It’s been a while since I’ve done a Monthly Recap, but I think that I want to try doing it again! I’ll be doing a little bit of experimenting in this first post in my three month recap hiatus so forgive me if at first everything doesn’t seem like it’s as handcrafted as usual.
November was a busy month for me, but that is sort of an understatement. I had Trimester 1 finals, submissions for the school Lit Mag, and A LOT of obligations for my school play, which just ended last weekend. I’m really proud of the productive month I had; somehow I managed to end the month feeling on top of the world. I really have everything together, and it’s not a feeling that I’ve had, EVER.
This busy month didn’t exactly leave me a lot of time to read. I actually only ended up finishing one book: None of the Above by I. W. Gregorio. You can read more about it in my review here. This was one of the books that I got for my birthday in October! I liked it fine, but overall I wasn’t impressed with the story. I don’t at all want to detract from the amazing strides that the book made for intersex awareness, but I think it’s important to also objectively note the books weaknesses as well.
In addition, I also started The Opposite of Loneliness by Marina Keegan. I know that this book made a huge splash in 2014 and it certainly has been on my radar. I was luckily able to buy it with a gift card and have since started it. The introduction alone is incredibly inspiring; Keegan’s life makes me want to not only spend all day reading and writing and doing theater but to have fun and be free and just be a teenager. Pardon my poor grammar, but I think that there is something to be said about the motivation I feel reading this.
This month I spent a lot of time consuming music. Primarily on Spotify, I’m a big fan of Spotify’s playlist “Deep Focus” for studying. I do have an appreciation for classical music, but it doesn’t work for me when I’m doing school work (works well for cleaning though). And I obviously try and avoid listening to music with lyrics. I recently have been pulling my favorite songs from the Deep Focus playlist (along with some others) and sort of compiling my own study playlist. I’m absolute rubbish at just randomly coming up with songs, but when I’m pulling from a group it is considerably easier.
I’m surprised that I haven’t mentioned this earlier, but ever since I saw the musical Heathers back in September, I’ve been completely and utterly obsessed with the soundtrack. For those of you semi-unfamiliar with musical theater, Heathers is a musical based on the 80s cult classic movie of the same title. The musical recently made it on to Broadway for the first time and also had a showing at a theater in my city. Since I’m a huge fan of the movie, I couldn’t wait to see the musical. Needless to say it truly blew me away, and now I can’t stop listening to the music. My favorites are “Seventeen”, “Dead Girl Walking”, and “Freeze Your Brain”.
Also, even with all of the holiday festivities in the past few days, I managed to sneak to the mall and FINALLY buy a turntable!!! Within less than 24 hours I’ve already dropped cash on four records but so far IT’S TOTALLY WORTH IT. I mean, yes, nothing can compete with the portability/cheapness of digital songs, BUT for someone who spends a lot of time at home/has an appreciation for sound quality (like myself) I honestly think that it was worth the money. Now granted, I did get it half off, but that doesn’t change the fact that I had been ready to drop a whole lot more than that.
I didn’t get to post a lot on the blog this month; I ended up with two reviews and a TTT. You can read this months reviews here and here, and the Top Ten Tuesday here. On Lit Up Review I shared one review this month, but always be sure to check out our content: it’s great!
This month I also had the pleasure of being featured as one of Lara’s Top 5 Favorite Bloggers for the Blogger Positivity Campaign. I just talked to Lara yesterday and we are both excited to announce that we will be returning to Epic Recs in December. Cee began her annual YA “Book Cover Choice Awards” which always one of my favorite parts of the end of the year. Get in on the Semi-Final Round before it’s too late. I also was crazy inspired by Grace’s post about her future. Not only was it super motivating but it was a chance to get to know her better.
November was certainly a busy month for the media. I’ll refrain from politics for sake of neutrality but I will take a moment to note all of the unnecessary deaths that occurred this month.
Grace shared this post critiquing Ageism in YA. Oh my goodness! I think that Ageism has been a problem in YA before (see this Slate article that still makes my blood boil) but this article not only convinces me that it is still a prevalent problem, but that people still don’t seem to understand the YA genre, as well as the idea of respect. I’ll probably end up writing my own critique about this over winter break.
I take Spanish in school, and although I have a desire to be fluent in a language other than English, I’m absolutely terrible at putting in the time to do so. My recent interest in linguistics was spiked but this cool Ted Talk article about learning languages. I’ve considered in the past ordering some of the Harry Potter in Spanish, but I think that this is my catalyst!
This month I’m of course looking forward to Winter Break and hopefully lots of time to spend reading and writing! A lot of the camps that I’m applying to this summer start their application process in December so I’ll be working on those as well.
I’m hoping to tackle more of my TBR this month, specifically:
–Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
– The Lifeboat Clique by Kathy Parks
– Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
I also think that I’ll probably pick up a few more albums on vinyl and enjoy spending break reading and listening to music.
Sounds like it’s definitely been a busy few months for you! Hope everything’s been going well and I’m super excited to do Epic Recs again in December!