Book Nerd – dinipandareads.

Top 5 Saturday: The Longest Books I’ve Read

Published on April 17, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads15 Comments

Welcome back to another Top 5 Saturday! Just in case you don’t know Top 5 Saturday is a weekly meme created by Mandy @ Devouring Books and it’s where we list the top five books (they can be books on your TBR, favourite books, books you loved/hated) based on the week’s topic. You can see the upcoming schedule at the end of my post 🙂 This week’s topic is actually: Longest Books (Books you’ve rad, on your TBR.)

I usually look at books that are on my TBR for my Saturday posts but I feel like I’ve already looked at the biggest books on my to-read list quite a few times already so I thought it’d be fun to take a look back at the longest books I have read. I had a few predictions for some titles but I was surprised to find only one of my ‘predictions’ made it onto this list, and it was the shortest of the lot! I also focused this list on books that are standalones or the first books in a series, so there were a couple that were even longer than the ones mentioned here but they were all the third or even fifth and sixth books in a series. All that being said, here are some of the biggest chonksters I’ve managed to tackle:

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First Lines Friday – 16 April

Published on April 16, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads9 Comments

Happy Friday book lovers! We’re back with another First Lines Friday, a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? Here are the rules:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“No matter what century you live in, the world will always be filled with assholes.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Top 5 Saturday: Bloody Books!

Published on April 11, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads15 Comments

So… I’m surprised by how much I struggled to come up with five books on my TBR for this prompt! I even struggled to think of five books that I’ve already read with blood on the cover and I don’t know why but this really surprises me? 😂 What I’ve decided to do for this week’s cover is take the prompt literally and I’ve found five books with the word blood on the cover (cos at least this was easier to find on my Goodreads TBR)! Without further ado… Here are five ‘blood-y’ books that I hope to read this year (she said) 😉:

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First Lines Friday – 09 April

Published on April 9, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads11 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“I sit with my wrists cuffed to the table and I think, But that I am forbid / To tell the secrets of my prison-house, / I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / Would harrow up thy soul. The guard stands by the door, watching me, like he’s waiting for something to happen.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Top 5 Saturday: Books with Diverse Characters

Published on April 3, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads20 Comments

Well, this is gonna be tough because I can pick way more than five books with diverse characters off my TBR, and I’m looking forward to reading all of them soon! In recent years, I’ve made an active effort to diversify my reads because I realised that many of the books I had access to in the main bookstores in Indonesia tended to feature mostly white authors writing white characters. I also never questioned what I was reading and never actively sought out diverse reads—well, not anymore! It has been amazing to read more stories with characters of different ethnicities, nationalities, religions, LGBTQ+ and abilities in contemporaries, romances, and even SFF and I can’t wait to read even more in the future! For this prompt I decided to focus on books with Asian characters because I love to see the Asian rep! So without further ado, here are five books with diverse characters that I’m really excited for.

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First Lines Friday – 02 April

Published on April 2, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads7 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a brilliant idea, conceived and executed by a clever young woman, must be claimed by a man.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Top 5 Saturday: Books Set in the Desert

Published on March 27, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads23 Comments

I’ve missed a couple Saturday posts but last week’s topic was love triangles and I would’ve struggled hard to have come up with any books cos love triangles are not my jam. It is one of my most hated tropes because the angst is so real and I’m not for that. But I digress! I’m glad be back and posting for today’s desert prompt. All of these are on my TBR although I’ve heard great things about the books and am looking forward to checking them out. They’re all (unsurprisingly) of the fantasy genre and surprisingly, none of them are retellings of the one thousand and one nights (at least I don’t think so but please let me know in the comments if I’m wrong)! I’m not particularly fussed about desert settings–I don’t seek out books with this setting but I also don’t mind reading stories set in the desert. Admittedly, I can actually only recall one desert fantasy and that’s The Kinder Poison (which is awesome and I would highly recommend btw)! On that note, here are five books with desert settings that I’d love to read (soonish):

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First Lines Friday – 26 March

Published on March 26, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads8 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“There’s blood on my hands, blood between my toes, blood speckled in my hair. It’s splashed across my chest, and to my horror, I can taste a few droplets on my lips.
There’s far too much of it staining the kitchen’s polished floors. No one can survive that much blood loss, not even the monster at my feet.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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First Lines Friday – 12 March

Published on March 13, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads2 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

First lines:

“I saw my mother raise a man from the dead. “It still didn’t help him much, my love,” she told me. But I saw her do it all the same. That’s how I knew she was magic.”

Do you recognize the book these first lines come from?

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Top 5 Saturday: Books I’d Gift Others!

Published on March 7, 2021June 23, 2021 by dinipandareads22 Comments

This prompt has made me realise that… I’ve never really been gifted books before! Hmm… 🤔 I mean, I’ve won giveaways, I’ve had books given to me based on request but I’ve only received a book as a gift three times that I can recall. I’m finding that a little hard to believe and we know my memory is terrible, but I really can’t think of any other times other than a random Secret Santa (Doctor Zhivago), a random “you-like-to-read?!” gift from a family friend (Catch-22), and a summer reunion gift from my bestie (a Nora Roberts book)! That’s a little sad…? LOL, but I digress! 😂 Since it is what it is, I’ve decided to focus today’s post on five books I’d love to gift people! Most of these will come as no surprise to many since I’ve gushed about these books quite often but I’d love for others to also experience the magic of these books ❤️