Today’s blog post is going to be a little bit different, because today… I am hosting a challenge for Bout of Books 13! To find out more about this read-a-thon, check out their website and consider joining in! Because – good news! If you catch this blog post in the next 2 hours – there’s still time to sign up! But if it’s already Wednesday where you live… you’re probably too late. I’m sorry! 🙁

This challenge is only for participants, so if you’re feeling left out, you should consider doing it next time!

For those of you specifically here for the challenge, here it is: Write a haiku about whatever book you’re reading right now.

Here’s one I’ve written about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as an example/a bit of inspiration:

Boy Wizard. Harry.
His school is cooler than yours.
But no internet.

Feel free to tweet your haikus as well, to share them with the world!

And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper challenge without a prize, would it? The winner of this challenge may choose a book up to $15 from Book Depository and I will get it for you! 

If you’re participating in the read-a-thon, good luck! And if not… what are you doing?! Grab a book anyway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I don’t know if I’ll be writing blog posts about every single day of this readathon, but I will be updating here and there, especially if the challenge for the day makes sense to write a blog post!

I think today, the first day, is my busiest day of the readathon. Not the best way to hit the ground running, but I will manage. I had to work today (9-5) and have a writing workshop that begins in 45 minutes. I’m writing this from the cafe where we meet, before anyone else has gotten here. In the small breaks I’ve had today, this is what I’ve managed to accomplish:

The 100 by Kass Morgan: Listened to 1 hour out of 7
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Read 57 pages

I plan to go home and read a bit more of Attachments tonight, but I also have a video to edit, so I’m not sure how much more I’ll get done. I’m still feeling confident about the rest of the week, though!

Today’s challenge is by Writing My Own Fairytale – Bookish Survey.

1. How do you organize your shelves? There is very little rhyme or reason to my shelves right now. I have two – a big one and a smaller one. The smaller one has mostly my favorite books, organized mostly by author and whatever seems aesthetically pleasing. The bottom shelf of this one is entirely Harry Potter and its companion novels. The large shelf goes (from top to bottom) 2 shelves of books I haven’t read yet, arranged mostly by size and by hardback vs. paperback, then a single shelf of books I plan to read soon, then the next one down is comics and graphic novels, then the bottom is childhood books and older books in a state of disarray.
2. What is one of your favorite books that’s not in one of your favorite genres? Hmmm. Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. I don’t read much horror but I really loved that book.
3. What is the last 5 star book you read? I believe it was Forgive Me Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. That or Saga Vol. 4.
4. What book are you most excited to read during the read-a-thon? I am dying to read Vicious by V.E. Schwab. I’m purposefully reading it last, to use as motivation.
5. What book do you recommend the most? Recently? Probably either Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs or Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I’m a pusher.

That’s it for today! How are your readathons going? Remember you can still participate in Bout of Books 13 if you sign up by Tuesday night (at midnight, I think).

I am participating in not one but TWO readathons this week, and I wanted to let you know what they are in case you want to join in!

The first one is called Bout of Books, which runs from Monday the 11th to Sunday the 17th. This one has pretty loose rules; you basically set your own goal and then can participate in the challenges along the way if you so choose. I’m actually hosting Wednesday’s challenge here on my blog, so make sure to stop back and see what it is!

Then on Friday the 15th – Sunday the 17th (it overlaps, which is actually kind of nice – double motivation!) I’ll also be participating in #CrushYourTBR, which is also a pretty casual TBR meant to encourage people to get through the books on their shelves at a quicker rate than normal. It’s great.

I’ve got a pretty over-ambitious TBR for the week, but I plan to start bringing a book to work and reading on my lunch break, which will help. I might not get through all of these, but by george I’m going to try.

I’ll likely be tweeting about the readathon experience over the course of the week, so make sure you’re following me on Twitter if you want to see my updates. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m dying to start. There are some books in that stack I’ve been meaning to read for months, so it should be great.

Let me know if you’re participating, and what you’re hoping to accomplish. Happy reading!

Free Comic Book Day has been a favorite event of mine for years now, and 2015 was no exception. In fact, this was hands down my best Free Comic Book Day yet! I picked up all the standard free comics that looked amazing, but I also happened upon some crazy deals and scored some finds you totally won’t believe. It was wonderful. I went a little nuts, but I have no regrets. 😀

Did you check out Free Comic Book Day in your own town? What was the best thing you picked up?

I read TEN books in April, which is probably the most I’ve ever read in a single month before. I was so proud of myself for finding time for all of this, and I filmed this wrap up video to tell you all about it!

That’s right! After a 5 month hiatus (I was so ashamed this morning when I swept the dust off our channel and realized five whole months had gone by) we’ve started regularly filming again as a channel. A big reason we stopped posting videos is because our game capture hardware was broken, so rather than shelling out the cash for a new one… we took a little break.

We still haven’t replaced that, so console games are still on hold for a little while. But PC games are a whole different story, so until we decide to buy a new game capture system, you’ll be enjoying a rotation of fun and exciting Steam games. You don’t even know. We have so much goodness planned for you.

In standard Team Hypercube fashion, we’re re-kicking off the channel with a WEIRD Japanese game. I give you…. Hatoful Boyfriend. I don’t even know how to properly prepare you for what is to come, but just know… I’ve been selected as the only human to attend a prestigious academy for birds. And it’s a dating sim.

Bird dating!? Aren’t you glad we’re back?!

People have been asking me about this for ages… so I finally filmed it! Here’s a video showing off my Funko Pop collection, where I got the ones I have, and what I am looking forward to from their new releases page.

I hardly even understand the Funko Pop craze myself, but I love ’em anyway. What is it that draws us to these adorable little figures? Which ones do you have? Let me know in a comment!

I participated in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon yesterday, April 25th. I cheated a little, starting Friday night, but I had the evening to myself so I wanted to get reading early. Technically I was supposed to start at 5am my time, but I started around 7pm the night before because I knew I’d be sleeping through many of the pivotal reading hours.

Basically I just made my personal 24 hours of reading a little more convenient to keeping a regular sleeping schedule.

My goal for the readathon, as I stated in a previous blog post, included a stack of a two books I was halfway through and a couple graphic novels I’d been meaning to read. As I got closer to the actual event, I revised my goal to include one more short novel and to read at least 500 pages over the course of the day.

Here’s how I did:

Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson: I read the 275 pages I had left. 5 hours.
Saga Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: I read all 144 pages. 1 hour.
Sex Criminals Vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky: I read all 128 pages. 1 hour.
Doll Bones by Holly Black: I read 133 pages, making it about halfway. 2.5 hours.

Total pages read: 680 pages
Total books completed: 3 books
Total hours read: 9.5 hours

I didn’t do quite as well as I was hoping, but I had a fantastic time and I knocked a few books off my TBR, which really was the ultimate goal. I still haven’t finished Sorcerer’s Stone and now I’m always halfway through Doll Bones as well, but.. I’ll finish those soon. I’m looking forward to getting really serious about my TBR after this, because I have to start whittling it down. I have to.

I believe the next readathon I’ll be doing is Bout of Books, and I am very much looking forward to it. I might also host a readathon this summer for my book club, if anyone is interested. Happy reading!

Ugh, I said I wasn’t going to buy any more books for awhile, but then this happened.

I swear, my book fast starts now. Pinky swear.

This week’s 5 Fandom Friday is RIGHT up my alley, but as I sat down to write it, I realized how difficult it was going to be. FIVE games? Really? I have to narrow all my love of board games, app games, handheld games and video games down to FIVE? Honestly, I almost just skipped this week on account of it being too hard.

But then I saw some other 5 Fandom Friday posts containing games like Clue and Uno and I realized it was extremely important that I make my list. Learning when I did that there were literally hundreds of actual great games out there after growing up with Milton Bradley was extremely eye-opening, and I love any chance I get to help pass that knowledge on to others. I am writing this list so people can stop thinking games like Clue and Uno are the best this world has to offer. Not saying people shouldn’t ever play and enjoy those games… but there is so much more.

After agonizing over it for awhile, I’ve come up with the following list:

1. 7 Wonders: It was extremely difficult to pick favorite board games for this list, as my personal collection contains over 30 and the list of games I’ve played and love goes well beyond that. But I’ve settled on 7 Wonders as my first one, because it’s probably the game I own that I’ve played more than any other game. 7 Wonders is a drafting, resource-management game where you’re deciding what elements of your city’s economy you’re going to care about. Military? Sciences? Just straight Victory Points? This game got even more fun with the release of some of its new expansions (Cities, Leaders, etc) and it’s really hard to explain why this game is so great, it just is. It plays just as well with 3 players as it does with many, because everyone is taking their turns at the same time, which I really appreciate in a game.

2. Betrayal at House on the Hill: This is an oldie but a goodie; my friends and I love Betrayal at House on the Hill. It’s a standard “explore the haunted house” style board game, but the great thing about this one is that once the haunt starts, you then play out one of a list of about 50 various stories for the game. We’ve played this with it ending in vampires, a literal cat and mouse race, ghosts, crazy people living under the floors, etc. This game probably has the best replay-ability because of that fact and I rarely get bored of it.

3. Ladies and Gentlemen: I don’t actually own this game yet, but playing it at a friend’s house instantly got it on my mental top games list. Ladies and Gentlemen is amazing. You partner up as a “husband” and “wife” though it’s often fun to work in other gender pairs, or gender swap, etc. Basically, the men “go to work and make money”, and the women “go shopping and find the prettiest outfit to spend their husband’s money on”, and while that sounds antiquated and extremely anti-feminist, it’s just self-aware enough to make a parody of the whole situation. It’s hilarious, a lot of fun, and works well with large groups of people.

4. World of Warcraft: I couldn’t make a list of games I like to play without mentioning World of Warcraft. I was tempted to add one of the many app games I love, or any of the Nintendo games that have gotten me through my life, but World of Warcraft is sort of one of those old faithfuls. I got into it in 2010, and even though I sometimes get too busy and have to freeze my account for while… I always come back. I’m not sure what it is about it. The expansive world, the holiday events, knowing there’s more levels I could get my main character up after the last expansion… World of Warcraft has been a constant in my life for nearly 5 years and doesn’t judge me, even if it’s been over 6 months since I last logged in. Except that sometimes I have to re-do my talent tree and reassign all my spells in the action bar. Okay maybe it judges me a little. I wish I had more time to play games.

5. Pokémon: This was just a no-brainer for the final game on my list. I was a hardcore fan of Pokémon Red, collected the cards, had Pikachu paraphernalia in my room growing up – then started playing again in college with Fire Red because I loved the nostalgic feel of the game. It’s been downhill from there, as I loved Pokémon X, Pokémon White and am now slowing working my way through Omega Ruby. I love playing these games as much as I did when I was 11. It’s nice to know that Pokémon is still there for me, and I’m glad Nintendo seems to know that while the younger generation also still loves these games, they’re also still making them for us – their original audience, who still loves it like it’s new.

Should I make a more extensive and detailed list of games I like? Maybe I could make different posts for different genres of games? Let me know if that’s something you would be interested in.