It’s All About Books is going light for the season

With the start of a new season, I thought it was a good time to make a personal announcement. I’ve been struggling with this for a while now… And it has come to the point that I have to do something about it. The thing is… I’ve been dealing with a blogging and social media slump for months now. With my blog stats plummeting, my attempt to grow my Instagram account a total failure and a general lack of motivation working against me, I’ve been seriously considering an unlimited hiatus. Blogging has been feeling like a chore instead of a hobby, the sheer pressure of deadlines and posting every day driving me away instead of making me love blogging again… I feel like I’m standing at a bifurcation in the road, and the future of It’s All About Books depends on what decision I will make.

I don’t want to do anything drastic yet and I know I would miss the book blogging community too much so I’m not going on a full hiatus… Instead I’m meeting myself in the middle and I’ve decided to go ‘light’ for the duration of this new season. What do I mean with that? Well, I’ve been working hard to get through my ARCs in the last few months, and I managed to mostly clear my schedule. I still have a few left (and a couple will appear soon; I’m looking at you Bookouture!), and also two blog tours in the next months, but mostly the rest of June, July, August and part of September will be all about reading my own books again. I’m hoping that the absense of pressure of deadlines and writing longer reviews will help me relax and get my blogging mojo back.

I’m also looking forward to participating in the Magical Readathon N.E.W.T.s edition again in August, and I hope a month of all fun and almost no blogging obligations will help do the trick. Likewise, I’m going to make myself stop trying to post every day and only post when I feel like it. The same goes for social media… I’ve been doing this basically already, but for the next couple of months I’m only going to post on Instagram whenever I feel inspired to take photos and I’ll probably not be as active on Twitter either. I need some time to focus on myself and make myself love blogging again… And I hope I’ll be ready to make a fresh start by the time the next season is around the corner.

So that’s why you will probably see less of me and It’s All About Books this season, but I will still be here and I will still be reading. Thanks for taking the time to read my rambles and I hope you will all have a wonderful Summer (or Winter like me)!! ❤ ❤ ❤

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You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Bloglovin’.

Bookstagram And Me

Let’s do something different today… It’s something I’ve been working on recently after playing the procrastinating game for months. What do I want to ramble about today then? Bookstagram. While I’ve been lurking the bookish Instagram community for a long time, it has been only two years since I started posting on my own account. Mostly kindle shots featuring my garden, and nothing fancy at all… Things progressed over time, but I’ve always felt like a complete failure compared to all those gorgeous photos out there. I admit I wasn’t all that bothered by it as I thought I would be, mostly because I was having fun taking those ‘lousy’ shots anyway… But recently I’ve been thinking I should pull my act together and try something different.

So what does that something different mean? Well, one thing I’ve been seeing in all those gorgeous and successful accounts is that (other than having those stunning photos) they all seem to have a theme; something that makes the photos connect and makes their feed look great as a whole. Confession: my feed was a total and complete mess, me just taking those photos in whatever way I felt like at that moment and not thinking about if they would look good with the previous ones. I thought it was a safe bet that if I wanted to improve my bookstagram account and stats, I should probably do something about that.

But how to decide on just one theme? I struggled more with this than I thought, but in the end I decided to go with what I love myself. Which is basically a black & white background and if I want one or more color splashes popping up to contrast that; always making sure to maintain a minimalist feel. I love my black & white decoration and clothes, so finding suiting backgrounds wouldn’t be too difficult… And with the (rainbow) paper roses I made as a DIY project recently, I had lots of props ready to use. (I LOVE the rainbow roses by the way; they are so pretty! ❤ )

So below my recent feed after I decided to finally stick to a theme!

Now my question to you is: what do you think of my decision to change my feed and stick to a genre? Should I continue with it? Do something different? Honest opinions are more than welcome as I have no clue as to whether I’m doing things right here. xD

Also, if you have a bookstagram account feel free to leave me your username so I can follow you! My details are below. 🙂

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You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram. Facebook. Bloglovin’.

It’s My Birthday!! Recent BD #bookhaul

It’s March 19th today, which means I’m now officially one year older and have reached the ripe age of thirty plus one… Not sure when that happened. xD I confess I have nothing special planned today but there definitely will be fudgy brownies and books involved. 😉

So I completely forgot to share my recent Book Depository hauls on my blog and I thought, why not celebrate by showing what is new on my shelves? I actually have a birthday order on its way right now, but it won’t get here for another week or two so I’ll leave those for next time. 😉

So what did I get?

I’m Baaaaack!!

Hello everyone! This is just a short message to tell you all It’s All About Books and me are now officially back from the Europe trip hiatus and back in action! Those who follow me on Twitter or Goodreads might have already seen it, but we actually came back from Europe a few days ago and the trip was absolutely fantastic. I promise I’ll give more details soon in a couple of Europe-related posts I’m planning to write. And yes, those include a physical copies book haul post and a lot of photos in general. 😉

In the mean time, please bear with me while I’m trying to get back on track, get everything organized, posts scheduled, reviews written etc etc. It might be a little longer before I can answer comments/emails, but I promise I’ll try to do so soon!

For now, it feels great to be back again. I’ve missed you all!! ❤ ❤ ❤

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You can also find me at Goodreads. Twitter. Instagram.  Facebook. Bloglovin’.

European Wanderlust

In a way I thought the day would never arrive, but time has also been going way too fast. It’s April 23rd today, which means as of today It’s All About Books will be going on a Europe trip hiatus! But not before I finish this ‘European wanderlust’ inspired bookish/movie post. Oh yes, what better way to prepare for a trip than looking up books and/or movies set in the countries we are going to visit?

So, below you can find my google map of the countries/cities we’ll be going to visit in the next month and also the countries we will be visiting in this post. It will be one intense trip with lots of different countries and cities in a limited amount of time (fact: there are so many amazing sounding places to visit in Europe, and it’s SO hard to limit them down!!), but hopefully this plan won’t be too crazy. *fingers crossed*

In short, we’ll be visiting The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Germany. They will be visited in a counterclock-wise movement, starting with The Netherlands, then Belgium etc etc. Why? Let’s just say we started looking up things that way and it kind of worked out. Or maybe I’ve been craving those Belgium waffles and chocolate way too much and wanted to go there first. Who knows? 😉 Either way, that’s the way our bookish/movie travels will go today as well.

Ready to start?!

Before we go to the different countries, I’m going to explain a little my choices below. I’ve decided to only name books I’ve actually read and movies I’ve actually seen. Otherwise it would kind of be cheating right? Also, I was surprised just how hard it was to find titles for some countries! I really thought it would be easier… But one country ended up with less than the three book/movie titles in total I wanted to mention and did’nt have a single book (Belgium, I’m looking at you!). I need to step up my international setting game!! xD

Upcoming Eurotrip Hiatus

Oh yes, it’s now official… We are going on a month-long backpacking trip through (Northern) Europe! I’m over the moon to be country hopping again along with my favorite human being A.K.A. my hubby. ❤ ❤ ❤

NOTE: It does mean It’s All About Books will go on an Eurotrip hiatus from April 23rd to June 1st and I won’t be accepting new requests until after that date. 

Slump Monster A.K.A. Why I Disappeared

No, It’s All About Books didn’t close for business and I’m still alive… I’m sad to admit that I’m still fighting a very VERY stubborn reading and blogging slump I can’t seem to get rid of. I first mentioned back in July that I was close to a burn out and wasn’t sure how to remedy it. I even made a 5 step plan soon after to help me beat that slump and it seemed to be working for a while, but it turns out I was fighting a bigger monster than I thought. I never had to do this before for reasons other than a vacation break, but in October I was left with no other choice than announcing an unplanned hiatus. I thought it would be a short one and that I would be back before Halloween, but here we are with Christmas around the corner and I only managed to write one meager book review. Oh yes, the slump monster is real and waaaay bigger than I thought. Think Godzilla, think Sauron In LOTR, think Demogorgon/Shadow Monster in Stranger Things, think… Well, you get the idea. Even sitting down and writing down this post took me WEEKS, that’s how bad especially the blogging slump is. I did get back to reading, although I read a lot less books than before, and managed to finish a dozen books or so including IT since October. But the blogging slump is a true unbeatable monster. I guess it didn’t help either that as I slowly started finishing books again, pending reviews started piling up as well as ARC deadlines and other blogging responsabilities. Adding more and more pressure to get started again and only feeding the monster instead of defeating it.

Trust me, it isn’t that I don’t miss blogging and the lovely blogging community. You guys seriously rock and I miss you dearly! ❤ Basically it’s the only reason you can still find me lurking in the background on Twitter and Instagram… But I really miss being around more actively.

So here is me saying sorry if I haven’t visited your blog, answered your comment or mail or simply haven’t been around. Sorry for all those missed deadlines and not reading books in time. It wasn’t me, it was the slump monster… I’m hoping to write a couple of posts on what I’ve been reading and a few other things in the next week or so, and start slowly with those pending reviews and deadlines afterwards. Please bear with me while I do so and slowly catch up with everything! Looking forward to be back. ❤

P.S. Here’s some pet spam to start making up for having disappeared on you all. Our cats Lila and Jasmine and dog Paco say hello!

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