Hey guys!

Welcome to this week’s Tuesday Talks. It’s a new month, which means new topics to discuss, and we all know how much fun that is! If you are curious about what the topics will be for this month, or if you want to participate in Tuesday Talks on your own blog or YouTube channel, go ahead and check out the Tuesday Talks group on GoodReads. Please feel free to comment your thoughts, and let me know if you will start joining in on the discussions! It’s always fun to read new thoughts.

What do you think of required reading in school?

It’s kind of a double edged sword for me. Sometimes, I feel like having required reading is essential to the topic of discussion for whatever is happening during that time. Let’s say that your professor is requiring you to read up on some past law cases in order to understand the topic of Habeus Corpus. I can understand why that type of required reading is important. But what if the topic is poetry and instead of being able to choose your favorite poem, you can only read what your professor tells you to read, and it’s not something that speaks to you or one that you can understand solely because you can’t relate to what the author is saying? Is it fair that you have to read it just because the professor feels like that particular poem should be required? I don’t think so.

It could just be because I don’t like to be forced to read something that I don’t find interesting, or it could be that I don’t want to have to read a required reading when it takes up my time to read the rest of the books I have on my shelves. Trust me when I say I have a lot of catching up to do. I think that if it will help me understand the topic that I’m currently learning at that moment in time, and it actually makes sense to me, then I’m down to read it. If not, then don’t waste my time.

Wow that one was actually really short. Sorry about that. What do you guys think about required reading? Yay or Nay? Let me know.

Hey Everyone!

Welcome to this week’s segment of Tuesday Talks. Every week, there is a new topic of discussion that each of us involved in the Tuesday Talks group on GoodReads participates in. We either post a blog post answering the topic or post a video to YouTube. Unfortunately, I don’t have the right equipment to make worthwhile videos so I’ve stuck with writing blog posts for now. Hope you guys like this one, and please feel free to comment and start a discussion with me. That’s always fun and will never be turned away!

Name some new releases you are looking forward to.

The newest release that I’m looking forward to is The Siren by Kiera Cass. It just published today and I am dying to hold it in my hands and read it. After finally caving in and reading The Selection by the same author, I feel like I will really like her standalone book. I also heard that she actually published a version of The Siren much earlier than today, but she either republished it and edited it, or something along those lines. Either way, I really want to read it as soon as possible. Another reason why I want to read it is because one of the groups I follow on both Instagram and GoodReads has chosen this book as our February group read, so that’s another good reason!

Another new release that I’m really looking forward to is The Last Star by Rick Yancey. This is the final installment to The 5th Wave series and I need to know how the story ends. The first book was amazing and I’ve been holding off on reading the second book for when the third book comes out so I’m not waiting too long in between them. It may not make sense to some people, but I made that mistake with The Selection series so now I’m dying to know how the series ends but I have to wait until May or even August before the last book comes out. So with this book, I’m going to wait to read the next to last book until the last one comes out! I hope that makes sense a little bit.

So far that’s all I’m really looking forward to, but if I think of another one, I will amend my blog post. As always, please feel free to comment your thoughts. Let me know what you are looking forward to, and you may end up jogging my memory on what I’m missing!

Hey everyone!

Here is another segment to Tuesday Talks. So far so good. I’ve been keeping up with the weekly discussions and having a lot of fun writing my thoughts about them. Please feel free to leave me any comments about the topic for this week, and also check out the Tuesday Talks group in GoodReads and possibly start your own Tuesday Talks journey! Trust me, it’s really fun.

What challenges do you hope to participate in?

There are so many GoodReads groups with so many challenges in each one. Trust me when I say that it can get pretty overwhelming when they all happen at the same time. With a lot of the groups that GoodReads has, many of the challenges involve reading a certain amount of books in the required time limit. Sometimes it can be reading 10 books in one month, or 20 books in six months. Whatever the case may be, it can be extremely difficult to keep track of every single challenge you are in and how many books you have to read for each in order to consider the challenge conquered. Sometimes it’s just not possible to complete every single challenge for each month, and that is totally okay. It’s all a matter of pacing yourself, taking on challenges that you know you can handle without overwhelming yourself, and sticking to at least one at a time.

I haven’t gone back to each of the groups I follow yet to see what kind of challenges they have this year but I do plan on checking them out. One of the groups that I really liked was called A Million More Pages. They always had a lot of challenges to participate in and they were extremely active the last time I was fully engaged in that group. I hope to go back in that group and see what small challenge I can participate in to get my reading juices flowing again. I would probably participate in a challenge that lasted for longer than a month so that I wouldn’t feel pressured to finish more than one book in a single month, especially if it starts to get really busy for me at work or just because I don’t find enough time to read as much as I need to for the challenge.

The main challenge that I will participate in every year that I am able to is, of course, the year reading challenge that is on GoodReads. Every year, you give yourself a goal of how many books you want to read by the end of the year, and you track your progress using GoodReads. As long as you put the date that you start and the date that you finish each book, all the ones that you finish in the allotted year (this year would be 2016 of course) will count towards your goal. That one is the easiest for me to do because I get to choose how many books I want to strive for, and I can push myself a little more each year. So far, I have read three books this year, and my official goal for GoodReads is 15. I will try to push myself to read 40 books in all, especially since last year I was so close at 39. Yes, I was one book short! So I am hoping to actually hit 40 books this year. Wish me luck.

That’s all I have for you guys this week. I know that it wasn’t as good as some of my other posts, but I still need to do more research on what kind of challenges I plan on participating in. Feel free to let me know of any challenges that you think are good ones to try out, and I will definitely check them out!