Books and Backpacks

In January, I read 6 books. I'm pretty pleased with the quantity of books I read, but I feel like the overall quality I read this month was a bit lacking. I only remember really enjoying one book, and a couple felt like a real dredge to get through. I think my average rating for this month is probably a 3/5 stars. ⭐⭐⭐ 1. Dear Aaron- Mariana Zapata: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ This was my favourite book of this month. The romance was really cute and I enjoyed the characters. However, I thought that the best part of the book was the email correspondences, everything else felt kind of awkward and out of place. After this book, though, I did feel the urge to track down and read another letters-to-a-military-man-who's-far-away-that-i-end-up-falling-in-love-with kind of book. I also kind of wish it was longer and I could've had the dramatic Dear John  moment where he finally comes home and she's with someone else but eventually they end up together. Oh, and some pining while hes at war.  2. Portrai...

  My university years have been the ones where I've read the least, which is the opposite of what I feel like it should be. For the past few years, I've been having trouble getting into the books I actually wanted to read after pushing myself through the mandatory school books I was assigned-- I forgot that I chose a major in English because it's something I actually enjoyed . 2021 was the most successful reading year of my life. I got back into reading for fun, and read nearly 200 books outside of school because of it.  My biggest goal in 2022 is to continue that trend, and in aid of that aspiration, I wanted to put together a list of books I do and definitely do not want to read this year to keep track of when I start feeling a bit sick of it. So, without further ado, is my 2022 Reading Resolutions list.  New author(s) you'd like to read? Joe Hill, Karin Slaughter, and K. Webster. Previous author I'd like to read more from: Emily McIntire. I loved her novel , Hoo...

 All in all, our vacation was a wonderful experience and I loved having so much time with my boyfriend since we'd been so busy with both of us being in school for the past couple of days. All of our hikes and travelling to the ocean were probably my highlights. However, I don't think I'd go back. While the weather was preferable to the -30 degrees back home, it wasn't as warm as I would've liked. I spent a large part of the trip in big sweaters and cozy sweatpants as the temperature hovered around 15 degrees. I remember a few years ago, when we were in Kelowna, we had one plus 40 day. That was one of the best days of my little human-lizard-hybrid life.  I also felt that there wasn't much to actually do in Palm Springs. So many of our days were spent inside watching movies or reading, which aren't bad in and of themselves. However, when I go on vacation if I'm reading, I'd like to be doing it while suntanning on a beach, soaking in the sun we Canadian...

  After Boxing day, we began our second and last week in Palm Springs. Well, what we intended to be our last week. On Monday, we went on a hike to Ladder Canyon. At Ladder Canyon, there are two different hiking trails-- one longer loop, through the mountains, and one shorter loop inside of it. The easier of the two was, surprisingly, the longer one. The longer one's trail is a sandy trail, with a steady incline, that takes about 3 hours to finish, pretty similar to the above image. The one on the inside is what puts the "ladder" in Ladder Canyon.  While we hiked the first, longer trail for about 1.5 hours before turning around, the second hike we only got about 30 minutes into before having to turn around. The second hike became almost impossible to continue by the 3rd ladder we came to. The first couple ladders were fairly easy to navigate, but the third ladder came about a foot short from the edge of the next rock up, and about halfway up it, you felt as though you were...

     In the first of our two weeks in Palm Springs, we spent more time outside than we had in the past two months back home. Day one of our trip was... Chaotic, to say the least. The night before we left we went to bed by 9 to wake up at 4:00am the next morning, and at the airport for 5:15 am. However, while we went to bed nice and early, there was very little sleep for us. We nearly immediately fell asleep, but, by midnight both of us had re-awoken. We tried to get back to sleep.... And tried... And tried. By 3:00 am, both of us had given up on our dreams of a good night's sleep and just started getting ready, and rapidly consuming caffeine. Eventually, we got to the airport, through security and customs, and were stopping for another coffee and breakfast at the airport's Starbucks.  Once we were on the plane, Carl immediately fell asleep. Awaking about 15 minutes later, asking "have we taken off yet?", completely missing the city lights twinkling far below us. Afte...

     For our 5th Christmas-versary, my boyfriend and I did something a bit different from previous Christmases-- we travelled across the continent, away from the harsh Canadian winters and towards the balmy Californian climate. Since we turned 18 (and were allowed by our parents to travel together), we've spent most of our Christmas vacations away from home. In 2019, we brought in the New Year in Phoenix, Arizona. Where we hiked the mountains in Sedona and rode camels at the Phoenix zoo... The next year, in 2020, we jetted around the West coast. Making stops in Rosalind, BC to hike some more... And another stop in Seattle to bring in the New Year shopping... Then came 2021, where everything was locked down, and COVID-19 had left us in a place where we weren't even allowed to have Christmas dinner together at each other's house. So we got stuck in the Canadian cold and barely had a Christmas at all. But that only left us more motivated this Christmas. My boyfriend was in s...

    As Goodreads  published its Year In Books, I've been thinking back to the 177 books I've read this year. Overall, my year was pretty successful, in terms of reading, at least. I had 14 favorites of the year, but many more 5 star reads. As an English major, I do read a lot for school, however, when I only include the books I read on my own on my Goodreads challenge. So I spent the first few months of 2021 reading only for school. As such, t he bulk of my reading occurred during the last 3/4ths of the year, which leads to the first question of this post.  What was the first book you read this year?  My first read of the year was Stephenie Meyer's Midnight Sun. With the Twilight Renaissance currently occurring online, this book felt as good as any to start my year off with. If you haven't heard of it, it's essentially a retelling of Meyer's 2005 novel, Twilight . While Meyer has done Twilight  retellings before (namely, the gender-bent novel, Life and Deat...