2017 - An Open Letter.

I can't wait to see the back of you. Not because I hated you, or because you treat me badly, but because I'm just so ready to start something new. It's not you, it's me, I'm just hoping for something better next time, y'know? Something a little more exciting.

That said, isn't it always hard to say goodbye? I will miss you, truly I will, but I am so ready to move on.

When Life Doesn't Go To Plan

So as my last post made clear, I'm out of education now and planning for my future. That post was full of excitement, and I am excited still, it also failed to show the reality of where I'm at right now.

For the first time in 20 years I am out of education and it is terrifying. I know exactly what I want from life, I have a 10 year plan and everything. But I only know how to get there in theory not in practice. And, hand on heart, not being certain and secure in my certainty is a terrifying prospect.

I'm sure that everyone has these expectations about how their life is going to go. I know I did. And I'm not disenchanted or anything, but the reality does not live up to the expectations at all.

Expectation: Finish my BA, get a part time internship or job with a small publishing firm, and get my MA on top of that.
Reality: Finish my BA, lose the part time retail job I had, finish my MA, start a new part time retail job - Zero publishing experience.

In hindsight, I was definitely very naive about how easy everything would be, and that's made it a bit harder for me to handle my situation as it is now.

So, I'm taking off the rose tinted glasses and looking at things realistically. Yes, some parts of my 10 year plan have been pushed back a few years, and I do feel a little bit like I'm wasting my education. But , this negativity is acting as a little shove in the right direction, and hopefully it'll all come right in the end.

Finished My Degree - What Now?

On Tuesday (7th November) I woke up to an email alerting me that my final uni results had gone live. I finished my degree a while ago but had been waiting on a re-submission being re-marked - it was unbearable. After weeks of checking my inbox there they finally were.

The results.

The finish line.

And I passed. I am a Master of the Arts in English. I couldn't be more thrilled. Of course, now that uni is over there's the question of what I want to do with my life. In the most basic terms, I want to work in publishing. What do I want to do in the industry? No idea. No idea at all. But I do have a few things that will help me to figure it out, and get my foot in the door of the publishing world.

This blog. This blog is the only thing I have that I can use on my CV to prove an interest in publishing, because I lack experience. That's why this is so important to me, and why it's so important to me that I get it up and running .

Secondly, I need experience. This isn't easy to get, but it's not impossible. There are lots of internships I can apply for in my region, and even a few publishing houses in my town that I can contact for potential experience days. So that's what I'll be doing in the next few months, working on gaining experience and madly applying to internships.

I also will, fingers crossed, be editing a book. I've never been more excited for anything. If this comes off it will help give me a necessary edge that other recent graduates may not have. I can't wait. Those three words sum up how I've felt for the last few days in the most perfect way.

I can't wait.

Why Do I Read?

On the first day of my undergraduate degree I was sitting in a room full of nervous freshers when the lecturer asked us all "so, what makes you read?" and I swear, you could hear a pin drop. How had we made it that far and never been asked that? Why did we read? Because we like it? So many questions. 

It's been four years since then, I finished my undergraduate, I've finished my masters, and I still don't have one definitive answer. There are lots of reasons, there are lots of reasons for other people that don't even apply to me.

I read for entertainment. There's something different about reading that you don't get from TV or games (though the 'are games literature?' debate fascinates me), it's both relaxing and stimulating at the same time. Somehow, even when I'm lounging around, when I've read that day I feel like I've achieved something.

I read to escape. Growing up there weren't a lot of other children who lived nearby, so I didn't get to play out very much. Reading became a way for me to replace that. Admittedly, I did take this a bit far and replaced all my real friends with fictional ones, but I ask you, who wouldn't want that?

I read to learn. This doesn't apply to my degree funnily enough. I'm very partial to a non-fiction book in my spare time (currently I'm on The Romanovs by Simon Sebag Montefiore), and while they can be a slog, I find them so much more rewarding than novels.

I read for nostalgia. I love to reread books from my childhood. I'm in the middle of my annual Harry Potter reread right now. There's something very comforting about rereading well-loved books that have so many memories attached to them.

There are also more practical reasons for me to read, for example, this blog. If I didn't love to read I'd have nothing to review. This blog most likely would not exist because I wouldn't have even started it. That's the one thing that I'm sure every single book blogger has in common.

YA Issues: Girls.

As promised, I am rewriting an old post that I removed. Last year (or the year before?) I wrote a post about girl hate in YA, and my thoughts on it. I reread that post the other day day and found it so lacking. It was clear that I was trying to write something serious but I missed the mark.

The way girls are represented in YA is something that interests me so much. So much so that I wrote my undergraduate dissertation on it. 

A lot of writers are doing girls a disservice with the way they present their characters. Girls are written as one dimensional stereotypes, none of which are very flattering. It seems that in the wonderful world of YA, girls only get two choices of the type of girl they want to be. They can be the tomboy (or the hero, depending on which subgenre the book is) and spurn many aspects of femininity so that they're proclaimed "not like other girls." Or they can be the standard ditsy girly-girl, who often in YA is seen as some sort of antagonist, usually a bully or the "other woman" - the only thing standing in the way of the protagonist and their love interest.

Now, I'm in no way saying that these girls don't exist in the real world, they do. But they also have more to them than this, they can even be both of these things, and this is rarely if ever shown in YA. Usually writers will choose the tomboy to be their protagonist, which results in other girls being 'Othered'. Othering is a way that writers to show which groups of people better than others. It creates a divide based on simple traits. In this case, writers often promote the idea that girls who deny traditional gender roles are superior to girls who adhere to them. 

While they do this to encourage girls that it's okay to not be feminine (which is absolutely true, traditional femininity is not a requirement for being a girl) they reinforce the idea that femininity is weak and something to be ashamed of, which isn't true. Girls can be whoever they want, be they embracing gender roles, rejecting them, or a combination of both. All are worthy of respect, and all are worthy of being protagonists. A lesson many YA writers need to learn.

Of course not all writers are guilty of this, some even go against the grain and purposefully write realistic, well rounded female characters, even having them as the leads in their books. Some of my recommendations of writers to check out are:
Holly Bourne - Holly writes amazing, feminism centred stories that include a wide range of girls who are all different and realistic.
Cathy Cassidy - Cathy was a favourite of mine as a teenager, her characters are all quite flawed, but their character development is always positive.
Jacqueline Wilson - The classic. Jacqueline has been in the game for a long time, and she has always provided girls with realistic characters who aren't always perfect, but who always come out right in the end. 

To read more about this, check out these articles:
"In Defense of Other Girls in YA" by Sharanya Sharma.
"Teen Talk: It's Okay to be a Girly Girl" by Tasman Kekai
"Are Girls Free to be Girly in YA? Short Answer: Yes" by Gwen Katz

Where Have I Been? - Changes.

It's been well over a year since I sat down to write anything on this blog. There are lots of reasons for this but in short, I've been very busy and blogging didn't take priority for a while. I finished my bachelors degree, and immediately started my masters. I misjudged how much work that would be. But I've been planning this relaunch for a while, and have been working on the changes to this blog for months.

The first and most obvious change was getting rid of the old header. I'd had issues with it for a while, honestly. It was very pretty, but it felt childish, distracting, and a little too busy. While the new one isn't perfect I'm much happier with it. One day I'd like to be able to hire someone to design my perfect blog, but until then I'll have to make do with doing it myself.

Another change that might have been noticed by past readers is that a lot of posts are gone. There are two reasons for this. One is that the post didn't fit in with the blog as it is now, and the other is that the post is being rewritten to get reposted. A lot of reviews are gone because I don't want a lot of reviews anymore, and will be limiting them to one a week. Exceptions to this are blog tours I may take part in, and seasonal reviews. There are lots of post ideas in the works right now, none of them are reviews, but all of them are exciting (to me at least).

Writing this post has made me realise how much I've missed and enjoy blogging. I can't wait for everything to be running regularly again.

Onwards and upwards.

Review: Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell

Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell
Genre: YA Horror
Published: October 2014 (Stripes)
Pages: 352
Summary: Dunvegan School for Girls has been closed for many years. Converted into a family home, the teachers and students are long gone. But they left something behind… Sophie arrives at the old schoolhouse to spend the summer with her cousins. Brooding Cameron with his scarred hand, strange Lillias with a fear of bones and Piper, who seems just a bit too good to be true. And then there’s her other cousin. The girl with a room full of antique dolls. The girl that shouldn’t be there. The girl that died.
-- Taken from Goodreads.
Available here.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book, I wasn't sure I'd like it so it's been sat lonely and forlorn in my Kindle for a few weeks. I finally got round to reading it and my goodness I loved it, in fact I read it in one sitting because I just couldn't get enough, and I might need a sequel.

So this book has everything, mysterious deaths, creepy house, horrifying dolls from a long gone era. Everything.

I'll admit I'm not usually a fan of horror stories, I'm too easily scared if I'm being honest, but this is in my top 10 books of this year so far, easily. It's beautifully written, the tone was the perfect blend of mysterious and terrifying and it gripped me from the very beginning right through till the end. But I will say it stayed with me slightly, and my porcelain doll collection has me feeling quite uneasy at the minute!

The twists in this book were phenomenal, every time I thought I'd figured everything out something new cropped up and threw me off, I didn't think I'd like that but I did because it meant the story never became predictable and I was constantly wanting more.

I rated this book 5 stars on Goodreads.

This book was given to me in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own and are in no way affected by the author or publishers.