Tuesday, August 18, 2020

nostalgiathon, but it's all fanfiction




What else screams ✨nostalgia✨ better than the copious amount of fanfiction I read throughout my high school days :")

I rarely feel very nostalgic over things... like Harry Potter & Percy Jackson? Good memories but I have never felt much nostalgic fondness. Haikyuu!! fanfics that I read during the most boring summer breaks, however, make me feel all the feels. Also, it's just in time for HQ!! DAY (8/19) in August!

When the school system failed me and made me hate reading books, fanfiction was always there to keep me from giving up reading entirely. And after getting back into published books and reading fanfiction alongside published books, I'm still really amazed at how fanfic authors do this for free. They write this stuff and put it out for the public to enjoy for free. So, love and respect fanfic authors!! 

I chose a good mix of stories I remember quite fondly, and stories I don't remember much at all (except for the fact that I remember I loved them). I'm really excited to spend my August reading old fanfiction I adored back in grade school. I start school this month though, so sadly I wasn't able to get through as many as I wanted to. I mostly only had time for reading short fics & one-shots, especially since Come Morning Light was a good 3x longer than most books and long fics.

For the longer fics, I'm updating as I read, then editing after I finish. So if some of the sections sound vaguely like twitter reading threads, well now you know.

Also, for all of these, please heed warnings! They're all different AO3 ratings (most are T, some are M, there's the occasional E)

Out of 5💖's to measure how much I loved them post-reread.
💗 → 1/2 💖

Saturday, August 1, 2020

July Wrap-Up


How is 2020 going by so fast...

What's up with July and cults? I read a couple books with cults in them this month and no one warned me there would be cults in these books?

I completely failed my TBR. I posted it thinking I'd read at the same speed and consistency as the very beginning of the month, but July was not a fun time for me and I ended up having very little energy to read and I just watched anime and re-read old comfort reads the entire month.

And then there was the additional distraction of Haikyuu!! ending, and threw myself into fanfiction in the midst of mourning... Also, I was feeling nostalgic so I picked up "Come Morning Light" by SharkbaitSekki and that fanfic is 300k+ words, which is even longer than A Little Life's 800 pages, so yeah I've been busy. I've been reading through it really slowly though because I've been reading 3 books at the same time + this fanfic. Lots of words to read. 
Also I've fallen into this barren pit called oikage and I've been scrambling for crumbs...it's been a terrible time it's pretty much 99% angst here

This month, I've been using the app libby a lot for audiobooks! I wanted to try audiobooks for once since many people seem to enjoy reading with audiobooks, and they also allow me to do other things while reading. However, since it's my first experience with audiobooks (aside from Sadie but that was an extraordinary full-cast audiobook), I'm not sure how I feel about them...I think I'm just not used to them. But I highly recommend libby since it's an easy way to get audiobooks and ebooks from your library in these trying times.

I've also made an attempt to make my reviews shorter, so if anyone's wondering why they look half-sized it's because I realized I've been writing so much in these mini-reviews, I end up having nothing to say in my actual reviews :")

👪 buddy read
🎧 audiobook

Books Mentioned

  • The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
  • What Happened To Goodbye by Sarah Dessen
  • The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
  • Beartown by Fredrik Backman
  • The Wicked King by Holly Black
  • The Queen of Nothing by Holly Black
  • Haikyuu!! (Vol. 38-end) by Haruichi Furudate
  • Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  • We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
  • Beach Read by Emily Henry
**summaries taken from the book but might be slightly altered

⸺ ⁕