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My Reading Month: August
So I have had a stop and start sort of reading month. I’ll be honest here – this month has flown by and between some crazy life changes and some crazy job stuff, I simply have not read all that much. When my brain gets overloaded, I tend to gravitate towards podcasts and television instead of books. I’m not sure this is necessarily the best choice, as reading is certainly equally relaxing, but it also takes so much more effort and sometimes I just don’t have it in me (and lets be honest, sometimes trashy television feels SO good). I do have one book to share with you all, which…
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Summer Genre Awards – The Ritas
Hello again! Today I have a new set of awards to share with you. While you might be inclined to dismiss these, romance novels are some of the most widely read novels in the United States (and with e-readers, it is all the easier to read them unobtrusively!) If you are interested in this at all, the following books have won the award for the best in their category for 2019, and would be a good place to start for high quality fun romps! The Rita Awards: The RITA—the highest award of distinction in romance fiction—recognizes excellence in published romance novels and novellas. Awards are given in many different categories…
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Summer Genre Awards – Eisner Awards
Well, it has been a while! I have a monthly reading post coming your way in the next few days, but in the meantime, I wanted to give you all some updates on a few great awards that have come out in the past month or so. These are great awards to check out if you have a special person in your life who loves comics, romance or science fiction, if you are curious about these genres yourself and want a good entry point, or if these genres are some of your favorites and you want to get the next best thing! Today, I am highlighting the Eisner Awards, a…
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My Reading Month: July
This is about 10 days late, but there has been plenty going on in my life lately! Between visits from family and visits to family and friends my July was fairly light on reading, but I do have some to talk about. I started a few books this month and struggled to find my groove in any of them. However, I did read some beautiful graphic novels and finish some audio-books. The two reads I want to highlight are Pride of Baghdad and The Winter of the Witch. Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan This was a beautiful graphic novel based on the true story of a group of…
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Running and Podcasts
I hate running. I love being outside, I love getting moving, but the idea of getting out for a run just for the sake of it is a tough sell for me. However, with a semi-desk job that usually entails 9 – 10 hour days, sometimes running is the only way for me to stay active and feel like I am taking care of myself. One of the ways I have been able to motivate myself is with fun and engaging audio drama podcasts. Because they are more episodic than an audio-book, I can gauge my run to the length of one or two podcasts without ending up stopping at…
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My Reading Month: June
Audiobook Gold, Great Sequels and Old Friends
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Book Subscription Box – Boxwalla
As a lover of reading, I have long been intrigued by book subscription boxes. I currently do the Book of the Month club, which I love for so many reasons, namely that you can choose the book yourself and you can skip a month if there isn’t anything you are that interested in, which I do quite often. However, I recently branched out to try a new box, called Boxwalla. I wanted something that wouldn’t come too often as I struggle to get through the books I own already). I also needed a box that wouldn’t double up on books I already had or pick books I had little interest…
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Small Publisher Book Prizes
Both the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and the Independent Audiobook Awards were announced recently! Both of these awards are intended to support lesser known authors and to highlight books that do not have the dollars of a major book publishing company behind their marketing campaigns. Foreword INDIES Book of the Year: This is one of my favorite indie book awards because of its format. One of the things I find difficult about some of these awards seeking to highlight diversity is that their categories become so specific that there are too many “winners” for me to focus on. While the Foreword INDIES still follow this format, with prizes…
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My Reading Month – Trees and Murder
I feel like I have been coming out of a bit of a fog over the past month – between work and life things, my life has been incredibly crazy over the past year, and it is so lovely to begin to have a little breathing room. I still have not found myself reading all that much over the past month, and have only finished 1 or 2 physical books. This is probably due to the fact that the one of my other obsessions, RuPaul’s Drag Race, has been airing the final episodes of its most recent season, so I have been going down that rabbit hole instead. (Go Big,…
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Diversity in Children’s Literature: The Pride Month Edition
The generally white, always heterosexual parents of my favorite children’s books as a kid are a stark contrast (at least in terms of sexuality) to the world I was brought up in. However, while same-sex couples I grew up around never stood out as different to me, it was still incredibly difficult for non-heterosexual friends of mine, raised in that same community, to explore and express their personal feelings, and issues of intersexuality and transsexuality were never discussed (or shown on the pages of my books). In fact, I vividly remember reading Middlesex as a (maybe) 14 year old and being kind of mind-blown by the idea that a person…
because stories are important
