Hey there...

Welcome to Once More With Reading, you can call me Emmie. I’ve tried this whole blogging thing more times than I would like to admit. I doubt myself quite often and honestly feel like no one would even want to read what I have to say.

So why start again now? What makes this time any different to the last attempts?

I’m not in a great place. I haven’t been for a long time.

My mental health is all over the place and if there is one lesson I’ve forced myself to learn is that I need to stop worrying about what other people think and focus on the things in life that bring me enjoyment.

For a long time I wasn’t sure what did bring me enjoyment. I lost sense of who I was. What made me the person I am?

I still can’t answer that question so a lot of people ask me ‘Well what do you like to do?’

The only thing I can ever reply is reading.

Reading is the one thing that has stuck with me from my childhood. If I close my eyes and attempt to remember my earliest memory all I can see is a younger version of myself, blonde hair tied up and a book in hand.

Years down the line the image is pretty much the same, except now my hair is no longer blonde (thanks to my rebel teenage years where my hair was a deep purple) and is thrown into a messy bun or ponytail because I’m simply too lazy to make myself look presentable when my only audience will be my family and my books.

I created my bookstagram account Once More With Reading back in 2017 when I found a Book community on Instagram and YouTube. Finally, I had somewhere I could express my love of reading and talk to people who actually understood what I was talking about instead of the vague nods from people who internally were screaming at me to shut up.

For years I’ve wanted to make a blog, where I could write my reviews on books that I’ve read and just post book related book posts even if no one decides to read them but I was so scared of what people would say. I want a place where I can vent, where I can give my bookish opinions and somewhere I can focus my attention when the world feels like its crashing down around me.

So, in answers to my above questions, this blog is my escape. This blog will be a mixture of book reviews, subscription box reviews, recommendations, tips I’ve picked up with a few personal blogs about my mental health because I know its hard for everyone to talk about their own struggles and I want to be able to help in anyway I possibly can.

If you’ve gotten this far down the post, thank you and I sincerely hope that you stick with me through this journey and the endless amounts of template changes this website is going to have because I’m a perfectionist and I’ve already changed it countless times before even attempting this post.

Emmie xoxo