MISC: Taking It Slow

Running a book blog and studying MA Writing means that you burn through books a little faster than you normally would. Or at least you try to. I know there are people on Goodreads who have already completed their Reading Challenge and are on book 140. I have equal amounts of respect and envy for those people. I’m not sure how they do it, or if they even sleep at all. For me, one book every four days is probably more realistic. Unless it’s a tome like the A Song of Ice and Fire books, and then I take a little longer to read them because I’ve tried rushing through them and honestly I lost track of the characters I was supposed to be keeping an eye on.

BOOKISH BITES: Macarons & Maclairs

It’s been a while since I shared any tasty treats, but I can’t pass up the opportunity to swoon over these amazing delights. I came across the Little Macaron Shop in Waterloo on my lunch break one drizzily afternoon and I’ve been back there three times, subsequently emptying their display cases. Everytime you visit their freshly-baked pastries are completely different but one of my favourite things is the maclair. I don’t think I’m exaggerting when I say they are the best things you will ever eat. The maclair has the delicate shoehorn pastry and cream of an ecalir but instead of a chocolate ganache it has a macaron topping. The ones above were madagascan vanilla. There were fights in my house over them. Fingers were very nearly lost.

You can also stay in and have a coffee if you can’t quite part with the maclairs straight away. It’s warm, friendly and there are no judgements made when you walk out with two boxes full of pastries with no intentions of sharing them.

REVIEW: Captive Prince by C. S. Pascat

I can count on one hand all the books I’ve managed to read in one day. I don’t even need to count all five digits. It really doesn’t happen all that often unless I find a book that I can’t put down. I did try- the day I started reading Captive Prince I had actual things to do apart from reading. I had a list of things in fact, and there were five or six times where I closed the book and went to do those things but I couldn’t quite shake the story out of my head. It’s easy to sink your teeth into a good book but rarely does a good book sink its teeth into you.

READING LISTS: The TBR Pile

My To Be Read pile has spiralled out of control. Over the past few months its evolved into a tower. You could probably use it to build the foundations of a small house.There’s something infinitely exciting about buying a new book and the eperiences you’ll have reading it. Since starting the blog I’ve definitely become more addicted to that feeling, and even though I try to curb my spending by using the glorious, glorious library sometimes I slip up (a lot). So, my aim for the final two months of the year is to make my way through this pile and make it smaller. If I can get it into single figures I will be immensely happy.

I should probably start with the short story collections first- Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell, We Don’t Know What We’re Doing by Thomas Morris and Spoiled Brats by Simon Rich- because I haven’t read any short stories in a while and they really do help to spur on my own short story collection. But I might have to sneak Jane Eyre in somewhere because I’ve been saving it as a winter read.

Does anyone else have a mountainous TBR pile?