The Monday Mix (05)

While I did enjoy doing A Sunday Retrospective, I've made the decision to stop posting on the weekends. I rarely open up my laptop during that time, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. The only thing that made me really sad was the fact that I would no longer have an outlet to share my favorite links from the past week. I mourned that for all of ten seconds before realizing that I could just start a new feature - and so, The Monday Mix was born.

The Monday Mix basically gives me the opportunity to share with all of you the links I loved online from last week, everything from reviews to articles about writing and perhaps other things too. I've always valued the opportunity to share the great things I've read or seen, and this is my way to share the love.

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So, I'm still sick, although this time, I can't tell if it's allergies or a full on cold. If anyone has good cures or tips for allergies or colds, I'd be happy to hear about them in the comments! Other than that, it's been a pretty quiet week. I did get to meet up with two awesome bloggers though - Gaby and Steph - which was a ton of fun on each occasion!

And now, here are a few posts that caught my eye:

1. Jamie (of The Perpetual Page-Turner) wrote this beautiful post about her mother that went up yesterday, on Mother's Day. It was completely heartfelt, and stunning in its emotion, and definitely worth a read.

2. Jamie also wrote this great post about friendship, as inspired by the book Five Summers. It really makes you think about the friends you had, have and hope to have in your life.

3. The list of authors who will be at the Teen Author Carnival on May 29 is up! I'm probably going to be at this event, though I will be arriving a wee bit late.

4. If you haven't listened to the awesome Nantucket Blue playlist that Betty (of Book Rock Betty) and Cassie (of Books with Cass) have put together, you're missing out. I am seriously obsessed with it.

5. The cover for Once We Were, Kat Zhang's second book in The Hybrid Chronicles, was released last week. It looks like it matches with the first cover, which I adore!

6. I have yet to come up with ratings to use on the blog (and I doubt I will anytime soon), but Molli (of Once Upon a Prologue) wrote this thoughtful post about ratings. Do you use ratings on your blog?

7. If someone wants to give me an especially extravagant birthday present, I wouldn't mind receiving one of these Kate Spade book clutches. (Thanks to Estelle (of Rather Be Reading) for sharing!)

8. I never tire of fangirling over the wallpapers that my friend Elena (of Novel Sounds) designs using book quotes - including this latest one by Sarah Dessen. They're beautiful. I have one on my iPhone, one on my iPad, one on my desktop at work and one on my laptop at home, in case you doubt how much I love them.

9. Leigh Bardugo (author of Shadow and Bone) is not only a wonderful writer, but also a great singer. Check out this original song!

10. THEY ARE OPENING DIAGON ALLEY AT THE WIZARDING WORLD OF HARRY POTTER IN 2014. Yes, this deserves an all caps statement because I AM SO EXCITED.

11. Jessi Kirby (author of Golden) shares some of her thoughts on the inspiration behind Golden.

12. You still have a chance to win a copy of Nantucket Blue from Estelle & Magan (of Rather Be Reading)! Read their review and the interview with author Leila Howland too.

13. We all know about writer's block, but did you know that reader's block also exists? Joanna Volpe's post on Publishing Crawl was very interesting!

14. If you're in the market for cute bookmarks (and aren't we always in the market for such things), check out these adorable printables from Epic Reads. I NEED THEM IN MY LIFE.

15. Susan Dennard (author of Something Strange and Deadly) shared about some online writing workshops that she's found extremely helpful in her writing! I'm definitely going to be looking into some of these.

16. Not very good with interviews? Jodi Meadows (author of Incarnate) lets you in on her secrets to being an expert during interviews.

17. I've never read this blog before, but I want to after seeing her post about getting off the blogging bandwagon. (Thanks to April (of Good Books and Good Wine) for sharing it!)

18. As a Blogger user, I thought this post was really interesting, as it tells you why you might not be getting comments. (Thanks to Christine (of Oh, Crys!) for sharing it!)

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I wanted to add a new aspect to The Monday Mix. Since I'm an avid Twitter user, I thought sharing my top tweets of the week would be fun. Every week, I'm going to pick one author/publisher/bookstore tweet and one blogger tweet that I personally really liked. Without further ado, here are this week's favorites:

 

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And in case you missed it, here are my posts from last week:

Greek mythology will instantly draw me to a book - and My Ex from Hell was super entertaining!

Rapunzel is a hard fairytale to do a retelling of, but I think Alex Flinn did a decent job with Towering.

New Orleans in the 50s? Characters I loved? Out of the Easy has it all.

I love the Summer series by Jenny Han, and this second book was so, so good.

I've never joined Bout of Books before, but that's happening this week! Here's my sign-up/goals post.

In case you wonder what's been going on in my world lately, I wrote this long personal post. It features Lauren Graham, In the Heights, bookstores and Gaby.

As part of the blog tour, I'm hosting a giveaway for Criminal by Terra Elan McVoy.

I hope you enjoy reading these posts as much as I did! Now it's YOUR turn - are there any posts (on your blog or other blogs) from last week that I missed out on? Please feel free to share links in the comments and I'll try to check them out.