Book Unhaul Challenge | Allison Does...

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

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

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.)

Creativity and Trying to Find It

I like to think of myself as a creative person. Actually, I'm confident in saying that yes, I am a creative person. The problem, though, is honing that creativity, finding something to channel it towards, something that will stick and not just be some fleeting one week hobby. Let me briefly talk about a few things that I have enjoyed in the past or am currently enjoying when it comes to letting my creativity flow (read: these are things that I got obsessed with and probably spent a good amount of money on only to let them fall by the wayside).

February Favorites | 2018

Reads
I read a lot of good stuff this month - and it wasn't all just books (okay, most of it was books). I'm trying to read more articles, interviews, things like that, but I always forget or just scroll past. I'm working on it.

  • The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
    • I wrote a review for this book, which you can find here. I loved it so, so much. It tore me apart and put me back together again - more than once - and Leni is a character that will stay with me for a very long time. This isn't an easy read by any means, but it transports you to a time and place where there is one key to everything: surviving.
  • The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
    • I also wrote a review for this one, click here. I have had my eye on this book for a while and I've always been kind of interested in it, but that interest jumped way up when I heard it had some queer characters. It still took me a little while to read it but I am so glad I did. What a piece of fiction. It is all at once contemporary and historical and features incredible women.
  • "Hunting -- and Haunted By -- a Serial Killer" by Alexandra Alter for The New York Times
    • This article is about Michelle McNamara and her posthumously published book, I'll Be Gone in the Dark, which came out yesterday (the 27th). This book is definitely one of my most anticipated of the year and it is now sitting in an unread stack, waiting to be picked up. Alter's article kind of goes through the process of putting this book together after McNamara's death and it was really interesting to read.
Screen
I think it's going to be a trend that this category always has the most things to talk about. From the movie screen, to the TV screen, to my laptop screen, I watched a lot of good stuff in February.

  • Black Panther
    • This movie is everything. I have not watched a lot of Marvel movies, I'll be honest, so I don't consider myself a fan or an expert or anything like that. This one blew me away. The cast is beautiful and amazing and so, so good at bringing these characters to life. The story is great, the villain is great, the music is great (more on that later), everything is great. The moments of humor throughout really added to the film and the parts that were meant to hit on sadder emotions excelled at that, as well. The buzz for Black Panther is greatly deserved.
  • The Winter Olympics
    • Like the rest of my Twitter feed, I was watching the Olympics. While I mainly enjoy figure skating and curling, I also found new love for snowboarding and the more extreme skiing. It's always nice when your country medals, but I wasn't too worried about that. Instead, I just loved watching skaters from everywhere wow me on the ice and get huge air on their snowboards. Adam Rippon is my new hero, though.
  • Down to Disness
    • This is a series of YouTube videos done by Sarah Sterling. Each month (more or less), she takes a Disney animated movie and really breaks it down. She talks about the animation processes it uses, the voice actors, the overall impact that film has on Disney and the animated film industry as a whole, and she does it really, really well. It shows that Sarah puts a lot of time and research into these videos. There are 31 of them as of now, I think, and I watched all of them this month. 
  • Other YouTube
  • Stuff About Food
    • I love watching reality shows about food and this month I watched a few of them. The Great Australian Bake Off came back for a new season (in January) but I didn't know until this month, so I got all caught up on that. I don't think any Bake Off can replace the original British version (with Mel and Sue and Mary and Paul), but I will watch them all anyways. This season, I'm rooting for Barb and Raeesa. 
    • Speaking of The Great British Bake Off, how did I not know that winner Nadiya hosted a cooking competition show called The Big Family Cooking Showdown?! I found it on Netflix and immediately binged all of it. Love, love, love. Please let there be a season two.
  • Waco
    • I will admit that my interest for this show immediately stemmed from the fact that it stars Michael Shannon and Taylor Kitsch. I do like shows that deal with real events and while I had heard about this one, I didn't know the exact details around it. My sister and I are watching this together (there is one more episode left as of me writing this) and I am not ready for that finale (because I read up on what happened and... oh boy). I will say that I do have some qualms with this show; for one, I feel like it could have done a better job establishing the Branch Davidians because I definitely didn't know (but I probably should have) that they were a thing outside of Karesh. Overall, though, this has been a really enjoyable series and I will always love Michael Shannon.
Music
Really good music was released in February. Some of it was from artists I have never listened to, some of it was from those that are familiar to me. Whatever the case was, February was a month for straight-up bops.

  • Black Panther Soundtrack and Score
    • As I mentioned earlier, Black Panther is everything and the music is no exception. Both the score and soundtrack (curated by Kendrick Lamar) are multiple fire emojis. I am obsessed with three particular sounds on the soundtrack: “Pray For Me” (The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar), “All the Stars” (Kendrick Lamar and SZA) and “Black Panther (Kendrick Lamar)”. On another note, can you tell I like Kendrick Lamar? The score fits so perfectly with the film and these themes and cultural influences flow over seamlessly onto the soundtrack.
  • Janelle Monáe
    • She is back and better than ever. Monáe’s two new tracks, “Make Me Feel” and “Django Jane” are completely different but still undoubtedly Janelle. While the former is my personal favorite of the two, with it’s heavy Prince influence and incredible bisexual message (I was trying to put this eloquently but really I just wanna all-caps the shit out of it), the latter is also impeccable. Her new album drops in April and I cannot wait.
  • Rae Morris
    • I listened to this song “Do It” on a whim, right, and it was fine and I wrote the album release date in my planner and listened to it when it came out and then – WHAM! New obsession. “Do It” is so much more than fine, it’s a highly contagious B O P. This album combines the catchiest of pop with ballads that shine. Other favorites include: “Atletico (The Only One),” “Lower the Tone,” and “Rose Garden.”
  • The Aces
    • The Aces released a great EP last year (and an equally great acoustic version of it this year), and they are now promoting a new album due out in April. They have released three new songs: "Fake Nice," "Volcanic Love," and "Lovin is Bible." Of the three, "Volcanic Love" is definitely my favorite but they are all so good. If they release anything else before the album, I'm not sure if I will listen to it, just because I want to have as much new stuff as possible, but I highly recommend that everyone listen to this band.
Other
Same ol', same ol'. I liked Disney things, boyfriend things, getting my life in order things.

  • Valentine's Day
    • I love this commercial holiday. I love my boyfriend. After having a panic attack on the night that I was supposed to drive down to him, I honestly didn’t think that we were going to spend this holiday together but I made it and we did and it meant so much to me. Besides the anniversary of us meeting each other in real life for the first time, we haven’t spent a holiday, birthday, or other anniversary together – this was the first one! We had a really nice dinner and he took me to the Disney store and it was a really good day.
  • Disney Puzzles, Pins, and Pop!s
    • Puzzles are still my favorite way to relax when I want to be away from the screen (I mean, books, I guess, but you know what I mean) and I got a lot of new ones this month thanks to my tax refund. My favorite one I put together was this Cinderella one that had a bunch of other characters scattered throughout. I got a couple new multi-packs that include another The Little Mermaid image, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast, among others. I also got an 101 Dalmatians one that is AMAZING.
    • I got a couple of new pins this month that I'm in love with. I opened a Kingdom of Cute mystery pin box and got Dumbo and he is adorable and a great addition to my pin board. On the first of the month, I got the pin that became my favorite before I even had it in my hands: the limited edition Little Mermaid flip pin. Also, neither of those photos are mine.
    • To continue with the Ariel and Eric theme, the Funko Disney Treasures box included these exclusive Ariel and Eric wedding Pop!s (again, not my photo). I don't think I need to say anything else. Just look at them.
  • Burt's Bees Intense Hydration Nourishing Facial Water with Clary Sage
    • I've been trying to find a skin care routine that works for me. I have super dry skin that, if left neglected, turns into a dried out corn husk. I use a lot of Burt's Bees products (for both my sensitive and dry skin needs) and I tried this one for the first time in February. I don't know if it's marketed as a toner or cleanser or whatever, but it does take some residual grime off of my face after I cleanse. It also just leaves my face feeling super refreshed and ready to go and pairs great with the night moisturizer from the same Intense Hydration line.
  • Blogging
    • I'm back at it (as evidenced by this very post)! For now. Er... for good? For now. I'm trying to come up with some ideas that I will be super excited to post for my readers. I also had a really great opportunity this month; I read and reviewed a baseball novel for a new blog, All Heels on Deck. The book was Squeeze Play by Jane Leavy and you can find my post here! This blog is dedicated to giving women of all backgrounds a voice in the baseball world. It's really exciting and important and everyone should read it.

Playing Catch-Up | What Have I Been Reading in 2018?

We have one week left in February (that sounds fake, but okay) and I have read some really good things this year. Instead of doing a detailed overview of all 14 books that I've read so far and prattle on for ages, I'm going to highlight some highs and lows and also talk about some overall goals (if you can call them that) I have for this reading year. I am keeping an up-to-date Twitter thread on every book that I read and you can see that here (like, I've read a few super great thrillers that I won't be talking about in this post but you should definitely check them out in that thread).

On Loving Baseball and Not Knowing How to Write About It

Here we are. The 2018 baseball season rapidly approaches and I haven't posted on this blog in a year or more. I want to, I really do. I know that you don't believe me, reader. My track record is so, so poor, but I'm here and I had an idea and I'm going to write it and we'll see where this all goes. Sound good? Okay.
© Books and Balks. Powered by Blogger.