August TBR

It's my birthday month!

and I also start summer school this month...😓 So I probably won't be able to read as much as I did in July. But I'm hoping to read around 4-5 new books this month? Since I think 6 is my average per month during the school months, and I'm planning on doing some re-reads.

But since it's my birthday month, I'm going to try extra hard to read books that I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy/rate highly, and I also wanted to treat myself to some re-reads of my favorites. 

I've also heard that there's a readathon called the nostalgiathon being hosted this month, and I had some ideas of what I wanted to do for that. It doesn't follow the prompts at all but...nostalgia.

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Boyfriend Material by Alexis Hall

This honestly just gives me Red, White & Royal Blue vibes, and we all know how much I loved that book. It's probably the England theme. And the fact that it's a romance/rom-com. And the illustrated cover (I've been really loving illustrated covers lately). Hoping this brings me lots and lots of joy this month!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

I don't know how to describe this vibe, but this is the kind of vibe I'm looking for in my stories lately (so if anyone knows any books that matches this vibe please let me know). I guess if I had to describe it, I would use the words melancholic and contemplative? I also don't know much about this book but the synopsis seems interesting and I really like the cover design. Also it's really short and I haven't had the energy for really long books lately :")

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

I'm planning on buddy reading this with a friend of mine and I'm really excited! I don't know much about this book except spies? Or something like that. They're on opposite sides of some war and apparently this book is wlw and there's lots of yearning, and we all know: 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Another buddy read with friends! I also know nothing about this except it's literary fiction and it was made into a movie. One of my friends from twitter whose writing I admire a lot (their writing is absolutely beautiful I am in awe) said that Ishiguro is one of her favorite authors. I also enjoyed reading Never Let Me Go, so I'm excited to read another Ishiguro book.

Re-reads

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston

Honestly, this just really grew on me. It's one of the books that comes back to me the most often whenever I'm thinking of extremely enjoyable reads. I recently re-read some parts of it since i was making a review for this book, and I didn't know I could miss a book so much. So yes Red, White & Royal Blue is one of my favorite books of all time and I can't wait to read it again!

Wolfsong by TJ Klune

Maybe it's a little early for a re-read, but since Brothersong is coming out in October, I wanted to start slowly re-reading the series. I'll probably pick this up late August? So that I can leisurely re-read this book, then Ravensong, then Heartsong, and hopefully I'll finish them right on time for the release of Brothersong! I am so excited to re-read this series since it's obviously one of my favorite series of all time!

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nostalgiathon: fanfiction edition

Tiffany, one of the creators of the readathon, made a bonus prompt: read a fanfiction or wattpad book to bring back all the feels :")

Basically I'm only going to be reading fanfiction for the entire thing because I'm still mourning over Haikyuu!! and I feel that—besides The Ranger's Apprentice Series—these old fanfics evoke the strongest feelings of nostalgia in me. I grew up reading fanfiction from when wattpad was big, to when fanfiction.net was the biggest fanfic platform (I still get notifications for old knb & hxh fics I subscribed to way back in the day?), and still now on AO3. 

I actually used to have 2 whole Haikyuu!! fanfic recommendation posts (it was supposed to be a 5 part series) since I had so many great fanfics to share. To be honest, I'm mostly looking forward to these re-reads over anything since I'm in the mood for Haikyuu!! and judging my high school self's taste in stories.

But anyways, here are my picks for fanfics that will bring back all the feels:

Come Morning Light by SharkbaitSekki

This apocalypse/war au is one of my all-time favorites. I haven't been following it since the very beginning but I think I've followed it since 2015 (?) all the way until its end in 2017. I want to say I have very fond feelings towards it, and I do, but also it's one of the darkest, bleakest fanfics I've ever read, and it was probably the story that sparked my love for those kinds of stories. I really loved the found family element in the story. Also, the author is an RN so all the medical procedures are pretty detailed which was really interesting to read. I've actually already started this story in July but its a whopping 354k words, which is probably equivalent to a 1000 page book, so I'm nowhere near done with it and will probably finish in August.

Against All Odds by SharkbaitSekki

Uh, take a wild guess at who my favorite fanfic author might be...

This fanfic is also one of my absolute favorites because I just really, really love the father-son relationships in this story. The captains (Daichi, Oikawa, Kuroo, and Bokuto) meet at a single fathers support group and they become good friends and help each other with their parenting struggles. The kids are so cute (Yuu, Shouyo, Kei, and Keiji) I love them so much. And I remember a lot of the parenting struggles being absolutely heartbreaking. The author said this would be a light-hearted story and I felt so betrayed, but in a good way (if that makes sense). There's also a smidge of romance in this fic, and the romance was adorable, but I honestly cared a lot more about the friendships and the familial relations over the romantic ones. I've already re-read this one several times, but this story is one that I can re-read a million times over and still love.

Boiled Frogs by reginagalaxia

I really love Matsukawa and Hanamaki, and I really love this fic. Wow all of these fics are not heartwarming or uplifting. And the romance...we're breaking the fanfiction stereotypes here because I think one of them (Matsukawa?) is in an abusive relationship with another guy for the majority of the fic, and the other is yearning the entire time. The cutest romance you get in here is Oikawa and Iwaizumi: pretty much married. But other than that it's all about the angst and pining.

This re-read was inspired by MatsuHana's glow ups :")

Dead End by JD_Centric

I actually don't remember too much about this one but I do remember that I liked it and it was yakulev...and that's it. And there's a sequel that's unfortunately unfinished. But I do remember really liking this one so I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane even if those memories are extremely foggy...

Based on the summary it's a detective fic and those are always fun. I think I remember the crime scenes being pretty gruesome so that's fun too.

Also inspired by Yaku's extreme glow up—I've always thought he was really cute, but post-time skip? 👀

But For Me, There Is A Storm by Authoress

This one's extremely tentative because it's long and I remember being really sad over a Major Character Death in this one. It's a Pacific Rim AU, which is always really fun because I personally really love Pacific Rim. I've watched that movie so many times :") I read this fic way back before it was even finished I think, so I don't remember the plot at all. 

I'm actually reading the Authors Note for the first chapter and it forewarns Major Character Deaths and I don't remember there being more than one so now I'm even more intrigued to re-read. This one is 276k words, which is about as long as A Little Life, so that's another reason why I might not read it.

There was actually one other fic I really wanted to re-read since it was so subtly haunting and creepy, but I think the author deactivated and the fanfic is gone and I'm still really sad about that...

And there are also several other favorites that I was contemplating reading but for once in my life I'm not ready for another re-read of the saddest fics of my life (pings, the jacket you never returned).

Also I was really tempted to re-read "Because of Noya" which was one of my favorite wattpad stories back in the day (there's an archived post from my journalism days about it I think) but I don't know if I can bring myself to go back to OC fics...

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I'm really excited to read more this month. I'm obviously a lot more excited to read the fanfiction at the time that I'm writing this (I'm a huge mood reader), so I deliberately did not put too many books on this list (we saw what happened with the last TBR)

Hopefully this month I will read more! 

My thoughts lately have been only Haikyuu!!

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