Month in Review: May 2015

Posted June 2, 2015 by Cristina (Girl in the Pages) in Month In Review / 17 Comments

monthinreview

Books I Read This Month Maybooksread

 

Reviews This Month:

These Broken Stars (4 Stars)

Vanishing Girls (3 Stars)

Making Pretty (2.5 Stars)

A Court of Thorns and Roses (5 Stars)

The Summer of Chasing Mermaids (3.5 Stars)

Extraordinary Means (3 Stars)

Immaculate (4 Stars)

Stats

Total Books Read: 6

Total Novellas Read: 0

Rereads: 0

Favorite Book Read This Month: Hands down, A Court of Thorns and Roses.

Least Favorite Book Read This Month: Making Pretty by Corey Ann Haydu. I wanted more resolution and better decision making by the protagonist.

Book that Most Surprised Me This Month: Immaculate by Katelyn Detweiler. I was a bit wary about how the religious aspect was going to be handled, but the story is SO good, not preachy, and well-written!

Reading Challenge Updates

Goodreads 2015 Reading Challenge Progress: 42/70

Fairytale Retelling Challenge: 5/8

Reread Challenge: 12/12 (Rereading all of the Princess Diaries books fulfilled the challenge!)

*Note that the status bars for challenges in my side bar are slightly different because they only count books I wrote full reviews for.

Notable Posts This Month

Are We Too Hard on Our Heroines?

Tinkerbell 10K Run at the Disneyland Resort

Moving to Self-Hosted: Everything You Wanted to Know About My Experience

Favorite Quote This Month

“Here’s a secret…There’s a difference between being dead and dying. We’re all dying. Some of us die for ninety years, and some of us die for nineteen. But each morning everyone on this planet wakes up one day closer to their death. Everyone. So living and dying are actually different words for the same thing, if you think about it.” –Extraordinary Means by Robyn Schneider

Updates About My Life This Month

This was my first full month of being on self-hosted and I can concretely say that I LOVE IT! There were definitely a few issues I had to work out and it’s a continual learning process, but I am so happy with having my own wordpress.org space. I had my highest number of views ever in May (beating my highest number of views ever before I went self hosted by 1,000+ views) and posted my 300th blog post! You can check out my thorough post about moving to self hosted, but I’m also glad to answer any questions you may have!

I was lucky enough to receive several review copies in May so it was a very review heavy month. In June I’m hoping to do some more features and discussions, and I have three big events coming up: Bay Area Bookfest, ALA, and the Scholastic Warehouse Book Sale. I’ll be doing recap posts for all of these, so be sure to look out for that! I’m also starting a new job for the summer this month, and as it’s full-time I’ll be doing my best to schedule posts in advance and continue to answer comments in a timely manner!

I’m also going to be participating in the Summer of Sarah Dessen read-along as much as possible, and I’m starting off this week with Saint Anything (my first Dessen book in years, and I’m loving it so far!) Other books that will be sure to be on my TBR this month are Emmy & Oliver, Just Listen, The Heir, and Crimson Bound.

What are your plans for the first month of summer?

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17 responses to “Month in Review: May 2015

  1. Congrats on your 300th blog post and first month of self-hosting! I’ve heard so much about a Court of Thrones and Roses recently, and I think a trip to the bookstore will be in order soon!

  2. Congrats on your 300th blog post and your first month of self-hosting! A Court of Thorns and Roses seems to be everywhere recently – a trip to the bookstore may be in order! It looks like you had a great reading month!

  3. Yay! You have made it through your first month of self hosted. Does it feel different!? 😉 Dang girl! 300 posts is a huge amount of writing and words and I congratulate you on your glorious achievement! Hope you have a great June and I can’t wait to see you at Bay Book Fest.

    ~Kaitlin

    Kaitlin @ Next Page Please! recently posted: Waiting on Wednesday #17
    • At first it felt a little different and disconnected since I wasn’t on wp.com which has some social media like functions, but now I’m totally used to it! (And I still use wp.com’s reader to comment on blogs through my account there, since it still exists!) Have you confirmed if you’re going to the festival?

    • Go for it! It’s scary but SO rewarding! I’ve seen a lot of bloggers who LOVED Making Pretty so I think it really depends on how well the protagonist works for you (which she did not for me). However, it still has some really interesting topics with the whole focus on plastic surgery, so I’m glad I read it!

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