Love Lane. Boy, did it surprise me how much I did not like this book. I love her historicals, but this was my first foray into contemporaries with her. I expected to like this and couldn’t believe not only that I didn’t, but how MUCH I didn’t. I have another contemporary, a different series, by her on my bookshelf. I’m now hesitant to try it. Maybe someday.

So there you have it, my February books. I ended the month with 43 books, having me on pace to read 258 books. As always, we shall see how it goes.

Happy Reading!

February 1, 2018 by Livlife

January 2018 Books

Here we go again! Kicking off a new year of book blogging. I once again set my sights on 175 books. I decimated that total last year, but I think that was highly unusual for me. However, today, on this first day of February, I have a solid start, with 19 books. Now, to be fair, the first 18 were MN Book Award selections, but I did read them. On my own, I chose and read one single book in January, which just leaves the field wide open for February. The first 18 are listed in alphabetical order by title, as I can’t remember exactly what order I read them.

January: (19 books)

Bearer of the Pearls – Terry Faust
The Bite of Winter – Bethany Helwig
Bold Women of Medicine: 21 Stories of Astounding Discoveries, Daring Surgeries, and Healing Breakthroughs – Susan M. Latta
City of Angels – Kristi Belcamino
The Devils You Know – MC Atwood
Echo Island – Edward Karlow
The Exo Project – Andrew DeYoung
Just a Girl – Carrie Mesrobian
Kollected: The Lake Hunters – JS Welles^
The Last Thing You Said – Sara Biren
Nico & Tucker – Rachel Gold
Painted Hives – Jay Ebben
Piper – Jay Asher & Jessica Freeberg
Sucktown, Alaska – Craig Dirkes
Thief’s Cunning – Sarah Ahiers
Things I’m Seeing Without You – Peter Bognanni
The Town Build on Sorrow – David Oppegaard
Unfolding – Jonathan Friesen
Stud in the Stacks – Pippa Grant^

There you have it. My strong start to the year. Of the Book Award books, I liked City of Angels, The Last Thing You Said, The Exo Project, and Things I’m Seeing Without You. I can’t really give you more information, just that I liked those.

Stud in the Stacks was my pick to start the year and what a pick it was! This is a story about a male librarian who reads romance novels. It’s like a love letter to romance told from a guy’s perspective and it’s funny. I loved it. Great pick to start my reading year.

Okay then, 19 books so far. On pace to read 228 books. We shall see how it goes!

Happy reading.

January 31, 2018 by Livlife

Year 4 of Movies

Here we are in our fourth year of movie dates with my mom. This year we only managed 10 movies, or 9.5 if you’re my mom.

This is the full list.

January – LaLa Land, which we chose because of the hype. Big mistake. I should know better. It was terrible.

February – nothing, there was not a single movie out we wanted to see.

March – Logan, the final entry of Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and it was wonderful, we both loved it. We also saw Beauty and the Beast with the kids, which doesn’t count on our date tally, but we did see it.

April – Gifted, starring Chris Evans (you know him as Captain America), and this was amazing. Just loved it. Could have been my favorite of the year.

May – King Arthur. This was my weird pick, only because my mom likes Charlie Hunnam. Did not expect it to be good. Turns out it was great.

June – Wonder Woman. The first female helmed solo superhero film in either universe and it.was.perfect.

July – Spiderman: Homecoming. LOVED this movie. How many Spiderman films have there been? It’s a “nothing new under the sun” and yet, this blew us away.

August – we didn’t see anything this month.

September – American Assassin. This was a film adaptation of a book we both love. It was okay. Not bad, but not as good as we had hoped. (Without mom, but also in September, I saw Kingsman 2 with Lane and it was fantastic and I saw American Made with Kelly and it was AWFUL).

October – we didn’t see anything this month.

November – Kicked off the month with Thor:Ragnarok and this was easily the best of the Thor movies and very high up in the overall pantheon of the MCU. Then, because it came out, we saw Justice League. Mom got sick halfway through and had to leave, which is why she only gets 9.5 credit, but I saw the whole thing and it was okay. DCU is just not hitting them out of the park. Wonder Woman is their only winner.

December – we had it narrowed to two. We chose to see Pitch Perfect 3 over The Greatest Showman and it was a mistake. PP3 was a terrible entry in this beloved series of movies. They should have stopped at 2. So stupid and such a waste to go out on that note. In January, I went myself and saw Greatest Showman and it was AMAZING. I loved every second of it, so it was too bad to go out on a low note, but it happens. They will not all be winners.

As today is January 31, we will not be kicking off 2018 with a movie, but we will pick right back up in February for Year 5!

January 31, 2018 by Livlife

2017 Books Recap

Tell the truth: was everyone dying because it took me a MONTH to get this written and posted? I’m sure. Obviously everyone loves this post. Oh, wait, is that just me? Too bad. My blog, my rules and I love this post. I get geekily excited about it year after year. Also, this is the fifth anniversary of the book blogging recap, so I feel like there shall be some fun ahead.

Alrighty, I could blather here for a while, but what’s the point? We all want the dirty deets, so let’s get right to it.

****************************************************************

2017 Statistics

Total number of books read in 2017: 225(!) (25% increase over 2016)

Average number of books read per month: 18.75

Average number of books read per week: 4.32

Month with the most books read: This goes to September and her 36 books. The most books I’ve ever read in a month is 37 (August of 2016) so this is a perfectly respectable, impressive total.

Month with the least books read: This is a tie between November and December and 3 books each.

Best book I read in 2017:

Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner. Wow, I really struggled with this. When I read this book and finally put it down, I said out loud “that was the best book of the year” and it held for months, but then, along came Brigid Kemmerer and I was torn. I almost said a tie because they were both so good but I don’t want to start that. So I made the tough choice. And this book is incredible. It is so brilliantly written and incredibly moving and supremely touching. I love everything about it. And the fact that I met the author and he’s an awesome guy and signed my book doesn’t hurt either. He’s now on the must-read/auto-buy list. He’s that good. He is also the very first male to win in this coveted category, so cheers, Jeff Zentner, and thank you for this unbelievably good book.

Runners up for best book in 2017: (in not much order)

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer. I seriously love this book so much I am disappointed it did not win, and wanted to create a second place category just for this book. Instead I am listing it first among the runners-up so it doesn’t get lost. This book blew me away. It is equally as good as this year’s champion and I am sad I read them both in the same year. Love this book.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne if you haven’t heard of this book I’d be surprised. It is everywhere and deservedly so. This book is amazing and funny and smart AND it is her first book ever! Imagine how great she’ll be in a few years. I bet she takes this category in a couple of years.

The Sea of Tranquility by Katja Millay is another very strong contender and if not for the three previous books could have won best of the year.

180 Seconds by Jessica Park, I sincerely loved this book. It is so well done and beautiful. Again, in a different year, this could easily have won.

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller. This is my dark horse pick. It isn’t romance but a swashbuckling adventure and I loved it. The sequel comes out this year and I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

Never Sweeter by Charlotte Stein. This story, my first by Charlotte Stein, really stuck with me. It was a dark and sometimes difficult read, but it ended up being a beautiful story.

The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn. I talk more about this historical romance in the most surprising category, where it did win, but what a great, fantastic book (and I just noticed that the first in this series, Because of Miss Bridgerton, was in this same category last year, I guess if you want historical, you cannot go wrong here.)

Walk of Shame by Lauren Layne. This book is an installment in a series, the third and I loved every word. This is not a book I would expect to find on this list but it hung in there and I just couldn’t NOT give it a nod.

Wish You Were Here by Renee Carlino. She appears in several categories this year and this is the only one that’s a good one. She also made this category last year with two of her books. And supposedly she has one coming out this year so I wouldn’t be surprised to find her here (or winning) next year.

The Knocked-Up Plan by Lauren Blakely. This is another book I wouldn’t have expected to see on this list. 1. Because the romantic comedy, while fun and easy to read aren’t typically stellar stories and 2. because I don’t like pregnancy storylines but, boy this book was awesome. And beating the stereotypes is reason alone to make the list.

Trust by Kylie Scott. I love Kylie Scott. I loved her rock star series, I love her bartender series and this was her first foray into YA. And you know what? I loved it, too. She’s just awesome. As long as she stays away from zombies (yep, tried those too, not even Kylie Scott could get me on board with zombies) she’s tops in my book.

The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig. Like the pirate king, this is a different sort of book. This one is about time traveling on a ship, through maps. It is an odd premise, but such an engrossing read. I loved it. I also liked its sequel but not quite as much as this one.

Worst book I read in 2017:

Thoughtless by SC Stephens. I have to say that this was on several lists as one of the best YA stories around. And I could not believe it. This is not only the worst book of the year but truly one of the worst books I have ever read. I mean, who did they pay off to get this title on so many lists?

Runners up for worst book in 2017: (in no order)

American Queen – Sierra Simone (This lost the crown by the very slimmest of margins)

The Way We Fall – Cassia Leo

Lucian Divine – Renee Carlino

Retrieval – Aly Martinez

Off-Base – Annabeth Albert

Some Kind of Hero – Suzanne Brockmann

The Story of Us – Tara Sivec

Total number of NEW books read: 219 (97.3% of books read this year, 2.6% increase over 2016)

Total rereads: 6 (2.7% of books read this year, 2.6% decrease from 2016)

Total number of standalone books (do not occur in a series): 74 (32.9% of books read in 2017, 2.2% increase from 2016)

Best series:

Hellcat Canyon Series by Julie Anne Long. This was a hotly contested category this year and I went back and forth, but ultimately, JAL won out because there is so much to love in the three books in this series but the thing I loved best is that each got better and I liked the third the most, which is rare enough in series writing. Plus, they are super funny, which I adore in a good romance.

Runners up for best series: (in no order)

Openly Series by Bill Konigsberg, I was very tempted to pick this as the winner as male authors don’t win much around here (although, best book of the year, Jeff Zentner!), and there was nothing to dislike in this series. If I had to rank, this would be my second favorite series of the year.

Love Unexpectedly Series by Lauren Layne, this could easily have been a winner as one of its books (Walk of Shame) made the best list this year. The final two books were excellent but the first two were just good, which is why it did not win.

Game On Series by Kristin Callihan, as a whole these are not books that will rock your world, but they are enjoyable books and I liked this series (which is ongoing) very much.

Royally Series by Emma Chase, a few years ago, I read a book by Emma Chase and hated it. Not just disliked, but hated, which crossed her off my read list. Then I kept reading about this series, it just kept dogging me until I finally gave in and tried the first, boy am I glad I gave her another chance! This is a great series, especially if you are (as I really, really, am) a fan of royalty in your books.

Most surprising book:

The Girl with the Make-Believe Husband by Julia Quinn. What surprised me about this book is how very much I loved it. I mean, it’s Julia Quinn, and she has long been on my must-read list, as a matter of fact, she is the only historical author I still read religiously, but in general, I’m pretty much over the whole historical romance thing. Yet, this book is one of my favorites of the year. It is on the best list. I’ve gone so far as to recommend this series just to give people a chance to read this book. It is utterly delightful.

Runners up for most surprising book: (in no order)

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence, surprising mostly for the fact that I don’t read this sort of book but it crossed my path and caught my attention and I liked it. Enough that I will read the sequel this year. For the curious, it is about assassin nuns. Truth.

The Rule Book by Jennifer Blackwood, this was a surprise because of how I found it. It was my friends at Amazon who said “based upon your choices, try….” and this was at the top of the list. Unfortunately, I had recently just gotten some really bad books from Amazon and the list was based off that. And I’ve tried Amazon recs before and been disappointed. But in this, I was pleasantly surprised. This was a great read. Kudos Amazon.

Biggest disappointment:

Without Merit by Colleen Hoover, oh how I struggled with this. If you follow my reading habits at all, you know Colleen Hoover is at the top of my must read list. In fact, she is an auto-buy for me. That’s rare. I don’t buy that many books. Anyway, this came out and a year with a new Colleen Hoover book is always a good one. Until this one. I just couldn’t connect with this one. It’s not that it’s bad. It isn’t. She couldn’t write a bad book. But I couldn’t connect to the story and it didn’t, in my opinion, deliver the same oomph her other books bring. So while it is weird to list a book that I said was 3/5 stars as my biggest disappointment, every other book of hers has been 5/5 stars, without hesitation, so I guess that’s why. I wanted the oomph and was disappointed I didn’t get it.

Runners up for biggest disappointment: (in no order)

Dating You/Hating You by Christina Lauren; so one of my favorite things to do is at the end of the year start looking at best of lists and read the best romance books of the year, if I haven’t already. Once those lists came out, they virtually ALL listed this book as the best romance of 2017. I had already read it and was just…meh about it. It’s not bad, but it certainly isn’t great. If you’re going to do office/hate-to-love romance, I feel that everyone will now compare you to The Hating Game (see best list) and this does not come close.

Lucian Divine by Renee Carlino, note this book also appears on the worst of list. It’s that simple, this was not a good book. And Renee Carlino is on my must-read list, she is amazing…this was not.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor. I loved her Gods and Monsters trilogy and I was so excited for this new series, but I was left feeling a little blah. It’s not bad, there is certainly potential but it fell a little flat for me.

Total number of print books read in 2017: 40* (17.8% of books read this year, 1.2% INCREASE over 2016. *However, with the MN Book awards books, I read what I was given and this accounts for 23 of those print books and two electronic books, so this stat is slightly inflated)

Total number of electronic books read in 2017: 185 (82.2% of books read this year, 1.2% decrease from 2016 see note* above)

Most surprising statistic: I don’t see how I don’t go with “Total number of books read” I mean, TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIVE books. That is so surprising to me.

5th Anniversary Stats:

(in honor of this being the 5th Anniversary of the recap, here’s some fun stats.)

Total number of books read in 5 years: 879 (Wowza! that means for sure by the end of this year I’ll have read more than 1,000 books, in just over six years. That is nuts!)

Average number of books read per month: 14.65

Average number of books read per week: 3.38

Total number of NEW books read: 769 (87.5% of books I read are new books)

Total number of re-reads: 110 (12.5% of books I read I have read previously)

The five worst books I’ve read since 2013:

Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

The Professional by Kresley Cole

Brown-Eyed Girl by Lisa Kleypas

The Sassy Belles by Beth Albright

Thoughtless by SC Stephens

The five best books I’ve read since 2013: (this is some good company right here!)

Goodbye Days by Jeff Zentner

November 9 by Colleen Hoover

Everything I Left Unsaid by M. O’Keefe

Endless Knight by Kresley Cole

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Honorable mentions (five selected books from all the runners-up):

Letters to the Lost by Brigid Kemmerer

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

The Five Stages of Falling in Love by Rachel Higginson

Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Before We Were Strangers by Renee Carlino

Monthly lists:

Annual recaps:

And there you have it. My fifth annual recap of the books I read. Still love everything about it, including how long it takes me to prep and write this post (but I got it in before January ended!). Congratulations to all the winners. If you found yourself in a less than stellar category this year, don’t worry, just ask Kresley Cole who I think has charted in every single category, it’s easy to recover. She’s still aces in my book. For now, my fair readers, go forth and read!

January 30, 2018 by Livlife

December 2017 Books

Man alive, I can barely remember back this far. I’ve had a busy January which is why I am nearly at the end and I still haven’t done my yearly book wrapup. As it is my favorite post of the year, I want to get it in before January runs out, so I need to post this quick. All I can tell you is that by December I was running on fumes. I was actually kind of burned out on reading so I barely read at all.

December: (3 books)

An Ex for Christmas – Lauren Layne^
American Queen – Sierra Simone^
Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire^

Yep, that’s it! Three little books. Here’s what I can tell you about them. The first one features a couple called Mark and Kelly and, well, I have very close friends called Mark and Kelly and so it was a little weird for me. But it the closing chapter of a series I very much enjoyed, so I read it, and surprisingly enjoyed it very much. It was cute and fun and sweet.

American Queen was on so many people’s best of lists that I gave it a try. Big mistake. It was horrible. One of the worst of the year (stay tuned…).

And Every Heart a Doorway an odd little book I stumbled across. I liked it, but it didn’t rock my world. If I were in a book deadzone, I might pick up the sequel. We shall see.

There you have it, folks. Any ideas on the grand total?

225.

Two hundred and twenty-five books.

True story. I was a reading machine in 2017. And that is by far my largest total since I started keeping track. Keep your peepers glued here to see my annual recap. It’ll be posted as soon as, well, as soon as I write it.

Here’s to another great year of reading!

December 9, 2017 by Livlife

Decadius Disseminatus

That’s Latin for “Ten Years of Blogging” (no, it’s really not, please don’t think that’s true, I totally made up the words of the sentiment. It’s not Latin for anything.)

But the gist is this: today, December 9, 2017, is the 10th anniversary of my life as a blogger. Ten YEARS I’ve been writing. On this very day an entire decade ago, I started out as a blogger. My friend Meg said, “You should write a blog” and so I did. Okay, there might have been more to it than that, I’m not that susceptible. I was going to repost my original blog, but, as it turns out, that site has shut down. Which means the first (just over) 500 blogs are lost forever. All that genius, gone in a wash of technology. (insert sad face smiley here)

I’d say it’s sad (see sad face smiley note), but I don’t know that it is (dammit! confused smiley). I don’t know if I need this to be permanent. The memories I’ll have either way but the granular details, I’m not sure we’re meant to carry those always. Maybe they are there just to color in the picture before it slowly leaches over time.

The point is, the stuff that matters we keep forever. but the rest of it, the stuff that seems so important in the moment? I don’t know that we’re supposed to keep it. I think part of life is letting go and moving forward. Hm, that is not a lesson I ever expected to learn through blogging, an exercise that by its very nature should show the opposite, but there you go.

This post, at the moment of publication is my 812th post. 812 times I’ve set out to tell you a story (at least here). My writing rate has slowed considerably. Five years ago, at the half decade mark, I wrote this post. In it, I told how it was my 1,000th post, 483 on this site and 517 on my first, now defunct site. If we include those 517 lost posts, then this is my 1,329th post.

(Remember my thing about numbers? This is a great place to demonstrate.)

I’ve technically written one thousand three hundred and twenty-nine posts (see? numbers are always more impressive if you write out the words.)

Over ten years, that is nearly 133 posts a year or a post every three days. Can you imagine? Every three days for a decade I wrote down my thoughts and published them on the internet for the world to read.

What was I thinking?

Just kidding, I like it. And I’m okay with it. I’m honored and touched and surprised that people actually do read it. People, that is, that are not my family or my friends. Since 219 people actually follow this blog and I’d guess less than 15 of them are the aforementioned friends and family, color me grateful and pleased.

What’s the point?

Well, there isn’t one, really. I just happened to stumble across my five year anniversary post only a couple weeks ago and it struck me, forcibly that I was dangerously close to this major anniversary. I knew then I had to take a moment and honor this date with a post, but as I thought about it in the days leading, I never found my story. Instead, today, without cleverness or guile, you get my thoughts. Just random scatters of notions sprinkled here for your enjoyment. Because I’m awesome like this, I’m going to link ten of my favorite posts.

Nope. Not favorite. Popular. I went to the site statistics and I found a list of all my posts ranked by number of views. So here we go, the Top 10 most popular posts on Livlife.

10. Blog Crack

9. Buddy Coke

8. 35/35 (Kel, can you believe one of your birthday posts is in the TOP TEN? Of the 178 times that has been viewed, how many were you?…tell the truth!)

7. All About Me (Huh, that’s my intro page, which makes sense I suppose, but feels a bit like a cheat. But I did write it….)

6. Cheese and Macaroni

5. Christmas Letter

4. Magic Necklace

3. The Danger of Brushing Your Hair (in that post I am talking about something that happened 16,000 times and I spell out the words sixteen thousand and comment on how much more it seems. In 2011. Clearly I’ve believed this theory for quite some time).

2. Christian Kane Concert (this could well be MY favorite post I’ve ever written. Certainly it is to reread. I’m probably half of the page views (though I don’t think I count) and I’m both oddly pleased and disappointed it is number two)

1. Purple Stripes – Never in a million years did I think this would be the most popular post on my site. Not sure what I thought WAS, but I wouldn’t have thought this, that’s for sure.

I’m adding one more: The Universe Wants Me to Listen to David Gray because I have always liked that post. And I think of it whenever a David Gray song comes on the radio or my iPhone. It’s number 33 overall which is still pretty high, so I’m including it as an honorable mention.

Ooops, make that two more. Wouldn’t Time Be Out To Charm You? This is another all time favorite of mine, the detailing of one of my life stories, a defining life story at that. I had to search for this one, only to find it is #73 on the list overall. But to me, this one would absolutely be top ten of my favorites, so I’m leaving it here as a second bonus.

What else can I say after ten years of being a blogger? Let’s see how long it lasts and where it goes, I guess. I certainly never thought I’d be writing a blog still after a decade.

Hm, how do you end these things? You’d think after doing this more than thirteen hundred times I’d have a foolproof system for getting out once the work is done (twss) but, unfortunately, I do not. Sometimes I’m pithy, sometimes it’s natural, sometimes I think I just stop typing.

This will be one of those times.

December 6, 2017 by Livlife

November 2017 Books

So here’s the thing, this has been the year I’ve read the most books. And I think, maybe, perhaps, I got a little burned out. November hit and I could not muster the energy to read. I’d tell myself…tomorrow. But the next day would come and all I really wanted to do was watch tv.

I don’t ever feel like anyone should be forced to read; I wouldn’t do that to others so I couldn’t do it to myself. Therefore, I didn’t read my first book until Thanksgiving. No, I’m not kidding. And as a result, this is a short list.

November: (3 books)

Renegades – Marissa Meyer^
Shacking Up – Helena Hunting^
Hooking Up – Helena Hunting^

And that’s it! Can you even believe it?

Renegades is a superhero fantasy novel. I enjoyed it, but it was a bit slow. I felt like I was waiting the whole book for it to get going. But apparently there’s another coming, so maybe all that setup will pay off.

Next was my first foray into Helena Hunting. Shacking Up will be forever known as the tarantula book. Like I had to put it down and stop reading because it freaked me out. I did eventually pick it up again, but I had to skip ahead to the end of the chapter because of the giant fucking spider. *shudder*

Hooking Up is the follow up to that book, which is only mildly irritating because they weren’t listed as a series, though they clearly are, and I started this one first. It was super highly rated, and it started out fantastic, but sort of fizzled thereafter. Neither would be books I’d recommend.

And November was complete. I finished the month with 222 books. One more month to go, then our yearly wrap. You know how much I enjoy that post!

See you in the new year!

November 21, 2017 by Livlife

October 2017 Books

Well it is rapidly sprinting toward Thanksgiving and my reading is at an all-time low. I decided to take a look at the year in review and see if I can spot anything that I might have missed, when I realized I never blogged my October books.

Here we go.

October: (14 books)

Without Merit – Colleen Hoover^
Until it Fades – KA Tucker^
Hollywood Scandal – Louise Bay^
More Than This – Jay McLean^
Wild at Whiskey Creek – Julie Anne Long^
Dirty Dancing at Devil’s Leap – Julie Anne Long^
Fear Me – BB Reid^
If There’s No Tomorrow – Jennifer L. Armentrout^
Where I Belong – J. Daniels^
The Beauty of Us – Kristen Proby^
Dream of Me – Quinn Loftis^
On A Tuesday – Whitney G.^
Until Friday Night – Abbi Glines^
Under the Lights – Abbi Glines^

And there you have it folks. So much I can say here. Obviously, at well over 200 books on the year, I’ve been reading like a fiend, but, largely, these have all been good reads. On the whole that is. Then October hit. I started with a beloved favorite, Colleen Hoover and her new book. I actually waited to read it so it wouldn’t blend in with all the fabulous books of September. But I didn’t like it. Oh, I mean, it was fine. Perfectly good book and all that, but there is good and there is ColleenHooverGood. This was not the latter. At least IMO. My mother, a convert at my insistence says it was exactly that, ColleenHooverGood. It is possible that this book fell victim to The Oversell. Obviously, all my own fault, I have such high expectations for her that, well, it’s almost like she is set up to fail. I’ll have to wander through the quagmire of my mind for a solution because I just can’t go around hating on CH, she’s just too awesome.

Things just went downhill from there. Okay, that’s not really fair. The Julie Anne Long books were very enjoyable. But really, that’s pretty much it. I had high hopes for Dream of Me, and to be fair, it was a cute idea, but the story went stupid and ends on a cliffhanger and then I find out it was supposed to be a series but this is the only book she’s written and it’s been three years since this came out. So odds are that she won’t write the next one. Kind of killed my book buzz, you know?

So yeah, October was a book bust. But even those lackluster numbers got me to 219 books on the year, headed for a fantastical total of 263 books on the year. Oh my.

November 8, 2017 by Livlife

Twenty Eight

Happy Birthday, Kelly Jo. No suspense here, this one’s for you. I started out with a grand plan to make you a video, I even got up early this morning to do it. I did several takes and finally got it right. Then as I stood up, I dropped the phone and somehow, in the picking it up, I deleted the freshly completed video. Which is how my celebration of your day started out with a giant Fuck You to the universe. Man, oh man, that made me crabby. I didn’t have time to re-record the video because I’d done more than one take to try and get it perfect.

Then I spent the entire day stewing over it, because I was annoyed my plan had failed. I had every intention of heading home tonight and doing it again, except that it is dark when I get home now and the lighting in my house is terrible and I knew it would look better in natural light.

Then it hit me. Kelly likes words. Specifically, she likes it when *I* write words for her (feels like there is more than one meaning to that sentence!) And in days gone by I used to write sonnets to our friendship or post montages of photos glorifying our BFF status and post them to my blog. I don’t use the blog much anymore, at least not for things like that.

But I could.

I did.

I am.

I’ve spent all day thinking of you. I was in a meeting this morning (that I was NOT late for, despite my tech snafu, thank you very much) at the University of MN and the woman was talking about the children’s picture book digital art collection and I thought of you and how you’d be able to use that for your art unit.

I thought about you in the parking ramp when the person in the next spot parked so close to me that I could not fit between our cars and that was the driver side. And I ended up climbing in the passenger seat and over the console and contorting my body to squeeze into my driver’s seat. And even though it pissed me off, as I drove away I thought how funny it was and wished you were there because we’d laugh about that craziness for YEARS to come.

I stopped at Subway and thought of you and how much you enjoy Subway and how much you enjoy eating out, and that time you called me on the phone to tell me that Subway started offering breakfast and it was awesome.

I drove past Peppers & Fries and thought fondly of our lunches there, with and without your children. Then I thought of all the other lunches we’ve had and how much you enjoy going out to lunch. More than anyone I know.

All day today, every little thing I do, my mind has found a way to relate it back to you. Given the two very different lives we lead, this should seem a difficult task. But it isn’t. I can connect almost anything to you. And the reason is that we’ve been friends for twenty-eight years. 28. Our friendship is old enough to vote, buy cigarettes, lose money at a casino, drink alcohol and rent a car.

The Civil War lasted four years. World War I lasted four years. World War II lasted six years. The Korean War lasted three years. The Great Depression lasted ten years.

Our friendship outlasted all of these major events….added together. We have been friends longer than it would have taken to fight in four major wars and survive the greatest economic hardship our country has endured. With a year to spare.

I’ve spoken many times on my blog about you and our friendship. I’ve listed those if you wish to reread my words about you.

The Wonder (I think this is my all-time favorite Kelly post)

Chicago Trip (Although this is a close contender, still makes me LOL, literally)

The Right Stuff

First Sleepover

One of these posts contains a different list of posts about Kelly (there are a LOT to choose from) and in that one I put four and mention specifically that I stop at four just for Kelly. In this one I stopped at nine. It killed me to do it, but I did. Only nine lovable posts about my BFF. Because she likes lists that don’t conform. It’s me who doesn’t.

But here’s the crux of the thing. I love you, Kelly Jo. I’ve been loving you ~~forever~~ since 1989 and fully plan on that being the case forever. It’s a remarkable thing to know someone that long. Outside of blood relatives, there is no one I’ve known longer, and I know it is the same for you.

When we met, we didn’t have boobs. We didn’t shave our legs, we’d never gotten our first periods. We’d never kissed a boy. Our lives were small and sweet and innocent, as a child’s should be. The size of the world has grown immeasurably since we met, but it is in keeping with our friendship. More succinctly, the older we get, the better friends we become.

I know this is your first birthday since losing your dad and I know how hard that has been, and still is, on you. I think of you every day hoping, praying, that today will be a better day than yesterday. Also, I think of him, his warmth and his laughter and how very, very, very much he loved you. He is responsible for us, he moved you from Woodbury to St. Paul, and if he hadn’t done that, in 1989, you and I would never have met, never become friends, and what an immense loss that would have been. Nearly as awful as losing your dad. I hope that brings you comfort. Of all the things he’s given you, and Heaven knows that is a lot of things, he helped give you my friendship. And I’m still here, always.

Sometimes, Kel, sometimes it is hard to write to you because there is literally nothing I don’t say to you. I love that about us, our openness, even on the rare occasions that we fight, we always communicate our every thought. So many times I’ve set pen to paper (okay, fine, fingers to keyboard, but whatever, pen to paper is more poetic, and alliterative) to talk about you, about friendship and about how incredible it is that we are still forever friends.

Or BFF. As you like to say.

You are never far from my thoughts, and today, well, you are my favorite thought.

Happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy birthday.

39 happys. Really. Count them.

Love you always, BFF.

kel

P.S. even though I never specifically mention NKOTB, I do reference them in the post. And because it felt weird to write to you, on your birthday and NOT mention them, I felt compelled to at this postscript to point that out, thus sneaking in a mention of your favorite band. I’m clever like that. Happy Birthday #1 Fan!

October 13, 2017 by Livlife

Long Live Livlife

My friend Elena recently had someone reach out to her on Facebook. As most of you know, I don’t do FB. But this person, Katie, reached out to Elena asking for my contact info because they wanted to send a yearbook.

Um, what?

Elena asked me and I asked who this person was. You see, I don’t really remember high school. But Elena does. So I figured she would know who this was and if it was worth sending along my contact info. She said, “I think she went to HS with us.” Well that’s strange. If Elena doesn’t remember her, then who is this person? More importantly, how does this person know that Elena and I are friends?

So I gave Elena permission to pass along my contact info, but not my regular email, my junk email, the one I use to sign up for stuff, and, apparently, pass along to people I may or may not know from Elena’s FB page. Obviously, I was curious. Then, Elena emailed me, “there is more to this story.” GAH! Tell me. Tell me NOW. She said she’d tell me in person, fortunately, we were seeing each other last night.

We went to a concert and Elena slipped in just as the lights were dimming, so there was no time to talk. After the show, after hours of waiting, she gave me this.

Katie Whatsherface reached out to me on FB about a yearbook. Apparently, she learned that you had died and wanted to send a copy of the yearbook to your family.

WHATTHEEVERLOVINGWHAT?!?!?

I’m not dead.

I’m really not. This is not a ghostly memoir. I’m a real, live girl, who reads a lot of books.

Now, of course, I have so many questions, so.many.questions, and I am just waiting to see if Katie Whatsherface reaches out. She’s had my email for two days and I’ve heard jack, with a side of squat. I’m wondering if she’ll even bother now that Elena confirmed that I am, indeed, still among the living.

Also, if I were dead, why would my family want my high school yearbook. Which is especially weird because I have a high school yearbook. One from every year (which I plan to use to look up Katie Whatsherface tonight, I forgot last night after hearing the story.) Junior high as well. And one from sixth grade. All on my bookshelves. So if my family wants them they are free for the taking when they clear out my house.

So odd. So, so, SO odd.

But I am here to state, firmly, that despite the fact that I am not a member of the Facebook community, I am, as a matter of certainty, alive and kicking. (I even just did an air kick just to prove it.)

I am alive.

Long Live Livlife.