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 ❤

WWW Wednesday | 8th May 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?

This week has been pretty chill, making very slow progress on my essay and progress on books and games! I’m not looking forward to May as we have a lot of stressful things coming up (landlord inspection, deadlines, etc) so it’s going to be a bit difficult balancing everything that’s coming up. For now though, let’s catch up on this week.

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.

WWW Wednesday | 30th April 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?

I managed to get a surprising amount read within the last week thanks to my last push for the OWLs Readathon and I’ve already made an early start on some of my May reading as its the only thing keeping my brain vaguely sane while I battle an essay for my Masters.

WWW Wednesday | 24th April 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?

This past week has been super hectic as I was attending Easter Con from Friday-Monday plus a day each side to prepare/wind down from the event so it has not been a heavy reading week. I have loads of fun though and bought some fantastic books at the con with my birthday money so at least it was ~book related~.