Booking Through Thursday #8 & Update Thursday #13

Booking Through Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by Deb @ BTT. This week's question asks the following:

What’s the largest your personal library has ever been? What’s the greatest number of books you’ve ever owned at one time? (Estimates are fine.)
Is your collection NOW the biggest it’s ever been? Or have you down-sized?
What’s the fewest number of books you’ve ever owned (not counting your pre-reading years)?

Apparently, after my quick count, it is approximately 350 (or more). Which is the largest it's ever been (I am including all of my books, by the way, not just fiction). I've downsized over the years periodically, but only a handful of books at a time. The fewest number of books I've owned... when I was younger and starting out with reading, my brother and I had about 25-30 books. Then when I got into the Baby Sitter's Club and Sweet Valley Twins (and my dad found a bunch at garage sales for me) I probably had around 50-60. When I first started with the YA novels, I usually just got the ones I really, really, really wanted, and those totaled to about 20 at that time (which isn't counting my childhood books, plus nonfiction books and dictionaries). So... I'm not really sure when it's been at it's fewest. But there's a general idea.

~*~


Welcome to Update Thursday, my own personal meme (but feel free to use it if you'd like) that I started to keep track of everything going on in my book blogging/writing/own world. Basically, I list off a few different things that have happened in the last week.

1. I have finally caught up on all of Ellen Hopkins books last night. Fallout was a great way to close up the story from Crank and Glass. Her next YA novel, Perfect, is coming out in September. And she has a book geared more toward adults called Triangles coming out in October. ELLEN HOPKINS OVERLOAD! Yay!

2. I was up until 2 AM reading last night, finishing Fallout and catching up on My Blood Approves by Amanda Hocking. I'm almost done with the latter. As I was reading on her site, she used words from an E.E. Cummings (or e.e. cummings as some fans like to write out his name) poem for the titles in that series (the poem is titled "Since Feeling Is First"). I love Love LOVE E.E. Cummings. I really enjoyed reading on my Nook last night. It didn't hurt my eyes or anything!

3. I had to return The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson to the library last weekend before I could read it. The library I go to is interconnected with several other libraries and you can request books from any of those libraries. Apparently, the one I had got put on hold for somebody because they wouldn't let me renew it. I don't want that to happen again, so I'm working on getting the rest of the library books read.

4. I need to get moving on my Summer Romance Challenge ASAP. Stupid library distracting me with their awesome books available! Once I'm done with My Blood Approves, I think I'll start one of the Nook books I chose for that challenge, like The Other Boy by Hailey Abbott (haven't read one of her books in awhile).

5. I distracted myself a little bit this week by watching Seinfeld episodes with my brother. We haven't been watching the syndicated reruns on TV for a couple years now (prior to that we had probably seen literally every episode 10 times each, if not some of them more), so watching them again was too much to handle. I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.

6. Remember when I said I was holding off on buying stuff in that cart I put together on Amazon? Well, I waited... and waited... and ALMOST went ahead to check out a few days ago. But THEN. I check it out Tuesday night. EVERY. SINGLE. ITEM. DOUBLED. IN. PRICE. Blast! That's what I always get for trying to be good. There are those days when I'll fill up a cart of bargain books, then say to myself, "Do I really want all of these? Or am I just throwing books in this cart just to get the free shipping?" So I sleep on it. And then one or more books are sold out in the morning. In any case, I just went ahead and bought Gossip Girl Season 2 only from an Amazon seller. I was getting way too anxious. I had to give in.

7. I decided to not do the Wannabe Writers thing this week. I'll just give the gist of my writing update via my Update Thursday instead. I don't have much to report. My word count hasn't increased any since last week. I've been spending my time working on compiling all the background/scene/dialogue information into spiral notebooks. I need to better develop my characters and their personalities so I can make the story more believable. And I'm changing my main character's name. I have been thinking about and working on my other book idea, which isn't as light a story as the first one. The first one has the whole story planned out, the second one has more of a general plot planned. Which has been developing nicely in my mind. I hope to get at least a little bit more written out by next week.


That's it for this week!

~Jessica