Weekly Wrap-Up (46)

Hey all, Dani here.

We have already finished one whole week of the new year, which is impressive. I’d love to say that on a global scale that this was a wonderful week to start the new decade, but that would be a massive lie. Honestly between all the hate, violence, war, and natural disasters occurring all over, it makes me very nervous and scared for the future. All I can do for my part is to try not to be a part of spreading that hate and violence around, and to help clean up our world, while offering whatever support I can to people in areas that have been ravaged, like a lot of Australia with the massive fire that is currently destroying so many homes and lives.

Wow, sorry, I didn’t mean for my post to start out so heavy, but it would be silly (to me) if I didn’t at least address the current state of the world.

But today’s post is about my weekly wrap up, it’s all talk about what I’ve done, what I’ve tried, what I’ve played, what I’ve watched, and what I’ve read in the past week. I started this series almost two years ago, with a significant spruce up around this time last year, and it has certainly helped me with consistency on the blog.

Anyway, it was a pretty big week for trying new things. Damian got me to sit down and try to play Borderlands 3 with him. We’ve played a couple times–I’m playing Amara, the Siren–and being a FPS game, it’s not my favorite and doesn’t work well with my style of gameplay, but it isn’t horrible. I think I’m at like level 9 or 10, so we’re not very far into the game at all. Damian on the other hand has already played through the main storyline for Borderlands 3 and the Casino Heist DLC. Borderlands is one of those video game series that he really enjoys.

This week I also decided that I wanted to try cooking a whole turkey for the first time. We invited a few friends over to have a dinner and game night. While only one friend actually showed up, there were no complaints about the turkey. And then after we ate, Damian and I were introduced to the board game Terraforming Mars, which is pretty great. Yes, it is a longer game, because it took a few hours to play through, but there was a lot to do, and clearly a few different strategies for how to rack up the most victory points.

I guess the final big piece of news update from the past week is that as a last minute thing I decided to jump into Calendar Girls and help Flavia host it while Katie and Adrienne take a small well-deserved break. So I’m trying to be a help with keeping the group running, and I’ve never managed something like this before, so it is a fun and interesting learning curve. But I am happy to be able to be helpful and I look forward to seeing what themes get chosen in the upcoming months.

Okay, next up would be the “watches” wrap-up. We watched “Abominable,” because it is a cute movie and we wanted to see it again. We also went to see “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” in theaters, and that was nice. Oh, and of course we watched the entirety of season one of “The Witcher.” I’m currently very much in a Witcher mood, and will probably try the video game sometime in the near future. I also randomly decided to start a binge re-watch of “Reign,” so I’m almost finished with season one. Oh, and I started re-watching “Arrow” season four.

Finally I guess it’s time to talk about books. My first “completed” read of 2020 was not the one I had planned to be my first, and that’s because I sadly started my year with a DNF before I could finish Ruthless Gods. I was working on prepping ahead a few Weekend Writer posts, and I just couldn’t keep going with The War of Art by Steven Pressfield; I’ve already got my post/review up for it if you want to check it out. After that the reads just kept coming. I did finish Ruthless Gods by Emily A Duncan, The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski, Steel Crow Saga by Paul Krueger, On Being Stuck by Laraine Herring, and The Never-Tilting World by Rin Chupeco.

As for my current reads, of course I’m in the middle of a couple of books: Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo, Reverie by Ryan La Sala, and Don’t Read the Comments by Eric Smith. I honestly had hoped to finish the new Bardugo book during my work’s winter shutdown, but I was actually pretty lazy and just watched more television instead. Then I’ve heard great things about La Sala’s debut, and it sounded interesting so I had to pick it up, and finally I’m on the blog tour for Smith’s newest book and I’m excited to have my post on January 30th, but I have to finish the book before I can write my review. So yeah, I’m hoping to keep my good read January going.

I’m actually pretty happy with my reading progress so far in 2020.

Finally there’s what I’m hoping to read in the next week. Thanks to not finishing my huge December TBR, and having a very long list of NetGalley reads, I have so many books that I’m hoping to read soon, but for the moment these ones are my plan. I need to pick up Ashlords by Scott Reintgen, Highfire by Eoin Colfer, The Unwilling by Kelly Braffet, and The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein.

So obviously based on my upcoming reads I’m hoping to tackle a few of my NetGalley ARCs, and then dive into the book I’m delving into for Weekend Writer after I write up the posts for On Being Stuck, which is the next Weekend Writer book. Look at that: I pretty much just spoiled the next two books for my series on writing. But I think they are both good ones to tackle. The worldbuilding one is a re-read for me and I found it to be immensely helpful, and writer’s block is something I have struggled with for quite some time, so finding books that talk about that issue are sort of a priority for me at the moment.

All right, well that’s all from me for today. What are you currently reading? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll be back soon with more bookish content.