Conversations is an awesome meme you should be taking part in! There's a new topic every two weeks, and as always you can check out the Conversation meme over at Corralling Books!

Today's question is:

Are real life friendships different from the ones you have online?

✱ Simple answer: yes. I have some really wonderful, close friendships in real life. I can also say the same thing about my online friendships. But there is a difference: I feel like people in real life (apart from my besties) don't know the side of me that you see here on the blog or on twitter, at all. Which I guess actually means that you guys probably know me better than some of my real life friends. Funny, huh? ✱ Sometimes it's easier to talk to people you don't see every day (or ever). Speaking about things like my mental health isn't easy for me, but since I know my online friends are nice and supportive and all kinds of wonderful, I try to be more open about it. Every time I open up about it a bit more, you guys support me. You're making me brave in tackling topics that are really close to my heart, and I appreciate that so much! At the same time, I don't feel like I can do that in real life. Partially because social anxiety... but also because I'm afraid of being judged. I'm getting better at it though, and that is very much thanks to all of you being so lovely! ✱ Wishing online friendships were real life ones Do you ever get that? Wish you lived closer to your online friends so you could meet them? I keep thinking I need to travel more so I can meet *all* of you but sadly I'm a poor student. Some day!

What about you? Are your online friendships different from real life ones?

I'm hosting the link-up this week because Geraldine is super busy! You can leave your link here any time in the next two weeks. You can still take part as I'm sure we all have something to say on this week's topic. We would love to hear how you juggle real life and blogging :)

Conversations is a new meme by Geraldine and Joan @ Fiddler Blue - all the info is over at Corralling Books! All you need to do is make your own post and link it up here!

The theme for June is Life Away from the Keyboard, and the topic for this week is: ✱ How do you juggle real life duties + blogging?

I'm actually really happy to have a chance to talk about this!

The straightforward answer to this question for me would be something along the lines of "How do I do it? Really well, until... I don't."

Real Life

-- is stupid. It gets in the way of a lot of things, like reading and writing, and blogging. Why can't those things be real life? :( Or CAT VIDEOS. Why not, world?!

But really, sometimes real life wants all my time and attention and yes, it's nice. You need to do both things, right? ...Except when you absolutely have to go to this party/get-together/any social event, and you just want to stay inside and blog/read. Like, I'm not going to enjoy this party, I'm going to be miserable, and you're going to hate me for it, so really it's just better for all of us to keep me away from uncomfortable social situations. Yeah?

Oops. Am I ranting? Sorry.

Being Suddenly Busy IRL

You probably get this one too, sometimes? You get busy, you miss one post, or decide to reply to comments the next day. But then... you have other things to do and you get anxious because somehow you're now behind on everything and there's so much to do so it's probably better to do nothing, so you end up letting things pile up more and more until you're drowning.

Or is that just me?

Just writing that paragraph made me anxious.

Sometimes...

This one's very much about me and my health (as you may know - I kind of struggle with mental health on a daily basis :P) but actually sometimes blogging makes me feel better and helps me cope with the dreaded real life which gets really stressful sometimes. This community is so supportive and sometimes I get to talk to people going through the same things I am, and it really helps. And just hearing nice words from people means so much to me.  All of you lovelies have such big hearts and you always make me feel better. I can't thank you enough ❤

I totally focused on the negatives here. And I'm kind of off-topic, and mostly just ranting. Oops. Tell me, how do you manage between blogging and real life? Is it possible to find that balance?

As with everything in life recently, I'm a tiny bit late with my Conversations post, but I couldn't bear to miss this topic, so here I am, a day late!

As always you can check out the Conversation meme over at Corralling Books!

In May, Conversations touches upon Blogging Habits, and  today's question is:

What are the essential things the blogs you follow have to have?

✱ An easy way to follow the blog. I really appreciate having different ways to follow a specific blog, and if I really like it, I'll probably subscribe on Bloglovin', by email, and by Google+. I'm a bit weird that way... But at the end of the day, everyone has different preferences on how to follow, so I think it's pretty important to have different options available. ✱ Different kinds of content and willingness to try new things.  I like book reviews, I like discussion posts, I like memes - any mix of those is cool by me. I don't require anything to be really different or set apart from other blogs, but I appreciate personal touches. I like getting to know a blogger a little bit through their blog posts. So, I like bloggers to post the kind of content they want, to write in their own voice (especially if they're funny without acknowledging it or weird while owning it), to sometimes have unpopular opinions, to try new things. If you do what you want I'll probably like it.  ✱ I like bloggers who comment back (and are nice people!) I suppose we all do, really, because it's a nice thing to do, right? But it goes a bit further than that. I love good comments. You know, those thoughtful ones that make you really happy? (basically every comment I've ever gotten on this little blog which are usually the highlight of my day). The thing is, those kinds of comments make me happy even when I see them on someone else's blog. And I'll tell you a secret. If I see a really nice comment on someone else's blog, I tend to look up the commenter and their blog, and follow them. Why? Because they're nice. That's all.

Tell me about your preferences! What do you *need* a blog to have before you follow it? What draws you in?

Conversations is a brilliant, new fortnightly meme by Geraldine @ Corralling Books and Joan @ Fiddler Blue. Check the details and get involved! The theme for May is Blogging Habits, and the topic for this week is: ✱ What pushed you to start blogging and why do you continue to blog?

Hello lovelies! It's the weekend! Are you as happy about it as I am?

Today's topic for Conversations is one of my favourites. I've talked about my love of the blogging community before, but today the focus is a bit different. Although the community may be one of the main reasons I continue to blog, it's not why I started blogging originally ( - okay, it actually is, in part).

But let me throw some other reasons at you, okay?

We All Need Hobbies

Right? It took me forever to realise it, but over the last three years or so, I've slowly given up all the things I used to love - and started focusing on my studies instead. It was making me seriously unhappy. So I started book blogging. I can talk books, meet wonderful people, and talk some more about books. Perfect!

Being a Grad Student is Wonderful(ly Stressful)

I'm always stressed out, especially now that I only have four months left to finish my MSc. I didn't fully anticipate how stressful it really would be, but here we are.

Luckily, I have this wonderful community of book bloggers who wish me well, and are amazingly supportive!

All Weirdos Need Other Weirdos

I'm so weird. Most of you have probably realised this too by now. When I meet someone else who's a little odd too? It's a party, basically.

Things I like (that make me weird [according to normal people])

• skeletons (like, real ones)
• being in a bone lab alone (it's really nice and calm),
• angry feminist rants,
• angry rants about how awful people are (title: I Hate People),
• talking to dogs like they're people,
• spending entire days talking to cats,
• pretending I know what the letters IT stand for,
• rapping along to anything from Hamilton,
• singing random lines from the Book of Mormon *at* people and making them uncomfortable,
• ugly-crying because something happened in a book,
• randomly bursting into song (I have a musical tune for any occasion),

Right. Too much ammunition for the BFF...

I'm Actually a Hermit/Vampire/Anti-Social Superhero

Sometimes I don't want to see people for days on end. It's nice to have a way to still talk to people about your interests despite being stuck home.

To Conclude: Being Social Yet Anti-Social is the Best

What about you? What pushed you to start blogging? Why do you continue? Let me know in the comments!

Conversations is a brilliant, new fortnightly meme by Geraldine @ Corralling Books and Joan @ Fiddler Blue. Check the details and get involved! The theme for April is Popular Issues, and the topic for this week is: ✱ Is 15 years old too young to be reading Fifty Shades of Grey?

Hello my lovelies!

Today we're talking about Fifty Shades. Spoiler alert - I hate it.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Okay. So... As far as I'm concerned, no one should read it. Ever. I feel like I shouldn't be saying this because I haven't read it, but just talking about this book is making me uncomfortable! Why does it even exist?!

Let me tell you a story, though.

I had a flatmate two years ago who proudly announced that she hadn't read a thing since high school, but she'd found something amazing and had actually finished reading a book. Surprise, surprise - it was Fifty Shades of Grey.

I was in shock.

She knew I liked books so she asked if I'd read it and I kind of rudely answered, "NO. I will never, ever, read it. No." (I stand by my words, to this day.) I'm paraphrasing. I think I made a speech about the dangers of Fifty Shades.

So after all that, she asked me what kind of books I read.

I said, "Literature."

This was the end of what could have been a beautiful friendship, I'm sure. I feel a bit bad, because I try not to be a book snob [ - if you enjoy reading something, you should read it]! But when it comes to this particular book, dammit - I am a proud book snob, okay?

Kids' Reading Choices and Sex in Books

I've always felt that as much as we'd like to shelter our kids from sex and violence, it's important to let them read whatever they want - I know I read everything from children's books to adult literature when I was young - Stephen King gave me nightmares, Nora Roberts probably made me understand what sex actually was ( - or maybe that was Audrey Niffenegger's the Time Traveler's Wife?). I also think that if we tell a fifteen year-old not to read Fifty Shades, they will definitely go and read it.

Yes, I'm a bit worried that (especially younger) teenagers may not always be able to distinguish romance from sex - or might think that there's something realistic about Fifty Shades or the BDSM in it or the fictional sex lives of the characters. It makes me really worried for kids and their expectations regarding sex and what's normal and what's not. But at least when it comes to the book, our friendly/rebellious 'little' 15-year-old can stop if they realise it's making them uncomfortable. This is why I'd rather not control what kids read. I didn't do it for my younger sisters - I wouldn't do it for my own children if I had them. Kids are generally smart enough to stop reading if they don't like it. I'd like to trust them to make their own choices about it, especially at fifteen.

So ultimately, even though I'd prefer fifteen year-olds not to read Fifty Shades, I was reading Nora Roberts when I was nine. I can't judge. If a fifteen year-old feels like they are mature enough to read Fifty Shades, then they're allowed to go for it - as long as they know that in this case it's an option to stop reading the book and tear it into pieces whenever they'd like.

Okay guys. Fifty Shades: yes or no? What do you think - should a 15 year-old be able to read Fifty Shades of Grey?

Conversations is a brilliant, brand-new, fortnightly meme by Geraldine @ Corralling Books and Joan @ Fiddler Blue. Check the details and get involved! The theme for April is Popular Issues, and the topic for this week is: ✱ Are there any particular diverse books you read more and why?

When I settled down to think about today's topic, I first thought of all the LGBTQ books I've only recently started reading. But then I'd just finished All the Bright Places, and I was wanting to talk about that without reviewing it because it hit me so hard emotionally that I don't think I can. So BAM, today we're taking this chance to talk about mental health and illness in books, and in life. I focus on depression here, because that's the devil I know best.

Diverse Topics in Literature

So firstly: why do we talk about this so much? Why is it so important to have diversity in the books we read?

For me, this is about equality, and the equal representation of different kinds of people in literature. We read to sympathise with characters, because we understand or want to understand what they're going through. I think that's especially important when it comes to things like different cultural backgrounds, mental health, sexual orientation - things that are sometimes difficult to discuss, because we're afraid people might not understand, or because they're not in our situation and really can't understand. Bottom line: everyone deserves to read about characters they can relate to.

Mental Health and Social Stigma

“It's my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic if they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other easily understood disease just to make it easier on me and also on them.”
- Felix Finch in Jennifer Niven's All the Bright Places

So many people still think of mental illness as something you can 'get over.' It upsets me - because we're not admitting that people need help. We're instead making them feel more guilty for being ill. The thing is that guilt is already there, and we have no right to make it worse for anyone. Because this social stigma still persists, I think it's important that we discuss these topics, bring them up in literature, incite conversation, and try to make it more accepted to talk about our battles with mental illness.

Medication

"Diego kept saying he felt like he should be able to control it. Like - he wanted to reason his way out of it, Because it's your own mind, right? But of course it doesn't work that way. Sometimes you just need medicine."- Ellie in Emery Lord's When We Collided

This is a topic that seems to divide people - even those who may desperately be in need of medication. I'm always interested to see how it is handled in books. It takes a lot of courage to start taking medication for a mental illness, and continuing to take them can be even harder. Which is why no one should make us feel like we're supposed to be 'stronger than that.' Because some people do argue against these, and some sufferers (even in books) talk about how they one day decided that they had had enough of suffering depression and being stuck in their bed. They didn't need meds, they were stronger than the rest of us. This kind of talk really upsets me because for a lot of people medication can be the thing that slowly helps them to feel better. There is no shame in that, and no one should make us feel like taking meds is a bad thing.

So What Can We Do?

“I can tell you that “Just cheer up” is almost universally looked at as the most unhelpful depression cure ever. It’s pretty much the equivalent of telling someone who just had their legs amputated to “just walk it off.” Some people don’t understand that for a lot of us, mental illness is a severe chemical imbalance rather just having “a case of the Mondays.” Those same well-meaning people will tell me that I’m keeping myself from recovering because I really “just need to cheer up and smile.” That’s when I consider chopping off their arms and then blaming them for not picking up their severed arms so they can take them to the hospital to get reattached.” 
- Jenny Lawson, Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Personally: books help - books that talk about mental illness, and books that don't even consider the topic. But speaking as someone who fights depression every day, what we need is people to be understanding. I realise how hard it is to deal with a friend's or a family member's mental illness, I really do. We can lash out at the people we love, we can seem uncaring, sometimes we may not react to what you're saying at all. None of it is because of you. It's because something awful is happening inside our brains, and we can't control it.

Compassion, open dialogue (as hard as it is for everyone involved), and kindness are the things that bring some light into our worlds. And sometimes all you need is knowing someone is there and cares.

Okay, so this is such an important topic to me, as you may have noticed. Chip in, let me know what you think, ask questions if you feel like it! Also: talking about such personal topics, yay or nay? And finally: what diverse books do you read?