Rainy Day Reads

August was ROUGH! I had an exam to resit and then a 3 week course on the other side of the country for my trainee position. Having school and classes all day and being away from my home comforts my brain was not wired for reading too much when the evening rolled around, so I only managed to get a couple of books off my TBR by reading them. I had to delete 4….but I’m pretty happy about the situation now and just hope September will be better. So now my TBR stands at 275 books.   Books finished La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman Tyler Johnson Was Here by Jay Coles (TBR book) Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi (TBR book) Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood The Serpent King by Jeff Zentner  The Rules of Persuasion by Amity Hope Books DNF’ed None…But I will admit that some of them are lingering a bit on my Currently Reading list… Books added to my TBR None! Wooo go me! Books currently reading The Joy of Tax by Richard Murphy (TBR book) He...

Well, July is here. Am I the only one who is taken aback? I for sure thought I had a least a couple more days…But nope! Here we are! And surprise, surprise I did not manage to get my TBR down by 5. Well, actually I did but then I added more books, so now my TBR stands at 287. Meaning I have to delete 2 books off of it.   First lets go through all the books I read in June: They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera - 4 stars (TBR book) The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic - and How It Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World by Steven Johnson - 4 stars (TBR book) One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus - 4 stars (TBR book) Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart - 3 stars Far From the Tree by Robin Benway - 5 stars My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows - 3 stars and by the skin of my teeth I managed to finish I Believe in a Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo last night and I gave it 2 stars.  Aside from ...

My last pick from the jar was “A Bloodsmoor Romance” by Joyce Carol Oates. Already when I first picked it I had some reservations. It is about 5 sisters in a Victorian style setting, and apparently these sisters are very sexual and impulsive to the great embarrassment of their surroundings. I felt like this could go either way for me, and when I got it home from the library it turned out to be MASSIVE! So it lingered on my shelves until it was time to return it, and I decided to just give it up and pick a new book.   So I picked out “Goodnight Nobody” by Jennifer Weiner, a murder-mystery set in surbubia, starring Kate, a mother who is not quite settling in with the other moms at the playground. I read the first chapter or so of this, and it did absolutely nothing for me. I’ve enjoyed Weiner’s books before, although I have to admit I find them of the enjoyable-but-forgettable variety, but I just wasn’t in the mood for this one. So I DNF’ed it and promptly returned it to the l...

I’m kicking off a new series in which I will give 5 book recommendations based on a subject. And in honor of Halloween we are kicking off with monsters. I don’t read a lot of super scary books, but I still managed to find 5 books with monsters, although some of these monsters perhaps don’t fit the conventional monster stereotype. From "A Monster Calls" This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab This is part one of a duology. The story takes place in a dystopian version of our world. A city is divided between a corporation that deal out their version of justice, and a mob boss using monsters for his own gains. In this world monsters are created by bad actions - you hurt someone, you spark the creation of a monster. Both sides of the city are trying to control things in their own way, but when Kate and August get caught in the middle, the unstable equilibrium threatens to topple. Kate is the daughter of the mob boss, and she wants nothing more than to be as tough as he...

Usually I get my books from the library, but every once in a while something will possess me and I will spend tons of money on books. This was one of those times and the result is a lovely mix of fiction and non-fiction of books I can’t wait to read.   Fist up we have “Cinder” by Marissa Meyer. I’ve already read this and I really liked it.  I gave it 3 stars which might seem a bit middling, and I definitely did have some issues with it, but overall I liked it and continued the series, which I ended up really loving. You can see my review of “Cinder” here :  Then I got “Private Peaceful” by Michael Morpurgo. This book is a story about the First World War, and since one of my all-time favorite books takes place during that time (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) I figured I should broaden my reading horizon on that subject. Apparently this book is about a boy who is too young to fight, but he follows his brother to the battlefields and reminisces about his ch...

So in order to get cracking on my newfound reading resolutions I went to the library today and picked up a bunch of books. To be completely honest I had some of these books lying around from my last trip to the library, but I figured I would just make one big haul.   I’ve divided the books into 3 groups; Diversity Bingo, Around the Year in 52 books and others.  Let’s start with the books I’ve managed to get for Diversity Bingo:  First up we have “NIght” by Elie Wiesel. This will go towards the challenge of a book with a Jewish Main Character. It’s part of an autobiographical novel trilogy about the author’s experiences during WWII. I have high expectations for this one, since some of my favorite books are set during wartime and I have heard good things about this book.  Then we have “P.S. I Still Love You” by Jenny Han. This will be my book with a person of color on the cover. This is the second book in the “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before”...

I was looking for a fun tag to do, and this one seemed like a quick little thing, so I decided to do it. I know the rapid fire element sort of fails when you write your answers out and have time to think about them, but I promise I will do them as quickly and intuitively as possible.   The tag was created by GirlReading and you can see her video here :) Let’s get started! E-Book or Physical Book?  I love physical books! I just can’t get into digital books in any way, shape or form Paperback or Hardback? I don’t really have a preference, except that I HATE those tiny hardbacks where your arms get a workout just from trying to keep the book cracked all the way open. You know the ones! Online or In-Store Book Shopping? I mostly do online, simply because my book shops don’t really have a lot of the things I am looking for, but when I do come across a well-supplied book store there is nothing better than browsing the shelves for hours on end. Onli...

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it sounded like fun. When recommending books it can be hard to hit all the things that make a book great, and sometimes you really enjoyed one aspect of it, but maybe not so much other aspects. So I’ve tried to find popular books that many people will have read to recommend from and then tried to find not-so-popular books to recommend according to a specific topic in the book. Does that make sense? Hopefully it will once you read the recommendations.  The Book Thief by Markus Zusak:  Why: Unusual narrator: Two Boys kissing by David Levithan World War II setting: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein Understated romance: The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: Why:  The competition element: Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin Dystopia: Angelfall by Susan Ee Rising up against the government: Legend by Marie Lu Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: Why: Friends...