At the beginning of the month I told myself, "Emilija, it's time for a book buying ban. You need to save money and get presents for your loved ones. CONTAIN YOURSELF, IT'S ONLY FOR A MONTH. YOU CAN DO IT!"

...

I failed. 

Somehow, I acquired 26 books in December. Some were bargains from Amazon. 2 of these were books I chose as xmas presents, some were boxing day sales bargains, others... were simply a catastrophe for my purse. Anyway, when you're done being dramatic, Emilija, get on with the list of books you got. 

Well, I don't know how about you, but winter evenings for me mean chill time to the max snuggled up in a blanket by the fireplace with a cuppa in my hands and a book in my lap. I have compiled the perfect playlist for these evenings to play softly in the background. 

I mean I'll be honest, Halloween has just passed and even though I love it, my favourite time of the year by far is the winter holiday period between Christmas and the New-Year. I don't care, I'm getting prepared for it now. I'll fight you if you have anything bad to say about this. 

Much love.

Em

I somehow managed to haul 18 books this month, even more than I did in September. 9 of these books were bought at a car boot sale and I paid like £7 for all of them so it's not as bad is it may look! One of these books I got from a subscription box, and one book not featured in the picture is It by Stephen King and it's an audiobook because I have an Audible subscription. It's almost 45 hours long, holy shit! I'm planning on listening to it when I finish The Name of the Wind. I have like 11 hours left and I am absolutely loving it. 

I've been really looking forward to doing this blog post for a while now. &book is a curated monthly book subscription box. Wow, what a mouthful that sentence was. Like many other subscription boxes out there, it has a different theme every month and the book along with all of the goodies in the box are according to the theme. The October theme was POSSIBILITIES. I was sent the October box because I took pictures for their IG feed for a while (which was amazing), and I held off doing an unboxing as soon as I got it because I didn't want to spoil the contents for others who still hadn't received their box. It's been a while now, so let's get to unboxing! 

(I want to preface this review by saying that Three Dark Crowns was my most anticipated read of 2016. I shit you not, I had hyped up this novel so much in my own damn head that when I pre-ordered the book it was all I could think about.) 

I'm deceased right now so I'm having difficulty putting my thoughts together, bare with me. 

ALRIGHT FAM, STOP WHATEVER IT IS YOU'RE DOING AND GIMME LIKE 2.5 MINS TO EXPLAIN WHY YOU NEED THIS BOOK IN YOUR LIFE.

 
Do ya'll remember the masterpiece that was Imaginary Girls? Like, holy shit, I'm such trash for Nova Ren Suma and her writing style. I eat it up like it's cake of the highest quality. I shit you not, Nova Ren Suma does not disappoint with this novel. Omg can I say Nova Ren Suma one more time? Nova Ren Suma. Ok. 

GOODREADS BLURB:

When Jill wakes up in a hospital bed with her leg in a cast, the last six weeks of her life are a complete blank. All she has been told is that she was involved in a fatal accident while on a school trip in Italy and had to be jetted home to receive intensive care. Care that involves a lawyer. And a press team. Because maybe the accident…. wasn't just an accident.

With no memory of what happened or what she did, can Jill prove her innocence? And can she really be sure that she isn't the one to blame?

So I started reading this book a while ago, then had to put it on hold because I had my dissertation to write and then exams, it wasn't because I didn't enjoy it. In fact, I was incredibly surprised by just how much I liked this book. You know, I'm actually not a fan of contemporary reads at all. Just not the genre I usually gravitate towards, but I do have an inkling for picking up contemporary novels during the summer months. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels that way. Right? Right. 

I have found the perfect album. This is it. No, seriously. Listen to it, this shit is lit! No joke, I've had this on repeat for the past week and it's been getting me through the very painful process of writing my dissertation. Which speaking of, I'm procrastinating by writing this post, but what else is new? Keeping this short and sweet though. Just give it a listen, this album is amazing. 

So. It's that time again. I've been really bad at these, haven't I? But sometimes life happens, and sometimes (which is a lot of the times, actually) I just don't have a song of the week, ya know? I simply don't. But this week I do, so yay! It's a good song and very appropriate for this point in time as I'm home for the Easter holidays. This song has been on repeat all day, every day. If you think I'm joking or exaggerating when I say that a song has been on repeat all day, every day, think again. I am the type of person who has no limits. Like, literally. I'm so hardcore when it comes to stuff like this, it can't even be considered healthy. When I discover a song I like, I will listen to it so much (for like a week or two on REPEAT, and I'm talking 24/7 here) that I won't want to listen to it again for like a year. 

I live in England. That sentence alone should paint a pretty clear picture of the type of weather I gotta deal with. I mean seriously, the more stereotypical you imagine it, the more accurate it is. It seriously feels like it never stops raining here, and if it's not raining then the sky is covered with a sheet of clouds. Now that I think about it, I actually don't even remember the last time I saw the sun. In reality that was probably like a week ago, but the dreariness gets to you and you start forgetting what sunshine looks like or feels like. I don't think this will come as a surprise to you, but it's freaking raining as I type this. No joke, it's raining outside. Not the pouring-it-down type of rain, but more like it-feels-like-someone's-spitting-on-me type of rain. You know the one I'm talking about. If I can avoid going outside the house when it's raining then it's great. I sit at home snuggled up with a blanket, a good book, and a cup of tea. As much as I love the sounds of rain, these activities, however, need appropriate music. Below, you can find the playlist I listen to in order to battle the rainy day blues. It's a very nice playlist, if I do say so myself. But seriously. It's really nice, super chill and relaxing. Give it a listen. 

Em

So, Imma 'bout to get real here for a moment or two. I'm feeling like shit today so instead of putting myself through the pain and going to my uni lectures (which would quite literally feel like walking through Dante's nine circles of hell), I decided to stay home in case something worse happens. That way I can make sure I'm in a safe environment, ya know? Fainting in the middle of a lecture wouldn't be a good thing. Anyways. Since I'm home all day today, I know that I should do some work since I missed the lectures, or at the very least work on my dissertation. HOWEVER. I'm the worst procrastinator there is when it comes to uni work, and since I've already done everything else that I could possibly do to procrastinate (like clean the entire house, scroll through my entire IG and Tumblr feeds), I had to get creative. So here I am. About to share the recipe of one of my favourite snacks of late. 

As it's the new year and stuff, I, like any other regular homo sapiens on this magical planet Earth have been doing some thinking. And imma tell you what I've thought about. So I haven't blogged in a while, right? Well, that's because I had kind of lost all passion for blogging. For a while I didn't know why that was, I no longer seemed to have a passion for writing and if you know me you KNOW that's all I do - read and write. Like, all the damn time. If I'm not doing either of those things, that means I'm thinking about them. So I'm sitting one day, scratching my head, thinking what he hell went wrong. I didn't know what went wrong and when and that made me frustrated. So I said to myself; "Emilija, WTF. Get your shit together". I literally had no idea how to do that, but the only thing that made sense was to open up the blog. I stared at my laptop screen for a while, then went to the last page and started to read back all of the posts I've written.