Goodreads Monday: 8/4/2024

Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Happy Monday!

I hope everyone has a great week planned. I’m hoping for another week of good books and adventures.

My chosen book to feature this week is one of my new books and another Alison Weir book that I haven’t read yet.

This remarkable recreation of the action-packed century that saw the murder of Thomas Becket and the signing of the Magna Carta covers the lives and reigns of the first five Plantagenet queens, who ruled England and France throughout the bloody 1200s, a particularly dramatic and violent period of European history. Wars, crusades, treachery, murder, passion, and the interplay between rival monarchs of Britain and France provide a surprising picture of these five ambitious women and their struggle for power.

The queens covered in the book are Eleanor of Aquitaine, Berengaria of Navarre, Isabella of Angouleme, Alienor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile. One of these queens became legendary when, accompanying her husband on crusade, she saved his life by sucking the blood from his poisoned-arrow wound. Equally intriguing are the descriptions of their marriages, including one that was extremely tempestuous, and one that was a love match turned sour when the jealous husband discovered his queen’s infidelity and retaliated by killing her lovers and hanging their bodies from the canopy of her bed.

This second volume of historian Alison Weir’s critically acclaimed Medieval Queens series brings these unfamiliar, fascinating royals to life, demonstrating how very much they resemble self-determining women of our own time.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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The Weekly Brief

Hello!

I hope everyone is having a good weekend so far. I have had a lovely afternoon reading whilst the husband has been catching up on the Grand Prix. Blogging and reading has been rather good this week.

Blog Posts

Currently Reading

Really enjoying The Priory so far and I have finally started to get back into The Fires of Heaven.

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Stacking the Shelves: 6/4/2024

Stacking The Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Marlene of Reading Reality. It is all about sharing the books that you have recently added to your bookshelves. These books can be physical books, ebooks and of course audiobooks.

Hello!

So the restricted book buying has completely gone out of the window this month which is worrying as we are still at the beginning of the month. However, I have been in Bath and that is always fatal as Bath has some of my favourite bookshops.

First up are the books I bought at Persephone Books.

I am completely obsessed with Dorothy Whipple so I was determined to get more of her books from the Persephone book collection.

  • They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple
  • Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple
  • They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple

Books from Waterstones

  • The Three-Body Problem by Cicin Liu – My husband really wants to read this book but we could not get a copy as every bookshop seemed to have sold out. However, after ducking into Waterstones to avoid the rain we managed to get a copy. I also plan on reading it once my husband has read it.
  • Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland – I quite enjoyed Sistersong so I thought I would give Holland’s next book a read as well.

Mr B’s Emporium

  • What the Greeks Did for Us by Tony Spawforth – I love anything to do with Ancient Greek’s so when I spied this book I knew it was a book I needed to read.
  • The Book of Days by Francesca Kay – I haven’t read anything by Francesca Kay but this book looked interesting so I thought I would give it a read.
  • Life, Death and Disease in the Middle Ages and Beyond by Professor Alice Roberts – I wrote quite a few essays on ancient diseases and death practices in Ancient Greece and Rome so I’m quite interested to see what they were like in the Middle Ages.

Topping and Company Booksellers

  • Queens of the Crusades by Alison Weir – I love Alison Weir and I am always on the hunt for books that I haven’t read yet so I was quite excited when I spotted this.
  • Adam Bede by George Eliot – I am trying to read all of George Eliot’s published works and this one is on my list to read next.
  • Dying of the Light by George R. R. Martin – I am really enjoying Martin’s sci-fi books so far so I am quite excited to read this next.
  • Tuf Voyaging by George R. R. Martin – Another Martin book to read.
  • The Book Forger by Jospeh Hone – This was actually my husband’s choice but I fully intend to read it as well.

I have one more week left off from teaching so I hope I might get a lot more reading done and I might tackle some of my new books.

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Friday Poetry: Gerard Manley Hopkins

Happy Friday!

I have just returned from a lovely few days in Bath which has involved some book buying and museum visiting.

My chosen poem for today is by the English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889).

Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring -
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush's eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightenings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.

What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth's sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. - Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid's child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

April 2024 TBR

Hello!

Now I will be honest I only actually managed to read one book off my March TBR. I had really good intentions to read all four but reading didn’t go to plan in March.

So I will try and be better in April and get my TBR ticked off.

I’ve carried two books over from my March TBR and have added two new ones. I’m really excited to read all of these books so hopefully I get around to reading them.

What is on your April TBR?

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

WWW Wednesday: 3/4/2024

WWW Wednesday is a meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

The rules are answer the questions below and share a link to your blog in the comments section of Sam’s blog.

  • What are you currently reading?
  • What did you recently finish reading?
  • What do you think you will read next?

Hello!

I am so pleased to be getting more reading done. I seem to have been in a bit of a rut but now I think I am getting back to normal.

What I am Currently Reading

I have completely fallen in love with The Priory and I plan on purchasing more books by Whipple as soon as possible. Yes, I am still plodding along with The Fires of Heaven.

What I have Recently Finished Reading

I will be reviewing this soon but I must admit it wasn’t my cup of tea. Yet another book I bought because of the hype and got disappointed with.

What I Think I will Read Next

No clue what I will read next but it might be one of these!

Please drop me a comment with your WWW Wednesday and I will head over for a visit.

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

March 2024 Wrap Up

Hello!

I hope everyone is having a good week so far. At the beginning of March reading was rather slow but then it picked up towards the end. This means I only managed to read 4 books and I am still behind with my Goodreads challenge.

Statistics

Books

Pages: 306

Format Read: Hardback

Review

Dragon Rating: 🐲🐲🐲🐲

Old Book

Pages: 578

Format Read: Hardback

Review

Dragon Rating: 🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

Old Book

Pages: 165

Format Read: Paperback

Review

Dragon Rating: 🐲🐲🐲🐲🐲

New Book

Pages: 384

Format Read: Paperback

Review to follow

Dragon Rating: 🐲🐲🐲

Old Book

That is another 3 books off the TBR pile and one of the new books I have bought this year. The TBR is slowly shrinking!

Goodreads Challenge: 10/50

24 Books in 2024: 5/24

Old Books: 3

New Books: 1

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you

Goodreads Monday: 1/4/2024

Goodreads Monday is now hosted by Budget Tales Book Club.  All you have to do is show off a book from your TBR that you’re looking forward to reading.

Happy Easter Monday!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I am looking forward to a week of reading and adventuring.

My chosen book from my Goodreads TBR is one of my Persephone books. I currently have all my Persephone books on display in the hallway and it is only a small collection which I try to expand every year.

Monica Dickens’s first book, published in 1940, could easily have been called Mariana – an Englishwoman. For that is what it is: the story of a young English girl’s growth towards maturity in the 1930s. We see Mary at school in Kensington and on holiday in Somerset; her attempt at drama school; her year in Paris learning dressmaking and getting engaged to the wrong man; her time as a secretary and companion; and her romance with Sam. 

We chose this book because we wanted to publish a novel like Dusty Answer, I Capture the Castle or The Pursuit of Love, about a girl encountering life and love, which is also funny, readable and perceptive; it is a ‘hot-water bottle’ novel, one to curl up with on the sofa on a wet Sunday afternoon. But it is more than this. 

As Harriet Lane remarks in her Preface: ‘It is Mariana’s artlessness, its enthusiasm, its attention to tiny, telling domestic detail that makes it so appealing to modern readers.’ And John Sandoe Books in Sloane Square (an early champion of Persephone Books) commented: ‘The contemporary detail is superb – Monica Dickens’s descriptions of food and clothes are particularly good – and the characters are observed with vitality and humour. Mariana is written with such verve and exuberance that we would defy any but academics and professional cynics not to enjoy it.’

Happy Reading

Etsy

If you enjoy reading my blog and would like to make a donation I would be very grateful. Thank you