September Wrap-Up

Another month bites the dust! And in September I managed (by some miracle I might add) to finish my proposed TBR. So, here are the books I read (the titles will take you to my review of the book):

1. Unravel Me by Tahereh Mafi

2. Fracture Me by Tahereh Mafi

3. Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi

4. The Assassin’s Blade by Sarah J. Maas

5. Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

6.  An Infinite Number Of Parallel Universes  by Randy Ribay

7. Finding Perfect by Kendra C. Highley

8. Finding Cinderella (novella) by Colleen Hoover

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All in all, not a bad month, considering that it took me over a week to finish Queen of Shadows, which I only did last night at 2 a.m., and that Ignite Me gave me the biggest book hangover of my life.

Queen of Shadows was also one of the most fun reads I ever had, and that’s thanks to the Buddy Read and the ongoing conversation on twitter with Josie, Erika and Anjie about the book – which given that we are on 3 different time zones, meant that I sometimes woke up to +60 notifications on my twitter… all worth it 😉 – I’ll read any book with you ladies, anytime, because this was fun as hell (even if the book had me crying for a huge chunk of it!).

Also, I ended up reading Finding Cinderella by Colleen Hoover because Dee @The Bookish Khaleesi wrote about it yesterday and it sounded so interesting that a few hours later it was on my kindle.

I also had slightly less time to post this month, and I ended up with a good number of 65 posts in the month of September… not bad!

Tomorrow I’ll post about my October TBR 😉 .

September Book Haul

Another month gone. Wow, time is flying! Anyway, this month’s books… Let’s start with the physical books that I’ve acquired this month:

Queen of Shadows (Sarah J. Maas)

The Summer I Turned Pretty Trilogy (Jenny Han)

Cinder (Marissa Meyer)

Scarlet (Marissa Meyer)

Cress (Marissa Meyer)

The Selection (Kiera Cass)

The Elite (Kiera Cass)

The One (Kiera Cass)

Landline (Rainbow Rowell)

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I also bought several eBooks this month, super cheap 😀 :

Daughter of Smoke and Bone (Laini Taylor)

Angelfall (Susan Ee)

Every Last Word (Tamara Ireland Stone)

Playing the Player (Lisa Brown Roberts)

The Boyfriend Thief (Shana Norris)

A Summer Like No Other (Elodie Nowodazkij)

Exit Stage Left (Gail Nall)

Finding Cinderella (Colleen Hoover)

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And finally, I got 3 books from Netgalley:

Your Voice Is All I Hear (Leah Scheier)

Rikki (Hart University) (Abigail Strom)

The New Year’s Wish (Dani-Lyn Alexander)

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This is it! My September book haul, a bit bigger than I anticipated… 20 books 😳 !

 

GoodReads Challenge Completed… Now What?

Just a very quick update here. I just completed my GoodReads 2015 Reading Challenge of 51 books! I finished Queen of Shadows last night, and how fitting that that would be the last book for this challenge. (by the way, Queen of Shadows is amazing, utterly brilliant, and I was a sobbing mess for more than 25% of it – I still have no idea how I’m going to review it…)

Now, back to the issue at hand, there are still 3 months to go on this year, and I have to admit that I get a thrill each time I see that bar in the book count go up just a bit, So… I’m thinking of upping the number, maybe to 75?! What do you guys think?

X-Files: “The Truth Is Still Out There” Promo

Who else is super excited for X-Files to return? 😀 I get all giddy each time a new promo or photo appears, because this was such a huge part of my teenage years.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Books To Read If You Like Kick-@ss Female Heroines

Hello, it’s Tuesday again, which means it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday post, a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme is:

Ten Books To Read If You Like This Super Popular Book/Author (ie: you could list 10 different popular/bestselling books or authors with readalike suggestions for each or give 10 books for one best-selling/popular book or author like 10 authors to read if you like John Green or ten books to read if you like Gone Girl. Idea is to give good readalikes that may be less well known).

I was struggling with this one a lot! I don’t usually make connections between authors or books and i couldn’t come up with anything more than 5 book, no matter which combination I tried. So, after contemplating not doing it this week, I decided to spin it a bit and make it a theme instead of an author or book. So, Ten Books To Read If You Like Kick-@ss Female Heroines! I’m sorry before hand for totally missing the goal of this week’s topic…

1. Throne of Glass Series (Sarah J. Maas)

This series is full of gorgeous, super strong women. Such as Aelin, Nehemia, Lysandra, Manon, …, I love how strong, powerful and human they all are.

2. The Wrath & The Dawn (Renée Ahdieh)

Shahrzad is one of my favorite female character ever. Despina is pretty bad-@ss herself.

3. The One Thing (Marci Lyn Curtis)

Maggie is so strong and sassy! I love the hell out of her.

4. The Infernal Devices (Cassandra Clare)

Tessa Gray, Charlotte Fairchild, Sophie Collins, Cecily Herondale. These four ladies are worth several men!

5. Eleanor & Park (Rainbow Rowell)

Eleanor is a different kind of strong female character. She doesn’t fight or anything, but she managed to survive some awful situations and still manage to live.

6. Harry Potter series (J.K. Rowling)

Hermione Granger is on everyone’s mind when we think of kick-@ss women, right? But I’ll raise you Molly Weasley, Minerva Mcgonagall, Nymphadora Tonks, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, Alice Longbottom, …

7. A Clash of Kings (George R. R. Martin)

One name for you: Aria Stark. Sure, this series has other female heroines, such as Daenerys, but Aria is my favorite.

8. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

Chiyo goes through some bad stuff throughout her life…

9. The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

It’s not because Katniss is broken that she stops being freaking amazing.

10. My Heart and Other Black Holes (Jasmine Warga)

 I really admire Aysel. Yes, the only thing she wants in the beginning is to end her life, but she goes through a big transformation and goes because of it. She makes my list!

Marvel’s Jessica Jones: Good Morning Teaser

Have you seen this? It’s GOLD!!!! I’m so super excited for this series to begin, I think I’ll save November 20, oh yeah, I’ll stay home, maybe bing watch the hell out of this… take a look 😉 !

My TV Shows Calendar

TV season has started again!!! Hurrayyyy! I’ve honestly had such a crazy couple of weeks that I still haven’t cathed up to anything that came out – I still have a few shows behind from last season… ups! 😳

Either way, I wanted to share with you what I’ll be watching this year, just like I did last year around this time (here).

I still have to catch up to a lot of shows before this becomes a regular schedule, but I’ll try my best.

Are you guys watching any of these? Which show are you most excited about? I’m pretty psyched about the return of Marvel’s Agent Carter 😀 .

I’m Back and how I failed spectacularly at the Tackle my TBR Read-a-Thon!

Hello people, I’m back from Portugal. After a crazy crazy week at home, I finally arrived to Barcelona yesterday morning (and at my house roughly 2h30m later… I have public transportation sometimes).

It was a SUPER CRAZY WEEK!! I’ll resume it for you, just because… I got there Friday night…

» Saturday I had a full day celebration at a friend’s house, to celebrate her birthday and PhD. After a day of eating and playing games, I finally got home at around 1 a.m.

» Sunday my brother picked me up at 9.30 a.m to go to the supermarket, then we went to his new house, looked around a bit, he showed me his 65′ and 55′ new TVs and played some PES, and then we had family lunch at our grandmother’s. After that, me, him and his wife went to a shopping mall, where he then left us and we went to IKEA next. We left IKEA completely drained at 10 p.m. and went to have a soup at another shopping mall… isn’t it great that things are open until 11p.m.?! After I had a freakout moment because I saw Throne of Glass in Portuguese, I went home.

– By now I’d been home for 2 whole days and had seen my dad a great amount of 1 hr on the day I arrived! –

» Monday I decided to sleep in a little… that was until my sister called me (and woke me up), to announce that she and her husband were arriving at Lisbon and if I wanted to have lunch with them. My answer was yes (because you never say no to dining out with your siblings, right?). SEAFOOD!!!! 😀 My bro and sis-in-law joined us as well, and then we (again) went to my brother’s new house. It was time to start washing the linens and stuff, and I spent the day assembling the kitchen diner table and the chairs… bless IKEA. On a bright note, I managed to get away and have diner with my dad 😉

» Tuesday I was able to stay at home a bit. I had to work on some stuff for my advisor, so that worked out well. And after 2 days of being stuck in the same page of Queen of Shadows, I was able to move up a few chapters (not many though). My BFF then went to get me and we made our usual route to some starbucks, a few shops, diner and a movie. 😀 (and then staying talking until past 2a.m. – I’m in serious need of some sleep).

» My plan for Wednesday was to relax all day and read, nothing more. I almost managed doing just that… But my sis called to let me know she would be picking me up soon… I said no, she said yes, she won! So, again, bro’s home – it’s a really nice house – we had a snack, we went to my grandmother’s, then to see a friend, then back to his house, we had diner at 11 p.m. and me and my sister-in-law’s sister stayed until 2a.m. playing Dance Central on the X-Box, while the men were upstairs with their PES.

» Thursday was a good day! I made progress on Queen of Shadows! I read and watched a bit of TV, relaxed, managed to actually read some blog posts that I had been accumulating, and then me and my BFF went to have coffee with a friend of ours that we hadn’t seen in awhile.

– Are you tired yet? – 

» Friday I went (guess…), yeah, bro’s house. They went to deliver furniture, mainly the couch and dining table  – very important – then we had lunch, me and sis went to starbucks, pharmacy, grandmother’s house. Then we had a family diner. My nephew arrived from the south of Portugal. After diner we all went to my brother’s house. Me and my BFF finally left past 1a.m. and I was super tired by then.

» Saturday (it’s almost over), I had a lunch with my family from my dad’s side. It’s always great to see my aunts 😀 ! By late afternoon I went shopping with my nephew and that was awesome, I had missed the kid. Then it was time to pack and sleep, because having a plane to catch at 6.45 a.m. is no joke.

      

My Grandmother/aunt’s house is full of these little treasures… Damn it, I was so cute when I was little…

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Now, for the actual #TackleTBR Warp-Up, I didn’t do any good in this Read-a-Thon… not good at all.

WHAT MY GOALS WERE:

• Finish my September TBR, which means reading Queen of Shadows (doing a buddy read – check the GR group 😀 ), An Infinite Number Of Parallel Universes  and  Finding Perfect. (Because I’ll finish The Assassin’s Blade today)

        

• Read at least 2 other ARCs – which ones will depend on my mood;

• Participate in 5 challenges;

• Find some new exciting blogs to follow.

WHAT I actually managed:

• I finished The Assassin’s Blade,  An Infinite Number Of Parallel Universes  and  Finding Perfect. I’m halfway done with Queen of Shadows, which won’t surprise you if you read the section above.

• I read nothing more, unless you count some form of fanfiction which I’m now apparently addicted to.

• I participated in 2 challenges: #TACKLETBR: SEASON CHALLENGE and #TACKLETBR: BOOKISH SCAVENGER HUNT!. I really like challenges, but to be honest, the ones in this read-a-thon were mostly meh… these two were fun 🙂 .

• I hardly had time to check on the blogs that I already follow, least of all find new ones… it was a busy week.

Movie of the Week: PHD Movie 2 – Still in Grad School

This week when I got home, I received my reward for crowdfunding the PHD Movie 2, that is, I received my DVDs of both movies, so naturally I wasted no time in watching the second one. If you have been paying attention here, you know that I’ve been pretty excited about this, right?

This second movie deals with 2 different main issues. From one hand, Cecilia (Alexandra Lockwood) needs to graduate ASAP, mainly because her advisor is leaving on sabbatical, so she deals with the problems of writing the thesis, procrastination, finding a thesis committee, managing all the conflicting schedules and ego issues, etc. On the other hand, Winston (Raj Katti) goes away with his group for his first field conference and has to deal with the pressure of doing better than the other groups and competing for funding.

I really liked this movie, though not as much as the first one. I did like the themes and the resolutions. I even cried! Winston’s collaboration with his rival lab to make an essential contribution to science moved me. But the high point of the movie for me was watching real footage of Alexandra Lockwood’s graduation! Yes, she is already a PhD! 😀

My biggest problem with this movie was the time frame. Essentially everything happens within a week or so, so while Winston is away at the super long conference, Cecilia realizes that she has to write a thesis, she actually writes it with several corrections from her professor, finds a committee and a date, defends her thesis AND has a graduation ceremony… in the meanwhile the conference is still going on. I didn’t like that! It’s the most unreal thing ever that they’ve done in the movies or comics…

It still left me pretty emotional… 😥 Oh, and I totally saw that ending coming… after how the first movie ended, I thought it was pretty obvious!

My Life in Books! Book Tag

Hello!!! Taking advantage of my last night at home, and just having been nominated for this tag by Ashley @Dear World…, I decided that I should so it now, otherwise it would have to wait until Christmas. Thank you Ashley!!! 😀

(oh, I almost missed posting today…)

1. Find a book for each of your initials.

   

Crown of Midnight

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Persuasion

Attachments

2. Count your age along your bookshelf – which book is it?

Oh, I’m old! I’m 31, so… Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins.

3. Pick a book set in your city/state/country.

Os Maias by Eça de Queirós. I think this is currently the only book I own that goes on in Portugal.

4. Pick a book that represents a destination you would love to travel to.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher‘s Stone by JK Rowling, I mean, who wouldn’t want to travel to Hogwarts?!

5. Pick a book that’s your favorite color.

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell. I love this book colour! This is not my favorite colour in general, but it is on this cover.

6. Which book do you have the fondest memories of?

As Sete Filhas De Eva or The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes. I read this book when I was young and it quite literally changed my life. It’s a non-fiction, in case you’re wondering, and it’s about Mitochondrial DNA (mostly) and how we can trace all our lineages back to Africa and I read it and I knew that I wanted to be involved in this for life. So, I decided I wanted to do Genetics and Human Populations… and I am!

7. Which book did you have the most difficulty reading?

A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin. This book took me so long, I just wasn’t feeling the characters and I was always getting lost with the names… but I did it!

8. Which book in your TBR pile will you give the biggest sense of accomplishment when you finish it?

Probably The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien! And then The Lord of The Rings trilogy… it’s been in my TBR forever.

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I tag EVERYONE! This was fun 😀