May Wrap-Up: A Mixed Bag

Ah, May—well, you turned out to be an interesting month, didn't you?

BOOKS

Guess who was really, really lazy this month and couldn't be bothered to save each book cover individually? Ely. The answer is always Ely. So yes, 21 books this month. Two of which were DNF's...it wasn't the best month. 

CHALLENGES

I kind of suck at challenges guys...

TV/FILM

I've been so busy with Uni that I've barely had the time to sleep, let alone watch TV. I did however get to see Pitch Perfect 2 for a special event which was great!

VIDEOS

I managed to upload a few videos in May... I had my April Book Haul, May TBR, a RYBSAT TBR/Unboxing, my RYBSAT Wrap Up and finally, Part One of my May Book Haul. I also hit 200 subscribers, which is just crazy and I'm not entirely sure how it happened.

ON THE BLOG

We had a very busy month here on the blog and already June is shaping up to be even crazier! I shared my first ever writing snippet here on the blog—thank you to the very lovely Val who convinced me to do that. I reviewed The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and talked about my Classics Club TBR. I also introduced my new series about Writing Resources, the first post of which will be released verrry soon.

OTHER THINGS

May started off on a high for me. I spent the first three days at a country book festival with two of my besets friends—Michelle and Miranda. These two are honestly some of the best people I've ever met and we had a great weekend full of lots of laughing and food. There were some kind of sucky times in the rest of the month. It was my first Mother's Day without my mum, so that was really weird. I have some really great friends who sent me some lovely messages that day that just warmed my heart. I also got to hang out with Michelle again and we need some more book/comic shopping and well, eating. We really like food. 

I got a piece of writing workshopped for the first time in my Writing unit. I don't really share my writing a lot, so I was kind of nervous. Everyone was super nice and they all seemed to like it which was amazing. That same day I got to have a really nice chat with my lovely friend Rachel. Rach is a reasonably new blogger but we've been friends for something like four or five years (?). She actually used to beta the story that has now turned into Tied Together. Anyway, she's possibly the loveliest person I know and we always have a great chat about books and writing. Have I convinced you to go check out her blog yet?

It was also my mum's birthday at the end of the month, and it would have marked one year since she got diagnosed with cancer. I really tried to stay positive because that's what mum taught me, but yeah—it was tough. I'm sorry if you are sick of hearing about this, I just think it's important to show that sometimes this isn't easy. 

Moving on to more happy things! On Sunday, I went to Reading Matters/YA Matters/Writing Matters/Everything Matters with Michelle, Miranda and Chami. We also met up with Tash and Becca for the first time, who by the way, are both absolutely lovely people. Anyway, we listened to some awesome authors talk, went book shopping and Michelle and I met LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON. There will be recap of the event soon, but just quickly—she is honestly one of the nicest authors I've ever met.

My YALC TBR

So, in my Top Ten Tuesday post the other day, I mentioned that I had a few TBRs for my upcoming Europe trip to share with you all. Today, we're starting that little miniseries with probably the biggest TBR you've ever seen in your life. I present to you... my YALC TBR. (If you'd like to learn more about YALC, check out the official website here).

(BUT FIRST, little bit of this gorgeous human being drum rolling for you all)

I'm sorry about the oddly stylish pattern here at the bottom. Apparently, I don't have enough books on my TBR.

YEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

Okay, so obviously I'm not going to list every single book here and why I want to read them or what I think about them individually but I will highlight just a select few. Also, I'm writing this a few weeks in advance so hopefully I've read something off here!

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

One of the few on here that I actually currently own a physical copy of. 

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

I've heard such great things about this series, mainly from Cait and Miranda, but I'm excited.

Crow Moon by Anna McKerrow

Maybe my favourite cover on here. It reminds me a little of The Raven Boys.

Legacy by C.J Daughetry

This is the sequel to Night School which I read...last year, maybe? and reasonably enjoyed. I haven't heard the greatest things about this one, but I'm going to give it a try.

Read Me Like a Book by Liz Kessler

I believe this is a teacher/student romance, but ALSO, LGBTQ+

The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting by Holly Bourne

I borrowed this from the library today (my plan is to read as many of these before I leave Melbourne through my library so I can decide what to buy over there). It's absolutely gorgeous, like really gorgeous because of its red/orange-y pages. Very excited to read this one.

So those are a few of the ones I've picked out. I know this is a crazy TBR guys and I don't honestly expect to read them all. I wanted to give myself options, and I really hate meeting authors without reading at least one of their books first because I like to tell them how much I enjoyed their books and my favourite characters and etc. 

If you're going to YALC, let me know what's on your TBR and who you're most excited to see. For me personally, it's a tie between Patrick Ness, Marie Rutkoski and Alice Oseman. If you're not going, let me know if you've read any of these books and what you thought about them.

The Classics Club TBR

So I’m finally doing it. I’m actually joining the Classics Club. I’ve actually made lists for this quite a few times in the past but then never posted them until today. For those of you who don’t know what the Classics Club is I’m going to link their Rules/FAQ page here for you to check out.

I’ve picked out 100 classic books to read, I started with the ones I owned and then added a few more that I just haven’t picked up yet. I’m setting my completion date to October 9^th, 2016. I picked this date because it’s my birthday, more specifically it’ll be my 21^st birthday and I think that it’s a good age to have read more classics. Without further ado, let’s start.

1. Adams, Richard – Watership Down
2. Alcott, Louisa May – Little Women
3. Atwood, Margaret – A Handmaid’s Tale
4. Atwood, Margaret – Blind Assassin
5. Austen, Jane – Pride and Prejudice
6. Braddon, Mary Elizabeth – Lady Audley’s Secret
7. Bronte, Anne – Agnes Gray
8. Bronte, Charlotte – Jane Eyre (reread)
9. Bronte, Charlotte – Villette (reread)
10. Bronte, Charlotte - Shirley
11. Bronte, Emily – Wuthering Heights
12. Burnett, Frances Hodgson – The Secret Garden
13. Capote, Truman – In Cold Blood
14. Chandler, Raymond – The Lady in the Lake
15. Collins, Wilkie – The Woman in White
16. Dickens, Charles – David Copperfield
17. Dickens, Charles – The Pickwick Papers
18. Dostoevsky, Fyodor - Notes from the Underground
19. Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan – The Complete Sherlock Holmes
20. Du Maurier, Daphne – Mary Anne
21. Du Maurier, Daphne – Don’t Look Now and Other Stories
22. Du Maurier, Daphne – I’ll Never Be Young Again
23. Du Maurier, Daphne – Rebecca (reread)
24. Eliot, George – Middlemarch
25. Fitzgerald, F. Scott – Tender is the Night
26. Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Beautiful and Damned
27. Fitzgerald, F. Scott – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
28. Foer, Jonathon Safran – Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
29. Ford, Madox Ford – Parade’s End
30. Frank, Anne – The Diary of a Young Girl (reread)
31. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Cranford
32. Gaskell, Elizabeth – The Life of Charlotte Bronte
33. Gaskell, Elizabeth – Wives and Daughters
34. Gibbons, Stella – My American
35. Hardy, Thomas – Far From the Madding Crowd
36. Hardy, Thomas – Tess of the D’Urbervilles
37. Hartley, L.P. – The Go-Between
38. Heller, Joseph – Catch-22
39. Hemingway, Ernest – The Essential Hemingway
40. Hugo, Victor – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
41. Huxley, Aldous – Antic Hay
42. Huxley, Aldous – Crome Yellow
43. Huxley, Aldous – Brave New World (reread)
44. James, Henry – The Golden Bowl
45. Joyce, James – The Dubliners
46. Keats, John – The Complete Poems
47. Kerouac, Jack – On the Road
48. Lawrence, D.H. – Sons and Lovers
49. Lee, Harper – To Kill a Mockingbird (reread)
50. Llewellyn, Richard – How Green Was My Valley
51. Malory, Sir Thomas – Le Morte d’Arthur
52. Marshall, Alan – I Can Jump Puddles
53. Mitchell, Margaret – Gone with the Wind
54. Mitford, Nancy – The Pursuit of Love
55. Mitford, Nancy – Love in a Cold Climate
56. Mitford, Nancy – Madam de Pompadour
57. Mitford, Jessica – Hons and Rebels
58. Montgomery, L.M. – Anne of Green Gables
59. Nabokov, Vladimir – Pale Fire
60. Nesbit, E – The Railway Children (reread)
61. Nesbit, E – Five Children and It
62. Orczy, Baroness Emmuska – The Scarlet Pimpernell
63. Orwell, George – 1984
64. Orwell, George – The Road to Wigan Pier
65. Orwell, George – Down and Out in Paris and London
66. Plath, Sylvia – The Bell Jar (reread)
67. Plath, Sylvia – The Journals of Sylvia Plath
68. Rand, Ayn – Atlas Shrugged
69. Salinger, J.D. – Franny and Zooey
70. Shakespeare, William – Hamlet
71. Shakespeare, William – The Tempest
72. Shakespeare, William – A Midsummer’s Night Dream
73. Shelley, Mary – Frankenstein (reread)
74. Shelley, Mary – The Last Man
75. Shelley, Mary – Mathilda
76. Shelley, Mary – Transformation
77. Shelley, Mary - Valperga: Or, the Life and Adventures of Castruccio, Prince of Lucca
78. Shelley, Mary – The Journals of Mary Shelley
79. Shelley, Percy – Collected Poems
80. Smith, Betty – A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
81. Smith, Dodie – I Capture the Castle
82. Stienbeck, John – East of Eden
83. Stoker, Bram – Dracula
84. Strachey, Julia – Cheerful Weather for the Wedding
85. Thomas, Dylan – Collected Works
86. Tolkien, J.R.R. – The Lord of the Rings
87. Tolstoy, Leo – Anna Karenina
88. Tolstoy, Leo – War and Peace
89. Turner, Ethel Sybil – Seven Little Australians
90. White, T.H. – The Once and Future King
91. Wollstonecraft, Mary – Maria, or the Wrongs of a Woman
92. Woolf, Virginia – Orlando
93. Woolf, Virginia – Mrs Dalloway
94. Wyndham, John – The Day of the Triffids
95. Yeats, W.B. – Collected Poems
96. Yeats, W.B. – Irish Fairy Tales
97. Zola, Emile – Germinal
98. Zola, Emile – Nana
99. Zola, Emile – The Dream
100. Zola, Emile – Therese Raquin

So those are my 100 classics to read before my 21^st birthday. This list isn’t set in stone, I’m sure I’ll add more to this list and there will be ones I take off in that time but these are the ones I’m currently thinking of. I’ll updating this list as I read the above books and I’ll be posting my thoughts on each book as I finish them.

Are any of you participating in Classics club?

Writing Resources: The Introduction

I’m one of those writers who loves research, but I’m also a little bit hesitant about writing diversely. Then I realised that there are aspects of my person that are diverse. In some ways, I’m pretty average — I’m a 19 year old female, I’m half-Australian half-British, and a student. In other ways, I’m a little bit different — I have anxiety, I lost my mum to cancer, I’ve been a Type One Diabetic for almost six years and (something I’ve never mentioned here) I have a disability that affects my ability to walk. This isn’t a pity party though, I’m mentioning all this because I want to start sharing my experience of these things with other people, other writers specifically, in the hope that it’ll help somebody.

I know things like this exist on the internet already, but sometimes I think that the websites you find for research can be very informative, even clinical. Sure, that’s great sometimes but I personally think the best kind of writing resources come from real people. The resources I’m going to be writing are going to be that kind — the real kind. I’m not going to tell you the scientific reasons behind Diabetes (not that I even know them), but I’ll tell you how difficult injecting yourself four times a day can be, about Diabetes burnout and other general sucky things.

For the things I’m not confident in I’ll be sharing resources I’ve found on my many travels of the internet. If there’s something you’d like to write about whether you’d prefer to post on your own blog or guest post for us, just shoot me an email and we’ll work something out. Similarly, if there’s something in particular you’d like to see then leave a comment and I’ll do my best to find something to help you out.

REVIEW: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

Title: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Author: Anne Brontë

Genre: Classics, Romance.

Publication Date: June 28th 2012 (first published 1848)

Publisher: Penguin Books

Format: Paperback

Pages: 524

Rating: 5/5

'She looked so like herself that I knew not how to bear it'

In this sensational, hard-hitting and passionate tale of marital cruelty, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall sees a mysterious tenant, Helen Graham, unmasked not as a 'wicked woman' as the local gossips would have it, but as the estranged wife of a brutal alcoholic bully, desperate to protect her son.

Using her own experiences with her brother Branwell to depict the cruelty and debauchery from which Helen flees, Anne Bronte wrote her masterpiece to reflect the fragile position of women in society and her belief in universal redemption, but scandalized readers of the time. 

After reading and absolutely adoring Jane Eyre last year, I made it my mission to read through absolutely everything the Brontë sisters ever wrote.

It took me a while, but I finally managed to tick another one off my list. I tried reading Wuthering Heights a few months ago and I didn’t love it (I still haven’t finished it) so when it came to this one, it really could have gone either way. Luckily, this turned out to be more like Jane Eyre for me.

Firstly, I feel like this one is seriously underrated. When people talk about the Brontë sisters, usually it’s all about Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. This one definitely deserves some more love, and not just from book bloggers or booktubers but I’ve already planned another post to talk about that in length.

I think what gets me the most about this one is that Anne Brontë based Helen Graham’s (our female lead, if you will) story on her own experiences with her brother Branwell. For those of who don’t know, and without spoiling too much, Branwell wasn’t exactly going for Man of the Year. As horrible as it is, it’s probably because of Branwell’s behaviour that this book is so beautiful. You can really feel the rawness in Anne’s writing and Helen’s hatred of her husband.  I don’t know how to put this other than ‘it gave me the feels’.

Let’s talk about another aspect of the writing for a moment. As a Literature student, this book felt like a dream. I absolutely love layered perspectives, stories within stories… however you want to put it. Again, I’ve got a post coming up about this. Anyway, within this we get to hear from both Helen and Gilbert Markham — Gilbert is telling a story (in letter form) to his friend Halford about Helen, and then within that Gilbert also reads a diary that Helen has written. It sounds confusing, but wow, it is well done. Originally, I had sort of wanted the whole novel to be from Helen’s point of view, because that’s just what I’m used to, but as the story went on I realised how terrible the story would have been, if it had been told like that. It would have been boring, there would have been no mysterious element to Helen at all — it would have been terrible, just take my word on this.

Just quickly, I want to talk about a couple of the characters. Warning: this is where I get a little sassy. So there’s a character named Millicent, and I honestly just imagined her as Millicent Nankivell the entire time — I’m not entirely sure this is a compliment, Sorry Millie! Also, there’s Annabella who is honestly the worst kind of person ever. Oh god, I lost count how many times I wanted to slap her. Helen, on the other hand, Head Bitch in Charge…seriously. I absolutely adore her, she’s such a strong character — her life honestly sucks and yeah, sometimes she’s a little naïve but wow. Can we be best friends? #Helly (I had to). I’m not 100% sure about this yet, but I think I might even like Helen more than I liked Jane.

So yes, this may have taken me eleven days to finish but it was totally worth it. If you haven’t already picked this up, especially if you’re a Bronte fan, you should definitely pick this up.

Ten Books I Plan To Have In My Beach Bag This Summer

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, and you can find more about this meme here. This week, the topic is books I plan to have in my beach bag this summer. 

Firstly, can we talk about the fact that I didn't have to change the season in this topic for once? I will actually be in the same season!! What is this sorcery? But really, how 'summer' is summer in England.

Anyway, I've got quite a few reading plans for my trip so look out for those TBR's coming at you very, very soon and let's go on with this one!

1. The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot

I've never actually read any of these, but I absolutely adored the movies as a child/preteen so I feel like this is a good plan. I'm not sure I'll get through all of them, but I would at least like to read the first three.

2. Sarah Dessen

This might be cheating, but mainly I haven't made up my mind about this one yet. Basically, I want to eventually read every Sarah Dessen book and so far I've read four and my last one was a few years ago. At the moment, I'm tossing up between Lock and Key and Saint Anything being the next one.

3. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien

I'll be travelling for the whole summer, which means a lot of...well, travelling. In fact, within the first three weeks — I'll be taking a seven hour train trip and then go camping with family. I feel like if there's ever a time I'm going to get through this, it's then.

4. Confess by Colleen Hoover

The goal is to read this before I leave, because have you seen that cover? (I want to be able to stare at it while I read it) but if that doesn't happen, well then I guess I'll have to read it in England somewhere, won't that be difficult?

5. The Luxe series by Anna Godbersen

I've owned the first book in this series for a good six or seven years now and I feel like it's probably time to read it. I haven't heard the greatest things about this series, so I might not even make it through the first book but if I do end up enjoying it, I'd like to finish the whole series.

6. The Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini

I actually own this whole series and I have for about a year and a half now so I should read it, I think. I also have a few boy cousins under ten, maybe this would be a cool thing to read with/to them?

7. Middlemarch by George Eliot

See reasoning for LoTR. 

8. 99 Days by Katie Cotugno

I've been waiting this one ever since I read an excerpt of it back in like January or something. Besides, it's summer — there is no better time to read Contemporary YA.

9. Cress by Marissa Meyer

Nope, I haven't read this yet. *dodges bullets* I've been putting it off because Winter isn't out yet and I generally like to read books in series when I know the next one will be out within a month or two, but I feel like I've been putting this off for too long. It's time to man up, Ely.

10. Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke by Anne Blackman

YOU CAN BET YOUR SWEET ASS I'M GOING TO READ THIS. *cough* Sorry, I just really adored Prisoner of Night and Fog and I feel like I've been waiting a gazillion years to read this. I just want it my hands.

Remember to check back in a few days if you're interested in seeing the other books I plan on reading while in Europe!