I decided that this week, in honour of going to a book shop yesterday, that it would be a good idea to talk about my growing list of books I want to read. This includes books I’ve been wanting to read, and books that I’ve started reading but have been meaning to finish.
To kick start this blog, I’m going to talk about my current read, and a book that has been stuck on my tbr list (I’m sorry, I’m going to have to shorten to-be-read list so that I don’t go insane writing this) for a good few months is Frankly in Love by David Yoon. The book itself falls into the genre of a Romcom, which I’m guessing means a Romantic comedy, and is a unique love story in the sense that it focuses a lot on different cultures and upbringing.
Due to only being on Chapter 4, I currently can’t tell you all that much about the book, but I can tell you that the protagonist is a very sarcastic teenage boy with Korean parents who he is trying to keep happy while searching for a relationship. I have high hopes for this book, and I hope that it can push me out of my reading slump and back into my steady, and frankly (that was not meant to be a pun, but now I feel like it has to be) quite shocking, ability to devour fictional worlds.
Following Frankly in Love, another book which has recently been added to my tbr list, is Seafire by Natalie C. Parker. This book is about a crew of female pirates (okay, I like pirates and their history – is that so bad?) who are seeking revenge against another pirate crew who killed their families and destroyed their homes. It’s a book in the fantasy/adventure genre and is again YA – young adult – fiction. After looking at it almost weekly for the past month, I finally picked up the book yesterday from Waterstones, along with Frankly in Love, and it will hopefully be my next read. Due to not actually reading anything other than the blurb, I can’t tell you much about Seafire. But I’m very excited to read it, and then move on to the second book in the series, Steel Tide.
Moving on from what I’ve not really read yet, we move into a new realm of my tbr list. The partly-to-be-read list. This includes books and book series which I’ve started reading, but haven’t finished, either because I’ve been distracted by other book series, or by getting distracted by my own writing.
Currently on this party-tbr list is the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo. The duology is also YA fiction, and has a lovely action element to it. For reference, I’ve read a total of the first half of the first book – The Six of Crows – and I was thoroughly enjoying it. However, I took a break from reading the book when my A level exams were coming up and I knew it would probably be a lot more sensible to focus on my set texts for my English class, and so I put the book aside and haven’t been able to pick it up since.
The same thing happened to me when I was reading the Throne of Glass series by Sarah J. Maas. This is a fantasy series, with a lot of action and adventure (Can you see a theme here?) which I was really enjoying reading. However, during my first year of college, when my mock exams were approaching in the summer, I decided it would be smart of focus also on my set texts. After I put the fifth book down to have a ‘break’ and focus on my education, I got distracted by writing, and the longer I stretched the break, the more anxiety I felt about picking the book back up.
I don’t know what it was that caused this anxiety, and when I think about it, I can’t help but think it’s stupid because I loved books so much, and they were such a key part of my life. Maybe it was because I had no control over the outcome of the book, or maybe it was because I was becoming aware that I was spending way too much time reading rather than actually living. But either way, this anxiety and physical sickness I felt at reading really made me take a step back in confusion.
Along with this, undergoing counselling at the time made me re-evaluate my life. My counsellor would regularly speak to me about how I maybe didn’t need books or writing as much as I believed I did, and that I relied a little too much on it as a coping mechanism, especially concerning the escape it provided.
While, at the time, this counsellor helped me look at my life in a different view, what I think they actually did was confuse me more than I was already confused (hence counselling in the first place) and made me feel nervous that one day I wouldn’t want to read or write. At the time, this scared the absolute shit out of me, mostly because I was considering following writing – or just generally English – as a career. Thinking about it now, this was probably why I felt so much anxiety surrounding reading and writing. In turn, it was also probably what led to my reading slump which has now lasted over a year.
Along with this, undergoing counselling at the time made me re-evaluate my life. My counsellor would regularly speak to me about how I maybe didn’t need books or writing as much as I believed I did, and that I relied a little too much on it as a coping mechanism, especially concerning the escape it provided.
While, at the time, this counsellor helped me look at my life in a different view, what I think they actually did was confuse me more than I was already confused (hence counselling in the first place) and made me feel nervous that one day I wouldn’t want to read or write. At the time, this scared the absolute shit out of me, mostly because I was considering following writing – or just generally English – as a career. Thinking about it now, this was probably why I felt so much anxiety surrounding reading and writing. In turn, it was also probably what led to my reading slump which has now lasted over a year.
But enough about that, it’s slightly unrelated. Other than Frankly in Love, Seafire, The Six of Crow duology, and the Throne of Glass series, there aren’t many other books that I desperately want to read. Sure, there are other books I want to read, such as Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan and the Complete collection of the Sherlock Holmes books, the originals, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. However, these books are different in the sense that I wouldn’t mind reading them over the next few years, rather than the next few months.
This concludes my current to-be-read list and partly-to-be-read list. Hopefully, I can read these books within the next year, but I’m starting to learn that I shouldn’t put a time limit on my own entertainment. I’m realising I’m allowed to take my own time.
As always, thanks again for taking the time to read my blog, and I hope you enjoyed it. I’ll see you next time I post.
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Want to find out more about my books? Follow the link below.
www.emilybrown.org.uk
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Want to find out more about my books? Follow the link below.
www.emilybrown.org.uk
You can also find me on Instagram: @emilybrownauthor
I also have a Spotify Playlist you can find below as well.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2rfakaE1iuqx5aMgL259L0?si=EHouOz37SICslhaCRxpLHQ