Discussion: How Do You Travel with Books?

Hey guys, it's been forever since I've done a discussion post! Though I usually talk more about the actual text and story aspects of books in these discussions, this time my question concern the books as objects. I've done quite a bit of traveling this summer (more on that here) and my book-loving were both a source of excitement (visiting awesome bookstores! Meeting authors! So many great books! So much cheaper than at home!) as well as a problem when it came to packing.

When I left for New York City, I packed only one paperback plus my Kindle. I knew I'd buy a ton of books and other stuff and I wanted to keep my suitcase as empty as possible. But already after that first week, I had like a dozen books. A few more were added in New Orleans. At the airport, my suitcase was exactly the allowed 50 pounds. But I knew there'd be more books added in California (San Francisco, I shall one day write an Ode to your book stores). In the end, my sister and I both bought a carry-on each - to be filled with books. Only books. To the brim. Plus a few stuffed in elsewhere.

I always need something to read when I'm traveling, even if it's just a bus or train ride. I need to know that if I have to wait for something (and let's face it, airports mean loads of waiting) I can just pick up my book. I can make my own bubble of comfort and disappear into a story. I like to read at the beach, at a café, basically wherever. But that also means lugging around books all the time. Weight. Space taken up. And even though I love print books, the Kindle comes in damn handy at those times. The problem is just that the battery of my Kindle Fire only works for like 8 hours, even if I have the light turned way down. So I still need a paperback with me, too.

How do you handle this problem? Do you have a Kindle, and do you use it for travelling? Are you a print-books only kind of person? How many books do you take with you when you travel? Do you worry about damage to the books (I sure do)? Do you like to buy books abroad? What was your craziest or most embarrassing book-related traveling experience? Let me know in the comments :)

I am done with EVERYTHING! And coming to the US! :D

Hey guys!

I know I know... it's been a very long period of silence from me. It wasn't intentional. I just couldn't keep up with everything at the same time, and I had to prioritize writing that MA thesis. But I'm done now. Done with the thesis. Done with the exam. Everything is handed in. My next and last action at university will be getting my diploma in September with everyone else who finished this semester.

It doesn't quite feel real yet. Studying was a huge part of my life for the past six years. It was a part of my identity. To not have that anymore... it feels weird. But also good. Because I was sort of fed up with... everything. I just need something else. I need to see the world. Which is what I'm about to do. In pretty much exactly 12 hours from the moment I'm writing this, my plane takes off. My sister and I are doing a huge, six week trip to the US!! :D

WE ARE SO EXCITED!!

Neither of us has ever been to the US before. And now we're going together. First we'll be in New York for about the week, then we're going to Washington D.C. for a day, then we're boarding a plane in Baltimore and flying to New Orleans. We're staying there for another few days, then it's off in the car. We're driving across Texas and then somehow up to the Grand Canyon, then to Vegas for my sister's birthday. After that, down to L.A. and San Diego and then up the coast until San Francisco.

Yup, we've quite a program. And we hope it'll be awesome. And that we'll have adventures. And meet people along the way.

I'm also a bit scared though, to be honest. I've never been so far from home for so long. (I also haven't driven a car in forever) But I also hope I can sort of figure out or at least get more of an idea what to do with my life post-university on this trip. I hope I can write some stories and have new ideas, see new things, get a new perspective.

What does all of this mean for the blog?
Well, even if I'm traveling, I will still be reading. I have in fact read quite a lot even while writing the thesis. I just didn't get around to/have the energy to blog about it. I am VERY out of touch with everyone and everything, including new releases. I also have quite a bunch of ARCs I never got around to reading, but I hope I can catch up a bit over the summer and I still plan to write and post these reviews, even if it's not around the release date anymore. I really missed blogging!! I feel like so many cool things were going on and I am way out of touch with everyone :/

Also, you can expect this blog to become a kind of travel blog for the next few weeks, with pictures and stuff every few days, also depending on where we can get WiFi.

Lastly and very importantly, if you live in NYC or New Orleans or L.A. or San Francisco or basically anywhere I mentioned above, I would love to meet you! It would be so cool to meet bloggers in real life! I wish I could have come earlier and gone to BEA, but I had my exam on  May 27.
I don't mean to come across as a creep with this meeting thing. But we could have coffee or maybe go to your favorite book store or whatever. So if you're a blogger and maybe we've talked before and you live along our route, I'd love to hear from you via email or on Twitter!

So... yeah. I don't really know what else to say. I have to go finish packing and stuff. And freak out some more. And hopefully catch a few hours of sleep. And not do something stupid like forgetting my passport or ESTA thingy. Hopefully you'll hear from me tomorrow or the day after that while I'm sitting in some café in Brooklyn and annoying the natives :P

Have any of you ever gone on a big road trip? Do you have any tips for my sister and me? Places we totally need to see? Things to avoid doing? Bookish places to visit? Let me know in the comments! I've really missed blogging and interacting with you all!

It's Alive!

... Or is it?
Remember me? I've been gone for a month without an explanation, and for that I'm very sorry. I owe a lot of people reviews. For some I've actually read the books, for some I just couldn't get around to it.
Why have I been gone? There are a lot of reasons and quite a few excuses. The main reason is that I'm not by nature a very energetic person. Especially lately, I've been fatigued and unmotivated and have a hard time making myself do anything apart from the really necessary, like dragging myself to work. That makes me feel unproductive, which in turn frustrates me and sends me spiralling even more. I just somehow don't... feel real. I'm hiding from the future and denying myself the present.

I kind of feel like this turtle. Lots of efforts with not very promising results.

I'm also very, very worried about my MA thesis. I need to have it written in 2 months so I have another 2 weeks to revise before handing it in, and I haven't written a word yet. I've done a lot of research (reading for that rather than reading YA novels), I have notes, I have ideas... but I'm very scared of sitting down and really starting to write it. I have no idea how and where to start. I don't know how to order things and put them together. It's a big strain on me, obviously. I feel like if I do other things, especially if I write other things, I'm taking time away that could be spent writing on the thesis... even if I don't do it. Even if I play Assassin's Creed instead. Ugh -___-

I also haven't felt like turning on the computer at all. Sometimes I left it alone for almost a week and then had to deal with over 300 emails in the inbox. Yes, something is definitely wrong with me. But I just haven't felt up to dealing with stuff... with life.

Have I missed blogging?
Yes. I miss commenting on each others' posts. I miss learning about new books and checking my favorite blogs. I feel completely out of the loop. Very often in the morning, I'd resolve to write a post that day. Only then it didn't happen. After a while I felt so guilty I couldn't bear to even look at the blog or the stats or anything. I also haven't checked on any other blogs in this entire time - as I said, my computer was mostly off. I do want to return to at least checking out posts and commenting. I also want to start blogging again myself, but I don't know how often that can realistically be because now I REALLY need to crack down on that MA thesis. Really really.
Or else I won't graduate this summer, which I would see as a personal failure which would make me ashamed and just generally feel like shit about myself because I was a lazy bitch who couldn't get off her ass when it counted.
Yeah, as you guys can see I'm sick of myself.

But last night/today I came to point where I know things have to change. I just can't go on this way, hating myself/feeling sorry for myself and doing exactly nothing to change things. I have to stop the slacking. I have to become sharp again. I have to force my brain into the right channel and just get things done. How many of these things are blog-related, I really can't say. It sounds harsh, but I just can't make it a priority at this point. I don't have that luxury anymore. But I also don't want another month-long silence here.
I hope that if I start to reach out to other people again, I will feel better and more energetic and invigorated. I hope that by being in touch with the passion of others, I can rediscover my own.

This post has become rather personal and kinda depressing somehow, perhaps too personal. But I don't know, maybe someone can relate? Somehow it even made me feel a bit better just writing it all down for once. I guess we all go through stressful periods in our lives and I just have to suck it up. But if anyone has coping mechanisms they'd like to share - be my guest, the comment form calls to you! Again, I'm really sorry for the long silence and I hope that I can still write at least some of the reviews for the ARCs I got. Just... bear with me? For better or worse, by May 15th (MA thesis deadline) it will all be over and I'll be a free woman again.

Discussion: Do you cast your characters while you're reading? How do you imagine them?

Hey guys :)

I want to apologize again for being less active lately, both on the blog and on twitter. There's a lot of change going on in my life right now and I'm trying to deal and find a balance. Mostly I'm just losing myself in one book after the other, which leads to reviews piling up, which leads to me sticking my head in the proverbial sand... yeah.

Anyhow, this is a discussion post! I'd like to talk about how we imagine characters in the books we're reading. I've noticed that a lot of bloggers (and also authors) 'cast' the people in the books they read or write, i.e. choose pictures of actors or models they think represent or resemble the character.

I can never resist an opportunity to show off this cover

Apart from the fact that I'd be way too lazy to search through all those pictures of hot dudes and ladies (because let's face it, they usually are good-looking) I admit I personally don't really see the point. When I imagine a character, they never resemble any other person I've ever seen before, be it from my own life or from a movie/advert/whatever. They just pop into my head as I read them. Even if there is no clear description from the get-go, I always have an image in my head that  I can then adapt/concreticize. Before seeing all those casting posts, the idea of looking for that type of pictures never crossed my mind. But I've seen in a lot in guest posts or on authors' Pinterest boards.

The only thing I admit to is that I sometimes 'lift' a character off the cover if I like it a lot. For Nevermore trilogy is someone I imagine pretty much exactly like the guy on the book cover. Same with Daemon from Obsidian, because that guy is so in-your-face everywhere before you even start reading the book that it's impossible to picture him any other way :P
instance, Varen in Kelly Creagh's

So I'm interested... am I the only one who isn't into casting characters? Those of you who do it... why? Or why not? Or how? I'm curious :)
Also more generally, how does the 'imagining characters process' work in your brains? Do you base them on other people? Do you even 'see' the book in your head like a movie at all when you're reading? The reading process is something I find absolutely fascinating and I'd love to hear how you experience it!

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Bookish Memories

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week the participants post their top ten to a specific topic.

This week is all about our best bookish memories, be they related to reading or to specific events.


I find this sooo hard to determine! No particular order. I'm sure I'm forgetting something obvious and important.

1. One bookish memory I love is how I discovered The Hobbit when I was waiting for the pasta water to boil. My mum had borrowed it from a friend, I was bored, I started reading it. The water overboiled (no clue if this is correct English) and I read like half the book under the bed covers that night.
2. Waiting for the  4th Harry Potter book, then reading the whole thing in a day.
3. Meeting Becca Fitzpatrick on a city trip to Dublin. My friend and me had no idea she'd be signing!
4. Reading Hush Hush with my friend in our hotel room that night! We could read and then discuss stuff immediately, it was awesome :D
5. Every time I 'disappear' into a book and forget where I am and have no idea how much time has passed when I 'resurface'.
6. 2013 things I loved: reading Divergent and The Replacement. Sooo good!
7. Discussing books and characters with my mum & sister because we all read the same stuff.
8. Finishing the draft of my novel a year ago.
9. Finding out that a series I love has more books to it, only they were never translated into German and thus I wasn't previously aware they existed! Happened with Holly Black's Tithe, for example. Glad I don't read German translations anymore...
10. Reading Stephen King's Dark Tower series.

Maybe I'll go back and edit this during the day. It's 2a.m. as I write this and I hurt all over because I was at a metalcore show tonight. Second row. Sooo worth it though ^^
Do you have any similar moments on your list? I'm curious what kind of book-related things you came up with :) 

First edit: Duh, I forgot something really obvious >.< Starting this blog and connecting with this amazing community! It's quite a bit more stressful than I thought but really worth it :) Also, every time an author favorits, retweets, or responds to one of my tweets makes me really really happy ^^