In My Mailbox (20)

In My Mailbox is a meme that I picked up from The Story Siren's blog. It's where we share the new books that we've gotten for that week with our readers. These books could be from the library, the store, or from the writers/publishers for review. Whatever the reason, I will share my new books every Sunday!

From Publisher/Author

Earlier this month, I had entered a contest to win one copy of Winter's Kiss from Jennifer Echol's website. A couple of weeks ago I got an email from her saying she had extra and asked if I wanted a review copy! I said yes (of course) and it came in the mail this week! This book includes her copy of The Ex Games and The Twelves Dates of Christmas by Catherine Hapka. It's going to be the perfect winter read :)

From Santa

For a Follow Friday post in late November, bloggers were supposed to make a "wish list" of books they wanted Santa to bring them that year. I posted a bunch of books and then basically forgot all about that post because I never get that many new releases, so I wasn't expecting to get them. Come Christmas morning, I opened a box and sitting in it were these four AMAZING books! I got so excited because I had no idea my mom was going to get them for me. Needless to say, my mom is awesome (who I know is reading this because she always does. Hi Mom!!). I am super excited to dig into these books because I've been pining for them! They all look so amazing and they're all mine! I ended up having a very good Christmas :)

From Barnes and Noble 

 

Along with my four awesome books I got from Santa, I also got a Barnes and Noble gift card! So a couple of days ago I visited the store and came out with these two lovely books :) I'm excited to read these too because they've been on my TBR list for a while and the covers are just so cool! The Predicteds hasn't gotten that great of reviews of Goodreads, but I guess we'll see how I like it!

From Library Sale 

This book was on sale for a dollar at the library so I picked it up. It looks like something I would love to read and it's by the author who wrote The Devil Wears Prada, which was an awesome movie. Just another book to add to my ever-growing bookshelf! Maybe I'll read it for the TBR list challenge this year...

Movies from Santa and Half Price Books

Santa was VREY good to me this year! He got me the first four movies (Including the second season of Vampire Diaries, which is the best show ever!!!). The last four I got on sale at Half Price Books and when they were having their 20% sale. So I got tons of great movies to bring back to school with me! 

I don't know about you, but I'd say my mailbox was pretty amazing this week! And that's it! I hope you all had a very happy New Year and a great mailbox from the last week of 2011!

Shelf Candy Saturday (19)

Shelf Candy is a meme hosted by Five Alarm Book Reviews and every Saturday, bloggers choose a book whose cover really catches their eye. I know you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but I always do, so I'm choosing books whose cover alone made me pick it up. So I hope you enjoy my shelf candy!

I saw this cover for the first time in someone's Waiting On Wednesday post and I was just in awe. The dress that all of these girls are wearing is just so pretty and the cover goes so well with the whole mirror, identical people aspect. It's so weird how one girl out of 35 is "selected" to be treated like a princess while the others are forced to live a pre-planned life. It's like they're all the same except for the one chose in the selection, which is exactly what the cover portrays. The dress is gorgeous, but it's not really that special when 34 other girls are wearing the exact same thing. The cover is just so eery, mysterious, and gorgeous all in one. I can't wait until this one comes out in April because it looks so good! 

2012 TBR Pile Reading Challenge

As a goal for 2012, I have decided to make a dent in my TBR pile and challenge myself to reading more of them! To do this, I am joining the TBR challenge! I will be doing the "Friendly Hug" stage where I need to read 11-20 books from my bookshelf in 2012. I may increase to the next stage later this year depending on how I do in the first couple of months. 

So I'm SUPER excited for this challenge! If you want to see how I'm doing, stop by near the end of each month to check my wrap-up post! Here is some information about this wonderful challenge: 

Welcome to 2012 TBR PILE Reading Challenge!!!

We all have those books. We buy them, win them, they're gifted to us.. Then we put them up on a bookshelf and there they stay, collecting dust, waiting for the time when we'll finally decide to pick them up..

Join us on a quest to dust off your TBR Pile and read all the books you've been telling yourself you'll read next time you'll get a chance.. This is your chance! And we've got PRIZES!!! :D

Challenge guidelines: 

1. This challenge will run from Jan 1, 2012 - Dec 31, 2012.
2. As we would like to see quality reviews linked up to our monthly wrap-ups, only bloggers can enter. Sorry about that!
3. Any genre, length or format of book counts, as long as it is a book that's been sitting on your shelf for some time now. Only books released in 2011 and earlier! NO ARCs and 2012 fresh-off-the-press releases allowed!
4. You can list your books in advance or just put them in a wrap-up post. If you list them, feel free to change them as the mood takes you.
5. When you sign up in the linky, put the direct link to your post about joining the 2012 TBR PILE Reading Challenge (You need to include the info + host list + challenge button. You can also grab the button code and add it to your sidebar!)
6. You can move up levels, but no moving down.
7. Sign-ups will be open until Dec 15, 2012, so feel free to join at any time throughout the year.
8. At the end of each month one of the hosts will post a wrap-up. Every wrap-up will have it's unique theme, a mini-challenge, a giveaway and place for you to link up your reviews from this month. For each review you link up, you will get one entry in a drawing of one book of choice from Book Depository. It's open to INTERNATIONALS. For participating in the mini-challenge you will get +1 entry.
9. If you miss a wrap-up post + giveaway, you can link up your reviews next month. Do not, however, try to link up one review twice - we will be checking ;)
10. December is a wrap-up for the whole year. All the book reviews you linked up January-November + the ones you'll link up in December will be entered into a HUGE giveaway - 12 books, 12 winners, INTERNATIONAL. 
11. You don't have to follow all the hosts to join the challenge, but you do have to follow all of us to be entered in giveaways!

Levels:

1-10 - A Firm Handshake

11-20 - A Friendly Hug

21-30 - A Sweet Kiss

31-40 - Love At First Sight

41-50 - Married With Children

Hosts: 

Evie from Bookish - http://www.evie-bookish.blogspot.com @SeoEvie

Nicole from All I Ever Read - http://www.nicoleabouttown.com/ @Nicoleabouttown

Bonnie from Hands and Home - http://www.handsandhome.ca/ @HandsHomeBlog

Donna from Book Passion For Life - http://bookpassionforlife.blogspot.com/ @BookPforLife

Caitlin from WatchYA Reading - http://whatchyareading.net @caitlingss

Rie from Mission To Read - http://missiontoread.com/ @missiontoread

Vicky from Books, Biscuits & Tea -http://booksbiscuitsandtea.blogspot.com/ @alouetteuette 

Christa from Hooked On Books - http://christashookedonbooks.blogspot.com @ChristasBooks

Jenna from Fans Of Fiction - http://fansoffiction.blogspot.com/ @fansoffiction

Angel from Mermaids Vision - http://mermaidvision.wordpress.com @mermaidvisions

Wrap-up POST Schedule:

January - Donna (Theme: Let It Snow + Book Cover Challenge)

February - Nicole (Theme: Un-requited Love/Love Gone Wrong + Advice Column Challenge)

March - Rie (Theme: Green or Pinched + Green Cover Challenge)

April -  Bonnie (Theme: Easter + Mini Challenge)

May - Christa (Theme: MayDay - Disaster Books! + Cover Disaster Challenge)

June - Jenna ( Theme: Camping + Sentence Challenge)

July - Rie (Theme: International Day + Cover Comparison Challenge)

August - Angel (Theme: Summer Memories + Send Your Fav Character On Vacation Challenge)

September - Nicole (Theme: Life Changing Books + Mini Challenge)

October - Caitlin (Theme: Thanksgiving Theme + Share-A-Book Challenge)

November - Vicky (Theme: Spooky Halloween + Book Puzzle Challenge)

December - Evie (Theme: Xmas Bliss + Book Bachelor Challenge)

Follow My Book Blog Friday (21)

This is a meme hosted every Friday by Parajunkee, where book bloggers answer a question each week and check out how others answered it. It's a cool way for bloggers and viewers to connect and learn more about each other!

Question: The New Year is here- and everyone wants to know your New Years Blogging resolution! What are you going to try to revise, revamp, and redo for 2012 on you blog? 

Answer: It's a whole new year, that means an entire new list of New Year resolutions! Let me get excited for a second....

All right, not that that's out of my system, let's get to my reading/blogging resolutions of 2012. The first one is to take part in the TBR 2012 challenge. I have SO many books on my bookshelves, yet I haven't read a majority of them. So, I want to read at least 20 books from my bookshelf in 2012. 

As for my reading goal, I am increasing it from this year to be 130 books. This year's goal was 120 and right now I'm beating it by 15. I would make my 2012 goal even higher, but this year is going to be busy, with me away at school and getting a job over the summer, so I won't have as much to to read as I did this year. Hopefully I can reach 130 by this time next year!

My next goal is to plan ahead on my posts more and try not to miss any memes for that week. Some weeks I get way ahead with my WoW posts or Shelf Candy posts, but other weeks I miss it because I just don't have time. So this year, whenever I find myself with down time, I will try to get ahead on my posts so that I can hopefully have a post published everyday. 

And that's it! I have a feeling 2012 is going to be a very good year, so hopefully I can keep all of these resolutions! Also, I will have been blogging for an entire year in May! Woo hoo!! Anyways, I hope everyone has a very happy new year! 

Happy New Year Giveaway!

As a way of celebrating the new year, I am participating in the giveaway hope hosted by I Am A Reader, Not A Writer. For this giveaway, one winner will get to pick from the list of some of my favorite books and authors! It is open to anywhere the book depository ships, so don't hesitate to enter if you know you qualify! Here are the books you can choose from: 

Just fill out the rafflecopter below! If you want to enter more awesome New Year's giveaways, check them out right here! And I how everyone has a very happy New Year :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Movie Review: 50/50

Summary: Adam is a 27 year old writer of radio programs and is diagnosed with a rare form of spinal cancer. With the help of his best friend, his mother, and a young therapist at the cancer center, Adam learns what and who the most important things in his life are.

Review: I actually did not want to see this movie, but my sister dragged me to the dollar theater to go with her. The reason I didn't want to see it was because I was in the mood for a happy, funny movie, not one that would make me cry. And boy did this one make me cry.

The first half of the movie was funny, revolving around Adam's kind of sad life and his hilarious and strange best friend (Seth Rogen). When the funny parts ended though and Adam realized he had cancer, this movie became a cry fest for both me and my sister. Near the end I was literally covering my mouth so that no one would hear me crying in the back of the theater. Though it was very sad, it was such a good movie! Adam's character was so lovable that the reason I cried was because I liked him so much. Anna Kendrick was awesome as the young, inexperienced therapist and Seth Rogen was the PERFECT person to play the best friend. Basically the entire cast was really great, including the one and only (and very handsome) Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

Now I'm not going to give away the ending, but the entire movie was so worth watching, even though I probably looked like a wreck when I walked out of the theater. I don't even know what to think regarding the fact that this movie is based off of a true story, but it definitely reflects an event in life that happens to soooo many people around the world. This movie was so amazing and you should definitely see it, but go in knowing you'll need a few (or a lot) of tissues to get to the end.

Waiting on Wednesday (22)

This is a meme hosted by Breaking the Spine where every Wednesday bloggers highlight a book that they are eagerly anticipating the release of! 

Slide

By Jill Hathaway 

Release Date: March 27th

Summary: Vee Bell is certain of one irrefutable truth—her sister’s friend Sophie didn’t kill herself. She was murdered. 

Vee knows this because she was there. Everyone believes Vee is narcoleptic, but she doesn’t actually fall asleep during these episodes: When she passes out, she slides into somebody else’s mind and experiences the world through that person’s eyes. She’s slid into her sister as she cheated on a math test, into a teacher sneaking a drink before class. She learned the worst about a supposed “friend” when she slid into her during a school dance. But nothing could have prepared Vee for what happens one October night when she slides into the mind of someone holding a bloody knife, standing over Sophie’s slashed body. 

Vee desperately wishes she could share her secret, but who would believe her? It sounds so crazy that she can’t bring herself to tell her best friend, Rollins, let alone the police. Even if she could confide in Rollins, he has been acting off lately, more distant, especially now that she’s been spending more time with Zane. 

Enmeshed in a terrifying web of secrets, lies, and danger and with no one to turn to, Vee must find a way to unmask the killer before he or she strikes again. 

This one sounds sooooo creepy! I'm normally not one for scary books, but I just can't resist with this one. It's so interesting that Vee slips into other peoples minds random times in the day and how she sees someone die during an episode. What does she do without sounding completely crazy? And it sound like a love triangle is going to be added to the mix, which is something that always makes a book more enticing to me. Hopefully this one doesn't scare me out too much when it comes out!