Tag: fantasy

books

Sunday Reading Wrapup

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What are you currently reading?

M.T. Clanchy – From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307 47% read. I’ve said this before – this book was written to be written, not to be read. It’s utterly fascinating but it’s a serious slog
DK Publishing – SuperSimple Chemistry 18% read. I picked this up on the Libby app, I didn’t realise it was a bite-size revision guide LOL but I’ve been on a science kick lately and it looked interesting. It is.
Imogen Edwards-Jones – The Witches of St. Petersburg 65% read. I’m feeling a little meh on this one. It has some good bits but mostly interspersed with blah. I don’t really care about the characters but I’m kinda curious where it goes. Mostly reading to fill the Russia prompt on a Round The World reading challenge.
Claire Heywood – The Shadow Of Perseus 49% read. Picked it up from the library, and I am loving this, y’all. It’s being told from the women in his life, so far I’ve read Danae and Medusa, and moving to Andromeda. So much love!
Stel Pavlou – Decipher 40% read, still absolutely batshit and I fucking love it! grins a bit like Matthew Reilly’s Temple, it has all the best bits of crazy sci-fi & pseudoscience & pseudohistory, with just enough of the actual stuff… kind of Ancient Aliens. LOL
Matthew Reilly – Ice Station 35% read, not loving it quite as much as Temple but it’s still a thoroughly enjoyable read. Maybe a little similar plotline-wise in places to Decipher but a very different approach.

I think my goal for the weekend is to finish either Witches Of St Petersburg or The Shadow of Perseus

What did you recently finish reading?

Steve Jackson & Ian Livingstone – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain 4/5 Li and I discovered we both loved Choose Your Own Adventure & Fighting Fantasy books when we were kids, so naturally we checked this out of the library and had a super nerdy date night. It took us 4 attempts to get through – Li drawing the map of our adventure while I read the book out.
Raynor Winn – The Salt Path 4/5 This had been on my TBR for ages, I saw one of her other books in the library so checked to see if they had this one, which they did and it was bloody brilliant, I could barely put it down.
Janna Levin – Black Hole Survival Guide 3/5. Like I said, I’ve been on a science kick recently, this was actually one of Li’s library books but I ended up reading it as well. I understood about 60% of the actual science, but could follow what Levin was saying about 90% of the time. Throughly enjoyed my trip into a black hole grins
Kris Hallenga – Glittering a Turd 4.5. I picked this one up on Libby purely based on the title, didn’t look to see what it was about. And I’m glad I didn’t, because I probably wouldn’t have read this, if I’d known it was a memoir of someone living with stage 4 cancer. But it’s amazing and highly recommended!
Angela Kelly – The Other Side Of The Coin 4/5. Another random Libby read (I love the app for that LOL) but I couldn’t resist it. A memoir of the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Personal Advisor, Curator, Wardrobe and In-house Designer, filled with so many lovely anecdotes and fascinating details about what goes into dressing The Queen. And lovely never-seen-before candid photos. I thoroughly enjoyed it – and Li knows I did because of how much I read out loud to her LOL

What do you think you’ll read next?

Meik Wiking – The Little Book of Lykke
Katja Pantzar – The Finnish Way: Finding Courage, Wellness, and Happiness Through the Power of Sisu
Both books I picked up from the library based on how much I loved the Hygge books. I don’t know if I’ll enjoy them, but I’m curious and they’re due back next week so definitely moving to the top of the pile LOL

top ten red, white, & blue book covers
top ten tuesday

top ten red, white, & blue book covers

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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 ‘Book Covers In the Colors of My Country’s Flag and since I’m in the UK, the colours of the Union Jack are red, white and blue A quick look through my TBR gives us:


Lin Anderson – The Case Of the Black Pearl
Keri Arthur – Beneath A Rising Moon
Juliet Ashton – The Sunday Lunch Club
Mandy Baggot – Staying Out For The Summer
L.A. Banks – Minion


Jeremy Blachman – Anonymous Lawyer
Natalie J Case – Thanátou
Toby Clements – Winter Pilgrims
Giovanna Fletcher – You’re The One That I Want
Milly Johnson – The Teashop On The Corner

I always love how these show the variety and electic nature of my reading grins

monthly wrap up

June 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

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I had quite the good reading month in June and finished 9 books

Kaleb Cooper – The World According To Kaleb
I am honestly not sure what the point of this book was. Other than to make money.

Like most fans of Clarkson’s Farm, I utterly adored Kaleb but this book was… well, it was exactly what you’d expect of a sheltered young man who’s never left the village he’s grown up in or experienced any kind of life outside of his circle.

There were a couple of points that were really interesting, and the bits of the book where he was talking about farming, the tone totally changed and you could feel his love. But as an overall reading experience, it fell flat

A 1.25 star read

Andrea Penrose – Murder at Half Moon Gate (Wrexford & Sloane #2)
The second of the Wrexford & Sloane regency mysteries and another excellent read. All the characters felt more fleshed out and real, even the secondary ones, and I’m not even hating the flirting between Wrexford & and Sloane, which I normally HATE. The mystery kept me guessing, and the story kept the pages turning

Now to wait ~patiently for the next 15 weeks for the next one to be available at my library

A 4 star read

Tim Marshall – Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics
Not my usual topic of choice when reading non-fiction, but it had been on my radar as something I thought I’d like to read for years. Goodreads kept recommending it, and I’ve picked it up in the bookshop a couple of times but it never made it home. I spotted it on the Libby app and it was checked straight out. Annoyingly, neither of the library services I’m a member of have the rest of the series electronically, but Devon libraries does have them physically.

The book was absolutely fascinating and very information. I swear I learned more about the conflicts in the Middle East in 1o pages than I’ve ever learned in my entire life. I’ve also never been more ashamed to be a white British person – like, I knew colonialism caused a whole bunch of shit and we were responsible for it, but not quite to this extent.

I was also blissfully unaware of quite how close the world is to devolving into entire chaos, and how many different countries either Russia or China have a hand in. It now feels like the slightest hair-trigger could cause what now feels like the entire world to spiral into war – because no matter where it happens, either China, Russia or the US is involved and then India or Japan or the UK would get involved

It actually started to trigger my main agoraphobia symptoms – the one I’ve spent the last two years working on of ‘the world outside isn’t safe – so I had to put it down for a while, which is why it’s lost a half point.

I will, however, still be picking up and reading the next book – but with the proviso it’s going to be alternating read with something a little light and fluffy for the sake of my mental health

A 3.5 star read

Ransom Riggs – Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #3)
I’m really liking the mythology Riggs is building and weaving into the world of Peculiardom he’s created, but the stories themselves are getting repetitive. And I found the ending of this one to be particularly unsatisfying.

A 3.75 star read

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean At The End Of the Lane
My first reaction was ‘well that was bloody weird’, but it’s Neil Gaiman, so you kind of expect it. I’m not usually a fan of Gaiman’s style, which is a shame because I think he’s a fantastic storyteller and this was a wonderful, whimsical, fantastical tale which I thoroughly enjoyed. I think magical realism might have to be a genre I investigate a little more!

A 4.25 star read

Peter Ackroyd – Foundation (History Of England #1)
I have taken my time savouring this book because it is utterly fantastic! Also, hi, special interest, anyone? It covers everything from the neolithic through to the Wars Of The Roses and the death of Henry VII. I was filled with complete and utter glee for most of the reading and loved that even though he covered a HUGE amount of info, he didn’t get bogged down in the details. Straight-forward, to the point and a really good overview of the history of England. Ackroyd has this ability to bring the past to life in his narrative and I loved reading about the bits I didn’t know – and falling back in love with the Plantagenets and the Wars all over again (which, y’know, I always do!)

A 4.25 star read

Wendy Jago – How to Manage Your Mammoth: The Procrastinator’s Guide to Getting Things Done and Bringing Ambitions to Life
I picked this up from the library purely based on the title because it kind of intrigued me – I’m a terrible procrastinator, although how much of that is ADHD I don’t know. Also the cover made me laugh. I found a few useful pointers about figuring out what kind of worker you are, and how to use it to your advantage, and it didn’t feel particularly like it was talking down on me so it was definitely worth picking up

A 3 star read

Susan Cooper – Over Sea Under Stone (The Dark Is Rising #1)
Even though I’ve never read it before, this books reminded me of my childhood. I grew up in the West County, and played a lot of make believe/mystery-solving games, based a lot on Enid Blyton, and this had those same vibes. I also adore Arthurian mythology and the Grail.. so it was a no brainer really. I’m really glad Li recommended the series to me

A 3 star read

Alexis Caught – Queer Up: An Uplifting Guide to LGBTQ+ Love, Life and Mental Health
With the world rapidly turning back against not-straight and not-cis people like myself, it’s nice to actually read a really positive, uplifting, book about being queer. While it was definitely aimed at a younger audience, it’s a book that teen me would have been over the rainbow to read so I indulged. I couldn’t not pick it up from the library, I mean really!

A 3 star read

Looking more at the stats side of things:
9 books, 2608 pages – 56% between 300 & 499 pages long, 44% <300 pages
The main moods were mysterious & informative
78% medium paced, 22% face paced
56% non-fiction, 44% fiction
My most read genres were fantasy, young adult, and history
My average rating was 3.33

book reviews · monthly wrap up

April 2023 Reading Wrap-Up

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I read 7 books in April which seems to be about my average in 2023

Jeremy Clay – The Burglar Caught by a Skeleton: And Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press
A collection of extraordinary, bizarre and morbidly funny stories from the Victorian press. There were farces and tragedies and a lot of misfortune and some utterly heart-wrenching stories – and everything in between. The book was absolutely fascinating and I couldn’t put it down, but at the same time it got a little repetitive with many similar stories featured.
A 3.5 star read

Ruby Wax – A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled
I usually struggle with mindfulness books but I found this very easy to read. It felt like Wax was sitting down and talking with me, her voice was so clear and the information about how the brain works and what mindfulness can do was thorough and detailed without getting bogged down. Her own experiences were utterly harrowing but at the same time helped to contextualise the mindfulness she was writing about. And I found the 6 week course to be really helpful – and will definitely be a practice I continue, and come back to.
A 3.75 star read

Andrea Penrose – Murder on Black Swan Lane
What’s not to love about a Regency murder mystery with a scientist who’s an earl and a fearless artist investigating crimes relating to alchemy?! While it wasn’t exactly historically accurate, that didn’t actual detract from the reading for me which it quite often does, but it was a whole lot of fun with entertaining characters that I ended up really loving. There’s quite the wait at the library for the second book in the series and I’m getting impatient now!
A 4 star read – and my book of the month

Holly Black – The Queen Of Nothing
Honestly, the best month of the series in my opinion. I struggled through The Wicked King, but I really loved the machinations in The Queen of Nothing. It wasn’t the most neatly plotted book, it wasn’t particularly original but the story was still engrossing, had a few twists and surprises and was a very satisfying end to the series.
A 4 star read

AF Steadman – Skandar and the Unicorn Thief
There are some downsides to reading a kids book as an adult, and that is a lot of frustration with the behaviour of the pre-teen characters but other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved the different approach to what a unicorn is, loved the whole vibe of the riders and the Eyrie and wasn’t at all bothered that I’d worked out the plot twist.
A 4 star read

Jeremy Clarkson – Diddly Squat: ‘Til The Cows Come Home
A bit like the first one, I read this in one afternoon, completely devoured it and loved it. Clarkson’s voice is very clear through his writing, it was a good mix of events that were featured on the show (but a slightly different telling of) and ones that happened off camera. For all his bull, you can tell he does genuinely care about the farm and I hope we get to keep hearing the stories about it.
A 5 star read

Ben Aaronovitch – The Hanging Tree
I’ve now hit the point in the series where I’m not re-reading, I’m reading for the first time. The Hanging Tree didn’t have a lot of the pacing issues I’ve found with the previous books, the action scenes felt smoother and easier to follow, and I really liked finding out more about some of the other magic paths in the world. I found there was a fair bit of callback to the previous books, and only small things, that I didn’t really remember which was a little frustrating but I loved how it’s all tying the series together and it didn’t detract too much from my enjoyment. I’m looking forward to the next one.
A 4 star read

Looking more at the stats side of things:
7 book, 2666 pages – 71% between 300 & 499 pages long, 29% <300 pages
The main moods were dark and adventurous
43% fast-paced, 43% medium-paced and 14% slow paced
57% fiction, 43 non-fiction
My most read genres were fantasy, mystery, historical, young adult, and self-help
My average rating was 4

Weekly Wednesday Catch-up
weekly wednesday blogging challenge

Weekly Wednesday Catch-up

Cassie1 Comment

Every time I think I’ve caught myself up and got into a rhythm, life laughs at me. I actually got my ADHD diagnosis yesterday which helps me understand a little why this happens, and I can start to try and figure out things out once we find a medication schedule that helps!

But, for now, it’s another catch-up on the Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge

A famous book I’ve never read, and why, and honestly there are SO many of them. 

The first one that always springs to mind on this sort of question is Lord of the Rings. I don’t enjoy high fantasy, the hero’s journey in high fantasy bores me to tears and I have no patience for Tolkien’s writing style. 

But, like I said, there’s so many of the famous and/or classics books that I haven’t read because they simply don’t interest me or the writing style or narrative voice don’t work for me. And I’ve tried a couple of the popular booktok authors lately, Colleen Hoover & Sally Rooney as examples, and thought they were dreadful, didn’t get past the first page.

Best non-fiction book I’ve read? Can you at least narrow that down into subjects? I read so much non-fiction about so many different things.

I went to my goodreads, selected the non-fiction shelf and sorted into 5 star reads and there’s everything from Derek Acorah – Haunted, Anton Adams – The The Learned Arts Of Witches & Wizards: History And Traditions Of White Magic, The Intimate Adventures Of A London Call Girl, Written in Stone: The Hidden Secrets of Fossils and the Story of Life on Earth, Gods with Thunderbolts: Religion in Roman Britain, Silent Witnesses: The Often Gruesome But Always Fascinating History of Forensic Science, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England, Megacatastrophes!: Nine Strange Ways The World Could End and Diddly Squat: A Year On the Farm – and that’s just the first handful of a shelf of 136 books

Sports I’ve tried and what I thought of them I am not a sporty llama. I have joint issues and have spent most of my life on crutches. Sport is generally not a thing I do. I do love going for a walk, and I’m absolutely terrible at but enjoy playing tennis. And I do love exergaming on the Wii, especially Mario & Sonic at the Olympics, Wii Sports, snowboarding and boxing games.

book reviews

Drive-by Mini-Reviews, the second

Cassie2 Comments
I keep telling myself I’m going to get better at writing proper reviews as and when I finish a book but… it’s not going very well. I’m still not completely confident at writing them, if I’m being honest, but I can already tell I’m improving when I look at the difference in my post about The Lost Apothecary compared to some of my earlier reviews.

And, once again, my habit of reading too many books at a time (back up to 15 again!) means I’ve finished a bunch all at the same time. So you get another round of mini-reviews of them

A Court Of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
4/5, fae. fantasy, romance, young adult
This… this is not my normal sort of book. I hold up my hands and say I don’t like fantasy. But this is one of those books that EVERYONE loves. It’d been on my TBR for a while, probably a couple of years, but I wasn’t prepared to buy it, in case I didn’t love it. But then this year I’ve started using the library again, signed up for Libby and was able to get the book that way. And… and OH! Yes, I can absolutely see why everyone loves this book. The world-building didn’t feel all encompassing but actually just part of the story, we discovered the world as Feyre did and because we were seeing it through her eyes, there weren’t 7 pages about a blade of grass, y’know? I loved how the vivid and tangible Prythian feels and the characters are very real – interesting, annoying, frustrating, with genuine interpersonal relationships. It didn’t go where I was expecting it to and I ended up loving it more because of it. I got A Court Of Mist and Fury straight out of the library!

The Prison Doctor by Dr Amanda Brown
3/5, health, memoir, non-fiction
I picked this one up from the library because the title and summary intrigued me – a memoir of a doctor working in some of our most infamous prisons. I mostly liked it. Some of the anecdotes and stories she told were moving and heartbreaking – and some funny. But I was getting a sense of ‘holier than thou’ from her tone, she felt a little preachy in places and there was a lot of time spent reiterating how wonderful all these hardened violent criminals thought she was.

Greek Mythology: The Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes Handbook by Liv Albert
4/5, history, mythology, non-fiction
I love Greek Mythology. I have loved Greek Mythology for well over 30 years at this point, and I’m currently doing a Classical Studies degree. I also have friends who love mythology and recommended Liv’s podcast to me. I’ve listened to a few episodes but sadly podcasts and I are not friends – I think it’s my ADHD, I just zone out when people are talking at me. But when I heard she had a book, based on what I’d heard, I knew I had to have it. I was right. It’s a great overview of the characters and stories that feature in the mythology – just enough information to give a good feel for each one but without being overwhelming. The art is stunning (seriously, I want a print of the Zeus artwork) and the book has a informal, friendly tone.

The Body: A Guide for Occupants by Bill Bryson
5/5, biology, health, history, non-fiction, science
I don’t know where to start with writing about this book. I fucking loved it. I adore Bill Bryson’s style of writing and human biology/anatomy/physiology has been a fascination of mine since school biology lessons. I definitely wasn’t let down. It wasn’t a deeply scientific book but it also didn’t talk down to the reader and was filled with fascinating anecdotes and trivia that I had to share with my betrothed as I was reading – and our tagline became ‘but we don’t know why’. It’s both fascinating and horrifying how damn much we don’t know but at the same time, I loved re/learning the history of how we discovered what we do know.

I am still trying to read about 15 books (trying to get it down to 8) but mostly focusing on 5 of them:
Holly Black – Cruel Prince
Sarah J Maas – A Court Of Mist & Fury
Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Certain Dark Things
Heidi Swain – Summer at Skylark Farm
Ruby Wax – A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled

top ten tuesday · weekly wednesday blogging challenge · www wednesday

Classic Literature, Mythological Creatures and What I’m Reading Wednesday

Cassie5 Comments
So, yesterday’s Top Ten On Tuesday asked 21st Century Books I Think Will Become Classics and honestly, I don’t have an answer to this, mostly because the kinds of books I read aren’t ones that would be considered for that status. It did, however, inspire quite the conversation between me and the betrothed about what it takes for a work to be a classic, what makes a work a classic and what it means when something gets awarded that status

That makes two thinkythought posts brewing:
One about fantasy
One about the nature of classic works
Are you interested in reading these, and if so – which one would you like to hear first?

Now, moving on to today’s link-ups:
Weekly Wednesday Blogging Challenge asks What mythological animal you’d like to have as a pet and knee-jerk reaction is a unicorn. 
But then… there’s dragons and chimera and mermaids and sphinxes and griffins and phoenixes and cerberus etc etc and that doesn’t even begin to cover Pegasus! 
No, I’m totally not a mythology geek. No, I’m totally not studying Classical Studies because of my love of mythology… why do you ask? LOL

And last, but by no means least, we have WWW Wednesday asking:
What are you currently reading? I’m trying to focus on finishing three books right now: Dr Amanda Brown – The Prison Doctor; Bill Bryson – The Body; and Sarah J. Maas – A Court Of Thorns and Roses
What did you recently finish reading? I DNFed Rainbow Rowell – Eleanor & Park at the beginning of the week. I read the first 30 pages of it about 10 days ago, wasn’t really feeling and just couldn’t be bothered to pick it back up again. I think a mixture of not being the target audience and being very frustrated with how information was being drip-fed too slowly – I had no reason to care, and not enough interest to read enough to find out. 
What do you think you’ll read next? I think it’ll either be Matt Haig – Notes On A Nervous Planet and finishing two other in-progress books Rainbow Rowell – Fangirl and Liv Albert – Greek Mythology