 Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Jasmine and I am really happy you're here. So I've been pretty MIA over the past couple of weeks here on Booktube. I've been trying to watch Booktube and comment on as many videos as I can but I haven't had time to film and I just really wanted to sit down and have a chat with you guys today about where I've been and why I haven't been able to film, what I've been reading and basically just have a good old chat. So if you've been watching my channel for a few months you'll probably know that I moved to New City a couple of months ago. So I graduated from university this summer from the University of York with a philosophy degree and then me and my boyfriend Cameron and two of our best friends Joe and Alex decided that we wanted to live together and get flat in a new city and so now we're in Leicester. So we moved to our new flat which by the way is amazing at the end of August and it was all very exciting and I was so happy to be moving but it was also really stressful. I mean moving to a new city is really stressful. Moving in with your partner for the first time is really stressful. Job hunting is really stressful and so all of that combined with the fact that I have a mental illness made for a pretty hard time. Thankfully I think that the most difficult time has passed for me now which I'm really really happy about and a large part of that is because I now have a new job which is kind of the main bit of news I wanted to share with you all. So basically my whole life I have known I wanted to work with books but I didn't really know in what way I wanted to work with books up until a few years ago now I think when I was probably 17 or 18 I decided that I wanted to go into publishing specifically fiction publishing and that's been my dream ever since then and it's been what I've been working towards and really I've always wanted to be an editor. Over the past few years both during uni and outside of uni I have tried to do as much work experience as I can to just give myself a better chance of getting into publishing so I've worked with independent publishers close to home, I've gone abroad to work with publishers, I've worked with Oxfam Books both in stores and on their Twitter, I've been the head of proofreading on a student journal, I've basically been doing whatever I can to hopefully be an editor one day. I never thought that I would get into publishing properly straight after graduating from university, I thought it would take a little bit more time but I did it. To get to the point I am now a junior editor at a small indie children's publishing house here in Leicester called Sweet Cherry Publishing, if you're interested I'll leave links to stuff down below. When I saw this job advertised when I moved to Leicester I was like that is my absolute dream job that would be absolutely insane if I got that job and I didn't expect to get it but I thought I should just go for it anyway and the application process would be useful you know and helpful for future application processes even if I didn't get the job and I kept getting through each of the stages and I couldn't believe it and I got the job. So I've been working at Sweet Cherry for three weeks now, this is the end of my third week and it is so amazing, I still can't believe that I got this job, I'm so shocked by it all still but I'm absolutely loving it. Sweet Cherry publishes children's books from like baby books right the way up to YA so it's really really cool and I am basically assisting in the editorial process, I'll do some proofreading, I'll do some copywriting, I'll do some copy editing, I'll do some research, just lots of fun stuff. I've definitely been thrown in the deep end which is brilliant that's what I hoped for and because I haven't done anything in publishing before I've not worked in publishing before and I don't have a masters in publishing I am learning new stuff every single day, the amount I've learned so far is so huge and I'm just so excited for everything that's to come and all my colleagues are so amazing, they're all so so nice and I love where I sit and the people that sit around me and yeah it's just really cute. So that's what I've been doing for the past three weeks, I basically landed myself my dream job and I've been trying to get used to that so the routine is definitely something which I am so so happy for, I love routine in my life and that was something that I was definitely struggling with not having when I first moved to Leicester so I'm happy that I have the routine but the days are long it's definitely taking me a little while to get used to that, I am in the office eight till five Monday to Friday so it's definitely taking a bit of getting used to but already I'm getting used to it and it doesn't seem like such a long day anymore. So of course for the past two or three weeks I have been very very tired of getting used to this new routine and doing so much more in my day and learning so much new stuff and that coupled with the fact that the previous two weekends to now I've had to go home to the Lake District both weekends so I haven't had just a free kind of chill out weekend I've been knackered so that's why I haven't had chance to film over the past few weeks this is my first weekend where I'm in Leicester and I don't have many plans and I can just chill and enjoy myself and that's really really nice so I'm really glad that I'm going to film now so that's kind of the big news the kind of job stuff out of the way all in all I'm just absolutely amazed that I got this job and I'm so so happy with it I couldn't be happier and yeah I just really wanted to share it with you all I don't know how much you guys will care about this kind of thing or if you want to hear more about what it's like to work in a indie children's publishing house I don't know maybe I'll talk about it more in the future when I'm more settled we'll see so the next thing that I wanted to catch you guys upon kind of ties in with why I had to go home a couple of weekends ago and that was because a new anthology of Cumbrian poetry which I was kind of involved with launched so I spoke about this poetry anthology a little bit in my my neck of the woods tag which I did a couple of weeks ago I'll leave it linked down below and I basically explained that when I was doing some work experience with an indie publishing house close to home we had this idea of creating an anthology of Cumbrian poetry that is all about Cumbrian poets today and celebrating the Cumbrian poetry scene so this anthology has been in the works for I think a year and a half now and it's finally launched and it's just so exciting I didn't have anything to do with the production of the poetry anthology because I went away to uni after coming up with the initial idea I kind of left it to Liz and the people at handstand but Liz was always emailing me and keeping me up to date with where the poetry anthology was up to and how it was all going and I can't believe that the final product is here and it's launched I remember the coffee we had when I kind of said the initial idea and she was like a poetry anthology that would be so cool and now for it to be a physical real thing that people are buying is insane so this is the poetry anthology it is called this place I know and it says under it a new anthology of Cumbrian poetry and it is so so beautiful I think the artwork is so so lovely and classy and really sums up the Lake District well this poetry collection is gorgeous inside and out of course I'm a little bit biased because I'm really proud of this but I do think it's amazing it has so many different poets in it ranging from I think the age of 16 upwards which is so so cool there's so much talent in Cumbria regarding poetry at the moment and it's so cool to celebrate that you can actually see my name in the front of this where she gives me a special dedication which is really really cool can you see it there can you see it so going home for that launch party was so much fun it was such a lovely evening and you should all go out and buy that collection so that basically sums up the past few weeks for me I think I did many other really cool things when I was at home including going and doing a seal survey with my sister and my mum because my sister is a wildlife conservation officer with the wildlife trust up in Cumbria and we went to South Walney and laid on a beach in the freezing cold and looked at some seals and took pictures and counted how many there were and it was the most fun ever we saw a little pup and it was so amazing me and my sister have such cool jobs but yes they're probably the highlights of the past few weeks and now you're all cut up to date so reading wise I am participating in nonfiction november this month in a loose sense I'm not doing any of the challenges or anything other challenges I don't really know I'm just kind of using this opportunity to read a lot of the nonfiction that's been on my shelves for a while and I'm trying to exclusively read nonfiction this month so I have read one book this month already which was The Gender Games by Juno Dawson I don't have it here to show you and hold up because I'm actually lending it to a colleague at work who saw me reading it and then wanted to read it themselves so they've got it now but that was really really good I've had it on my shelves for about a year I think since I won it in a Goodreads giveaway which was really exciting and I knew I'd enjoy it it's about gender and about how it basically screws over everyone in today's society and it talks about the experiences of Juno Dawson who was a trans woman and it was a really really good book so that was a really good start to nonfiction november I was really happy with that you will of course hear more of my in-depth thoughts about the book when I do my next recent reads video which might be the end of this month depending on how much I get read might be in another month's time so the book that I'm reading at the moment is another nonfiction book and that is The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostin so this book is told by Sarah Krasnostin actually details the life of a woman called Sandra who is a trauma cleaner so it says on the front one woman's extraordinary life in the business of death decay and disaster so as a trauma cleaner Sandra goes into these situations and cleans up the mess when you probably haven't considered who cleans up that kind of stuff so it says in the front here she helps a woman who sleeps amidst the garbage that she's not put out for 40 years a man who bled quietly to death in his living room a woman who lives with rats random debris and terrified delusion and the still life of a home vacated by accidental overdose Sandra is also a trans woman and she's had a very interesting life and has a lot of very interesting stories to tell so I'm really enjoying this one so far I'm about a third through at the moment and it has me completely hooked I really like it another book that I'm reading at the moment is I am I am I am by Maggie O'Farrell which is a memoir and I have absolutely nothing to say about this because I'm literally like 10 pages in all I know about this is that it is comprised of lots of different accounts of times when Maggie was faced with near-death experiences I think that sounds super intriguing I love a memoir and I know this is really well beloved here on booktube so it's a no-brainer as for the rest of the month and what nonfiction books I want to pick up soon there's quite a few on my shelves that I'm really wanting to read so I'm just gonna basically pick up whichever one strikes my fancy at the time but there is one I'm definitely going to be reading next and that is rebel ladies who brazen rocks the world by Penelope Baggio so this is a nonfiction graphic novel which I kind of feel is an oxymoron nonfiction graphic novel but I've been lent this by my friend and colleague Rianan who is a designer at Sweet Cherry and she's so into graphic novels and when she heard that I hardly ever read graphic novels she was like oh my god they're so good can I recommend you some and lend you some and I was like yes please so she brought this one in for me and it is nonfiction November so I thought this would be perfect it is what it says on the tin it's about ladies throughout history who have rocked the world I'm super excited for this one I'm really excited by the topic and the artwork looks really cool so very happy so that's where I'm up to with my reading at the moment I'd be interested to hear if any of you are doing nonfiction November and what you're reading at the moment if you are and I think that's everything I've got to tell you no I just remembered something that has happened in the past few weeks that I haven't spoken about yet and that is that we did reach 1500 subscribers here on my channel recently which is insane I've been super busy but of course I noticed that and I just really wanted to say thank you it's mad I can't quite get my head wrapped around it that that many people care enough and like me enough to subscribe and watch my videos but you all make my life you're amazing thank you so much so I think that's going to be it for this video I've explained where I've been and what's been going on and what I'm reading so I think that's sufficient for now hopefully I'll be back to uploading weekly now on the weekends I should get videos done so next week hopefully there will be a normal video on a Wednesday I won't promise anything because pressure how are you guys doing I really genuinely care and really want to know I'd love it if we could have a chat down below I really want to catch up with everyone and see how you're doing because you now know how I'm doing so I'd love to chat with you all down below thank you so much for watching everyone this has been really fun I was kind of nervous about filming this video for some reason probably just because I haven't filmed in a couple of weeks but I didn't need to be nervous it was super nice and I'm really looking forward to uploading it and just chatting to you all thank you again everyone and hopefully I will see you next week bye