Links I Loved This Week – 11/05/17

Hope everyone had a good week! I was very productive on my blog and I’m really proud of the 3 posts I published this week. Check them out in the On The Blog section. I’m still struggling with getting Links I Loved published early Sunday morning (rather than around 9AM LA time and noon on the East Coast), but typically my Saturdays are so busy I’m too tired to write it up until Sunday morning. Hope you’ll forgive me 😉

Don’t forget to join the new Los Angeles Book Bloggers group if you’re a book blogger based in LA. It’s starting to gain a little traction and I’m hoping once we have a few more members to plan our first get together!

And check below for an exciting announcement about an upcoming Readathon I’m co-hosting! Onward to this week’s links!

Jackie at Death By Tsundoku and I are having a real Thanksgiving Readathon for the first year. Last year we sort of did a very informal version of it and a few people joined us via Twittter, but this year there will be an official announcement post with more details on the week before Thanksgiving, launch and wrap-up posts, and a really great giveaway, so keep your eyes peeled and sign up! The idea is to still keep it really chill and not set precise reading targets for people, so you can set your own or just read as much as you want.

• Of course it was the first week of Nonfiction November and Julz’ Reads was the first hosting blog. In this wrap-up post you’ll find links to each blog who participated. The topic was My Year In Nonfiction (you can find a link to my post below), and my favorite contributions were from Novel Visits, Lakeside Musing, Lindsay’s Library, Based On A True Story, and Mind Joggle.

• It was also the week for October 2017 Reading Wrap-Ups, and there were tons of great posts to spark some new TBR additions, including on Novel Visits, Sarah’s Book Shelves, Fictionophile, Pace Amore Libri, Book Bum, Read Eat Sleep Repeat, Death By Tsundoku, The Misstery, Keeper Of Pages, One Reader’s Thoughts, A Dance With Books, Arctic Books, Sophisticated Dorkiness and Greatest Escapist.

• Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke And Bookish, and this week’s topic was a Halloween Freebie (you can find a link to my post below). Here were some of my favorite posts with creative topics: haunted house novels on Dwell In Possibility, scary book covers on The Montana Bookaholic, books to read on Halloween on Rants And Raves Of A Bibliophile, bookish Halloween costume ideas on One Girl Infinite Books and ten vampire series on Boundless Bookaholic.

• Book Of The Month announced their November 2017 Selections, and there were several titles on the list that are really hot right now. They included The Rules Of Magic by Alice Hoffman (my review here), Artemis by Andy Weir, Future Home Of The Living God by Louise Erdrich, Bonfire by Krysten Ritter and Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks. Since I’m leery for books written by celebrities, I’ve already read The Rules Of Magic and I have an ARC waiting for me of Artemis, I went with the Louise Erdrich pick.

• I’m always really curious to read a super positive review by someone of a book I didn’t love. That’s the great thing about reading – two people can come away with completely different impressions of a book. That was the case for The Seven Husbands Of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Erin Read It posted a very positive review of it this week, but as you can read here, I found it good but not great.

• It was also National Author’s Day on Wednesday and Off The Shelf published this post on 13 Authors We Love, which I found really interesting because I wasn’t familiar with several of the names on the list. Time to do some Goodreads exploring and make some damage to my TBR list. I shared my Eowyn Ivey Author Spotlight as I’m impatiently waiting for her next novel (no pressure Eowyn!).

• I found this summary of Book Awards that Modern Mrs. Darcy posted this week really useful, because I can’t for the life of me keep them straight or remember when the long list, short list and winners are announced for each. Maybe I need to make myself some sort of chart. Would you guys find that useful?

• The Hungry Bookworm shared another delicious looking recipe for Halloween – Tipsy Chocolate Cake from The Rules Of Magic by Alice Hoffman. It sounds scrumptious in the book and looks amazing baked by Megan. Her Julia Child Halloween costume is just quite literally the icing on the cake!

• And as last week, if you’re looking for even more bookish links, The Secret Library Blog has her post up today as well!

• Here are the individual book reviews I read this week that inspired me to consider reading the books they covered:
  • Caroline by Sarah Miller and A Wilder Rose by Susan Wittig Albert on Hopewell’s Public Library Of Life (historical fiction)
  • The Winter’s Child by Cassandra Parkin on Over The Rainbow Book Blog (mystery)
  • See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt on My Chestnut Reading Tree (historical fiction)
  • The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers on Lindsay’s Library (sci-fi fiction)
  • The Alice Network by Kate Quinn on Lindsay’s Library (historical fiction)
  • The Last Hours by Minette Walters on BiblioManiac (historical fiction)

• On Monday, I published my monthly feature on New November 2017 Release I’m Looking Forward To, including 5 nonfiction and 5 fiction titles. Among the books mentioned, I’m planning on reviewing Prairie Fires by Caroline Fraser and Artemis by Andy Weir in the next few weeks.

• On Tuesday I participated in the Top Ten Tuesday Halloween freebie topic and posted a list of 10 Books I Want To Read Featuring Witches. This way I have my list ready for next Halloween, when I’ll hopefully be writing up reviews of each title (and maybe some new ones published in the meantime).

• On Friday I published my first Nonfiction November post on My Year In Nonfiction, with a list of all the nonfiction books I’ve read to date in 2017 (43 titles) and links to reviews for the ones I’ve already featured so far on the blog. You can also see what my plans are for the rest of Nonfiction November at the bottom of the post.

• I know somehow Starbucks holiday cups seem to be more and more controversial every year, but I really love there idea for this year. They’ve turned the cup into a portable coloring book, so you can personalize it and use it for a little stress relief. Probably not something people will do on a daily basis, but I still thought it was a clever idea.

• I really liked this post on being single from The Stripe, because it’s very nuanced. It gets at the good, the bad and the ugly of it, both reveling in all the freedom singledom brings and not pulling any punches on the fact that many single people still ultimately really wish they could find the perfect happy relationship.

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Any articles or blog posts from the book world that you really enjoyed this week? Share them in the comments!

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