The Monday Mix (04)

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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Last week was pretty great, apart from the fact that allergies threatened to knock me out! I got to hang out with Rachel & Estelle, and meet Lauren Graham. I also got to spend the weekend devouring some awesome Filipino fast food from Jollibee and pastries from Red Ribbon, and hanging out at a friend's house. And yesterday, I got to have Mexican food for lunch to celebrate Cinco de Mayo!

Here are some of the links that caught my eye last week:

1. Molli (of Once Upon a Prologue) wrote this honest, wonderful post (Stop Running, Start Being) that made me smile when I read it. I think it's something that we bloggers often forget about, so her post was a great reminder.

2. Susan Dennard (author of Something Strange and Deadly) shared her thoughts about the process of writing her first novel. Despite not yet having read Susan's book (which I will soon, I promise!), I really do love the way she shares her writing advice and process so candidly.

3. Thanks to Jen (of Almost Grown-up), I am now super excited for BEA and the galleys to be found there. This pretty comprehensive list from Publisher's Weekly has a lot of books I'm anticipating on it - what about you?

4. As part of PierceFest, Gillian (of Writer of Wrongs) shared her thoughts on Alanna: The First Adventure. If you haven't read this series yet... YOU MUST. Tamora Pierce is awesome!

5. Marissa Meyer (author of Cinder) shares some advice when it comes to writing a retelling. As a huge fan of The Lunar Chronicles and a big admirer of Marissa's ability to retell a fairytale, I highly endorse this post.

6. I love it when my friends are enthusiastic about a book. Magan (of Rather be Reading) made me immediately want to go out and find a copy of Winger after reading her review.

7. Michael Grigsby shared this sweet post about why he thinks book bloggers are the most awesome people on earth (and that's a true story!).

8. Brittany (of The Book Addict's Guide) wrote this thoughtful post about writing DNF reviews. I love the way she was able to air her own personal opinion in a very objective manner.

9. Renae (of Respiring Thoughts) talks about the instance where you read a book because it was blurbed by Author X. Have you done that before? Was it a good experience (you liked the book!) or a bad one (you ended up not liking the book)? Go and weigh in on her discussion.

10. I really, really, really am making it my mission to get through the ARCs I have left before BEA. This was brought on by this post from Molli about ARCs.

11. Last week, Rachel (of Hello, Chelly) managed to convince me to whittle down my TBR shelf on Goodreads. (In case you were wondering, it was a smashing success - I went from 495 books to 200!) Together, we've come up with some tips to help you spring clean your own shelves!

12. Erin Bowman (author of Taken) wrote a post about how certain creative philosophies can be universal. I like the fact that she gave voice to things that I thought were true even before!

13. I found this post from Kid Lit thanks to author Diana Peterfreund (author of For Darkness Shows the Stars). It's definitely a post that I consider a challenge, as it reminds me that sometimes, as a writer, you just have to "go there".

14. The amazingly talented Margot Wood (of The Real Fauxtographer) shot this photo for The 5th Wave, and it is stupendous!

15. My favorite CP pair Sarah J. Maas (author of Throne of Glass) and Susan Dennard share their thoughts on sharing ideas! I love reading about their creative process, and I think it's interesting (and awesome) how well they work together.

16. Thanks to Margot, I got to read this awesome post about why there's nothing wrong with reading YA. Honestly, I personally think that each person has their own preferences when it comes to reading material. Whatever it is - whether YA or something else - people should not be made to feel awful or awkward about what they choose to read.

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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:

I got a little personal in this birthday post that I wrote for Macky.

Froi of the Exiles was even better than its predecessor. I'm dying to read Quintana of Charyn now!

I did a double monthly retrospective for March & April!

I haven't read too many witch books, but I was utterly pleased with Moonset.

PierceFest is finally here! I'm so happy to be hosting this celebration of all things Tamora Pierce along with my friends Gaby (of Queen Ella Bee Reads), Gillian (of Writer of Wrongs) and Rachel (of Rachel Reads).

Golden is definitely one of my favorite contemporary reads of this year. It is such a beautiful book.

Who knew I'd love a zombie book? The Dead-Tossed Waves proved that I could.

I'm joining Classics Retold! My classic of choice? Romeo & Juliet.

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.