Nerd Church - It's Too Hot To Do Anything

 

It’s too hot to think.

It’s too hot to do anything except stare vacantly at my laptop for a while.

But I said there’d be a Nerd Church post… so now I have to write a Nerd Church post. (Good luck, dear readers…)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: Mid-Year Check-In - What Books Have You Loved So Far In 2026?

 

**This post contains Amazon.com affiliate links, which allow me to earn a small commission on qualifying purchases.**

**Please only use my affiliate links for .COM purchases, as I do NOT earn from other Amazon sites**

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

30th June - Mid-Year Check-In: What books have you loved so far in 2026?

Nerd Church - Queer, 365 Days A Year

 

I’m Queer 365 days a year.

June is Pride month - the month where LGBTQ+ people celebrate and commemorate the Stonewall riots, as well as our right to exist and be the people we are.

(Here in the UK June is the month, but due to scheduling quirks, events pretty much take place all summer.)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Are Your Favourite Beach Reads?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

2nd June 2026 - What are your favourite beach reads?

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Is Your Favourite Flower?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

19th May 2026 - What is your favourite flower?

I love gerberas.

I always call gerberas ‘happy flowers’ — they’re bright and beautiful and, so long as they’re not wired (bad florists *sprays with water bottle*) they freaking dance.

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Toppings Are On Your Ideal Pizza?

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

5th May 2026 - What toppings are on your ideal pizza?

Ermahgad I love pizza!

Pizza is my favouritest food :)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: A Magical Solution To the Terrors of the Blank Page

 

My dearest nerdlets, there are some topics which appear in the bookish/writerly/bloggerly interwebs again and again — and one of the most common of these is writer’s block.

(Which, yes, I’ve talked about before too.)

Tell Me Something Tuesday: What Is Your Favourite Sports Team?

 

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a meme-thingy where people answer a different question each Tuesday

- it's currently run/hosted by Roberta @ Offbeat YA,  Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, and Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell.

I plan on dipping in-and-out of it if and when I feel like it - I figured it was a low-pressure way of posting a little more regularly here on Dora Reads (...and hopefully I'll be right about that!)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: On Updating Old Blogposts, and The Beauty of Blogging

Warning: Brief refs to Depression and trauma

I've been going through a lot of my old blogposts lately.

It's both an attempt to defeat the forces of entropy... 

...and to possibly get back onto Google Adsense (it's a whole thing, I talked about it a few months back, so check that post out here if you're interested.)

And... it's been interesting.

Like, genuinely interesting - way more than I thought it would be.

Basically, I was not aware of the sheer volume of stuff I have written over the course of the last 11 years - it's a lot. (Lol.)

And a lot of the things that I've written are a lot better than I remember.

(...which is probably once again proof that I'm my own worst critic 😅)

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: The Writerly Urge To Face-Plant the Laptop

 

It's not that easy, being a writer.

Sometimes, you just want to face-plant your goddamn laptop.

I've had a frustrating couple of weeks, writer-ness-wise.

• A piece of poetry I'd submitted to a magazine got rejected (again.)

• I got declined for rejoining the Google AdSense programme (again.)

• And I made only pennies on Medium (...again.)

The 11 Year Blog Anniversary Post!

Warning: brief references to grief/loss and mental health problems

Yes! Dora Reads is now eleven years old.

...Somehow I've made it this far!

Nerd Church - Shout Out To Those With Mental Health Problems In This Clusterf**k Timeline!

 

Sh**'s messed up.

...Like, it's been messed up for a while, I know. But our current level of 'historical' is feeling more like 'biblical' (in terms of scale, rather than religion,) every day.

It's one thing on top of another on top of another. 

I came across a blogpost I wrote in 2018 where I was like 'the world is bad at the moment,' ...and I genuinely can't remember what I was talking about. That was 2 years before 2020, and none of us really know what normal is any more.

Maybe, five to ten years from now, I'll look back and think, 'what was I complaining about in 2025?' but I really hope not.

Against that backdrop then, I, like many people, have mental health problems. And have for 10+ years at this point.

And it's f**king tough.

So to all of those with mental health problems, or anyone struggling, right now - this is a shout out to you.

Nerd Church - Fighting the Pointlessness

 

Warning: brief reference to feeling suicidal, discussions of pointlessness, grief, mental health, existentential dread, and all the things that make up the general sh**ty state of the world.

Things have been tough for me, lately.

When you lose someone you love... it's damned hard.

Everything feels pointless - if that can happen to them, then what is the point of anything?

What's the point of writing a blogpost? What's the point of writing anything?

And since my purpose in this life is to read and to write... if I can't find the point of that, then what's the point of me?

(...I'm actually an optimist, if you can believe that. I just have mental health issues, and have been through some tough sh**.)

Nerd Church - The Fractured Web: Our Socials are Scattering

Warning: this post refers to the bad things that happen on the internet; wide variety of topics, be careful!

The internet is fragmenting...

Nerd Church - The Writer Diaries: My Brain Is Unpredictable, Right Now

 

[Warning: this post discusses mental health problems and grief]

Look, I've been through some stuff lately, and it's definitely affected me.

My mental health has not been good for the last 10+ years, and now, after losing my mother in February... my head has given me a whole bunch of Very Bad Days lately.

I can't bring myself to go into details, but... it was hell. As a family, we've been through absolute hell since October 2024.

Schedule/Blogging Update

 

[Content Warning: brief references to death, cancer, grief, and mental health issues.]

For those who don't know, my mother passed away from cancer in February.

Things were pretty awful, generally, at the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025.

Another Life/Blogging Update

(CW: death)



Hi everyone —

My mother passed away last week.

Thanks to everyone who’s been so supportive the last few months, it really means a lot.

I will get back to doing more on here and on Medium — although possibly the social interaction side of things is going to take a lot longer — but for now it’s just… awful.

Hope you’re having a better 2025 than I am.

Life/Blogging Update (...Again)

 

Cards on the table time: I have no idea when I'll be able to get back to my regular blog series.

I'm hoping to put out the odd post here and there, but I honestly can't guarantee anything for the foreseeable future.

My mother is dying.

My mental health is terrible.

I don't know if/when I'll be able to put the time and effort in that I want to.

This is not me giving up blogging - I don't think that's ever going to happen at this point. 

This is me saying that things are going to be sporadic around Dora Reads, my Medium account, and my socials, for a long time to come, so apologies for not being great at the whole social interaction thing for a while.

Life/Blogging Update + Updated Blogging Schedule

 

OK, so... life continues to be tough AF for yours truly.

So while I fully intended to bring my regular series (Comics Wrap-Up, Friday Fics Fix, Nerd Church,) back in January, for my own mental health and ability to use my free time for such luxurious things as sleeping and eating, that's not going to happen.

I'm tentatively aiming to bring them back in February, but honestly the way my life is right now, we all could have been hit by a meteor by then.

Still, I'll keep you updated when I can!

Look after yourselves, and remember to shelter from meteors... somehow.

Nerd Church - To-Do List Struggles

 

My to-do isn't that long - at first glance.

But that's mostly because I only write down a few things that I need to prioritise and/or think I'm in danger of forgetting. 😅

My mental to-do list? Much, much, bigger.

Like... I expect a lot of myself.