As I said in my Sunday Rundown yesterday, I’ve been struggling with reading so far this month. I’ve got loads of great books to read and I’m really looking forward to starting them. The only problem is, I just can’t seem to sit down and concentrate. Every night last week, I tried to read but I always started really late. It’s partly to do with the month I think. January is the worst month of the year. It feels so long. I’m sure time slows down. We’re all tired after Christmas and all of the food is weighing us down. The weather is miserable and there’s nothing going on. All around us, people are preaching about their new gym lifestyles by posting endless selfies (even though we all know it will last all of 3 weeks). People are going vegan or alcohol-free and feel the need to rub it in our faces every 5 minutes. January is a bad month, so forgive me if I’m not quite in the swing of reading yet. But I do have a plan. I’m going to binge audiobooks all month until I feel ready to read physical books again. That way, I don’t fall into a dreaded slump and fuck up my whole year.
Emotionally, it’s been an up and down kind of day. I’ve gone from being tired, super stressed, happy, and then weepy. Every little thing has set me off today and, this evening, one simple email nearly destroyed me. I guess I just need a bit more sleep tonight. So, the plan is to finish this up and head to bed with a good book. There’s nothing that can’t be solved by that. But first we have to get down to business. October kind of got away from me this year. I had such plans to read plenty of horror books but, thanks to the dragging nature of Notes on a Nervous Planet, I ended up only starting one. To be fair to myself, it was one that I had been wanting to read for a while but it’s still kind of disappointing. Especially every time I walk past the pile of spooky books I’ve got still waiting for me to get started on. Both the pile and I know it’s not going to happen now but that doesn’t stop us pretending. I have such unhealthy relationships with the books on my shelves… actually, better make that floor.
I’ve been banging on about October and Halloween for ages now and I do apologise. But I’m getting into the spirit quite a lot this year. I’ve loved creating seasonal photos on Instagram and I’ve been using my TBT posts to watch some appropriately scary films. Well, not that scary. I’m not exactly a lover of horror films in general. It’s not the gore or the violence that get me. It’s the suspense. I’m one of those people who can’t stand being scared. I have no chill so I can’t cope with anything too shocking. Anything that relies on jump scares could, probably kill me. So I have to be careful at this time of year when it comes to my film viewing. I’m just lucky that children are catered for at this time of year. So, instead of watching the countless Netflix films about haunted houses, I decided to watch the sequel to a film I reviewed years ago. 3 years ago to be precise. It’s been so long since the first Goosebumps film came out so I tried to refresh my memory by reading my review. I discovered 2 things: number 1, it wasn’t a very good one and number 2, I made no real discoveries about the film itself. I kind of liked it but kind of didn’t. So not very helpful. It certainly didn’t get me more excited for the sequel.