Swamped

I'm a terrible, terrible person - and I didn't even attempt NaNoWriMo this year. The truth is, third year law is hell on earth and although I love it, I barely have time to do all the other extra-curriculars I'm involved in, let alone read books and write reviews. So, my apologies that there's been no new material on RMMR in the last three weeks.

I do have a review or few in the pipeline - it's just getting the chance to sit down and finish writing them and get them up to scratch. Unfortunately, my multiple to-do-lists only get longer no matter how many items I can tick off. This has been a fairly mild week in terms of crazy-ness (relatively speaking) and though I'm only going to get busier before the week is out, I hope to (fingers crossed!) have a review up soon. No promises, though.

And for the fun of it, here are some epic things from Buzzfeed that made me laugh this week:

- Tesco Mobile twitter conversation that escalates exponentially: http://www.buzzfeed.com/scottybryan/this-is-the-best-twitter-conversation-you-will?utm_campaign=socialflow&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=buzzfeed

- Student live tweets break up #roofbreakup #teamrachel!: https://www.hellou.com/blog/2013/11/student-witnesses-a-break-up-and-live-tweets-what-he-hears-hilarious-0

- And just the cute of this cat and his human sister: http://www.buzzfeed.com/meganm15/toco-the-cat-and-his-human-sister-are-the-most-adorable-trou?sub=2752443_1974263

10,000!

10,000 pageviews! And only a very small fraction are mine, I promise!

Thanks to all who have been reading, whether you've follwed the blog from the start and read every post, or you stumbled across it accidentally last week - it means a lot to me.

Lots more reviews to come (I have to work through the 'Recently read' column on the right-hand-side!) and I'm trying to be more orderly about posts and upload them Mondays and Thursdays. Keep a look-out and happy reading!

Bring on Summer!

The weather has been perfect this last week, my exams are finished and I'm FREE!

Today has been a productive day. My alarm was set for 6.15 because I was still a little paranoid from the night before that my brain was scarily taking on sieve-like characteristics. I had breakfast while spending a couple of hours of cramming and I was as ready as I would ever be. Law students aren't particularly known for their love of Equity & Trusts, especially since it's not law when compared to everything else we learn, but boy was that a nice exam.

Added to that I had a productive meeting, have organised my whole year's worth of notes within an inch of their lives, ticked three huge items off my to-do list that have been waiting to be done for weeks, and am almost done sending my final round of applications for summer internships.

Reviews are next on the list. I'm still feeling super-productive and motivated and so I might as well jump-in and get them done while I can. BRACE YOURSELVES.

#weallwin

Exam Hiatus

I'm prone to putting Enactus ahead of my degree, and any committed Enactus student across the world will be sympathetic and admit to doing the same. Why do I do it? Because as much as I love my degree, it doesn't give me anywhere near the same satisfaction I get from doing Enactus. I might only run our commercial project and thus have only an indirect impact on the lives of our beneficiaries, but to me, it doesn't make a difference.

As competition season is making its way across the globe, I'm nothing short of relieved that the UK held its Nationals first, so that I can actually focus on my exams. As much as I lived and breathed the competitions during the three months of preparations and couldn't imagine going back to real work, exam season is upon us and there's no denying it. In two weeks time, I will have sat my first exam with three more to go. I'm normally pretty calm when it comes to exams, essays etc and so it's when I start to get worried that I should be REALLY worried - I'm worried.

Basically, this is a long-winded way of saying: don't expect any new reviews or blog posts etc before 6 June. As much as I need to catch up with my backlog, second year actually counts and I want at least one first amongst my four modules!

Good luck revising to anyone else who has exams!

Happy (Belated) Anniversary!!!

I first set up RMMR on 4 February 2012, and I completely forgot my one year anniversary! That won't be happening again, let me tell you!

I started RMMR purely as a book-review blog and from there, it's really just taken whichever direction I've felt like. There's been a mix of recipes, television-show reviews by episode, TED talks, rants as well as the odd book review when I feel like it. I started RMMR because I want to work in publishing and I thought that a book review blog would help to add something more to my repertoire. Instead, this blog has really taken a life of its own and it has taken me by surprise more than anyone else. All I can say is: let it continue!

Some stats for y'all, just because I'm really addicted to them and so you should be too:

Checklist

Criminal law unassessed essay - tick
Victoria Fisher essay competition - tick
Merlin episode round-ups - tick
NaNoWriMo - not so much ...

I may not have finished NaNo, but I'm pretty pleased with my progress overall this month. November has been beyond hectic and I just capped the week with a 10-4pm Fair Trade Market where I did not quite as well as I would have liked (you never do) but generally very good. And it's not even Sunday yet!

Admin update

The Favourite Books tab has been updated a little to include some of the fabulous books and authors I've discovered this year. I have a feeling that I might overhaul it again soon to list alphabetically by author rather than title ... when I have more time.

I've taken the plunge and started NaNo. For the first time ever, I didn't have a detailed plan of exactly what was going to happen and a full list of character names etc and I'm sort of liking it. Even in hte years where I had a plan, there were some areas where I would just let my characters take me where they wanted and that's exactly what I'm doing now. For my whole, 50,000 word novel. Apart from a vague idea about the general plot and where I want Marissa and Josh (my protagonists!) to end up, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen the next time I open up my NaNo document. And you know what? The thought thrills me. I'll be updating my daily total wordcount on the right between the 'About Me' and 'Blog Archive'. As you can see, I had a brilliant day yesterday with 3,205 words bringing my total to 4921 which is just below on target. Let's see what today brings.

Once I get the feeling back in my arm ...

... I'll get started on the huge backlog of reviews etc that I have piled up.

I consider myself somewhat of a pro at exams. I've done a lot, most of them quite well; for some perverse reason, I actually enjoy them; and once had a day during GCSEs where I had three in a day. But I don't think I've ever written quite so much as I did today. Three hour tort exam = 15+ pages of writing. I don't think my arm has ever ached quite so much as it did when I finished: from my fingers to my shoulder, it just hurt. Mostly faded now, but there's still a lingering ache.

So glad that exams are over. I only had three, so that was nothing compared to some other people. Still. This is law. I'm looking forward to being able to laze around and actually pick up a book and read it cover to cover without feeling guilty about it. And I have a LOT of exciting stuff lined up to read.

Some admin stuff: I was bad and fiddled around with a few things while I was supposed to be revising. You might not care, but I'll tell you anyway in case there is someone who does:

• Review Archive: now alphabetically by author. Not sure why I chose to do it by title in the first place, but I prefer it like this. Of course, it now means that it looks like I've reviewed hardly anything (true) because half of the books I have reviewed have been by the lovely Ms. Roberts.
• About Me: I rejiggled the info, but I'm not sure I like it very much. It'll probably change again soon.
• Misc: I added some new tags to things. Recipes, from what I can remember.

I promised myself that once my exams were over, I would have a Dollhouse Season 2 marathon. Problem is, I finished watching the last few episodes of season 1 without reviewing them, and I've probably forgotten what happened. So: to review or not to review I'll get back to that.

To be honest, I was planning to do a conclusion to the BGT semi-final review posts, but I just can't be bothered, so I'll just sum it up in a paragraph. I wasn't expecting Ashleigh and Pudsey to win and I'm not entirely sure why they did. I would have loved it to have been Aquabatique, but their performance wasn't that great. IMO, there was no outright winning performance, but I thought Jonathan and Charlotte did best on the night. Real shame that they didn't win.

I think that was everything I had to say. Now brace yourselves for a flurry of posts.

I'm Going On a Summer Hiatus ...

Yes, you're supposed to sing it to the tune and everything.

I wish I were going on a summer holiday. The weather today was awesome and I felt like I should be on holiday. The reality is that I have exams, and so I'm pretty stressed out and work is taking over my life, so I'm making this post so that I'm not tempted to take a break from revising/writing essays to catch up on my reviews.

Don't expect anything before Saturday 16 June, at the very earliest. If there's anything before that, then feel free to yell at me to go do some revision - I need someone to.