She's Eleven: It's My Bloggoversary!

I can't believe that time of year has arrived again. Because if it's Late July, in my book, that means it's time for yet another bloggoversary. 

That's right: the blog I started when I was sixteen, is now eleven. I'm twenty-seven, turning twenty-eight in just a loose handful of months. 

I never thought my blog would be with me this long. I also never thought my bloggoversary would be something I celebrated regularly: when I was younger, I didn't really make a point of even recognizing when it hit, late in the summer, typically when I was mid-scramble to finish off my Summer Homework before September rolled around. 

Once I reached as unavoidable a milestone as my fifth anniversary, though, I wanted to make it a big deal. 

Since then, every year, I do a couple of things to celebrate the occasion... and that typically involves buying new books. It's one of the only times of year I let myself head into Barnes and Noble, and pick out just five (or so) titles that I want, regardless of whether they're new hardcovers, or on sale, or what have you. Honestly, that first year I decided on this course of action - my fifth - was solely a personally-crafted escape hatch out of the hole I'd dug myself into, during a "no buying books" year... I was mainly getting my new releases by way of the library, and my bloggoversary became some attainable moment I could look forward to, in order to get my hands on newly-published reads. Now, every year, it's become a hallmark of the celebration. 

To ring in this particular year, one after a year-and-a-half of Covid anxiety and staying at home, I grabbed my younger brother - back from college, and good-naturedly resigned to doing my bidding - in order to go spend some money on fun things, you know, like books. I decided to travel a bit of a different route this year, as well: after more than a year without visiting thrift stores, decided to really lean into the experience, and made both my favorite Value Village and Goodwill locations an integral part of my book-buying adventure, as well. 

In total, we went thrifting at TWO different secondhand stores, swung by Barnes and Noble for what ended up being FOUR books, and I made out, in total, with FIFTEEN new reads (and that's not even counting the two cookbooks I picked up, too).

(I also didn't go to either my real secondhand fave, local indie darling King's Books, or the secondhand store I've really been meaning to visit, Tacoma Book Center. So in reality, I think I showed quite a bit of restraint!)

While my massive amount of thrifted finds seriously merit their own individual post, I still wanted to share the four - instead of five - titles I did end up picking up for myself:

Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse

I've been watching Roanhorse's star rise in the Fantasy field for the past couple of years, and couldn't wait to add this gorgeous title to my shelves.

Malibu Rising, Taylor Jenkins Reid

Not only will it tick off one of my current Seattle Summer Book Bingo squares, but I feel like for the past couple of summers, I've enjoyed a TJR read per year. She's a reliable vacation-maker!

The Talented Mr. Ripley, Patricia Highsmith

This title has been recommended to me by a number of friends over the past couple of years, and seems to be a favorite of the Dark Academia crowd on Instagram.

Across the Green Grass Fields (Every Heart a Doorway #6), Seanan McGuire 

The most recent installment in the Every Heart a Doorway novella series, one that I pull off my shelf sparingly so that I get to enjoy them as long as possible before their next inevitable release. The nice thing is that my brother is just as excited to read this one as I am... the not-so-nice thing is that he's so tired of me dragging my feet - to read the book series I INTRODUCED HIM TO - that he's threatening to start grabbing them from the local library, instead. (His threats aren't going to stop me from hiding these away in my shelves, though.)

how else I celebrated 

I got in some valuable snuggle time with my precious kitty, and enjoyed a bit of bread-y goodness from 85 Degree Bakery, conveniently located only about a minute from Barnes and Noble.

After all this action, I had originally planned on spending the rest of the afternoon in a full-out horizontal position, reading books in the backyard with my brother, but in the end, my mind was totally scrambled by the time I got home. I think the mix of spending so much time outside my house - not exactly something I've done a lot of in the past year - plus thinking over all of the books I was now so excited to read, had put my brain into something of a whirlpool. I literally ended up just sitting at the kitchen table, telling everyone who passed by about each of the titles I picked up. 

So, that's this year's celebrating all wrapped up. Thank you so much for sticking around for so many years, whether you're one of the only people who's been here from the beginning - hi, Dad! - or you just joined up after following my romance reviews. Whatever the case, I couldn't be happier to be sharing this corner of the Internet with you. 

To get a little better perspective on the start of my blogging journey, and read some of my past years' bloggoversary posts, check out what I wrote last year for the 10th Bloggoversary!

Here's to a great year past, and another into the future! I appreciate your participation in my random, sputtering reviews on the Internet. Hopefully I'll see y'all again next year!