Book Unhaul Challenge | Allison Does...

books
One of my favorite Booktubers, booksandlala, has been killing it lately. She recently uploaded a video called Book Unhaul Challenge, in which she -- you guessed it -- challenged herself to unhaul books according to a list of certain criteria. Unhauling, if you don't know, is basically culling a certain amount of books off of your shelves to clear up space and make yourself feel terribly guilty about all of the money you spent on things you have never read or didn't like (okay, it doesn't make everyone feel guilty, that's just a me thing). "Allison," I said to myself, "you should do this. You need to make room and you know there are books in your room you are never going to read."

Roster Rewind | 2013 Detroit Tigers

balks
In baseball, things change fast. Whether it be by trade, free agency, or retirement, rosters go through multitudes of changes between both the off- and on-season. In this new blog series, I am going to pick different teams and different years -- sometimes random, sometimes not -- and look at where they are now. Is an old favorite playing overseas or maybe selling real estate in southeast Michigan (spoiler alert!)? Let's find out with Roster Rewind.

March Favorites | 2018

2018
Yes, I am ashamed that I only got one post up this month. I have excuses but I won't make you sit through them, reader. I'll try to be better.

Reads
  • I rated only one book a full 5 stars this month and it was, with little to no surprise, I'll Be Gone In the Dark by Michelle McNamara. If you haven't heard about this book you're hearing about it now. It changed me. It's part true crime, part memoir, all really good. The switches from Michelle's writing to that put together by her team were seamless and the forward and afterward by Gillian Flynn and Patton Oswalt, respectively, made the book that much more special. 
  • I read the anthology All Out: The No Longer Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout the Ages. While I thought that the second half of the collection was really lackluster and brought down my overall rating, I loved quite a few of the stories and gave three of them five stars: "Burnt Umber" by Mackenzi Lee, "New Year" by Malinda Lo, and "Every Shade of Red" by Elliot Wake.
  • I read a really interesting article about Ichiro Suzuki. It talked about his routine and his mindset while waiting to sign with a team. 
Screen
  • I had some favorite YouTube videos in March but I also continued to love content from some of my favorite creators:
  • I saw three movies in the theater this month and I loved all of them: Annihilation; A Wrinkle In Time; and Love, Simon. The former was scary and trippy and made me think way too much and the cast was really great. The middle made me cry literally 11 times and, despite seeing a lot of bad reviews, I thought it was great! The latter took my breath away. I haven't read Simon Versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda but I absolutely loved this film. I cried (obviously), I laughed (a lot), and I was so happy to see this kind of love story play out on the big screen. 
  • Guys, Netflix brought it this month. I watched Ugly Delicious, On My Block, Nailed It!, and the second season of Santa Clarita Diet. I loved all of them. 
  • I used to watch Survivor when I was way younger but I haven't watched in years. For some reason, though, I really wanted to watch this season, so I am. I'm really enjoying it. I forgot how intense it can get and how many feelings I can feel during tribal council.
  • Good Girls is a new series on NBC and I'm watching it with my sister and we are really liking it. It has three actresses I love as the leads (Retta, Christina Hendricks, and Mae Whitman) and it has a great mix of humor, drama, and shocks. 
Music
  • Those three movies I saw? I loved the music, too. In the case of Annihiliation, this means a score, while the other two had soundtracks full of great songs. The Love, Simon OST was curated by Jack Antonoff (Bleachers) so of course I was going to love it and A Wrinkle In Time had some great songs from Sade, Sia, and Chloe x Halle.
  • Hayley Kiyoko is the lesbian pop goddess we need. Her debut album, Expectations, blew my mind and continues to blow my mind (it has only been three days but still). My favorite songs include "What I Need (feat. Kehlani)," "Mercy/Gatekeeper," and "Molecules."
  • I've never really listened to Kacey Musgraves except for when her songs would come on the radio at work, but I listened to her just released album Golden Hour and I love it. It's super chill and some songs remind me a lot of my favorite album of 2016, Miranda Lambert's The Weight of These Wings. Standouts include "Happy & Sad," "Velvet Elvis," and "High Horse."
  • The Aces. Still. While their album doesn't come out until Friday, they released two more songs from it and NPR has an early stream of the entire thing. And it's good. Really fucking good. I'm not going to go into too much detail here and I'm not going to list favorite tracks yet because I will definitely still be obsessed with it for next month's favorites post. 
Other
  • The Sims Mobile was finally available for me and, guys, I'm still addicted to it and it has been weeks. It's kind of basic but I absolutely love it. I'm on my third generation and I'm really taking my time with this one. The basic premise of the game is you pick stories for your Sims to complete in their career, relationships, and hobby. As they make progress, you pick different traits for them that reap different rewards. Once they've played for a bit with all four (or five? I don't remember) traits, you can, but don't have to, retire them. With my family now, I'm really focused on getting them to complete their marriage, career, and hobby stories. They have two kids, one toddler and one baby, and I'm really happy with the progress I'm making in this generation. 
  • I started listening to two podcasts this month (one new and one new to me) and they have very quickly jumped up to be a couple of my favorites:
    • Three Swings - This is hosted by Rhea Butcher, whom I absolutely love, and it's so, so good. It's a baseball podcast at its roots, but so many other things are touched on. Rhea is a great host and their guests are always funny and knowledgeable and super interesting to listen to.
    • Inside the Disney Vault - Pretty self-explanatory, each week this crew takes a movie in the Disney vault and talks about it. They're currently in the real Renaissance era for Disney, talking about some of my personal favorites like The Lion King, Pocahontas, and The Little Mermaid. 
  • It is officially SPRING! It may not feel like it all the time yet (or most of the time, really), but it is Spring and it is lovely and I cannot wait for more green grass and flowers and beautifulness. Except it snowed on Saturday and is supposed to snow again tomorrow. Great. Thanks, Michigan.
Those were some of my favorite things for March and I'm sure April will have a bunch of new things to talk about. (Also, I definitely will post more this month. Maybe. Don't quote me.)
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