Up Close and (un)Conventional Bookish Babble Welcome to our first Up Close and (un)Conventional Bookish Babble. As we each had done similar discussion posts, we merged the names and, voila! This is where we discuss whatever we feel like. It can be something about books or the bookish community, or it can be about something else entirely!   Hey y’all! This post was sparked when I had a dilemma last week. I had finished a book and needed to choose my next read. Sound familiar so far? 😉 So I looked at my list of ARCs and nothing really tripped my trigger. (I am nothing if not a mood reader 😛 ) Then I looked at my list of authors […]

Late last year, Lexxie and I discussed hosting a Read-Along/Book Club here on the blog. We thought it was a great way to get us all reading and discussing something TOGETHER. Here are our thoughts and we’d LOVE some feedback from you. So make sure to leave comments with your thoughts on our ideas, as well as any thoughts/ideas you may have, so we can make this (un)Conventional-ly awesome! We’ll post a poll mid-month, both here on the blog and on our Facebook page, to help us choose the book we’ll be reading the following month. We’ll start reading the winning book on the 1st of each month. We’ll do a “book club” meeting/discussion on the last weekend of the […]

The past few years on my former blog, Bookworm Brandee, I enjoyed doing a “look back at the year” and sharing my favorites. So I asked Lexxie if we could continue the tradition here and to join me in listing favorites. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our favorites and we’d be happy to hear about any of yours! This post is all about Worlds/Settings! Here are my favorites for this year: Maico, North Carolina, where the Wahyas of Walker’s Run reside. This series by Kristal Hollis has a great small-town feel along with some unique mythology for her wolf shifters. Although I’ve only listened to Darkness Dawns so far, Dianne Duvall has created a fascinating world and mythology in her […]

The past few years on my former blog, Bookworm Brandee, I enjoyed doing a “look back at the year” so I asked Lexxie if we could continue the tradition here and to join me in listing favorites. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our favorites and we’d be happy to hear about any of yours! This post is all about narrators! Honestly, I’m pretty picky when it comes to narrators. Here are my favorites for this year: Neva Navarre ~ A new-to-me narrator, she narrated Over Duet by JA DeRouen and did a fantastic job of embodying the characters and conveying all the emotions! Kirsten Potter ~ KPotter is a favorite of all-time narrator for me and I listened […]

The past few years on my former blog, Bookworm Brandee, I enjoyed doing a “look back at the year” and sharing my favorites. So I asked Lexxie if we could continue the tradition here and to join me in listing favorites. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our favorites and we’d be happy to hear about any of yours! This post is all about New-to-Me Authors! Here are my favorites for this year: M. Jane Colette ~ Text Me, Cupid was a surprise in that it was so funny yet serious and hot! I want to read read her backlist now! TM Frazier ~ I binged on her King series and I couldn’t get enough of these characters! I’ve […]

The past few years on my former blog, Bookworm Brandee, I enjoyed doing a “look back at the year” and sharing my favorites. So I asked Lexxie if we could continue the tradition here and to join me in listing favorites. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our favorites and we’d be happy to hear about any of yours! This post is all about couples! Here are my favorites for this year: Caden and Greyson from CD Reiss’ Edge series Vince and Peyton from Jana Aston’s Good Time Keely and Hound in Wild Like the Wind by Kristen Ashely Sarah and Roland from Dianne Duvall’s Darkness Dawns Ivan and Marsha from Rock F*ck Club #3 by Michelle Mankin Charlotte (Charlie) […]

The past few years on my former blog, Bookworm Brandee, I enjoyed doing a “look back at the year” and sharing my favorites. So I asked Lexxie if we could continue the tradition here and to join me in listing favorites. We hope you enjoy reading about some of our favorites and we’d be happy to hear about any of yours! This post is all about books/audiobooks! Here are a few of my favorites for this year because seriously…it’s hard to narrow it down! The Alice Network by Kate Quinn Come From Away by Genevieve Graham Braving the Wilderness by Brene Brown Murder of Crows by Anne Bishop Show Me the Way by AL Jackson, narrated by Andi Arndt and Zachary Webber […]

Privacy Policy, GDPR and other fun things Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and you should not use this post as legal advice! This is just my take on what needs to be done in order to be in compliance with the GDPR, and a little bit about Privacy Policy and why we need them. If you have a blog, you have probably heard of the new regulations from the EU. And they sure do apply to all of us. What it means, is that each blog needs to have a Privacy Policy, and also a secure connection, including SSL. My privacy policy is pretty straight forward, and I may need to add a few things to it, but I […]

Books That My School Library Should Have! Many of you know that when I don’t blog, or spend time with my family, I teach English as foreign language. I teach in high school, so my students are between 15 and 19 years old. (Yeah, high school is four years here in Switzerland). Our school library has an English section… of sorts. It’s really not very good. And some of the books that appear in the English section are in French. Because books are shelved based on the author’s nationality – which include only UK or US. Which again, makes me kind of wonder who decided how to sort the different sections. I know it’s not our current librarian. Last week, […]