UPDATE

Hello!

It's been a while (oops!) so I suppose I may as well write this as though I'm writing completely from scratch on this blog.

My name is Maya, I live in London and I am an avid reader. I am also an author (I write YA Fantasy and you can find my debut Asyra's Call pretty much anywhere you can buy books in case you were interested - I can hardly refuse a cheeky plug for my novel can I?) and, as of last month, I am also a graduate and business owner.

So as you can see, it's been a busy few months.

I graduated from university, I quit my job (a job I absolutely loved, by the way, so I'm genuinely still a bit sad about it) and I started a bookish business where I design and embroider book-related sweatshirts and tote bags. And in between that all I also try to read, as you do too, otherwise I'm not really sure what you're doing here on my book blog, and I have been writing and (currently) editing my second book!

I thought I would make this post to let anyone who is reading know that I am still here and am planning to write a lot more often on this blog and more regularly.

One thing I do want to do differently, though, is I don't want this blog to be solely book reviews. No, I think that might be too boring for you to be honest! I mean yes, of course I will be sharing my bookish thoughts, but I want this blog to be so much more relaxed. I want recommendations from all of you, I want to have casual chats.

This should be a platform for us to connect, not for me to write really rigidly created reviews and you to scroll past because they're boring!

Moving on, I wanted to talk about something serious. The TBR.

I have recently stopped working in a bookshop and one of the perks of working there was that I was constantly sent advanced copies of books from publishers for me to read. And I loved it!! The other thing was that I was surrounded by books every day... which meant I was always tempted! So in my year of working there, not only did I receive a lot of books, but I also bought a lot of books.

And the other day I decided to count all of them.

Almost 200 of them are unread.

200.

Almost 200 books, sitting on my bookshelf, unread.

And I've also pre-ordered a lot of books! So that's going to be even more added to the list. How did I even get to this point?! I remember when my tbr was 3 books.

^^accurate representation of my bedroom right now.

Hence why I have decided that this August I want to try and read 31 books in 31 days. One book each day.

Ideally, I will read physical books and mostly my review copies, but I'm the biggest mood reader ever and I know I won't be able to do this if I plan my reads in advance.

So... I guess we'll see how it goes!

P.S. Manga, graphic novels and audiobooks all count as reading and I will not be convinced otherwise. I'm also reading a manga at the moment called Yona of the Dawn because I want to make a collection inspired by it for the business, so if Yona of the Dawn appears a lot this month, that will be why!

In terms of updating you all about this challenge, I'm going to try daily updates and daily blog posts, but I am also going on holiday in a couple of weeks (hopefully I'll read so much while I'm away) and I'm not 100% sure that I'll be able to post everyday, so it might end up being an every other day kind of thing.

I guess that's it for now. I rambled a lot but that's the vibe I'm going for apparently, so I'm not going to spend ages editing it like I usually do.

Look out for a day 1 update tonight (or possibly tomorrow) to see what I read today and what I thought about it :)

Thanks for reading!

Maya xx