Tag: raynor winn

New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023
top ten tuesday

New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023

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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 New-to-Me Authors I Discovered in 2023 and I’m picking ones that I read for the first time in 2023, not necessarily the ones I only heard of first – because I did a lot of ‘picking the popular thing up to see what the fuss was all about’, and they were books that had been around for a while.
I have 8 though, not 10 -I read more than 10 new authors, but these are the 8 that stuck with me, and i have something to say about.
That made more sense in my head – in my defence, I’m writing this under a heady cocktail of codeine, naproxen and not enough caffeine because today is A Bad Pain Day.

Matthew Reilly Definitely one of my top author discoveries of 2023. I picked up Temple because it was set in Peru and filled the ‘South America’ prompt on a Reading Around The World challenge and completely fell in love, proceeded to read 2 more of his books, just bought a 3rd, and have further 2 on my TBR.

Andrea Penrose I absolutely devoured the Wrexford & Sloane books last year, and read books 6 and 7 in January of this year. I am now very impatiently waiting for book 8 to come out in like Aug/Sept
Note to self – you should check out her other series too

Jeremy Clarkson Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t discover Jeremy Clarkson last year. I’ve known who he is for years, I live in the UK and I’ve watched Top Gear, Grand Tour, Clarkson’s Farm etc, but this was the first time I picked up one of his books. It won’t be the last
Note to self – do the library have any of his other books too?

Talia Hibbert Talia Hibbert is someone I first heard of a couple of years ago, and knew I wanted to read. How could I not want to read spicy diverse romance novels, with characters who are fat, or autistic…i.e. like me. And they were wonderful and I adore her!

Alix E Harrow The Once and Future Witches was one of my standout reads from last year, and Harrow’s beautiful writing style is one of the main reasons for that. I absolutely loved it and, yes, want to read more.

Meik Wiking I’d actually attended a bunch of webinars that Wiking has either led as part of The Happiness Institue, or been part of through places like Action For Happiness, but I’d never read one of his books. And then I devoured all the Hygge books he’d written because that all just

Raynor Winn I had been wanting to read The Salt Path for years and when I saw it sitting on the shelf in the library, I was overjoyed. Thankfully the book was every bit as amazing as I expected it to be, Winn’s writing style flows so easily and all three books were completely unputdownable

Stel Pavlou The one author on this list I don’t have the burning desire to read more by but Decipher was definitely one of my top books of 2023. Li recommended it to me and it was fucking batshit crazy, OTT, sci-fi action thriller and I LOVED IT. His other book/s, the precis don’t appeal to me, but he deserves to be on this list for my love of Decipher!

2024 Anticipated Reads
book blogger hop

2024 Anticipated Reads

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The Book Blogger Hop was originally created by Jennifer from Crazy-For-Books in March 2010 and ended on December 31, 2012. With Jennifer’s permission, Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer relaunched the meme on February 15, 2013. Check out the hop here!

Each week the hop will start on a Friday and end on Thursday. There will be a weekly prompt featuring a book related question. The hop’s purpose is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, befriend other bloggers, and receive new followers to your own blog.

The Question of the week is: Do you anticipate any upcoming 2024 reads? If so, what are they?

I’m sure there are many many exciting books coming out in 2024 but I genuinely don’t know what they are. I also don’t even know where to look to find out! I know that Goodreads has an upcoming releases section but other than that? I got nothing

Part of me doesn’t want to know. I have enough of a TBR without getting excited about things that haven’t come out yet, y’know?

But then I do know that Andrea Penrose has TWO books out this year – The Diamond of London (a historical) is coming out later in January and the 8th Wrexford & Sloane is coming out in September (and that one I’m super excited about – I’ve almost finished Murder at the Merton Library, and having read all the books back to back over the last couple of months was feeling quite sad that I didn’t have another one).

I’m also really looking forward to my library reservation of Raynor Winn’s Landlines finally being ready. I’m first in the queue and it’s due back in 13 days!

And, of course, there’s lots of books on my TBR I’m looking forward to actually reading

Favourite Books of 2023
top ten tuesday

Favourite Books of 2023

Cassie4 Comments

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 Favourite Books I read in 2023 and this is much easier than just being asked my single favourite for reasons of no LOL

If I ever wasn’t sure what an eclectic reader I can be we have non-fiction history, non-fiction farming, historical fantasy, sci-fi thriller, historical mystery, action adventure thriller, haunted house horror, urban fantasy cozy mystery, non-fiction lifestyle, and non-fiction travel memoir!

I wanted to take a moment and talk about why each of the books was one of my top reads, but I have the flu, feel completely rotten and honestly just sitting at the laptop to write this much is making my head pound and my back muscles ache, and y’all don’t want to know how many times I fucked up that HTML LMAO

books

Sunday Reading Wrapup

Cassie1 Comment

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