REVIEW: The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry

It’s easy to think of past centuries as the dark ages, a time when superstition took precedence over logic, but Victorian Britain is not the black and white place you might expect it to be in Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. It’s a time of enlightenment, when advancements in science and technology are moving the world into the modern age and the Great Exhibition showcases ideas of the future. Surgeons like Dr Luck Garrett perform pioneering procedures that will revolutionise medicine, a recent widow, Cora Seaborne is fascinated by the Earth’s ancient history and collects fossils, and her companion Martha fights for social change. These are people who look outside religion for answers.

WWW WEDNESDAY- 27th September 2017

WWW is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. Each Wednesday book enthusiasts share their reads by answering three questions:

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I haven’t been on the blog much the last few days because I was away for my birthday weekend and had an interview in London (exciting news to follow) but I have finished a few books on my train journeys!

BOOKISH FINDS: Birthday Books

It’s my birthday! I’m turning 24 today, and to celebrate I decided to invest in some extra special books. It’s something I started doing last year, and I wanted to keep it going because for me there’s nothing better than a book on your birthday, or maybe three.

I’ve had my eye on these beautiful Austen books for ages. Since I first read Emma as a teenager, Jane Austen has been my all time favourite author. I loved her wit, her warmth and her strong characters. For me, there’s no one like Austen, and these books seemed liked the perfect present to myself.

Despite being a huge Austen fan, I only actually own a Clothbound Classic copy of Persuasion and a Vintage Classic Pride & Prejudice, so it’s nice to finally have some copies to call my own. I’m thinking I might have to complete the set very soon.

What’s your favourite way to celebrate your birthday? Do you buy birthday books too?

REVIEW: The Duff by Kody Keplinger

There are quite a few films I didn’t see at the cinema because I hadn’t read the book first, and there are plenty I still haven’t seen because that book is helplessly floundering in the vast sea of my TBR pile. But I watched the film adaptation of The Duff before I knew it was based on a book. It wasn’t a film I expected to like, I just thought it would pass the time, but I was surprised how much I connected with the main character Bianca. I thought we shared a lot of the same qualities, and even when she was being stubborn and unreasonable, I liked her. So when I started reading the book I was a little disappointed. It wasn’t the voice of the sarcastic, flawed girl I was expecting. Book Bianca had animosity dripping from every word, but it seemed wrong to judge the book based on what I had come to expect from the film. Characters change and grow through stories, so I was expecting a similar journey for Bianca.

WWW WEDNESDAY- 20th September 2017

WWW is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. Each Wednesday book enthusiasts share their reads by answering three questions:

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

I’ve had a fairly slow reading week, but despite that it’s been a surprisingly good one. 

TOP TEN TUESDAY- 19th September 2017

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Each week they post a different topic that one of their bloggers answers, and they invite others to join in, by posting their answers as a comment of by creating their own blog post.

Autumn is creeping up, and the nights are closing in, so this week’s topic Top ten books on my fall TBR seems very appropriate! I’m looking forward to long nights tucked up on the sofa with a big cup of tea! There are some books that somehow seem to be perfect for the colder nights, and those are the books I’m going to focus on for this post.

Down The TBR Hole #9

I have a very strong sense of dejavu this week. I could’ve sworn that I’d already talked about some of these books, but my blog tells me I am mistaken. How weird. Clearly I’ve been thinking about this post so much that I thought I’d already written it. Or these books have been on my TBR so long they’ve become that familiar. It happens to the best of us. Anyway, let’s have a look at whats staying and going this week!

Lia at Lost In A Story started this weekly post to trim down the Goodreads to-read list.

The rules are simple:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books. Of course, if you do this weekly, you start where you left off the last time.
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

REVIEW: The Power by Naomi Alderman

Naomi Alderman’s Baileys Prize-winning novel The Power, is a dark, powerful story of how one thing can change the world forever. At first there are isolated incidents, girls across continents realise they have a new ability to release an electrical discharge that can inflict pain on others. It’s an epidemic that spreads across countries and generations. Younger girls wake up the power in their mothers and grandmothers. It’s been buried in them all along, a genetic mutation that sits at their collarbones, waiting, and when it finally emerges the balance of power in the world suddenly shifts.

BOOKISH FINDS: Feminist Fiction, Mesmerising Mags and Sunny Socks

After two year of part-time study, furiously writing and re-writing, reading and analysing, I’ve finally finished my Masters, and although I’m relieved and proud of what I’ve achieved, and excited to be let loose on whatever books I choose, I am a little bit sad. For a while now it’s been my main focus, and without it I feel a little adrift. So to cheer myself up I did what I do naturally; I bought some books.

WWW WEDNESDAY- 13th September 2017

WWW is hosted by Taking on a World of Words. Each Wednesday book enthusiasts share their reads by answering three questions:

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

It’s been a few weeks since I took part in WWW Wednesday, so here is a run down of what I’ve read in the last few weeks.