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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week today. I have had the day off so I had a lovely morning reading then went to a National Trust property to enjoy some Christmas decorations.
My chosen book to feature off my Goodreads TBR this week is another one that has sat on my TBR for way too long.
Sarah Perry’s award-winning novel, set at the end of the nineteenth century and inspired by true events.
Moving between Essex and London, myth and modernity, Cora Seaborne’s spirited search for the Essex Serpent encourages all around her to test their allegiance to faith or reason in an age of rapid scientific advancement. At the same time, the novel explores the boundaries of love and friendship and the allegiances that we have to one another. The depth of feeling that the inhabitants of Aldwinter share are matched by their city counterparts as they strive to find the courage to express and understand their deepest desires, and strongest fears.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I’ve had a busy day putting up Christmas decorations and teaching but I also managed to start my day with a bit of reading as well. I have also finally managed to start some of my festive books.
My chosen book to feature on Goodreads Monday this week is from a series I plan on finishing in 2024. This is the next book I need to read in the series.
A revolution brewing for generations has begun in fire. It will end in blood.
The Free Navy – a violent group of Belters in black-market military ships – has crippled the Earth and begun a campaign of piracy and violence among the outer planets. The colony ships heading for the thousand new worlds on the far side of the alien ring gates are easy prey, and no single navy remains strong enough to protect them.
James Holden and his crew know the strengths and weaknesses of this new force better than anyone. Outnumbered and outgunned, the embattled remnants of the old political powers call on the Rocinante for a desperate mission to reach Medina Station at the heart of the gate network.
But the new alliances are as flawed as the old, and the struggle for power has only just begun. As the chaos grows, an alien mystery deepens. Pirate fleets, mutiny and betrayal may be the least of the Rocinante’s problems. And in the uncanny spaces past the ring gates, the choices of a few damaged and desperate people may determine the fate of more than just humanity.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. The first book I read and reviewed this year was The Box of Delights by John Masefield but I still haven’t read the first book in the series. I’m really hoping I get to read this book before the end of the year.
Young Kay Harker lives in an old house in the country, filled with portraits of his ancestors. His only companions are his unpleasant guardian Sir Theopompus and his governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer (who, Kay suspects, has stolen all his toys). Life is lonely and dull, until one night Kay’s great-grandpapa Harker, a sea captain, steps out of his portrait to tell him about a stolen treasure that belongs to Kay’s family. The evil Abner Brown is searching for it too, but Kay is helped by the midnight folk: creatures like Nibbins the cat and Rollicum Bitem Lightfoot the fox, and even his lost toys, who will join him on his dangerous quest.
The Midnight Folk is a feast of imaginative story-telling, a glorious cornucopia of pirates and witches, lost treasure and talking animals. Although it was published in 1927, it evokes an older world: houses are lit by oil lamps, and travel is by horse, carriage – or broomstick. Masefield perfectly captures a child’s perspective, from the terrors of tigers under the bed to the horrors of declining a Latin adjective. Yet there is also plenty of humour that adults will appreciate, from Miss Piney Trigger, who swigs champagne in bed and prides herself on having backed a host of Derby winners, to Kay’s lessons: ‘Divinity was easy, as it was about Noah’s Ark. French was fairly easy, as it was about the cats of the daughter of the gardener.’ This mingling of past and present, reality and fantasy, has made this one of the most rewarding and influential children’s books ever written.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I’m on my last full week of teaching and I must admit I am looking forward to more free time to read once I have finished.
I’m still enjoying my Tudor history books and my TBR list is growing with Tudor related books. This one is currently at the top of the pile and I really hope to get reading it soon.
Henry VIII is best known in history for his tempestuous marriages and the fates of his six wives. However, as acclaimed historian Tracy Borman makes clear in her illuminating new chronicle of Henry’s life, his reign and reputation were hugely influenced by the men who surrounded and interacted with him as companions and confidants, servants and ministers, and occasionally as rivals–many of whom have been underplayed in previous biographies. These relationships offer a fresh, often surprising perspective on the legendary king, revealing the contradictions in his beliefs, behavior, and character in a nuanced light. They show him capable of fierce but seldom abiding loyalty, of raising men up only to destroy them later. He loved to be attended by boisterous young men, the likes of his intimate friend Charles Brandon, who shared his passion for sport, but could also be diverted by men of intellect, culture, and wit, as his longstanding interplay with Cardinal Wolsey and his reluctant abandonment of Thomas More attest. Eager to escape the shadow of his father, Henry VII, he was often trusting and easily led by male attendants and advisors early in his reign (his coronation was just shy of his 18th birthday in 1509); in time, though, he matured into a profoundly suspicious and paranoid king whose ruthlessness would be ever more apparent, as Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk and uncle to two of Henry’s wives, discovered to his great discomfort, and as Eustace Chapuys, the ambassador of Charles V of Spain, often reported.
Recounting the great Tudor’s life and signal moments through the lens of his male relationships, Tracy Borman’s new biography reveals Henry’s personality in all its multi-faceted, contradictory glory, and sheds fresh light on his reign for anyone fascinated by the Tudor era and its legacy.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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 you have all had a good start to the week. I’ve had rather a busy day with teaching but I managed to get some reading done today.
My chosen book today is by an author who is fast becoming one of my favourites. I have added every single book of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s that I haven’t read to my Goodreads TBR.
The Mayan god of death sends a young woman on a harrowing, life-changing journey in this one-of-a-kind fairy tale inspired by Mexican folklore.
The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.
Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather’s room. She opens it—and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea’s demise, but success could make her dreams come true.
In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City—and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. I have spent the day reading as sadly I was too poorly to go to school. I’m really hoping I can start to feel better soon as I’m quite fed up of this cough and cold.
My chosen book this week is by one of my favourite authors but one I haven’t read for a very long time. I went through a huge Philippa Gregory phase a few years ago but for some reason it has been a couple of years since I have read any of her books. However, I picked this book up at Sudeley Castle and it has gone straight on my TBR pile and very near the top.
Fleeing rebels in Scotland on Queen Elizabeth’s false promise of sanctuary, Mary Queen of Scots finds herself imprisoned as the “guest” of George Talbot Earl of Shrewsbury and his indomitable wife, Bess of Hardwick. Soon the newly married couple’s home becomes the center of intrigue and rebellion against Elizabeth, and their loyalty to each other and to their sovereign comes into question. If Mary succeeds in seducing the earl into her own web of treason, or if the great spymaster William Cecil links them to the growing conspiracy to free Mary from her illegal imprisonment, they will all face the headsman. Using new research and her passion for historical accuracy, Gregory places the doomed queen into a completely new tale of suspense, passion, and political intrigue.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. I have been back at school today which has been nice but rather a shock to the system after a week off.
During my holidays I bought a few books and the one I have chosen to feature today is one of those books. I fully intend on reading all of the published works by Alison Weir one day and this is another book I have added to my TBR.
At his death in 1547, King Henry VIII left four heirs to the English throne: his only son, the nine-year-old Prince Edward; the Lady Mary, the adult daughter of his first wife, Catherine of Aragon; the Lady Elizabeth, the daughter of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and his young great-niece, the Lady Jane Grey. These are the players in a royal drama that ultimate led to Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne–one of the most spectacularly successful reigns in English history.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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 had a good start to the week so far. I am on half term so I had a lovely morning reading and drinking tea.
My chosen book today is one I have only recently purchased but one that I have wanted to read for a while.
Here’s how the history of the Roman Empire usually goes…
We start with Romulus, go on to Brutus overthrowing Tarquin, bounce through an appallingly tedious list of battles and generals and consuls, before emerging into the political stab-fest of the late Republic. From there, it runs through all the emperors, occasionally mentioning a wife or mother to show how bad things get when women get out of control, until Constantine invents Christianity and then Attila the Hun comes and ruins everything. But the history of Rome and empire is so much more than these Important Things.
In this alternative history, Emma Southon traces the story of the Roman Empire through women: Vestal Virgins and sex workers, business owners and poets, martyrs and saints. Each gives a different perspective on women’s lives and how they changed, across time and across class lines.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I am really looking forward to half term as I really need a rest and some quality reading time. My chosen book today is one that I have only recently added to my Goodreads TBR.
Set in the 19th century, The Romantic is the story of life itself. Following the roller-coaster fortunes of a man as he tries to negotiate the random stages, adventures and vicissitudes of his existence, from being a soldier to a pawnbroker, from being a jailbird to a gigolo to a diplomat – this is an intimate yet sweeping epic.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
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.
Hello!
I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. My day has been particularly exhausting but I have worked out a good reading routine whilst at school. I can average half a page of reading whilst I’m waiting for my next student to arrive and I must admit it soon adds up.
My chosen book to feature this week is one I picked up in Hay-on-Wye during the Summer. I thought it would the perfect read for October so I’m hoping I manage to read it this month. If it gets cold enough I might even manage to read it in front of a nice fire.
This is a book to be read by a blazing fire on a winter’s night, with the curtains drawn close and the doors securely locked.
The unquiet souls of the dead, both as fictional creations and as ‘real’ apparitions, roam the pages of this haunting new selection of ghost stories by Rex Collings. Some of these stories are classics while others are lesser-known gems unearthed from this vintage era of tales of the supernatural.
There are stories from distant lands – Fisher’s Ghost by John Lang is set in Australia and A Ghostly Manifestation by ‘A Clergyman’ is set in Calcutta. In this selection, Sir Walter Scott (a Victorian in spirit if not in fact), keeps company with Edgar Allen Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu and other illustrious masters of the genre.
Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday and I will head over for a visit.
Lady Book Dragon 