BOOK HAUL: JAN & FEB 2019

Hey, remember how when I was setting Resolutions for this year, I mentioned how badly I wanted to downsize my TBR? How I said that I was committed to adding only one book to my shelves, with every two that vacated it? How this was going to give me an opportunity to re-evaluate my shopping habits, and actually get around to reading the books on my shelves? Remember that?

Yeah, me neither. Especially when, you know, I got it into my head that I wanted to pull together a Book Outlet order. And, you know, that other time when I was at Goodwill, and got a little overwhelmed by the amount of buzzy almost-new books that were on their shelves. So, yeah.

(And we're not even going to talk about how when I took my brother to Barnes and Noble to pick up Leigh Bardugo's King of Scars on its release day, I almost walked out with three other full price books. Clearly I cannot trust my own grabby hands, which think on their own.)

In total, between these two shopping binges, I bought 9 books for myself in January and February (and yes, I'm deliberately choosing to overlook the books included in these purchases that were made for other people). This is a bit of a personal problem, because in just January, I only read 6 books, and only 4 of them were off of my TBR shelves. Now, I've added back more than double that total.

And yet, absolutely no part of this contradicts the amount of excitement I feel about each of these book purchases. You know, it's important to be self-aware, for growth's sake, but it's also important to feel joy, for living's sake.

So, which titles were so important that I broke one of my most important book goals for this year, in the first two months of the year?

BOOK OUTLET

Originally, I made this order in order to pick up a couple of birthday presents for my Dad. And I did: both the Sopranos Family Cookbook and Phil Doran's The Reluctant Tuscan were for him! Plus Anne Fadiman's The Wine Lover's Daughter, which was a present for my mom, too. The rest, though... those are my bad.

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry, Kathleen Flinn
One of the first books off of my TBR shelves in January, was Flinn's Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, in which the author uses family recipes to tell her history, from her grandparents through to her own childhood. In this bestselling memoir, she discusses how getting fired from her Microsoft job, lead her to learn from Le Cordon Bleu.

Trials of the Earth: The True Story of a Pioneer Woman, Mary Mann Hamilton
Recording her life experiences in the backwoods of the Mississippi Delta, Hamilton gives a first-person account of the tragedies and triumphs that come from the backbreaking labor of making your own land in the early American South. I'm already looking forward to picking this up this summer (aka, the best season to read American Fiction and History).

Vanity Fair's Writers on Writers, edited by Graydon Carter
What can I say, I'm an absolute sucker for this kind of stuff. From Didion to Parker, to e. e. cummings and Capote, I absolutely live for people hyping up other people in their industry.

Strange the Dreamer, Laini Taylor
This has been hyped so often by various friends of mine, that I couldn't resist the temptation to finally pick up this Fantasy story of a junior librarian, driven to discover a lost city, cut off from the world by the gods. Unfortunately for me, Book Outlet doesn't always note what edition of a particular book you'll be sent... and being that this one, for me, is a Large Print edition, I don't think I'll be hanging onto it for very long after reading!

(Oh yeah, and I also bought a cookbook. But I'm not counting that one... it goes on my other shelves!)

GOODWILL

Ignore the price tags on here: being that I went during a special sale day, each of these bad boys were only $2, despite each of their almost-new condition. And, plus the six items of clothing I picked up, too, my total purchase price ended up being only around $40! Score!

Less, Andrew Sean Greer
This Pulitzer winner follows a failed writer about to turn 50, as he adventures through various places abroad, and finds love along the way. Despite its significant award status, I've heard mostly mixed reviews about this one, which is probably why I'm so excited to pick it up! I love when people can't make up their minds about a book... it gives me a little more freedom to decide what I think, without all the hype!

Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng
Full disclosure: as a general rule, I avoid contemporary stories about dead girls. But this one has not only been loved by close friends of mine, but also just by Bookstagram at large, and I feel like if I'm going to dip my toes into any modern-day lit anytime soon, this would be a pretty safe choice.

Beartown, Frederik Backman
Okay, here's the thing. Originally, this book was sold to me as "Friday Night Lights, but for Hockey," and there's really nothing about that sentence that drives me to want to pick up this book... especially when I read the summary, to see that the catalytic moment of all the action, is the rape of a 15 year old girl by one of the team's players. But what can I say? Out of over 121,000 ratings on Goodreads, it has 4.29 stars. To be clear, that's absolutely insane.

When Life Gives You Lululemons, Lauren Weisberger
I swear I didn't know this was a Devil Wears Prada follow up when I picked it up in the store. I didn't even glance at what the inside flap said. I just liked the cover, and the clever title, and I figured it would make for a fun read during Spring Break. And like I said before, it was $2. Sometimes it's fun to pick things up for no reason at all! (But dammit, that's why I'm in this mess in the first place, isn't it?)

Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
Highlighting Thomas Cromwell's impact at the moment in British history where Henry VIII is choosing to leave Catherine of Aragon for Anne Boleyn, this historical fiction is probably one of the most consistently recommended reads for fans of the genre I've seen in the past decade. And being that I haven't been able to get the Six: The Musical soundtrack out of my head for the past few months, I'm very receptive to Tudors at the moment.



Well, that's that then... let's hope I can make it through March unscathed, right? Either that, or hope that I just start reading prodigious amounts of my TBR shelves on my own.

Believe it or not, in the middle of this month, I even made a trip to Portland, which included a stopover in Powell's Books... and I didn't pick up anything! This is what character growth feels like, I guess?

What books have you picked up recently? Have you broken any of your Resolutions yet? Let me know, in the comments below! 

TOP TEN TUESDAY: BOOKS I LOVED WITH FEWER THAN 2,000 GOODREADS REVIEWS

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! 

As a collective unit, book bloggers, bookstagrammers, and BookTubers can have a tendency to get hung up on a certain kind of reading material: the much-lauded, marketing-backed, and hype-train-riding recent releases.

But when you do that, you miss out on some of the good stuff... sometimes really good stuff! Be they backlog, indie-published, international, or just plain weird, chances are there are some really tremendous titles you just haven't heard before.

So, here are some of my favorite books, with 2,000-ish or less ratings on Goodreads! 

1. Burnt Toast Makes You Sing Good, Kathleen Flinn (1,601 ratings, 3.86 stars)
This food-oriented family memoir, tracking the lives of Flinn's extended relations through their own favorite recipes, has been one of my favorite reads of 2019 so far. Her way of describing not only food, but the ways it affects relationships and reflects tradition, really reminded me of those of my own family.

2. Kitchen Literacy: How We Lost the Knowledge of Where Food Comes From, and Why We Need to Get It Back, Ann Vileisis (350 ratings, 3.68 stars) 
I love reading about food, but mostly in memoir form, and not necessarily nonfiction, so the way this book was immediately able to grab me late last year was a total surprise. It has made me way more cognizant of the effects of my grocery-purchasing habits, as well as the processing my food goes through before it manages to reach my cart.

3. She Caused a Riot: 100 Unknown Women Who Built Cities, Sparked Revolutions, and Massively Crushed It, Hannah Jewell (479 ratings, 3.85 stars)
It's not easy to think of another book that so seamlessly matches well-researched feminist history with a great sense of humor, but if anyone's going to do it, it's Hannah Jewell. I'm usually skeptical of books that boast being filled with the names of impressive names "you've never heard of" - and true to form, I knew quite a few of them - but the ones that were included spanned such a wide reach, diverse and globally-reflective, that I even flagged a couple to read into more later.

4. All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Famous Friends Who Happen to Be Strangers, Alana Massey (1,602 ratings, 3.64 stars) 
Hands down, one of my favorite essay collections from the past couple of years, right up there with Leslie Jamison's Empathy Exams. This one, though, captures a topic close to my heart: celebrity worship and modern pop culture. I liked it so much, I even bought a copy for my younger sister!

5. How Zoe Made Her Dreams (Mostly) Come True, Sarah Strohmeyer
(2,197 ratings, 3.7 stars)
One of the only two fictional works on this list, and definitely the most surprising, being that it's a YA Contemporary pick (No, seriously). If I'm going to be spending my time on a high school romance, it better have all the glitter of a mid-2000s teen flick, and Strohmeyer totally delivers. Let me sell this to you, in three phrases: Disneyland-meets-Devil Wears Prada. It's crazy, and crazy wonderful.

6. Beyond: the Queer Sci-Fi and Fantasy Comic Anthology, Sfe R. Monster (482 ratings, 4.09 stars) 
I still don't get the chance to read as many comic books as I'd like, but I really enjoyed picking up this one a few years ago... especially when it comes from my younger sister's dresser! I'm always stoked to see diversity in fiction, but especially when it's presented in a visual format, like in this collection from a variety of queer artists.

7. Shake the World: It's Not About Finding A Job, It's Creating a Life, James Marshall Reilly (112 ratings, 3.88 stars)
Okay, I've read my fair share of job-finding books in the world, and there have been some really good ones... but this was the first after college that really sent the message home that building a career as well as a philanthropic habit are both fundamental parts of constructing an adult life as a whole. I'm still majorly working on both of those things, but at least this book gave me a good sense of direction about it!

8. Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books, Cara Nicoletti (1,833 ratings, 3.68 stars) 
Out of all of the books on this list, this one probably requires the least explanation, because its title should serve as more than enough. Books are my favorite thing... and so is Food. Both books and food in one read? Truly a match made in heaven. (And her Instagram makes for a fun follow, too!)

... and the ones that are slightly above 2,000... but deserve so much more love!!

9. Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her, Melanie Rehak (2,188 ratings, 3.76 stars)
As a Nancy Drew collector and super-fan - yes, I'm serious - this is consistently one of my favorite nonfiction picks to reread. Focusing in on the lives of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson, this tracks the legacy of not only their work to cement the intrepid teenage sleuth in the pantheons of youth fiction, but also how the various facets of the cultural mantle of ownership are entitled to both. SO good!

10. Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, Ron Suskind (2,263 ratings, 4.20 stars) 
Get ready to cry buckets. Out of all of the books on this list, and quite a few nonfiction titles, this will absolutely be the one to tug on your heartstrings, like Quasimodo ringing those darn bells. One of my favorite non-fic picks of all time, this tale of how Disney stories and a loving family gave a young autistic boy the language he needed in order to communicate, was turned into an Oscar-nominated documentary a few years back. I haven't watched it yet, of course... mainly because I haven't found the kind of Kleenex box built big enough for it yet!

What's in your Top Ten? Let me know, in the comments below! 

SNOW DAY READS

If you follow my bookstagram account, you know that Washington has been experiencing a spate of bad weather recently. As in, historically bad. Record-breakingly bad. Two Sundays ago, I walked out into my backyard, and my rain boot sunk down almost to the top.

Needless to say, this has made for a perfect environment for reading. Sure, there are plenty of bookish ways to spend your snow day - you can pick up an award-winning Nancy Drew video game, or finally get around to making it through the final season of Netflix's Series of Unfortunate Events - but why not just use it as an excuse to really rack up some numbers on this year's Goodreads goal?

Here are five different categories worth keeping warm with, on the days when you just can't brave the bleak winter weather:

the childhood favorites

There's just something about a snow day that hearkens back to days off from school, hosting a snowball fight in your backyard, hanging out in the park with your neighborhood friends, and downing as much hot chocolate as you could hold in your stomach. Why not harness that kind of nostalgia, and celebrate the snow outside with a childhood favorite?

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales (especially "The Snow Queen"!)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C. S. Lewis

the wintry fantasy

There's no shortage of snowy landscapes within the genre of Fantasy. Something about winter itself gives plenty of authors icy inspiration... maybe it's the way snow can transform the world overnight into something completely new, or maybe it's the sense of suspense you feel, waiting for the frost to thaw. Either way, keep warm indoors with these similarly-set adventures.

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik
East, Edith Pattou
Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

the icy thrillers

But it isn't just Fantasy that gets their settings from a winter scene, is it? There are plenty of Thrillers and Horrors that find themselves stuck in the snow... whether it's hiding out in a cabin, getting  trapped in unfamiliar surroundings, or more. The best way to pass a snow day, might just be to make a mystery out of it!

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie
Icy Clutches (Gideon Oliver #6), Aaron Elkins
The Shining, Stephen King

the staycation destination

After a few days of snow keeping you homebound, you might start to dream of a different, sunnier way of living (We know we did!). So, why feel confined to that kind of weather at all? Close up the blinds, crank the thermostat,  and drift away to a world where leaving the house doesn't require three layers of pants.

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Vacationers, Emma Straub
Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty

the dense doorstop

Well, if you had told me last Monday that in the subsequent week and a half, I'd be able to drive my car a total of about three times, I probably would have decided to pick up a little heavier reading material. After all, what better time to invest in a heavy, fully-loaded novel, than when you're encouraged not to leave the warmth of the fireplace?

Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt

What's the weather like where you are? What have you been keeping cozy with this winter? Let me know, in the comments below!

BLOGGING UPDATES, AND A NEW SENSE OF STYLE

As we ventured into the new year, and I was writing out my Resolutions for 2019, the thought crossed my mind: "How am I going to change up the blog this year?" 

Longtime readers - hi, Dad - know that the layout and format of my corner of the Internet has remained widely static over of the course of my eight-and-a-half years of blogging. It feels like so many of the components that make up its foundation have grown over time, and yet, there's so much of it that has continued on throughout its near-decade without meaningful development: for instance, one of my favorite parts about looking back on posts is observing how my writing style and critical voice have expanded, my graphic design skills have altered alongside talent and trends in design, and my book choices have even grown up as I have... but in its total history, the actual layout and look of my blog have only changed twice. 

At first, Playing in the Pages was a pre-set design offered by Blogger, light pink, and one of four of its kind to choose between. As I got older, got a laptop, get more interested in how I can customize this platform to my own tastes, things got a little cooler around here: creating a logo on my phone, from a picture taken of my own bookshelves, I wiped the slate clean with an all-white background, smaller type in a font I thought was a little more hip than your average Times New Roman, and started mocking up interesting headers in Canva, rather than relying on photos in the posts themselves.

But that was back in college, and I've been doing a lot more different work since then. I've gone from a design Newbie to adequate Novice, and I have maintained my blog-adjacent Instagram profile (@playinginthepages) with its own kind of theming. I pay a lot of attention to how others promote and style their own platforms, and over the past year or so, I felt a growing sense that mine wasn't as cohesive as I would have liked it to be.

Sure, there were elements that I had a tendency to rely on in my own work - I had preset headers for things like "Bits of Books" and "Top Ten Tuesday" posts, and an affinity for a particular lighter shade of red - but nothing felt all that cohesive, and it was beginning to affect my excitement for generating content for both of my platforms. I wanted a sense of "Savannah" that felt consistent whenever I talked about books, and it frustrated me that I couldn't narrow things down.

Obviously, the right thing to do was switch it up.

"Style Inspo" (aka, some of my fave #bookstagrammers), clockwise from top-right: @ejmellow,
@thebiblionet, @literatureandchill, @thebiblionet, @literatureandchill.

I've created a new Style Guide, and the blog's layout has gone through a bit of a makeover, much as it will continue to do as I try to decide on what look translates myself and my thoughts best across the Internet. I've got a comprehensive color scheme, a new profile photo, a large-and-in-charge logo, and font choices that speak in my voice. I've got series headers set in place, and a clearer vision of what kinds of photos I want to be taking.

With any luck or decision-making on my part, this will all not only beautify my blog, but also make it easier for me to make graphic design-oriented decisions, instead of taking forever to put together a good-looking header, or agonize over what colors to use in a post.

Not exactly starting the new year with a new look, but having found one just the same, I'm happy with the current version of the "new and improved" Playing in the Pages. I'm excited to put it to good use in the coming couple of years, too!

So, what do you think of the new design? My favorite part's the new font choice. Let me know, in the comments below!