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

Goodreads Monday: 19/2/2024

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.

Hello!

I hope everyone has had a good start to the week. I must admit I found my first day back at school rather a shock to the system.

I am determined to start my Agatha Christie challenge back up, so for today I have chosen the next book on the list for me to read.

A practical joke goes chillingly, murderously wrong in Queen of Mystery Agatha Christie’s classic detective story, The Seven Dials Mystery.

Gerry Wade had proved himself to be a champion sleeper, so the other houseguests decided to play a practical joke on him. Eight alarm clocks were set to go off, one after the other, starting at 6:30 a.m. But when morning arrived, one clock was missing and the prank then backfired, with tragic consequences.

For Jimmy Thesiger in particular, the words “Seven Dials” were to take on a new and chilling significance…

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: 12/2/2024

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 Everyone!

I have had a lovely day enjoying the sunshine on a nice walk and National Trust visit and I have also done some teaching.

My chosen book to feature today is a book from a series I started a couple of years ago and I have sadly not finished yet. This is the next book in the series I need to read and has been sat on my TBR for way too long!

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. 

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: 4/2/2024

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. I only had a little bit of teaching today as school has been moved to Thursday for this week so we went to Hanbury Hall for a day out.

My chosen book to feature off my Goodreads TBR this week is a book I bought last year and I am quite excited about. I think this book will be a fascinating read and a different take on the history we know so well.

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. 

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: 29/1/2024

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 and Happy Monday!

I must admit I am not very happy with my lack of reading in January, I can’t remember such a bad month reading wise and I’m not even in a reading slump. I just can’t find the time like I usually do.

I am really hoping my reading increases in February. One of the books I think I would like to read in February is this one.

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction–a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted–no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape–she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

“What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

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: 22/1/2024

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 an unexpected day where quite a few of my students were off sick so it meant a shorter day for me. My chosen book today is one I got this month but I’m really hoping I get around to reading in February.

Their names still echo down the ages: The Great Pyramid at Giza. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The Temple of Artemis. The statue of Zeus at Olympia. The mausoleum of Halikarnassos. The Colossus at Rhodes. The Lighthouse of Alexandria. The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases of the reaches of human imagination. Now only the pyramid remains, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today.

In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time; on a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A majestic work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting, and nourishing, notion that humans can make the impossible happen.

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: 4/12/2023

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. 

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: 27/11/2023

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. 

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: 20/11/2023

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. 

Happy Reading

Etsy

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