This is a super short post just to let you all know I won't be posting consistently for the foreseeable future. My grandad got diagnosed with blood cancer two weeks ago. In that time he's went from being admitted into hospital in a relatively normal state to in a hospice and us anticipating The Call. 

On Friday we got the prognosis. Not good. Weeks. Months, if that. Monday he was in the hospice, still relatively alright. Wednesday, out of the blue, he was not good. He's deteriorated so dramatically and I'm finding it super hard. I'm exhausted. I'm drained. I'm reading and sleeping and doing nothing much else. 

I know it's understandable that I won't be posting much but despite this being a hobby, I still want to be professional, and I don't want people to see my lack of posting and assume I don't care. 

So yeah. If and when inspiration strikes and/or I just want a break from life I suppose I will post something but there's no guarantees. No weekly posts or anything for just now.

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​Emma

With each year that passes, I DNF (Did Not Finish) books more and more. I used to be one of those readers who HAD to finish a book, but with my crazy tbr - currently at over 5 years worth of reading and still growing!! - I can't bring myself to keep going with books I'm not enjoying. I read for fun and if I'm not having fun, I'm not going to push myself through because the book "might" end up amazing. It's not worth that. 

I should note that my system is a little weird: I only officially mark a book as DNF'd if I started reading AND marked it as "Currently Reading" on Goodreads. If I pick something up and read a page or two and decide "not just now" and don't take it off my TBR, I consider it still on there. If I mark it as Currently Reading but haven't actually started it and decide it's not the right time it goes back on my TBR also. So, if I start reading  book, mark it as currently reading but then decide I'm not feeling it there's definitely still a chance it's one I'd go back to. Why I don't just put it back to my TBR and forget about that brief reading time I do not know.
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There's still time for a book or ten to be added to this list but for now, here's all the books I gave up on in 2019.

I'm still feeling a lack of motivation for booktube just now. I'm not sure if it's a mental health slump that's causing it or if I'm maybe subconsciously finding stress with keeping up with it all and need to take a step back. Or maybe I've had a crazy two weeks and just need to get myself back into the swing of things and it'll all be ok. 

Blogging itself isn't quite so difficult - I can make content without much effort at all and it's not as obvious or as "detrimental" as it would be in video form - so here I am, making a blog post in order to feel somewhat more productive. 

My consistency in posting has been lacking lately. Part of this is due to slumping both with reading and life, but most of it is due to Hector, my new PUPPY!! 

I've not been reading very much at all as I've been exhausted from being up early and having longer days as well as the overall excitement of it all. It doesn't help that I've taken sick and think I have tonsillitis. BLEGH. I'll try and put as much effort into posting on here as I can but I also don't want to pressure myself so I think I'll almost definitely take the rest of the month off (a whopping three days lol!) and perhaps will tone down my December plans (vlogmas is pretty much a nope at this point which I'm a little sad about but it's just not worth my health!) 

Thank you all for sticking around. To appease your desire for bookish content, I'm currently reading The Starless Sea and LOVING it but I've been taking my time because who knows how long it's going to be before Erin Morgenstern releases another novel. I'm also listening to Girls With Sharp Sticks which is interesting but I do have some thoughts on it. I'm hoping I get these both finished this month. I was planning to complete my reading goal just so I could be ahead and chill in December but it's going to take a miracle!

I'm in a weird limbo right now. It's almost like a slump but it's not. I'm still reading, just not quite as much as I'd like. If anything it's blog and booktube I'm slumping with. I was going to blame it on the fact I'm super excited about something that's happening in a few days but really I think it's just the curse of November. 

Throughout the year we can easily pop out a few "books I didn't like" or whatever posts but come this time of year we're prepping all the end of year content. Who wants to have their most disappointing reads of 2019 spoiled because they did a blog post on their most disappointing reads period? 

So I guess the point of this post is to say that I'm still here, I'm just not sure what I want to post yet, because I just really want to get into the end of year/start of year stuff. Maybe I should just read a damn book and write a review!

The end of the year is fast approaching and I'm nearly done with my reading goal but there are definitely a lot of books I haven't gotten to yet that I really should have (ahem, my whole TBR)... but here are just a few of the books I would really like to read and check off my tbr before they end up stuck there for yet another year!

I've had a pretty rough few months with reading... or maybe it was just september - either way, it's felt like forever. But finally, in october I managed to read 6 books and I am so happy with that! 

October is my favourite month of the year - Autumn, Halloween, my birthday... and you guys SPOILED me with gifts, including books! If you want to see everything else people sent me, my unboxing video is here, but for today, it's my October Book Haul!