I couldn’t decide on one category of characters for this post, so I kind of cheated and picked a few. On the plus side, you get a bit more variety! …Renewed my faith in humanity The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society – READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG – MURIEL BARBERY
Do you ever finish reading a book, leave it for a while, and still have no idea what you thought of it? That’s this book for me. I’ve been letting it “settle” for over a month now, and I’m no closer to a succinct, concise review than I was when I closed the cover. READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | BOOKS ON MY AUTUMN TBR
I’ve been a bit out of the loop on new releases since getting back into books (I’ve been focusing on catching up with everything I’ve missed – which is, apparently, a LOT), so this post was a lot of fun. It gave me a chance to look up some most-anticipated-books-of-2017 lists, check out some READ MORE
MAN BOOKER PRIZE | 2017 SHORTLIST & TBR UPDATE
Though I got myself out of the loop in the past few weeks, one literary happening did make it onto my radar: the announcement of the Man Booker 2017 shortlist! You might remember I wrote a post about the longlist and discussed which books I was interested in reading from it. In case you are READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | OLD BOOKS I WANT TO RE-READ
I’ve been blogging for such a long time that it’s tempting to feel as if my blog is a sort of living record of my reading history. But the truth is that I’ve only been blogging for about seven years, on and off, so there’s a lot of my life prior to blogging when READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | CITIZEN – CLAUDIA RANKINE
**NOTE: I wrote this review shortly after reading the book in 2015, but never got around to publishing it – so this is actually an older review!** I don’t normally read poetry, but I’ve heard so much about this book in my blogging community over the past year or so, that I was curious. READ MORE
MY WEEK ON WEDNESDAY | #33
It’s been a few weeks since my last My Week On Wednesday post – mainly because I hadn’t actually finished any books to tell you about! Here are the books I tried (and failed) to get into: It hasn’t been going well. Fortunately I decided to pick READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | BOOKS I STRUGGLED WITH BUT AM GLAD I READ
When I look back over my reading history, there are always some books that stand out as having been difficult – usually because of the length, but sometimes because of the content (or a combo of both) – and that I’m particularly proud to have completed. Often these books are also ones that have READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | AUTUMN – ALI SMITH
I’ve been meaning to read Ali Smith for ages. I have her previous novel, How To Be Both, but was put off by the historic section and never picked it up. I then tried reading some of her short stories, and discovered that I very much enjoyed them – which is why I decided READ MORE
STACKING THE SHELVES | #98
I got two books this week that I’ve been dying to get my hands on for what feels like a very, very long time: The Trouble with Goats and Sheep is one I’m really glad to get during a heatwave as it’s set in England during the heatwave of 1976. So READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | HIDDEN GEM BOOKS
This week’s prompt was actually to pick ten hidden gem books in a specific genre. But as I read quite varied books, if I were to go with just one genre I’d struggle to find ten and end up either not having very many, or using filler books that don’t really deserve to be READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | AMERICANAH – CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE
I’m so glad I finally got around to reading this book, after years of guiltily skimming past its spine on my bookshelf. It’s the first novel I’ve read by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, though I’ve read and loved her two short non-fiction works, We Should All Be Feminists (which you must read if you haven’t already) READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | IF I TAUGHT A CLASS ON FEMINISM…
I did lots of Women’s Studies classes in College, but I also read a lot of books on feminism, gender and women’s issues outside of the syllabus – and I’ve continued to read and gather books that relate to these topics. Now that I have a daughter to raise, my interest has been revived READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE PARTICULAR SADNESS OF LEMON CAKE – AIMEE BENDER
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is the story of a young girl, Rose Edelstein, who discovers one day that she can taste more in her food than its flavours. She can taste her mother’s restlessness and emptiness, she can taste if the cook was in a rush, or if he was angry. Over READ MORE
MY WEEK ON WEDNESDAY | #32
I’m a bit late with this one because I wanted to finish up the book I was reading so I actually had something to report! It’s been two weeks since my last update, but I’ve only finished one book. It’s been a really stressful couple of weeks, with lots on the home front, so READ MORE
TOP TEN TUESDAY | BOOKS TO PUT ON YOUR TBR IF YOU MISSED 2016 (LIKE I DID)
As any of you who have followed my blog for a while know, there was a long gap in my blogging (and reading) life over the past year or so. Which means that not only did you miss me (I assume), but I missed out on everything that was going on in the bookish READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE HATE U GIVE – ANGIE THOMAS
This is the story of Starr, a sixteen-year-old from south central L.A. – not the part of L.A. where white people live in big houses, but the part they stay well clear of. But Starr doesn’t quite fit in. She and her brother go to a private school 45 minutes drive from home, where READ MORE
THE SUNDAY REVIEW | THE BOOKSHOP – PENELOPE FITZGERALD
This book appealed to me because A) it’s short and B) it’s about a bookshop, and anything set in a bookshop has my interest. And it’s really because of point A that I actually made it through the whole book, because…. well, I’m not even really sure where to start with this one. On READ MORE