twitter – Book Dust Magic

Why I Disappeared and Getting Back to Blogging #blogging #books #MentalHealth

It feels like it has been ages since the last time I posted anything here on Book Dust Magic. It was never my intention to disappear. I guess life had other plans for me, and as much as I wanted to keep up with the same lifestyle I had before 2020, I couldn’t.

As I feel like I am ready to at least try to get back to blogging, before I do, I feel like I need to explain why I disappeared over night from the blogosphere.

Some of you may know that in 2020 I became a mother for the first time. I was really looking forward to a new chapter of my life. I had so much plans, including telling you about my experience as a first time mother here on my blog too.
However, each day after giving a birth was harder and harder, I fell into postpartum depression when I felt like I had no right to be in that state of mind, because I had no one except my fiance to help me with the baby. I felt like I had no luxury to have some rest, to be sad, or to just be myself, when all I had to do was taking care of my son. I really wished for my mother to help me, or to have a friend who would just look after him for couple of hours, just so I could sleep or rest, but wishes don’t always get granted.

I missed reading so much, but I didn’t have time or energy to do it, and I honestly felt like the old me was slipping away, until her final disappearance.

I was already in a bad shape, and then to make more room for the baby I had to give up on so many (un)read books. I sent them to my parents with plan to get them back when we move to a bigger apartment that we plan to purchase in next 10 years (we want to buy an apartment without mortgage), and then my father placed them in my late granny’s house and guess what? Dump ruined them.

And then I had to say goodbye to my cat GiGi (my father took him) because of his aggressive side, so our baby wouldn’t be in danger while he was newborn, and to be honest, saying goodbye to GiGi was a nail to a coffin of a person I used to be.
From then on, I felt like I was trapped in someone else’s body, living someone else’s life and not being able to live a life that was mine.

And then the earthquake happened (and another one), and cut the strings I still held onto with tips of my fingers.
I still have ptsd and I don’t think it will ever go away.

Anyway, I wanted to let you know why I wasn’t around, I practically stopped being part of this community not only because I simply didn’t have time, but because it was hard for me to look at everyone reading more books then ever. If I’m being honest, I was envy, and it was healthier for me to stay away from twitter and blogs.

Now when my son is 13 months old, I feel better and more rested as he started to sleep during night, and I started reading again.
It is still not as much as I would like to, and I will probably have to make piece with the fact that maybe I won’t read as many books as I’d like to for next few years.

My English suffered too, I find it hard to express myself as good as I used to, but I am working on it.

So… I decided to try to get back to blogging. One post at time. I won’t have a schedule because I can’t obligate myself to one.
I will cross post some reviews I have already written on Goodreads, and write new ones as I read, with hope that with time I will be able to write discussions and touch other subjects too.
And I hope someone will read them.

Winter photo created by jcomp – www.freepik.com

Wecome to our #BloggerGirl Readalong (aka Buddy Read)

What happens when your high school nemesis becomes the shining star in a universe you pretty much saved? Book blogger Kimberly Long is about to ﬁnd out. A chick lit enthusiast since the ﬁrst time she read “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” Kim, with her blog, “Pastel is the New Black,” has worked tirelessly by night to keep the genre alive, and help squash the claim that “chick lit is dead” once and for all. Not bad for a woman who by day ekes out a meager living as a pretty, and pretty-much-nameless, legal secretary in a Manhattan law ﬁrm. While Kim’s day job holds no passion for her, the handsome (and shaving-challenged) associate down the hall is another story. Yet another story is that Hannah Marshak, one of her most-hated high school classmates, has now popped onto the chick lit scene with a hot new book that’s turning heads—and pages—across the land. It’s also popped into Kim’s inbox – for review. With their ten-year high school reunion drawing near, Kim’s coming close to combustion over the hype about Hannah’s book. And as everyone around her seems to be moving on and up, she begins to question whether being a “blogger girl” makes the grade in her off-line life.

This weekend (starting Friday 25th), me and my blogger friend Amanda from ChocolatePages (who’s amazing and you should all visit her blog) are taking over the Twitter with the hashtag #BloggerGirl.

Why? Because we will be reading a chick lit novel Blogger Girl by Meredith Schorr, and you are all welcomed to join us.

The readalong will start on Friday, March 25th and will go on for four days (that means it ends on Monday, March 28th).
In other words, we decided to read 9 chapters per day.

You can all join us by using a hashtag #BloggerGirl, tagging me or Amanda in your tweets, and if there are spoilery things you’d like to discus, you can always DM me (I plan to be on my Twitter most of the time those days).

Here is the link for Amanda’s post about this Readalong if you’d like to check it out.

You can also add

me @Irena_BookDust ,
Amanda @Chocolate_Pages and
the author of this book @MeredithSchorr on Twitter.

I am so looking forward to this buddy read and I hope we’ll have a lot of fun discussing things and chatting while reading.
I hope I’ll see you there!

What do you say?
Will you be joining us this Friday?
Feel free to let me know in the comments.

RYBSAT Read-a-Thon Wrap Up

Yesterday was the last day of RYBSAT Read-a-Thon. As promissed, today I’m bringing you my RYBSAT recap.

If I told you I was happy with the number of books I read during this Read-a-Thon, I’d be lying.

From five books I had in my TBR, I ended up reading only two (and I barely finished the second one). Honestly, I knew five books in a week was too ambicious for me, but I hoped to finish at least three of them.

I decided not to feel bad about it. Two books in a week is still more then what most people read, and it is satisfying accopmlishment.

I ended up enjoying those two books, and that is what’s most important.

Here is what I read:

The Secret by the Lake was so good that I couldn’t stop thinking about it after finshing it (I still am) and you can read my review for it here, on my blog.

A Single Girl’s to-do List was pretty fun and was a good choice to pick up after my first-read. The review for it will be up this week.

Participating in twitter sprints was really fun although I found myself chatting with others more times then actually reading, so I am not sure that was a good choice when it comes to reaching my reading goal, but I am not sorry because we had some great chats and I would do it again in no-thinking.

In fact, I am sure I’ll be participating in the next RYBSAT Read-a-Thon whenever one will be announced.

In the end, let’s not forget my reading buddies, Prince Ash and Bella, who were with me most of the time I was reading. Not only were they rooting for me with their purring, but were also great models when I wanted to take pictures of my read.

My first blog post in which I am discussing how I started reading in English and my 2016 bookish resolution

Once upon a time, there was a girl who liked to read. Although reading was her favorite hobby, there were still things she liked to do as well: going out with her friends, watching movies and tv, listening to music, knowing everything that happens in the celebrity culture, traveling and just being alive.

Then, the year 2013 came. The girl stummbled upona website called Goodreads, where she learned about books she never heard of. They all looked so appealing to her, but there was just one problem: most of them weren’t translated into Croatian, the girl’s native language.

The girl figured out that, in order to read them, she has to learn English. She already knew some basics from school, but she was never good enough when it came to using them.

That didn’t discourage her. The girl went to a bookstore, bought herself a copy of the spin-off of her favorite series (it was a Bloodlines by Richelle Mead and no, it is still not translated to Croatian L ), took a dictionary and a pen , and started reading.

It took her almost a month to finish that book and after she was done with it, she bought herself a copy of The Golden Lily.

It took her around two weeks to finish that one and, when she was finally done with it, she grabed herself a copy of The Fault in our Stars.

Then came Anna and the French Kiss which made her fall in love with books in a whole new level, and after that, more and more books she read, faster and faster of a reader she became, more and more hungry for a great fiction she was.

As you probably figured out by now, the girl was me and, although I still enjoy all of the mundane things, reading is what I love the most and feel a great passion about.

These days I am not only reading in English (although I still do enjoy reading in my native language) but writing reviews and discussing books in it as well.

Although I am a pretty active user on Goodreads , I decided to start my own blog and to be a part of a bookish community (I also got a twitter account for that purpose).

These are my 2016 bookish resolutions:

To be a part of bookish community
Not to set up myself a Goodreads challenge (because this year I don’t want to stress myself whether I would reach it or not, but just want to relax and enjoy reading as I once did)
To participate in Read-a-Thons
To read more classics
To re-read more (once upon a time re-reading was what I loved the most. To me, it was even better then first-time-reading. Since discovering Goodreads and so many new books, I kind of lost the habit of re-reading and I started to miss it)
To read books I still haven’t from authors I consider as my favorite (Richelle Mead, Julie Kagawa, Katie McGarry, Jane Costello, Lindsey Kelk, J. A. Templeton, Cynthia Hand, Madeleine Wichkam (aka Sophie Kinsella)

When it comes to my blog, I am still in process of learning everything but I hope I will manage to handle everything pretty soon.

In the next few days I will post some of my old reviews that I am obligated to publishers, some of my old reviews because I want them to be here on my web-space, as well as new ones that I still have to write.

Anyway, I hope to be here a long time, to be able to call myself a blogger, and to get on well with other book bloggers.

Thank you for reading this.