[Book BFFs] Interview with Lindsay of The Novel Life

During Bout of Books 7.0, I met a group of wonderful people who happen to be fellow book lovers who spread the word. We decided to stay in contact and do some wonderful blog-y things together like the Summer Solstice Read-a-thon. This interview is one of the things we came up with.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to Lindsay of The Novel Life:

The Novel Life    @lindsaychurch    Goodreads    Facebook

1. Tell me about yourself, what kind of person are you behind the computer/phone screen?

I am a full time creative writing and acting student! I love movies, books, acting, writing, musicals, and dancing- contemporary and ballet. I get very attached to the things I love (books, movies, tv shows etc). I am also obsessed with watching bookshelf tours and room tours on youtube. I have an unhealthy love of peanut butter- especially Reese peanut butter cups!

2. How long have you been blogging and what made you start?

I've actually only been blogging for about a month. I've WANTED to for years, I always start a blog and then stop it after one post. I started this time because I found a base topic that I really love - books! It makes it easier to blog if you have a solid thing to base the blog around.

3. In your opinion, what makes a book a great read?

A strong cast. If the lead characters are compelling and seem like real people I will read about anything. I love it when book characters end up feeling like people you know. It doesn't hurt if there is lots of conflict and humor and "all the feels" either!

4. What are the first 5 books that come to mind?

The Maze Runner series by James Dashner
Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare
Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
The Farm by Emily McKay

5. What are your blogging tactics/strategies? How do you, personally,manage blogging and your real life?

I'm still figuring this one out. I'm having a hard time balancing school/work/blogging at the moment, but I'm starting to schedule things into my phones calendar which is really helping. I love lists so I'm finding that making them is helping a lot!

6. If you could pick any 5 fictional characters to have brunch with, whom would you pick?

I would choose
Fire from Fire by Kristin Cashore - she's lovely and can teach me how to shoot a bow and arrow afterwards.
(I'd pick Katniss but I don't think she'd talk to anyone else and it might be awkward)
Fred and George Weasley - they would liven the brunch up. (they count as one!)
Will Herondale from Infernal Devices - so that I can force him into a relationship with me.
Katsa from Graceling, though if she's unavailable I'll take Po!
And
Wanderer from The Host - preferable when she's in Melanies body so that Melanie can come too! (see how I cheat?)

7. What was the first book that left a lasting impression with you?

I want to say Harry Potter, because.. hello Harry Potter! But I think the FIRST book that I read that made me feel all the feels was actually a few years before HP came out. It was The Guests of War trilogy by Kit Pearson. I have the omnibus of it but it's "The Sky is Falling" "Looking at the Moon" and "The Lights Go On Again." I still read it every couple of years. It's a beautifully written story.

8. Who initially fueled your love for books? How?

I'm not actually sure but I think a mixture of my mother and the Scholastic book club that came once a month at school. You got to take this big catalog home and choose books from it and then magically a week later they'd come to school for you! My mom bought me books from when I was little though and really encouraged reading.

9. If you could only take 3 books on a yearlong sabbatical in another country, which ones would you pick?

Hmmm.. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Harry Potter (magically they've become one GIANT book)
and Fire by Kristin Cashore

10. What do you need for your perfect reading surroundings? (Area, foods, drinks etc)

I don't actually need anything, I'll read anywhere. But IDEALLY, a drink (tea or coke zero!) and a snack that won't get all messy on the book - so unfortunately no chocolate :(

[Waiting on Wednesday] Vicious by Victoria Schwab

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted by Jill of Breaking the Spine that spotlights upcoming releases we're eagerly anticipating.

Summary: (from goodreads.com)
A masterful, twisted tale of ambition, jealousy, betrayal, and superpowers, set in a near-future world.

Victor and Eli started out as college roommates—brilliant, arrogant, lonely boys who recognized the same sharpness and ambition in each other. In their senior year, a shared research interest in adrenaline, near-death experiences, and seemingly supernatural events reveals an intriguing possibility: that under the right conditions, someone could develop extraordinary abilities. But when their thesis moves from the academic to the experimental, things go horribly wrong.

Ten years later, Victor breaks out of prison, determined to catch up to his old friend (now foe), aided by a young girl whose reserved nature obscures a stunning ability. Meanwhile, Eli is on a mission to eradicate every other super-powered person that he can find—aside from his sidekick, an enigmatic woman with an unbreakable will.

Armed with terrible power on both sides, driven by the memory of betrayal and loss, the archnemeses have set a course for revenge—but who will be left alive at the end?

Release Date: September 24, 2013

[Top 10 Tuesday] Cover Love

Top Ten Tuesday is a bookish weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

Today's topic is: Top Ten Favorite Book Covers of Books I've Read (in no particular order)


I love the James Bond feeling of this cover with the girly colors. It gets me in a good mood right away & if fits the book perfectly, if you ask me.


For some reason, it just calms me down to look at the two lower body halves of the very different girls who switch their lives in this book.


I love America's dress! It's as simple as that, I can look at the dress for hours!


The German cover of The Iron Duke is so much more appealing to me than the other covers I've seen. (I took this one from Goodreads.) It is one of the few series I buy translated to German because the covers are just beautiful. I love the feel and the colors. The Iron Duke looks like a manga picture of the man I picture whenever I read about him.


Doesn't the girl just rock this cover? She looks a little bad-ass with quite some spunk - and you have the Greek pillars right next to her. It's simply, but I really like it!


This is another case of "that dress" swooning for me. I love the color and wish I could own or at least wear a dress like that just once. It's beautiful!


This cover stands in lieu of all the covers in this series. On first sight, they have this quaint feeling that goes perfectly with the setting, but when you look closer, you will usually find some hint to the murderous affairs that happen in the books. I love how they always manage to pull it off!


This cover just drips with dark humor (as does the book!)!!!


If you are a nerd like me, you'll probably love Star Wars and the thought of Origami Yoda itself makes you laugh. This book not only has an origami Yoda on the cover, it also shows you how to reproduce him... How cool is that?!


Can I have her hair, please? Really, whenever I look at that cover, that's what I think right away. I want her hair, and I want it bad! LOL And it has this easy-going feeling, just like the story...

What are your favorite book covers?

[Summer Solstice Read-a-thon] Sign ups

Created by: Rie of Mission To Read 

and 

Cohosted by: Melissa of Harley Bear Book Blog, Lindsay of The Novel Life, Kathrin of StackedNPainted, and Melina of The Pretty Nifty YA Reader. 

The summer solstice is the longest day of the year.  And you know what that means...

So no matter where you are on the planet we want you to celebrate the first day of summer with us in a 24 hr read-a-thon!  Just think of all those summer reads you've been waiting to start!  

1. Create a sign up post on your site saying that you're planning to join in the read-a-thon on the 21st.  You can post a goal list of books you want to read that day, but it's not mandatory.  Include the read-a-thon button and this blurb:

Summer Solstice Read-a-thon is a 24 hr event taking place on the longest day of the year...June 21, 2013.  It was created by Rie @ Mission To Read and is cohosted by Melissa of Harley Bear Book Blog, Lindsay of The Novel Life, Kathrin of StackedNPainted, and Melina of The Pretty Nifty YA Reader.  The goal of this read-a-thon is to take advantage of all the extra daylight and read as much as you can!  Mini challenges and a giveaway will be happening this day so make sure to check out any of the host's blog's the day of for more information.  Don't forget to chat with us at the twitter party 12pm CST #SSRead. 

2. Add the link to your sign up post in the linky below.

3. Check back to any of the host's blogs on the 21st for mini challenges and a chance to win a giveaway!

4. Read till the sun goes down

[Bout of Books] Wrap up

I'm sad that Bout of Books is over already. Last week flew by and I was busy with so many other things, I still don't know what happened or believe that it was actually an entire week.

Last night, I really scrambled to finish the two books I has started to get to a somewhat decent result for Bout of Books. I was about 70% done with The Selection by Kiera Cass and 50% done with a short German audio book produced by Audible.de.

Here's the result:

Goal: Read 4-5 books
-> Well, that one was a miss. I finished 2 audio books and 1 e-book, so I'm one short of my goal. I usually read about 2 books per week, so I really hoped I could double it up with the week-long readathon. Unfortunately, I was so busy with work, university, and my first Lamaze class, that I just couldn't get it done. I'm a little bit sad about that, but in the end, 3 books is a good result with all that was going on.

Goal: Participate in one Twitter chat
-> That was an all-out success! I participated in the last Twitter chat on Saturday and had a lot of fun. With the time difference, the other two would never fit in because I'm either fast asleep or busy with work/university. The weekend chats usually work out for me, though, because I can arrange my schedules accordingly.

Goal: Write reviews for the finished books.
-> Yeah, I've started, but I did not finish them yet. If I am lucky, I can finish them by Wednesday.

If you participated in Bout of Books, how did you do? Would you participate in an upcoming Bout of Books?

[Bout of Books] Update Day #7

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Are you all ready for the last day of Bout of Books? I cannot believe it is almost over and I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I had planned to. In fact, I've managed to forget the goals I had set. That's embarrassing, if you ask me...

Yesterday, I participated in the last Twitter chat and met some great people - who I am now stalking on Twitter ;-) I also started to listen to a German audio book, which so far is very entertaining, but due to the language barrier will probably only get a quickie review here, if that.

Updates for today will follow here as I go:

11:30am
I listened some more to my audio book this morning, which leaves me at about 50% of the story. I really hope to finish it today because I want to know how it ends. And last night, before I fell asleep, I also read some more of The Selection by Kiera Cass. I had thought I'd be able to finish it faster, but with the lack of reading time I had to deal with this past week, there was no chance, even though I love the story and the main character so far.

[Stacking The Shelves] #1

There are so many posts featuring book hauls I simply lost track. The options for us to show off our newly acquired books are broad: There is In My Mailbox by The Story Siren, Stacking The Shelves by Team Tynga's Reviews and Mailbox Monday, which is hosted by a different blog each month.

I've (obviously) decided on Stacking The Shelves because it is the one that is still running that I like best, in part because it also fits best genre-wise.

I don't have all the books in the same place, so here's the majority of the goodies (Please ignore the kitty butt on the right side, he likes photo bombing ;-) ):



Bought:

Jessi Kirby: Golden
Cris Beam: I Am J
Robin Benway: Also Known As
Terence Blacker: Boy2Girl
Gail Carriger: Etiquette & Espionage
Dave Cousins: 15 Days Without A Head
Ashley Elston: The Rules for Disappearing
Elizabeth Eulberg: Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality
Janet Gurtler: How I Lost You
Christina Henry: Black Wings
Stacy Kramer & Valerie Thomas: From What I Remember
Annabel Monaghan: A Girl Named Digit
Chelsea Pitcher: The S-Word

Not pictured:
Rick Yancey: The 5th Wave

For review: (e-ARCs through Netgalley)

Kim Firmston: Touch
Kiera Cass: The Elite
Leah Rae Miller: The Summer I Became A Nerd
Kim Barnouin: Skinny Bitch in Love
Rainbow Rowell: Fangirl
Katie McGarry: Dare You To

[Bout of Books] Update Day #6

After a slow start with me sleeping in way too late (I was supposed to run errands) and a late breakfast (at around 12:30pm), I finally managed to crawl upstairs to update my files for my TBR with the two books that arrived in the mail today (I will post a Stacking the Shelves post later on!) while catching up on Bones Season 5 as the mister watched some episodes without me (shame on him!).

Today, for the first time in this Bout of Books, I will actually update this post as I go along, so check back if you want to know how I fare...

For now, I will try to finally catch up on the last few hours of Bout of Books tweets. I may not have been able to participate in the Twitter chats, but I try to stay up to date with what everyone is doing & I have met some wonderful people already! This, to be honest, is always one of the two reasons why I sign up and participate in Bout of Books.

6:30pm
I have accomplished one of my goals! Can you believe it? LOL I participated in the Twitter chat earlier (right after the Bloggiesta Twitter chat, which means I spent 2 hours on Twitter). I met great people and have set up a bookmark folder so that I can check out all the blogs after Bout of Books. Now, I will head on to my books, who knows, maybe I'll go listen to an audio book.

10:25pm
I started a German audio book earlier and didn't get very far. The mister kept talking. Imagine a very, very annoyed look on my face. He didn't get it... Off to my book!

[Bout of Books] Update Day #5

Bout of Books sadly is coming to an end soon and I have not achieved my goals yet - not nearly *sigh* I almost feel like a failure this time around, but life just took over.

I managed to read for two more hours on Thursday night and Friday, leaving me at eight hours of reading so far. I have finished The Maze Runner and about a third into The Selection. I hope to be able to finish this one soon, preferably on Saturday, but we'll see.

I have not yet taken part in any of the challenges (but I didn't plan to anyway) and none of the chats, as the time was never suitable for the time zone I am in. If I am lucky, I can participate in tomorrow's chat, as that is during my daytime. Wish me luck!

How are you doing so far?

[Bout of Books] Update & General Thoughts

Until 10:30am this morning, I was determined to finally write a review I've been planning. And then I remembered that after work, I'd have my first Lamaze class. Each class takes two hours, so I knew then that I'd be coming home late. And now, after some relaxing and dinner, it's almost midnight. There is no way I can coherently type up my thoughts. So I decided to wait until tomorrow.

However, it is not like I haven't been thinking about books and reading lately, especially with Bout of Books. So, first a short update on how that has been going:

I so far read for about 6 hours this week, but I haven't finished anything yet. This is such a fail! But between work, university, a doctor's appointment, and the Lamaze class, I didn't have much spare time. This, hopefully, will be better during the next 4 days - and lucky me, Monday is a holiday here, so I will be reading on Monday as well. I am working on the last few pages of The Maze Runner and The Selection. By tomorrow, I should at least have finished one book.

And then a general thought:

I have been on a semi-successful book-buying ban (more like a limitation) since January and in theory it is going on until the end of the year. My basic goal was to read at least 3 more books than I acquired. So far, I've been doing quite well, in some cases working up to 9 more books off of my TBR shelves than I added to them. This month, however, I can already say I failed miserably! I added around 20 books to Mt. TBR (if they all arrive this month). I cannot possibly read 23 books, so that's that for May. It will be big, fat fail!

Nonetheless, I think the books I will be receiving soon are totally worth it. Just wait until you see the goodies!