My Bedside Table – Stephanie Pegler of Chicklit Club

This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.

Stephanie Pegler is an Australian journalist who set up the Chicklit Club website in 2007. She is also an organiser of International Chick Lit Month, held each May. This afternoon, Steph has invited us into her home to participate in our weekly nose around our favourite bloggers’ bedside tables. Over to you, Steph.

Unlike most book reviewers, my bedside table doesn’t actually have a paperback in sight. My TBR stack lives on a shelf above my desk while a bedroom wall unit stores books I intend to pass on to friends, colleagues, family members and charities. I live by that organisational creed of ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ so I don’t like clutter. All the books I receive pass in and out of my hands quickly. I only keep a handful of my all-time favourites, such as The Devil Wears Prada and Bridget Jones’s Diary, in a box in the shed (I sense gasps of horror from book lovers the world over).

But I do have a multitude of books at my fingertips via my iPad mini with the red cover. Most of my review titles these days come via Netgalley – I love, love, love their system. Having books drop immediately into my library at the push of a button is fantastic, especially since it can be expensive and time-consuming to mail books Down Under. Normally at the start of the year I am drumming my fingers waiting for the new-year releases to wing their way to me, but this time I was able to read several of the 2014 titles before the champagne corks even popped.

Other items on my bedside tables include a red rose drawing my oldest son did for me and a photo of all three kids from a South Pacific cruise we took late last year to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary. My long-suffering husband, Craig, takes care of all the design and technical support for our websites. My daughter has always been a mad-keen reader and I am proud to say she has now progressed to the occasional chick lit title.  She has just finished Cecelia Ahern’s Where Rainbows End – one of those classic books from the shed – because she wanted to read it before the movie came out.

My side of the bed has a love theme, with its love and heart prints. Orchids are my second favourite flowers (after irises) and the crystal anklet hanging from the Love ornament was a present from my mum, after I admired one she bought for my daughter.

Usually there would be a notebook and pen on my bedside table because I am well on my way to breaking the Guinness world record for ‘novel written over the longest period of time’. I finally learnt my lesson that that amazing plot idea that arrives when the lights go out won’t still be in my head by morning unless I have some scrawl to remind me. But as it’s summer holiday time, the writing is on ice.

Because I spend lots of time with my bottom in a chair, editing health copy for an Australian newspaper or coordinating the websites, I use a Fitbit to ensure I do at least 10,000 steps a day. One of the first things I do in the morning, after checking emails and Facebook on my iPhone, is grab my old-school iPod – trust me, it’s usually tucked away neatly in a wicker basket – and walk around my neighbourhood listening to my fave band Green Day (an entire wall of my home office is taken up by band memorabilia. But that’s another post …) In fact, most of my reading doesn’t happen in bed at all – instead I use reading breaks as an opportunity to hop on the exercise bike or stretch out on our Bali-style daybed out the back.

Thanks, Stephanie!

If you would like to be featured in the My Bedside Table feature, you can email kerry@writingtipsoasis.com