August Wrap-Up // September TBR | 2014

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image source: here. edited by me.

To be honest, August wasn't a very productive month for my blog (and my reading). I got back from my holiday trip to the UK on 10th, and had so many things to do after that. I also dedicated almost the whole month to finish reading A Game of Thrones; so I only picked up comic books to alternate my reading (because I can never focus on reading two different stories at the same time). Not that I'm complaining, because A Game of Thrones is totally awesome and Westeros is still lingering in my mind. Thankfully, in the last few days of August I managed to read several Indonesian books that I bought this month. I read a total of 5 books in August (not including Son), but only managed to review 4 of them (because I seriously have no idea how to start my review on A Game of Thrones). So here are the books I've read and reviewed this month, non-review posts in August, and lastly a list of books I'm planning to read in September. spoiler: I mentioned a bit about my holiday, a course I recently take, and k-dramas!

Son (The Giver, #4) by Lois Lowry (read in July, reviewed in August)
This book was a wonderful conclusion to The Giver quartet. I am most satisfied because this final book managed to intertwine the previous three books into one solid story - even though each have different characters and settings. I'm glad I finished the series, and now I'm so ready to watch the movie adaptation ! Hopefully the movie adaptation won't disappoint me. And of course, I gave this book 5/5 stars. ✮✮✮✮✮

Tuti & Friends by R.M. Fajar
I'm really happy because one of my favorite characters from Facebook finally published a comic book! This book is created by an Indonesian illustrator and I bought this book to support local artist. I really adore the characters in this book, especially Tuti - the main character, who cannot pronounce the letter 'R' correctly and always wears a helm on her head. The stories inside are targeted for children, so even though it's still fun to read, it wasn't really exciting. 3.5/5 for Tuti ' 3 ' )/ ✮✮✮½

Kumpulan Cerita Terbaik Miiko! 7 by Ono Eriko
Although I've read all volumes of Miiko, it still doesn't stop me from buying this one - which is basically a compilation of the best episodes. In this volume, the author compiles Miiko's stories about struggles (?). I didn't write a review for this one, but I gave it 3/5 rating. Anyways, this comic helps boost the number of books I've read this month ;)) ✮✮✮

Dikatakan atau Tidak Dikatakan, Itu Tetap Cinta by Tere-Liye
I actually expected this book to be Tere-Liye's newest novel, but unfortunately it's just a poem (?) collection. But since I love Tere-Liye's writing so much, I still enjoyed this book pretty well. It's a collection of poems that talks about feelings in simple and heartwarming words. 3.5/5 stars for this one ;)) ✮✮✮½

Tomodachi (School, #2) by Winna Efendi
Winna Efendi is definitely one of many authors whose writing I really enjoy, including this one. Tomodachi is a teenlit that tells the story of friendship, family, dreams, and of course love. I remember Winna Efendi as a writer who likes to write about friendship that turns into romance, including this one. The story makes me smile and is a refreshing light read. 4/5 stars! ✮✮✮✮

My review for A Game of Thrones will be published in September (though I'm not sure when); and I'm currently half-way through reading Perfect Mess by Rina Suryakusuma - so hopefully the review will be up soon as well. Compared to the previous months, August was a pretty bad reading month because I only read 5 books. But still, I feel so accomplished for being able to finish A Game of Thrones (which is almost 900 pages long) ! I really want to continue with the second book of the Song of Ice and Fire series, but I also want to bring some life back into this blog first. I may want to read it some time around December :)) Anddd, as for the non-review posts, sadly I only posted so little - because I didn't even join Top 5 Wednesday this month. Hopefully I can post more interesting topic next month ;)) Below I also listed some of the books I'm planning to read in September (some are books I listed in August TBR but haven't read them yet.

Non-Review Posts in August:

✮ LINE Webtoon ✮

Movie Adaptation Review: The Book Thief
August 2014: Book Haul

September TBR:
(I might have more books coming in next month, so this list can change and is quite flexible)

Chronicles of Audy: 21 by Orizuka
Simple Thinking about Blood Type 2 by Park Dong Sun
Priceless Moment by Prisca Primasari
Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley
Four: A Divergent Story Collection by Veronica Roth

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

image source: here. edited by me.

Last month, I mentioned that I would write a post about my holiday to the UK if the trip was interesting enough. However, it turns out everything wasn't as interesting as I hoped it would be. It was a really tiring trip, because we had to sit for a really long time on the bus; and most of the time was dedicated to moving from one place to another (on the positive side, I had a lot of time spent reading A Game of Thrones on the road). The places we visited wasn't really fascinating for me; and the only memorable place from that trip was London! In London, me and my family separated from the group and explore London on our own (with the help of Google Map, of course). I even get to visit the beautiful Waterstones bookstore, which sells Kindle and so many amazing books - they even have book posters! But then again, I'm not a big fan of traveling, so don't judge the place by my experience and opinion ;)

As for this month, an important event that happened is I finally took a course at Arva: Fashion Design School ;D I chose Easy Sewing Short Course class, which takes about 6 months to finish. I finally decided to take this course since my parents encouraged me, and the knowledge is relevant to my family's business. And since I'm such a rookie in terms of sewing, I learned a lot of things in class. So far I'm really enjoying it, and my classmates are really friendly and fun - which makes learning so much more enjoyable :)) I won't post any pictures of my assignments because they're still pretty embarrassing to look at ㅋㅋㅋ

And another reason why I wasn't really productive with blogging this month is: K-dramas.

so if you're not a fan of K-dramas, you might want to skip this part.

The first one is 고교처세왕 (High School King), a story about a high-school boy who's forced to impersonate his identical older-brother to work in a huge company. It's about how he juggles between his high-school life as well as his work as a director. And not to forget the fact that he fell in love with a woman in his office, who's 10 years older. Despite the age gap, I find this drama really entertaining - mostly because I adore Seo In Guk (서인국) to the max; he's one of my favorite actors, and definitely my favorite singer. His chemistry with all the casts is amazing; and I give two thumbs up for his acting skills. And he's so adorable in this drama, by the way. I love his trademark of saying thank you: "Thankyouverykamsajo" (which is a combination of English thank you, and Korean's kamsahamnida).

The second one is a drama that just ended recently, and everything about it still lingers in my head because it's just so good! 연애 말고 결혼 (Marriage Not Dating) is the perfect romantic-comedy drama. It's about a woman who really wants to get married, and a guy who wish to live alone forever - but his mother kept forcing him to marry. These two get together and acted as a couple, but the girl kept doing horrible things to make his mother give up on marriage. My favorite part about this drama is how adorable the two main characters are together ! Both of the dramas I watched are aired in tvN, a cable channel that starts to produce really good dramas recently.

So, to be honest, the power of K-dramas sometimes defeats my desire to read. When I'm hooked to a K-drama, sometimes it feels like nothing else matters - I just need to watch one more episode. Please don't think I'm weird ㅋㅋㅋ

The last thing that I did in August, is cleaning up my bedroom - which involves reorganizing my bookshelves. I'm running out of space in my bookshelves so I thought I should throw out some old useless things, and also separate books that I'm going to sell/donate. If you followed my Instagram, you would've seen my stacks of books when I remove them from my shelves. It took me about 4-5 days to finish everything (cleaning every single drawers, vacuuming dusts from books, etc.) and now I'm really happy with how my bookshelves look like - especially my rainbow bookshelf that you can take a look here. If I'm not too lazy, I will make a post sharing photos of my bookshelves in this blog ;)) That's it for my August Wrap-Up, hopefully this isn't too long. Wish you all a great day, and I'll share some more life updates in my next wrap-up post ;))

by.stefaniesugia♥ .