The Sunday Post is a weekly meme for sharing our news, and plans for the next week, hosted by the wonderful Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello my lovely internet narwhals!

We're finally getting some sun and it feels like summer! On top of that, I just got a ticket home so I'm heading there on Wednesday. You could say I'm pretty excited :)
I'm pretty busy doing my dissertation research now. I've got a meeting again tomorrow (yay!) to go over my bibliography and chapter outline and then I'll be treating my dissertation as a 9-5 job, basically. Is there a better way to spend a summer?

✦ April Top 5 YA Recommendations + ARC challenge updates
I recap ARC April and start up on the May Clean Sweep Challenge

✦ Bookish Confessions: I love YA (too much?)
A discussion post - you're welcome to join in!
✦ Conversations: Reasons to blog
A bit GIF heavy...
✦ BookBuddyAThon TBR!
My TBR for the next week.

✦ The Fourline Trilogy by Pam Brondos
Pretty awesome fantasy trilogy about a student who goes through a portal into another world.

✦ Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
Alternate history where Hitler is still alive in the 1950's.

  

Basically, I got a massive amount of approvals for ARCs in two days and so... yay.

  

  

And I got a few things for my kindle...

  

✦ Review of  A Fierce and Subtle Poison

✦ (Finally) a post about the end of Camp NaNoWriMo
✦ A Bookish Confessions post!

How was your week? Did anything good happen? Let me know!

The BookBuddyAThon is a pretty relaxed Readathon from 7-13 May, where you find a buddy to take part with.
Check the details for #BookBuddyAthon Readathon, and the booktube channels of Elena @ Elena Loves Books and Sam @ Cold Tea and Crumbs who have put the event together.

So starting today, I'm taking part in this event with the brilliant Ely! You should check Ely and Michelle's blog @ Tea & Titles!

So anyway, I'm ready and excited!

There are five challenges - here are my picks for the next week:

[Covers link to Goodreads]

  

 

1) Choose three books and get your buddy to pick one from them for you to read. Ely picked Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl for me. I'm so excited to read it!

2) Buddy read a book with your buddy. Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne.

3) Read a book with your buddy's favourite colour on. Ely's favourite colour is purple, so I'm reading Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo.

4) Read a book that's title starts with the first letter of your buddy's name (or at least appears in the title if not possible). Every Day by David Levithan. I've been wanting to read this one for ages!

5) Read a book that you want to... just because. Probably Julia Vanishes by Catherine Egan, because I have way too many ARCs I need to read.

Are you taking part in BookBuddyAThon? If not, what are you reading at the moment? Are there any other interesting events going on?

Conversations is a brilliant, new fortnightly meme by Geraldine @ Corralling Books and Joan @ Fiddler Blue. Check the details and get involved! The theme for May is Blogging Habits, and the topic for this week is: ✱ What pushed you to start blogging and why do you continue to blog?

Hello lovelies! It's the weekend! Are you as happy about it as I am?

Today's topic for Conversations is one of my favourites. I've talked about my love of the blogging community before, but today the focus is a bit different. Although the community may be one of the main reasons I continue to blog, it's not why I started blogging originally ( - okay, it actually is, in part).

But let me throw some other reasons at you, okay?

We All Need Hobbies

Right? It took me forever to realise it, but over the last three years or so, I've slowly given up all the things I used to love - and started focusing on my studies instead. It was making me seriously unhappy. So I started book blogging. I can talk books, meet wonderful people, and talk some more about books. Perfect!

Being a Grad Student is Wonderful(ly Stressful)

I'm always stressed out, especially now that I only have four months left to finish my MSc. I didn't fully anticipate how stressful it really would be, but here we are.

Luckily, I have this wonderful community of book bloggers who wish me well, and are amazingly supportive!

All Weirdos Need Other Weirdos

I'm so weird. Most of you have probably realised this too by now. When I meet someone else who's a little odd too? It's a party, basically.

Things I like (that make me weird [according to normal people])

• skeletons (like, real ones)
• being in a bone lab alone (it's really nice and calm),
• angry feminist rants,
• angry rants about how awful people are (title: I Hate People),
• talking to dogs like they're people,
• spending entire days talking to cats,
• pretending I know what the letters IT stand for,
• rapping along to anything from Hamilton,
• singing random lines from the Book of Mormon *at* people and making them uncomfortable,
• ugly-crying because something happened in a book,
• randomly bursting into song (I have a musical tune for any occasion),

Right. Too much ammunition for the BFF...

I'm Actually a Hermit/Vampire/Anti-Social Superhero

Sometimes I don't want to see people for days on end. It's nice to have a way to still talk to people about your interests despite being stuck home.

To Conclude: Being Social Yet Anti-Social is the Best

What about you? What pushed you to start blogging? Why do you continue? Let me know in the comments!

Her story begins on a train. The year is 1956, and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule. To commemorate their Great Victory, Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host the Axis Tour: an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents. The victor is awarded an audience with the highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victor’s Ball in Tokyo. Yael, a former death camp prisoner, has witnessed too much suffering, and the five wolves tattooed on her arm are a constant reminder of the loved ones she lost. The resistance has given Yael one goal: Win the race and kill Hitler. A survivor of painful human experimentation, Yael has the power to skinshift and must complete her mission by impersonating last year’s only female racer, Adele Wolfe. This deception becomes more difficult when Felix, Adele twin’s brother, and Luka, her former love interest, enter the race and watch Yael’s every move. But as Yael grows closer to the other competitors, can she bring herself to be as ruthless as she needs to be to avoid discovery and complete her mission? Synopsis from Goodreads. ✱ Pages: 388 (hardcover) ✱ Publication date: October 2015 ✱ Series: Wolf by Wolf #1 ✱ Provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review ✱ Amazon UK | Amazon US

I went in only knowing that this was an alternate history where Hitler lived. Pretty interesting (and scary) premise, right?

The Plot

I can't believe I actually read a book that's basically about motorcycle racing. I have absolutely no interest in motorcycles or racing... or motorcycle racing. But Wolf by Wolf is so good. I got really caught up in the plot, especially because the story-telling happens in the 'then' and 'now' - describing Yael's childhood and the horrors she has seen, as well as the deadly race she is caught in, in the present. Wolf by Wolf keeps moving at a fast pace (literally and figuratively), and there's something really original about this alternate history.

Yael

A superb protagonist who faces her problems head on and struggles to do what she thinks is right,Yael is interesting and relatable. Because of her peculiar ability to skinshift ( - to change her looks at will), she takes on what could be the most important task in the resistance against Hitler, and she concentrates on that mission in a way that really makes you respect her. The rest of the resistance is easy to side with too, and the other characters who take part in the Axis Tour get more and more interesting as the story progresses and we learn about them, little by little.

Important Themes

Graudin's brilliant writing brings the story to life and makes us wonder about questions of morality and identity. These are pretty big themes to grapple with, but it's done extremely well: Yael's ability to skinshift makes you wonder what it is that makes a person who they are. If you can change the way you look, who does that make you? Questions of morality come up too - is it right to do things that are wrong if it's for the greater good? Important things are explored in a very smart way in this story, and I couldn't help but appreciate that.

Exciting and exceedingly enjoyable, Wolf by Wolf is an amazing work of alternate history.

Have you read this one or other books that focus on alternate history?

Young Adult fiction is one of my most favouritest things ever.

You might be thinking, 'Annika, that's not really even a confession. We all knew this already.' Well, I don't blame you. I have been reading a lot of YA lately. But why do I feel like (non-bookish) people will judge me for reading YA? Do you feel the same way?

My Favourite Things About YA ✱ Not overly complicated with metaphors - it's acceptable to talk about things in a straightforward, understandable way. ✱ Works in any genre. YA sci-fi? Awesome! YA romance? So cute! YA fantasy? I'm already hooked.  ✱ Novel length tends to be towards the smaller side. You can easily binge a book in a day! It's a pretty wonderful thing. Why YA is so important ✱ I'm pretty firmly of the opinion that every single person can benefit from reading. I give a lot of credit to books for having a big part in raising me - I lived in books growing up! The things is, so many things can be seen in, and taught through the pages of a book. I learned about morality, equality, compassion. You can't help but think and learn when you read. ✱ Moving slightly away from that tangent, YA fiction has a part to play in getting kids to read. So it's exciting that it's such a big thing, such a big market right now. It also means that YA authors have a lot of responsibility: it's really important to get these books right. Maybe that's why we talk about diversity in YA so much? The Drawbacks ✱ Sometimes YA can seem too formulaic. There's the heroine, there's the love interest, introduced in the first few pages... But I suppose every book is formulaic, so maybe that's a bit of a stupid thing for me to say?  ✱ People are judgy! Did you see Ezrah's post related to this? She talks about how every romance and YA reader will sometimes get weird looks for their reading choices. Focusing on YA: I get it, people. Young adult fiction is often put on the same shelf as children's literature. This does not mean that adults can't read it. I find YA often has more important things to say than a lot of 'adult' literature.

What do you think about YA? Do you read a lot of it? Do you think YA is important? Let me know! xx