2014: A Year in Review

Personal

I moved from my childhood home into a flat with my little sister.

I did a week’s work experience on the features desk of The Times newspaper.

I went to lots of gigs:

- Fall Out Boy (support: New Politics, The Pretty Reckless)

- You Me At Six (support: Young Kato, Don Broco)

- Deaf Havana (support: The People the Poet, The Maine)

- The Summer Set (support: Paradise Fears, William Beckett)

- Blink 182 (support: Neck Deep)

- Black Veil Brides (support: Drama Club, Fearless Vampire Killers, Attila)

- The Maine (support: Lydia, Nick Santino)

- We Are the Ocean (support: Boy Jumps Ship, Decade)

- Kids in Glass Houses (support: Save Your Breath)

- Framing Hanley (support: Reaper in Sicily, Hours)

- Bring Me the Horizon (support: Issues, Sleepwave, Young Guns)

I got my first tattoo at Broad Street Studios in Bath (highly recommended).

I saw some musicals:

- Once: The Musical at Phoenix Theatre

- Avenue Q at The Hawth (for the third time...)

- Wicked at Apollo Theatre (for the second time...)

I saw a pantomime, Sleeping Beauty, on Christmas Eve at The Hawth in Crawley. The best I’ve ever seen!

I went to my first spoken word event, Mark Grist’s Rogue Teacher.

I spent a week on the Greek island of Thassos.

I went scuba diving. I hated it. A lot.

Bookish

I celebrated my fifth blogoversary.

Meg Cabot followed me on Twitter (I had a full-blown freak out).

I was invited to an advance blogger screening of The Fault in Our Stars in Covent Garden.

I got my quote about Orange is the New Black published on an inside back cover ad in Stylist magazine and they sent me an amazing thank you goody bag.

I got to go to YALC!

I met Scott Westerfeld – a longtime favourite author.

I started 22 new series’.

I read 22 debut novels.

I read 9 dystopias, 55 contemporaries, 36 UKYA novels, 5 historical novels, 13 LGBT novels and 4 classics.

All together, I read 137 books.

Sophie