top ten tuesday

Water

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s topic is Water so we’re going with books that either have a body of water on the cover, or in the name. Which gives us:


Isabel Allende – City of the Beasts
Mandy Baggot – Truly, Madly, Greekly
Trevor Baxendale – Something In The Water
Terry Goodkind – Wizard’s First Rule
John Grisham – The Pelican Brief


Belinda Jones – I Love Capri
CS Lewis – The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader
Stephen King – Skeleton Crew
Sally Malcolm – Stargate: Atlantis – Rising
Ali McNamara – The Little Flower Shop by the Sea

This didn’t quite go where I expected it to go when I started poking through my books on Goodreads for things connected to water. I fully thought it would be another bright, colourful, summery, chick-lit selection, making up for the fact it’s grey, windy and wet out there. But then the first two I found were Stephen King and John Grisham!

top ten tuesday

Random books from my TBR

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish and is now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each week a new theme is suggested for bloggers to participate in. Create your own Top Ten list that fits that topic – putting your unique spin on it if you want. Everyone is welcome to join but please link back to The Artsy Reader Girl in your own Top Ten Tuesday post.

This week’s prompt is The First 10 Books I Randomly Grabbed from My Shelf (close your eyes and touch/grab/point to 10 random titles and tell us what they are! And tell us what you thought if you’ve read them!)

OK so to be honest, I know where all the books on my shelves are, they’re organised by author surname so anything I grabbed wouldn’t be too random. But, Storygraph will display a random 4 books from my TBR, so I’m just going to reload the page a couple of times, and tell you about those instead

Jaimie Admans – It’s A Wonderful Night
I have known Jaimie online for… many many years at this point, her books are an auto-buy for me, even her Christmas ones – and not just because I consider her a friend, but because I do genuinely fucking adore the stories she writes.

Mira Grant – Feed
I loved the Parasitology trilogy, and this is more medical biotechnology horror but with more zombies – how can I not be super excited to read it?!

Belinda Jones – Divas Las Vegsa
I read most of the LoveTravel series about 8 or so years ago but it was one of those I never finished when I had the mental health crash after my mum died. So, book 1 is back on the TBR and I’ll hopefully get through them this time. I absolutely loved the books when I was younger and I’m excited to revisit and finish the series.

Kelley Armstrong – The Summoning
I read this many many years ago, read the whole series and loved them – scientist who’ve performed experiments on kids and given them powers. Lovely eerie paranormal horror, in the same vein as Stephen King’s Firestarter, but YA. It’s back on my TBR because it’s the oldest book shelved as ‘read’ on my goodreads without a read date.

Dan Jones – The Plantagenets
Another re-read, for absolutely no reason other than my sheer love for Dan Jones and how he brings history and some of my favourite figures to life. Originally read as a library book but now I’ve picked up a second hand copy for myself, and it has to be read before it’s shelved, right?

Neil McGregor – A History of the World in 100 Objects
We listened to a couple of bits of the podcast the other year as part of a history module I was studying, and I loved the idea – but struggle with podcasts – so picked up the book. And it’s sat on my TBR for a while.

Carrie Fisher – Shockaholic
I haven’t read any of Carrie Fisher’s books, I don’t know why – but Li has them all on Kindle and we share a Kindle library, so now I have them all on Kindle too. And they’re sitting waiting for me to read them

Alix E Harrow – The Once and Future Witches
This is one I picked up having seen it reviewed in the book community. It sounded amazing, I looked it up, it sounded even more amazing. I picked up in the shop, read the first page and… it’s sat on my TBR for like 4 months. It’s pretty close to the top though, I will admit.

CS Lewis – The Last Battle
I first read The Chronicles of Narnia 35 years ago. I revisit them every couple of years. I’m half-way through The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe right now and still as every bit in love with the books as I was when I was 7. And still trying to get to Narnia.

Ali McNamara – From Notting Hill With Love… Actually
Ali has become one of my favourite authors over the last few years, I’ve read most of her more recent stuff – but never her earlier books so I’m really looking forward to reading this one and working through her full bibliography again!

weekly wednesday blogging challenge

Weekly Wednesday: A book setting you’d like to visit and why

This week, Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge asks A book setting you’d like to visit and why

And OMG y’all, I have been trying to get to Narnia through the back of a wardrobe for like 33 years now!

The BBC adaptation of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe aired when I was 8/9, and I got a boxset of the books (which I still have) for the following birthday, summer of 1989. My parents spare bedroom even had a proper big old wooden wardrobe and there have been many many attempts to travel from the Land of Spare ‘Oom and War Drobe to Narnia.

I want to go to the wood between the worlds and jump into the pools to travel to different universes
I want to sail in the Dawn Treader to the end of the world and find the seven lost Lords.
I want to meet Mr Tumnus and Mr & Mrs Beaver and Aslan.

And so, I will keep on trying every wardrobe until I get there.