Super Bowl// Sunday Post #64

 

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly from The Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

It is Super Bowl Sunday. I look forward to this day every year. As long as I can remember, I have always watched the super bowl and I am keeping the tradition alive with my daughters. It is also the one day a year where I allow them to yell at me because they all the time choose the opposing team. So I am pulling for the Kansas City Chiefs and my girls are going for the 49ers.But other than the super bowl, we have another event next weekend that we are looking forward too.

My county library has a program where volunteers gather together and do fun things for the community like book sales, garden dates, dances. Next weekend they are hosting a father daughter dance and I bought the tickets for my hubby and three daughters. It was a 115.00 dollars well spent. We have also spent a little over 100 for new dresses and shoes. I can't wait to share pictures in next weeks sunday post.

Speaking of next weeks post, I am hoping to get back into the weekly Sunday Post routine. Life has changed once again but I feel that it is good. I am no longer babysitting because the mom just started taking advantage of everything and not wanting to pay me what I was owed and just started to make excuses for everything. I just called it off because this is the third stint for babysitting her kids and it just kept getting progressively worse and she would constantly want to give me less and less and want me to watch them longer and longer. It got to the point where I was getting them at 4 in the morning to put them on the bus at 630 and then getting them off the bus at 230 and keeping them until 6 in the afternoon and then she just kept trying to stir up trouble and gossip about her ex and his wife. 

I cut ties 2 weeks ago and it was stressful but honestly it was not worth the money she was offering which was less than 100 a week at this point. Since then, I have felt more relaxed and my kids have seen a notable change in myself and my hubby. I am finally getting back into a routine and feeling more productive.

I have finished three books so far this month which were started in January. 

I am in the middle of two and I am wanting to start another that I wanted to get to last month. I am in a reading mood. 

There is another thing that has been on my mind and that is my youtube channel. I have not made a youtube video since March 2022 when I got my German Sheperd. I feel like I will have time to think about my channel and what direction I want it to go in. I don't want to solely be a booktube channel anymore but I would still talk about books, but I want to incorporate homeschooling high schoolers and gardening and becoming a homestead. 

I am so excited about my upcoming garden and I will be starting seeds indoors in the next week or so. I have grow lights thanks to my hubby. 

I have so many plans. We are going to continue building the fence around our property. Removing trees on our other 2 acres. Possibly start clearing the back of my grandmother's property so she we can fence it with our propety so she can let her dog run and play. I want this year to be so productive. 

Hope everyone has a great week and I am going to try to reply to comments and visit your posts but the wordpress blogs have me log into my wordpress account and I feel that yall wouldn't know it was me. 

Review: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

 

My first classic of the year and it was ok. I decided to pick this up because it is on my classic club list and I have read reviews that this is for people who like utopian- dystopian worlds and I hyped myself up for it. I went in knowing absolutely nothing. 

It is also a short book so I went in with the mindest that I would finish it very quickly and that was not the case. I should have known better because my track record with short books is not good. It takes me about a week to finish a book under 250 pages. But with that being said, whenever I did put this book down, I picked it back up within 15-20 minutes because I wanted to read it and know what was going to happen next.

With this being a classic, most people should know what this is about and for those that don't know like me, I will be keeping spoilers to a minimum. This is set in a world where humans are created in labs and conditioned to be a certain type of personality. There are Alphas, Betas, Deltas, Gammas, and Epsilons. That is the caste system that this world conforms to. 

They are conditioned to think of mothers and fathers as derogatory and disgusting where when they are children they are encouraged to involves themselves in erotic play. They get taken to a death center where they are paraded around dying people to show them that death is nothing to be scared of and it will happen. The people get pumped full of a drug called soma to keep them complicit and everything happy.

I was struggling at the beginning because it was a big info dump about how everyone is created and the fertilization process and how the episilons are given alcohol to make them the most inferior and pretty much become mentally unstable and slave like. Whenever they talked about God and religion and how they wroshipped Ford and the model T, I was bored to tears. But other than that, when the main characters Bernard and Lenina and John(Savage) were together, it was the most interesting. 

Review: The Rose Code by Kate Quinn

 

I have been interested in Kate Quinn's writing for years now and I have always put at least one of her books on a yearly TBR and just never got around to them. This year, I made it a priority for January and I am freaking OBSESSED. This just solidified my love for WW2 fiction. It also made me more interested in learning about the Enigma machine and this particular bit in the war. I love that this book had a further reading section and some movies to watch and I will be taking full advantage of this list.

We follow three different women Osla, Mab and Beth who work as codebreakers during WW2. We also follow them during Queen Elizabeth's royal wedding. So during the war and post war. Osla and Mab meet on a train heading towards a meeting at Station X. They have no idea what they are walking into. 

We learn more about the women throughout both timelines. We learn that they betrayed each other and don't know why. Beth is in an asylum and you are made to believe that she broke her Oath when she joined Bletchly Park. Osla is the girlfriend to a Prince and during the post war chapters she gets dragged through the tabloids and gets harrassed for information on said Prince.

Mab's character is more background and angry in the post war chapters because she wants nothing to do with Osla or Beth, but she is front and center in the war chapters. I really loved Beth and Mab during the war chapters. I was rooting for Beth to finally grow a spine and stand up to her horrible mother and stop being a wallflower. Mab and what she went through is something so tramatizing that when I read it, I cried like a baby because it's the kind of accident that happens more often then people think.

Osla's character just pined after her Prince most of the book and that was about it. She hated being called a silly deb and you can tell she was a social climber. She also survived something traumatic and for most of the book, she was hung up on the person who rescued her for the duration of the war and the three years after. She had no character growth in my opinion but this story would have not been as good without her.

My first 5 star read of the year.

BLOG TOUR: City Spies: Mission Manhatten by James Ponti

I am thrilled to be hosting a spot on the CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN by James Ponti Blog Tour hosted by Rockstar Book Tours. Check out my post and make sure to enter the giveaway!

 

About The Book:

Title: CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN

Author: James Ponti

Pub. Date: February 6, 2024

Publisher: Aladdin

Formats: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook

Pages: 430

Find it: Goodreads, https://books2read.com/CITY-SPIES-MISSION-MANHATTAN 

In this fifth installment in the New York Times bestselling series from Edgar Award winner James Ponti, the young group of spies take on New York City in another international adventure perfect for fans of Spy School and Mrs. Smith’s Spy School for Girls.

The City Spies head to the Big Apple when a credible threat is made to a young climate activist who is scheduled to speak in front of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly. With Rio acting as alpha and a new member in their ranks, the team’s mission to protect a fellow teen takes them on an exciting adventure in, around, and even under the greatest city in the world as they follow leads to the outer boroughs, the UN Headquarters, and even the usually off-limits stacks that extend deep under the main branch of the New York Public Library.

 

Grab the rest of the CITY SPIES BOOKS now!

 

Book Trailer:

About James:

JAMES PONTI (he/him/his) is the New York Times bestselling author of three middle grade book series: City Spies, about an unlikely squad of five kids from around the world who form an elite MI6 Spy Team; the Edgar Award–winning Framed! series, about a pair of tweens who solve mysteries in Washington, DC; and the Dead City trilogy, about a secret society that polices the undead living beneath Manhattan. His books have appeared on more than fifteen different state award lists and he is the founder of a writers group known as the Renegades of Middle Grade. James is also an Emmy– nominated television writer and producer who has worked for many networks including Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, PBS, History, and Spike TV, as well as NBC Sports. He lives with his family in Orlando, Florida. Find out more at JamesPonti.com.

Website | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Goodreads | Amazon

Giveaway Details:

1 lucky winner will receive a finished copy of CITY SPIES: MISSION MANHATTAN, US Only.

Ends February 6^th, midnight EST.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule:

Week One:

1/22/2024	@enthuse_reader	IG Review/TikTok Post
1/22/2024	Kountry Girl Bookaholic	Excerpt/IG Post
1/23/2024	YA Books Central	Excerpt/IG Post
1/23/2024	@darkfantasyreviews	IG Post
1/24/2024	Little Red Reads	Excerpt/IG Post
1/24/2024	Log Cabin Library	Excerpt
1/25/2024	Two Chicks on Books	Excerpt/IG Post
1/25/2024	Lady Hawkeye	Excerpt/IG Post
1/26/2024	Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers	Review/IG Post
1/26/2024	Avainbookland	IG Review

Week Two:

1/29/2024	The Guild	Review
1/29/2024	AJ Johnson	IG Review
1/30/2024	Callisto’s calling	IG Review
1/30/2024	@katherinebichler	TikTok Post
1/31/2024	A Blue Box Full of Books	IG Review/LFL Drop Pic/TikTok Post
1/31/2024	One More Exclamation	Review/IG Post
2/1/2024	@froggyreadteach	IG Review
2/1/2024	Country Mamas With Kids	Review/IG Post
2/2/2024	@pagesforpaige	IG Review
2/2/2024	Lifestyle of Me	Review

Top Ten Tuesday: New to Me Authors in 2023

 

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

This weeks prompt is a fun one because it is easy. I read from so many new to me authors last year and I can not wait to read more from them. Some have a backlist a mile long and some were debut.

1. Barbara Kingsolver

2. Julia Quinn

3. Travis Baldree

4. Scarlett St. Claire

5. Riley Sager

6. Tatsuya Endo

7. James Riley

8. Jacqueline Winspear

9. Rebecca Yarros

10. Maggie Stiefvater

Review: Full Flight by Ashley Schumacher

 

Thank you Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to ugly cry at the end of this. The problem right off the bat that I had with this was the character names. The book I finished before this was set at a school named Weston. The male main character is named Weston. Our main girl is named Anna and both of them are on the high school marching band. 

I don't know anything about marching band and was hesitant at how I was going to like this. It was very band centric with insta love. It was sitting at a two star for most of the book because every chapter was the same with Anna not wanting to lie to her parents and wanting to be good at saxophone and worrying about her duet with Weston. Weston was not wanting to get to close and was basically the outcast in their little small town Texas high school.

He didn't want to fall for Anna because his parents divorced and he had the mindset that every relationship is doomed and love doesn't last. 

I thought about DNFing this because it was taking forever but I pushed through and the ending had me crying. I am really triggered by car crashes. The whole ending of this reminded me of the Rascal Flatts music video What Hurts The Most because it is exactly what happens, minus teenage pregnancy which is what I was expecting because there is a sex scene but not graphic. 

I ended up giving this a three star. The end is what bumped it up a star because it gave me emotion and it was touching, I just wish there was more of that throughout the book.

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Books of 2023

 

 Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

This weeks topic is bookish goals and I don't have that many besides to read 100 books, finish some series, and enjoy my time reading. Instead I am going to be sharing my favorite books of last year because I missed that post due to work and procrastination. So without further ado, my favorite books of 2023.