Yesterday was a busy day, after spending most of the day in the office at Kingston Hill working on The Student Room for results day I was pretty exhausted by the evening. I could have easily gone home, microwaved something and curled up in bed but I’d been looking forward to my first Young Adult Book Club all month talking about Ned Vizzini’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story which is next Thursday’s review. Book Club is something I’ve never done before and after missing out last month because of Basingstoke Live so I was determined to go.

Buuuuuut, determination is hard when you’re anxious. As usual my anxiety reared its head as I was walking to town with thoughts swimming around my brain. What if everyone knows each other? What if I’m the oldest? What if no one shares the same opinion as me?! Part of me wanted to run (ha, I wish I mean struggle to quick walk) away and forget about it.

As usual the staff at my local Waterstone’s were lovely and engaging. I got there half an hour early and had a lot of conversations with different members of staff and got compliments about my jumper again ( It’s says – Me? Wrong? Never. on it and it went down a storm at the office). Then I bumped into a girl who bonded with me over books we loved and that’s just the beginning.

At this point let me introduce Becky who is scarily similar to me and feels like she’s been a friend for years! I think she’ll feature on my blog again! We hit it off straight away, she’s heard of my band (!!) and ended up talking way after the evening had finished. The only worry that came of my anxieties was that I was the oldest non staff member of the group, but that didn’t matter. The girls were great and I’m already thinking of some people from uni I want to bring down.

It was a big step for me tonight to do this when I didn’t know anyone. It’s the kind of situation that makes me incredibly anxious and panicky but I did. It’s nice to do something that only I’m really interested in and meet other people who like it too. I’m definitely going to be going for the rest of the year which is super exciting and something to look forward to every month. So I would say it was a success! I also treated myself because I was proud with two next YA books (of course), a new fox keyring, some pens, an about me type book, a to-do notebook, a new academic diary, Harry Potter Pop and some brightly coloured pens! 🙂

Are there any other YA readers out there who can give me some good recommendations?! Throw them my way!