Teasers & Top Ten – 11/19/19

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Purple Booker. Here are the rules if you want to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

This week’s teaser comes from The Spectral City by Leanna Renee Hieber.

It was true that the restless city didn’t know how to stop, its engine an ever-whirring turbine of need and greed, possibility and progress, kindness and cruelty in equal measure, forces constantly wrestling towards an uneasy equilibrium.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. The writing in this book is so beautiful. I’m so glad that I have time to read again. It’s been a tumultuous few weeks.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s topic:

Ten Changes In My Bookish Life Since 2010

The original topic didn’t include a year, but Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl used 2010 as her starting point, and I did like the continuation of the ten theme.

1. The most important change is that . . . I didn’t have this blog back in 2010. I’m actually coming up on my blogiversary – my first post here at Life With No Plot was November 26, 2011. Before this, I was on Livejournal, but it wasn’t exclusively a book blog. My first book blog was over on Blogger, but I only posted there three times before moving to WordPress.
2. I did not keep up with my books on GoodReads in 2010. I only started keeping up with my yearly challenges on GoodReads in 2012. I kept an informal book tally on my Livejournal, but GoodReads definitely made it easier and felt more official.
3. My number of books read for the year has fluctuated over the years. I went back to take a look at it. This isn’t so much a change as it is just interesting to me. I always wanted to hit 100 books in a year, but never made it.
   • In 2010, I read 67 books.
   • 2011, I didn’t keep track
   • 2012, I read 69 books.
   • 2013, I read 81 books.
   • 2014, I read 82 books.
   • 2015, I read 76 books.
   • 2016, I read 57 books.
   • 2017, I read 32 books. (What happened there??)
   • 2018, I read 57 books.
4. I have branched out on the genres that I read a bit. It was around 2010 when I really started reading YA, and from then on, I have branched out even more. I think this year is probably the most different genre books that I’ve ever read, which I think is cool.
5. I have started reading e-books almost exclusively. I still have physical books and read them on occasion, but the convenience of e-books has really made me stick to them more and more. The fact that I don’t have to remember to grab a book, that I can just pull up my Kindle app on my phone – that was a game changer.
6. I read a lot fewer classics. This is probably because I graduated with my degree in English Literature back in 2009 and was surrounded by a lot more pretentiousness then. Not that you have to be uppity to enjoy classic literature, but fancy pants English majors tend to frown upon a lot of genre fiction. I never did, but I didn’t have as much time for more relaxed reading.
7. I discovered graphic novels! I still haven’t read many, but I definitely appreciate the medium a lot more than I used to. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series is an absolute masterpiece.
8. A lot of what I read is predicated on ARCs that I get and not just for enjoyment. This past year I have started doing blog tours, which has been really fun, but also does limit the amount of other books that I can read. I might pull back on that just a little going into the new year.
9. I discovered YallFest!! The first time I went to YallFest was in 2013 and before then, I had not really met any of my favorite authors before. Being surrounded by authors and book lovers, discovering new authors because of how fun they are on a panel, buying new books and getting them signed – it is the absolute best. I haven’t been able to go in a few years, but that needs to change. Come on, 2020!
10. I feel more confident in my blogging. This one is about books, but also just about me. I used to have a hard time writing posts, especially writing reviews. Now they are my favorite posts to write. I had always wanted to do a chapter by chapter analysis, ever since reading Mark Reads, and now I am finally doing it. I’m a very different blogger from when I started, but also still the same in a lot of ways. This post has sent me down Memory Lane and it has been interesting to look back.

That’s my teaser and top ten list for this week. In other news, I am creeping up on 600 followers, which is really cool! I never thought I would get this far with blogging and it is making me really want to branch out even more. The podcast is probably finished since I can’t afford the hosting fees right now (I’ll go into more detail in the Weekly Wrap-Up this Friday), but I have a few other ideas too.

---

‹ CHAPTER-A-LONG: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – Chapter 12

WWW Wednesday – 11/20/19 ›

---

Categories: Teaser Tuesday, Top Ten Tuesdays

Tags: books, teaser tuesday, top ten tuesday