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.

Hello!

I have had a wonderful couple of hours sat in the garden reading today and I am planning on going back out again later. This beautiful weather is really helping my reading at the moment.

The book I am featuring today is a recent book that I have added to my Goodreads TBR. I have really enjoyed the books I have read by Jennifer Saint so far and she is definitely an auto buy author for me now.

Hera by Jennifer Saint

When Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronos, helps her brother Zeus to overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side.

As they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera suspects that Zeus might be just as ruthless and cruel as the father they betrayed.

She was always born to rule, but must she lose herself in perpetuating this cycle of violence and cruelty? Or can she find a way to forge a better world?

Often portrayed as the jealous wife or the wicked stepmother, this retelling captures the many sides of Hera, vengeful when she needs to be but also compassionate and mostly importantly, an all-powerful queen to the gods.

Happy Reading

Etsy

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Goodreads Monday: 22/7/2024

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.

Hello!

Apologies for not posting much recently. I decided I needed a little break from blogging and it has done me the world of good. It has also meant that I have managed some more reading as well.

My chosen book to feature today is one that I purchased back in 2018 and I have still not read it! I think it is high time I read it but first I need to find it!

Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel

Deadwood, USA. A girl sneaks out just before dark to ride her new bike. Suddenly, the ground disappears beneath her. Waking up at the bottom of a deep pit, she sees an emergency rescue team above her. The people looking down see something far stranger…

“We always look forward. We never look back.”

That girl grows up to be Dr. Rose Franklyn, a brilliant scientist and the leading world expert on what she discovered. An enormous, ornate hand made of an exceptionally rare metal, which predates all human civilisation on the continent.

“But this thing … it’s different. It challenges us. It rewrites history.”

An object whose origins and purpose are perhaps the greatest mystery humanity has ever faced. Solving the secret of where it came from – and how many more parts may be out there – could change life as we know it.

“It dares us to question what we know about ourselves.”

But what if we were meant to find it? And what happens when this vast, global puzzle is complete…?

“About everything.”

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: 8/7/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. My chosen book to feature off my Goodreads TBR today is one that has sat on my Goodreads TBR for a very long time. I added The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society way back in 2019.

To give them hope she must tell their story.

It’s 1946. The war is over, and Juliet Ashton has writer’s block. But when she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey – a total stranger living halfway across the Channel, who has come across her name written in a second hand book – she enters into a correspondence with him, and in time with all the members of the extraordinary Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Through their letters, the society tell Juliet about life on the island, their love of books – and the long shadow cast by their time living under German occupation. Drawn into their irresistible world, Juliet sets sail for the island, changing her life forever.

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: 24/6/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I have boiled at school today and was glad to go on an evening walk to cool off. My teaching room at school is very small and even with the windows open I still struggle.

My chosen book to feature today is by one of my favourite authors. I would love to one day be able to say I had read all of his books. It is definitely one of my aims but I’m not sure I will manage it.

The first volume of Alexandre Dumas’ two-part interpretation of the story of Robin Hood, popularised for Nineteenth Century audiences by Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, set in England in 1162-66.

In this book, Dumas tells the story of Robin Hood’s youth: how he is delivered by an unknown man to be raised by poor but honest foresters, his great skill as an archer, how he comes into conflict with the Baron [sic] of Nottingham, how he meets Friar Tuck, the Maid Marian, Little John, Will Scarlett, and others, how he is declared an outlaw by the King, and decamps, with his followers, into Sherwood Forest to wage war against the Baron.

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: 17/6/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I had rather a stressful start to the week but I’m hoping it will be calmer now. I did manage quite a bit of reading today which was nice.

My chosen book to feature this week is one that I really hope to read soon as it has such good reviews and has been on my radar for quite a while. I picked up a copy a few weeks ago so I’m hoping that means I will read it rather than add it to the never ending TBR.

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

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: 27/5/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I’ve had a lovely few hours working in the garden and I’ve managed some reading. Having the day off work really is the best!

The book off my Goodreads TBR is from an auto buy author for me. I love the books of Stacey Halls so when I saw this book coming out I had it preordered straight away.

From the Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Women’s Prize Futures Award, the captivating, highly anticipated new novel, inspired by real historical figures and events.

In a quiet house in the countryside outside London, the finishing touches are being made to welcome a group of young women. The house and its location are top secret, its residents unknown to one another, but the girls have one thing in they are fallen. Offering refuge for prostitutes, petty thieves and the destitute, Urania Cottage is a second chance at life – but how badly do they want it?

Meanwhile, a few miles away in a Piccadilly mansion, millionairess Angela Burdett-Coutts, one of the benefactors of Urania Cottage, makes a discovery that leaves her her stalker of 10 years has been released from prison . . .

As the women’s worlds collide in ways they could never have expected, they will discover that freedom always comes at a price . . .

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: 13/5/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I’ve been back to work today which has been nice.

My chosen book today is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke which has been on my Goodreads TBR for many years and I think it is about time that I read it.

The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation’s past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell, whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country.

Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of another magician: the brilliant novice Jonathan Strange.

Young, handsome and daring, Strange is the very antithesis of Norrell. So begins a dangerous battle between these two great men which overwhelms that between England and France. And their own obsessions and secret dabblings with the dark arts are going to cause more trouble than they can imagine.

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: 6/5/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I sadly have started to come down with something and I am feeling pretty awful so that isn’t the best start to my week but never mind.

My chosen book to feature off my Goodreads TBR this week is another nonfiction book. I seem to be really craving nonfiction reads again at the moment so I might be reading this sooner rather than later.

An enjoyable, accessible exploration of the legacy of ancient Greece today, across our daily lives and all forms of popular culture

Our contemporary world is inescapably Greek. Whether in a word like “pandemic,” a Freudian state of mind like the “Oedipus complex,” or a replica of the Parthenon in a Chinese theme park, ancient Greek culture shapes the contours of our lives. Ever since the first Roman imitators, we have been continually falling under the Greeks’ spell.

But how did ancient Greece spread its influence so far and wide? And how has this influence changed us?

Tony Spawforth explores our classical heritage, wherever it’s to be found. He reveals its legacy in everything from religion to popular culture, and unearths the darker side of Greek influence—from the Nazis’ obsession with Spartan “racial purity” to the elitism of classical education. Paying attention to the huge breadth and variety of Hellenic influence, this book paints an essential portrait of the ancient world’s living legacy—considering to whom it matters, and why.

Happy Reading

Etsy

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

May 2024 TBR

Hello!

After reading only two books in April I have decided that May is going to be a month dedicated to shorter books. A good portion of the books I have read so far this year have been big books and I think it is time for some shorter reads which might get my reading mojo back a bit. I will still be doing my Wheel of Time books though which as we know are huge!

Here are my planned reads for May

I hope everyone has some good books planned for the bank holiday weekend.

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: 29/4/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. My day has been jam packed with very little reading time but I have managed a chapter of The Fires of Heaven. I really want to make a push with my Wheel of Time series challenge as I feel like I am falling behind and in danger of neglecting it.

My chosen book to feature this week is another relatively recent purchase but one I hope to read soon. I might even have it as a holiday read.

When Kris Kelvin arrives at the planet Solaris to study the ocean that covers its surface he is forced to confront a painful, hitherto unconscious memory embodied in the physical likeness of a long-dead lover. Others suffer from the same affliction and speculation rises among scientists that the Solaris ocean may be a massive brain that creates incarnate memories, but its purpose in doing so remains a mystery . . .

Solaris raises a question that has been at the heart of human experience and literature for centuries: can we truly understand the universe around us without first understanding what lies within?

Happy Reading