3rd Year Blogiversary! & Farewell…

Exactly 3 years ago I published my first review to The Leaning Tower of Tomes, Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. Since then, my reading habits grew enormously and this blog became a successful, happy little place of mine on the internet. I read the most I’ve ever reading during a period of time and I connected with super cool, real people all over the world. I read many books outside my initial comfort zone of YA, expanding into graphic novels and adult thrillers. From blogging I’ve learned skills I currently use at various jobs and I feel comfortable sharing my opinions and writing publicly. The past three years have been amazing.

I have decided to step away from book blogging for the time being. I’m about to go to university with a maxed-out schedule, and I really haven’t been reading much anyway. (*cough* K-dramas *cough*) This year marked a lot of big, new changes in my life, all of which I’m happy about, but that definitely were very time-consuming and stressful. Reading sort of fell to the wayside and I still haven’t thrusted myself back into the vigor of consuming a book every few days.

I want to thank everyone who visited The Leaning Tower of Tomes and whom I communicated with about bookish things. I would not have continued talking about my reading endeavors if no one had been around to converse with me, and I am super grateful that my three-year experience was fantastic. If you ever stopped by this blog, thanks, I’m glad you came and I hope you liked what you saw.

I’ll be leaving the blog up indefinitely with all of its reviews and posts for everyone to peruse. Who knows, maybe I’ll feel inspired to take up blogging again. I put a lot of work into this site and I’m proud of it. But I’m not disappearing forever! I’m still on Goodreads and will forever be recording the books I read and want to read, so feel free to say hi.

Happy three-year blogging anniversary to me. 🙂

Farewell for now!

What I’ve Recently Read, Plus Thoughts on Going Forward

It’s been a month. How is everyone doing? Life has been crazy for me. I’m moving from the home I grew up in and going to another state. A fresh new start. I’ll also be starting university at the end of the summer. I’m super excited. But I already know I won’t be reading much once school starts.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how reading and blogging aren’t enticing me as much as they used to. I’ve gone through slumps in the past purely because of burnout. But now that my life is going to dramatically change, I’ve had to think about managing my time going forward.

I still love reading and will always read voraciously, but with work and now college fast approaching, I find that while I do still read, I don’t have the time to devote to writing reviews. I do love blogging and it’s taught me incredibly useful skills that I am actively using at one of my jobs. Book blogging kept me sane while I was going through a rough patch and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I am blessed that I joined the book community and met and talked to other readers when I didn’t have any IRL friends who read the same types of books as me.

I plan to try to keep up posting at least once a month up until my third year blogging anniversary on August 24th, literally the week before I start classes. After the summer is over, though, I won’t promise anything. It seems like this will be the right timing to let go of The Leaning Tower of Tomes…

But until August 24th rolls around — here’s a look at what I’ve read in the past two months. I’ll admit, I have only read three books since I posted my review of Wild Orchid. And because I’m in the middle of packing, working two jobs, and getting my wisdom teeth out, I don’t know if I’ll be reading much of anything until I get settled in my new place. Still, I plan to read as much as I can over the summer.

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What I Read in April and May 2017:

  

Paper Girls, Vol. 2 by Brian K. Vaughan, art by Cliff Chiang, colors by Matt Wilson, letters by Jared K. Fletcher (Paper Girls, #2) | Image Comics, November 2016. Paperback, 128 pages.

• Maybe it’s because I read a physical copy, but I enjoyed Paper Girls, Volume 2 much more than Volume 1. The time-travel/alternate-worlds aspect was poppin’ and I felt much more invested in the mystery. ♥♥♥♥

The Legion of Regrettable Super Villains by Jon Morris | Quirk Books, March 2017. Hardcover, 256 pages. I received a copy from the publisher.

• Quirk Books publishes the most amazing coffee table books, that’s what I’ve decided. The Legion of Regrettable Super Villains is basically an encyclopedia of super villains from comics that weren’t so super. ♥♥♥

Monstress, Vol. 1 by Marjorie Liu, art by Sana Takeda, lettering by Rus Wooton (Monstress, collected, #1) | Image Comics, July 2016. Paperback, 202 pages.

• Now. THIS. Was quite something! Effing dark but so intriguing. I can see why it’s been so hyped. I didn’t love it with every ounce of my being (those cat info-dumps were tedious…), but I am definitely a fan of the story and artwork. Especially the artwork. ♥♥♥♥

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So that’s what I’ve been up to lately. There’s just been so much going on I haven’t been in the mood to sit down and read. Escaping into Korean drama land and K-pop is so much easier for my brain to handle these days. And, you know, the books I typically read are complex and dark fantasies. I just need a break.

See you next month!

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What was your favorite book you read in the past few months?
Have you read any of these books?
If not, do any of them pique your interest?
Comment below letting me know!

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My brief Sailor Moon history thus far (or, A very loose book review of Sailor Moon, Vol. 1)

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Volume 1 by Naoko Takeuchi, translated by William Flanagan. Sailor Moon Renewal Editions, #1.

My copy: Kodansha Comics (Kodansha USA Publishing), September 2011. Paperback, 240 pages.

Source: Library.

Synopsis:

Usagi Tsukino is a normal girl until she meets up with Luna, a talking cat, who tells her that she is Sailor Moon. As Sailor Moon, Usagi must fight evils and enforce justice, in the name of the Moon and the mysterious Moon Princess. She meets other girls destined to be Sailor Senshi (Sailor Scouts), and together, they fight the forces of evil!

This new edition of Sailor Moon will feature:
-An entirely new, incredibly accurate translation!
-Japanese-style, right-to-left reading!
-New cover art never before seen in the U.S.!
-The original Japanese character names!
-Detailed translation notes!

This version of Sailor Moon will be completely true to original. Join us as Sailor Moon returns to the U.S. for the first time in years!

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(Well, it not’s really a strict review…
I’m using this “review” as an excuse to share my Sailor Moon life story with y’all.)

My first encounter with Sailor Moon was when I was a little kid perusing the (now obsolete) video and record store Tower Records. I spotted a VHS that had two Sailor Moon either episodes or movies on it, and my mom, knowing Sailor Moon was a fun, girly thing, bought it for me.

Behind the Scenes: All the sites and apps I use to manage my blogging life

Today I thought I’d talk about all the sites and apps I use when it comes to The Leaning Tower of Tomes. There are a number of them that are absolutely essential, and a few I’ve kind of abandoned even though they still have their uses. The most essential sites I use are WordPress, Google Calendar, Gmail, and Goodreads. I could actually run my blog on those sites alone, but I use a bunch of other things, too. So, without further ado, let’s start!

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Books I like better the more I think about them (or, Why I like Crimson Bound the more I think about it)

Hello readers! Welcome to the second Monday Musing discussion post!

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I was recently looking through my Read shelf on Goodreads just to get a glimpse of the ratings I’ve given out so far this year. (Thank you Emily from Loony Literate — she wrote a great discussion post about if giving out too many five-star ratings brings down reviewers’ credibility.) As of writing this post I have given out 23 five-star ratings in 2015. Which is many more than I thought I’d given! (Comparatively, I’ve given out 7 one-star reviews, and I’ve altogether read 143 books.) Five of those five-star rated books actually started off as four-star rated, but which I bumped up to five-stars after thinking about them some more as time passed. (Those books happen to be The Vanishing Girl by Laura Thalassa, Fairest by Marissa Meyer, Elixir by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Seraphina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty, and Into the Wild by Erin Hunter.) There are also a bunch of other books that I really liked that I think of more fondly as time goes on. And one of those books is Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge.

How my reading habits have changed since book blogging

It’s the inaugural Monday Musing! Not sure if I’m going to make this a weekly thing, but I’m finally introducing discussion posts to the blog. Since I had my one year blogiversary last week, I thought it fitting to talk about how my reading habits have changed since I started blogging.

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