 Eggnog and Nutmeg just hits the spot right now. Four years and welcome back to another video. This video is going to have a couple different elements to it. So this is my end of the year book tag and that is super exciting. However, it's going to be a little bit Christmas themed because before we get into the tag, I'm going to do something a little different and kind of interesting. So I recently celebrated Friends Giving Miss, Friends Thanksgiving Christmas. I was a couple of my friends here in Minnesota before I moved back to Michigan just for the holidays. But one of my friends was amazing and she decided to do her own mysterious book box and that she wrapped a box in this beautiful Christmas wrapping paper for me to unbox as if it were a book subscription box and she calls it her little mystery box and I thought that was just so adorable and so sweet of her so I wanted to open it up here with you guys on camera and kind of do like a makeshift mysterious book box opening and so like and I personally loved this. I thought it was such a sweet idea, sweet concept of her and so like this would honestly be such a cool gift. I really wish I had someone in my life physically around me who loved reading books as much as I did so that I could do this for someone because oh my word this was so sweet for her. Anyway, I'm going to stop lobbing on and get into the unboxing now. We're going to first open up the box and we've got more of the tissue paper inside and oh my word it's beautiful. Guys she included, oh my gosh she gave me passion tea, oh my word and she gave me like quite a bit of it. Oh my gosh that's so sweet. I've got like quite a bit of tea to get me through the holidays which is good because we're almost at an eggnog and I don't know what I'm going to do with that eggnog so now at least I have tea. She gave me everything in here is wrapped. I'm just unwrapping it because it's easier for you guys to see it but unwrapping the second thing, it's chocolate. It's a little chocolate bar. Oh my gosh it's milk chocolate, chocolate bar by Lindor. Oh gorgeous. Obviously this video isn't sponsored because it's a homemade Christmas gift. Just still felt the need to say that though. Oh my gosh guys there's more candy. She got me, she got me Hershey's cookies and cream which she knows is one of my favorites because this is such childhood nostalgia for me right here because I always got this chocolate bar when I was at summer camp and I never ate it except when I was at summer camp. So oh my gosh I am so... Oh she knows me so well. No she's not. AKA yes she does. She got me a gorgeous bookmark. Look at this. It is literally a mermaid upside down but it has this gorgeous string to hang out the side. I don't have any bookmarks like this. Like oh that's just... oh that's so pretty. My goodness. Oh the detail is amazing. I think she got this on Etsy I believe is what she told me. Which oh that's gorgeous. I love that bookmark. I've never had a subscription box before so this to me is just... So great of her. And then of course it's a book subscription box. There's obviously a book here. She got me Tequila Kingdom which matches the bookmark perfectly. Oh my gosh that is so sweet. Oh a princess must have her prince. His heart will make a fine trophy. Oh my gosh okay. So I'm just gonna quick do a little read through of the summary of this book but I've heard quite a bit about it and she actually my friend did read this and she told me that it was really good. So it's Princess Lyra is a siren royalty and the most lethal of them all with the hearts of 17 princes in her collection. She is revered across the sea until a twist of fate forces her to kill one of her own. To punish her daughter the sea queen transforms Lyra into the one thing sirens allow the most. A human. Thanks but no I love it. Oh my gosh. Robbed of her song Lyra has until the winter solstice to deliver a prince alien's heart to the sea queen or remain a human forever. The ocean is the only place Prince Elyon calls home even though he is heir to the most powerful kingdom in the world. Hunting sirens is more than an unsavory hobby it's his calling. When he rescues a drowning woman in the ocean she's more than what she appears she promises to help him find the key to destroying all of siren kind for good but can he trust her? And how many details will Elyon have to broker to eliminate humankind's greatest enemy? And hey it's right before the winter solstice so this is definitely a book that I should read right now right? Right? Before it gets too far into winter when it's the winter solstice I should read this right now I should stop filming and just start reading Right? Mark is so cute this like hangs out but then when you open it it's like I'm gonna say that this bookmark is a siren now instead of a mermaid Ugh This was so sweet. If you know someone who loves books in their life this is a great Christmas gift idea but that's not the point in this video so now I'm gonna move on to the actual point in this video which is the end of the year book tag this was created by Ariel over at her channel Ariel Basette awesome channel, definitely check her out but let's get on with the tag now Number one Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish? Yes So throughout this past year when I was doing my one genre per month I was kind of saying once the month is up even if I didn't finish a book I'm gonna put it down so that I can dedicate all of next month to the next genre and so because of that there were a couple of books I did not get to finish that I wanted to because I forced myself to put them down in order to switch genres I mean it was good because it really made me switch genres if I hadn't done this I wouldn't have read as much as I had in terms of diversifying genre wise but that did leave me with a couple of books that I really do want to finish First of which being one I started in January and historical fiction loved but then put down because it's quite the big book and that is Anna of Clave The Princess and the Portrait by Alison Weir we're sorry I took the dust jacket off because I didn't like the dust jacket so it's just this but like I said I started it in January and I liked it I just didn't have time because in February I was moving on to romance which is not fair to this book but at the same time we once had been fair to romance so I don't know if I'm gonna necessarily finish it this year the only reason I would finish it this year is if I finish all the books that I planned for December and I planned quite a big TBR for myself for December but I'm also I'm gonna have more time when exams are done so hopefully you know if I do end up finishing my December TBR then I'll move on to this book to finish Other than that though I have done a pretty good job of finishing the books before the end of the month so that's really the only one that I was like ooh I really want to finish there were other books that I started like Anna Karenina Tale of Two Cities The Mermaid where I just kind of was like I'm okay with putting this down I'm just putting it down for a long time Anna of Cleave is really the one that I would love to finish soon rather than later Question number two Do you have enough terminal books to transition into the end of the year? Not really I don't have a lot of autumnal books per se I love the autumnal aesthetic and I want more autumnal books but I would say the best book I have to fit this question is one that I again read in January and I wouldn't be super opposed to re-reading it as a transitional book but that is The Winter Palace and this is by Eva Stechniak and this was a really good book it's a novel of Catherine the Great and obviously it's The Winter Palace it talks quite a bit about winter but it is very much the transition into or from the summer palace into the winter palace and so I feel like that kind of matched along with the transition of from fall to winter and so obviously Catherine the Great this is Old Russia so this is probably the best book for this transition for this question so Winter Palace I enjoyed it quite a bit Question number three Is there a new release that you're still waiting for? Yes plenty of them but two that I'm going to name are Blood and Honey that came out this past year it's the second book after Serpent and Dove which I read this past year I loved it I don't know why I don't own Serpent and Dove and I also don't know why I haven't read Blood and Honey I really want it I know I'm gonna love it so why don't I have it? I don't know it's frustrating for me too but the other book that I want to mention is Home Before Dark Home Before Dark and the reason this is on the list because it came out this past year I bought it it was sent to me however because of mailing issues I never got it so I actually had to return it because I was like I'm not gonna pay for a book that I never got but now I'm sitting here like I don't have the book so that's one that I would say yeah I'm still waiting on it because the mail system but I've also kind of given up in that hopefully when I when it's a little safer I might go to a bookstore and just buy it just so that I can know that it's gonna come home safely so the next one is what are three books that you want to read by the end of the year so as it is December my December TBR has five books on it and so it would be any of those five books one being Song of Rates and Ruins is right there that is also based off of West African mythology which I really want to read more about and learn more about because it is so fascinating the second book would be Star Daughter right below it as you can see this is kind of my stack of I want to read this this is my kind of TBR stack it's a loose TBR stack but then the third book for this prompt and actually it's three other books are the Twisted Tale books so I have quite a few of those I think I have like seven three of which I have not read and so those three are also a pretty high priority for me to read by the end of the year because they're on my TBR for December December was kind of my mythology mythology and fairy tales month that was kind of the subgenre that I chose to end out my year and so I'm doing fairy tales and mythology books and so I really want to make sure that all of those are read by the end of the year however the prompt only asked for three I still gave you five moving on is there a book you think could shock you and become your favorite book of the year yes I think that either Song of Branson Ruins or Star Daughter either of which could shock me and just blow all the other books out in the water all the other books I have to compete with are in the video of top 10 of 2020 and that video will either come out the week before or the week after this video either way I encourage you to check it out and that's where I will talk about my favorite books of this year however as of filming right now I have not read them and I do believe that either one of them or both of them could just become my complete new favorite books of the year and then the last question is the dreaded question have you started making reading plans for the next year aka 2021 and for that one I say kinda I haven't made like set solid reading plans like I have not planned out week by week what videos I'm gonna make also if you did that for an entire year in advance that would be insane but I have small ideas like I really wanna go through the year and kinda figure out what read-a-thons happen during the year that I want to participate in either again or I didn't this past year and I want to so I can be a little more prepared so it's not just like oh the announcement video and it starts tomorrow or I see the announcement video late and then I'm like oh my word I need to pull together a TBR but what about the TBR I already set my reading plans consist of being more prepared for read-a-thons I would love to start a read-a-thon or do one but I don't think that's gonna happen just cause I'm not creative I don't have ideas this year I had such big plans like again I've mentioned this so many times of reading a different genre per month and that was so great that was such a fun experience I encourage you all to try it however I'm not gonna continue that was only meant to be a year long and it was a year long and I feel very proud and accomplished for doing that I read a different genre every month and I found some new genres and I also reinforced some genres that I knew I didn't like reading very much um so it opened doors but it also just kept some windows closed but that's not the point so next year I'm gonna head towards more of a natural reading plan and that I normally am so much more of a mood reader like I don't generally like structuring too much because this makes me want to not do it as much so my reading plans for next year are a lot more read what you want read what comes out, read what excites you read what you have as well as participating in readathons I'm not doing anything super structured like I did this past year because it was so easy for me to fall into a slump because of it but also at the same time it was great because I knew I always had a book to read so yeah the answer to that question is kinda but I'm trying not to because I'm trying to recover from my intense plans from this past year so that is the end of the tag which means that is the end of the video I hope you enjoyed this video if you did give it a thumbs up to let me know comment down below answer to any of these questions or if you've ever received or given a homemade book box also subscribe I will be posting videos every Thursday and I would love to see you guys more on a regular basis so yeah hit the bell notification I generally upload Thursday mornings but you know you want to be notified when I upload because some of these videos are fun some of them are creative some of them are other people's tags so thank you Ariel for creating this tag but with that I have nothing more to say so until I see you guys in the next video I wish you a happy reading