Okay, I wasn’t going to do this reading challenge, but hearing other people talk about things is the biggest catalyst in making me want to do those things. So here I am. Doing the Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge. I’ll be updating this list all year long as I tackle the challenges, so check back if you want to see how I am doing.

Challenges Completed: (46/50)

A book with more than 500 pages: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
A classic romance (Persuasion)
A book that became a movie: Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison
A book published this year: The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson
A book with a number in the title: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
A book written by someone under 30: The Last Girlfriend on Earth: And Other Love Stories by Simon Rich
A book with nonhuman characters: The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
A funny book: Sex Criminals Vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky 
A book by a female author: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
A mystery or thriller: The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson
A book with a one word title: Hazed by Mark Sable
A book with short stories: The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant by Drew Hayes
A book set in a different country: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
A non-fiction book: The Opposite of Loneliness 
A popular author’s first book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
A book from an author you love that you haven’t read yet: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
A book a friend recommended: Cinder by Marissa Meyer
A Pulitzer Prize winning novel: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
A book based on a true story: Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman
A book at the bottom of your TBR list: An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
A book your mom loves: Old North Dakota German Cookbook
A book that scares you: The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
A book more than a 100 years old: Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
A book based entirely on its cover: In Real Life by Corey Doctorow and Jen Wang
A book you were supposed to read in school and didn’t: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A memoir: Bossypants by Tina Fey
A book with antonyms in the title: Glory O’brien’s History of the Future by AS King
A book you can finish in a day: The Woods: Vol 1 by James Tynion IV
A book set somewhere you’ve always wanted to go: Magical Girl Apocalypse
A book published the year you were born (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency)
A book with bad reviews: Doll Bones by Holly Black
A Trilogy (Magic 2.0)
A book from your childhood: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn
A book with a love triangle: The Shadow Cabinet by Maureen Johnson
A book set in the future: Cress by Marissa Meyer
A book set in high school: Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick
A book with a color in the title: Scarlet by Marissa Meyer
A book that made you cry: The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski
A book with magic: Spell or High Water by Scott Meyer
A graphic novel: A Wrinkle in Time the Graphic Novel by Madeleine L’Engle/Hope Larson
A book by an author you’ve never read before: This One Summer by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki
A book you own but never read: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
A book that takes place in your hometown: Off To Be The Wizard by Scott Meyer
A book that was originally written in another language: Magical Girl Apocalypse
A book set during Christmas: PS. I Still Love You by Jenny Han
A book by an author who has your same initials: The Kite Runner Graphic Novel by Khaled Hosseini
A play (from joe!)
A banned book: On The Bright Side I’m Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God by Louise Rennison
A book based on or turned into a tv show: The 100 by Kass Morgan
A book you started but never finished: Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Hello, lovely blog readers!

Yet again I have sort of fallen off the face of the planet, but I’m here to make amends by doing another little roundup of my favorite videos I’ve posted in the past month or so. If you missed any of them… go ahead and catch up! I’ll wait here.

So, first of all.. this video I’m about to show you is probably my favorite video I’ve ever made. Half the views it has are probably from ME, rewatching it and laughing hysterically alone in my room. I have no shame about this. It’s that funny.

Joe and I did a slightly different take on the whisper challenge. Rather than asking each other inane questions sent in on twitter, we just said nerdy phrases at each other. It was amazing.

The next video I want to share is my wrap-up from the #xmasbooktubeathon. I love booktubeathon. In fact, I am really coming around to just loving ALL readathons, and I can’t wait to do so many more in 2015. But this was the weekend long readathon I did right before Christmas, complete with a lot of struggles:

This year I am, of course, doing the 50 book challenge, so there will be MANY more readathons to come. And, I can imagine, more book struggles.

As we get closer to the end of the year, I started getting reflective. About books, of course. I realized too late that the trendy thing to do was your top FOURTEEN books of 2014, so I look a n00b only listing five. Whatever!

Then I had to show off all my NEW books, of course. This is a very book heavy blog post, I’m finding. No regrets! Here is my most extreme book haul yet:

I posted many more videos over the last month or so, so scoot on over to my channel to catch ’em all! Like a Pokémon master. Or you can stay here and leave me a comment telling me what kinds of videos you’d like to see more of in 2015. Whatever you want.

Thanks, as always, for reading my blog! It makes me smile. I like you guys.

Okay I am a little late on actually making a blog post about this, but better late than never, right?

I am participating in Bout Of Books! It’s a readathon that’s happening right now, as we speak – it started on Jan 5th and it goes all the way until Jan 11th. I thought this was the perfect way to kick off the new year and get a few books under my belt early since I am attempting to read 50 books this year.

Here are the books I set out to read:

These were/are my goals:

• Read all three of these books
• Don’t watch any Netflix

Pretty simple, right? Here’s how I did:

I read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks on Monday and Tuesday, finishing Tuesday night. I also started Ready Player One on Tuesday night, which made me think this readathon was going to be a breeze. However! Wednesday and Thursday were bad reading nights for me… though I still managed to squeeze in a few pages on each of those nights. Not much. About 40 pages total across the two evenings.

Friday I powered about 100 pages through, then I read 150 pages on Saturday and I finished up Ready Player One today (Sunday morning).

That book was amazing, but intense. I ended up needing to take a little break (which turned into going for a 3 mile walk with Joe that included stopping for margaritas) and starting to play a game called Hatoful Boyfriend (which is a dating sim for pigeons and yes, it will be on Team Hypercube). After that I finally cracked open The Night Circus, but after the trip Ready Player One took me on, I just wasn’t totally ready to dive into another book.

So, I’m about 30 pages into The Night Circus, nearly a book short of my goal – but happy. Because I also listened to about eight hours of All The Light We Cannot See over the course of the week, in my car. So really, I’m still leagues ahead on my reading challenge for the year, which is the important part.

I’m excited for this year. I’m excited for all my new books, and how I finally feel like I’ve carved reading back into my life in a big way, and I don’t even feel like I’m “making time” anymore. I just have reading time, even if it means other things are back-burnered or put on hold.

Oh – that reminds me. I also stuck to my goal of not watching any TV this week. It’s been 7 days since I watched anything on my television, on Netflix, etc. I’ve only watched a very small handful of YouTube videos, as well. I’m proud of myself.

But now… I think I am going to reward myself with an episode of Gilmore Girls. Shhh.