Post Uni/Yay its Summer Book Haul!

Hello, dear bookworms of the interwebs! I hope you’ve all been enjoying soaking up the summer rays, especially if you live in the UK where we’ve been having a serious heat wave (to those of you stuck in offices with poor air conditioning I weep for your souls). Personally, I have been indulging in some well deserved time off. My final year of university was a super stressful slog, so I am currently taking advantage of my post-student but have-yet-to-be employed status (Yep, I’m a slacker now!) by catching up with family, friends and my books (not necessarily in that order).
As a gift to myself for completing my degree I decided to splurge on some books I had been pining over for a while, especially now I have the opportunity to fit in some serious summer reading!

So first up we have two YA contemporaries that deal with an important topic

Guilt Free Book Haul (In Which My Relatives Feed Me Pretty Books)

There’s a lot of things I like about Christmas – the food, spending time with family, chilling out and watching lots of movies, but I have to say one of the biggest perks of all is being able to add a few more unexpected books to my shelves. And better yet – I don’t have to feel guilty about buying books when I have so many unread ones because other people have done it for me. Double win! I always tend to have a book wish list on the go so that if any of my relatives are stuck for present ideas, they can randomly pick something off it. This way, it’s always a surprise and I never have any clue which books I’m going to get. And I have to say, this year I was ecstatic with some of their choices! So, without further ado, allow me to present you with lots of bookish pictures and nerdy goodness, mwuhuhuuuu. 🙂

Alien Life Forms and an Excess of Pasta + Mini Book Haul

Hello all!
I feel like it’s about time I did another one of these random life update posts. A few weeks ago I packed up all my stuff AGAIN and headed back to the student world for my final year of university. Can you say scary? The fact that this is my final year is really messing with my head. What I do in the next 9 months will count towards two thirds of my degree. It’s where the real work starts. EEEP. Right now everything feels a little bizarre because it’s like the calm before the storm, I know all of these deadlines are looming but the impact is yet to hit. At the moment it seems like I’m having too much fun! I know it can’t last and the stress factor will soon kick in but for now all is good in Becky world. I’m feeling oddly hopeful about my final year. Even though it will probably be mind numbing and intense I’m ready to face the challenge (no doubt this entire train of thought will reverse within a month, you wait and see :P). 

The Hills are Alive…With the Sound of my Bookcase Creaking.

Hello all! It’s that book haul time again. You know, where I begin to hyperventilate and go completely bonkers at the sight of pretty inanimate objects.
I have to say, I think I’ve been doing pretty well on the book buying front lately, while I gave up on my naïve attempt at a book ban a while back (which everyone but me knew wasn’t going to work) I’ve still been trying to restrain myself when it comes to my bookish whims. After all, if I had my way I would buy the ENTIRE store, and my TBR pile is nearing 200. Although actually now I think about it, due to my latest escapades it’s probably over that now…whoops.
However, a couple of weeks ago my second year university results came though. I discovered that I had passed everything with flying colours, including my soul sucking statistics course which was the biggie because it’s the only module everyone has to pass in order to go onto to their third year, and it was my one weak spot. Safe to say, it was a big relief! So of course, I chose to treat myself by buying a tonne of books I had been lusting after.
So, onto the bookish goodness. 😀

Back to School Books of the Fiction Variety! (Aka, Reading my Feelings).

Do you have one thing you always go out and buy when you’re feeling a little down, a bit meh, or slightly avoidey? Some people like to ‘eat their feelings’, others get a kick out of retail therapy. Me? I buy books. Lots and lots of books.
Pretty much any high or low in my life is dealt with by getting my hands on a shiny new novel. Feeling sad because you didn’t get that grade you wanted? Buy a book! Need a break from real life? A book will do just the trick! Super psyched you passed that tough assignment? Well done you clever clogs you worked so hard, you know what you deserve? Yepp you guessed it, a book.
Over the last month one thing has occupied my thoughts, the imminent return to university accompanied by a pang of back to real life anxiety and the imminent doom of my social life (Hello unrelenting assignments. Why did I choose a science degree again?). So, naturally I compensated by investing in some spellbinding stories. 🙂 So without further ado, let me present you with reading my feelings! Or er…buying them.

Book Haul: Invasion of the YA

You guyyysssssss, I’m hyperventilating in the best possible way! 😀

You know what that means don’t you???

BOOOOOOOK HAULLLLLLLLL. WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

I had so much fun taking pictures for this, in the same week I bought these amazing books I also found this beautiful bird cage lamp! I love the way it refracts the lights making patterns on the ceiling and table, it was awesome experimenting with the photos and the text for the header too.

This holiday I have been volunteering at a second hand book shop once a week. I absolutely love it and the only thing that could improve it would be actually getting paid. 😛 It never feels like hard work, the people are lovely and I love the atmosphere of constantly being surrounded by books of all shapes and sizes. Getting to be there when new donations come in you can discover some real hidden gems, a few surprises and a couple of cobwebby dead spiders or two!

Falling Back Into Old Patterns

There are a lot of great things about the summer holidays for a university student. We get to eat food that’s actually edible, we are temporarily free from deadlines and we get our warm cozy bed along with the small comfort that nobody gross has slept in it before us! Still, the best part for me has to be the precious time we’re given to catch up with old friends that we have been separated from for the majority of the year.

This week I met up with some of my best budds for coffee (none of us actually drink coffee but you know, meeting for coffee sounds cooler). We brought our drinks and snacks before finding a table, and once again I was surprised to find that on chatting to them, it literally felt like no time had passed. We fell back into the same rhythms we’d always had. Although I had heard of the quote ‘True friendship isn’t about being inseparable, it’s being separated and nothing changes’ I guess I never fully understood it until this year.

So of course falling into our normal rhythm also meant falling back to a certain habit with a certain friend – book swapping. 😀 As I still have ten of my best budd’s books from our swap last year and she still owns several of mine it was a smaller loot than usual, but boy was it an awesome one!

Yes, my cat will also be starring in these pictures, because cuteness!

Belated Birthday Book Haul! (As Requested)

There comes a time in every bookworms life when they just have to say no to books. When your to-be-read pile is overflowing and you have run out of shelf space for the third time running, you know that you have a serious problem! Not to mention when you start to calculate how long it will take you to read all those books you own…..lets just say some of mine will still be unread in ten years time. :S So it was with much pain and internal suffering that I stated to my family ‘do not buy me any books for my Birthday this year, I have too many!’
When I headed home the weekend after my birthday and opened my presents I was really happy with everything I got, but couldn’t getting rid of a nagging little voice inside my head that said ‘but Becky, there are no books.’
So when my blogging buddies started asking me what books I got and telling me to let them know about my crazy haul I didn’t really have an answer, because I didn’t have anything to tell!

But, as the title suggests I did get some books in the end after all, they were just very delayed due to various friends being off at uni. This is the part where I have an excuse to take lots of pretty pictures of my books and fulfill my promise, one book haul post coming up! 😉

Christmas Book Haul: In which I foam at the mouth from all the literary goodness.

I really love doing these haul posts. I get all super happy looking at pictures of so many books, and the fact that they’re MY books, well, that just makes it even better!

The title may be a little misleading, because although all these books apparated into my home around the Christmas period, not all of them were actually Christmas presents. This is where I have to tell myself off for potentially breaking one of my New Years Resolutions already, or at least severely hindering it! As you can see, I’m doing excellently at reducing my tbr pile by buying more books. :L

Christmas books
These were a real surprise for me, I had no idea I was going to get them! I’ve heard that they’re really good from various people, but because I read Cornelia Funke’s Reckless and found it really boring I was a little unsure about putting these on my wishlist. But now I’ve got them anyway, and I’m really excited to read them! 🙂
The book series – or the first book anyway, is about a man who if he reads aloud brings the world within the book alive! Now doesn’t that sound awesome?! 😀

And This is Why I Shouldn’t be Allowed in Bookshops…

….especially second hand ones.

I went into town with the intention of buying some stuff for my room at University to make it feel a little bit more homely.
Instead I came home with two bags full of books.

That pretty much sums me up as a person doesn’t it? Lol. 😛

You should have seen the ladies face when she saw how many books I was buying! I don’t  think she could believe it.

But thinking about it, how often do you walk into a second hand book shop and find THAT many amazing books that you want? It must be fate! And you know, I think I deserve a little reward for surviving the first month of University, it certainly hasn’t been easy!

Book Haul: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

First off, how awesome is that title? I’m quite proud that my little brain came up with that, and it totally fits as well! 😛 Much more interesting than just book haul don’t ya think?

Ok, so the book ban is well and truly desecrated. How long did I last? *checks blog* Well I announced it May 19th 2012 so that’s *counts on fingers* not even three months!!!! *hangs head in shame*. And since the ban I’ve only gotten three books off my TBR pile so ummm…..yeah, the Maths doesn’t add up, I’m actually worse off than when I started. But you know what? I’ve never been all that fond of Maths.

So errr, ignoring my pathetic failure, lets move on to the books, because we all love the books! That’s why we’re here right?

Something Old:
I went into town with a bookish friend of mine and we spent about two hours just looking around Waterstones. After a thorough rummage (in which I found a beautiful hardback copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes but made myself put it back because of the price) he told me about these two second hand book shops a short walk away. So of course, I had to go and investigate!

Every Bookworm’s Dilemma: When Shelf Space Runs Out.

Ok so here’s a random and vaguely related anecdote: There is currently a lot of DIY going on in my house, which means there are toolboxes and various pieces of equipment in my room. A couple of days ago my mum was helping me carry some stuff up there and I carefully reached over a mass of tools to turn on a plug, at which point I told her “You know we should move these because one day I’m going to actually step on that sword” She looked at me puzzled and said “sword?” At which point I replied “yes” She laughed “I think you mean SAW?”
*Facepalm*
I’ve been spending way too much time in the literary world lately, either that or art work’s fried my brain. Anhoooows thought you might find that vaguely amusing.
*Hears crickets*
Now on with the post!

My book buying habit has reached an almighty high. I have never owned so many. You could say I’m a bit of book hoarder. Around a month ago I went up to my room with a fresh batch of brand new beautiful shiny books to place proudly on my shelves, only to realize that I had no space left. This isn’t the first time that this has happened either, except this time, it was on a somewhat larger scale. Luckily salvation was just around the corner in the form of a very thoughtful friend who donated to me one of her old bookshelves. So the problem is fixed – temporarily.

BUT I’ve already filled that bookshelf up, I’m now precariously squishing another layer onto it.