It feels like we’ve been in this pandemic for most of my life, which is saying something because I’m 33 years old and I’ve had a lot of life so far. Last year started off SO great, and right after an epic trip to Seattle, the world shut down and its basically been like that since. I’ve done a few things as we’ve gotten the vaccine out more and opened things up and loosened restrictions but there are still things that I SUPER miss doing right now, either because we still can’t do them OR I just don’t feel comfortable with it yet.

Its been a year and things ARE getting better, painfully, slowly, and I’m vaccinated which gives me a huge sense of relief and it makes me think we are closer than ever to getting back to…well, relatively normal. I haven’t wanted to THINK too much about the things that I’m missing out on right now because it just makes the quarantine depression worse! But now that we have a light at the end of the tunnel…now I want to talk about all the things I missed doing!

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The Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly challenge post previously hosted by The Broke and Bookish and now hosted by The Artsy Reader Girl. You can follow along for each weekly post here. This week’s topic is about books you’d gladly throw in the ocean. I think that tends to be a pretty open ended topic and I took that as books that I either did NOT finish or that I just plain disliked. Here’s the thing – as a blogger of nearly 9 years (omg) and an author myself, I try not to show any negativity too much because I know how hard that authors work on their books and that just because I don’t like it, doesn’t mean its necessarily BAD. However, the books listed below are books that I personally did NOT like, or just couldn’t even finish. Because, you know what? It’s okay to just not like books sometimes…

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Hi Everyone, my name is Sara Santana and I’ve been in a book slump for about two years now.

I hate it.

Now, I think there are a lot of reasons why I’m in this slump. I mean, don’t get me wrong – I’m reading and I’m still reading more than a lot of other people are. I’m 20 books in for 2021, which ain’t bad and I read 80 books last year. But I used to read 100, 150, 200 books a year and I’m just not doing that anymore. Part of that is we’re in the middle of a global pandemic and even though we technically have more time on our hands, I’m also depressed because its a global pandemic so I’m not doing the things I love – i.e. reading – as much as I normally do. I’m also so much busier than I was in 2013, 2014 or 2015 when I was getting through 150-200 books. I was working way less hours and for waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less stressful jobs. I also am just in a slump, that unexplained, I don’t FEEL like reading most things. My favorite genre is fantasy, hands down, and I’ve been struggling to read fantasy for the past year or so and most of what is on my TBR list and in my TBR pile is fantasy, because its my favorite genre!

It’s horrible and gets me nowhere haha.

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A friend of mine recently asked me what are some of my favorite book-to-movie adaptations and the first thing I thought was, oh wow that’s both a hard and loaded question! I love reading, obviously, and I love watching movies and often times, those overlap. It’s often that I end up watching a movie or a TV show with absolutely NO idea that it began as a book to begin with, especially and almost always when its a non-YA book.

I feel like I’m a little more lenient when it comes to adaptations. The fact is – you can’t make a perfect adaptation. It’s always going to be different than the book. You can’t tell the story the same way! A book, a movie, a tv show – they’re all different mediums to tell a story and they all do so in such different ways. There’s a reason that this is a tv show while that is a movie. They are just different! So I do tend to be a little more forgiving, especially when changes are done and they just make sense.

On the other hand, I do get frustrated at big changes made that really has nothing to do with the medium or trying to condense the story or whatnot. Sometimes it just seems as if the screenwriter barely read the book or maybe didn’t at all and just got it secondhand from someone else, like a game of Telephone because somewhere between the original work and whatever they put out, a lot was lost and I just don’t even recognize it anymore!

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I am so EXCITED to be sharing a spotlight, an excerpt and a GIVEAWAY for the newest Star Wars novel from the awesome and amazing, Claudia Gray. As a massive Star Wars fan, Claudia Gray and her excellent novels are a huge reason why I continue to read the SW novelizations and I’m SOOO excited to read this one!

Long before the Clone Wars, the Empire, or the First Order, the Jedi lit the way for the galaxy in a golden age known as the High Republic!

Not everyone who hears the call to adventure wants to answer it….

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