March & April Wrap Up

 

Yikes! April is over. I took a slight unplanned blogging break during April due to just wanting to spend more time on other stuff but not to fret I'm back now. It was supposed to be just Easter Friday I'd be off but I just kind of didn't return oops.

I'm still very much ahead with my reading goal even though I'm in a tiny slump right now. I have my nose in so many good books I just don't know what to read.

Outside of the blog I've kept my book club organised where we had a super successful readalong of Ice Massacre and Ice Crypt by Tiana Warner which was so lovely so please stop by if you wanna take part in others (The Bone Witch for example) and I've also worked on a few illustration commissions which maybe I'll share one day.

I also got to meet up with Amy, Bec, and Beth and we visited Liverpool to see Laini Taylor at a book Q+A and signing. She was super lovely (as were my lovely girls too) and loved my blue hair! I've linked their posts on it because I was lazy and didn't do one. We're going to meet up again in May for a less bookish adventure but I'm super excited.

Oh and I'm going to StratLAN in June so maybe I'll tell you about that.

Books Read

Ice Crypt remains my favourite from these two months, I love love love some wlw mermaid stories and this was great. Dream Magic was a wonderful sequel and I'm so glad I agreed to give this series a chance so I highly recommend this MG series. I sobbed a lot when reading The Princess Diarist so make sure you have tissues around if you haven't read it yet.

I kinda read a lot but also not really because theres some really short books here.

Currently Reading

I'm currently reading The Sweet Far Thing (also dubbed as The Sweet Farting) with Allie for a buddy read cause its her fave series but she is in a reading slump at the moment so I'm making slow progress with her in mind. I read the first two chapters of Six of Crows to my boyfriend over the phone to help him sleep but since then I've just been lazy with it.

I actually haven't touched these two since last time I wrote a wrap up omg. I am the worst.

But I am also somewhat actively reading the following, slowly. I dunno I'm loving them but also just want to play games more.

Reviews

We Awaken by Calista Lynne (5 stars)
Video Game: Radiator 2
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa (2 stars)
Harper and the Night Forest by Cerrie Burnell (4 stars)
Clutch by Lisa Becker (3.5 stars)
Dream Magic by Joshua Khan (4 stars)

Other Posts

Due to me not really existing here in April I only have one other post to share - my January and February Wrap Up post.

So because of that here are the other two from previously. In January I wrote about goals for this year and this month I advertised and explained my Book Club which you can all join.

Goals

I'm ahead on my reading goal - 10 ahead to be exact - so that is awesome and I've kept on top of keeping my book club in order, even got a new moderator to help out.

I've read 3 books from my "aim to read this year pile" and the Moomin book is of it too so I'm somewhat on track I guess:

 No progress on the whole I'd like to finish off some series that I started last year:

- Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray
- Unwind Dystology by Neal Shusterman
- Wicked Lovely series by Melissa Marr

But only one book left on the I'd like to finish off books I started last year list:

- Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
- Darkest Mercy by Melssa Marr
- Princess Diarist by Carrie Fisher

I successfully took part in the Ice Massacre read-a-long with my book club so I only have to do one more to reach my goal of wanting to take part in two.

Anyway that is pretty much it for these two months, I hope you have all had busy and fun time too.

January & February Wrap Up

I can't believe the first two months of this year have already passed.

Luckily though I am on track with blogging and my reading goal so its been a good start to the year even with all the shit that has been going on around the world.

Outside of the blog I've also celebrated my two year anniversary with my boyfriend, kept my book club organised, and started planning my trip to YALC (actually just before I finished this post I purchased my tickets and booked the hotel).

2016 Wrap Up

Yikes, this year has flown by. How am I already here writing up my wrap up post when I've not posted since October? Ooops. Life happens.

This year has been very busy for me. I've finished up studying Illustration at university, had a volunteer job in an Oxfam Book Shop which I left to work in a book store. I've also worked on a few commissions and continued growing my online book club.

I've also celebrated a year in a long distance relationship and we've had some fun trips out together which have been great (Chester Zoo and our first holiday together to Cornwall). And lastly, I've played some really cool video games - I've shared a few reviews of them here too.

If you want to know more about, and hopefully join, my book club its hosted on Discord and you can follow that link to read an older post explaining it.

Bought, Borrowed, & Bagged (87)

Bought, Borrowed and Bagged hosted by Talk Supe is a weekly meme where you can share your book haul, ongoing events and news about what is coming up on your blog for the week ahead.
Please Note: All images link back to their GR pages.
 

New Books

Its been a little while since I last did a haul. In fact I've had a birthday and a pay check or two since then so maybe there are a few more than normal. Okay there is no maybe about it. So without further ado heres my birthday (+ extra) haul.

I recieved Shadow Magic by Joshua Khan for review which I've already posted. My boyfriend bought me GYO by Junji Ito and Welcome to Night Vale for my birthday, and with a gift card I got The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich and The Enemy by Charlie Higson. Last the Gemma Doyle trilogy was sent to me as a birthday present from Allie!

#SpooksandTea Read-a-thon

Its almost October and you know what that means, right?

Yeah its almost Halloween!

Are you excited? I am. Even though I don't ever do anything, its just nice seeing what everyone else does.

This year though I am kind of doing something. Over on Discord (you can read more about it here and even more in detail here) I'm hosting a month long horror themed read-a-thon.

The aim is simple; challenge yourself to read as many horror themed books as you can throughout Ocotober and then talk about them with everyone else!

We have a list of recommendations on our Goodreads group and Allie will be posting it live on the 1st on her blog too.

Anyway I'm just super excited about this and wanted to let everyone know so they could come and say hi and take part if they wanted. Or just stop by to talk about books and make friends if you dont want to read spooks :D

100 Best Books by Smart Women, part one

So I've had this book journal lying around from a few years ago (see maybe ten) and anything I wrote inside it was useless and messy but I kept it lying around because it had two lists in that I thought future me might like to refer too.

Future me finally decided to do something with said lists.

Here is the first of them: 100 Best Books by Smart Women, well part one of it any way. (Again I take no credit for this list it was just in a book journal I had lying around and it says courtesy of Madison Public Library)

I wonder how many I've read. How many have you read? Do you recommend any of them?
covers have been used because they look nicer than me just writing for ages

 
 

So far I've only read one of the books on this half of the list - The Secret Garden. Theres a few of the more popular classics here that I own copies of but haven't read yet.

Am I really uncultured because classics are not something I ever pick up? :')
Anyway I hope you've seen a book or two that you'd like to read and had maybe forgotten about.