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Book Review: Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas
Crown of Midnight was an exceptional follow-up to Throne of Glass. The pacing problems of the first book were pretty much non-existant, and the combination of a more mature narrative with far more effective character development makes for a riveting read from start to finish. Celeana as Unlikeable Still Isn’t Actually Unlikeable. As I mentioned in my Throne of Glass review, many of the criticisms often hurled at the character of Celeana are criticisms that I found to be valid points, but are ultimately traits that make her character feel more real. To be honest it’s kind of fun for me to read a character who, while a decent…
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12 Tips for Adjusting to College from a Student Turned Professor
This year marks my 7th year teaching college. It’s an absolutely CRAZY thing for me to think about, since it seriously just feels like yesterday that I was receiving my MA. But time marches ever forward, and with seven years of teaching under my belt, in addition to the five years I spent in higher ed. as a student, I feel like I’ve picked up a few tricks of the trade along the way. Between the mistakes I made and lessons I learned as a student myself, and the years I’ve spent watching class after class of new freshmen arrive (and then graduate!) – here are the top twelve tips…
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Liebster Award and Blogger to Blogger Personal Tag
It’s been a very hectic week here at Magpie Making Do (for a variety of personal reasons that I’m not going to get into here, including a death in the family), and I’ve noticed myself feeling very guilty about not posting in more than a week and a half – which is nice, because it’s been a while since I had even enough energy to feel guilty about my absences. The guilt makes me feel like I’m FINALLY getting back into the swing of consistent posting! But anyway, I don’t have a huge amount of time this week, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve done a “get…
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#ReadWomenMonth Reading Wrap-Up
Participating in StasiaLikesCakes’ Read Women Month was a really fun, fulfilling, and enlightening experience. I did both the Instagram challenge (see that wrap-up here), and the reading challenge, and in the process read 9 books, reacquainted myself with reading fiction regularly, and learned a lot about my reading preferences and habits. I realized how much I miss just reading for the sake of entertainment, and discovered some great series and authors. So what’d I read? Well, because I ended up going through so many books, I’m not going to review each and every one here. I will be doing full reviews on a few of them in the future (I’ve…
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June Wrap-Up and July Goals
Ah, another month gone, another goals wrap-up post – and June did NOT go as smoothly in terms of goals as I hoped it would. That said, it wasn’t quite the total failure that it could have been. So how’d I do? Well, June was a strange one this year. I spent the first two and a half weeks rush rush rushing to clean, and prep classes, and run errands, and catch up on everything I always let go during the semester when I’m working 14-18 hour days all week. And then the last week and a half I did, well, nothing. Positively nothing but read, and eat, and travel.…
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#ReadWomenMonth Instagram Challenge Wrap-Up
Today marks the end of #ReadWomenMonth, and not only did I pledge to read only female authors this month (wrap-up on that coming soon), but I also participated in the Instagram challenge – as best I could anyway. So today, I’m wrapping the month up with a compilation of all my Instagram posts over the course of the challenge. It’s been a blast participating in this, even though I didn’t hit every day of the challenge (mainly because my book collection is split between my apartment and storage). In addition to totally being down to do this again next year, it’s also definitely made some differences in how I choose…
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So Magpie’s Gonna Run a 5k… Again.
So I know I said in my June goals post that fitness was on the docket, but that I wasn’t going to follow any set plan or anything. Well, turns out I’m a liar. I’ve started a Couch to 5k program. Whoops. Well, at least it’s a good whoops. I’m using the C25K – 5K Running Trainer app from the Google Play store. I used it before about two years ago (maybe three?) to decent success, and I liked how the app functions. It’s easy to use, tracks your progress, gives you the option of sharing either with social media or with a C25K community (I don’t do either), it…
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Book Review: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
I’ll be honest, I started out not really feeling this book. I picked it up on a whim after one too many times seeing it in the bookstore and reading one too many internet reviews just raving about how good it was, but I wasn’t super excited about it. The description on the back cover of the main character, Celaena, sounded just a bit too… ugh. As described in the blurb, she sounded just a bit too much like some of the cringy Mary Sues that had dominated my middle school attempts at writing fantasy. Always blonde, always perfect, always a super-duper badass warrior and super tough, but still absolutely…
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#ReadWomenMonth 2017
So a few days ago I stumbled across the greatest idea on Twitter – Stasia of Stasia Likes Cakes has designated June as Read Women Month, complete with corresponding instagram challenge. And I am totally all about this. One of my big goals for June is to just read. A lot. I’ve spent the last few months kind of falling back in love with fiction, and it’s reminded me how much I miss reading for fun. When I was a kid I used to go through like, three books a week every week. And then somewhere along the way as I switched to History all my reading became work-related. Which…
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May Wrap-up and June Goals
Well, hot damned. It’s June. Already. I find myself saying that a lot these days. “Already!?” “It’s summer already!?” “It’s [insert month] already!?” And the busier I am from day to day, the more I seem to be saying it. And May was a VERY busy month. It always is. From wrapping up and ending the semester, grading final papers and exams, getting final grades in, and working graduations not just at my own institution, but at a couple others in the region as a musician… Then add in all the holidays and anniversaries – Mother’s Day, a major family member’s “cancer free” milestone anniversary, my birthday, trying to shop…
