About Me
I'm Bex, a 38 year old married mother of two. I started blogging in January 2011, after relocating to a totally different part of the country with my husband (then fiance), and feeling a bit like a fish out of water (most people seem to either be much older or much younger than me, and all the book groups meet in the middle of the day!). I'm the eldest of seven kids, and have a biiiig group of friends I've known since school, so leaving them made me feel a little bit stranded.
There is not a time in my life when I don't remember reading. As the age of around six, I had to go to a completely different part of the school at reading time, as I'd read all of the books in my year group. My house is full of books although I'm trying to read what I own before buying anything new and have declared 2016 the Year of Buying Indie.
Aside from having something to focus on, the other reason for starting An Armchair by the Sea is that I'd reached a point where I was finding that I would get half way through a book and realise that I'd already read it, years before. The blog helps out a lot with this, and also with giving me a point of reference when people ask for recommendations (seriously, my memory is that bad).
In 2013, along with a good friend of mine, Hanna, who I made through blogging (yay, blogging!) I cofounded the Ninja Book Swap which was a twice yearly swap for book lovers during which people send out amazing parcels of bookish loveliness mostly to people they've never met before. There is nothing better than knowing there are so many lovely people in this world willing to spend their time and money to make a total stranger's day. Due to life constraints, Hanna and I passed on the swap to a new generation of swappers, and it sadly no longer runs.
In 2016, I accidentally established Bookshop Crawl UK when I tweeted asking people if they'd like to spend a day visiting bookshops in London with me. They did, and now we bookshop crawl all over England, Wales and Scotland throughout each year and run Bookish groups & book swaps in Kent, London and Edinburgh.
Genre -wise, I really do read a bit of everything. Primarily fiction, but non-fiction as well. I'm very interested in fairy tales, folklore, and mythology - this was my area of specilisation at university, and I always love a good fairytale retelling. I also really enjoy graphic novels and fantasy, and have been known to indulge in the odd bit of science fiction. I like both 'literary' and general fiction, and also dabble in crime, thriller, mystery, and chick lit.
I'm on year 15 of boycotting Amazon. I highly recommend it, I've never missed out on anything because of it and I get to feel like I'm contributing to my local economy when I buy books from indie bookshops, rather than funding billionaires who don't know how to treat their staff.
I no longer review books on a regular basis, and primarily review my own books with the exception of books I am sent for consideration at the Canterbury Children's Literature Festival.
