Hello lovelies!

This is meant to be a short and sweet, light-hearted, and slightly exaggerated feature for sharing my deepest and darkest bookish secrets (and for you to share yours, maybe?)

What better topic to start on than a Game of Thrones? I'm just over halfway through the book and... I don't know if I'll ever finish it.

Under no circumstances should you take me too seriously! I definitely don't ;)

I DON'T LIKE GAME OF THRONES

I know, I know! Everyone loves it. It's amazing!

But why? 

I don't get it.

I'll rant in a nice, respectful way for a minute, okay? And then you can try to convince me to give the book another chance. Deal?

Things I like about A Game of Thrones.

Okay. Um. Jon Snow is alright? I like whathisname Lannister? Tyr-something? Tyrannion? Tyrannus? No, that's Tyrannus Basilton Grimm-Pitch, right? HOW AM I MIXING UP Game of Thrones and Carry On?! What is this?!

Anyway. There.

Wait, no! Also, there's dragon eggs, so there will be dragons, yes? That's good.

And direwolves! Them, I like.

And the mother. Who's all WAAHH I'll protect my children! I forget her name but she's nice. I like Dani too. Poor Dani.

SEE?! So many positive things. I tried really hard.

Why I Don't Get It

I'm halfway through and I'm bored! I just can't do it, I can't finish this book! Too many characters, and yeah, they're okay, but I don't care about any of them, and I need to care about the characters, because otherwise, what's the point of you, book?! WHAT IS THE POINT?!

I'm really disappointed in myself because this is fantasy - one of the greats - and I LOVE FANTASY. I just don't understand what's happening.

TV versus books

I swear, everyone I know who's obsessed started by watching the TV programme. Maybe that's why people love it so much? Except it was a big deal before then, too, wasn't it?

BUT I am against watching the TV series first. It goes against all my principles. BOOK FIRST. That's the rule. Except, in this case, I just can't finish the bloody book. 

*ahem*

Oh, I just had a realisation!

I compare Game of Thrones to the Kingkiller Chronicle

This HAS TO BE why I can't read it! Because I've seen Patrick Rothfuss's Name of the Wind recommended to people who like A Game of Thrones. And if you've been around for a while, you will know that I f***ing love that book. I'm so obsessed that I wrote a post about how obsessed I am. But I digress. I read Kingkiller first and it's the most fantastic thing in the world, and then I go to read A Game of Thrones, and it should be as good, right?! But it's not. I think maybe I'm just biased, honestly.

So, to,,, finish this post off on a positive note - I found things I like about Game of Thrones! But I just can't get into it. Oops. That's not positive at all.

This is the most rambling, I-ran-out-of-adjectives level weirdness filled post I have ever written. (Even that sentence didn't make sense.)

 

Do you like Game of Thrones? (I will still love you if you do, I promise.) Please, feel free to convince me that it's amazing and that I should keep reading.

Any bookish confessions of your own? Do you have a book everyone seems to love but you just don't get? Let me know in the comments, or feel free to write a post of your own if you fancy it!

P.S. I love you

P.S. The origin story of this feature: I was going to update you on my writing progress for Camp NaNo, but then I thought, HEY, what would be even sillier, and even more embarrassing for me? So here we are. I'll write about writing when I feel like...writing.

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme for sharing our news and plans for the next week, hosted by the wonderful Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello lovelies!

Since I'm doing Camp NaNoWriMo, this week has been about writing (yes, again, I'm pretty boring, sorry!). I think I've made it about halfway into my draft - I hit 31k on Monday night, and I'm hoping whatever muses are currently taking pity on me continue to do so.

My yoga mat has become a place for wine-drinking and typing. (Sorry, yoga mat. You're serving a new purpose. We all have to make sacrifices.)

Since I'm mostly plotting, writing, and reading at the moment, my sense of time is all wonky (as is my sleeping schedule but that problem's always there). In any case, I've given up on knowing which day of the week it is. I trust other people to remind me. (I saw Greg's Sunday Post was up and remembered it was time for this. Yep. Thanks, Greg!)

✦ Random Ramblings: I talk about Camp NaNo
(and spill secrets about my WIP!)

✦ Conversations: Diversity and Mental Health
(a new meme you should definitely check out!)

✦ When We Collided by Emery Lord
An excellent YA story with themes of first love, family, and mental illness

✦ The Sign of One by Eugene Lambert
An intriguing page-turner of a sci-fi thriller

I'm on a book buying ban but...

Oftomes publishing was doing a sale on their kindle books! If you're quick you might be able to still get them for 99p off Amazon (I believe the offer is available on Amazon US as well)

   

I went to a charity book sale and the result was this:

✦  Norwegian Wood
✦  Pride & Prejudice
✦ The Aspern Papers and the Turn of the Screw
✦ Mrs Dalloway 
✦ The Outsider
✦ One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
✦  Cymbeline
✦ The Thirteenth Tale
✦ Saturday
✦ The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I also received a few ARCs I'm pretty excited about!

These are all set for publication in June:

  

✦ Review of SHTUM by Jem Lester

✦ Review of Dawn at Emberwilde by Sarah E. Ladd
(I finally took a dip into historical romance!)

✦ Possibly a writing update

How was your week? Tell me one good thing that happened to you, or maybe tell me your favourite book from the past week or two?

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?

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme for sharing our news and plans for the next week, hosted by the wonderful Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello lovelies!

My internet DIED on Friday, so I have spent an entire weekend without wifi. (Okay, I admit it: I've sat in my favourite coffee shop for hours because apparently I can't live without being able to contact you all every minute of the day). It should start working on Monday morning - they promised me it would - so I'll be back and checking all your lovely Sunday posts soon!

In other news I am still working on a Master's thesis but don't have a confirmed topic. So basically I'm a very stressed out little Annika at the moment.

Maybe most importantly, I've started writing for Camp NaNoWrimo. Because of that, my life basically resembles this picture:

It's Day 3 now, and I'm at just over 10,000 words. My goal is 30k, but I think I might just stretch it to 50k, since the writing gods seem to be somewhat familiar for the moment.

This Past Week in Review

✦ my reading plans for ARC April - it's a fun event that you can join until 15th April!

✦ why I love the blogging community - feel free to join the discussion! There are also a few references and links to musicals hidden in the post ;)

✦ Reviewed Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, a really interesting novella.

✦ wrapped up my first blogging event

✦ talked about my favourite books read in March - if you're in need of recommendations, check these :)

✦ I also just posted a review of Howl's Moving Castle - have you seen the movie?

I'm really looking forward to continuing Sarah J. Maas' books. Have you read any of these? Any recommendations for which one to read first?

These last two were free on Amazon UK (thanks for letting me know Katelynn!) - so if you're interested, definitely go see if they're free on your country's Amazon!

 

✦ Review of When We Collided by Emery Lord

✦ Conversations: diversity in literature

 

How was your week? Did you read anything that blew your socks off? I'm also in need of some positivity so tell me: what was the best thing that happened to you this week?

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme for sharing our news and plans for the next week, hosted by the wonderful Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.

Hello lovelies! Hope you're having a wonderful time easting Easter chocolates!

✦ This weekend seemed like it might get a bit quiet as I live away from family, so my plan was this:

Then I decided some others might be in as similar situation (or might just like an excuse to be antisocial and stay indoors) so I started an impromptu TBR challenge/ReadAThon! You're more than welcome to join us on your blog, twitter, or instagram, by sharing your Easter weekend reading plans! Officially #HidingReadAThon ends on Monday evening, but I'll leave another link-up for wrap-up posts. And of course, I'm doing a few little prizes so that's pretty exciting :)

Sorry about the essay, but I'm really excited about this!

✦ The West End revival of Guys and Dolls is on tour so we went to see it and it was so much fun!

✦ I actually didn't spend any money on books - for an entire week. Mild applause? Thank you.

✦ I finished and handed in my last assignment as a Master's student. Now onto the dissertation.

✦ Book Spine Poetry!

✦ #HidingReadAThon details

✦ Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye

✦ Flawed by Cecelia Ahern

 

Received copies for review - these seem really cool!

Won this in a GR giveaway and I'm so excited to finally read it!

  

Got a few things for my kindle (although Memories of Ash is a preorder!) - thank you to Kimba for arranging the giveaway for her Read-A-Thon :)

✦ Sadly, the last posts for Rachel's Blogging Extravaganza
(details are up on Beauty and the Bookshelf)

✦ #HidingReadAThon wrap-up post (that you can link to)

✦ Mini-reviews of my Easter Weekend reads!

How was your week? Do you get time off for Easter? If you're doing some reading today and Monday, please consider sharing your TBR for #HidingReadAThon and link up :) Would love to see what you're reading [and to include you on my list for the prizes]!