What's a girl to do?

In which the reluctant Substacker reflects on a month where her brain felt cluttered and her space did too. Welcome to the wrap up and beware the ides of March.

1. What do you do when a reading slump looms?

Last weekend, I finally decided that I was sick of having stacks of unread books on the floor of my office. Please don’t misunderstand me — I am not ashamed of the size of my TBR. But I am one of those people who feels oppressed by clutter, and as March continued to drag on, and my attention felt less and less held by reading (despite how badly I wanted to spend my time that way), I decided that something needed to be done. And so, dear readers, I bought myself another bookshelf.

I should have taken a before picture, but I didn’t think of it, so you’ll have to settle for this one I took last year.

You might be wondering how things got to this state.

I was a bookseller for almost a decade, working at two different WA bookshops, and as a result, I amassed a large collection of books very quickly. Much quicker than I could read them. Because I had experienced the hard work and passion that goes into being a bookseller at an independent bookshop, and because I had experienced having to close one of those shops down, I am a regular customer of bookshops all over Perth, and I rarely leave without making a purchase. I like to think that these days my purchases roughly are balanced out by my reading output, but more on that in the next section.

The thing is that every year, there will probably be books left unread on your TBR. No matter how badly you wanted to read them at the time, no matter how excited you were that they existed when you found them, it’s a simple matter of practicality that there are not enough hours in the day without prior claims on them. There will always be a book club book, or a book you told a friend you’d read for them, or a shiny new library book that you finally reach the front of the holds queue for which needs to go back in three weeks. When the piles on the floor and the library loans and the review items and the book club books all converge, it can lead to a dreaded reading slump.

That’s where March found me. So overwhelmed by all the books waiting for me to read them that I would avoid choosing what book to read and opt to read the internet instead. But beware, reader, because the internet is dark and full of memes.

I wanted to reclaim reading as something relaxing. I wanted to make reading the thing to calm my overwhelm, rather than cause it. I wanted the cosiest damn reading nook ever. So I bought a small bookcase to fit under my window, where the piles were, and I sorted the piles into categories: still excited about, sort of excited about, no longer excited about. Everything from the first category went on the shelves, everything from the last category went in bags to leave my home. As for the middle category… let’s just say, there are no longer books on the floor, I have fairy lights, and it’s my intention that I will read through the books in one of these cubbies so that my crochet and knitting bag can have a permanent home.

Will it help me read more in April? Only time will tell. Let me know in the comments your tips for breaking a reading slump.

2. What does this mean for Balancing the Books/ my low buy project

In case you have no idea what I am talking about, this year I am breaking up with ‘Stuff.’ On top of doing a monthly reckoning where I tally up the number of books I read from my TBR against the number of new books I acquired, where the aim is for the overall TBR number to go down, I am also attempting to do a low buy year, and to get rid of 100 unused items around my home.

I haven’t done the balancing bit for March yet but I already know that I am going to be over. So many of the books I got rid of when I redid the office were somehow NOT in the tally, so only a few of the ones I unhauled counted. Usually, I would have to get rid of books to make the numbers balance, but I am going to give myself a free pass in March because it’s my birthday and I can.

I also unintentionally stopped keeping track of my purchases for my low buy, though you already know that I bought a shelf.

But as for the 100 items? Re-organising your office can do wonders for a project like that. Remember, you can have the thing or your can have the space. In this case, I needed the space for books.

If you like decluttering and reorganising your home, a few audiobooks and Youtube channels I can recommend to keep you company are:

• Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana White

• The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

• The Space Maker Method (Youtube)

• Shelve it or Stack it with Becca and the Books (Youtube)

3. What have I been talking about?

Aside from my novel, which comes out in a matter of days (eek!) this month I discovered the joy of Ann Patchett’s personal essays, and enjoyed sharing this one about the impact the different father figures in her life had on shaping her as a writer. It’s a long read, but so worth it.

If you’d like to follow me on social media and see more of the things I am sharing in real time, you can find me on Facebook and Instagram for now. I even posted about Aussie Rules football this month.

4. What’s on my camera roll?

If you’re wondering about how I define my low-buy, please enjoy these pages from my notebook with the rules that I constantly bend to my own purposes.

5. Reading, watching, making, listening

Reading: I just finished a re-read of The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood, which was part of a read along being run by Natasha Lester. I loved this book when I first read it more than a decade ago, and I love it still. I haven’t decided what to read next, but you know full well I have many options…

Watching: I finally watched season 3 of Hacks, about women in comedy and the working relationship between a woman who could have had a big career in the mid-twentieth century and is now making a comeback with the aid of a millennial comedy writer who is teaching her how the world has changed. I binged the whole thing in a day- the writing in it is smart, quick, sometimes a little gross. Good thing there is a new season out soon… there are so many things that show makes you think about! Today, I watched the first half of the new season of Ten Pound Poms, which is a joint production between Stan and the BBC.

Making: I finished my gnome, made a weighted chicken, and have started crocheting a blanket for friend who is expecting a baby. All I seem to want to do at the moment is watch TV and crochet!

Listening: I’m back on audiobooks in the car, and this month listened to Long Island by Colm Toibin, read in a gorgeous Irish accent by Jessie Buckley. It made a book I otherwise didn’t enjoy all that much worth listening to… I’ve also been loving the ‘Dear Rach and Soph’ podcast with Sophie Green and Rachael Johns, and ‘Tome and Tome Again’ with Jess Gately and Jemimah Brewster. Get your ears around those.

Thanks for reading, if indeed you did make it this far!

My book, The Distance Between Dreams is out on Tuesday April 1 and available at any bookshop worth its salt. There are still tickets left for the launch on April 3 if you’re in Perth and would like to come along! Head to www.emilypaull.com/events.html to secure your spot. I’ll be in conversation with the delightful Michael Burrows.