It's Monday...What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading is hosted by Book Journey!

So this week it's going to be a hectic week.  I'm going to a convention this weekend for my business and to meet amazing authors.  Imaginarium is a writing convention and I'm super excited about it.  If you're going to be in the Louisville, KY area this upcoming weekend, stop by and see me.  

With that being said, I'm only going to have one book and an audio book on my list for this week.  

This Week I Plan To Read

Also since I didn't get a chance to read this one last week, its still on my list for this week. 

  

An emotional contemporary YA novel about love, loss, and having the courage to chase the life you truly want. Reeling from her mother's death, Georgia has a choice: become lost in her own pain, or enjoy life right now, while she still can. She decides to start really living for the first time and makes a list of fifteen ways to be brave - all the things she's wanted to do but never had the courage to try. As she begins doing the things she's always been afraid to do - including pursuing her secret crush, she discovers that life doesn't always go according to plan. Sometimes friendships fall apart and love breaks your heart. But once in a while, the right person shows up just when you need them most - and you learn that you're stronger and braver than you ever imagined.

The Audio Book I'll Be Listening to

(I'm half way through this one so I might add another one for my trip.  Not sure yet.)

 

When Ruby woke up on her tenth birthday, something about her had changed. Something alarming enough to make her parents lock her in the garage and call the police. Something that gets her sent to Thurmond, a brutal government “rehabilitation camp.” She might have survived the mysterious disease that’s killed most of America’s children, but she and the others have emerged with something far worse: frightening abilities they cannot control. Now sixteen, Ruby is one of the dangerous ones. When the truth comes out, Ruby barely escapes Thurmond with her life. Now she’s on the run, desperate to find the one safe haven left for kids like her—East River. She joins a group of kids who escaped their own camp. Liam, their brave leader, is falling hard for Ruby. But no matter how much she aches for him, Ruby can’t risk getting close. Not after what happened to her parents. When they arrive at East River, nothing is as it seems, least of all its mysterious leader. But there are other forces at work, people who will stop at nothing to use Ruby in their fight against the government. Ruby will be faced with a terrible choice, one that may mean giving up her only chance at a life worth living.

So there is my list for this week, I know it's sort of a repeat from last week, but I didn't get them all read.  What about you, what are you reading this week? 

 

Bloggiesta Time!!!

YAY! I love Bloggiesta and can't wait to participate again this time around.  Also I'm more excited than usual because I'll be hosting one of the mini challenges! Not sure when my post will go live, but I'll let you know as soon as I do.  There will also be a giveaway with the mini challenge.  Let's get to the main purpose of this post though and that is my main to do list for Bloggiesta. 

To Do List

• Write and schedule 6 reviews (They are all drafted)

• Update Goodreads reviews and to be read list
• Do 4 to 5 of the mini challenges 
• Comment on other Bloggiesta participants blogs 
• Participate in at least 1 twitter chat
• Schedule 3 weeks worth of posts 
• Update my spreadsheets (TBR, On my shelves, etc) 
• Update my year challenges   
• Add a Pinterest board for all the books I've read this year. 

Alright so that is my main to do list and once I have an item completed I will mark it off this main list.  I might add more to this list throughout the week as well.  If I can complete the other items first. 

Dear Opl Blog Tour and Author Guest Post

Today I'm super excited to have a great guest post to share with you written by author Shelley Sackier, but first lets talk a little bit about the book itself.

Title: Dear Opl

Author: Shelley Sackier

Release Date: August 4, 2015

Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky

After two years of hiding beneath a sugar-laden junk food diet meant to soothe the bitter loss of her dad, thirteen-year old Opl Oppenheimer is told she's gained so much weight she's pre-diabetic and now must start weighing far more than she ever bargained for. There are three things that keep Opl busy during her eighth grade days: fighting the new “mock meat and healthy colon” cafeteria cooks, attempting to crush a celebrity chef’s reputation because he slings mud on any food that tastes good, and finding a pair of jeans that still fit. What she doesn’t count on is needing time to win back her best friend, illegally employing a penniless ex-rodeo clown, and solving the problems of teenagers who write in for advice on her blog. Finding room to fit everything in is proving as impossible as following her mom’s ridiculous diets. Only now, Opl has no choice. It’s do or die. How Opl determines what it is she's truly hungering for and how to fill herself and her world is the heart of this timely, contemporary novel.

Amazon- http://ow.ly/OGAi4

Barnes&Noble- http://ow.ly/OGAxF

Books A Million- http://ow.ly/OGBa5

iBooks- http://ow.ly/OGCmE

!ndigo- http://ow.ly/OGCDX 

Indiebound- http://ow.ly/OGCUC

Shelley Sackier is an author and blogger who writes about the everyday ordinary grand slams and gruesome snafus in completing the Herculean task of raising two healthy human beings. Ultimately she hopes to impart the necessary knowledge of how to balance their checkbooks and pay their taxes. Here greatest hope is to discover that parallel universes are a reality, and that somewhere she is living a life where her children have agreed to occasionally make eye contact with her. They live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. You can read more of her work, illustrated by Robin Gott, at Peakperspective.com

 

Social Networking Links:

Website: http://peakperspective.com/tag/shelley-sackier/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@ShelleySackier/

Food plays an important role in Opl’s life. How would you describe Opl’s relationship with food, and how it changes as the book progresses?

Sadly, I think Opl’s love/hate relationship to her food is not unique to the greater landscape of today. Many of us use food as a coping mechanism, as Opl does. She employs it as a device to reward and punish herself and to mollify the discomfort of emotions that have appeared as a part of her grieving process. Because her methods of muddling through heartache are either ignored or misinterpreted, she quickly moves into a downward spiral, reinforcing bad habits, convinced they are serving her.

When people begin to point out that her choices are negatively impacting her life, she again does what many of us do: digs in and grows stubborn. Change is hard, especially when, in the past, change brought misery. If you believe that the road ahead of you is rife with more of the same unhappiness, you tend to search for comfort anywhere you can find it. And food is something that people turn to a lot in times like those. It’s like eating the comfort equivalent of a giant, body-sized pillow.

Once Opl isn’t handling her issues on her own, once she has some guidance, her behavior begins to change. It certainly isn’t all at once, and she stumbles into plenty of potholes along the way. The shift in Opl is a simple one that grows from small moments of awareness. She has tiny “aha” moments that come to us usually through experience. Oftentimes those greatest shifts in our perspective happen when we fall down and skin our knees. A look back at what tripped us up can be the trigger to an eye-opening moment.

In the end, Opl changes how she looks at food, and that changes how she looks, but much more importantly, it changes how she feels. It’s a lesson that she learns ‘one bite at a time.’

I want to thank author Shelley Sackier and Sourcebooks for letting me be part of this fantastic tour. 

 

Teaser Tuesday #70

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser. 

 

She could feel the tremors of fear as they ran down his spine. Then she saw the rope.

September To Be Read List

It's that time again, time to show you what I'll be reading for the month.  Sometimes I stick to this list and sometimes I deviate a little, but most of the time I do end up finishing all the books on the list for the month.  September is going to be a fun month for me as far as reading and blogging goes. I have a few books just in time for Halloween which is in about two months seeing as today is the first of September.  Then I have a few books  that I've been wanting to read and a few ARCs that I need to read for review.  So it's going to be a fun but weird reading month.

Let's do this! 

 Let's start with my three scary/freaky reads for September.  I'm reading each of these this month so I can review them in October. 

The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall by Katie Alender
Dead Upon a Time by Elizabeth Paulson
A Night Divided by Jennifer A. Nielsen



I'm also going to be reading the following: 

The Darkest Minds by Alexandra Braken (Audio Book)
How to be Brave by E. Katherine Kottaras (ARC Netgalley)
Vanishing Girls by Lauren Oliver (Physical Hardcover) 

So that is my list so far, might add a few if I read all of these, we shall see.  If by chance I don't finish all of these before the end of the month they will be moved over to October's TBR list.  

Hope you all have a great Tuesday and make sure you stick around today, I have a great teaser, from one of these books, that will be posted later on today.