PaperCat

Tag: reading

  • Favorite Books I read in 2025

    In 2025, specifically starting in August, I got started on a whole reading kick. From August to the end of December, I ended up reading about 75 books. Today, I will share the ones that I read during that time that were my favorites. Some of them are considerably older than being released in 2025, so they weren’t released at that time, but I read them in 2025.

    A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

    You may be tired of hearing about this book (or not), but this was the first book that started me on the reading kick and romantasy/fantasy romance genre in August 2025. I read it completely on August 16 in one sitting! The very next day, I had to get the next book in the series from my local Barnes & Noble.

    Many fans of the series say that this is their least favorite of the ACOTAR series, but I enjoyed this book so much because of everything that it lays out for the subsequent books. The author writes so many little sentences that don’t seem to foreshadow anything at the time, but then it comes back later, sometimes even 2 books later!

    I ended up loving all 5 books of this series that are currently out, but because the first one got me started on this whole new world of books and it was the first domino that led to 75 books being read, it has a special place in my heart.

    When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker

    This book destroyed me in the best way. The whole world that is presented in this story is so beautiful, and the writing is so poetic that I fell in love with this story and these characters. I am completely emotionally invested in their story.

    Without spoiling anything, the story does get bittersweet towards the end, but it is such a sweeping romance as well that I read it while my heart ached alongside these lovely characters.

    The next book in the series is coming out in May 2026, and I had to preorder it because of my absolute need to hear how their story progresses. As I said, I am completely emotionally invested.

    Tears of the Wolf by Elisabeth Wheatley

    This was my first step into proper fantasy romance genre books, as well as my first step into independently published books. I was not disappointed.

    Elisabeth’s writing is slower paced than what I began to expect from more “romantasy” type books, but it was refreshing in that way. The story itself doesn’t come across as slow; it feels more cozy until the action portions begin. I fell in love with these characters because this story was more “friends-to-lovers” than any of the previous stories I read above that are more of the “enemies-to-lovers” trope, so while I do enjoy a good “enemies-to-lovers”, I found that “friends-to-lovers” is preferable to me.

    I hope to continue reading and writing more reviews on the individual books that I have been reading; it’s just been difficult getting myself out of reading-mode and into writing-mode!

  • Stop the Doomscroll Weekly Recap

    Over the week, I did find two new apps to use but they are not time-wasters. The two apps are Wellos and Fable.

    Screen time recap last week

    Wellos is a health app that I have access to through my insurance. Fable is a book tracking app that also has book groups. I saw it through Instagram before I got rid of it and Fable is a great alternative to Goodreads since I’ve been trying to drop Amazon. (Goodreads is owned by Amazon.)

    Even with the addition of health and reading tracking, my screen time for the week went down by 58% from the week before.

    By creating a barrier to the apps for myself by only accessing them on my computer, I have greatly increased my reading time. I was able read the majority of the first Wheel of Time book in about 3 days. (The book is 744 pages!) I also finished reading ‘Home is Where the Bodies Are.’ (Not my favorite read.)

  • Stop the Doomscroll Day 2

    Today was a more typical day with listening to YouTube in the morning and the evening but it is still progress. The screen time app said that my daily average is down 76%!

    Screen time 3.24

    Even though it looks to be more than I would like, this is exactly what I was hoping for.

    As an anecdote, I feel that my mood has been more stable but also more neutral. That is to say, I often feel like I feel nothing. It’s true that emotions are not supposed to be up and down constantly and shifting from very high to very low quickly, but I just feel very neutral and it feels like nothingness right now. I hope that using my time productively by making things and cleaning things will help any boredom to become fulfilling.

    I have made progress in reading: I read two chapters of “Home is Where the Bodies Are” at lunch time and I read one chapter of the first “Wheel of Time” book in the evening.

  • Back to Stop the Doomscroll

    Back at the beginning of the year, I made a decision to stop my doomscrolling habits. Now at the end of the first quarter, I can say, that habit did not go away and it maybe even got worse.

    I am here at the beginning of Quarter 2 to finally make and keep this promise and work on my habit of doomscrolling.

    But first, my current habit:

    My current weekly screen time

    As you can see, in a week’s time, Instagram stole (actually I gave them willingly) about 18 hours of my time. In a week.

    YouTube looks bad at almost 14 hours but for that, I mainly pop headphones on and listen to videos while I accomplish other things.

    Facebook wasn’t terrible at almost 2 hours in a full week but again, that’s two hours of sitting, scrolling, maybe interacting, but doing nothing.

    In a week, almost a full day was used on social media apps. A full day. 21 hours and 13 minutes.

    A goal needs steps. First steps:

    I have deleted Instagram, Threads, LinkedIn and Facebook from my phone. I can access them on my computer as needed, and with that, I can set aside an intentional amount of time in my office for using social media apps.

    Next week, I will check in with how this time compared to last time.

    Second step:

    If I feel like I want to scroll, I will read a book. I have nine books I am currently reading from my TBR pile. Let’s see how many of those I can finish with the 21 hours not being allocated to social media.

    Have you made similar time-management decisions? How did they affect your life?

  • Book Review: Counterfeit Kingdom

    As I’ve been taking a long commute to and from work, I decided to start listening to audio books and I decided to start with a book by Holly Pivec and Doug Geievett called Counterfeit Kingdom. As a Christian, I frequently watch YouTube videos regarding Christianity and Christian culture. So when channels I watch often like Fighting for the Faith and Alisa Childers began recommending this book, I added it to my reading list.

    As a quick explanation, this book is a summary of the apparent beliefs of a movement within Christian circles called the New Apostolic Reformation. One of the main things in this movement is a belief that there are current-day apostles rather than just the past apostles that are described in scripture. This book explains this and other beliefs in this movement in detail.

    A strange additional detail about this movement is that most of the churches that are in this movement deny being in this movement. This appears to be the heart of why this book was written, in order to show the unbiblical part of these beliefs, because many who wouldn’t normally be influenced by this movement have been influenced by this movement.

    Even as someone who isn’t an expert in religion or Christianity specifically, I’ve noticed these beliefs in my local churches. One of the ways I see this myself is through the jargon or buzzwords that are used in the movement. Because our culture is so centered on hashtags, trending, and buzzwords, we all are easily able to adopt words like this even if it means something slightly different than what we think it means. An example phrase is “prayer declarations.” Many in the NAR movement just talk about prayer but in teachings from the pastors of the movement, they only talk about prayer declarations, which is to say that in prayer, the person is declaring to receive what they are “praying” for. The scriptural view of prayer is of a humble request of God, not a declaration that God must give or will give what the person is “asking” for.

    A cultural example of a hashtag or trending phrase becoming popular or viral but it wasn’t understood by a large part of the population was “Netflix and chill.” This phrase is still used jokingly out of what its original meaning was, which was a code teenagers were using for sexual activity in order to hide it. But it still went viral because it was popular and people heard it often online so it caught traction. I think because we start to hear the phrases or buzzwords like “prayer declarations” on the radio like on KLOVE or in teaching videos online, they sound Christian in their use, they gain traction. They sound good but they don’t actually mean the same thing.

    I could say more about how much I agree with the thoughts of this book, but I will end here. I highly recommend this book to Christians not as a blaming book or a pointing fingers book, but as a helpful tool for true discernment. Being able to understand false teachings and discern them from biblical teachings is taught in scripture in the New Testament as being an important skill for the Christian to have. (Acts, 1 Timothy, Titus, and Jude contain some of these examples.)