These Authors are Taking Up Space!

When you obsessively buy and read books the way I do, they start to pile up. You also start to see trends in genres and authors which tend to take up the most room on your shelves.

Here are 10 authors which I have the most books of in descending order.

Stephanie Meyer- 5

Well... this is embarrassing. I mean... it's Stephanie Meyer. But yes, I still own all of my Twilight books as well as The Host. Stop judging me.

Anne Rice- 7

Oh good, a respectable vampire author. I have her first three novels in The Vampire Chronicles in one big volume, and then the next three individually, and the first of her first book about the life of Christ.

Kady Cross- 7

Kady Cross is the author of The Steampunk Chronicles which has four novels. However, she also wrote three novellas to go along with the novels which I also own. 

Francine Rivers-9

I was surprised at how many of her books I own when I counted. I have the Mark of the Lion trilogy, Redeeming Love, The Prince, and then all five of Lineage of Grace in one big volume.

Cassandra Clare- 9

Between The Mortal Instruments series and The Infernal Devices... that's a lot of books! All nine of them are on my iPad and I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up buying more of her future novels as they come out.

Elizabeth Chadwick- 9

What's crazy is these books aren't even technically part of a series. Many of them connect to one another and I personally feel there is a "best" order of which you should read them. But all except for one of her novels which I own are stand alone novels. So I feel like that deserves a special note.

JK Rowling/Robert Galbrath- 10

Well... obviously I own at least seven of JK Rowling's novels, the Harry Potter series. I also own The Tales of Beedle the Bard, The Casual Vacancy, and The Cuckoo's Calling. Yeah, yeah, I know... it's under another name. But it's written by the same person so it totally counts!

Jane Austen- 14

Technically, I own her complete works in one big volume on my iPad. So I feel like that counts.

Charlaine Harris- 14

I know... I know... another ridiculous vampire series. But it's better than Twilight, right? There are 13 books in the Sookie Stackhouse series and I also own a novel of short stories about Sookie.

Now... for the author for whom I own the most books...

Robin Jones Gunn- 19 going on 20

That's like a TLC TV show or something...

Crazy, right? Robin Jones Gunn won this by a landslide, and they all have to do with the same world and group of characters. I have all 12 books in the Christy Miller Series, the Christy and Todd the College Years trilogy, and all four of her books in The Katie Weldon Series. On top of that, Gunn just began a series about Christy and Todd the married years and I should be getting the first one in the mail in the next few days!

What authors take up the most room on your book shelves? Link up here for 10 on Tuesday: http://www.brokeandbookish.com/2014/07/top-ten-authors-we-own-most-books-of.html

Also - some announcements!

First, my friend Kirsti and I are coordinating Vlog Every Day August (VEDA)! It starts on Friday if you can believe it. It's a ton of fun and I want this year to be a HUGE success. Check out the website to learn more, sign up, and get the topics calendar. And you can watch all of my videos next month on my YouTube channel! (https://www.youtube.com/user/SnowWhitegrl)

Second, starting Monday I'll be hosting a link up with two other lovely bloggers, Brittany (http://www.storiessongsandpraise.com/) and Teh Megan (http://www.canidecideanotherday.com/) called Music Monday! We'll link up every week with the first Monday of the month having a theme. We're starting off with your favorite song on the radio right now. So be sure to stop by here on Monday and link up! In fact... you can get the button right now. 

A Cry For Help

A few days ago, I must have been in a weird mood.

How do I know?

Because I randomly decided I wanted to watch Twilight. Yes, that's right. I WANTED to watch Twilight. Not just the first one, but all of them. Because yes, I do own all five of them. (I got the first two forever ago and the others were on sale for like $4 on Black Friday so I figured I might as well... STOP JUDGING ME WITH YOUR JUDGING EYES I CAN SEE YOU!)

I have a weird relationship with Twilight. I'll admit- I enjoyed the books and the movies have their (rare) moments. However, I also realize they aren't good literature. A friend of mine once compared it to drugs. You know it's bad, but once you start you just can't stop. Twilight is a drug. I avoid it as much as I possibly can, but once I start... it's all downhill from there.

I know, I've probably just lost several friends followers.

As I finished watching the first movie, I think decided to live tweet as I watched New Moon. While some people found it fun and amusing (I'm glad some of you did!), others... well... they were concerned.

One of my friends asked if everything was okay and if I was being tortured or something.

I reassured her I was fine and kept on tweeting everything that is the Bella/Edward/Jacob drama.

Then another friend begged me to stop.

It was then that I realized, I was in denial. No, everything was definitely NOT okay. I love how my friends on Twitter know me better than I know myself.

Because everything is not okay. I try to be positive and keep going and encouraging, but my life isn't okay. It's not awful and I'm not horribly depressed or anything, but I'm not 100% okay either.

I'm frustrated and tired and I feel like nothing is happening. I realize this is all just part of change and the montage section of my life movie. I get that. However, it still isn't fun. But part of it is my own fault. When I look at what I do everyday, I see that some of this is my own doing.

I haven't been working on my novel.

Before yesterday, I was weeks behind on Cake for Breakfast.

I even joined this 30 Days of Hustle thing, but hadn't done a thing about it.

I've been lazy and then getting sad about nothing happening in my life. My motivation for anything has gone out the window.

So... my Twitter friends calling me out about watching Twilight in a way was my wake-up call. I need to get up. I need to do something. And I need to just keep going.

I need motivation.

What do you all do when you need a good kick of motivation in the butt? How do you get going when you're in a funk? Because I need help!

(And admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? Right.)

(Also, since I did have several people say they were really enjoying my snarky tweets about the Twilight movies... I probably will do the rest at some point. However, I'll forewarn people about it so if they want to block my Twitter for those few hours they can. )

June's Soundtrack

It's the end of June (Already! Crazy!) so here are my top ten songs that I've been listening to this month.

Also - I'm sorry the blog has been taken over by guest posts. I LOVE LOVE LOVE having guest posts because I can feature some really great bloggers. However, I feel like I've barely written anything myself lately. I've been busy so it's been hard to think of actual blog posts to write. Hopefully this will change soon.

As I said, summer is my craziest and busiest time of year. School is out and that means the teenagers have A LOT of time on their hands - so youth activities are in full swing, and therefore my music is being controlled by a lot of high school students.

Thankfully they don't have too terrible of taste. ;)

I Am [blank] Because...

I found this idea from the blog Lily White.

I am weird because...

So You Want To Do NaNoWriMo? #1

The internetz are buzzing. It's the night before Halloween and people who are normally social butterflies have become hermits and hovering over their computers instead of going to a Halloween party. People start to stock up on coffee. Some are begining to freak out because they feel like they aren't prepared.

It must be NaNoWriMo time. National Novel Writing Month.

Sparkly Vampires?

Day 21: Harry Potter or Twilight?

Twilight of course.

My Love

It's a good thing that today is the last day of my 30 Day Book Challenge - because I keep on needing to catch up!

Day 29: A Book Everyone Hated But You Liked

GAH. This is the third post in this challenge where I am completely embarrassed. But... here we go. Don't hate me after you read this, please.

Alien Love

Day 9: A Book You Thought You Wouldn't Like But Ended Up Loving

I avoided reading this book for a long time. It was almost how I felt about the book with Miley's face on it. Owning all of the Twilight books and seeing all of the movies was humiliation enough - did I really have to buy Stephenie Meyer's other book?

But after almost two years of prodding from one of my teenagers (who LOVES Twilight. The books, not the movies, she probably wants you to know.) and her saying "But Emily, this one is sooooo much better than Twilight!"

If You Could Tell Girls About Relationships... Part 2

I think I'm finally recovered from the Twilight Lock-In last week. Just in time for our trip to 6 Flags too!!!! Oh summers in youth ministry. It's so fun!

Recap: In my last blog I told you all about how I asked various women for their advice to jr. high girls about relationships and then gave you their answers.

The general advice given was: don't let a guy ruin your dreams, be friends first, be yourself, don't rush into anything you don't want to do, put your relationship with God first, be honest, don't worry, listen to your gut, you are beautiful, find a man who loves God, God has a plan, and a healthy relationship is hard work.

If You Could Tell Girls About Relationships... Part 1

As many of you may know, Wednesday night I held an all-girl Twilight lock-in where we went to go see the movie Eclipse. Many of you told me I am insane... I won't argue with that. Haha.

For the lock-in portion of the night we did some guy talk. Which makes sense considering it was with a bunch of  jr. high/going into high school girls who just saw a Twilight movie. (They LOVE Taylor Lautner, it's so funny!) As I was preparing I thought that it would be really cool to get some insight from women who are older than them.

The responses I got? WOW! So awesome! I was completely floored by how many people responded and gave such awesome answers. I asked St. Andrew members, non-St. Andrew members, Christians, non-Christians, single, married, dating, engaged, ages 20-60's, etc. The variety was so cool and everyone took it so seriously. Then even beyond that, everyone wanted to know what everyone else was saying. Therefore, the blog. Some people wrote a lot, which was great, but it would take up way too much space. So I'm only going to do highlights/summaries/short quotes of what people said.