Book Blogger Problems #1: The Never Ending TBR

I decided, quite a while back now, that I wanted to do a post on the problems with blogging and being a book blogger. As my fellow book bloggers will know, there are quite lot of them. Once I started to draft the post, I saw just how ridiculous it was to try to fit them all into just one. So I've decided to let each of the problems have it's own post. And so, today we are looking at the never ending TBR.

This is essentially what happened to my TBR:

Back in February, I counted up all of the physical books that I owned but had not read yet. I didn't include Kindle books, books from publishers or eARCs. I just counted books I had on my bookshelves. That was a grand total of 299 physical books that I own but have not read yet. 

Here's what that looks like:

How many of those have I read in the 5 months since I did that post: 5

That's right, I have only read 5 out of the 299 books. I have read way more than 5 books since then, I just haven't got to any of these. That's because there are just so many more books that you see that you want, books come out or you go crazy on Netgalley or Edelweiss and request for too many. It's terrible!

The important question though is how many books have I bought since I did the last count, and then proceeded not to read. After that first count up, I had told myself I would get my book buying under control because it was a little ridiculous now. Well... I lied. So here's the answer:

Mini-Reviews: Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes and Rites of Passage by Joy N. Hensley

Title: Anatomy of a Misfit
Author: Andrea Portes
Publisher: Harper Children's
Buy This Book: Amazon / Book Depository

This emotional, hilarious, devastating, and ultimately triumphant YA debut, based on actual events, recounts one girl’s rejection of her high school’s hierarchy—and her discovery of her true self in the face of tragedy.
Fall’s buzzed-about, in-house favorite.
Outside, Anika Dragomir is all lip gloss and blond hair—the third most popular girl in school. Inside, she’s a freak: a mix of dark thoughts, diabolical plots, and, if local chatter is to be believed, vampire DNA (after all, her father is Romanian). But she keeps it under wraps to maintain her social position. One step out of line and Becky Vilhauer, first most popular girl in school, will make her life hell. So when former loner Logan McDonough shows up one September hotter, smarter, and more mysterious than ever, Anika knows she can’t get involved. It would be insane to throw away her social safety for a nerd. So what if that nerd is now a black-leather-jacket-wearing dreamboat, and his loner status is clearly the result of his troubled home life? Who cares if the right girl could help him with all that, maybe even save him from it? Who needs him when Jared Kline, the bad boy every girl dreams of, is asking her on dates? Who?
Anatomy of a Misfit is Mean Girls meets The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Anika’s hilariously deadpan delivery will appeal to readers for its honesty and depth. The so-sad-it’s-funny high school setting will pull readers in, but when the story’s dark foreboding gradually takes over, the devastating penultimate tragedy hits like a punch to the gut. Readers will ride the highs and lows alongside funny, flawed Anika — from laughter to tears, and everything in between. (Goodreads summary.)

I usually like to do a full review for every book that I read, but I honestly don't have that much to say about Anatomy of a Misfit. It was a book that frustrated me, then bored me and then made me wonder why I had bothered. But it didn't make me really feel anything, it barely got one page worth of notes out of me. I will do a short review for it, followed by one for Rites of Passage, a book that I eventually had to DNF.

I had a lot of issues with Anatomy of a Misfit and reasons why I just couldn't get into it, enjoy it or connect to the characters. My main reasons that I really didn't get along with this book were:

The unspecified year it's set it: The blurb makes no mention of the fact that this book is set in the past, and it's never actually mentioned in the book. I would have much rather have known that going in. It's not clear when exactly this book it's set, but I highly doubt it's set recently. From the racism, to the language used and cultural references, it's clear that it's set sometime in the past. I would rather have known when this was set, it was getting on my nerves that I couldn't figure out when it was supposed to be set.

My Weekly Book Haul: 06/07/2014

Friday Finds is something that was started over on ShouldBeReading and Stacking the Shelves over at TyngaReviews, I am in love with all of these as I love finding other blogs to follow and books to read through these! So check them all out and see what you find, Stacking the Shelves has a lot of participants as well which is great. This is basically a way for me to show what books I have received, borrowed or bought each week. All book covers and their summary come from back of book or Goodreads.

She crosses her legs when she sleeps!

This week has just been the worst. It's been so bad that I don't even have the energy to explain why it was so bad. The only thing that was good about this week was all the pretty books I got. Mainly, the new Bloomsbury editions of Harry Potter, which are beyond gorgeous. Oh, and not forgetting the adorable Lilo, who likes to keep me company as I blog.

Five Friday Favourites: Favourite Books I Was Recommended

Five Friday Favourites is a weekly event hosted by Book Badger, where once a week, a five favourites subject is posted and everyone is welcome to join in. You can find out more about Five Friday Favourites and the future subjects here.

Favourite Books I Was Recommended

I was surprised by how hard I found this topic. I'd never really had many books recommended to me, at least not before I started blogging. I don't know many other people who a big readers like me, so I am usually always the one recommending books. I buy them as gifts for people, do displays for them at my work and generally go on and on about my favourite books to people. But now, thanks to the blog, I get to class all of your wonderful reviews and comments about books as recommendations. Thanks to you guys, I've discovered a lot of amazing books since I started blogging. 

Films for Thoughts on Thursday: If I Stay

This is a weekly meme that I am hosting here at Reviews from a Bookworm. To take part all you have to do is share a movie review once a week, link back to Reviews from a Bookworm and add your link to the linky tool.


This weeks movie review will be for:


If I Stay

I really loved the book, so I was apprehensive about seeing the film. It's almost always guaranteed that what you about to watch is not going to do justice to the book you love. Sadly, that's very true for If I Stay. It's not a horrifically awful movie, but it's not an exceptionally good one either. It suffers from far too many cheesy moments, making it more about the romance than anything else and not capturing all the feelings you get from the book.

The movie follows the book quite well, it has small changes but not too many. It leaves a lot out though, which did upset me. It still all revolves around Mia and her out of body experience after being in a car accident. She watches as her body is taken to the hospital, as her family gather around to see if she'll wake up. But that decision is up to Mia, and it's a hard one to make. The accident steals a lot from her, so deciding to stay is a lot harder than you would think. Mia doesn't know if she's strong enough to do it.