The Next Few Weeks

As I'm sure you pretty much all know by now, I (being Ely) am travelling to the UK this month. In fact, I leave for the airport in about five hours, which is kind of terrifying. Yes, I'm packed but my room is still mess so guess what I'm doing for the next five hours?

Anyway, I wanted to do a quick little update/post on what's happening. Here's the thing, I don't know how much internet I'll have. I'm spending a lot of time with family in June/July, and I don't want to use up all their internet. Besides, I'll be busy sightseeing and looking after my little cousins.

I'll try and update you all as much as possible, but I just don't know how often that will be. Thank you for all of your support!

UPDATE: Read 10, Buy 1

For those of you who have seen my Project TBR post/video, you know that I have a really, really, really long TBR list. I mentioned in that post that I was implementing the 'Read 10, Buy 1' rule and today, I thought I'd update you on how that's going.

So far this year, I've read 17 books (almost 18) but some of those were library books which I'm not counting towards this goal. I should have only bought 1 book this year right? Well, not quite.

I know what you're thinking. 'OH GOD, ELY. WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?' But no. I've been really good.

I've read 14 books towards this goal and bought only two. So the books I've read are:

1. Let it Snow
2. The Gift
3. Hansel and Gretel
4. Burial Rites
5. It’s kind of a funny story
6. Tandem
7. Defiance
8. The Winner’s Curse
9. The House of Silk
10. I Was Here
11. Seraphina
12. The Darkest Fear
13. Storm
14. The Man in the Brown Suit

I bought two books when I hit book number 10 - The Goldfinch and a collection of short stories by Sylvia Plath. Rather than completely give up the challenge after I failed, I decided that the next six books I read will count towards me buying the Sylvia Plath collection. That means, I have to read another sixteen books before I can buy something.

Will I bring strong enough? I think so. There aren't really any books I want to buy right now, except for a few that I've already read (therefore they don't count). I'm hoping to save up so I can buy both Every Move and The Winner's Curse when they come out next month.

In Which Ely May Have Gone (Slightly) Out of Control

I've been really slacking on the posts recently but I haven't had the energy or the motivation to write a post in what seems like forever. To be honest, I haven't really been reading that much in the last week or so - I've spent more asleep so far this year than I have awake, and therefore my reading time has kind of been cut down.

I'm writing this post a little bit ahead of time, but I thought I'd update you all on what I'm reading, what I'm looking forward too etc.

The Read Your Bookshelf-a-Thon/RYBSAT is currently taking place. At the time I'm writing this, I'm only 30% into my first book for the read-a-thon which is Tandem by Anna Jarzab. I'm enjoying it so far although it was a little slow to start off. I'm hoping to review it once I'm done. After that, my next book is Defiance by C.J. Redwine which I'm very, very excited to read. At the moment, I feel that these may be the only books I make it through but I really hope I can read a few more.

So I went a little crazy on at the library, or rather in the online catalog. I put twenty books on hold, and I already another two. So yes, now I have twenty two books on hold and I just know that they're all going to come in at once. I'm going to take over the entire hold shelf!

(Okay, that's a lie.)

What else? OH! On Saturday (the day that I'm writing this post), I went shopping with the lovely Michelle. She took me to All-Star Comics which I'd never been to before and well...I bought some comics. I was pretty restrained (for me) and only bought three - Black Widow, Sex Criminals and Ms Marvel. I'm going to do a video about these and a bunch of other comics I've bought/borrowed recently so I'll put that up and link it here when I do.

I think that's about everything. I'll be doing a wrap-up next week in which I'll talk more about the books I've read and whatnot. See you all next time!

BOOKISH UPDATE// Chami

Hey everyone!

I thought I would post a lovely update on what has been going on in my life.

BOOKISH THINGS:

·      - I recently completed Anna and The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins and now I am barrelling my way through the Lux series by Jennifer L Armentrout.

·     -  One of my friends does not like Warner from the Shatter Me series and I literally can’t deal right now. *cries*

NON-BOOKISH THINGS

·      Uni offers, why are you so slow?

·      I am going on a vacation soon so I won’t be able to post on the blog that often. Sorry all!

UPDATE: We're Back

Hello everyone! As you may have noticed, I've slowly been returning to blogging since I went on a little break at the end of October. Before I get into this post, I just want to thank everyone who sent me tweets, comments and e-mails - it really, really meant a lot to me. Now, we've got some exciting news for you all!

Firstly, we're getting a new blog design from the wonderful Hazel of Stay Bookish. She's been so patient with us, and the design is amazing! We can't wait for you all to see it :)

Secondly, starting tomorrow, we're doing this thing called 'review week'. It's exactly what it sounds like - a week filled with nothing but book reviews. We've been kind of lacking with the book reviews lately, hence our decision to do this.

Thirdly, Chami is almost finished exams! In fact, her last exam is tomorrow. Do you know what this means? CHAMI WILL BE BACK!

Finally, (I think), we've created another wonderful themed week that'll be happening in two weeks time. What is the theme you, I hear you ask. Welllll, it's Shatter Me.

I think that's about it! I hope you're all having a marvellous week, and we'll see you next time! (because Chami will be back!!!! Can you guess I'm excited?)

UPDATE: Top 14 Books That Must Be Read in 2014

I wrote this post way back in January outlining the books I decided I definitely had to read this year. I did my last update in July, so I thought it was time for another update. In July, I'd only three of the 14 books so let's see where I'm up to now!

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
I finally finished the last two books off, and it was a great feeling. I can't even begin how great it was to finally move this onto my 'read' shelf.

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I still haven't read this one. To be honest, I haven't even thought about it since I did my last update. I still want to read it, but it's not on the top of my list.


3. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
I've read this one too - woo! I enjoyed it, but it wasn't as good as I was expecting.


4. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness
5. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
6. Legend by Marie Lu
I'd finished these three last time, so I won't go into detail about them.

7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
I finished this one last week. It was just beautiful.

8. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray
I haven't progressed any further with this since my last update. I'm still stuck on page 300 or so, but I will get it finished this year!

9. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Still haven't picked this up...

10. The Parasites by Daphne Du Maurier
Or this one :(

11. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
I have, however, finished this one. I really liked it, and the movie too.

12. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
I'm actually terrified to read this.

13. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
I still don't have a copy of this book, but I do have it on hold at the library. Hopefully I can get to it soon.

14. Paper Towns by John Green
Still haven't read anymore of this either.

So I've read seven of these books now, which I'm pretty happy with. I've just realised that I'm probably not going to make it through the other seven books by the end of the year but I'd be happy to get through just one or two more of these. I won't be doing another update on this list until the end of the year. I'll see you all next time!

UPDATE: A Break from Blogging

I'm sure most of you know by now that Chami is doing her final year of school. Her exams are about to start, so naturally she's not going to be active around here.

There will be a few of you who will already know this (and I couldn't have made it through this past week without you), but I lost my beautiful mum to cancer yesterday. As you can probably guess, I'm not really feeling up to blogging right now.

I don't know how long this break is going to be for, but I've been looking into get some people to do a few guest posts so that this blog isn't completely inactive so we'll see how that turns out. There are already a few posts scheduled, so I hope you enjoy them.

Thank you.

UPDATE: Booktube and Other Things

Hi guys! It's been a while since I did one of these, but it's time for an update today.

I don't know whether you've noticed but I've been posting every day for the last five days. Even when Chami and I were most active, we never posted every single day but I've noticed that quite a few blogs do it so I thought I'd try it myself. I'm not going to promise that this will be a constant thing, but I'm going to try and post every single day until the end of this month just to see how it goes.

What's next? Booktube! I've been booktubing on and off for a couple of months now. I'm not a particularly interesting booktuber- I only really post book hauls, but I absolutely love doing it. I'm hoping to use my channel and this blog in conjunction with one another in the future. Oh, and you can find my channel here. I wanted to bring this up now because once Chami has finished her exams, we're hoping to make some awesome bookish videos together (and I wanted to make you guys excited about that).

(That better be all of you, right now.)

Reading-wise, I'm sort of in a slump but not really. I've actually been hanging out with friends a lot the past couple of weeks so I haven't really had much time to read and I'm still struggling to find something that holds my attention. I've started Heir of Fire but I'm reading it quite slowly because I don't know if I'll be able to handle it- I just have a lot of feels!

So the reading leads me into my next part which is book buying. I've placed myself on book buying ban since coming back from Sydney. It's my birthday at the beginning of October so I'm trying to hold myself off from getting anything until then, but if things go really well I'd like to resist buying books until the end of October, after my exams. We'll see how that turns out though.

Now onto the massively exciting part of this post...COLLABS. I'm lucky enough to being collabing with two of my bestest blogging buddies this month and I am SO excited. Firstly, Chiara of Books for a Delicate Eternity and I will be doing a discussion post on Every Breath and Every Word by Ellie Marney. I don't know exactly when this will be going up yet or the finer details of the post but it's going to be awesome! Even more exciting than that (I do love Chiara, very very much), Ebony of Daring Damsels and I are going a little bit nuts together this month. We have three different collabs this month - we're doing a part two of our Cover Comparisons, Ebony will be joining me for my new Colour Schemes feature and we're also hosting a read-a-long for The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson (more on that later). On top of all of that, this Friday we're going to see Les Mis together which is going to be seriously brilliant.

How exciting is all of that? And yes, that is how I feel right now. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy all this exciting stuff when it happens! Tell me about some of the awesome things in your life right now...(or not so exciting)

UPDATE: Top 14 Books That Must Be Read in 2014

This post is an update of this post which I did back in January, outlining the books I decided I definitely had to read this year. Let's see how that's been going for me...

1. The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
I'm most of the way through this- I think I've only got the final two books left. I own a big bind-up edition of this which is horrible to read from, but I will make my way through the last two as soon as possible.

2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 
I think I've read the first 200 or so pages of this but that was all last year, so I haven't actually read a single page so far this year. I've read a few more 'big' classics since then so I think I'm ready for this. (Okay, I'm probably not)


3. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
I finally read Wintergirls earlier this year which I enjoyed, but I don't know whether I'm quite in the right place for a book like this at the moment. I know it's supposed to be amazing and the subject matter is very important, but I know it's going to be an intense read. 
 

4. The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness 
Here we go...a book I've actually read this year! I seriously loved this, and I also read the sequel this year but I haven't gotten around to the third book. Unfortunately, I had to return it to the library before I got the chance to finish it. ONE DAY!


5. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
Woo, two in a row! I read North and South very recently and I absolutely adored it. It was amazing and the mini-series is just brilliant and I like to re-watch it whenever I'm feeling a little bit down because FEELS.

6. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 
This is going very well for me considering I don't even own this book nor have I borrowed it from the library. I haven't actually seen it anywhere otherwise I think I would have picked it up by now. I still want to read this really badly.


7. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray 
Okay, this one is a slightly difficult one to explain. I've read about 300 or so pages of this 800 page book this year. I was really determined to finish it a few months back and then I just put it down to pick something else up and I just haven't picked it back up again. 
 

8. Legend by Marie Lu 
Another one done! I think this was actually one of the first books I read this year. I really, really enjoyed it. On top of that, I finished Prodigy a few weeks again and I'm currently reading Champion (very slowly).


9. Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Considering that I list Aldous Huxley as one of my favourite authors, I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that not only have I not read Crome Yellow yet, I also haven't read any of his other works. This one is such a tiny little book too, I really should get to it!

10. The Parasites by Daphne Du Maurier
Again, I haven't gotten to this one yet. I have actually read another Daphne Du Maurier book this year- Jamaica Inn (which is amazing) but not this one. I have a sudden urge to read this book now!
 

11. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Ahh, okay, so. Basically, I've started reading this book two separate times and I have yet to make it past chapter four. I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about this one but I really, really want to read it before the movie comes out. I guess I should pick it up soon?

12. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein 
Val, if you're reading this, I'm sorry- I know this is one of your favourite books. For everyone else, I've already read Rose Under Fire and loved it but I just haven't gotten to this one yet. I don't even know why, but I'm fixing that asap.
 
13. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux
Like The Bell Jar, this one is going really well in the sense that I don't even have a copy of this one. I saw this beautiful edition once and I hate myself for not buying it- I NEED it in my life.

14. Paper Towns by John Green
*hides from things that might be thrown at me* I have started this one too, again- two different times, and I think I've read like 80 pages but I know this is probably going to break my heart because that's what John Green does. I'm not ready for that.

So basically, I've read three and three halves, maybe another two quarters, of these fourteen books. I'm really not going very well with these as you can probably guess. I kept staring at this scheduled post, telling myself I read more of these before it would go up but alas, that just hasn't happened. I've been really into the 'read whatever I feel like' thing lately and I just haven't felt like this. Luckily, I've still got a bit of time to make it through at least a few more of these...Wish me luck!