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.

#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

This year so far

I really don't know where this year has gone. How are we already a few days into July?

These past 6 months have been very busy for me, I've finished up studying Illustration at university, fully cleaned my flat and moved back home, and I've applied for jobs and had interviews (nothing successful yet).

On the more fun side of things I've read a bunch of great books and made some great friends on my Discord book chat. I've celebrated a year in a long distance relationship and we've had some fun trips out together which have been great. And lastly, I've played some really cool video games - I'm toying with the idea of sharing some min reviews of them here.

Join my book chat! We have read-a-longs

 

Ever wanted somewhere you can easily talk to other book readers and bloggers? 
Discord is a (voice and) text chat primarily for games but I’ve seen other communities utilize its multiple channel feature to be able to have conversations about other things (I’ve seen servers for anime, manga, and movie fans) and I thought it was perfect to create a space for us book bloggelrs to gather to talk all things bookish.
TO JOIN THE CHAT CLICK THIS INVITE

Above you can see the different channels we currently have to allow people to have general conversations, book talk (where our idea for a read-a-long was proposed) and to share book recommendations and reviews. We’re also running a Neverwhere Read-a-long and 2 travelling book projects at the moment.

We’re only a small a growing community at the moment as the server was created 14th January this year but so far peoples feedback has been encouraging to make this an active place for all :)

I'm sharing this now because as of today we will be running two read-a-longs; the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman which will go on until October as we're reading a book a month to allow time for everyone to read other books too and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

I'm Back!

I'm back!

No really, I am this time. For good. It's official, I have no more lessons to attend. That's it. I'm done. I'm no longer a student.

Time for me to face the real world and become an adult now.

Okay I'm pretty scared and a bit like, what do I do know? But I'll get there, I'll get somewhere at least.

Anyway, I really enjoyed (most) of my time at university and it was a huge learning experience for myself. But at the same time I'm so ready to be done.

My last post here would've been a bit of out of the blue from my hiatus but I was so thrilled to be working on a book focused project at last that I just had to share some of that work with you guys.

I guess I should talk about whats been happening outside of university; I've set up my own website to share my illustrations and I created a shop to sell prints of them too! Hopefully one day I can be printing these myself so I don't have to go through redbubble but for now it'll do.

On a more bookish side of things I've been able to somewhat stay part of the book community by creating my own discord server for those who enjoy books can come and talk and share reviews etc etc. Its been so much fun and I've met a lot of new booklrs thanks to it. So its about time some of my fellow bloggers came to say hi too because we're over a 100 members strong now and all super friendly.


We're just about to finish up doing a readalong of The Raven Cycle, we'll start a read-a-long of Neverwhere next month and this month we're also running 2 travelling book projects which has been fun but also a little stressfull to sort out. (Unfortunately no new people can join the travelling book project but read-a-longs remain open for everyone).

[To read more about discord click here | To join the text chat click here]

Anyway the rest of this month and next I'll be playing catch up with reviews before I start writing them properly again.

So now you're caught up and I'm ready to hop back in with this book blogging. I hope you've all been doing well, please let me know how you've been since I've been gone.

September Wrap Up

September has been a busy month for myself but a happy one too. I managed to get a fair bit of reading done which I'm pleased about and I'm still ahead of my GR challenge.

Summer Time Updates

I've been thinking long and hard about returning to book blogging and I realised one of the things putting me off was how unorganised I had left everything. Emails and bloglovin notification had been piling up, my Twitter feed is unreadable, and my queue empty on Tumblr.

I've been reading regularly now which has helped with my need to return, but I desperately needed a spring cleaning. At one point I even considered a new blog, though I ended up decided to just tidy up and organise what I already had.

So this post is a just quick update to let everyone know what I've been working on and intend to do.

Also a big big thank you to all the kind words on my previous post, I'm much happier now and things are looking better.

Books and Tea Updates

I run another book blog on tumblr - Books and Tea - which I decided should be my first re-entry into the book blogging world.

I have:
- Added a new theme to the main page
- Written a new about section
- Updated The Book Blogger Directory
- Kept the queue full of images

I still want to change the side bar image, create a 2014 and 2015 read books page, and work on a format for adding reviews there.

Northern Plunder Updates

So you have probably seen me stopping by a few blogs here and there, thats because I'm slowly making my way through bloglovin which has helped inspire me and I've found a few things I want to take part in.

I have:
- Started catching up with my bloglovin feed
- Draft and schedule reviews/posts here
- Cleaned up old posts (removed broken images/removed white backgrounds)
- Changed the main font here (hopefully it reads okay for everyone)

I still need to schedule more posts really, clean up my Twitter feed, and figure out what to do with the Facebook page, but my main thing I accomplisted was unsubscribing from all but one of the book tour hosts. I love taking part in book tours but I think that may have been what killed my passion here, as I felt like I was reading and posting because I had too, not becuase I wanted. Even though I enjoyed what I read it was still a bit too much.

Where have I been?

I met Laini Taylor last year, finally finished reading this

Hello and happy 2015.

Well that was a bit delayed but I hope this year has been treating everyone well.

I've had a few people wondering just exactly what happened to me, so many days passed when I wanted to put a hiatus post up but it never felt right.

As some of you may have noticed my reading significantly decreased last year, and eventually I just stopped. I tried encouraging myself that it was simply my university work taking over but ultimately I could no longer find joy in reading when I was so down myself.

 

I spent many months dwelling in unhappiness and not ready to face the reality of it or try and solve it, I finally did though throughout December and since then I've been focusing on myself and my own happiness, focusing on a better and brighter me.

 

It has been working. Self-care and self-love should never be frowned upon. I learned this the hard way.

 

2015 has been a much brighter year so far. I've started reading again and playing with the idea of blogging again. Oh and I'm single. Still feels odd to say that.

 

However I don't know whether to stay here and hope I'm not too out of touch with the followers and friends I had/have here, or to focus on using tumblr as the platform to book blog instead.

 

This is me now

Hopefully I'll get some replies here to help figure that out. 

All the best,

Lauren

Insomnia Gaming Festival

Less books, more gaming. 

I had intended to do a very well planned out post about my time at Insomnia Gaming Festival, or i52 for short, with lovely pictures of the exhibition halls the Bring Your Own Computer halls and overall documenting the great time I had with my friends.

However I didn't take any photographs because I was simply enjoying myself too much and well running off not a lot of sleep.


i52 started for my group of friends on the Thursday which went very smoothly and we gamed until 2am I believe. Friday was the first  "proper" day though as the exhibition halls actually opened, inside there were stalls to try out early access to Evolve and Borderlands: The Pre-sequel and a Transformers themed MOBA, a few stalls selling geek themed items and of course PC stallls. Above is my group of friends with one of the guys we know working there.

I aimed to pull an all nighter that night too, most of my group abandoned ship before 4am I believe so it was just myself and my best friend, Jon. It went pretty smoothly and I didn'[t even feel tired until they so rudely turned the lights back on at 8:20am. That was killer. Have you ever gone from so long in the dark to sudden and un-warning bright light when tired. It is not fun!

Of course some obligatory selca's of me during the night, the second one I was adamant I could last until that evening until I slept. 

The rest of the weekend pretty much carried on the same, apart from I was much more sensible with my sleeping - only getting myself delirious with lack of sleep on the Sunday night. The only downside to the long weekend was the local shops and restaurants weren't prepared for the extra 2,500+ people that they should've been feeding. It was very much a first come, first served, fight for the best food situation each day.

The drive back was really smooth though! (Nothing to do with me sleeping, nope).

Attempting University (3)

First year of university is over, I finished it with some very good grades and I got the full deposit back on my flat even though it had looked more like a garbage truck most of the time.

Summer has been really good, I've not done too much when it comes to being creative but I have been working on a few small things.

But for now I want to finish sharing my Creative Narrative work with you, don't know what I'm talking about? Please refer to this post for the first lot of my work.

(Hey also please note that I do have a blog to keep track of my work in progress which can be viewed here, at the moment I'm posting these images you can see below as I'm not actually working on anything I can show just yet - its a present for my best friend)

These two images illustrate a transition of sorts, the change in nature to man-made and old to new. I prefer my second attempt at this and surprisingly really enjoyed the process and outcome.

I have a great love for typography, and I think that is why I took to this task so strong. I had to illustrate a different typeface for every letter of the alphabet that portrayed "environment" before selection one to create fully. My chosen design was inspired by tree rings and ripples in water.

Here I decided to use leaves and plants to portray the "environment" theme by dipping and printing them with ink.

These last two aren't of my creations but instead some of the research, planning and development that went into some of my final pieces of work. I think I ended up working harder on this part than the outcome in the end.

Attempting University (2)

It's been over five months since I checked in with how University has been going for me. and that is because it's been going well.

I have now finished my first two modules and over Christmas I really wanted to update you on how those had been for me, but I was still waiting for my grades back and didn't want to say how whilst I'd found it challenging at times, I felt I'd done well and then get a rubbish grade as I'd be pretty pooped out to then  have to announce I didn't do well.

However, that is not the case!

I think its safe to say I did pretty damn great on both modules.

Living alone, well with four other students, is odd at times. I can have a week pass smoothly and its great, but then others I just can't wait to move out. at this moment you wouldn't even want to cook in the kitchen if you could see what it looked like.

I've already sorted out accommodation for next year and it'll be with a friend who I'll have known for almost five years by the time we move in, and one of her current flat mates too.

I think I'll enjoy living there a lot more, knowing I'll be comfortable around them.

As I promised last time, I'll share some of my work.

The first module title was Creative Narrative, we had to explore the city visually and eventually create a final outcome that related to both the city and a certain aspect of it, mine being nature.

One of the initial drawing exercises given was to draw ten aesthetically pleasing buildings, signs, statues or details of building. From the ten I drew my favourite are these Winged Lion statues, it was only a quick scribbley drawing but I was still really pleased with the outcome.

These next three are all from the same drawing exercise which I thought I'd hate but turned out to be pretty fun, first we had to spend an hour people watching and drawing them on squared paper, followed by using only 10 and then 5 lines to draw others, and lastly we had to enlarge a few and work into them.

These next five images are just my own exploration of the city with different materials and techniques, I've tried to share some of them that I had most fun with or found most visually pleasing.

Another given exercise, the opposite to drawing building we found aesthetically pleasing. Here we had to look at creating type we found ugly, though honestly, by the end of it I ended up enjoying most of the outcomes because I had a lot of fun getting messy and exploring with inks.

Okay, I'll stop here as I'm worried about over loading those of you with bad interwebs because these are fairly high quality images. I know I shouldn't have saved them so large but ah too pretty and I don't know what else I may use them for yet.

Anyway, I hope you liked seeing my work that you requested and there will be more next time I write a post like this.

The wait wont be as long next time!