Reading Challenge | TheRealSharon's Blog

{May 31, 2013} End of the 30 Day Reading Challenge!

Yesterday was the official last day of the 30 Day Reading Challenge, but since there’s an extra day in May, I figured I would use this day to leave my opinions on it!

I had a lot of fun racking my brain to think of a book(or character for a couple days) each day and it feels like the month just flew by! I’m glad I found this challenge on FB and decided to take it on! I encourage others to do it themselves sometime either on a blog or their FB page, wherever they choose! I would love to hear about others favorite reads!

Starting in the month of June, I have joined up for the 2013 Word Count Blogathon, which entails blogging everyday in the month of June. Since I’m blogging everyday anyways, why not? Registration ends at 8 p.m. Pacific Time/11 p.m. Eastern time tonight if you’re interested! Not sure what time that is in my Central Time Zone. I’ve never been good with that kind of thing!

This year is my first year but my friend Dayle over at “I shall be a toad” is doing it for her 3rd year! She is also the one who encouraged me to sign up so a big thank you to her for that! I think June is going to be great! 🙂

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{May 30, 2013} Day 30 of Reading Challenge!

Day 30-Favorite Book

I was dreading this day. I read somewhere once that to pick a favorite book is like a mother being told to pick her favorite child. No matter how hard I try, I can’t honestly give you one and ONLY one favorite book. I once posted a list of some of my favorite books but to pick just one is inconceivable. I don’t want to leave this completely blank though so I will give the title of one of my favorites that I have yet to post about on my blog. 🙂 Totally random pick here: “Man of Wax” by Robert Smartwood…awesome ebook I read and I got the second one about a week ago on sale for .99! Can’t wait to read it! 🙂

{May 29, 2013} WWW Wednesday for May 29th,2013/Day 29 of Reading Challenge

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions… • What are you currently reading? • What did you recently finish reading? • What do you think you’ll read next? What are you currently reading? “Strange Candy” by Laurell K. Hamilton

What did you recently finish reading? “And Eternity”(Book 7 of Incarnations of Immortality) by Piers Anthony

“How to talk to girls at parties” by Neil Gaiman(this was…ok…but too short for me and I’m not as big of a fan of this as his other novels.)

I started reading “You know what they say: The truth about popular beliefs” but only about 30 pages in, I decided to not waste my time. It was written in 1991 so it’s outdated and besides that, I just found it really boring. I can’t remember the last time I gave up on a book but I just felt like there were other books more exciting to move on to! Since I didn’t finished this, I just completely removed it from any shelves on Goodreads and didn’t rate it as I thought it would be unfair due to me not finishing it.

What do you think you’ll read next? I have no clue because my next shipment from Booksfree hasn’t shipped and I am almost done with the book I am on now. We will just have to see….

Day 29-A book everyone hated but you liked

Technically, there’s no book out there I know of that EVERYONE but me hated…but I will play along and pick one where the consensus on Goodreads seems to have been negative but I disagreed. 🙂

I skimmed through my Goodreads and decided to go with “The Raising” by Laura Kasischke, which was a book I read last year because I saw it featured on Goodreads and it sounded interesting. I really enjoyed it and rated it a 5 but the average rating is a mere 3.27. Granted there WERE some books on my “Read” that were rated as low as 2.29 BUT most of those I pretty much agreed with or at least enough to offer a 5 rating. As an extra fun thing, I decided to look at the lowest rated book on my “To Read” list and add it here as well: The lowest rated book currently on my “To Read” list ranks in at a 2.61 and it’s “The Almost Moon” by Alice Sebold, who you may recognize as the author of “The Lovely Bones”. I OWN “The Lovely Bones” and have seen the movie, but have yet to read the book. I wonder if I will agree with the low rating once I read this…

{May 28, 2013} Day 28 of Reading Challenge

Day 28-Favorite Title

I think I’m going to go with the book that I am now reading. “Strange Candy” by Laurell K. Hamilton. So far, I am really loving the short stories but I have to say, I also LOVE the title. It’s very mysterious and even if I had never heard of her or her books, if I saw this book with the title, I would probably pick it up and read it based on that alone. It just sounds so mysterious and forbidden, like Halloween Candy that might have been tainted by evil. The title alone makes you intrigued to find out just what kind of short stories fit the idea of “Strange Candy”. As someone who hasn’t almost read the entire book, I will say I think the stories do the title justice. Take with that what you will. 😉

{May 27, 2013} Does being sick have a benefit?/Day 27 of Reading Challenge

After almost a month of being stuck at about the same weight, I stepped on the scale this morning and saw 284.0! Finally off of 286 and above it where I had been fluctuating. I AM currently sick, though. I have had a cough since Thursday evening with congestion and now my nose is stopped up at the moment of this posting. So, needless to say, I feel really crappy but I can honestly say it hasn’t made me starve myself or anything. I have ate pretty much the same while being sick, but in the past, when I get sick, I tend to lose a bit. In a strange way, I guess it could be considered a benefit, BUT being sick sucks and it’s no fun at all! Tomorrow I’m supposed to start my Medical Transcription training after coming home from an Awards Ceremony for my 7 yr. old niece so I will really not looking forward to feeling blah while doing it. If everyone could send their positive thoughts and prayers my way that I will feel a lot better tomorrow, I will greatly appreciate it! 🙂

Now…for Day 27 of the 30 Day Reading Challenge!

Day 27-The most surprising plot twist or ending

I’ve read a lot of books where there’s a plot or ending that really shocks me and surprises me because I did NOT see it coming. To narrow it down to the MOST surprising I had to glance through my Goodreads “Read” List and really rack my brain to remember all the books I’ve read. I feel like I have to shout out a book I might have referenced before and that’s “Blasphemy” by Douglas Preston because it definitely had a heck of a surprising twist to it. Same with the book I picked as Best Book I have read this year…although that has also changed now. “Hiding in Sunshine” by John and Caitlin Stuart is one of the best books I read this year BECAUSE of the twist at the end. So I broke my own rules and reused books but sometimes books fit into more than one category. 🙂

{May 26, 2013} Day 26 of Reading Challenge

There’s no Spotlight Sunday today as I’m sick with a cough and just wasn’t up to doing a lot today. Hopefully, I will get better soon and be back next Sunday with a new one, though! 🙂

Day 26-A book that changed your opinion on something

I didn’t want to reuse a book here but technically, I guess I’m not because I mentioned the whole series on Day 9 rather than a specific book. The book is “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” which is book 1 of the series and if you want to know about the opinion that was changed, go back and read my “Day 9 of reading challenge” post where I talk about it! If I felt better, I would go over it all again..:(

{May 25, 2013} Day 25 of Reading Challenge

Day 25-Favorite book you read in school

NOT Great Gatsby…I had to reread this like 5 times in college for a research paper on the color symbolism and it’s well written, but I just hate it. Honestly, other than books I read in high school that I could choose to read and take tests on….there are no books that really stick out as loving them. Pretty much all the books I was FORCED to read were pretty boring to me. As a Theater Major, it’s probably crazy for me to say that I’m not a HUGE fan of Shakespeare but the plays I’ve read of his…not a big fan of. Having said that, I have never read “Macbeth”….yes, I have committed a sin in the Theater world, I know! I have read parts, but not the whole. I’ve never read “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” either but that one actually DOES intrigue me. “Romeo and Juliet” frustrated me and “Julius Caesar” felt like torture to read. The one favorite that pops up in my mind is not a book, but a story called “The Monkey’s Paw”. It’s a horror short story that I first read in one of my Literature books in elementary sometime and I absolutely loved it. It shouldn’t be a surprise to me NOW seeing as I have always loved horror and supernatural tales. If you have never heard this story, find it and read it! It’s really short but Stephen King’s later “Pet Sematary” feels like it might have grown a bit from it. It was written in 1902 and is one of those stories that lets you know to be careful what you wish for! 😉

P.S. If you’re not aware of Stephen King’s novel, you may be silently correcting my spelling right now. “Sematary” IS the correct spelling for it, though. 🙂

{May 24, 2013} Five Question Friday for May 24th,2013/Day 24 of Reading Challenge!

Welcome!

As always, you may answer these questions in your own post or in the comments section!

This 5 Question Friday was brought to you by:

On to the questions!

1. Do you wake before the alarm or stay in bed until the last possible second? I normally don’t have a set time I NEED to wake up but when I use an alarm, I tend to wake up when it goes off, not before. Today, however, I woke up 35 minutes before it went off(cause I had to use the bathroom!) and stayed up.

2. Who should get a baby shower? Is it just the first baby or all babies? Well, I think mainly just the first baby, but I think there are good reasons to sometimes break that rule. For instance, if a family had a baby and then didn’t have the next until so long after that they had already gotten rid of all or most of their stuff. OR if a family has gone through some disaster and lost a lot or all of their stuff. In those cases, and others that I probably didn’t even think of, it makes sense. If however, a person has a baby then has the next a year after, then I think it’s kind of ridiculous(even if the baby is a different sex than the first). Friends and family can still give gifts for each baby, nothing wrong with that…but a baby shower for each consecutive baby is a little much, in my personal opinion.

3. How will you spend Memorial Day? Probably taking my Mom to run some errands as I usually do on Monday and then coming home to just hang out at my house with my husband.

4. Do you have a Storm/Hurricane/Tornado/Fire plan for your kids, house..? No, not a specified written plan….maybe when I have kids, I will actually get one done…but for now, I guess I’m too lazy. 😦

5. What is your favorite morning drink? Well, I don’t like Coffee or Tea…Over 10 months ago, I would say Mountain Dew cause that’s pretty much all I drank. Now I just drink water ALL the time with those drink mixes so I don’t really have a choice in what I pick here…

Day 24-A book that you wish more people would have read

This is an easy one! I have to say anything by Kimberly Kinrade, but overall the WHOLE “Forbidden Trilogy”. It’s in the same vein as a lot of these other books that have been turned into movies lately, for instance, “The Hunger Games” but better, in my honest opinion. I know other people through her Street Team and her launch parties that love this trilogy BUT I don’t have any really super close friends or family that have ever read it and that makes me sad. 😦 I would love it if they all read it too and loved it as much as I did so we could share the love together! AND getting Kimberly more loyal fans would be awesome for her too as she truly deserves it. I would love it if “Forbidden Trilogy” was made into movies too!

{May 23, 2013} Day 23 of Reading Challenge

Day 23-Your Guilty Pleasure

They say you should never feel guilty about what you love to read so I try not to, BUT there’s definitely a series of books that I’m going to pick here because I love them so much, yet others consider it a guilty pleasure to feel embarrassed about. Those are the few that seemed to love it like me. The ones that don’t love it seem to completely hate the series and think the author is trying too hard to be funny. I disagree and that’s my personal right. The series is the “Undead Series” by MaryJanice Davidson and they are all about Betsy,who dies and turns into not just any Vampire…but the Vampire Queen. Betsy is big into shoes, expensive shoes and she reminds me of a preppy girl that in real life I would despise, but in the books…I find it hilarious. I read the first chapter on the computer years ago cause it sounded interesting and..I HAD to read them! And yea…I admit they’ve gotten a bit cheesy lately but I can’t help it. They’re easy, fun reads where I don’t have to think too much and I love them!

{May 22, 2013} WWW Wednesday for May 22nd,2013/Day 22 of Reading Challenge

What did you recently finish reading? “For love of evil”(Book 6 of Incarnations of Imm0rtality) by Piers Anthony

What do you think you’ll read next? “How to talk to girls at parties” by Neil Gaiman (this was free from pre-order about a month ago so I ordered it and it JUST got sent to my Kindle about a week ago so I’m going to read this next. It’s a short story, so it won’t take long!)

Day 22-Book you’re currently reading

It’s funny how this is the question today of all days when I already say what I’m reading…so I’m not going to repeat myself. See above for the answer! 😉

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