Lately With Lila January & February 2021 | Drowning In Schoolwork…

*peaks shyly around corner*

Hellooooooo there, friends. It is I, your friendly neighborhood Lila, returning from my impromptu hiatus! I know I was gone for two whole months and I’m so sorry there was no notice. Basically school and life got crazy and adjusting to the uptick meant I had to take an unscheduled break from everything that wasn’t a major life priority. But I’m back, baby!!

Sadly, because school and life were so hectic, I only managed to read two books, but I did manage to also consume some other great media as well. What can I say? Sometimes it really do just be like that, friends. Let’s take a look at what went down…

BLOG UPDATES

N/A

WHAT I POSTED

WHAT I READ

  • The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo (★★) Honestly, this book had its hits and misses, but in my opinion it was mostly unnecessary and unmemorable. If you’re a big fan of the Grishaverse books who’s SUPER obsessed with them, then you might enjoy this, but if you’re wondering whether or not you have to read this collection to continue on with the books…Well, the answer is “no.”
  • Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (★★) I actually read this book for a project for my Native American History course, which was an awesome opportunity. I LOVED the Navajo mythology aspect and world building of this book so much, but at the same time, the plot felt loosely constructed and convenient and the characters left me wanting more in terms of their histories and motivations. I’m on the fence as to if I want to continue with the series, so we’ll just have to wait and see if I’m ultimately drawn back to the world of Trail of Lightning.

WHAT I PURCHASED

WHAT I ACQUIRED FROM PUBLISHERS

WHAT I PLAN ON READING

Honestly, given how slump-y I’ve been lately and the overwhelming amount of schoolwork I typically am assigned weekly thiss semester, I’m gonna kind of play it by ear in the upcoming month. I’m planning on participating in the Taylor Swift themed Tis The Damn Readathon (info here), so I have a small TBR for that, but I’m not making any real promises.

TIS THE DAMN READATHON TBR

REPUTATION

  • Reputation // Read a book that is romance within a separate genre
    • House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas ↝ I made it halfway through this book before getting distracted and setting it aside for later. I really enjoyed what I read, though, so I’m hoping I can finally finish it.
  • “Look What You Made Me Do” // Read a book that’s recommended to you
    • The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna ↝ I’m currently reading and absolutely loving this book! I’m excited to see how it wraps up!

FOLKLORE

  • Folklore // Read a book based on mythology, folk tales, or a retelling
    • Lore by Alexandra Bracken ↝ I started reading this YA fantasy that’s based on Greek mythology back in January when it released and was enjoyinig it so much, but put it down so I could read my schoolbooks. I can’t wait to get back into it at last!
  • “Exile” //Read a book written by two authors
    • Master of One by Jaida Jones and Dani Bennett ↝ Apparently this is a queer fae fantasy? Which, like, yes! I want to read it so badly!

WHAT I WATCHED

FATE: THE WINX SAGA

Winx Club was one of my favorite shows as a kid, so I was cautiously hopeful about this live action reboot, while also expecting it to be very different after watching the trailer. When I finally watched the show, I was pleasantly surprised, though! Does it differ drastically from the original cartoon? Yes. Does it fall prey to the typical clichés and tropes of a standard teen fantasy show? Absolutely. But if you’re willing to look beyond that, it’s a nice bit of fun fluff. The one qualm I do have with the show is the whitewashing, which is obviously never okay. But other than that, it’s a decent teen show.

BRIDGERTON

Lissen, reading the reviews for this show before I watched it was a real rollercoaster, y’all, cause to be honest, no one seems to be able to agree as to whether Bridgerton is good or god awful. The reviews seemed to be split between people who loved the show and people who find literally every aspect of the show to be problematic. Now, I know about the [TRIGGER WARNING] rape scene and while watching I definitely noticed the colorism issue, but I was able to acknowledge how deeply problematic those two things are, while also genuinely enjoying Bridgerton as a nice, escapist historical romance show.

TO ALL THE BOYS 2: P.S. I STILL LOVE YOU

For Valentine’s Day I (finally!) watched To All The Boys 2: P.S. I Still Love You and, I’m not gonna lie, I loved it so much! Netflix really does a great job of adapting Jenny Han’s feel-good romcom series and managing to just completely capture ~the vibe~ of the books! I was surprised because when I read P.S. I Still Love You, I was totally Team Peter K., but in watching the movie, I definitely found myself warming up to John Ambrose McClaren. Anyhoo, this film was a sweet way to celebrate the holiday and I’m excited to read Always and Forever, Lara Jean and watch the movie!

WHAT I LISTENED TO

THE CIPHER

The Cipher is a YA sci fi audio drama podcast starring The Witcher‘s Anya Chalotra and y’all!!! If you enjoy sci fi audio dramas, then you have to listen to this one! It’s about this teen girl who solves a complex puzzle and finds herself working with a secret organization to hunt down an interdimensional serial killer.

POD SAVE AMERICA

Having grown up in the Washington, D.C. area, I’m (naturally) pretty obsessed with politics…Yet somehow I never listened to Pod Save America until recently? Basically, Pod Save America is a political news and punditry podcast hosted by former Obama staffers and, for a politics junkie like myself, it is just *chef’s kiss*!

WHAT I BOOKMARKED

for readers

for bloggers

for fun

WHAT HAPPENED IN JANUARY & FEBRUARY 2021

Honestly, most of my time was taken up by adjusting to a new semester online and getting set up and solid with my courses (hence why I took my impromptu hiatus). My courses this semester are pretty difficult, but I’m managing to hang in there. But other than that, life hasn’t really been full of much else.

WHAT’S AHEAD FOR MARCH 2021

Mid to late March is the beginning of spring weather in the D.C. area, so I’m really excited and relieved to be able to spend more time outside after what feels like the longest winter ever! I’m hoping to get together with a friend or two and socialize a bit more than I’ve been recently. The pandemic still means playing it by ear, but I’m hopeful that what’s to come will at least be slightly better than what’s behind me.

SPILL THE BEANS, FRIENDS!

  • How have the past two months been for you, dear friends?
  • Has 2021 been off to a good start for you?
  • What have y’all been reading?
  • Anything coming up that you’re excited for?

Posted by

Lila is a 27-year-old college student studying physics and a lover of literature. When she's not busy reading or saving the world through science, Lila can be found singing jazz and blues and obsessing over hedgehogs (a.k.a. the cutest animals in the multiverse!)

10 thoughts on “Lately With Lila January & February 2021 | Drowning In Schoolwork…

  1. Your thoughts on Trail of Lightning were so interesting, since I’m planning to read it soon. Good to know what to expect going in! Lore sounds so interesting, so I hope you continue to enjoy it 😀 Thanks so much for sharing my post, and hope you have a lovely March!

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi Lila, thank you again for sharing my new blog series, I’m very excited about the other topics I’ll cover in future posts. I actually don’t have a strong opinion on the saints of the Grishaverse and have been unsure whether to check the recent collection, so thank you for your honest thoughts on it. I can’t wait to read more of the awesome posts you’ve linked, great wrap-up! ❤

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Thank you for sharing my post in the Bookmarked section!!
    I’m very curious to know what you though of Ben Barnes’ narration of the Lives of Saints! I didn’t think I’d pick up a copy, but tbh he could probably get me to read it XD
    Also I feel you on the whole drowning in school work life…January and Feb were pretty slow months for me to! But I am glad you’re back!

    Liked by 1 person

  4. I’m glad you had fun with the Winx show. I must admit, while I loved the animated series, I’m not all that interested in the Netflix version, but that’s probably due to me being tired of all these live-action remakes haha.
    Good luck with your courses and remember to take time for yourself. Don’t overwork it. 😀

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I know that I am very, very late to this post, but I’m finally catching up on all the mentions and pings from months ago. (Let’s just say the relatability I feel about school/internships taking over my life and leading to impromptu hiatuses is REAL!)

    Thank you so much for mentioning my post! It feels like so long ago that I wrote that discussion, so it was nice to have a little look back at what I was busy talking about at the beginning of 2021 now that it’s getting closer to the end of the year!

    Liked by 1 person

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s
https://hardcoverhaven.com/2021/03/01/lately-with-lila-january-february-2021-drowning-in-schoolwork/
hardcoverhaven.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-05
195827
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KJ34S63ZC32ZOL4IBJPYSDDF526KSFUU
<urn:uuid:a1a684da-bc6f-4437-99d1-ce0d6758903e>
2022-01-26T13:59:49Z
192.0.78.25
text/html
sha1:CPLPXTQTTTRA7LLCESIHCVUTS576TKRN
<urn:uuid:82372375-cf96-4afd-ae98-2455d29af4e9>
https://hardcoverhaven.com/2021/03/01/lately-with-lila-january-february-2021-drowning-in-schoolwork/
response
<urn:uuid:4de1b446-47be-434f-b7ec-3195a936a716>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-05
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for January 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-95
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/