January Wrap Up

Wow… what a month. What a start to 2020! We’ve had our fair share of disasters around the world, and sure, maybe some of us aren’t doing the best personally in terms of certain optimistic New Years resolutions (yep, I’m totally talking about myself), but we’ve survived. And if you’re lucky, you’ve even had the time to read a few books!

I started the year with a leisurely pace, working my way through books while lying on the couch under the air-conditioning and staying up until 3am impulse-buying ebooks. You know. The usual. In amongst my schedule of work, beach days, and a solid week spent watching Netflix, I managed to read nine books in total!

Time for a little breakdown:

• Novels: 5
• Short Stories: 2
• Comics: 2
• Audiobooks: 1 (also counted in “short stories”)

I’m so happy with the books I managed to read in January – my reading year is certainly off to a good start already! Ready to find out which books I loved the most? Check out my thoughts on all the below titles, then come tell me what your favourite book of January was down in the comments!

Late to the Party (AKA Content I Wish I Consumed Earlier)

Don’t you hate the feeling that you’re missing out on something that the rest of the world seems to be loving? Are you afraid of FOMO and are literally willing to put your life on hold to catch up and feel in the know? Well, same here!

Because we live in a world where every day, more books and shows and movies are added to our endless achieve, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to consume it all. AND THAT MAKES ME SO SAD. So in order to combat that feeling, I’ve been known to binge entire shows in a day, dedicate my life to watching a series before the final episode is released, and even becoming so obsessed with a franchise I start to dress like the characters.

Even though I’m endlessly trying to play catch up, there are always shows and books and films that I just don’t get around to for AGES. So today I’m going to be sharing some of the content I wish I’d discovered earlier – and what I thought of it! Enjoy!

What To Read Based On Your Favourite Star Wars Character

Sooo… I may have finished watching all nine Star Wars films for the first time ever, in the space of three weeks, and now I’m a TINY BIT OBSESSED. Okay, “tiny” is totally an understatement. I’ve read fan fiction, I’m currently watching The Mandalorian, and I’ve seen The Force Awakens THREE TIMES SO FAR. I honestly can’t believe I never got into Star Wars before now! It’s the best thing ever!

Because Star Wars is basically the only thing I can think about now (including Kylo Ren’s eight pack), I thought it was time to do a recommendation post based on my “research”. Because who doesn’t need more Star Wars-esque content in their lives?! I know I do. I don’t even need air to breathe. My love of this fandom will sustain me.

So today I decided to recommend some books based on your favourite Star Wars character! Yes, I’ve only chosen characters from the final three Star Wars films because otherwise we’d be here ALL DAY — but maybe I’ll make one of these for the original series and the prequels another time. Maybe for the spin-off series as well! The possibilities are endless!

Let’s do this.

Predicting My 20 Favourite Books of 2020

It is time to announce what I think my 20 favourite books of this year will be! Ahh! Looking through all the lists of upcoming releases for the year ahead is always one of my blogging highlights of the year, and I love predicting which ones I think will be my absolute favourites.

It’s always such a tough decision because there are so many fantastic books to be released, but I’ve forced myself to make some hard choices and nominate what I think my top 20 reads of 2020 are going to be. If you’re in need of some more books on your TBR this year, check out which ones I’m most eager to get to!

2020 Resolutions (That I Hope I’ll Be Able to Keep!)

I’ve always been the kind of person to roll my eyes at New Year’s Resolutions. I mean, most people don’t even make it an entire week into the New Year without breaking one of there newly set rules, let alone an entire year. Then I’d be the person to laugh and say “I told you so” while I sat on the couch eating chips and thinking about how I wasn’t going to let ANY of my resolutions end in failure—mainly because I hadn’t even made any.

After all, goals can be such unspecific things. I know people who have promised themselves they’d “be healthier” when the clock strikes midnight, heralding in the New Year, but what does that even mean? That you’ll go vegan and take up yoga? I find that without fully-defined goals, our grand ideas for the year to come often crash and burn not long after takeoff, no matter how well-meaning our intentions are. 

So this year, I decided to join the masses in making some goals for myself! Instead of making my goals broad, I’ve tried to make them as specific as possible in the hopes that this makes them just a little bit more achievable. 2020 is the start of a new decade, and no matter how terrifying that thought is, it’s also so full of possibilities. 2020, here we come!

Top 10 Favourite Books of 2019

HERE WE ARE, FOLKS. We’re down to the last few days of 2019! It’s always such a weird mix of feelings that comes with another year ending, isn’t it? It’s like a weird sense of nostalgia for the past twelve months, but also the feeling that the next twelve are going to be so much better, right? It’s exciting, in a way, to have the future creep up on us. Next year’s a new year full of new releases, new favourite books to discover, new authors to try… and I’m looking forward to all of it.

But before I start getting too excited about all that (and a little overwhelmed), it’s time to look back on my top ten favourite books of 2019! It was so hard picking only ten for this list, but I was super strict with myself and forced myself to choose from my countless favourites. I read so many incredible books this past year – I fell into so many different lives, battled monsters, and gained a better understanding of not only the protagonists I read about, but also about myself.

So without further ado, here’s my top ten!

Expectations vs Reality: My 19 Favourite Books of 2019

If you’ve been reading my blog for longer than a year or so, you’ll know that it’s kind of my tradition to predict what my favourite books of each year will be – and then I do an expectations vs. reality post at the conclusion of the year! And yep, you guessed it! I’m going to be spilling the tea on whether or not these books lived up to my expectations. So sit down and buckle up, because I’m going to be sharing alllll my thoughts on these 2019 YA releases.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child | A Review of the Play

THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

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So… I FINALLY SAW HARRY POTTER AND THE CURSED CHILD! I know, I know, I feel like I’m the last person in Melbourne to see it. But I also know I’m super lucky to even have had this chance! We Aussies sure have been privileged recently with all the plays and musicals coming to our city (we’re still waiting on Hamilton, but come on, any day now there should be an announcement), but despite The Cursed Child having been in my sweet home town for like eight months already, I only just got around to getting my tickets. And BOY was it worth the wait!

The main reason why I waited so long to get around to seeing it was because the tickets are just SO. DAMN. EXPENSIVE. And I’m too stubborn to wait in a virtual queue on the ticket’s first release day, so I just always had it on my “oh yeah, I’ll do it later” list. But after entering the Friday Forty (a lottery whereby you can enter each week for the chance to see The Cursed Child for the reduced price of $40 per part) every single week since it started, I still hadn’t been lucky enough to score myself some tickets. So I bought some candles, went to an abandoned mansion by the ocean, and sold my soul to the devil to get enough money to buy some tickets of my own.

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My Favourite Festive Reads

HELLOOOO, DECEMBER! Wow, we’ve almost made it to the end of the year. As much as that’s a terrifying thought, it’s also something to be celebrated. We made it through 2019! I’m proud of you. Are you proud of me?

And that means that Christmas is almost here! While Halloween takes the cake for being my favourite holiday, Christmas is pretty cool as well. We get to watch Christmas movies on repeat, listen to Christmas songs while drinking our gingerbread lattes at Starbucks, and, of course, dig out our festive YA books for a quick reread.

So in the spirit of Christmas, today I thought I’d share my favourite festive reads with you all! If you’re looking for something to get you in the mood for this holiday season, I definitely recommend checking out these books.

Reading Your Book Recommendations

One of my favourite things about the bookish community is getting new book recommendations. I’m always on the lookout for something that sounds up my alley, or even sounds like something I wouldn’t normally try, and you folks are seriously the BEST at convincing me to read books you’ve loved! Whether these book recommendations have come directly from friends or bloggers, or whether I’ve just seen a post about it, my TBR is always as tall as Mt Everest.

So today I thought I’d share which books you all have recommended to me this year, and what I thought of them! And maybe in the meantime, I can add a few of these to your TBR as well. Enjoy!