The End of August

I need time to slow down. Today is August 31, and I'm foregoing my usual First Impression Friday post in order to write down my thoughts on August. For the record, here's the Post Breakdown for August: Top 5 Tuesdays: Five Bookish Maps Book Tag Thursdays: The Birthday Book Tag Three Bookish Things Tag Book …

The Back-to-School Book Tag

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Thursday here at Books are Only the Beginning. This week, I met with my adviser about my thesis and learned that I have a terrifying two weeks to get the first draft of my critical introduction finished and three weeks to finish the revisions on the first 90 pages of my …

Top 5 Bookish Maps

Okay, I haven't really participated in a lot of T5T topics this month. Many of them I haven't had material for, and others I've started writing and wound up realizing that I only had one thing to put on it. Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm has come up with something I haven't really thought about, …

We’ve Set a Date!

Okay, so that's a title usually reserved for when someone gets engaged. I, however, am using it to announce the fact that I've set a date for my thesis defense! My schedule is currently as follows: September 14: Turn in draft of Critical Introduction September 21: Second adviser meeting & turn in revisions of 90+ …

First Impression Friday: “Gulliver’s Travels” by Jonathan Swift

I'm working my way through this thesis reading list while wanting to bang my head against the wall. Not all of the books are awful, but some of them just drag on and I can't see anything super beneficial to my reading them. However, they are on my list so I'm just going to attempt …

Gaming While Female

I know, I know, I've been slacking a little. Thank you for waiting for me, though! I'm going to be honest with you -- today's topic is something I've been stewing on for a few days. Namely, it's something I've been stewing on since Sunday afternoon at my latest X-Wing tournament. Now, I want to …

First Impression Friday: “The Kiss of Deception” by Mary E. Pearson

So yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble while waiting on Steven to get done at the comic shop. (I'd felt a little burned out and didn't go myself.) I wandered for about an hour, before I came upon the Remnant Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson. They had them all lined up underneath the new …

Book Un-Haul

Not your typical book tag, but I was reading through Red Gal Musings, and realized that I have a ton of books I just purged after moving a few months ago. Most of these are called book un-hauls, so I decided to go ahead and post my own. I have so many books, and the majority …

Travel Diary – Asheville

This past weekend, I turned 24. I also visited a new city for the very first time - Asheville, North Carolina. Steven's best friend has a vacation condo there, and we were offered the use of it if we would go and make sure everything was in good working order (and we had to meet …

Happy Birthday!

What a difference a year makes. I turned 24 today. And I'm here to say that nothing is ever as easy as it looks. I've survived everything up until this moment, and I've got a lot more surviving ahead of me. I will say that I've learned a lot in my 24 years. Heck, I've …