Category Archives: Litsy Challenges

#junebookbugs – June 27 – Set In The Southern Hemisphere

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So these are the first two books in a YA series set in Australia. (The first two are on Kindle Unlimited right now!) The series is apparently very popular in Australia, but I’d never heard of it until an internet friend told me I should read them. They’re about Australia getting invaded – by who is purposefully left vague – while these kids are out on a camping trip in the bush. So they come home to find their town empty, and have to puzzle together what happened and decide what they’re going to do. They’re pretty good. I didn’t finish the series because I had a falling out with the internet friend, and attached bad outside feelings to the books, unfortunately. But I always found it interesting how books can be wildly popular in one place, and completely unheard of in another.

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The #junebookbugs Index Post is here.

#junebookbugs June 26th – Published in the 80’s

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I had a moment of “I don’t know what was published in the 80s! I just read!” but then I realized I do know of at least one book I own that was published in the 80s. (I probably could have checked the publishing dates on some of the Heinlein, and then just randomly started checking my other older stuff…) But Willow! I actually own both Willow, and the trilogy inspired by it that was published many years later. If you haven’t read the trilogy, it’s an excellent spiritual successor to the original story, and is worth a read.

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The #junebookbugs Index Post is here.

#junebookbugs June 25th – Sweet

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I feel like cookbooks are an often overlooked section of books, when it comes to reviews. And that’s a shame, because I love cookbooks! So for “Sweet”, today, I pulled Bittersweet off the shelves. It’s a lovely cookbook for chocolate lovers and those who like the desserts less sweet. Which means it strikes a happy middle ground between my husband and I! One of my favorite recipes from this book is a dark, fudgy brownie topped with coconut. It’s DELICIOUS. You can still find this book on Amazon, but they also have Seriously Bittersweet, which is apparently a complete rework and update of the material.

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My #junebookbugs Index Post is here.

#junebookbugs June 24th – Urban Fantasy

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Ooo, urban fantasy. One of my favorite genres. (Seriously, go back through this blog, you’ll see!) I simply took a picture of my shelf. The important thing to note, here, is that this shelf is stacked with paperbacks – three deep! We’re probably going to weed out books next time we move. (That’s going to be a herculean task…) But in this picture we have Patricia Briggs‘ Mercy Thompson series and Alpha and Omega series, which exist in the same universe, as well as When Demons Walk, which is, kind of randomly, the fourth book in a different series. we also have representatives of Jim Butcher‘s two main series, The Dresden Files and The Codex Alera. (The latter is high fantasy, not urban fantasy, though.) Below those, we have one of Kresley Cole‘s urban fantasy romances, and a few from Christine Feehan‘s Leopard series and Witch series. (The Dark-whatever, Carpathian series, and the supernatural soldier series is behind these.) The Ian Douglas books are more hard sci-fi than urban fantasy, but the bookshelf is mostly alphabetized, so that’s where they go! And you can just see one of my many Robert Heinlein books below those, though again, that’s more hard sci-fi.

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You can find my first #junebookbugs post (I started partway through the month), as well as links to the rest of my #junebookbugs posts, here.

#junebookbugs June 23rd – Classics TBR

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So the main classic novel on my To Be Read list is probably Arabian Nights. We bought this beautiful copy from Barnes & Noble some years ago, but we wanted to buy a copy in Arabic as well, so my husband could brush up on the language. We planned to read them together. We’ve never bought an Arabic copy! So it still sits on my shelves, looking beautiful and unread. I might have to hunt down an Arabic copy for his Christmas present. (And yes, I photographed it in front of our language shelf, my husband speaks Arabic, Pashto, Spanish, and a smattering of other languages in addition to our native English. He’s a little crazy. I keep trying to learn something, but my pronunciation is always terrible, and I keep switching between Spanish and Swedish.)

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You can find my first #junebookbugs post (I started partway through the month), as well as links to the rest of my #junebookbugs posts, here.

June Book Bugs!

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Over on Litsy, there’s a monthly challenge with themes for every day of the month. (If you haven’t joined Litsy, it’s an Android/iPhone social network that feels like the love child of Instagram and Goodreads. It’s fantastic, and you can find me there as crystallinegirl!) Real Life Reads on Litsy posts the thirty day challenge every month, and I thought I’d cross-post it here, and try to cross-post my daily posts for it. I may eventually go back to just doing the daily challenge on Litsy and Facebook, and save this blog for more in-depth reviews, but we’ll see how this goes! This is the challenge for June:

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And since today is June 22nd, (which also happens to be my husband’s birthday, Happy Birthday, Love!) today’s theme is “Teeth.” When I think of Teeth, I immediately think of vampires. (I kind of have a thing for vampires. I spent a lot of time playing Vampire: the Masquerade in high school.)

So I pulled together just a few of my many vampire-related books! Kelley Armstrong’s Bitten is the exception here, it’s about werewolves, but I couldn’t leave it out, with a title like that! (No, I have not seen the TV series yet.) Prince of Many Faces is a nonfiction look at the historical Dracula, and it’s pretty fascinating. Nosferatu is actually a fiction novel from the world of Vampire: the Masquerade, and it was the cover illustration that made me pick it, as opposed to the dozens of other V:tM novels I own. (yes, dozens.) The Vampire Book is just a reference book, and it’s a bit dated at this point, but it’s fun to flip through.

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I’ll come back and add in links to each day’s post as I post them.

June 23 – Classics TBR
June 24 – Urban Fantasy
June 25 – Sweet
June 26 – Published in the 1980s
June 27 – Set in the Southern Hemisphere
June 28 – A Planet in the Title
June 29 – Latest Book Haul
June 30 – Best of June