The Sunday Salon - Why Are the Months Going so Fast????

Please can somebody explain to me how it is already June?? I just don't understand how the year is going so fast! I think the first few months went quite slowly, as I wasn't working much or really doing much at all, but since I've started working full time, weeks have been flying by. I've already been in my new job a month, and feel like I've been there a lot longer. Also, since the death of my book buying ban, I've been acquiring books like a fiend, making up for lost time! In the past two weeks, I've somehow managed to add an absolutely massive THIRTY FIVE books to my collection. I have a serious problem. And since I've started buying again, I guess I need to start monitoring how much I buy again. In the interest of stats, and keeping tabs on how long I've had things, here's my acquisition list for May:

******WARNING- It's VERY long******

Books I've Bought for Myself:

• The Outsiders by S.E Hinton
• Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt & Stephen J. Dubner  (read about on Sophisticated Dorkiness)
• The Merlin Conspiracy by Diana Wynne Jones (after reading Neil Gaiman's tribute to her )
• Dear Fatty by Dawn French
• The Little House by Philippa Gregory (recommended by my friend Judith)
• Peter Pan & Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens by J.M Barrie
• Confessions of an Eco- Shopper by Kate Lock
• The Hand that First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell (because the lovely woman at the car boot sale threw it in for freeeeee!)
• Essays in Love by Alain de Botton
• A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane
• The Best of Miss Marple by Agatha Christie
• Yes Man by Danny Wallace (Who is totally hilarious)
• Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (recommended by my little sister, the Cheese Ninja)
• The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon 
• In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
• The Serpent on the Crown by Elizabeth Peters (bought for my mum, but she already has it!)
• Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (see above)
• Vanity Fair by William Thackaray (I read it years ago, but wanted my own copy for the readalong)
• An absolutely beautiful boxset of Faber Poetry comprising: The Waste Land and Other Poems (T.S Eliot), Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (Eliot), Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Wendy Cope - a poet I've not read before), Ariel (Sylvia Plath), Death of a Naturalist (Heaney), Crow (Ted Hughes), High Windows (Larkin), Tell Me the Truth About Love (Auden), Kid (Armitage), and The War Poems (Sassoon)

Books I've Been Given or Swapped:

• A LOT of Ian Rankin (A Good Hanging, Blood Hunt, The Naming of the Dead, Strip Jack, The Black Book, Mortal Causes, Let it Bleed, Black & Blue, The Hanging Garden, Dead Souls, Set in Darkness, and The Falls) - lots of these are in big books, so I'm counting them as one book, although they're actually three. 
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (result of my appeal for Creative Nonfiction Recommendations)
• The Ugly Duckling by Iris Johansen (for my July Fairytale Feature - June is Cinderella, and I'm working on it at the moment!)
• Gossip Girl: Love the One You're With by Cecily von Zeigesar
• Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
• The Jacobite Trilogy by D.K Broster
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Three More to Mention:

• Coming Up for Air by Patti Callahan Henry (Review copy from St Martin's Press)
• The Summer We Read Gatsby by Danielle Ganek (Review copy from Plume)
• Promises to Keep by Jane Green (Review copy from Plume - published in the U.K as The Love Verb)

Aaaand breathe! Hugely long list, I know, and it's led to my fiance putting his foot down. Although I'm not back on my ban (I seem to be unable to stop at the moment... ) he has said that from now on, I have to read two books that I already own for every one I buy. This includes reading two for every one that I've bought over the last two weeks... so I won't be buying again for a while! To be honest, though I've got some awesome stuff on my shelves, and it should be fun to rediscover the reasons why I absolutely had to have things!

The thing I'm most excited about, though, is that I've recently got all excited about reading and blogging again! I was going through a bit of a slump back there for a while, and I think it was a lot to do with the fact that I was feeling some pressure (I'm not sure why) to make my blog be a certain way - i.e. to be 'literary' or 'serious' or something, I'm not really sure - rather than just being what I want and need it to be, which is an outlet for all my book related madness! And so, in deference to said madness, here's the list of stuff I read in May :-)

• Delirium by Lauren Oliver
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams (read for The Birth Year Reading Challenge)
• Emma by Jane Austen (read for The Classics Circuit)
• Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor
• Godmother: The Secret Cinderella Story by Carolyn Turgeon (read for the Fairytale Feature)
• Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel (read for the Historical Fiction Challenge)
• Meet the Maitlands by Noel Streatfeild (for my Noel Streatfeild reading challenge)
• Of No Consequence by Sonia Rumzi
• Rock and Hard Places by Andrew Mueller
• The Art of Forgetting by Camille Noe Pagan (Review copy from Dutton)
• The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
• The Locust and the Bird by Hanan Al - Shaykh

Links go to my reviews, and that's pretty good for me in recent times! Favourite read for May was probably Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon. I loved Mermaid, which I read in April, and I'm thinking I might have found another author to add to my 'favourites' list!

If you've stuck with this post till this point, I am amazed! And if anybody has any tips for managing the book acquistion fever, they will be VERY gratefully recieved! I'm sure my fiance would be thrilled, too, he'll probably even send you a present! :-)

Happy June (my birthday month!) everybody!