Book Review: [ARC] Please Pick Me by Reina Regina

Posted on 09/23/2020 by Lenn

Title: Please Pick Me

Author: Reina Regina

Publication Date: November 11, 2020

Number of Pages: 124

Publisher: Moonchild Press Publishing

Genre: Poetry

Synopsis:

In a garden of a thousand other volumes, my little yellow book with its earnest plea and hopeful flowers on the cover sits waiting for you to pick it up. It’s got a heart it wants to give away.

These haikus, poems, and prose pieces are about

the miracle of being wanted back by someone we want,
the desperation of hoping they’ll fight harder when they waver,
the rawness of seeking reassurance that we are loved as we are, and
the tenderness we feel when we’re sending love out to others

—all those moments when we are making our need to be accepted plain and praying, please pick me.

This book was born after twenty-six years of learning that it’s okay to want to be wanted, that vulnerability is merely throwing open the gateway to honest connections, and that fighting to be loved the way you deserve is bravery and not weakness.

I hope you open it. I hope it invites you to be open too.

Continue reading →

10 Books On My Priority List

Posted on 09/04/2020 by Lenn

Hey, everyone! I’m back with another book list and today I’ll be talking about the top ten books in my physical TBR that are on my priority list. I may have mentioned in one of my previous posts that I am a mood reader which is why I don’t post monthly TBRs here or on Instagram (except for my readathon books). My being a mood reader is also the reason why I do not have a specific date set for reading each of the books that I will mention in this post, but hopefully, I can get to them before the year ends. Continue reading →

Book Review: [ARC] Ever After by Olivia Vieweg

Posted on 09/03/2020 by Lenn

Title: Ever After

Author: Olivia Vieweg

Publication Date: September 1, 2020

Number of Pages: 288

Publisher: Graphic Universe

Genre: Horror, Dystopia

Synopsis:

Vivi and Eva are two travelers in a countryside filled with the undead. After a train breaks down, stranding them between safe zones, the young women partner up to stay alive. Vivi is struggling with grief–and guilt–over the loss of her sister. Eva is hiding the start of a horrifying transformation. Together they’ll face heat, zombie hordes, and their own inner demons, searching for signs of life in a land of the dead.

This graphic novel addition to an enduring genre is thoughtful and emotion-driven, but also full of zombie scares and action.

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Stuff I’ve Been Reading Lately #11

Posted on 09/01/2020 by Lenn

BOOKS READ:

Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage
Dekada ’70 by Lualhati Bautista
Ever After by Olivia Vieweg
One-Punch Man Vol. 7 by ONE
One-Punch Man Vol. 8 by ONE
Cardcaptor Sakura Vol. 6 by CLAMP
Kaguya-sama: Love is War Vol. 3 by Aka Akasaka

BOOKS BOUGHT:

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna, #1) by Kendare Blake
Girl of Nightmares (Anna, #2) by Kendare Blake
Demon Slayer Vol. 1 by Koyoharu Gotouge
Your Lie in April Vol. 1 by Naoshi Arakawa
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
The Shadow of What Was Lost (The Licanius Trilogy, #1) by James Islington
An Echo of Things to Come (The Licanius Trilogy, #2) by James Islington
The Modern Faerie Tales Trilogy (Omnibus Edition) by Holly Black

BOOKS RECEIVED:

Finding Audrey by Sophie Kinsella
Storms by Chris Vick
The Museum of Heartbreaks by Meg Leder
Geekerella by Ashley Poston

ARCs:

Ever After by Olivia Vieweg
One of Those Days by Adres G. Leiva

Continue reading →

Favorite Debut Books

Posted on 08/17/2020 by Lenn

Hey, guys! Today I’m going to talk about my all-time favorite debuts! I’ve been wanting to write posts of my favorite so and so and I have already started in February and sort of stopped because I ran out of ideas of books to list. Recently, I came up with a lot of ideas for my blog content and have been scheduling posts since last week. With that, I also came up with new topics for my book lists!

If you do not know, a debut book means it is an author’s first novel that has been published. I honestly love reading debut novels and discovering amazing authors, I mean, if the first novel they ever wrote is amazing, what more the next books that they will write, right?

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The Tome Project

Posted on 08/14/2020 by Lenn

Tome, /tōm/ n.
A book, especially a large, heavy, scholarly one.

I started reading more since the quarantine started in March and managed to put a quarter of a dent on my physical TBR. Some time around the middle of this chaos, when it was announced that couriers are back in operations and that deliveries can pass through from wherever city to another, I started buying books again. I started hauling books that have been on my Goodreads TBR for years! So the quarter of a dent that I made on my physical TBR isn’t quite considered a dent anymore since I’ve added quite a number of books on it. Haha

As you know, I’ve announced in a previous post that I am participating in Sam’s (of thoughtsontomes) Tome Topple readathon and it quite gave me an idea to launch this little project. With that being said, I came up with a plan to read at least one tome (or a 500+ page book) from my physical TBR per month.

I have a lot of books that are over 500 pages and I think I’ve added some more during the quarantine, and most of these books are part of a series so I hope that this personal project will help me read most of the books that I have hauled over the years (and recently) and finally finish all of them.

For August, I included Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage which has a total of 531 pages and Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl which has a total of 563 pages. This is a good start for me because the Caster Chronicles series has been on my Goodreads TBR for a very long time and it has been suggested and recommended to me by a lot of people and I bought the whole series three years ago, so I really really need to get to it.

Reading update:

I have managed to finish reading Flyte (Septimus Heap, #2) by Angie Sage on Saturday and I gave it a 3.75 rating. It was absolutely an awesome journey with Septimus and Jenna. so I am looking forward to continuing the series next month. After reading Flyte, I started reading Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles, #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl yesterday and I’m just a couple of pages in so I can’t really say anything about it yet.

On the side of Beautiful Creatures, I am also reading Dekada ’70 by Lualhati Baustista on the side so that I could also make progress with my Wikathon TBR. So far, I am enjoying the book. For me, it is really educational given the current state of our country recently.

Me? An Otaku?

Posted on 08/12/2020 by Lenn

I have always considered myself as an avid reader, so I read almost anything and everything. As I have mentioned in a previous post, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was in elementary school and books have been my best friends since. I basically devoured every book that is available for me to read.

I used to read a lot of romance books (because my mom used to have a lot of Nicholas Sparks pocket books) back then. And in the middle of all that, I was also reading middle-grade fantasy books, nonfiction (e.g., National Geographic magazines, Almanac, Ripley’s Believe It or Not, etc.), comics, and horror books. It was just recently when I discovered the wonderful world of manga (and even more recently, anime).

I’ve always known that manga have a large cult following different types of fans depending on its genre (e.g., yaoi, yuri, shoujo, and others). Being a long-time comic book reader, it was a bit confusing for me when I first started reading manga because of the reversed way of reading it. I know so many people who are quite fans of reading manga. Take for example, my brother — he reads a lot of manga online and I never really cared about it before until I met my boyfriend a couple of years back who asked me to try it. Being a wide-reader, I did try it, but I never really expected to go deep into this fandom.

The quarantine has absolutely turned me into what they call an Otaku, a person with consuming interests in manga and anime. In my side of the world, reading manga or watching anime is synonymous to a geek or a nerd, which I don’t quite understand. In my perspective, I am just reading another book or watching another series/film. It’s still reading, it’s still watching. That’s it.

So what made me continue reading manga? What really cemented my being an Otaku was when I fell in love with Tokyo Ghoul‘s characters. I am far from finished with the first arc because I have yet to complete the physical copies, but I am absolutely obsessed with this manga that I even started reading other titles like One-Punch Man, Kaguya-sama: Love is War, and I recently preordered the Orange Collection Vol. 1 which I am really excited about. Hopefully it arrives this month. I also started reading Cardcaptor Sakura which has been my favorite anime when I was a kid.

Aside from reading manga, I also started watching anime. I started watching Sword Art Online, Erased (which I’ve already finished), and Your Lie in April. It’s been such a fun journey so far and I am absolutely looking forward to more manga to read and anime to watch.

How about you? Do you read manga or watch anime? Maybe you could recommend me something?

Eureka! Moment #6: Backdrops

Posted on 08/10/2020 by Lenn

Hello, blogosphere! It’s that time of the month again where I feature something that I have discovered and have totally enjoyed using from the previous month. For July, I will be talking about backdrops!

As you all know, I love taking photos of food, places, my books, and basically anything I can think of. Going into quarantine, I don’t have a lot of food and places to take pictures of. So I am left with my books for my Instagram content and it has been a struggle for me to look for an IG-worthy space in our house that fits my aesthetic. So I have been using my white pillow case as background for my photos:

Using my pillow case was totally okay, but it’s already starting to wear out and needed cleaning, and I don’t have an alternate pillow case (or any other cloth, for that matter) to use. So I decided to look for other materials that I can use for my photos’ backgrounds and have found out about these backdrops and it totally up-ed my game in flatlay photos.

This backdrop that I found in Lazada is reversible and has two designs which are both white. I also bought an orange cloth backdrop which I also sometimes use when I get tired of the white background. I am absolutely in love with both products that I am planning on buying another color for each; I’m planning on getting a darker shade for the base backdrops and a lighter one for the cloth backdrops.

Here are some sample photos where I’ve used them:

Amazing, right? I think there are a lot of other shops selling these kind of backdrops. You can look it up in both Lazada and Shopee so you can choose you preferred color and style.