Happy Monday everyone! I hope you all are having a wonderful day and starting of the week semi-productive as you drudge past the Monday “blues”. Today, I decided to share a bit of what I got up to the last few days while my deadlines and general life-related stress tried to emotionally squash me.
Last week was a tough week for many reasons so I decided to treat myself to some book shopping. I’m pretty sure I’m an ambivert but I often find myself leaning towards the introvert side. I love to socialize but can only do so in short bursts before I find myself locking myself in my room for some quality alone time with a book or some YouTube. I always find that surrounding myself with books or just taking myself somewhere alone relaxes me and resets my headspace.
Recently, I’ve decided to venture off and explore local bookstores near me. After some quick Google map calculations, I found out that the closest one to me is a 25-30 min drive and also happens to buy back books for store credit. So I ended up going through my book shelf and picked some books I’ve either read and don’t want to keep or tried and definitely didn’t want to continue. I picked out four books but the bookstore only ended up accepting two.
The books I ended up giving up included Fairest by Marissa Meyer and The Rose and the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh. I don’t think that after 
finishing the Lunar Chronicles and having read Fairest, that I’d really want to keep the novella to reread. I somehow ended up finding the second book in The Wrath and the Dawn duology by Renee Ahdieh in the discount section of Barnes and Noble section and couldn’t resist buying it. It most definitely was an impulse buy. While I think I’ll enjoy reading this series, whenever I get to it, I often find it in the library and don’t think I really need the book in my shelves. Also, I’m not going to lie, the cover’s not my favorite.
With the money I ended up getting from the books, I picked My Plain Jane, which is one of the novels in The Lady Janies series. Apparently, each of the novels in this series can be considered a stand alone, which was a huge selling point for me, along side the premise. I really find the concept of taking known historical figures, fictional or real, and twisting their stories to play a role in the crazy plots these collection of authors have come up with.
The following day, I ended up spending some time at Barnes and Noble to study for my upcoming midterm this coming Friday, and picked up The Last Namsara. Like the other book I bought, this book can be considered a standalone and is a fantasy novel involving dragons. Just the fact that the main character is a dragon slayer had me hooked from the moment I read the synopsis but the talk of political drama and a strong female lead has me wanting to pick up this book very soon.
Hopefully, this week will be much better and much more positive and productive. What do you do to pick yourself up or reset your mindset?