Shaina Reads

I honestly thought I wasn't going to have two cents to throw in this pot, but what better way to close out the month than with a massive library haul?! All but one of my reads in January qualified for #ReadMyOwnDamnBooks, so I think some borrowed goodies are well-deserved. Library Books Read Nimona, by Noelle Stevenson — My heart grew three sizes that...

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After dipping in and out of it since October, I finally finished up Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Made up of letters to and from The Rumpus's former advice columnist Sugar (AKA Cheryl Strayed), this book lends itself well to taking your sweet time (heh), reading a column or two every day, and letting the insights percolate....

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Happy last week of January, everyone! Can you believe it? One of the snowiest storms to hit the East coast in recent memory came and went this weekend, and my neck of Connecticut ended up with about a foot of the stuff (AKA little more than a dusting compared to Kerry, Shannon and others' totals). Mid-blizzard on Saturday. You'd think this kind of weather would mean...

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A photo posted by Shaina (@shainareadsbooks) on Jan 10, 2016 at 6:43am PST Happy Thursday, everyone! It's time for Thrifty Thursdays, a weekly book meme dreamed up by Sal over at Motion Sick Lit (back in action!). Thrifty Thursdays is designed to get book bloggers hunting for new and/or interesting reads on the cheap. Scoping out your favorite independent bookseller is especially encouraged. Sal's rules for the...

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At some point last year, I stopped eating meat. Despite my love for cheeseburgers, cheap hot dogs, and saucy, bread-y sesame chicken, I'd come to realize that I didn't agree with the way we mass-produce it. Maybe I didn't agree with the idea of killing animals to eat them at all. I could not in good conscience go on eating it, so I...

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Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, everyone! Coming off the last of my graduate school applications, I am more grateful than ever for the long weekend. I didn't read anywhere near 24 hours this weekend, but 24in48 was still a rousing success. I finished the second half of The Longest Night, Andria Williams's heartbreaking debut, and then Nimona went and destroyed what was...

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"People talked. Do you know what that does? Do you know what that does to a marriage? People talking. Have you heard how people talk?" Nat and Paul Collier just moved to Idaho Falls for Paul's new job. It's 1959, and he's just completed nuclear reactor training; he's now responsible for operating the CR-1, a prototype that no one will admit is falling...

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Y'all, I think there's a readathon fairy that just knows. Dewey's came around the Saturday after I took the GRE, and now 24in48 is happening the weekend after I submitted my very last grad school application. I couldn't be a luckier, more relieved gal because—in case you missed that—I'M DONE. And that means it's time for some books! I'm not putting any pressure...

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All right, y'all. I'm gonna flex my reviewing muscles for the first time in, er, two and a half months to talk about the first book I finished in 2016. A TL;DR version of this review could be: I just really want to sit down with Sarai Walker and talk about feminist porn. To start things off easy, here's the blurb from Goodreads: "Plum Kettle does...

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I didn't want to let the first part of January go by without paying some homage to my favorite reads of last year. Just a single one of these picks was published in 2015; I found the majority of my joy in backlist books and, to no one's greater surprise than my own, backlist audio books. I can't believe I was staunchly refusing...

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Welcome to 2016, friends! It's time for some long-winded, new-year reflecting. 2015 was a wonderful blogging year for me. I dove headlong into reviewing, participating in challenges (and hosting some!), and getting to know the fabulous, bookish community that welcomed me with open arms and which I still feel so privileged to call my own. I ran out of steam toward the end...

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