Merry Wanderer of the Night:
blogging

Hopefully I'll be back to normal blogging this week. I have plenty of reviews and things to post. I've been spending a lot more time thinking about my life and what I want to do than I have reading recently. I'm reading my first self help book right now, which probably has something to do with it. I'm not really a big "self help" person necessarily, but when I saw Jillian Michaels' book Unlimited: How to Build an Exceptional Life

I was really drawn to it. I'm a big fan of her work-out videos and I loved her show Losing It With Jillian. A lot of people think she is mean and scary, but I find her commitment to honesty and helping others inspiring. She's no joke and her book has really pushed me to analyze my habits and attitude. I've really been searching for myself over the past year and I think this book came at a great time. It's Spring, a time of renewal, and I'm taking some of my first steps towards life after graduation even though I have a year left of school.

When I started this blog I wanted to read more and read like I did when I was a kid. I wanted reading to be fun again. I think I've accomplished that goal, but I don't ever want to make reading stressful or not fun. Lately with the amount of school and work I've had it's been hard for me to balance the blog with my life outside it. I was also struggling with friendships when I started this blog, but now I think I have a good solid group of friends and I've become a lot more social--hence less time for reading. I'll be done with school in three weeks, but until then I'm going to allow my blogging to be a little irregular. Once summer comes I should get back in the swing of things.

I've thought a lot about priorities recently. My blog is a big priority to me because it brings so much joy into my life. While I'm glad I've had the opportunity to go to college school has never been my number one priority. I'm an A-B student, but I could probably get better grades than I do. It's always seemed to me that when I work really hard to get straight A's other things in my life start to fall apart. My parents never stressed good grades to me and for that reason I've let things slide a bit more this semester. I also decided I didn't want to go to graduate school right after college, which has lightened my stress. I guess sometimes I wonder what that means, to be in college and have school not be my number one priority. I know I'm rambling, I've probably rambled a lot lately.

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I am at home sick with the flu, but I have entertained myself by making charts of my reading habits. I reorganized my bookshelves earlier this week by read and unread, but then further by genre. I noticed some definite patterns taking place so I decided to see what the patterns looked like in numbers.

The first thing I looked at was how many books I had read my read shelf from each "genre."

As you can see, most of the books I have read are either general nonfiction or classic fiction, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me is that I've read almost as many YA & MG books as I have essay collections. When I thought about this it made sense, since a lot of the books I have are from junior high and high school and several of those are YA & MG. I was really surprised by the amount of poetry I had!

I then looked at how many books in each genre were on my TBR shelf.

Once again, most of the books I own are general nonfiction with general fiction and classic fiction also making a large part of the books I own. Just by looking at these numbers it seems like I am extremely likely to read the YA and MG books that I purchase, but I'm less likely to read the historical fiction I purchase. When I first started blogging I was a lot more interested in historical fiction so I purchased more of it, but after awhile I became less interested and now I have some historical fiction I've never gotten around to reading. I've never bought much science fiction until recently, so it will be interesting to see how many of those books I end up reading.

The last thing I looked at was how many books in each genre I've read since starting my blog in October 2009.

Clearly I've spent most of my time reading general nonfiction and YA & MG. This, once again, surprised me. I never read many YA books before I started blogging and never thought I would. It must just be all the great YA bloggers out there! It's interesting that general fiction and classic fiction are evenly split, although I noticed most of my classic fiction is made up of books I read for class. If I wasn't in school I think general fiction would probably be a little higher.

How are your shelves organized? Are you surprised by the different genres you see there?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Hello fellow readers! I can't believe it but I only have four more days until Thanksgiving Break and I register for classes this week. I'm extremely ready for this semester to be over with. I don't know what's up but this semester has gotten me in such a funk as far as reading, blogging, and general attitude goes. I've gotten more in touch with other things I love though, like art and music. I'm so looking forward to a week off so I can get a rest and some good reading and blogging in before winter break.

I've actually been spending quite a bit of time on blogging lately, but it's been the behind the scenes stuff you don't know about. I'm trying to figure out how to improve the sound on my vlogs using Audacity, which is why there haven't been any vlogs recently. I hate that buzzing sound the built-in camera makes on my laptop. I also recently got Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, and I've been trying to figure out design stuff and how to edit some comics I want to post on here. And I've been considering moving to Wordpress.org-- which is a nightmare to even think about but I feel I would be happier there. If anyone knows about any good guides I could use for any of the above topics please let me know!

This week was all about writing as I (still) try to catch up on National Novel Writing Month. I did a video update and shared some of what I have. I also talked about the essay Walking With an Essayist and wrote a review of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

How was your week?

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Earlier this week was my one year blogiversary so I just wanted to take today to thank all of you who have supported me until now. I've had some awesome experiences and have done so much more than I ever thought possible through my blog! I made a little video with pictures from everything I've done over the past year and it's set to an awesome song (Wrapped Up in Books by Belle and Sebastian).

When I started this blog a year ago I was really just frustrated with not getting to read very much and I wanted to change that. And I have! I'm well on my way to reading 100 books this year which is more books than I've read in a long time. I've made so many great connections and encouraged other English majors to pick up a book and read.

Thanks everyone!

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

Yesterday was the long awaited Twin Cities Book Festival. I got to Minneapolis on Friday night and was excited to see a Borders right across the street from my hotel. I went there right away of course, but didn't end up buying anything. That, of course, doesn't mean I didn't buy anything on Saturday.

This is the nice stack I came away with. To be fair four of these books are literary magazines (which were only $2 each, it's amazing I didn't just buy the entire table) and one of the magazines is for a friend. I got two issues of Creative Nonfiction, a magazine I love for obvious reasons but rarely get. I talk about Number 31 yesterday in my Awesome Essays post because the subject is publishing and writing in 2025, which seemed to be a huge theme in the panel discussions I went to. Check out that post to share your ideas! I also got Number 23, which is about Mexican-American writers, something I've recently become interested in. I got a little poetry magazine called Bateau and the Alaska Quarterly Review for my friend Michael.

As far as actual books, I got the first comic book in the Fables series, A Blue So Dark by Holly Schindler (the publicist, Courtney, did a great job selling the book to me), and If You Lived Here You'd Already Be Home by John Jodzio from Replacement Press. I'm super excited to read all of these!

Yesterday was a very long and exciting day. Right away in the morning I met Reagan from Miss Remmers Review, Sheila from Book Journey, Kim from Sophisticated Dorkiness, and Alea from Pop Culture Junkie. We all had a great chat about books and life before heading over to Sheila's panel discussion about the future of publishing. Her panel was awesome-- and Kim and I said that she answered all the blogger questions just how we would have answered them. After the panel we browsed some of the tables where publishers and authors were promoting their books.

It was a huge crowd! I was excited to see so many people interested in books all in one room. We all went to get lunch with Liz from Consumed By Books and Joanne from Jo Jo Loves to Read. We talked about books (more) and life (more) and then headed back to the festival because Kim, Alea, and I wanted to go to a panel about comic books and comics that Bill Willingham was speaking at. I never realized there was such a great comics scene in Minneapolis and I'll definitely be checking into the other speakers' work as well.

Later at night Sheila, Reagan, Kim, and I went to Borders for awhile and I found a bunch of books I wanted but didn't buy any, which I think deserves a round of applause. Then my boyfriend met up with us and we went to a Chinese place for dinner.

Take One: Reagan, Sheila, me, and Kim.

Take 423: Reagan, Sheila, me, and Kim.

So that was my fun exciting time at the Twin Cities Book Festival. Hopefully I'll get to go again next year and we can do another Midwest Book Blogger meet-up again soon!

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.

When I reached 100 followers in time for my six month anniversary I made a new goal to reach 200 by the end of my first year. My one year anniversary is in October, about a month and a half away. But if you take a look, I've already reached 200 followers. This is a ginormous accomplishment and I have all of you to thank for it because my readers are the best advertisers of this blog. You guys put me on your blog roll, retweet my posts, and tell your friends about my blog. This is awesome! When I started this blog I had to know sense of what I was doing or where it would go, but in less than a year I've find an amazing community of people who love books as much as I do and are willing to spread the word about what I do here. I'm so grateful for that.

The question I get asked most frequently about my blog is how I make time for all of this reading. The answer is simple: I make time for it. I make time for reading just like I make time to go hiking on Sundays, go for walks, ride my bike, cook healthy meals. I spend a lot of time trying to live a healthy lifestyle and to me reading is a part of that. Reading feeds my mind. Sometimes when I'm done with all of my homework I look at my TBR pile and think, "Ugh, I don't have time for this. I just want to dink around on the Internet." But when I come to the Internet I see hundreds of tweets and blog posts all about reading. That is one of the greatest encouragements. When you see that there are other people out there reading books that look good and talking about them, it gives you a reason to leave the laptop and pick up a book for awhile.

Another encouragement is making someone decide to read a book based on your review of it. This is my favorite part about blogging. I love, love, love when someone leaves a comment on a review that says "I think I'm going to have to read this!" Even better than that, I love when someone comes back to my blog a few weeks later and says, " I read that book because of your review and I loved it." To be a part of helping people decide what to read is a beautiful thing. And all of you have given me some great recommendations too! You always come to the rescue when I say, "Gee, I don't know if I should read this book or this book." You give me reasons why, all of you.

So basically what I'm trying to say is thanks. For being cheerleaders, mentors, recommendationists, and friends.

I haven't gotten a lot of reading done this month because I've been so busy packing and unpacking. I just moved into my first place, my first townhouse actually, two weeks ago and I've been busy making everything look the way I want it to. There are still a few things I want to change but I'm happy with the way things look for now. I tried to make a comfortable reading place in every room of the house and I wanted to share where I'm doing my reading and blogging with all of you!

The picture is pretty dark but I've been using this spot a lot lately. No, this is not my bed, it's a day bed in my office. This is a really nice place to read because it's right by a window so I get a lot of natural sunlight and usually don't even have to turn the ceiling light on to read, unless it's night of course. Also, since this is my designated reading bed it seems like it's easier for me to stay awake in it than it is in the bed I sleep in every night.

This is the living room with, as you can see, all of my books. I haven't done a whole of reading in here and I think that's partially because there is no ceiling light so at night it's rather difficult to read and I haven't been able to use it a lot during the day. It's a great spot for watching movies though!

This is probably my favorite place to read "in the house." My porch. The chairs are actually pretty comfy and there is a nice table for me to put my tea while I'm reading. The porch looks out to a street, but there are a few trees around and I like watching the squirrels do their acrobatic flips.

This is the bed, where I naturally do quite a bit of reading. I made sure to have lamps by the bed so I can read by lamplight and then just turn them off when I get too tired to keep reading.

Not a lot of reading gets done here, but I do quite a bit of blogging here as you can tell. It's where I'm at right now!

This is the dining room where I do a lot of eating, but I also do the majority of my blogging here. At least that has been the case the past couple of weeks. I blog a lot in the morning before I go to work and I like to sit here and have my breakfast and blog.

So this is where all the magic happens! Where do you like to read or blog?

Whoa, guess what today is. My six month blogaversary! Yeah, that's right, it's English Major's Junk Food's half birthday. I was really excited about this day, but when I told my friends and family they all said they couldn't believe it had only been six months. I guess I kind of feel that way too, sometimes it's hard for me to remember a time when I wasn't blogging. I've always been big on celebrating halves because I figure it's an extra incentive to get you to a whole. In my six months of blogging I've met some veteran bloggers and helped some new bloggers get a start. I've been interviewed on the radio and for a newspaper. I've reached 100 followers and surpassed 100 followers. I've read twice as many books as I did before I was blogging. I've read books for review and joined in on a blog tour. I've bloggiestad and I've changed my layout a lot. In short, I've done a lot in six months!

Unfortunately I did not bake this cake, but if I could bake a cake I would and I'd want everyone who has helped me these past six months to have a little cake too. I couldn't run this blog without all of my great blogging friends and followers- like you!

So this week I posted a review of the The Lightning Thief and I revisited a teen favorite, Fifteen. These are both YA books and I'll just warn you I've read a lot of YA recently so several of my upcoming reviews will be YA. Not all of them though. If you're ever curious to see what books are coming up for review you can check out my 2010 reads page. I usually review the books in order. (PS, If you love YA I'm probably going to have a Hunger Games week next month as I just finished The Hunger Games and I'm reading Catching Fire right now. So good.) I revisited Where the Wild Things Are in my children's book vlog. On Friday I posted an awesome music video that makes literary references. Check out the Filligar video and enter to win a free t-shirt from them!

I felt like posting today, but really had nothing to post since I'm a bit defunct right now and I'm trying to save up reviews for when I get back in school. I saw this post at Books and Movies this week and decided to do this myself!

Book next to your bed right now: Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine, Armadale by Wilki Collins, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
Favorite series: Recently my favorite series is probably The Luxe series by Anna Godbersen. Otherwise probably Harry Potter.
Favorite book: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Middlemarch by George Eliot, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, and A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.
The one book you would have with you if stranded on a desert island: Right now I'd say Shirley by Charlotte Bronte as it is quite long and I have yet to read it.
Book/series you would take with you on a long flight: Well I just went on a fairly short flight and I took The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen on my flight in (great plane reading!) and I took The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (not so great plane reading, but still enjoyable). If I were going on another flight tomorrow I would take Just Kids by Patti Smith. I just got it and after listening to her on Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt I'm really excited to read it.
Worst book you were made to read in school: No contest: Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell. That book made me question my love of reading.
Book that everyone should be made to read in school: The Stranger by Albert Camus.
Book that everyone should read, period: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.
Favorite character: Mr. Rochester.
Best villain: Count Fosco in The Woman in White.
Favorite concept series: I'll tell you as soon as you tell me what a concept series is.
Favorite invented world: I'm not sure if it's really an invented world but it's definitely a different world. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore.
Most beautifully written book: The Awakening by Kate Chopin.
Funniest book: Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float was hilarious.

So remember last Thursday when I said there was someone taking pictures of me? During that video about The Very Hungry Caterpillar? Well now you get to find out why- it was for an article about me! I was featured in The Daily Iowan today. Emily Busse (the reporter) and Laura Willis (the photographer) both followed me and asked me about the day in the life a book blogger. It was a really fun experience and I'm so glad I got the chance to be in the newspaper. You can read the article even if you're not in Iowa City too! Just go to The Daily Iowan's website to read the article, you can view extra pictures of me that weren't featured in the newspaper as well.

* Sorry I had to use Photobooth for my picture! You get the idea.

If you haven't already noticed, I have moved to a custom domain name. In a few days http://englishmajorjunkfood.blogspot.com will direct you to http://www.englishmajorjunkfood.com and the old site will not exist. If I am on your blogroll I would really appreciate it if you would change my url! In the switch I actually lost my blogroll, so I will be adding it back later this week. Do not fear, I will still be linking to all you great bloggers! The blog might hit a few bumps along the way, please be patient and let me know if you have any problems. The look of the blog is going to be changing quite a bit in the next month or two. I'm excited for the changes and hope you are too!