Update: Conventions and Festivals 2015

Earlier this year we did a post on what we were looking forward to in 2015, and about events we were aiming to attend. Now that it's a little into the year we have all of our plans set in stone, so we decided that we would post an update on what we have planned.

April will be giving us readers something amazing, YallWest! The spin off our Yallfest! We have decided with this being it's first year that we will be dipping out of this event. Were going to wait and see how it plays out. Once we get the skinny from our Cali friends we will decide from there... Ya
know before we take on a cross country adventure there. So look out California there's a good chance were coming for you next year! 

In May we sadly wont be able to attend BEA due to our work schedules, but we are for sure headed to BookCon. SO YUP YOU HEARD RIGHT SBSR IS HEADED TO NEW YORK!!! May 30th and 31st we will be at the Javits Center. We're so excited to attend and meet everyone there. Well be going to panels, signings, and hopefully a few meet ups! Oh and we will finally, FINALLY, get to meet Colleen Hoover! Anytime we go to see her or she is near something pops up and the event gets cancelled! So fingers and toes crossed that nothing happens in this case. The list of authors, celebrities, and publishers that will be attending this event are insane! We are also hoping that there will be an Ansolo event one of the nights there so we can squeeze that in. If he has a show while were there we might actually die!

The biggest months this year for us are definitely October-November. October 30th through November 1st for the first time ever we will be attending the Walker Stalker Con in Atlanta.We've never been to this event before, but had so many people message us once they saw we were going. The feedback we've heard has been amazing, and has up so jacked to make the trip to our sister state. Well have a chance to go to cast panels, signings, contest, and other walker like events! WE ARE SERIOUSLY FANGIRLING OVER GETTING TO MEET STEVEN YEUN AND NORMAN REEDUS! We can't wait to cover this event and let y'all know how it is! Hopefully well be able to add this to the growing list of yearly adventures. November 13th and 14th we will once again be hitting up Yallfest! If you don't know it's currently the nations largest Ya book festival and it's held in our town!!! This event is probably our favorite all year. Again well be doing panels and signings. Last year we were able to meet some huge authors like Jennifer Armentrout, James Dashner, and Veronica Roth. The list for 2015 attendees hasn't been posted yet, but I promise once it has well be posting if for y'all. We're really hoping to authors like Ransom Riggs, Tahereh Mafi, and Victoria Aveyard will snag some spots this year (we could probably name 100 more hopefuls). November 19th we will be hitting up the early screening and marathon of The Hunger Games. We will be seeing all the movies leading up to the premiere of MockingJay Pt. 2. Saying were excited about seeing how this movie series wraps up would be an understatement. 

As far as the year goes these are all the major events we have going on. Can't wait to write post for all these events and to see all of you there.

Auto Buys

If you're big on books and book buying then you already know what auto buys are... For those of you who don't let me explain. It's this freaky weird thing book people do when they can't help buy a book because (insert bizarre reason here). As a book collectors ourselves we know all reasons for auto buying are usually odd and pretty off the way. You also know if you collect books that everyone has their own auto buying reasons. Sometimes its genre related sometimes it's just because of who wrote it. We decided to share a few of ours. 

Angela: I love to collect books. Love it! (Clearly right?!) I also prefer owning actual dead tree copies to downloading E-books. I'm so very, very guilty of buying books for the reasons listed below... Not kidding I'll buy just about any books that fall under these things. 

I will buy any book that has half a girls face on it. Why? I don't know. I wont even read what the book is about before purchasing it. If I'm strolling down my local B&N aisles and see a book with a girl with half a face on it I will just pick it up! Sometimes it's like a knee jerk reaction. I'll even try to talk myself out of it, but then my inner book girl wins out and I purchase it. 

The other cover related auto buy I'm guilty of is buying any and every book with a girl underwater. Under water covers are my favorite!!! I'm obsessed. Not kidding, I have always been in love with pictures taken underwater, so it figures my love for it would flow into the book world. Again these are books that I automatically add to my cart and wont even care what the synopsis are. I have never met a cover with an underwater picture on it that I didn't like. The pictures to the right are only some of the ones I own.

Of the half face and underwater covers I think The Kricket Series (Under Different Stars/ Sea of Stars) and Unteachable are my favorites. 

Books Featured: The Ring and Crown, Mystic City, Branded The Lux Series, Unteachable. Wicked, The Kricket Series, Ten Tiny Breaths, The Mara Dyer Trilogy. 

The next two things I'm guilty as charged of doing are buying books that are written by two authors. I will not only automatically buy anything by these two authors, I will drop anything I'm currently reading to pick up one of their new books... Jennifer L. Armentrout and Colleen Hoover. These are my two favorite authors! I'm obsessed with them. They are two authors that never let me down. Between the two I'm sure you all know that my all time favorite however is Colleen Hoover. She is the ONLY author who has never let me down. Her books are both amazing and life Ugly Love, Maybe Someday, and Maybe Not are my favorites. As far as Jla her Lux Series and The Dark Elements Trilogy are my favorites.
changing. Of all books

I saved my favorite auto buy for last... My all time favorite purchases to make are *drum roll please* Alien related reads. I AM FREAKING ALIEN OBSESSED!!! I can't stop! I will read, purchase, see, watch anything alien related. Of any "genre" (because I don't really think Alien is a genre, even though it should be) Aliens are my favorite. All this alien news about a Lux movie actually happening now has me all jazzed up. Daemon Black on the big screen, whoosh, don't even get my started! I also am barely breathing waiting for The 5th Wave movie coming out next year and the last book in the trilogy, The Last Star, coming out later this year. Alien books are almost, probably, my most own books. Of all my Alien books/series I think The 5th Wave Trilogy, The Lux Series, and The Broken Skies Series are my favorite.

Featured books: Wait for You, Wicked, The Lux Series, The Dark Elements Trilogy, The Half-Blood Series, The Return. Hopeless, Slammed, Point of Retreat, Ugly Love, Maybe Someday, Confess. The 5th Wave Trilogy, Alienated Series, In the After Duology, The Taking Series, Fire in the Woods Series, Broken Skies Series, Gravity, Rush Series.  

Leah: Like Angela said, auto buying is a knee jerk reaction where you've ended up buying something without even realizing it sometimes. Being a fangirl is tough sometimes! I'm SUPER notorious for auto buying because along with reading and collecting books, shopping is my other favorite hobby. It really makes for an expensive hobby.

First, my usual auto buy is a series. Doesn't sound weird, right? Well, I will buy an entire series of something before even reading the first book on the assumption that I will love the first book and feel the need to devour the rest of the series. Well.... if y'all have read any of my recaps, you know that I am also notorious about getting bored in the middle of a series. I'm not one of those people who like to binge read through a super long series. I like to read a book or two then go to something else then come back later. For example, I have the full series for Vampire Academy, The Mortal Instruments, The Hunt, The Covenant, and The Pledge all on my bookshelves right now. I'm about 3-4 books deep into each one of those series. I'll finish them eventually, but I probably could just bought one book at a time instead of the entire series at once. #autobuy 

I'm also very loyal to my favorite authors. If Colleen Hoover, JLA, John Green, or Gillian Flynn releases something new, I'm buying it no questions asked. Like Angela, I will put down anything that I'm reading and dive straight into my new book. These authors have never given me a bad book or disappointed me, so I know no matter what kind of slump or mood I'm in, they will give me a good pick me up. The Fault in Our Stars is my favorite reread, but I also absolutely adore Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns by John Green. My favorite CoHo books are Slammed, Maybe Someday, and Ugly Love and I will pick those up if I need a good cry/romance in my life (I plan on reading Point of Retreat this week when I'm alone so I can ugly cry all by myself). JLA knows how to bring the steaminess and also bring the action. My FAVORITE JLA is Wicked, hands down. I love that it is just the start of the series so there is so many places for it to go! And when I'm feeling a little darker and need to indulge my inner serial killer, I turn to Gillian Flynn who never disappoints with her mind-effs. 

My last two big auto buy categories I'm going to partially blame on Angela because before she and I became raving fangirls, these two were never things I cared about. UK cover editions and signed copies of books. I don't care if I already own an entire series, if a sweet UK cover releases, I'm 

buying it. For example, I have two full (well, full so far since the series isn't complete) sets of the Throne of Glass series in both the US editions as well as the beautiful white UK editions. My favorite UK edition that I've bought so far is the florescent graffiti style Hunger Games set. So beautiful! 

Lastly is the signed copy problem that I've developed. Ok, it's no secret that we love going to book signings. Cool, that's not weird. The auto buying weirdness comes in when I go into a bookstore and see a book that is an autographed copy. MUSTBUYNOW. It's kind of weird having a signed copy of a book for an author you haven't met,  I can't resist. I need to see that signature on that title page. Must collect them all. For example, I have signed copies of The Fifth Wave and To All The Boys I've Loved Before that I have picked up in bookstores. 

Featured books: The Mortal Instruments series, Vampire Academy series, The Covenant series, The Hunger Games series, Throne of Glass series, To All The Boys I've Loved Before, The Pledge, Looking for Alaska, Paper Towns, The Fault in Our Stars, Wicked, Maybe Someday, Ugly Love, Slammed, Point of Retreat, Dark Places, and The Fifth Wave.

Angela's December Readcaps

December is coming to an end, and I know that we are posting our December Reads earlier than normal but we have a few things that we will be posting in the next couple of days that will really round out our year. As far as December reading went well... IT WAS PRETTY AWESOME! Since it was also this little holiday that you might have also heard of called Christmas I got a few book things from that I will be posting as well! 

This December has been one of the best!

Below are the books I read in December, all which were hard to get too between vacations, holidays, and work. Either way everything I read was so good, barely any fails (sadly when I typed that I did the whoop whoop sound while raising the roof.)  Also below I'm gonna put my top and not so hot choices and some of my Christmas presents. So lets go! (and now I snapped and did gun fingers... Wow I need to stop.)

The Truth About Alice- Jennifer Mathieu

Rush- Maya Banks
Fever- Maya Banks
Burn- Maya Banks 
Captive- Aimee Carter
Outlander- Diana Gabaldon
The Young Elites- Marie Lu
Filthy 1-4- Megan D. Martin
Uninvited- Sophie Jordan
Everneath- Ashton Brodie (broke up with)
Ugly Love- Colleen Hoover
The Book of Ivy- Amy Engel
Don't Look Bank- Jennifer L. Armentrout
Pushing the Limits- Katie McGarry
Wicked- Jennifer L. Armentrout
Love, Rosie- Cecelia Ahern  
Arclight- Josin L. McQuein (broke up with)
Wait for You- Jennifer L. Armentrout
Unite Me- Tahereh Mafi
Raw- Belle Aurora
Maybe Someday- Colleen Hoover 
Paper Towns- John Green (re-read)
Love Letters to the Dead- Ava Dellaira
Keep Me Safe- Maya Banks


Now for the best and worst. Feeling jazzy so I'm gonna mix it up and I'm gonna start with my biggest let-downs. Yes I did drop two books this month, Arclight (which I plan to try and revisit later) and Everneath. But I'm not counting those in my choice since they weren't completed. To me the biggest let-downs were... 

• Captive by Aimee Carter. It's the second in the Blackcoat Rebellion Series/Pawn 2. The first book Pawn was SO amazing one of the best I had read in a long time. I waited so long to get my hands on book two that I was really let down by how much this book didn't bring it. I have the review posted if you wanna see fully why.
• Filthy1-4 by Megan D. Martin. This is probably the worst book(s) I've ever read. They were disgusting and so aggravating. My review for them are in the links above as well. Can't express how much I hated these books. 

And now to the good stuff... My top pick is... Well actually there are four!!! And yeah I'm refusing to pick just one! They were all just that good. Each one of these I gave 10/10 stars too. Review are up for all of these and the link are in their titles in the list above.

• Raw by Belle Aurora is my first pick. Girl falls in love with her stalker and their relationship only get crazier from there. This book was shocking moment after shocking moment. The ending alone had me freaking out.
• The Truth About Alice by Jennifer Mathieu. This book in my opinion is the closet depiction of how high-school is. The book is told from several POVs all leading up the the final one which is Alice's. This book couldn't have been better. 
• Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover. An amazing new spin on a relationship between two musicians completely blew me away. With surprises you wont see coming this book not only is a top pick for me for December but one of my top picks this year.
• Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. A nurse and Pilot have a rocky relationship built around secrets. This book whoosh... This book was just perfect! One of my favorite stand-alones this year. Colleen Hoover is just simply amazing and never fails to not leave me in tears. If I had to pick just one to be my top pick this would be the one.

To wrap this all up I'll leave you with some of the book-ish things I got for Christmas. I got a lot, A LOT of Barnes and Nobles gift cards, and some of the book I read this month I used the cards to get. I also received lots of cash... Which just meant more books/books to come. I also got a Rune car sticker from Leah but it's also not featured because I need to wash my car before I put it on. I'm really not big on celebrations or holidays so people getting me these gifts was really above and beyond. Everything was so perfectly chosen for me. 

Since I really don't love holidays my husband always lets me open my gifts early... by lets me I mean I always sucker him into giving them to me early... and by early I do mean early like..... November and the start of December. Yup I'm the worst lol. Anyways one of the gift he gave me was a gift cards so I used it to purchase the UK cover editions of The Throne of Glass Series and The Hunger Games Trilogy. For some of you who might not know, I LOVE and collect UK covers for book series. These two series are my favorites so far. The white covers of TOG are so perfect. They stand out from other editions of books. Speaking of standing out The Hunger Games Rebel UK editions are amazing. This picture doesn't do it justice they are so bright. The back and spines of the books have two different and important quotes from that book on it. Loved being able to add these to my growing collection. 

Some of the other things I got were... A signed copy of The Murder Complex by Lindsay Cummings. Leah got me this book and I was so surprised. Since Lindsay hasn't been able to tour in our area we haven't gotten a chance to meet and have her sign them before so her ordering this for me was amazing. Then my boss got me, probably my favorite gift, a signed and personalize Top Fit Men 2015 Calendar... You're probably wondering why This is in here with all my book stuff, well it's because the cover/main model in it is Nick Bateman. If you follow me on anything than you probably already know who he is, but for those of you who don't he is going to be playing Miles Archer in the movie adaptation of Ugly Love. My sister gave me these amazing Theo James earrings, which I will more than likely turn into necklaces for Leah and I. Then my husband got me a new and HUGE book shelf since my other ones were double stacked some even triple stacked with books. Leah and I will probably do a bookshelf tour sometime in January because people are always asking about them. Plus we just reorganized them this weekend SO be on the look out.

We will be posting our Awards this week along the full list of what we've read this year. We will also have a post about what we have coming up in 2015 dropping on January first.

Mockingjay Part One

We went and saw Mockingjay the day it premiered because we absolutely COULD.NOT.WAIT. We got tickets to the first showing possible so we were able to get in at 8pm to see it. After a little bit of theater drama (bought tickets for the wrong theater so had to basically fly to the other theater to make it on time), we made it and got good seats. The whole time we were waiting we were both FREAKING out with nervousness and excitement.

We won't say too much because we don't want to spoil it for anyway else, but THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME. It was super action packed and had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so stressed and was reliving all of the emotions that I felt when reading the book.. All of the drama from the rebellion, the fear/hatred of President Snow, and the worry for Peeta.

The biggest change that I saw that I remember being different from the book (granted it has been a little bit since I finished the series so my memory is spotty) is Effie. I don't remember her being in District 13 at all in the book, but in the movie she plays a major role. In the movie she basically does for Katniss what she does in the other movies, she advises her and helps her be beautiful and fashionable. Personally I LOVE Effie's character. I love how dramatic and ridiculous she is. Even in District 13 where everyone is made to look alike and wear ugly jumpsuits, Effie finds ways to add sparkle and still look like she could walk down a runway. I love how sassy she is, but she knows how to get the job done.

Also, another big change that I remember is when Katniss is listing off her conditions for her to be the Mockingjay, she leaves out the part about how she is the one that is going to kill President Snow. She names all of the others- rescue the victors, pardon the victors of all their crimes, and Prim gets to keep her cat. I've read a few articles that have said that they may have left this part out since it is a two part movie and they may focus more on it in the big finale part two.

Overall, the movie really exceeded my expectations. I laughed, I teared up, and I nearly bit off all my fingernails in anticipation. I can't wait to see it again!!

Have you seen it yet? What are your thoughts? Did you notice anything else that was changed? Leave us a comment!