October will be my blogging slump month, I think. It was one thing after another for me that left me just staring at blank blog posts thinking about all the things I wanted to write but had no motivation to. It was just one of those months. I still wanted to read, but the writing of posts and reviews just seemed to fall by the wayside. It’s been a refreshing break but now I am really struggling to get back into my blogging routine. I don’t need to be posting all the time but right now I’m barely writing anything and I keep being late posting. I always intend to have these posts ready for the end of the month, but at least I’m getting this up

And there you have it. I won’t update you on my challenges because I’ve completed my Fantasy one and my Dusting off the Shelf challenge and I’m so behind on my Fairytale Retellings it’s embarrassing.

How have your months been and have you seen any cool links over the internet? Please tell me about them because I can never get enough of new things to read online.

Author Addiction is a feature where Kaja at Of Dragons and Hearts and I talk about authors we love who may not have gotten the attention they deserve on our blogs. It is an opportunity to declare our love for them and basically fangirl over how great they are.

This month we’re announcing our love for Rainbow Rowell. I know everyone on the internet loves her, but we want to explain why we do too. I’m going to be honest with you all now, I forgot to write this post until Sunday. My months have all started to blend together slightly and it completely escaped my notice I was due to write another one of these… oops? It’s okay, though, I can write posts like nobodies business, I just need to remember what I want to say.

I was not a book blogger when I first heard of Rainbow Rowell. I had read none of her books but a book blog I followed mentioned her new book, Fangirl, which was due to be released in a little over a month and as soon as the words fanfiction were mentioned I was down to read this book. It completely spoke to me because I was once an awkward 18 year old going to uni with no clue how to speak to people who I hadn’t known forever, or when drunk (I am a social butterfly when drunk, thankfully I swiftly remembered to make friends without requiring alcohol, I’m not an alcoholic). I was also an avid fanfic reader. I even wrote a few back when I was younger, although I will never tell you where to find them because it is embarrassing to say the least.

Anyway, I wanted to read Fangirl as soon as I heard about, but the book wasn’t due for release for a while yet, so I was left pre-ordering on my Kindle and anxiously awaiting release (I stayed up until midnight waiting for it to be automatically delivered… that is how excited I was for this book).

I knew I was right in being so rabidly excited for this books as soon as I began reading. Cath was absolutely perfect, she was awkward and strange, but she also had some sense of who she was, even if she struggled to get this across to new people. Her issue was her shyness and she didn’t know how to overcome it and I enjoyed following every step of her story. I loved the friendships and the family and every part of this book, and it really made me want to go back to uni.

After reading Fangirl, I then investigated all of Rowell’s other books. I knew everyone had been raving about Eleanor and Park, so I bought that, and I pre-ordered Landline, although I wasn’t sure what to expect from that book. And I bought Attachments. You’re probably wondering what I thought of all of these books, well let me tell you.

I liked Eleanor and Park, I could see why everyone raved about it, but I just didn’t connect with the characters the same way I did with those in Fangirl, so sadly that book was not an instant favourite, instead it was a book I enjoyed and am glad to have on my shelf because I want my friends to read it (there is a distinction between love and book pushing upon friends, just so you know). There are plenty of elements of the book I enjoyed and the story was good so I was just disappointed it was not insta-love.

Then I read Attachments, and the concept was amazing, someone who falls in love with someone from their emails? What isn’t there to love? But I instantly saw the flaws in this book, I began questioning how this could end well for our characters at about two thirds of the way through. Luckily, Rowell is an amazing author who managed to finish this book without me losing interest. This book was a grower on me. I liked it at first, and the longer it went on the more I began to love it. That’s what I like about Rowell’s writing, she writes characters that feel so genuine you can relate to them and you can’t help but like them (even when you don’t).

Then there was Landline. I had been so eager to read that book, I even pre-ordered. But the excitement of reading that book built, and it built, and it built, and then it became too daunting to read book. As such, that book is still sat by my bed waiting to be read and I feel terrible about it. Have you ever had a book you were so excited for for so long that you find yourself unable to pick it up? That's mine, the anticipation was too much and I knew I was building that book up far too much, so I took a step back… or ran swiftly from it and I haven’t quite gotten back to it yet.

Well that's easy, I don't need to love everything an author writes to include them in my absolute faves, I'm not that fickle. And as I said before, her books grow on you. Even when you don’t fall completely in love with a book the first time, you will grow to love it after you’ve read. These are books which stay with you long after finishing both because of the strong characters, but also because the emotions in her books.

Rainbow Rowell is a fantastic writer who writes books about people. The stories are also good in her books, but it is the characters she writes that are stand out. So many people love her books because they love her characters as they relate to them. Much like I love Cath because I can see parts of me in them, others will read some of her other books and see some of themselves in these characters. I saw myself in Eleanor her love of music and reading. I saw myself in Lincoln and his detachment from people, witnessing people from a distance (I am a bit of a people watcher, you don’t even understand how fun it is). Her characters are so relatable, and how could you not an author who writes characters like that?

I could not recommend one single book to you, because I don’t know which book you will connect with the best, but I can tell you you would be hard pushed to find a book you won’t like from her. My favourite is Fangirl, probably because it is the first book I read by Rowell and the one I could most relate to, but I’ve enjoyed all the books I’ve read from her. It’s pretty difficult to go wrong.

And, because I forgot to originally, credit for the art goes to Simini Blocker because she is as much a Rainbow Rowell fangirl as anyway, as shown by her tumblr and website.

Don’t forget to check out Kaja’s post and I hope I’ve convinced you to read a few of Rainbow Rowell’s books. You can obviously tell Fangirl is my favourite and I am so excited to get started on Carry On. Have you got a favourite Rainbow Rowell book? Which one and why?

As anyone who reads my blog will know, I’ve recently been a bit under the weather and my blog has born the brunt of my illness by being ignored. I had been doing quite well in reviewing books and then I got sick and didn’t touch my laptop for days on end and simply couldn’t work up the motivation to blog when all I wanted to do when coming back from work is sleep. This has meant I’ve fallen behind in all the books I want to review.

 

I’m Behind In My Reviews And Don’t Know If I Can Catch Up

 

I don’t read all that many review copies of books, but I always prioritise those books to review over other books I’ve read which I’ve bought myself. I do like to try and review all the books I’ve really enjoyed though, even if it’s just a short review, because I like to bring attention to those books I liked. Sadly, when I was sick I was still reading but I wasn’t writing anything up for review and I was already a few books behind for reviews in the first place, getting sick just put me way behind.

 

My question to all of you is simple, when you fall behind in your reviews (for whatever reason) do you carry on trying to review all the books you originally planned to on top of the new books you’re reading or do you forget those and start afresh?

 

I’m Thinking I May Have To Forget My Old Books

 

I am not the best about making sure I get posts written anyway, but to have to work on old reviews for books which have already drifted from my mind is a daunting task. Even my half written notes about a book are not always the best guide for what I should be writing, they are more spontaneous moments of inspiration that don’t make sense out of context.

 

I am not helpful to myself, and it seems my lack of order and method in writing reviews makes it even more difficult to know what I initially wanted to say. In some ways it’s good, my reviews end up taking a completely course than originally intended and I discover something I hadn’t realised about a book, but a lot of the time it is just confusing and unhelpful until I’ve edited things down.

 

As such, I now have a bunch of half written reviews and useless notes that don’t help me in writing reviews and leave me quite unmotivated to finish them. That lack of motivation means that any review I write will not be my best, and I don’t want to do that disservice to the books I want to review. I enjoyed them too much to not attempt to capture and explain my enjoyment of them to the best of my ability.

 

It’s OK, though, because isn’t it an excellent excuse for a reread?

 

I know I probably shouldn’t just abandon the books I wanted to review, but it’s the only thing which makes sense to me because I know how poorly I manage my time anyway, let alone creating time to write reviews for books that have faded slightly from my mind. I have vague notes written down so maybe I’ll go back and review them, but for now they are on the back burner. There are a couple of books I did really enjoy, and those are the books most likely to drive me to go back and write reviews, but this is also a perfect excise to go back and revisit the stories. Who doesn’t like an excuse for a reread?

 

As you can probably tell, I’ve already made my mind up on my course of action, but I do want to know your thoughts. How would you go about tackling a review backlog? Would you review your absolute must reads, work on getting all your reviews ready or simply just ignore them and move on?

Yay, I’ve gained an extra hour this weekend! Don’t you just love when the clocks go back and you can spend an extra hour sleeping? Or, when they go back and you find yourself awake an hour earlier than usual and you can lots of extra things done with your day? Basically, the clocks changing is pretty awesome in some ways, and I know I’ll lose it again in March, but that’s ages away. In case you don’t know, it’s the end of British Summertime and Brits everywhere are rejoicing about the extra hour they will have on Sunday.

Now I have actually been out of the house shopping and being a busy little bee the past few hours of today, which is why I didn’t post this morning. I’ve gone and gotten food for next week and I treated myself to the Jurassic Park 4 disc collection, which would have been great, but my local Supermarket forgot to remove the red security tag from my discs. I have just spent the past hour raging about the incompetence of Tesco (last week they forgot to take the security tags off some pyjamas I bought), refusing to return to ask to have the security tags removed and finally begging my stepdad to help me figure out how on earth you are meant to remove these ridiculous things. It’s frustrating to say the least, but oh well.

This week has been far better than the past couple of weeks. Has my blog been lavished with attention? Not so much. I’ve started a couple of posts but I’m certainly not caught up. That said, I haven’t felt like death all week and I’ve managed to stay awake beyond 10 o’clock at night (an amazing feat for me recently) so I’ve had chance to read a few blog posts and I am catching up on things. I’ve also been able to read more books (yay for me) so I’m just building a long list of books to review.

My book buying ban was not as successful this week, but they were all books I intended to read immediately, well… apart from Everything Everything, that is the book which came in my Ravenpost subscription box. I’ve seen good reviews so I will be reading this soon, but it looks like a pretty different read for me.

Tell me about your week, has anything interesting happen or is your life as much of a thrill ride as mine has been? And am I the only one frustrated by stores forgetting to remove security tags from their shiny new things?