Not the "I'm Back" Post

Hi, wonderful people that are (hopefully) still here somewhere! No one will actually believe me if I say I'm back for good here this time. I've lost my credibility when I did exactly this a year and something ago, and then disappeared again what? 5 posts after? So let's just say that I'm not promising anyone (including myself!) anything and we'll see how it goes!

I'm at the point of life where I've again started to get excited about books, and I can see my friends and colleagues trying hard not to roll their eyes when I'm gushing about a new fave of mine. And of course, I can feel the itch to put my thoughts to a virtual paper in hope of finding like-minded readers out there on the vast Internet.

A lot has happened in my life since I wrote last. I climbed a volcano at night in Indonesia, visited a Google conference in London and circled Majorca on an 18th century rigged ship. I got depression, gained 10 kilos and now already lost 7 of them (fingers crossed to losing the rest, working on it!). I've started learning Arabic for no reason and got to really enjoy it. I'm nowhere close to even figuring out what I want my PhD to be about and whether I want it at all. I've started a webpage called 80 days & counting (get the reference, fellow book nerds?) about traveling with my best friend, and myriads of technical problems and writer blocks after we still don't hate each other. Maybe we should marry!

Although I still live in a rented flat that is actually on sale at the moment, I keep buying books, and 3 levels of my IKEA shelf are now occupied with paper happiness. Wherever I go, I leave some space in my suitcase, because I realize I'll definitely stumble on a bookshop on the first day of my travels and then will have to throw out toothpaste or something equally necessary to fit in just one more book. I may have a problem here. Especially London was bad, as you can imagine :) Anyway, here's my precious:

I know it doesn't look like much to happy house owners, for example, but the thought of transporting them to a new place when I inevitably have to move scares me.

Anyway, what I plan to do now is to just write about whatever great books come my way, without feeling compelled to catch up on last year reviews or anything. But I do want to catch up with my favourite bloggers that are still online, so expect a visitor) I've been participating in Emma Watson's feminist book club Our Shared Shelf since the beginning of this year, so probably some posts will be about books for it. Anybody else following their program? I've cleaned the challenges slate here on the blog and refreshed the design. Hopefully you like the new one more! Ah, and I'm starting The Well-Educated Mind reading as soon as my Don Quixote arrives. I even have a journal! :)

So that's that, thanks for still being here, let's see how this "homecoming" goes!