Wrap Up | May 2019 + the unintended hiatus

Hey friends!

Some of you may (or may not) have noticed that I’ve been absent for pretty much the entirety of May. I had planned to take a little step back from blogging anyway as this summer is going to be really busy for me on my Master’s degree, but then I managed to catch/develop gastroenteritis – a nasty contagious stomach bug – which completely knocked me out for almost 2 weeks. Then I had to return to work, start planning my long summer of uni work, and celebrate my partner’s birthday on Sunday. Before I knew it, I found myself at the end of May? I feel like I blinked and missed it.

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted about my concerns around being able to manage book blogging alongside starting my PhD in September (not to mention squeezing it in amongst all my Master’s work this summer) and I’m still not sure what the outcome of my ponderings will be. It’s definitely something I’m planning on writing a discussion post about so that I can talk about it more in-depth and speak to other book bloggers who manage their blog alongside busy lives. What I do know though, from having my unintended break this month, is that I feel a lot less happy when I’m not blogging and I felt so isolated from my book blog friends. Writing this post is already beginning to lift my low mood but I’m also anxious about how much work I have to do. Anyway, that’s not a decision to be made right now – instead, I want to share with you all what I did manage to get up to during Moody May ❤

Down the TBR Hole | #4

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Welcome to the fourth instalment of Down the TBR Hole! It’s been exactly a month since I posted my last Down the TBR Hole and I can’t believe how much more my TBR has grown since then. It feels like fighting a never-ending battle sometimes haha.

This month I had planned on meeting some of my deadlines that I set myself in my first instalment, but unfortunately, I’ve barely been able to do any reading (let alone blogging or anything else). So far I’ve only managed to read The Snow Child, and had started The Night Circus but had to put it aside to try and deal with all of my upcoming ARCs! I’m hoping once the ARC tide calms down a little bit I’ll have more time for my wonderful backlist books 🌊

As it’s been a little while since my last post and I’m eager to get through my TBR pile as quickly as possible, today’s post contains a grand total of 31 books!

How it works:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 books)
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

February TBR | Getting stuck into my 2019 goals

Hey friends!

After having such a successful January, this month has been off to quite a slow start. I’ve had a lot going on over the past week and I’m going to be pretty busy for most of February meaning I’m likely to have less time for reading and blogging. I did come up with a fairly ambitious TBR, prior to realizing I might not have much time this month, so we’ll have to check back in at the end of the month to see how much (if any) progress I made!

2019 Reading Challenges

This year I took part in my first proper reading challenges, Beat the Backlist and the Goodreads Challenge, with varying success. Although I absolutely smashed my Goodreads Challenge, I struggled to balance backlist books with new releases and ARCS as well as log my reading progress with the BtB database to register points. However, I had a lot of fun with reading challenges and found that they (mostly) helped me keep on track with my reading!

For 2019, I’m committing myself to even more reading challenges and am super excited to take part. I’ve matched my challenges up to my reading goals, which I’ll be sharing with you all on New Years Eve, but for today I’m sharing with you all which challenges I’ll be taking part in and 8 books I will read for each as well as linking you up to the hosts so you can sign up too if you want! A massive thanks to the wonderful Tina for her 2019 Reading Challenge Index which helped me find some new challenges to take part in.

Book Tag | The End of the Year

It’s not the End of the Year (yet) nor is it Thursday, but I’m going to do the End of the Year book tag anyway because Destiny is a bad influence on me and I’ve missed blogging so much these past few weeks!

Are there any books you started this year that you need to finish?

Usually, I’m quite good at abandoning books halfway through but that has not been the case with my ARC of Defy the Worlds. 2 months later I’ve not picked it back up after putting it down but I really need to finish it before the end of the year!