May TBR!

Hi everyone!

I have an exciting TBR for May; and I am going to share it now with you! As I mentioned a couple of posts back, I am trying to read 50 books for 2016. My number of read books so far is 15, which means I have 35 left to reach my goal. I have set myself a minimum of five books for May. They are:

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy- I have been reading this slowly since I received it at Christmastime; and I would like to finish it or at least smash out a big chunk of it this month.
   
2. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg 
   
   
3. Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout
   
   
   
   
4. The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
   
   

What are you guys reading this month? Do you like to plan your monthly reading or choose books as you go? Let me know in the comments. :-)

Happy reading!

Rhi xo

April Wrap-Up!

These are the books I read in April 2016! I had a couple of re-reads this month, as well as quite a few books I have been meaning to read for ages but never quite got 'round to. In total I read 9 books.

• White Rabbit Chronicles Book 1 by Gena Showalter (a re-read)
• White Rabbit Chronicles Book 2 by Gena Showalter (a re-read)
• The Snow Pony by Alison Lester (a re-read from my childhood)
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• My Fight Your Fight by Ronda Rousey
• To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han
• Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

I must have re-read the WRC at least ten times by now, they are such good books and I am a major Cole Holland fangirl! I gave both these books 5 out of 5 stars.

The Snow Pony is a book I read in primary school and somehow 90 per cent of my books disappeared during one of the many moves that my family made, so I went on a mission to find this book again. I saw it on the Book Depository with an updated cover that I wasn't very fond of, but then one day I was browsing through Readings (an amazing bookshop in Melbourne that everyone should check out) and by chance (or fate) I stumbled across The Snow Pony, with its original cover, for sixteen dollars and I couldn't leave the shop without it. I love this book so much; and what's even better is that it's set in Victoria, my home state. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.

Now, I know I'm very late to the Hunger Games party, but I have now finally read them and I have to say, I love them. Everybody knows what these books are about by now, so I won't go too much into the synopsis, but I will say that I heart Peeta + Katniss. Those bloody cuties, I never stopped rooting for them. I gave all three books 4.5 out of 5 stars.

My Fight Your Fight actually belongs to my papa, he loaned it to me so that I could read it and I hated it. I powered through it just so I could say I had read it and then give it back. Ronda Rousey is the single most arrogant person I could have thought to read a book from; and I cannot stand arrogance. I gave this book 1 out of 5 stars. Sorry Papa!

Next up is To All the Boys I've Loved Before, by Jenny Han. I really thought I was going to love this book, it had great reviews all over the internet, it sounded like such a cute story and I was all prepared to love it. I didn't hate it, per se, I just found it quite juvenile. It's supposed to be narrated by a sixteen/seventeen year old girl, but it sounds like a thirteen year old girl. Maybe that was the point, I don't know, but I felt like the protagonist's voice lacked any sort of emotional maturity, especially for a girl who lost her mother and needed to grow up quite quickly. There is a sequel to this book, which I am curious about, and I will probably pick that one up to see if it sounds more mature. All in all, this was a light read; and I gave it 3 out of 5 stars.

The final book I read for the month of April is Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher. I did enjoy this book, though I found Hannah a tiny bit smug for a girl who is about to kill herself. This was an incredibly difficult topic to tackle in a YA book and I give Asher a ton of credit for that. I really felt for Clay, I think he was a great protagonist for the story and I closed this book after reading it in one sitting, full of emotions and not quite knowing what to do with them. I gave this book 4 out of 5 stars.

So that's all of the books I read in the month of April, I have also been working my way through War & Peace, which is a gigantic book, but I haven't finished it yet so I haven't included it in  my Wrap-Up. What have you guys been reading? Have you read any of these books?

Happy Reading!

Rhi xo

You can find all the books mentioned above here:

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Book Review- All the Bright Places

Hi everyone!

Today I am going to be posting my review of All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven. In my opinion, this is a five-star book and I recommend it to absolutely everybody. This book made me bawl like a baby and even though I read it in late 2015, I still haven't fully recovered.

The subtitle of this book is, "The story of a girl who learns to live from a boy who wants to die," which foreshadows just how devastatingly beautiful this book is.Violet is popular and pretty but feeling vastly empty, [Theodore] Finch is her social opposite- Rather than feeling empty he is filled with an overwhelming suicidal fantasy and planning his perfect escape from the world- Until he falls in love with Violet and suddenly his two conflicting obsessions create a deeper inner turmoil which seemingly consumes him.

This story does not have a happy ending at all, which is refreshingly un-YA and while the conclusion left me a sobbing mess, it is haunting, poetic, beautiful, devastating and, for me, unsettlingly relatable. I suppose I identify with Finch in ways I would prefer not to admit, but All the Bright Places forces me to confront my own dark places, the little voice in my mind that pushes me towards the bell-tower ledge; and ultimately makes me wonder where the point of no return might lie.

Reading Goals for 2016

I know it's the end of April, but I have decided to set myself some reading goals for 2016. I would like to read at least fifty books this year. I have already marked down the number of books I've read so far, and I have adjusted my monthly goals accordingly. I have decided to include re-reads, because they are still books that I have read. As of April 25th, 2016, I have read thirteen books. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but I had a lot going on at the beginning of the year, with moving house, some personal things that happened; and general 'life' stuff which got in the way of my reading. In saying that, I have read four books in the past week and a half or so. So I have made a good amount of progress and I am on track for the remainder of 2016.

I will be tracking my progress throughout the next eight months, keeping this blog updated as I go along reading and I am very confident that I will be able to meet my goal. As I have read thirteen books so far, I have thirty-seven books to go. That works out to 4.6 books per month for the rest of the year, to meet my goal. Obviously that is an odd number, so I figure I need to read four books per month for seven months; and one month where I read five books. Easy! I might readjust the numbers later on, depending on how much progress I make with my reading. I could end up reading sixty or seventy books if things go really well, but for now, I am targeting fifty.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50!

How about you guys? Have you set a reading goal for this year? How many books do you think you will read this year? Let's talk about it! ^__^

~ Rhi

50 Facts About Me!

This is a fun tag from YouTube; and I wanted to do it for this blog by way of introduction so you guys can get to know me a little bit. If you have a blog, I tag you to do this too!

1. I was named after the Fleetwood Mac song "Rhiannon," and
2. I love Stevie Nicks!
3. My favourite perfume is Vera Wang "Princess"
4. My favourite colour is blue
5. I love ballet- dancing, watching it, reading about it, daydreaming about it, ballet clothes, pointe shoes, practicing, everything!
6. I feel most at home when I am near the ocean
7. Autumn is my favourite season
8. I'm obsessed with Alice in Wonderland
9. Wolves are my favourite animal
10. My blog name is a play on "Dancing With Wolves" (the movie)
11. I have blue eyes, but in certain lights they look grey
12. I have twelve tattoos (see what I did there?)
13. Melbourne (Australia) is my hometown
14. My football team is Richmond Tigers
15. I drink black coffee every day
16. I have Coeliac Disease
17. I eat a low-FODMAP diet
18. I love punk rock and pop-punk music
19. I know every single word to "Uppercut" by Tupac
20. I basically live in pyjamas and sweatpants
21. I have a double B.A. in Psychology and Creative Writing
22. I aspire to be a published author
23. I love Nike Air Max 90 sneakers
24. I prefer French skincare products
25. I was reading novels by myself at age five
26. I skipped Grade Ten and graduated high school at age sixteen
27. I collect fun coffee mugs
28. I still sleep with stuffed animals
29. I love snow
30. My favourite city in the world is Helsinki
31. I love online shopping
32. Robinson's Bookshop and Readings are my favourite bookshops
33. I consider false eyelashes a daily necessity
34. I like really big clunky watches (preferably with lots of bling!)
35. I spend far too much money on books
36. I'm just under 5'7"
37. I really want to go to California and have dreamed of it since I was ten
38. I travelled around Russia and Scandinavia when I was eighteen
39. I have been to the Grand Canyon
40. Winnie the Pooh is my favourite cartoon character
41. I hate wearing jeans
42. My journal collection is huge
43. The 1940s are my favourite fashion era
44. My go-to makeup look is a navy blue smoky eye and a strong cheekbone contour
45. When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor/writer/ballerina when I grew up
46. My favourite brand of pointe shoes is Bloch
47. Liam Hemsworth is my celebrity crush
48. My best friend would describe me as "tough"
49. Jack Kerouac and Stephen King are my favourite authors of all time
50. Harry Potter is still (and always) my favourite book series

Books "Everyone is Reading"

I have to say, I notice a lot of trends in the online book community; and one of those is that I see a lot of the exact same books hauled by almost everyone in the community. I also hear a lot of, "Everyone has read this book." And I have NOT bought or read 90 per cent of those books. I can't help but wonder, how much of this trend is because "everyone has them"? Can we attribute this to a sort of silent peer pressure?

Personally, I have always deliberately avoided books that "everybody" is talking about. I almost missed out on Harry Potter and the Hunger Games because of this- which would have been really dumb, But I have never grown out of my rebellious, non-conformist stubbornness and I approach wildly popular, overhyped books/series in one of two ways: I either wait for the hype to die down and then read the book(s), or I simply refuse to acknowledge their existence.

It seems that every "BookTuber" I see has identical collections of books and discusses the same titles. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; and while I have no doubt that these books are great; I can't help wondering how many other really great books are being overlooked and languishing in obscurity simply because they didn't make the "Popular" list.

Another thing I hear a lot is the phrase, "Well, I bought this book, but everyone hates it so I'm not going to read it." What? Really? Who is this mysterious "everyone" that has so much influence on the bookish community? And do they deserve so much power?

Read whatever you like, whatever makes you happy; and please don't feel pressure to own, read, enjoy or dislike books because of other people.

Welcome, Readers :)

Hi there!

If you have stumbled down the rabbit-hole and found my blog, you probably have an interest in books and reading. Me too! ^__^

This is going to be a blog devoted primarily to the sharing of one of my favourite things in the world: Books. I love books; and I always have. I can't even tell you how much books are an integral part of my life. So here, in this blog, I will be collecting and assembling my thoughts about books and my reading experience, writing lots of reviews and generally discussing bookish matters.

I hope you will continue to join me on my bookish adventures and enjoy reading my thoughts!

Bye for now,

Rhi