December 2018 Wrap up & January 2019 TBR

Welcome to my first post in 2019!

As always, since the end of the year are crammed with yearly wrap-up, I will post the monthly wrap up in January. I feel like it’s a great way to keep myself from being overwhelmed with making wrap ups and focus only on one type. So without further ado, let’s see what I read in December 2018!

1. THE WICKED SAINTS by Emily Duncan {e-ARC} // ✰✰✰.5
2. THE UNTEACHABLES by Gordon Korman {e-ARC} // ✰✰✰✰.5
3. THE SUFFERING by Rin Chupeco {e-ARC} // ✰✰✰✰✰
4. IF WE WERE VILLAINS by M.L Rio // ✰✰✰✰.5
5. ANGEL AND BAVAR by Amy Wilson {e-ARC} // DNF at 39%
6. HISTORY’S GREATEST VILLAINS #1: DRACULA {e-ARC} // ✰✰✰
7. THE AFTERLIFE OF HOLLY CHASE by Cynthia Hand // ✰✰✰✰

1. VENGEFUL by V.E Schwab
2. OUTRUN THE WIND by Elizabeth Tammi {e-ARC}
3. THE CRUEL PRINCE by Holly Black
4. NEED by Carrie Jones (re-read)
5. THE ANTIDOTE by Shelley Sackier {e-ARC}

With the holiday season, come blogmas and year end lists all around. Therefore, there are many amazing content to choose for from each blogger as they tend to post more in this month!

• So many amazing tags, with the most popular one this year the bookish naughty or nice tag.
• Readathons: Destiny @ Howling Libraries shared her TBR, Caro @ Book Chesire Cat listed all the festive ones happening this month, and The Wolf and the Books listed all readathons happening this month, festive or not.
• I am not going to recommend any wintery/christmassy recommendations as they are everywhere, along with memes post (t5w, t101, t5t, etc).
• Marie @ Drizzle and Hurricane wonders whether we can truly avoid bookish hype?
• Kelly @ Another Book in the Wall rest her case about why Harry Potter is the perfect winter read.
• Breanna @ Paws and Paperbacks reviewed Winter of the Witch by Katherine Arden, which is my 2019 most anticipated, and now I’m even more hyped!
• Zooky @ Book Bum explains why she wants happier marriage in literature.
• CW @ The Quiet Pond shares some Christmas corgi wallpaper to add your festivities!
• As someone who studies biomedicine and will definitely work closely with this technology in the future, the news of gene editing babies using CRISPR technology really came as a shock for me. This is because the technology itself is commonly used to edit genes of bacteria, virus, and animals. As for human, it is still in development for therapy. We have been proceed cautiously in utilizing this technology because who we are to play God, to decide what kind of babies we want to bring into this world? If you want to read more about this, The Atlantic listed 15 reasons why the experiment was unethical– from forged license, fake consent form, imprefect technique, and unproven benefits.
• Millenials killing everything? Well, reports from the Fed via NPR said that instead of us being cheap and not spending, it’s actually because we have less money than the previous generations.
• Hazel @ Stay Bookish finally released this year’s YA book covers as christmas sweater and as always, I love them.

As this being the last month of 2018 and the last two months of the semester, not much happened. With all the craziness and last-minute chaos already happened in November, December’s workload has decreased significantly, providing time to rest up a bit and be lazy. It’s still quite a lot, but considerably less from the previous months and for that, we are thankful.

December also means Christmas. This year, I decided to try out new things by giving all my friends some chocolates, as well as some present for my best friends and family. My family has never been big on the commercial part of Christmas, we usually just go to church and be done with it. I had to beg for a Christmas tree, we don’t even have lunch or dinner, let alone presents. So yeah, this year I decided to try out something new.

I honestly underestimated the amount I had to spent though. I now understand the chaos of budget and decision making of who’s going to make it into this year’s list. I’m not overwhelmed as I already planned the list far before December, as well as what I’m going to buy for each present. Yet the number I spent still astounds me. I didn’t realize how much money going into gift-giving! I’m literally broke this month.

Oh also, we ended up not doing Christmas tree this year as we are afraid Pedro will tackle the tree, eat the fake snow, or worse, eats the mini nativity statues. But, we bought him a shark hat and despite him hating it, we all love seeing him in it.

• November Wrap Up & December TBR // It’s the final countdown
• Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan (+ overall series review)
• The Listicle Tag // Bringing some characters to life and trying to survive the apocalypse
• Rereading Harry Potter⚡✨: Book 5-7
• Favorite Taylor Swift Song
• The Unteachables by Gordon Korman // Everyone Deserves A Teacher Like Mr. Kermit
• The Suffering by Rin Chupeco // Oh I think the first book was okay? This sequel scared the life out of me.
• End of the Year Book Tag
• The Christmas Characters Tag
• Things I am excited for in 2019
• 2018: A Year in Review

Happy new year guys! How’s 2019 so far?