February Wrap-Up: In Which I Am Insanely Busy

Welcome to my February wrap-up. We've got a lot to get through so let's get started!

BOOKS

So I read a staggering 21 books this month. Unfortunately, a lot of them were three stars. My favourite was most definitely Maybe Someday. 

CHALLENGES

I set myself a lot of challenges this year and I've been very slowly making progress with them. My biggest challenge this year is #ProjectTBR and I've taken quite a few books off that but I'll be updating you all on that very soon. I've been loving the Around the World challenge the most - look at that map!

TV/FILM
I continued watching Agent Carter this month and that was literally it. Actually I lied, on the 28th I watched the first episode of this show called Grantchester - I loved it.

WRITING
Eeep. This...wellllll. I haven't really written much. I'm now at a total of 47,000 words so I've written about 3,000. Not as much I wanted but...

VIDEOS
I only posted four videos this month but I do have quite a few lined up for March so I'm not too disappointed. Here are those four: January Book Haul, Favourites #1, Fictional Boyfriend Tag and Bookentine Wrap Up.

ON THE BLOG
We were kind of lazy on the blog in February (and you'll find out why in the next section) but we still had some interesting posts. Firstly, we had Hilary Thompson and a friend of mine - Sky, visit us as part of Fathomless Females. We celebrated Harry Potter Book Night, I talked about my dream book collection and was nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by my dear friend Rachel. But most importantly...CHAMI POSTED A REVIEW. This hasn't happened for a year or something!!!

OTHER THINGS
Phew, it's been a busy month! Chami and I started the month off by attending the Ruby Circle Launch Party with a bunch of other awesome bloggers. I finally got to meet the lovely Millicent and if you want to know more about that event, definitely read her recap because it's amazing. Saturday the 14th saw the beginning of the read-a-thon I was co-hosting with one of my best friends Michelle. We had a lot of fun hosting it and I've made some new friends out of it including the marvellous Lori who you should all check out immediately! I also started a new short online course with the Australian Writers Centre that I'm really enjoying so far. I caught up with Michelle the day after Bookentine finished and we chilled in the city, ate some really good food, covered our hands in lipstick testers and somehow...didn't buy anything. On the 24th, I went and saw McBusted live. I've been a fan of McFly since I was about 14/15 so I jumped at the chance to see them live. I also did a meet and greet and spent the entire night shaking afterwards because OH MY GOD. Finally, I spent the last weekend away with my dad. He was going up for a conference so I tagged along and read some books and hung out in the beautiful town of Ballarat. That area - Ballarat, Daylesford, Clunes, Castlemaine and Bendigo, is probably my second favourite area in all of Australia, only beaten by the seaside town I spent my childhood summers in. I really love spending time there, especially with my dad.

Did you think I was joking when I said I had a busy month? Tell me about your February!

The Versatile Blogger Award

I was nominated for The Versatile Blogger Award by the incredibly lovely Rachel of The Very Hungry Bookworm. Rachel has just started up her blog but I've been lucky enough to be friends with her for four or so years now so I can definitely recommend her blog because she's an absolutely gorgeous human being. Anyway...

The rules for this award are short, sweet, and easy to follow:

• If you are nominated, you've been awarded the Versatile Blogger Award!
• Thank the person who nominated you, just to be nice.
• Link back to their blog. They'd be ever so grateful!
• Select bloggers to award (ones you recently discovered or follow regularly).
• Nominate them for the award (remember to notify them once you do!).
• Lastly, tell the person who nominated you seven things about yourself. Easy as that!

As for my seven facts...

1. I am always introduced to new people (mostly by my dad) as 'The Reader'. 

2. Purple has been my favourite colour since I was about eight. A fact made very evident when you walk into my room.

3. I speak English (obviously), French and I'm learning Danish currently. I also really want to learn German...and Italian, and Spanish and every other European language.

4. In about five months time I'll be living and studying (and blogging) in Denmark. (With some travelling throughout Europe in four months time.)

5. I love clocks. I don't really know why...but I have two or three in my room. I like how they look, but I also have this need to be able to see/know the time at any given, well, time. 

6. I am notoriously bad at starting books but never finishing them. I probably have a good thirty that I put down for whatever reason and haven't picked up. It's something I'm working on.

7. I am a terrible, horrible, incredibly lazy blogger at the moment. Again, it's something I'm working on.

Now for some nominations! I'm nominating the always wonderful Ebony of Daring Damsels, the very lovely Eugenia of Genie In A Book and a new favourite blogger of mine, Lori of Books o' the Wisp. Thanks again for nominating me, Rach!

BOOK SHAME #4

Book Shame is a monthly post here on A Book So Fathomless where I pick out four books from my TBR jar, talk about them and then challenge myself to read them before the next post.

Let’s talk about how I went last month first!

I managed to finish both The Man in the Brown Suit and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – I liked them both. I also started Annette Vallon but I only got 106 pages in – I will be continuing it next month. Finally, Rags and Bones – I picked this up early this month then realized I hadn’t read most of the original tales that these were retelling so I decided to leave it for another time.

As for the ones I picked out for March…

1. All the Wrong Questions by Lemony Snicket

I’m sure you’re all aware of my love for the Series of Unfortunate Events books, so I’m happy that I can finally get around to this new series.

2. The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

I’ve owned this one for years now – I think about seven years or so and I still haven’t read it. I know there was a TV series adapted from this that looks amazing, so hopefully I can read this and then watch that.

3. Castle Dor by Daphne Du Maurier

I’ve been meaning to pick up another Daphne Du Maurier book since I finished Jamaica Inn in May (or something) last year but I didn’t know which to pick. To say I’m excited for this would be an understatement.

4. Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks

I absolutely adore the movie adaptation of this book so I’m both super excited and a little terrified to finally read this.

So I think I’ve got a pretty good selection here for March. These are all books that I’ve genuinely been wanting to pick up for ages but just haven’t yet. Hopefully I can actually get to them all this month!

WARNING: Excessive fangirling... OH, and a Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover review

Title: Maybe Someday (Maybe #1)

Author: Colleen Hoover

Genre: New Adult, Contemporary.

Publication Date: March 18th 2014

Publisher: Atria Books

Format: Paperback

Pages: 367

Challenges: Around the World, #ProjectTBR

Rating: 5/5

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Colleen Hoover, a passionate tale of friendship, betrayal, and romance.

At twenty-two years old, Sydney has a great life: She's in college, working a steady job, in love with her wonderful boyfriend, Hunter, and rooming with her best friend, Tori. But everything changes when she discovers Hunter's cheating on her--and she is left trying to decide what to do next.

Sydney becomes captivated by Ridge, her mysterious neighbor. She can't take her eyes off him or stop listening to the passionate way he plays his guitar every evening out on his balcony. And there's something about Sydney that Ridge can't ignore, either. When their inevitable encounter happens, they soon find themselves needing each other in more ways than one...

Original music created for Maybe Someday by musician Griffin Peterson can be accessed through the website listed in the ebook and paperback.

So people I talked to about this book…Remember how I was all like ‘I don’t know if I’m going to like New Adult, you know’? HA. HAHA. Guys. I can’t even.

For those of you who I didn’t talk about this book with, well, I was a little apprehensive to start it. I feel comfortable in my little YA-sometimes-classics-sphere so branching into a new genre was terrifying for me. But oh my god. Just oh my god.

I don’t know if this review is going to make sense at all so if it doesn’t, I’m really, really sorry but I feel like it’ll speak volumes for this book.

It started off kind of strangely and for the first, maybe, 40 pages or so I wasn’t sure about this. I felt like I’d read the story before – girl breaks up with boyfriend, girl is heartbroken, girl meets new boys, the usual. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, I was completely invested in the story. I’m sorry, what do you mean this book was 367 pages? I’m pretty sure it was only like 50.

Let’s talk about our main character Sydney. At first, I didn’t like her – she was boring and cliché and I just couldn’t have cared less. By the end? I loved her. I don’t know about anyone else, but I thought she was just a really great character. She wasn’t judgmental or whiney or anything else that would make her just like all those others. She was awesome, she had a passion other than boys, she could be witty and sarcastic.

I think my favourite thing was the relationship between her and Ridge, and I don’t mean the feels (although, there were a lot of those.) I liked how the characters grew because of one another and I liked that you could see that in the way they acted. I loved the banter between the two of them but also the deep trust and understanding. They’re basically the definition of my idea of love. No other characters have ever personified that in any book I’ve ever read.

Ridge was perfect. Well, not perfect but seriously amazing. I wish I could talk about why I think he was so brilliant but unfortunately that’s a spoiler. I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone else gush about Ridge, but wow. He’s honestly become one of my new favourite book boyfriends. I mean, he’s up there with James Mycroft and Sirius Black and I’m sure you all know how I feel about those two. Could he maybe move Warner out of the top three? Welllll, don’t tell anyone (especially not Chami) but maybe…someday. I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist!

Before I move onto the biggest part of the book and this review, I just want to quickly talk about Colleen Hoover’s writing. Usually when it comes to contemporaries, I find you get a really mix – you get the good writing and then the OMG-what-have-you-done-to-my-heart? kind of writing. This was definitely the second. I think the reason this story is so beautiful is because the writing is absolutely gorgeous, it’s honest and it’s a little bit heartbreaking but it’s funny too. It’s just a whole lot of feels.

Now let’s move onto the big thing. The music element to the book. I’m going to start of by saying that I love music, really I do but the idea of writing completely baffles me. I know a bit of guitar and piano but I’m definitely more of a listener rather than a maker. It’s always interested me though so the fact that this book is about musicians was very exciting when I started reading. Oh but wait, it got better! First page, before the book even starts, there’s a little note from Colleen Hoover saying that you can actually find the soundtrack on her website. That’s cool right? *insert me buying the album off iTunes and then sobbing at the beauty* Anyway, I love the fact that we don’t only get to see the lyrics within the book, but we also get the chance to listen to the songs but even more than that, we see them being written. Please excuse me while I fangirl over that. If you’re even a little bit interested in music then you absolutely have to read this. (Especially you Ebony, if you’re reading this.)

Random little extra note here, I actually had to put this down with 20 or so pages left because my heart couldn’t take it. Obviously, I had to pick it back up 30 seconds later because RIDGE.

Okay, so to summarise – Maybe Someday is now being referred to as the book of ‘oh my god, no, stop, I just can’t, nope, MY HEART!!!’

Yes, I’m warning you now. And yes, we have a massive graphic budget here on A Book So Fathomless.

The Dream Book Collection, Or Why I’ll Be Broke for the Rest of My Life

We all have one right? That idea of the perfect book collection, and I don’t mean the fact that we want floor to ceiling bookshelves (because who doesn’t?) or matching hardback covers. I’m talking about the actual books we desperately need to have in our collection. Today I thought I’d share the books that I just need to own, some are particular books or authors while others are just certain genres or ideas.

Firstly, there are a few authors that I have to own all of their books one day. For example, Agatha Christie, Emile Zola, Sylvia Plath, Daphne Du Maurier, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’m sure none of these surprise any of you. These are some of my favourite authors ever so I desperately need their whole collection. There are also a few auto-buy authors for me, but that’s a whole other post.

There’s a never-ending list of books that I want in my possession, but here are just a couple that are on my list of things to buy when I’ve met my ‘Read 10, Buy 1’ challenge/when I actually have money. EVERY MOVE by Ellie Marney, The Winner’s Crime by Marie Rutkoski, Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, My Life Next Door by Huntley Fitzpatrick, The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (I’ve read all of these, but GAAAH, I NEED THEM!) Finally, I also really want to get my hands on the sixth book of the A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket – I’ve read this too and I owned it once upon a time but then I let it to the person I used to be friends with and I never got it back.

Genre-wise, I really need to add some more poetry, plays and short stories/essays to my collection. I’ve been picking up a couple of these throughout the past year or so but I just don’t own enough. I really like picking these up second-hand because I don’t like paying $20 for a poetry collection that’s only 50 or so pages long. I need some recommendations for this – I currently own some Sylvia Plath, John Dunne, John Keats, Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare but I don’t know what else is worth picking up. 

Sort of similar to that, I’d really like to own more classics. By this, I mean like proper Greek classics and myths. I totally blame the booktuber Jean BookishThoughts for this (if you haven’t seen her videos then I totally recommend them.)

I’d also like to own more fairytales, fables etc. Specifically, Hans Christian Andersen’s as he’s Danish and that’s kind of my obsession right now. I think the children’s literature course I’m doing will really help with this, and hopefully I can collect a few more children’s classics to my shelves.

Also, I’d like to get more comics and graphic novels – luckily Michelle is helping me spend all of my money out with this.

The last two I’ve got are kind of connected. If you’ve been here a while you probably know about my obsession with Wales and Denmark, so yes I want to buy more books both set in those countries and just about them in general. The last part is travel guides – I really, really love travel and so I want to pick up some travel guides and mark things off as I see them and add things I like and etc. This isn’t related to this post, but I’ve been thinking about doing a ‘Bookish Guide to Europe’ when I go over there later this year – would anyone be interested in that? Or hearing about any non-book related Europe-y things?

Now’s your turn – tell me about your dream book collection! Are you going to be as broke as I am or do you have more self-control?

Fathomless Females #4 - Sky

Welcome to our fourth post of Fathomless Females! For those of you who don't know, Fathomless Females is a 2015 feature where we showcase amazing female authors.

Today, we have a lovely friend of mine joining us - Sky or StarlitSky99. Sky and I met on Twitter through our mutual love for the absolutely gorgeous Harry Lloyd (you're welcome). So before I start fangirling, let's get onto the interview! 

1. How and when did you start writing? 

I started writing poems when I was around 13, but I didn't start writing stories until 4 years ago. I remember reading my favourite books Harry Potter and thinking, "you know what? I can do that too!" And thus my writing began, never thinking it'd see the light of day.

 

2. You post your writings mostly on Wattpad. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Do you have a favourite aspect?

I found Wattpad by accident just wandering on the internet wanting to read other people's stuff. I love it there. Some advantages are easily putting your stories up for people to see, and meet amazing writers just like you who you can share and bounce ideas off of. Just being able to reach so many people is a blessing for any writer. Disadvantages are you can't always get feedback from the people who aren't signed up to Wattpad. Also your stuff is considered published by other certain sites so you can't resubmit to other places if you need to.

 

3. You write both stories and poetry. Do you find one easier than the other? Or is there one you prefer?

I love writing poetry. It comes easy to me, I can write a poem on something I'm feeling in like 3 minutes, but I prefer to write stories more. I find it more fun to create worlds, characters, situations, and personalities. At the end of the day they're both my babies.

4. What’s a typical day of writing for you? When and where do you write? How often? Do you set a writing goal?

I write when I get the itch, which is a lot. I couldn't live without writing. It's like breathing for me. I write my stories like it's a movie being played out in my head. That's how I see it, and I hope it comes across close enough for the readers to see it that way. I'll write anywhere it's quiet. I need quiet when I write so that I can gather my thoughts and make sense. But mostly I write lying on my bed - Nothing special just good old fashioned pen and paper. Then I type it and edit later. I tried the 30 day writing challenge and loved it. I only made it till day 26,but I feel that's still quite an achievement. I'll take it. I really loved keeping in touch with my writing and my audience of readers. It was nice. I'd like to get back to that place of writing again. I try to set writing goals, helps me to keep on track, but some days life just gets in the way. I'm working on it.

5. Give us a brief synopsis (or excerpt) of one of your stories.

Loki held out his hand for me as I shakely find my way up the stairs, but once I was up there and looked around I suddenly didn't feel scared at all, but...empowered! Loki continued to talk and scare the masses. By this time the Television crews had appeared and he was plastered on every T.V. screen and heard on every radio station in the world.

I knew it was wrong, yet as I watched him I couldn't help but be amazed, as I became drunk with his power. I was as mad for power as he was, and by the look in his eyes, he knew it now too. I only hoped Zach hadn't caught on. At least not yet.

Before I knew what I was doing I stood on my tippy toes, grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him rough. I decided to declare my love and let the whole world know this...was my man, and for once I'm beginning to think I'm gonna like this.

That was an excerpt from "Make It Right" on Wattpad Ch.20- The Takeover.

And there you go! Thank you to Sky for joining us today. Make sure you go check out her Wattpad and we'll see you all next time.

Next time on Fathomless Females: Alison Pensy, author of the Custodian series.