Time to share what I'm loving in, and out, of the book community this week! Because you are all pure brilliance.


Wednesday Wandering is just a fancy title for Jessica Infrequently Posting Entries She's LOVING. Because, reasons. Also, I feel like there's never enough love and appreciation coming from our little community.

This week is dragging on for me, personally, because I am SO excited for the weekend. I'll be at Pride and it's one of my favourite things about summer in Chicago. We're still deciding if we want to go out the night before the parade and take in a drag show or just grab drinks, but either way it's going to be a good weekend!

Plus, I'm hopefully going to catch up with some people I haven't seen much since high school. Which is always a plus. A bit nerve-wracking but not terribly so. It's more of an excited nervous tick, rather than an "oh-my-God-no" type of thing.

Like last week, there's just been SO much good content within the book community. Here's what I've been reading, watching or looking at over the last seven days.
 

• Over at Lovely Audiobooks, Eline asks the question: Is having a Facebook essential to building your blog? Well, read The Facebook Guide for Book Bloggers to figure out the importance in utilizing Facebook to build your audience. It's almost convinced me to join FB again. We'll see! Likely not, though, since I've never used it for Booked J and all it does is get my anxiety racing for some reason. Then, keeping up with Pride Month celebrations, Eline also shares her 5 Favorite Lesbian Romance Audiobooks.
• Under the Covers has quite a lot of good content, as per usual. Including Francesca sharing her Top 10 Standalone Recommendations. There is just waaay too much good to highlight on UTC and I definitely can't recommend them enough! 
• Over at A Novel Idea, Katie's got a treat for us! An Interview with Susan Dennard and, if you love Dennard, this is a great Q&A for you to dive into! You can find her previous interview with Ashley Poston and Kristina Perez here. I love, love, love reading interviews and I'm sure many of you feel the same! 
• Tânia of My Lovely Secret breaks down Ten Young Adult Retellings Coming Soon for lovers of YA and retellings! I'm so excited for all of these! I don't know about you, but once I got into retellings it was all over for me!! I'm basically leaving shame at the door and making grabby hands at all the retellings. ALL OF THEM.
• The always Queenly Queen Cait at Paper Fury discussed the 7 Books She Nearly Didn't Read. AND HONESTLY? Me.  
• Because a Mid-Year Book Freak Out is always necessary, here's Melanie's. I love seeing these types of posts and the tag featured is one of my favourites. 
• Because it wouldn't be a list without BooksNest, Beth recently posted How I Arrange My Bookshelves to Make My Own Personal Library. I love book organization and tours of others personal shelves, and this post combines that. They're just pure fun to me. And, sometimes, informative.

• The Heart of a Book Blogger: Jordan reviews Tell Me How You Really Feel by Aminah Mae Safi and The Best Lies by Sarah Lyu.
• Books, Movies, Reviews. Oh my!: If you're looking for something quick and to the point, look no further than Stormi's posting of  Mini Reviews.
• The Fictional Reader:  The conclusion of The Bone Witch, The Shadowglass, gets the review treatment by Jolien! 
• Paper Fury: Cait reviews Toffee by Sarah Crossan, who is a new-to-me author. 

• The book community has been buzzing with talk of Wizards Unite (the Pokemon Go-like game for Harry Potter fans) and I, for one, am enjoying it! There haven't been a lot of places nearby where I can play the game to its full advantage, but I've been living vicariously through others who can play it. The Hufflepuff Queen, for example, explores the Top 10 Weird Places to Find Magical Creatures. 
• Keeping with my Harry Potter mode, Book Roast has an unboxing for the Azkabox. 'Nuff said. 
• Bookmarked | Chapter 32 is all about the HYPED BOOKS. And I'm all about these Booktubers. 
• Becca and the Books latest Reading Vlog is up. In which she reads everything but also nothing. Her words, not mine! I know reading vlogs aren't new but they're new-to-me this year and I'm really just a sucker for them, okay? 
• Princess of Paperback has her Mid Year Book Freakout Tag video up and, well, let's be real, you didn't actually think I was done mentioning this tag, did you?

• As far as True Crime goes, one of my go-to Youtubers, Stephanie Harlowe, discusses the, ah, deadly bond between Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker. Which is by far one of the weirdest cases I've researched. You may know Juliet Hulme, nowadays, as an author, under her name Anne Perry. Or, you may know the case due to the film Heavenly Creatures. Essentially, the two young girls murdered Pauline's mother when they were teenagers. The build up to this was their obsessive relationship that may or may not have been of the sexual variety. It's an... interesting case, to say the least. 
• If you've ever wondered what your expired beauty products look like under a microscope, here you go. Thank me later. I was a little nervous about watching this one but I've been really enjoying Raw Beauty Kristi a lot lately--and love how upfront she is. 
• I don't really talk about it much on here but I'm a big fan of The Sims 4 and I've been playing The Sims since childhood. With the release of Island Living, I've been digging a lot of the Simmers on Youtube and really enjoy watching all the new content we've been getting. Lately, I've been watching a lot of Fantayzia's videos, including Island Living based Odd Jobs & Rare Finds. 
• Christine at Temptalia discusses the Best & Worst of MAC's Electric Wonder Collection. I am honestly obsessed with the packaging of this line! I'm most intrigued by the Lipglass which is rare for me because I don't usually feel drawn to lipglosses. 
• I love photography and I love editing photos in general. I've been saying I'll give Lightroom a shot for a while now, but I can never seem to fully give it a chance when Photoshop and VSCOCam are my true ride-or-dies when it comes to editing. But, I've been learning more and more about it the last few weeks. Including this helpful article from Natalya Amour on how she uses Lightroom for a cohesive Instagram Feed. She also touches base on other helpful apps for photography. If you're looking for some free Lightroom presets, look no further than Helene in Between's Free Summer Mobile Lightroom Presets.  
• More True Crime! *Pretends to be shocked* Eleanor Neale recently posted about H.H. Holmes and his infamous 'Murder Castle' which was truly something. It's one of those cases that just... phew. I think I've spent a great deal of time being haunted by it through the years.  
• Kendall Rae recently talked about The Andrew Burd Story. I'll just... leave that one without any context. The case is heartbreaking.
• Continuing with my tradition of true crime/various cases, Gab at Gabulosis posted about 'The Fort Worth Trio' (three missing persons, young girls between the ages of 9 and 17, who've been missing since just before Christmas of 1974) and reminded me why I love her channel. Gab posts a lot of cases that are older and lacking in recognition and whatnot. Or, those who don't get as much exposure as they used to. Plus, she's just a sweetheart in general. You can tell she genuinely cares about these cases, getting the facts right and helping out the families. That being said, I think this is one of the first "older" cases that I encountered a while back. It's one of those cases that just really breaks your heart and gets under your skin. It's a baffling one. 
• Keeping up with my taste for summery drinks, I've found quite a few ones I want to try or have tried recently! Including this Frozen Sangria Slushie which utilizes Aldi's White Sangria Kits (!!!!!) and is sugar free AND SO SO SO YUMMY. There's also a non-alcoholic version out there for those of you who don't, can't or won't drink! Either way: delicious and a perfect summery drink. If you do drink and do so on a budget and haven't tried any of Aldi's selection of wines, you should! A lot of great options for a decent price. Side note: the recipe calls for Brandy, the person who posted this used lemon lime soda, but I don't drink either so I used the suggested orange juice with this. 
• Another good drink recipe I'm eyeing and going to try this upcoming weekend is the Pineapple Rum Punch Mimosa from Tanya at Lemons for Lulu.
• If you're feeling hungry, allow me to direct you to Cheesy Crispy Baked Green Beans, Roasted Strawberry Sheet Cake, French Potato Salad and Cheesy Cauliflower Rice Arancini! And because it's not a recipe shout out without my biggest go-to food blog, The Minimalist Baker: Kale Falafel Hummus Wraps, Crispy Vegan Portobello Mushroom "Bacon", Smoky 1-Pot Refried Lentils and Balsamic-Marinated Portobello Mushroom Pizzas.  
• Emily Noel is one of my favourite Beauty Youtubers and is pretty much consistently the only one who is honest but respectful and just all around nice??? Anyways, I love her channel because she plays with beauty products from all price tags. Here's her recent Shop & Haul!

Have any bloggers, tags, booktubers, reviews or entries you've been loving this week? Feel free to share in the comment section! I'm always looking for some blog hopping goodies to explore.