Some England Pictures, Part One

I promised that weirdo Val some pictures of my trip to England, and since she's seen the picture of my floor that I promised her, I thought it was time to share some real photos with the rest of you. (She doesn't deserve them since she has ARCs of Passenger and The Rest of Us Just Live Here *grumbles*) I warn you, it's mostly countryside right now but that'll change verrrry soon.

 This is Jamaica Inn—an English pub, and also the setting of one of my favourite books ever...Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier.

 One of my cousins' bookshelves that I'm not jealous of at all.

 A pretty beach. Also, look at that very non-English weather!

 Daphne du Maurier's house. I AM CALM. YOU'RE NOT CALM.

 This town was rebuilt ten years ago after a really bad flood in which they lost most of the buildings and pretty much everyone's car.

This is Doc Martin's house. I personally hate the show, but my dad's a big fan so he needed photos.

This is me and my new best friend, Molly. Oh, and there's a pretty bridge in the background.

So there you go—a few pictures of my trip so far. I won't be doing posts like this very often because a lot of the photos I'll be taking in the next month and going to be personal ones (family, basically) but I hope you enjoyed this!

Other People's Book Collections

I’m currently staying at my great aunts house in a very small town in Cornwall, England. As you can probably imagine, there’s not a lot to do here. Luckily, I’m staying in my lovely cousin Naomi’s (who you’ll probably hear mentioned frequently from now on) childhood room. Naomi, like my great aunt, my mum and me, is a big reader.

Her room is kind of my heaven.

There are books everywhere. I honestly feel like I’ve just stayed in my own bedroom, only with different books. I’ve never stayed anywhere before that had books, other than Michelle’s. It’s a weird sort of feeling, and I won’t deny that a massive smile spread across my face when I saw all the books.

The best thing is, the majority of Naomi’s books are ones I haven’t read yet. They’re mostly classics, or they’re more diverse that the ones I own and I love that. I finally get the chance to read all these books I’ve wanted to for ages but haven’t because they were too expensive to buy back home or they weren’t available.

I’m going to try and read as many of them as is humanly possible. Naturally, there are a few higher up on my lists than others. I’ve read Stardust by Neil Gaiman already, which for some reason is always roughly $27 in Australian bookstores. I spied some Angela Carter who I studied last semester and really want to read more of. I mean, she has books on writing novels, Charles Dickens and learning to speak Welsh. I’ve got the time of my life in front of me.

Anyway, the main point of this post was to basically fangirl over the fact that I am so incredibly lucky to have a family of readers, even if it meant coming all the way out to Cornwall for them.

I wanted to know if any of you have ever been in a similar situation. That is, finding yourself with this whole new collection of books to explore at your leisure. Let me know in the comments.

The Next Few Weeks

As I'm sure you pretty much all know by now, I (being Ely) am travelling to the UK this month. In fact, I leave for the airport in about five hours, which is kind of terrifying. Yes, I'm packed but my room is still mess so guess what I'm doing for the next five hours?

Anyway, I wanted to do a quick little update/post on what's happening. Here's the thing, I don't know how much internet I'll have. I'm spending a lot of time with family in June/July, and I don't want to use up all their internet. Besides, I'll be busy sightseeing and looking after my little cousins.

I'll try and update you all as much as possible, but I just don't know how often that will be. Thank you for all of your support!

My YALC TBR

So, in my Top Ten Tuesday post the other day, I mentioned that I had a few TBRs for my upcoming Europe trip to share with you all. Today, we're starting that little miniseries with probably the biggest TBR you've ever seen in your life. I present to you... my YALC TBR. (If you'd like to learn more about YALC, check out the official website here).

(BUT FIRST, little bit of this gorgeous human being drum rolling for you all)

I'm sorry about the oddly stylish pattern here at the bottom. Apparently, I don't have enough books on my TBR.

YEPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP.

Okay, so obviously I'm not going to list every single book here and why I want to read them or what I think about them individually but I will highlight just a select few. Also, I'm writing this a few weeks in advance so hopefully I've read something off here!

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

One of the few on here that I actually currently own a physical copy of. 

Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy

I've heard such great things about this series, mainly from Cait and Miranda, but I'm excited.

Crow Moon by Anna McKerrow

Maybe my favourite cover on here. It reminds me a little of The Raven Boys.

Legacy by C.J Daughetry

This is the sequel to Night School which I read...last year, maybe? and reasonably enjoyed. I haven't heard the greatest things about this one, but I'm going to give it a try.

Read Me Like a Book by Liz Kessler

I believe this is a teacher/student romance, but ALSO, LGBTQ+

The Manifesto on How To Be Interesting by Holly Bourne

I borrowed this from the library today (my plan is to read as many of these before I leave Melbourne through my library so I can decide what to buy over there). It's absolutely gorgeous, like really gorgeous because of its red/orange-y pages. Very excited to read this one.

So those are a few of the ones I've picked out. I know this is a crazy TBR guys and I don't honestly expect to read them all. I wanted to give myself options, and I really hate meeting authors without reading at least one of their books first because I like to tell them how much I enjoyed their books and my favourite characters and etc. 

If you're going to YALC, let me know what's on your TBR and who you're most excited to see. For me personally, it's a tie between Patrick Ness, Marie Rutkoski and Alice Oseman. If you're not going, let me know if you've read any of these books and what you thought about them.

Help Me!

Hi everyone, just a super quick post today to ask for your help!

Some of you might know that I'm studying abroad very soon - in fact, I live Australia around about the 10th of June. For those of you who don't know I'll be studying in Aalborg, Denmark for a couple of months as well as travelling around the rest of Europe.

That's where I need your help! I've never been to Europe before and so I have no idea where I should go or what I should see. Currently, I know I'll be in the UK, France, Germany and obviously, Denmark. Basically, places where I can stay somewhere for free (yay family!)

So people who have been to Europe/lived there/still live there, where should I go? What should I see? What bookstores should I spend all of my money in? What libraries should I spend hours in?

Absolutely any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you!