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 Everyone!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. My day has been jam packed with teaching so not much reading has happened but I’m hoping to get more in tomorrow.

My chosen book to feature this week is another one that I have recently added to my Goodreads TBR. I am really enjoying reading George R. R. Martin’s books outside of The Song of Ice and Fire series, especially his science fiction.

From the multiple award-winning, best-selling author of The Song of Ice and Fire Haviland Tuf is an honest space-trader who likes cats. So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he’s become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth’s legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures. With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way… and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf’s ingenuity-and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues… Tuf Voyaging interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio. Included will be her original eight illustrations, along with 28 newly commissioned ones.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday 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

Goodreads Monday: 15/4/2024

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. I have had a packed day of teaching so very little reading has taken place but whenever I have had a minute I have read a page of A Gentleman in Moscow because I simply can’t put it down.

My chosen book to feature today is one that I have wanted to read for a very long time. It was the first full length book George Eliot published.

Adam Bede is an upstanding, hardworking, intelligent young man, the kind of person who knows what he wants—and what he wants is the incredibly shallow Hetty Sorrel. Though Hetty is a milkmaid, she harbors dreams of becoming a dignified member of the upper class. To that end, she has set her sights on Captain Arthur Donnithorne, a squire and heir to much of the town’s wealth. Meanwhile, Dinah Morris, Hetty’s compassionate cousin, harbors irrepressible romantic feelings for Adam.

This love rectangle forms the character basis for one of the greatest English novels of all time. Upon its release in 1859, Adam Bede was immediately lauded as a seminal work for its depiction of English country life at the turn of the nineteenth century, garnering the praise of Charles Dickens. Eliot’s deft mixing of the fictional with the real has made Adam Bede a timeless classic.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday 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

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

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

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

Goodreads Monday: 25/3/2024

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. Sadly, the weather has kept me out of the garden today but I have been busy doing some teaching and chores.

My chosen book to feature this week is one I have recently purchased but one that I want to read as soon as possible because it looks really interesting.

Medea longs for a different life. Since childhood, she has been separated from her sister, shunned by her mother, and persecuted and tormented by her brother and father. All because of a unique and dangerous witchcraft.

But when a dashing young hero, Jason, arrives to claim the famed Golden Fleece that her father fiercely protects, Medea sees her opportunity for escape. Her offer to help Jason overcome the trials set by her father sets in motion a journey that will test every ounce of her strength, magic and loyalty; a journey that will see her battle monsters, dethrone kings and fall in love.

But when faced with the ultimate betrayal, Medea is driven to an act of desperation so brutal it rips apart the lives of everyone involved…

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: 18/03/2024

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 have had a glorious day working in the garden in the sunshine. It is so nice to finally have some sun and no rain! I am really hoping to actually use my garden this year so I am working hard to tame it so I can happily sit in the sunshine reading a good book during the summer. There is a lot of work to do before I get to this stage.

My chosen book to feature off my TBR this week is one that I bought relatively recently and hope to read soon.

334 BC. Alexander the Great is just twenty-one years old when he sets out with a small army to challenge Persia, the largest and most powerful empire in the world.

Together, his Macedonian army marches East into the unknown – winning battles against overwhelming odds, storming impregnable fortresses from the Aegean through to India.

But there is another Alexander. Prince of the Macedonian royal house of Lyncestis, he becomes Alexander the Great’s general and most trusted friend.

Alexander of Lyncestis is between this friendship and the duty to avenge his murdered brothers. And he is under threat, too. Others – Persians, Greeks, Macedonians – see him him as a rival for the throne. For six years of conspiracy and battle, his life hangs by a thread.

For Alexander of Lyncestis is the Shadow King.

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: 4/3/2024

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 my fellow Book Dragons!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week so far. I have had a good day teaching and making up Etsy orders. I have also managed some reading but sadly not much.

My chosen book today is a recent addition to my TBR but one I hope to read soon.

Change your fate—or kneel to it. The Companions are scattered and hopeless, torn from each other. After Corayne barely escapes with her life, she must forge on alone, leaving her blade broken and her allies behind her. Her only consolation—Corayne now has Taristan’s sword, the only Spindleblade left in existence. Without it, he can’t rip open any more Spindles. Without it, he can’t end the world. But Taristan and Queen Erida will not be defeated so easily. Both will burn the world to bring down Corayne—and bring forth their demon god, What Waits, ready to claim the realm of Allward for his own. In a final clash between kingdoms and gods, all must rise to fight—or be destroyed. Everything has come to this. Prepare for a larger-than-life, unforgettable finale to the instant New York Times bestselling Realm Breaker series, where a shattered alliance must rise from the ashes to make their final stand against a ruthless enemy…and the demon god who looks to shroud the entire world in darkness.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday 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 TBR

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a nice weekend so far. I have had a lovely day of reading today. It was so nice to just be able to sit and read for a couple of hours.

I will be honest February’s TBR didn’t go to plan but I’m really hoping I manage to do better with this TBR for March.

I am going to try and get Blade Breaker read this month as I failed last month. The Seven Dials Mystery is my next Agatha Christie challenge read.

I have also started my next book in The Wheel of Time series so my chapter a month challenge continues.

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: 26/2/2024

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 had a good start to the week. My day has been rather long with lots of teaching but I did manage to do some reading today.

My chosen book to feature this week is another that has been sat on my TBR for way too long.

At first glance, the world has not changed: the trams on the boulevards, the grand hotels, the cafes abuzz with conversation. The street kids still play on the two great bridges that divide the city, and the smart set still venture down to the Morgue Ship for an evening’s entertainment.

Yet it only takes a spark to ignite a revolution.

For young Dora, a maid at the university, the moment brings liberation. She finds herself walking out with one of the student radicals, Robert, free to investigate what her brother Ambrose may have seen at the Institute for Psykical Research before he died.

But it is another establishment that Dora is given to look after, The Museum of the Worker. This strange, forgotten edifice is occupied by waxwork tableaux of miners, nurses, shopkeepers and other disturbingly lifelike figures.

As the revolution and counter-revolution outside unleash forces of love, betrayal, magic and terrifying darkness, Dora’s search for the truth behind a mystery that she has long concealed will unravel a monstrous conspiracy and bring her to the very edge of worlds.

Please drop me a link with your Goodreads Monday 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