Saturday Smalls: 24th August 2019 | Silkpunk, Latinx Poetry, WW2 & NSFW Graphic Novels

Welcome to Saturday Smalls, a weekly review feature which was originally created by Destiny at Howling Libraries!

Each Saturday Smalls will include a handful of mini-reviews for books that I’ve read but didn’t get a chance to review at the time and, once I catch up, I will then use it to review books I don’t feel I can commit to doing a full review for. A huge thank you to the lovely Destiny for letting me adopt Saturday Smalls.

This week’s mini-review round-up includes:

1. Adult Fantasy/Silkpunk novel
2. YA Contemporary/Poetry
3. Adult historical fiction novel
4. Adult graphic novels

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 ❤

WWW Wednesday | 31st July 2019

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words! All you have to do is answers the following three questions:

What are you currently reading/playing?
What did you recently finish reading/playing?
What do you think you’ll read/play next?

It has been a damn while since I did my last WWW Wednesday (over a month) and I almost missed it today because I somehow forgot today is Wednesday? Luckily I have remembered just in time so I am here to share my progress with you all (now that I actually have some progress to share!)

May ‘TBR’ | Moody May!

By now I’m sure most of you are aware that I’m taking part in Moody May as my enthusiasm over mood reading has led me to mention it at almost every available moment in my recent blogs! I had initially planned to take part in another readathon but I really need a break from structured TBR as well as the pressure of keeping up with reviews. I’ve noticed that the combined constraints of my TBR and stress of ARC reviews were leading me to read much slower than I otherwise would, leading me into reading slumps and all around sadness. Plus, sometimes books that had been patiently waiting on my long-term TBR list would one day call out to me only for their pleas to be read to go ignored…

No longer! Moody May is here to save the day and help me take a much needed, more relaxed approach to reading. As part of Moody May is to be free from TBR’s this post isn’t so much of a TBR as a “Moody May sign-up and list of books I might like to read” post.

Down the TBR Hole | Using the #KonMarie method for my Physical Shelves

Today I had planned to do the next round of Down the TBR Hole but considering that I have just done a major reorganization of my actual bookshelves using the Marie Kondo method I thought it would be really fun to share this progress with you all instead. Apologies for the crappy photo quality in advance, my phone camera is not great!

The second stage of Marie Kondo method, books, was one that I was simultaneously dreading but also really looking forward to. I find it quite difficult to sort out my books as these are objects that I am obviously quite attached to but I was also finding myself becoming frustrated with my bookshelves looking cluttered with too many books. Rather than just buying another bookshelf to fix the problem, I decided that I wanted to have a good sort through the books I own to see which ones I was invested in keeping and which ones I could donate to new homes. 

The thing I love the most about the Marie Kondo method is that she encourages us not to think about getting rid of things but to make space for the things that we want to appreciate more and that spark joy for us, rather than them being hidden away in amongst a mess of other things. This definitely helped me to sort through my books in a way where I didn’t feel guilty about “getting rid of” books but instead focus on the beautiful books that spark joy for me that I wanted to spend more time with.