Welcome, book lovers!

As someone who reviewed books for three years for her university rag, it's perhaps understandable that I should miss doing it a year after leaving. I tried joining the 50bookchallenge community on Livejournal last year, during my master's degree, but was unsatisfied with it for several reasons. However, I enjoyed the process of reviewing books, so have decided to return to it for your delectation.

A little about me: I studied Classics and English at Exeter University, UK, from 2004-7. Immediately following this, I read a Master's degree in Linguistics at Oxford University. After a summer on unemployment benefits (through no fault of my own, I assure you!), I moved to Paris where I now work as an English teacher in an international, bilingual secondary school and live with my boyfriend (and yes, we are glad to be out of the ridiculous long-distance arrangement that we had going for 3.5 years!).

As part of living in France, I read a lot of books in French, and I will be reviewing these as well. The reviews I write initially (i.e. in November and December of this year) will be to get me back into the swing of reviewing more than anything else. As of January, my reviews will be accompanied with a figure for my own interest, so that I can chart how many books I read during the year. The first year that I counted this, I managed 43 (not including rereads). It perhaps goes without saying that I hope to equal or exceed this in 2009.

The maxim that "a day without writing is a wasted day" is certainly something I ascribe to, although I don't spend nearly enough time on my novels and poetry as I should. I am, however, constantly tapping away at my beauty product reviews over at my beauty blog. When not teaching, reading, or writing, I enjoy singing, listening to all kinds of music, travelling, sleeping, food and drink, calligraphy, and anything Christmas.

I should probably also say what kind of books I enjoy reading. It's difficult to classify, but generally speaking, as long as it's of a high quality (and this doesn't mean reading classics all the time - some are abysmally bad!), I'll probably enjoy it. I can't stand overhyped literature and am generally not carried along by the crowd. A pretty vague description, and I'm sure you'll agree that someone who studied English at university level for three years should be able to sum up better than that. You'll soon find out what I like and what I don't. I hope you enjoy the blog regardless, and if I can make any improvements, please let me know.