The book journal

For Christmas this year my best friend Bunny gave me a book journal. An A5 size notepad with sections neatly divided into books read, books to read, and books lent/borrowed. This was the perfect gift for me. I am a notorious bibliophile, if I don't have a stack of ten books to read next I get antsy. I have a wide and varied palette, I read: sci fi, fantasy, ya, ya, ya fantasy, ya sci fi, literary fiction, classics, crime, historicals, romance, auto/biographies, non fiction etc. However apart from one notorious summer when I counted the number of books I read (80), I've never kept a record of the books I read or reviewed them.

Recently I've begun reading in a different way. I still read for pleasure, to devour stories, to dive into imaginary worlds, to immerse myself in the thoughts and feelings of characters. Now I've started deconstructing books, pulling them apart to examine the mechanics of structure/plot, characters, description, and dialogue. This is because instead of reading from a consumer point of view I've started writing seriously for the first time.

I have been writing stories from as early as I can remember. An overly imaginative (delusional :)) child I would walk down the end of the garden and tell stories to the vegetable patch and the fairies I believed lived in the fronds of the rhubarb and slept cradled in the pea shells. But this was the first book I ever finished. At the moment I'm neck deep in revisions which are more taxing and strangely more rewarding than I ever could imagine.

So in order to procrastinate a little bit more I've decided to blog about the books I read, as well about the revision process (lots of pathetic moaning ahoy) and anything else that catches my fancy