November TBR | SciFiMonth 2019

I can’t quite believe how long it’s been since I posted my last post on this blog (25th September) and how quickly time seems to have flown. Things have been quite hectic for me since starting my PhD in September for various reasons including, most recently, a huge mess up with my doctoral loan which caused untold stress. But, for now, that is all besides the point because today I have quickly shoved my lowly human woes to the back of the closet so that I can make space for my favourite month of the year – SciFiMonth! It’s been a bit of a chaotic rush to tie up some loose Earthly ties, throw a load of miscellaneous items in my space-faring rucksack, and rush over in time to catch the SciFiMonth ship before it departed but I made it and I’m ready to report.

 

 

September TBR | The Calm Before the Storm

Hello, hello friends!

I can’t believe that September is already here?! I know I’ve said that pretty much every month this year but it is even truer for September. It feels like not that long ago that I was starting my Masters last September and now we’re back in September and this time I’m about to start my PhD?? I honestly do not really know how I got here but September/October is going to be a pretty big month for me and the start of another 3-year foray (at the very least) into education. I am clearly a glutton for punishment.

Speaking of being a glutton for punishment, I still want to keep up with my blog in whatever way I can manage so I don’t foresee myself going anywhere over the next months. Not only am I going to be sticking around but I’m hoping to introduce a new feature to put the spotlight on indie and/or diverse authors. I’ve been wanting to introduce this since the start of the year and feel particularly inspired to after World Con in August. I’m also hoping to set up a book blogger streaming collective with a few blogger friends. So, lots of exciting things ahead. Do you think I’ll have time for reading too? 😂

Wrap Up | August 2019 + updates

There’s almost no point in me doing a wrap up for August because I completely fell out of the blogging and reading worlds. August truly turned out to be the month where time kind of ate itself; I remember preparing for World Con back at the start of August and then before I knew it the first day of September arrived?! I have a fairly good excuse in that preparations for and recovery from World Con turned out to be pretty all-consuming. That combined with a 5000-word report, a statistics exam and writing my 15,000-word dissertation meant I basically had zero time for anything else. I feel a lot less guilty now seeing how much I actually had to do in August written down…

August wasn’t just a complete non-event on the blogging front but I also barely read anything despite it being the NEWTs readathon. In total, I only managed to read 2.5 books before August was over which is kind of disappointing and also means I’m not behind on both my reading and my blogging 😭

August TBR | First-time NEWTs

Like my O.W.Ls earlier in April, I hadn’t intended on studying for the N.E.W.Ts, mostly because my dissertation is due in early September and I didn’t think I would have time! Fiction reading is giving me a nice break from reading academic books all-day though and there are a few books I’d love to read before Dublin 2019 (World Con) so a structured TBR would definitely be helpful for keeping me on track.

The career that I chose back in April was ‘Magizoologist’ as it is the career I would most love to do in the Potterverse. I passed all of the O.W.Ls I needed to progress onto the N.E.W.Ts for the Magizoologist career so I’m ready to sit my N.E.W.Ts. I need to achieve an O in Magical Creatures, an E in Charms, and an E in Herbology. For each N.E.W.T, I then need to pass the prompt for each grade so I will need to read 3 books for Magical Creatures, 2 for Charms and 2 for Herbology. In total, I will need to read 7 books this month in order to pass my N.E.W.Ts and become a Magizoologist ❤

Video Game Wrap Up | June 2019

Welcome, friends, to my first video game wrap up on my blog!

Although I’ve been blogging a lot more about video games on my blog recently, it never occurred to me to do a separate wrap up for them. However, in my last wrap up I had a lot of books to wrap up and personal news to share and didn’t want to make the post even longer, so decided it was finally time to give video games a wrap up of their own!

As I mentioned in my general wrap up a couple of days ago, June ended up being quite a stressful month for me in terms of personal life stuff so I found myself turning increasingly to books and video games as a way to have fun/escape from real world stuff. It was nice to actually get to play so many games for a change, instead of struggling to find time for them.