If We Were Having Coffee…

If we were having coffee is a blogging community idea, where bloggers publish posts about what they’d like to say to their readers if they were sitting down together having a casual cup of coffee.

In my mind, we’re sitting in a small rustic coffee shop, tucked away down a cobbled street. It has oak tables, vintage cutlery and copper decor with dim lighting, and The Civil Wars are playing in the background.  What are you waiting for? Snug in, grab a beverage, and let’s chat!

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I’d say hello lovely bloggers, it’s me, I’m alive! Contrary to popular belief, I haven’t been spirited away to join a secret Wiccan coven, I haven’t disappeared to study dragons in Peru (I wish), nor was I kidnapped by nargles…
I can’t even feign a flu powder disaster to explain my absence (something tells me you wouldn’t believe me).

2015 in Review: A Year of Big Changes and Awesome Fantasy Books!

Happy New Years everybody! Pop those corks, pump up the music and hug it out. You’ve made it through another year!

It sounds corny, but I’m so appreciative of everything in my life as 2015 comes to a close.
I feel like my relationships with friends and family have only grown stronger this year, and I feel lucky to have a number of amazing, passionate and loyal people in my life. 2015 has been a big personal year for me and I’ve learnt so much. I’m more sure, centred and confident about who I am, to the point where I really don’t care what anyone else thinks! And I’ve stopped obsessing over the what ifs that used to stop me from taking chances.

A New Look for Blogs of a Bookaholic!

Hello everyone! I have some really exciting (and somewhat scary) news. Blogs of a Bookaholic has a new look!

This is something I’ve wanted to do for ages, over two years at least. But every time something kept stopping me from fully going through with it, and also, (being a total fusspot) I kept finding specific aspects of new themes I’d picked out that I didn’t like, which led to me changing my mind and putting it off on about six different occasions.

Quoting the Quill #51

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

– Dr. Seuss

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Well this week I packed up all of my stuff and moved out of my university accommodation, having to leave the great people I had been living with and had become great friends with behind. I’m not going to lie, it was sad, especially as these people will be living such a big distance away from me that it will be quite hard to keep in touch, but we’re going to try.

“What are your plans for after university”

You see, I have this problem.
I don’t know what I want to do after I leave university. I don’t even know what field I want to go into after university.
Sure, I’m studying psychology, but it’s a subject that can be applied to multiple areas.
That doesn’t exactly help me narrow it down a whole lot…

There are some people, you know those people, who seem to have had their lives planned out since playschool.
And then there’s me….

The gaping big hole of the ‘unknown’ after university is something that I’ve come to terms with. Mostly. Occasionally I feel terror creeping in when I see people bragging on Facebook about all their amazing internships and how they’ve got their dream jobs secured before they’ve even finished, but mostly I feel curiosity and a nervous hopefulness about what’s going to come next. You see, because I don’t know what I want to do, I don’t have the pressure or fear that comes with trying to achieve it, at the moment life is all possibility. And that’s okay with me.

Unfortunately, this answer doesn’t satisfy most people.

In every direction I turn, I find myself being faced with the same question from family, lecturers, friends, acquaintances, even random people I’ve only just met.
It’s the question dreaded by students everywhere.

“So *insert name here*, what are your plans for after university?”

2014 In Review: A Personal and Bookish Round Up!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope wherever you are, whether it’s at a party, the pub with friends or at home in your dressing gown watching TV or film marathons (all equally great options) that you are enjoying a relaxing, entertaining night and you’re starting the New Year as you intend to go on! Let’s hope we all make 2015 a great one!

2014 seems to have whizzed by but it’s been a pretty good year for the most part. I passed my second year of university and started my final year, which has included some really great grades and plenty of fun impromptu cocktail and movie nights with my housemates. I went to the Isle of Wight festival to enjoy some great music and learnt how to bartend, and I also had some fun days out like Go Karting, Archery and visiting the Warner Bros Harry Potter Studio Tour (which I keep meaning and failing to blog about). Overall, I’m in a much happier and positive place than I was a year ago, which is awesome! 🙂

It’s also been a pretty good bookish year for me too, I read 31 books (11432 pages), just beating last years target of 30 books (and 10531 pages) ohh yeah! Yes, I am a very slow reader *don’t judge me*. I also gave out five, five star ratings and particularly read a lot of great contemporary books this year which is very unusual for me!

So without further ado, here are the lucky books that are receiving notable bookish awards from me this year!

Quoting the Quill #40

“In new situations, all the trickiest rules are the ones nobody bothers to explain to you. (And the ones you can’t Google.)”

– Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)

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Yes. Yes. A THOUSAND TIMES YES. This quote resonates with me so much and I’m sure it will with a lot of other people too. It’s so awkward when 

Three Years of Blogging! *Fans Self.*

I can’t believe I’m celebrating another one of these blogoversary thingies! How is time passing so fast? I don’t know how I haven’t run out of things to say yet! People really do underestimate the amount of hard work that goes into maintaining a blog, I bet if I started to keep count of the hours I spend on this thing it would be a little scary, but I still wouldn’t change it. 🙂

Even though it feels surreal that I’ve reached the three year landmark, it seems as if I’ve been blogging forever. It’s such an ingrained, natural part of who I am now that it’s hard to remember a time when I wasn’t posting my opinions about books on the internet! I value and cherish this little blog space so much.

The 10 Stages of Bookshelf Reorganisation

It’s a well known fact, bloggers that I’ve been in desperate need of shelf space for quite some time. So long, that I have to squint hard and knock on my head to remember when I wasn’t double stacking or trying to squish books precariously into tight spaces. Well, this summer I decided enough was enough! After spending hours assembling two kamikaze flat packs with a lack of straight edges and a missing piece or two my new bookshelves were finally welcomed into the world! Once I decided where to put my new shelves I was faced with the somewhat intimidating task of reorganising all of my books. I was totally up for the challenge, but what I didn’t expect was the surprising number of emotional stages I went through during the process! So, I thought it might be fun to present thee with a post on the 10 stages of bookshelf reorganisation. 🙂

1.) Excitement.

At first I approached my book reorganisation task with excitement. I mean, who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to spend the majority of their day hanging out with their books – staring at their pretty covers, dusting them, organising them?

Quoting the Quill #36

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
‘Which road do I take?’ she asked.
‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response.
‘I don’t know’, Alice answered.
‘Then’, said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.’”

– Lewis Carroll

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There seem to be two different versions of this quote on the internet, I prefer this one (which appears to use more modern language) but both have the same key message at heart. In life, we all worry if we’re on the right path, if we’ve taken a sharp left when we should have gone right. If we chose to buy the tuna sandwich when we really wanted the chicken and mayo.

My Blog is Now on Facebook! (And Other Noteworthy Updates.)

ATTENTION: I INTERRUPT YOUR SUMMER FUN WITH AN IMPORTANT PUBLIC BOOKISH ANNOUNCEMENT.

*Pauses for dramatic effect that’s not all that dramatic because the clue is in the title.*

Blogs of a Bookaholic is now on Facebook! Woohoo. 🙂

See, even Joffrey’s impressed, and he’s not impressed easily!

Freedom from the Institution that is University, Huzzar!

I’m Freeeeeeeeee!!! *Waves Hands Energetically.*

I felt like it was about time I did another one of these update rambly post thingies. As of last week I handed in the last of my coursework, grumbled and complained through torturous exams (in my head of course, or I would have been disqualified) and packed up the last of my things and headed for home. My second year of university is officially over and I can for the most part, breathe a sigh of relief! At least until I get my results or start having to think about my dissertation (gulp).
I’m currently in denial.
To say work has been full on the last few months would be an understatement, but as a reward I now have a long, hopefully hot summer of reading and home comforts ahead. Woohoo! Most importantly, my cat will no longer have to make complex, life changing decisions without me like whether to go for the fish or chicken chunks in jelly.
I know, she will be so relieved.

2013 in Review: Happy New Year Bloggers!

New Years is one of my favourite holidays. Cynics will knock it and pragmatic people will state that everything doesn’t just start again with the beginning of a New Year, but for me it often does. Sure, things don’t magically transform, only you can choose to make things different and even that doesn’t happen in the flash of an eye. But for me, New Year is a great celebration. It’s a time where we can be thankful that we actually made it to the end of the year through all of the stress and tribulations and hopefully have become a lot stronger because of it! I think 2013 was a pretty good. I passed my first year of University, went on holiday to Edinburgh without any major catastrophes and attended my first author signing. Sure there were some sucky times too, there always are, but I am happy to say that the good outweighed the bad this year!
2013 was also a great year for books and blogging by my standards. I sped my way through 31 books and 10617 pages, a massive total for a slow reader like me (last year 2012 I read only 22 books). And of those books I gave six five star ratings! That’s almost unheard of for me, I don’t give out those five stars lightly. In terms of blogging achievements, I managed to bash out 113 posts on my keyboard, completed the 30 Day Blog Challenge and took part in my first ever 24 Hour Readathon as a reader, which was a truly amazing experience. 😀 My blog visitors came from 128 different countries and the majority were from The United States, the UK and Canada.

To make this New Year post just a little bit different I thought I would 

Two Blogtastic Years!

It’s my two year blogoversary, holy Dickens, Brontë and Tolstoy! My little blog is growing up quickly. This date really snuck up on me, so much so in fact that I actually missed the ‘official’ blogoversary date, which was the 10th, whoops!

I’m struggling to come up with anything that will sound genuine and heartfelt while avoiding the line of cheesy or clichéd for this post, because honestly, I never expected this blog to become anything. I thought I would write a few book reviews and if I was lucky, I might get a comment and then shut the thing down after a few months. I know, I know, everybody says that, but I had no idea what an amazing and enjoyable outlet this would become and all the fantastic people I would encounter!

Quoting the Quill #16

‘Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.’

– F. Scott Fitzgerald

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This quote seems particularly apt at the moment. I’m soon going to be returning to my life a full time student, (In less than a week in fact!) and for this year I have had to search out my own work placement in the field of psychology and it has been unsurprisingly, very stressful! The problem with psychology is