I’m so, so excited to be writing this post! Hannah over at Sprinkled With Words is hosting a read-along of ALL of Rick Riordan’s books, and I am helping her (kind of).  There are a lot of them (my bank balance is not best pleased with me for all my recent shopping oops), so it’ll be going on until July as we work our way down the list.

I have never read anything by Rick Riordan before, but I started Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief for this event and it’s SO GOOD. Why on earth I didn’t read these books sooner? I do not know. If you haven’t read them before, please do. I know you hear longtime followers of these books going on about them, but I’m beginning to see why.

The Readalong begins with the Percy Jackson series (from the 1st of January), then the Heroes of Olympus, then the Kane Chronicles, Magnus Chase, and finally Trials of Apollo. We will then move onto all of the additional books that accompany the various series.

If you are in the UK, both the bookpeople.co.uk and The Works have boxed sets for great prices (that’s where I’ve got three of the complete series from). I’m certain libraries will also have them in stock, as they’re really popular – I know my local library in Norfolk, where I live during term time, even has audiobooks and ebooks to be borrowed.

I genuinely cannot wait to be getting into Rick Riordan’s books after putting them off for such a long time! I’m loving the first one, and I’m hoping they only get better (he’s certainly proved a success after all). Please join us with our Readalong, all the links will be shared at the end of this post. There will be regular videos on the Youtube channel, both updates and more creative works. It would be wonderful to have more people involved!

Anticipate update posts on here, talking about and reviewing the books I’ve read, what’s coming up, and exciting videos on their way. Probably once a month, but this is me, so who knows. As I said (many times), I’m so excited for this (Hannah’s enthusiasm is infectious I swear) and I hope we have more people join us!☺️

Epic Riordan Readalong links:

• Youtube
• Twitter
• Instagram

I love watching Youtube videos, and I’ve seen quite a few posts by people sharing their favourite you tubers recently. Most recently, my best friend who runs the blog Sprinkled With Words did one (link here). And so I naturally decided to share some of mine.

OKBaby

Here’s the thing. I don’t like children and I don’t find them particularly cute or anything, but this family is honestly adorable. I’ve been watching them for quite a long time now, and their vlogs are just lovely to wind down and watch.

 

GirlReading 

She’s a British booktuber who seems really down to Earth and reads a lot of similar books (contemporary YA) to me, which is fun to watch. I find her videos a lot more calm than some youtubers, and she’s another I like to relax and watch.

 

Sprinkled With Words

Obviously.

 

 

Ruby Granger

I’m not organised and often need some motivation to actually get down to work. Ruby somehow manages to study for 12 hours straight (I don’t know either, but hats off to her), and it’s a help. She’s also about to publish an ebook, which is pretty fab.

 

Family Fizz

I literally found this channel about a week ago, but I’ve really been enjoying watching some of their videos. They live such a unique lifestyle and are so lovely to watch.

 

Hell on Earth

Okay this sounds like a bit of an odd one, but they’re urban explorers. They’re from Yorkshire (if you have even a vague knowledge of British accents you wouldn’t struggle to work that out once you started watching!) and they’re not exactly family friendly in terms of their language. But I’ve got a lot of respect for the way they treat the abandoned buildings (in one video they scared off vandals) and they make some pretty interesting and hilarious videos. They make a pleasant change if I’m feeling like watching something a bit different.

Which Youtubers do you like? Do you have any recommendations? ☺️

It’s odd to think that I’m in second year of university already. For the longest time, uni has been my goal in life; the place I wanted to get to. Many people have jobs or something in much later life that they strive for (maybe travel, family, or career for example), but uni for me was where I wanted to get to. It’s scary to think I’m almost halfway through.

I thought then, after finding study based youtube channels and study grams, that I should plan a bit more, and work out exactly what I want to achieve this coming year.

1. Be organised and don’t turn up to a seminar not having finished the book. Okay, so I’m pretty sure everyone is guilty of this in some way, and in the first semester I think I made three seminars (in twelve weeks) where I had actually read the book. If that. No, I’m not proud of that at all, and I will say that my second semester was very different – I think there may have been one or two where I hadn’t completely finished a text, and I usually had a good reason too. This year though, I’m reading longer books, especially in my 19th Century Russian Literature module, and there is no way I can read Anna Karenina or Crime and Punishment the night before the seminar – or even the week before for that matter! The improvement I made in the second semester can still be bettered in the new academic year.
2. Start early with extra reading. I don’t actually mind extra reading and going to the library to find resources, in fact, it’s quite interesting. What I don’t particularly enjoy is reading five books one after the other about Père Goriot because I hadn’t read any previously. I’m thinking even if I’ve read one or two short essays on each book in advance, then it’s something I won’t have to do when I have three summatives due in within three days of each other.
3. Focus on my health more. Having an autoimmune condition means that I need to keep an eye on my health as best I can. I guess I’m lucky in an odd way in that I get mouth ulcers when I’m run down, so I know when I’m not paying my body enough attention. I’ve recently focused a lot more on healthy eating (I went through a phase of eating so well but this went downhill at uni) and I have felt so much better. Getting enough sleep is a big deal for me too, as I get horrific headaches that border being migraines if I don’t. I also want to exercise more so that I’m not out of breath from walking a short distance, but that’s purely so I don’t look even more like a fool when I’m undoubtably late for a seminar. The final part to this is that I want to focus on my mental health. I’ve had all summer to work out what made me stressed or anxious in first year, and second year I’m going to avoid these things as best as I can.
4. Make more time for writing. I study a creative writing degree but somehow it’s always the lowest priority. Why? I don’t know. But this needs to change. I’m hoping for an hour a day, but at the moment as much as possible is what is working.
5. Be more organised. This probably goes without saying, and though I try to be organised, it usually fails. I’ve invested in a bullet journal and it’s already resulted in me making the conscious effort to try and do as much work as possible so that my productivity tracker looks more impressive… I improved massively last year regarding organisation, and this I want to further so that I can have more time for myself and my hobbies, as well as uni.

These are just some things that I’m hoping to focus on when I’m back at uni, and to be honest I’ve already started working on them (I’ve nearly finished the first book for the Russian Lit module🎉).

I’m looking forward to getting back to this gorgeous place – this photo was from an afternoon that I spent reading by the lake on campus.