The Great Bookshelf Tidy of 2015

My bookshelves before and after I'd sorted them out.

BOOKWORM ALERT

I jut counted my book collection and I have a ridiculous 264 books, and that number is just going to keep growing and growing (especially since I don’t even have all the books I need for uni yet!). So as you can probably gather those 264 books take up a hell of a lot of space in my room. Which is why I was in desperate need of a new bookcase. So I bought one, my dad built it for me, my mum and I reorganised my room to be able to fit it in, and the end result was my beautiful new reading wall. I’m slightly obsessed with it. 

Pre-tidy! That's Chet Faker on my laptop... his singing accompanied me.

THE SET UP

I organised my books in colour and genre shelf by shelf, so for example I have the non-fiction books on one shelf, which includes travel books, memoirs, biographies, that sort of thing. I have the young adult/teen shelf which ranges from Northern Lights by Philip Pullman to my John Green collection. And so on and so on. 

And after! <3

TOURS

I already have a bookshelf tour up on my youtube channel but since then I’ve bought heaps more books and completely reorganised, so I might do another bookshelf tour again to update y’all on how things are in my book world. But until then, I filmed ‘The Great Bookshelf Tidy of 2015’ which is now live on my channel, so if you wanted to watch that then there’s a link down below. 

QUESTION TIME

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: How many books do you own? And what’s your favourite? I’d really love to know, talking about books is my all time fave thing to do. 

Thanks for reading! Remember to follow me for weekly posts!

Hope you’re having a rad day. 

Love Chloe x

#IBW2015 Bookshop Crawl!

THE BOOKSHOP CRAWL
It's Indie Booksellers Week and to celebrate I participated in the bookshop crawl (I mean of course I did, it's a bookshop crawl). The set date for the bookshop crawl was actually the 27th, however I have to move out of my university halls on that day so I definitely won't have time for that and exploring  bookshops, so I did my crawl on Monday the 22nd instead. As Bath has some of the most amazing bookshops I decided I would do my bookshop crawl there. Here's what I got up to...

BOOKSHOP 1 - THE OLDFIELD PARK BOOKSHOP

I'd never been to this bookshop before, in fact I didn't even know it existed until now, but I can tell I'll be spending a lot of time there in the future. It had a great selection of books and I had a good little browse whilst there.

I came away with 'The Moth' which is a collection of 50 true stories that were each told at a live storytelling event in America, and then put into the book. I originally picked this up because of the oh-so gorgeous cover and then the concept of it intrigued me so much I couldn't not buy it.

I decided that I would find 9 other books to recommend to you from each bookshop I visited on the crawl. The books range from ones I've read and loved, ones on my forever growing To Read list, or books I saw on my journey that I thought looked good. So here are my 9 recommendations from The Oldfield Park Bookshop...

1. The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon (i love this book!)
2. The Night Circus by Erin Morgernstern (this is my all time favourite book, oh my god, go read it)
3. A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman (in shop spot)
4. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (to read)
5. Tigerman by Nick Harkaway (on my to read list)
6. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger (to read)
7. Who Could That Be At This Hour by Lemony Snicket (to read)
8. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey (to read)
9. The Axeman's Jazz by Ray Celestin (to read)

MOCKTAILS AND BURRITO BREAK

Every bookshop crawl needs a mocktail and a burrito break!

BOOKSHOP 2 - TOPPING AND COMPANY

Toppings was the first bookshop I ever went to in Bath and it's still one of my favourites to this day. I love it in there, I could spend hours just browsing the shelves. Whilst there, I bought 'How To Be Bad' by E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski. Because Toppings is so fab, they have loads of signed books on offer, and when I saw this book was signed I had to pick up a copy. (Unfortunately I missed E. Lockhart actually being in store by a day! If only I'd have done my bookshop crawl a day earlier!) 'How To Be Bad' is about three girls, Jesse, Vicks and Mel, who are desperate to get out of town and discover their true badass selves. And that calls for a road trip!

And here are my 9 other book recommendations from Topping and Company...

1. The Book of Lost Things by John Connelly (love this book!)
2. Uprooted by Naomi Novik (in shop spot)
3. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (I adoooore this book)
4. The Song for Ella Grey by David Almond (to read)
5. I'll give you a sun by Jandy Nelson (to read)
6. The Perfectionists by Sara Shepard (in shop spot whilst looking for Pretty Little Liars)
7. The Grand Budapest Hotel (to read)
8. It by Alexa Chung (to read)
9. The Great Automatic Grammatizator by Roald Dahl (in shop spot)

BOOKSHOP 3 - MR B'S EMPORIUM OF READING DELIGHTS

This is my all-time favourite bookshop in Bath and just in general. I absolutely adore it. It has an amazing selection of books, friendly staff who will always chat about books, plus tea and cake on offer. I had a long browse in here before coming out with 'Vivian Versus The Apocalypse' by Katie Coyle. I've heard lots of good stuff about this book and for some reason never got round to buying it, so I decided now was the time. It's about Vivian Apple (amazing name) who wakes up one day to find a 'New World', or more simply an apocalypse. Her parents are gone and all that's left is her memories of what life used to be like and her friend Harp (again amazing name). And so they embark on a road trip across America in search of any family they might have left. (There seems to be a road trip theme going on with my haul... that wasn't intentional, haha.)

And here are 9 more book recommendations from Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights...

1. Leon Cookbook (to read)
2. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente (read and loved)
3. The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (obviously love)
4. The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman (in shop spot)
5. Gingerbread by Robert Dinsdale (to read)
6. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (to read)
7. Jamarach's Menagarie by Carol Birch (to read)
8. The Bookshop That Floated Away by Sarah Henshaw (in shop spot)
9. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Saffron Foer (to read)

BOOKSHOP 4 - GOOD BUY BOOKS

Good Buy Books is a discount bookshop, offering books for half price. However, I didn't actually end up buying anything from here as their fiction section wasn't very big and nothing was really jumping out at me. But it's still a bookshop so that's what counts, right?!

POST CRAWL COFFEE

And then that was it for my bookshop crawl! We had a quick coffee at the Forum Coffee shop (which is one of my new favourites) and then it was time to head home. I had so much fun on my bookshop crawl, I'm in bookshops all the time anyway, but this just added a little something extra to my shopping! If you want to see more Indie Book Week or Bookshop Crawl stuff then make sure to check out the hashtag #bookshopcrawl or #IBW2015 or go to the Indie Bound website here: http://independentbooksellersweek.org.uk/Find-Your-Indie/Bookshop-Crawl#. I also have a vlog from my day, click below to watch it.

Thanks for reading! And make sure to follow me on here for weekly posts.

Hope you're having a bookish day!

Love Chloe x

A Week Of Happys #2

LOOKING BACK
I really enjoyed doing this post last week so why not do it again, eh? Here's a few things that made me happy last week. Happiness starting now...

1. LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL 
Leon is my favourite film and I watched it again this week, and it just makes me so happy. Leon is so cute and I have a huge weird crush on him (to the point where I named my plant, Jean Reno, after the actor... <3). Watching Leon again just confirmed why I love it so much.

Leon and Radler to celebrate my last night at uni. 

2. BEACH DAY
We went to Chichester Harbour last week, which is a lovely little beach crossed with countryside. The weather was gorgeous and it was just so nice to walk along the seafront in the sun! Plus we had scones, so that bumped up my happiness levels quite a lot.

3. FINISHING UNIVERSITY
I finished my first year of university this week, and it's so crazy because this year has gone hella fast and it only feels like a few months ago that I nervously started. I have loved my first year of uni, and to be honest, it was hard not to when I live on the most gorgeous campus ever. We have sheep and cows in all the surrounding fields, and I get to walk past lambs on my way to lectures. Oh god, it's so great <3 And as if the animals weren't good enough, my course is the best. I study creative writing which means I just to write stories and talk about books. Living that ultimate bookworm life yo.

Me in my university room.

4. BEST HOME AND AWAY EPISODE EVER
I'm a huge fan of both 'Home and Away' and Simon Baker, so when you combine those two things it gets excellent results. Simon Baker (star of TV show 'The Mentalist') is Australian and was in Home and Away when he was much younger (I think from about 1993 to 94, ish) and they showed an episode starring him last week. The best thing about it? He was on the beach wearing just Speedos. Amazing :')

5. EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES
My mum and dad went to London last week and whilst there they bought me a beautiful hardback edition of the book Emil and the Detectives! We used to listen to the audiobook of this in the car when I was really little and last year I saw the stage show of it with my Mum, so it's quite a big part of my life. And this lovely hardback edition is a very welcome addition to my book family.

6. RICCARDO
Riccardo is my little avocado tree baby and I love him so much (probably an unhealthy amount actually). He lives with me in my uni halls, but unfortunately is now too big to bring back and forth too often, so during holidays I have to leave him at uni by himself :( When I went back to uni for a couple of days last week I was very excited to see that he grown a new leaf. BUT that's not the best part! (He grows new leaves all the time and whilst I'm always proud of his leaf efforts, it's not as exciting as the first few.) The exciting part was that his new leaf had grown in between branches rather than at the the top of his trunk like usual. This means he is hopefully going to start growing outwards rather than upwards! #proudplantmother

The smallest leaf in the middle is his new one!

THIS WEEK
And that's it, time to start living this week! Tell me in the comments below what has made you happy recently!

Thanks for reading, remember to follow me for weekly posts.

Hope you're having a rad day.

Love Chloe x

All WE Know Now

CARRIE
If you are someone who spends a lot of time on Youtube (like me) then I'm sure you already know Carrie Hope Fletcher, or as she goes by on youtube, ItsWayPastMyBedtime. And if you do know her then you'll also know that her book, All I Know Now, came out last week. I very excitedly went into Waterstones this week and bought my copy of her book, and then sat down in their café with a latte and a big slice of millionaires shortbread and began reading it.

And so, in celebration of Carrie's book coming out I decided to tell you five things I have learnt during my nineteen years of life, or more simply, all I know now...

1. Bread Makes You Fat
Now this one might seem obvious to you lot, but picture a 14 year old me, happily watching KickThePJ videos and not watching Scott Pilgrim vs The World. It wasn't until I watched that film a few years ago that I understood a lot of the references PJ had made in his videos about it. So when PJ said in a video that bread doesn't make you fat, I stupidly took his word for it (I don't know why, I was young). Cut to me watching Scott Pilgrim vs The World and hearing the rest of the line and it's then that I find out that bread does make you fat. My mum confirms it. My world is shattered. I can't eat endless amounts of bread and not get fat. Now, let's get real here for a second; I still eat a lot of bread, that will never change, bread is my one true love. But I do now know that it's definitely not good for me.

2. Your Makeup Doesn't Come Off When You Sleep
Well that's not strictly true, it does come off when you sleep (the evidence is on your nice was-white pillow), but it doesn't properly come off. When I was first getting into makeup in my early teens I remember my mum telling me to take my makeup off before going to bed, and I responded my saying 'It comes off when I sleep, I don't need to.' YES YOU DO YOUNG CHLOE. Taking your makeup off before going to sleep is the best, and easiest, thing you can do if you want clearer skin. It stops dirt and oils from building up and plus, it feels so good after a long day (unless you have really good makeup on, then it just feels heart-breaking, but you gotta power through that pain).

3. It's Better To Have One Flower Than 100 Weeds
This is basically just me saying, it's okay to not have hundreds of friends, but making it about plants because why not. I have never been good at making friends, and I have about eight years of experience in not having friends in my classes. (I was that one person who loved seating plans in school because it meant I didn't have to worry about not having friends to sit next to!) But I've come to realise that it's okay to not have loads of friends, as long as the friends you do have are rad as heck. If your friends are amazing and love you as much as you love them then don't you worry about only being a three person group. And it's far better having just a small handful of wonderful friends than having lots of fake friends who don't really care about you (speaking from experience here, trust me on this).

4. Don't Do Anything Once You've Painted Your Nails
I am the worst at chipping freshly painted nails, I've been known to chip or scratch my nail varnish within minutes of painting them, so when I say wait at least an hour before you do anything when you've just painted your nails, TRUST ME.

5. Fuel Your Passion 
Whether your passion is writing, photography, playing guitar or acting, fuel it! If that means spending hours practising, or grabbing five minutes to write something when you have the chance, then do it. My dream is to be an author and it always has been (apart from that weird time when I was very young and wanted to be an ice cream van driver), but for some reason between the ages of about 11 and 14 I stopped writing. I have no idea why, but I am constantly grateful for the forums on a gaming app I used to play that made me start writing again. Because of those forums I rediscovered my love of stories and writing, and now here I am five years later studying creative writing at university and getting my passion for writing fuelled every single day. So don't give up on your passions, keep going with them, and you'll reach your goal soon. Promise.

VOILA


Well, there we go, five things I know now. I hope some of those helped you, even if it was just a little bit. If you want more life lessons then make sure you go read Carrie's book because it's wonderful.

Thanks for reading, remember to follow me as I post once a week (and very often more)!

Love Chloe x

HAVE SOME LINKS:
'All I Know Now': https://www.waterstones.com/book/all-i-know-now/carrie-hope-fletcher/9780751557510
Carrie on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ItsWayPastMyBedTime
Me on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheGiddyElf

Scented Reminders

A WAVE OF NOSTALGIA
I had the idea for this blog post earlier in the week when I sprayed my Chloé perfume (when you share a name with a brand, you gotta use them!) and was hit by a wave of nostalgia for being in Australia last year. I always find it cool how smells can remind you of certain times and places, and so I thought it might be fun to share with y'all some smells that remind me of different moments in my life.

LOVE, CHLOÉ PERFUME
In April of 2014 I went to Melbourne, Australia to visit my sister while she studying abroad there. And it was the best time of my life. I loved every second of it, from feeding wild rosellas along the great ocean road to having to change out of my converse because it had rained so hard. While I was there I mostly wore my Love, Chloé perfume. It's a floral scent but with a hint of spice mixed in too. Whenever I spray this perfume now, which is pretty much every time I'm going out somewhere nicer than uni or shopping, it reminds me of being in Melbourne.

BACON
This one is a bit different to the fanciness of my perfume but the smell of bacon reminds of Melbourne too. And that's because my sister's apartment always smelt like bacon because someone in one of the neighbouring apartments obviously enjoyed eating bacon, haha. This scent is so distinct to me to the point that I can remember perfectly how it smelt right now as I write this in my bedroom in England where nobody is cooking bacon!

DOVE WOMENS ORIGINAL DEODORANT
I use different brands of deodorant all the time, I just buy whatever is on offer, but whenever I use the original dove deodorant the smell really reminds me of summers while I was in secondary school. I don't know why it's summer in particular, but I just can't help thinking of the days when I used to go to the park all day with my friends and just sit and talk. In a weird way though, I really wish I wasn't reminded of those times because since leaving secondary school I realised how bad those friends treated me, and I lost contact with most of them. But hey, that's life. (Woah, this got deep real quick, back to the lighter stuff shall we!)

A CERTAIN BOOK SMELL
A true bookworm knows that not all books smell the same, and so with this one I don't mean all books, just a certain kind. It reminds of being little and reading The Faraway Tree, aka my favourite book ever when I was a child! It's hard to describe this smell properly because it's just a certain type of paper I guess, but the best way I can think of is that kind of felt, spongey material you get, mixed with paper? I can guarantee that most of you will have no clue what I'm talking about so I'm going to move on, haha.

RIGHT GUARD MENS DEODORANT 
I can't tell you what particular one, but I imagine it would just be the classic/original deodorant that right guard have, always reminds me of being at the Danny Elfman, Music from Tim Burton films concert that I went to at the Royal Albert Hall in 2014. I think it's because I was wearing this deodorant that night as it's what my dad uses and I'd ran out of my normal one, so I just borrowed his. Now, men's deodorant smells hella strong, so I could just smell it on myself all night. And now whenever I smell it it just reminds me of that evening (and seeing Helena Bonham Carter sing, which was crazy exciting because woman crush).

BYE!
And that's it! I'm sure there are more scents that remind me of different things, but I can't think of them right now, or in most cases, I can't distinguish what the smell actually is, which makes it a little bit hard to write about.

Are there any smells that remind you of certain times of your life? Let me know in the comments below and we can have a nice little scent based memory chat!

Thanks for reading, remember to follow me for new blog posts every week!

I hope you're having a wonderful day.

Love Chloe x

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell // BOOK REVIEW

So Rainbow Rowell is one of my favourite authors and Fangirl was just as amazing as I expected it to be! This book is about a girl called Cath, who is in her first year of university. And her love of the book series Simon Snow, makes it a little hard for her to fit in, as she prefers to write fanfiction than do the stereotypical university life.

First off, Fangirl made me laugh out loud and I was smiling whilst reading nearly every page. My particular favourite moments were the references to Gilmore Girls and Beverly Hills 90210, which are two of my all time favourite TV shows, so those parts really made me giggle! 

I liked how this book deals with more than just your average YA love triangle. I mean there's a tiny bit of that, but amongst mental illness, alcohol abuse, family separation and trying to fit in. Or in the case of Cath, not fitting in at all. I could really relate to Cath, who in her first year of university, prefers to spend her free time in her room, writing fanfiction. And whilst I don't write fanfiction, I do spend my free time doing equally nerdy things by myself. Plus we're both doing creative writing courses, so y'know we're pretty much the same person. 

But, as much as liked Cath, it was Levi who stole the show for me! He was ADORABLE. From the second he was introduced I was in love. He's so happy and it's contagious - when he was smiling, I was smiling. Ugh. In love <3

My only issue with Fangirl was that I wanted less of the fanfiction about Simon Snow that Cath was writing. For example, the book ended with a piece of fanfiction she'd written, and whilst I can see why, I wanted it to end with the characters from Fangirl! But I think this down to is personal taste, as I've heard other people say they really liked the fanfiction parts of the book, so don't let this put you off! 

Overall, I adored this book! I give it 5 stars. You need to read it right now! 

***

Since we're on the subject of books, I thought I'd just let you know that I have a goodreads account, which I am constantly updating with all things bookish. I also have a youtube account, where I talk about books fairly often (amongst other things, like beauty and the weird things that happen to me). I actually did a review of Fangirl over on there too. Links to both of these are just below, so why not pop over and have a little look. 

I hope you're having an excellent day! 

Love Chloe x

Eleanor and Park Review

Eleanor and Park. More like Adorable and Cute. YOU'VE BEEN HAZED. (i'msorry)

Eleanor and Park is a story about a girl and boy. The girl stands out like crazy, with her not so slim figure and her odd choice of clothes. The boy blends in, headphones on to block out the noise and his head burrowed into a comic, nobody really bothers him. Except Eleanor. She suddenly appears in his life, unwelcome at first, but eventually he can't get enough of her in his life. And Eleanor feels just the same about Park. This book is essentially an adorable little romance. 

So firstly, lets talk about the plot. It's funny. It's cute. And it's sad. Like all at once. There'll be a moment where you're laughing at something ridiculous that Park has just said (this line will be ridiculously cute too by the way).Then all of sudden you'll be overwhelmed with sadness by Eleanor's heart-wrenching reply. I think the phrase "a roller coaster of emotions" fits quite well here. 

The great thing about the romance in this book is that it's realistic. Eleanor and Park don't fall in love instantly, never looking back as they stroll into the horizon.In fact they don't even like each other when they first meet. It takes time for them to fall in love. Plus the things they say to each other and do with each other are really realistic and relatable too. It's not just movie love, it's the love that happens in real life. 

Furthermore the set up of this book is great. The chapters are split into various short chunks, written from either Eleanor or Park's point of view. This means we get both characters opinion on things and how they personally saw and felt in each situation. I really liked this idea as it means you get to know Eleanor and Park equally, rather than just getting to know one protagonist best. 

Now I'm not going to ruin the ending for anyone that hasn't read Eleanor and Park, but I'll give you a warning: wrap yourself in a blanket to use for comfort after you've finished. Have some tissues ready, your eyes will be leaking slightly. And finally, have some chocolate to hand, the ending is going to hit you like a Dementer. But seriously, the ending broke my heart. But it was incredible. I think it's one of the cleverest endings to a book I've read for a while. 

So, in conclusion, I love this book. Five stars for sure. It's cute and romantic and made me laugh and broke my heart. And if that doesn't add up to create a good book then I don't know what does. 

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. Read it now! 

☆☆☆☆☆