Achieving Anything In One Year

I was clearing out my emails on my break at work earlier today and saw that I had an email from Amazon, suggesting books that I would like to read. One of the categories was “Most Wished For” and the cover that accompanied it was from the book Achieve Anything in Just One Year: Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals. I had heard of the book before so decided to check it out online. When I saw that it was only £1.99 (usually £5.68) I thought to myself why not and hit the "buy now" button.

Book Review: The Gift

I have loved Cecelia Ahern ever since first reading her novel P.S. I Love You. I’ll admit that I jumped on the bandwagon a bit with that book but come on, I was only 11 when it was first published! Ever since reading PS I Love You, I have always bought Cecelia’s books almost immediately after their release and I especially loved the presentation of The Gift.

With shiny silver bows on a matte silver background and a gift tag revealing the novel's name and author, this book is designed to look like a gift, especially when you turn it around and see the folds of paper on the back as though it were a wrapped present. What was even nicer about this is that it originally came with a sheer red ribbon tied in a bow around the book to really add to the finish of the presentation. With the presentation of the novel being so high and unique to what I had ever seen before, I had high hopes about the actual content inside the covers and I can’t say that I was disappointed.

Book Review: Abducted

A couple of days, ago, I finished reading the book Abducted by T. R. Ragan after 9 days of reading and I have to say that generally I quite liked the novel so want to share with you a review of the book.

100 Days of Happiness, 71-80

To think that we are 80 days into my 100 Day resolutions is scary. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago that I set myself the resolutions so to be 4/5 of the way through it is mind-blowing, though these posts are a good way of keeping track of the time! So, without an incredibly long introduction, here are my happy points from days 71-80.

Hello December

Can you believe that it is December already? In only 23 days it will be Christmas and then not long afterwards it will be 2015... Crazy!

Recently I decided to change up my monthly goal posts a bit and do more of a 'things I hope to accomplish' post combined with a 'things I accomplished last month' post, thus giving birth to my Hello posts.

Without further ado, here is my first Hello post: Hello December

Starting off with what I accomplished last month, in November, I:

1. Participated and won NaNo: this is a challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days, which I won by writing 50,176. It was tough and I fell behind by 9000 words at one point so I am super proud to have completed the challenge!
2. Continued with my blog: I am not too happy with how infrequently I have been posting recently and while I am hoping to change that, I am glad that I didn't completely ignore my blog!
3. Ate no McDonald's or KFC's: before November, my boyfriend and I were eating two-three a week which is pretty awful! However, neither of us ate either of these, despite my sister offering me some nuggets in the final days of November!
4. Continued with 100 Days Happiness: although my 51-60 day post was late, I have continued with the Resolution and am determined to see it through to the end.
5. Did a hefty amount of the birth sampler: I mentioned that I wanted to complete a cross-stitch for my nephew to record his birth and I managed to get quite a chunk of it done this month.

However, I didn't...

1. Complete the birth sampler
2. Continue to learn Spanish (I want to turn this around though)
3. Read as much as I wanted to

Overall, I am pretty happy with how November went, especially since I had a pretty intense work schedule for about two weeks. However, my December work schedule is great so I have a few ambitious goals I would like to achieve this month:

1. Complete the birth sampler
2. Read a lot - I'll admit that I am going to cheat slightly on this as I have a few short Christmas books to read but I definitely want to read more this month.
3. Finish writing the book I started for NaNo
4. Go back through and edit my NaNo book so that I feel comfortable allowing others to read it.
5. Overhaul my blog: I really need to give my blog some TLC so I would love to be able to do that this month!
6. Blogmas? I would love to do Blogmas - and I'm not doing too bad at the minute, but can I keep it up?

What do you hope to accomplish this month?

- Taisie ♥ | Bloglovin ♥ Twitter ♥ Tumblr ♥ Pinterest ♥ Instagram

NaNo Update

Can you believe that November is only three days away? Three days! Where has the time gone? I honestly still feel like it is the 15th October, who knows where the past two weeks have disappeared?

So, since I am competing in National Novel Writing Month next month, a challenge to write 50,000 words in the month of November, I thought I would update you all on my novel.

My Top Book Quotes #1

Initially, I had wanted this post to contain all of my favourite book quotes. However, when it came to actually writing this post, I realised that would take me a very long time and it would be an incredibly long post! That being said, I have broken it down and only included my favourite quotes from a sprinkling of my favourite books during this first part of the series of posts. Enjoy!

Book Review: Eeny Meeny

After taking so long to read a Clash of Kings a few months ago, I decided I wanted to have a break from big books and read a few easier, smaller books. I read Sleeping Arrangements and decided to follow it up with a bit of a more mature, weighty book so I picked up Eeny Meeny by M.J. Arlidge. The blurb talks about how pairs of victims are abducted, imprisoned and then forced to sacrifice either their life or their conscience. Since I love horror films and mysteries, I knew this book would be a great read for me and as it happens, it only took me three days to finish reading so I thought I would share my opinions on the book.

100-Day Resolutions

I realised the other day that today, Tuesday 23^rd September, marks 100 days until January 1^st 2015! I was quite excited and also thought that it might be a good idea to create a goal to work towards during the last 100 days of the year, as we all know how much I love my goals!

The next 100 days will be quite insane for me, what with Blogtober (publishing a blog post everyday throughout October), heading straight into NaNoWriMo (writing 50,000 words of a novel during November) and then possibly doing Blogmas (the blogger’s version of Vlogmas – another month of posting daily). Plus there will be the birth of my nephew, two other birthdays, my relationship anniversary and Christmas to contend with over the next 100 days so even without the challenges I will be setting myself, I’m going to be quite busy.

So why am I setting myself some 100-day goals?

Book Review: Sleeping Arrangements

I saw Confessions of a Shopaholic (based on the novel by Sophie Kinsella) at the cinema when it came out and although RomComs aren’t my favourite genre of film, I did quite like this chick flick so when I saw Sleeping Arrangements on the Kindle, I realised it was from the same author as Confessions of a Shopaholic and I bought it straight away. I read it not long after finishing A Clash of Kings, hoping for a lighter, easier read and I can’t say that I was disappointed.

Book Review: A Clash of Kings

Entertainment: 9/10

Predictability: 2/10

Density/weight of story: 10/10

Quality of writing: 7/10

Inspires reader: 4/10

Characters: 9/10

Overall rating: 8/10

I started reading A Game of Thrones when the fourth season aired on TV. My boyfriend had started watching the series when it first aired in 2011 and when the fourth season aired, he pestered me to watch the show with him. I declined, stating that I would rather read the books first so I purchased the first few books and began my (incredibly long!) Game of Thrones journey.

Usually I can read a 300 page book in 1 day if I sit down to it, but that usually extends to about 3 or 4 days if I am busy with work or family life. A Game of Thrones took me 19 days to read which, considering its 819 pages are packed full of character development, description and plot, I didn’t think was a bad time scale.

However, a Clash of Kings was a very different story. It took me 70 days to read. 70. Over 2 months. It took a lot longer than I would have liked but alas, I finished it and here are my two cents on the book.

Best Present Ever!

A few months ago (if not a year ago now) I let my friend read one of the books I have written. As a result, he bought me a present: a Segway experience. Due to a series of reasons, I was unable to use the experience before it expired so a couple of days ago my incredibly sweet friend replaced it for me with something else. I hadn't been expecting anything from him as it was primarily my fault for not using the experience before it expired but I was so incredibly excited to receive the new present from him as it is completely fitting for my personality.