Letter to my (possibly future) self

Dear me (and dear readers),

Today, 21 July 2015, is the day I finally made and started this blog, although I did already have several blogs in Tumblr already with a modest number of followers. Tumblr is great, awesome, absolutely mind-blowingly amazing,

but Tumblr is a whole different dimension and there are trillions of wonderful things, news, pictures, music, etc to discover, like and reblog, that it came to a point where my blogs were straying away from my intended theme and purposes of that blog (Tumblrians, anyone?). I'm sure I'm not the only one who encountered this problem, which is not even a problem, I mean, come on!


So anyways, I have waited since March to finally have some free time during the summer to dedicate some time to the love of my life: books. I hope I can keep it clean and neat here. The only thing that bothers me more than it should is the name for this website. Wanting to keep my tumblr name (crowns-and-roses.tumblr.com), Blogger didn't allow me to keep that name because apparently somebody else took it. I really love this name; it has a certain ring to it and I'm pretty sure it's original and unique and my own creation. So I looked it up if somebody owns any Blogger blog with that name, and I got the non-existent page. So well, since I hold that name so dear, I decided to add an 's'. And there you have it, the story of how my website has such a dumb name.

Nope, I regret nothing.

What I want to do in this blog is:

Bookreviews: Every Tuesday --> This includes both newly released books and old books that have found a special place in my heart. I would also appreciate suggestions on what to read next!
Writing tips and advices --> I love writing short stories as well as reading and have tried writing a few novel drafts myself. So follow me through my writing journey as I will talk about the problems I encountered, my sources of inspiration, tips and advices, writing hacks, encouragement, ideas and so much more!
Reading challenges and book recommendation
Post some of my short stories? --> I'm still not sure about this, we'll see...
Giveaways (in the future)
And.. why not? Perhaps my short commentaries on tv show episodes. For those who have followed me on tumblr for a long time know that I have done a few in the past (well, depends which blog you were following..) on Once Upon A Time and Pretty Little Liars. I might try and do those too in here, in separate section from the book topics, of course.
Now, a few things about myself:

Hi! My name is Mashy and I like warm hugs, wait what?  I've lived in Rome, Italy since I was 3, but I did my middle-school and high-school in an english curriculum. I've recently moved to England. When I was in Grade 5, I used to attend this really small school that apparently not many people knew about it, but where I spent the best years of my life and had valuable life lessons that shaped the way I am today. And we had tiny library there full of dictionaries and fiction books only, but my younger self found it very thrilling nevertheless. Strangely enough, nobody was allowed to borrow books. Nobody seemed to even bother or be interested in borrowing! So my then-best-friend, M., asked our teacher, Mr. S, about those books and soon enough, we started a whole new trend around the school. Everyone would gather in there at lunchtime to read a book. I devoured one book after another. I soon started reading ''Little Women'', ''Little House In The Prarie'', ''The Secret Garden'', ''Peter Pan'', and there grew my passion for reading classics and novels. I experimented and daydreamed a few story plots and wrote them down so I wouldn't forget anything. It went on for a while, when one day I was writing in my journal another idea and my one of my friends made me realize that what I had unconsciously become a writer.

Grade 7 and 8: I had a new diary where I wrote a chapter of my short stories a day, and all my friends would wait impatiently to read it. They encouraged me to keep writing, criticized when a few things weren't working, threatened me to get back to work when I was slacking off, and cursed me when my story made them cry. I really had the best friends one could ever ask for!

Mr. S was the most pleased for my reading hobby. At one lesson, one of our textbook had an activity that assigned us to write a poem about anything. I wrote one called ''Children Town'' and he loved it so much that he took it and read it aloud in front of the whole class. Mrs. G made me read the poem I wrote about my family in front of the class too. She then told me to copy it in a piece of paper, my friend Y helped me decorate the paper and it was then sticked to the school bulleting board. Those small achievements meant so much to me. At the end of the year, I recieved many prizes such as ''Best in Writing'', '' Most Creative'', ''Best in Language'', and recited poems at school events and talent shows.

When I started Grade 10 in a new english school in Italy, I was struggling with coursework and grade pressures that I had to quit writing. But I didn't give it up completely. I just had to do it at a very slow pace. It depresses me whenever I'm not able to read and write. I met a few friends during my senior year, who helped me realize that there are just so many ways to be creative! L got me into blogging and tumblr, S and M introduced me to Youtube animations and vlogs, W knew about a million tv shows around the world, and V made me love even more manga, comic books and anime shows so much to the point I wished to move to Japan immediately.

I dream to be a writer someday, and my family support me to a certain extent. I'm not giving up on that dream just yet. And I hope this blog will help me to keep that dream alive and reachable. Meanwhile, let's read!

''Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And then one fine morning—''

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby