Life of a Random

Let me just say right now that this post is going to be pretty  long. After all, it IS a recap post and I always get long-winded on those. ;) But I hope you like it! (Let me know if you think this should be a thing) I also just want to mention that I did a guest review for Kate  @The Magic Violinist and you should maybe probably totally go check it out. *grins* favorite book quotes "We don't get to choose who we love. Or stop loving them when they're difficult."   {born wicked by jessica spotswood} "Laugh it up," she told him, "but the thing is, I hadn't known myself at all until I went away. I knew how Nicole and Amber saw me. And Lucien and the Spider and all the others-- they're afraid of you, so they figure you must be pretty awful indeed. They think you can't feel anything, because they've forgotten how. You're very, very dangerous, I get that, and you're prone to some very theatrical brooding, but don't le...

Before I get into the main part of this post, I'd just like to say that "white chocolate" appeared in the keywords that people have used to find my blog. Um, yes. That is fabulous. I love this person. Let's be honest here, the only search word better than this would be "milk chocolate." (Don't argue.) ~~~ I was wondering what to write today....and I really wasn't producing any interesting, fun ideas. At all. So I googled and found a list of topics, one of which was "What You're Addicted to and Why," here . I thought that sounded really fun so I'm stealing it for my blog. :)  Because we all know that as a blogger, I'm gonna have addictions . That's just how it works.  My List of 10 Things I'm Addicted To 1. Social Media + YouTube First, the expected things: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and YouTube. Who doesn't adore these websites. They are literally my life. I check them everyday...

Okay. PANIC TIME. I completely forgot to publish yesterday's post. *begs for mercy* You may or may not have noticed that I started posting on Sundays and Wednesdays. Buuut, yeah, kinda forgot. Oops. In conclusion, once again SORRY and this is my 200th post yay! To All the Boys I've Loved Before  by Jenny Han Publication date: April 15, 2014 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Format: hardcover Source: me Pages: 355 To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before is the story of Lara Jean, who has never openly admitted her crushes, but instead wrote each boy a letter about how she felt, sealed it, and hid it in a box under her bed. But one day Lara Jean discovers that somehow her secret box of letters has been mailed, causing all her crushes from her past to confront her about the letters: her first kiss, the boy from summer camp, even her sister's ex-boyfriend, Josh. As she learns to deal with her past loves face to face, Lara Jean discovers that someth...

I got back to college for my second semester on Sunday evening. Today was my first day of classes. And I thought since I never did my whole "Here's my awesome dorm room" post, I'd do it today. Of course, this time around it was way less stressful and lonely and awful. POSITIVE THINGS. YAY. I've started getting hungry a lot faster again though. I'm having trouble keeping up with my stomach here. **I apologize beforehand for the bad quality of the photos. my book case AKA the center of my life I have a book case! Because my parents are fabulous. And my mom has a thing about stuff absolutely having  to go somewhere specific. Psh. On the top is my hotpot (very useful for making essentials like instant noodles and hot chocolate), the first letter of my name made out of a book (A gift from a friend. It has honest to goodness pages inside. I'm not sure whether I should cry with sadness or happiness), and a bin with dishes and snacks that I want e...

Number 9 of my 2015 book challenge is finished! I don't know what I'm going to do when the book requirements get more specific. ;)  Deep Blue by Jennifer Donnelly Publication date: May 6, 2014 Publisher: Disney Press Format: Hardcover Source: library Pages: 340 Deep in the ocean, in a world not so different from our own, live the merpeople. Their communities are spread throughout the oceans, seas, and freshwaters all over the globe. When Serafina, a mermaid of the Mediterranean Sea, awakens on the morning of her betrothal, her biggest worry should be winning the love of handsome Prince Mahdi. And yet Sera finds herself haunted by strange dreams that foretell the return of an ancient evil. Her dark premonitions are confirmed when an assassin's arrow poisons Sera's mother. Now, Serafina must embark on a quest to find the assassin's master and prevent a war between the Mer nations. Led only by her shadowy dreams, Sera searches for five other mermaid her...

Because I already addressed the main topics of this month, I'm just going to be talking about smaller goals that can be finished by the end of January. books to read Since the month is already almost half over, I'm not going to push myself too hard. But I do  want to read the two books below for sure.      Besides both of them counting for my 2015 book challenge, I've wanted to read both for a while and just haven't gotten around to it.  resolutions for the month 1. Create a Goodread's shelf for the books I want to read this year.  2. Set a time to work on blog stuff-- this will be super important to keep up because of school.  3. Write a monthly recap post and continue writing them each month.  things to change I'm not gonna call these resolutions but just things that I want to change in my lifestyle. Last semester was a pretty rough one for me. I ended up with great grades but throughout the semester I didn...

From past experiences with resolutions and to-do lists *cough* failures *cough*, at the beginning of this year I already had decided that I would put a limit on all my goals. I would: 1) Make them manageable. 2) Make them non-intimidating aka stress inducing. 3) Not make many resolutions. However, as I was randomly googling for neat blog tags, I came across something called the Book Blogger Organization Challenge   started by Brittany of The Book Addict's Guide . If there's one thing I need, it's a little organization in my blogging life. And this challenge is perfect because it has good goals but it doesn't have those intimidating specific  deadlines. So I decided to do it! The idea is to organize specific areas of your blogging every month for six months. Here are the "rules" (said exactly as the founder of said project): The Blog Organization Challenge will run from January 1st to June 30th. Participants can join in at any time!  Like I...

Okey-dokey, peoples. Game plan. Here goes.  I don't have everything figured out yet, but I'm going to lay out the basics of a posting plan I hope will work.  1. Hopefully, I will post one or two times per week. Ideally, it will be two-- one review and one "other." But there's no way I can post the way I was last year in summer break while I'm at college. Have I freaked out about the THREE art studio classes I'm taking this spring on here yet?  2. I will be tweaking the blog a tiny bit. Mainly just the tabs/links at the top, just so they'll match the current design.  3. Does anyone feel up to doing a guest post for me?? Or if not, are there any things about my real life that you're curious about? As a book blog (or mainly bookish), I don't touch on that too much but I plan to do way more in the future.  4. I have made an art blog.  This is huge. For me, anyway, because I'm super insecure about my art. Which is ri...

Vampires. Oooooooh. This is probably the only other vampire book I've read besides Cassandra Clare's shadowhunter books that feature vampires. It's also the first book I get to check off my 2015 challenge!  The Coldest Girl in Coldtown  by Holly Black Publication date: September 3, 2013 Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Format: Paperback Source: Me (or more accurately, my sistah. THANK YOU, GORGEOUS) Pages: 419 Tana lives in a world where walled cities called Coldtowns exist. In them, quarantined monsters and humans mingle in a decadently bloody mix of predator and prey. The only problem is, once you pass through Coldtown's gates, you can never leave. One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters ...

It's a new year! I've always loved the first day of things, like the first day of school (because there's no homework yet and there are pretty school supplies to organize) and... the first day of the year. So I devote this whole entire post to talking all about my plans for 2015. WAHOO. It wouldn't be a new year if I didn't make a list of resolutions so I decided to make a regular one and use a bookish one I found on Pinterest. :) Take a picture every day for a year.  Try something (big or small) that I've never tried before.  Finish a writing project.  Exercise more (HAHA. But I thought I'd try.) Grow closer to God.  Get straight A's.  Learn how to do more types of art.  (or challenge) A book with more than 500 pages.  A classic romance.  A book that became a movie.  A book published this year.  A book with a number in its title.  A book written by someone under 30.  A book with nonhuman chara...