I have a penchant for piercings. Nah, not so much facial piercings. I stopped with my nose. But ear piercings. I like to collect them. I went for the biggie in September: a scaffold piercing. Some call it an industrial. For all you not riveted to your Big Book of Piercings it's basically two piercings at the top of your ear with a bar passing through both. FYI, the top of your ear is made of cartilage and requires considerable force to pierce through. So needless to say, this kind of piercing hurts like a bitch. I went with my sisters to get it done in their home city. Their piercer is hot. He tattooed my wrist last year - holding his hand for 45 minutes was like holding a little piece of heaven. So when the room started sliding away and I felt the cold grip of a faint around my throat as he forced that needle through my cartilage twice I said, "Nope, not today" and fucking pulled my self together. There was no way I was collapsing to the floor in the presence of this beautiful person. But I swear I came this close.

Similarly, you have no idea how close I came to giving up and laying on the floor whilst reading Matched by Ally Condie. This book is about as painful as a scaffold piercing but minus all the blood. I felt an almost overwhelming desire to shove more needles through my ear just to have something to do because this book is a major snooze-fest.

Hello? Hello plot?! Where did you go? Come back!! We need you!! Yeah, Matched has next to no actual plot going on. The basic story goes that Cassia lives in a Society (that's right. Society with a capital S) which has somehow reserved the right to dictate who she marries, where she works and when she dies. It's all very The Giver-ish, but without the menacing undercurrent. Cassia is paired with her bestie, Xander but finds herself falling instead for the dark and brooding guitar playing, poetry writing Ky (naturally), who she then begins a dangerous and illegal affair with. There's a bunch of hill-walking, angsting and sorting (whatever that is. Can anyone help me out here and explain exactly what sorting actually is?!) going on, all the while Cassia uncovers secrets and discovers the Society isn't as perfect as she's been led to believe.

There aren't that many things on this earth that hold my interest. I've tried ice skating, painting, long distance running, photography, yoga, aromatherapy, tennis: the list goes on. And the only thing I have an unending obsession with is my animals, particularly my horses. I love to ride. I love the power, grace and beauty of the horses. I love the speed and the agility they lend, and I love them for who they are too, in all their quirky, stroppy, unpredictable glory. My horses are my passion. I devote so much time, energy and cold, hard cash into making them the best they can be. I'm competitive and I love to win. I love the adrenaline rush that comes with the incredible highs of achievements and the lowest of the lows that come with the inevitable failures. And boy have I had some failures ..... Riding doesn't make it onto the list of the top ten most dangerous sports for nothing. The worst accident I ever had was when I fell from a bitch of a pony and landed hard on the ground with my foot twisted round the wrong way. I bust my knee pretty much as bad as is possible without breaking a bone. Every ligament torn, every muscle ripped, every nerve irreparably damaged. My left knee is still swollen and completely numb five years later. So why do I keep coming back for more? With so much risk involved, and having gone through so much pain, why do I keep trusting my safety into the hooves of a massive, unpredictable creature who's highly likely to leap three feet into the air when he catches his own shadow out of the corner of his eye? Maybe I'm a little crazy .....

It's the same story with The Mortal Instruments series. Granted, I'm not taking my life in my hands when I pick up the book but I am beginning to doubt my sanity when I beginning reading something that I know will cause me pain.

City of Ashes made my jaw hurt.

If you want to retain any amount of your sanity, don't buy a house in the UK. I have been tackling this massive undertaking over the past month and I can tell you my friends, it's no picnic. Or in fact, it is a picnic. A picnic with giant, poisonous ants traipsing over all the food, staring daggers at you when you timidly try to shoo them away. The underwriters are the ants. I am the anxious picnic-participant. It's been one thing after another, culminating in my requiring a forklift truck in order to deliver the mountain of paper work that the bank requested. They wanted to see three different proofs of income, bank statements dated from when I was 6 months old, eight-four forms of photo ID, blood and urine samples and for me to take part in a pagan full-moon ritual in which sacrificing a baby goat was necessary. Okay, okay. I exaggerate (slightly) but there have been many hoops to leap through. Thankfully the end is in sight. I have chosen a beautiful apartment two streets from the park with countertops made of crushed diamonds and flooring I would kill a man for. Needless to say I can't wait to move.

So in light of the stress I've had piled on my head the past month, I opted for an easy read. Enter Teardrop by Lauren Kate. C'mon, I needed a good laugh. And laugh I did. This book is a hot mess of sexism, teenage angsting and foul romance.

Let's start with the plot. So the story goes that this chick, Eureka (I know! That goddam name!) has been grieving for a year (has it been a year? This seems to fluctuate to fit her mood) over the untimely death of her mother who was killed by a freak wave accident, of which Eureka miraculously survived. Naturally this gives Eureka the right to act like a complete bitch for the duration of the novel. Urgh. She discovers she has a stalker and then there's something about her best friend being possessed in order to mildly humiliate her. I don't know. The end culminates in her discovering her destiny and endangering the lives of her family and friends - exactly the way all great literary works should end. Right?!