T5W: Favourite Publishers

This week’s Top 5 Wednesday ~ a weekly book meme set up by Gingerreadslainey and hosted by Sam@thoughtsontomes, Goodreads group here ~ is a great one; favourite publishers!

I split this into two categories as my reading life generally follows that trend. My first love is the Sci-Fi & Fantasy genre but a few years ago I started trying to expand my mind by branching out to ‘The Classics‘. So without further ado…

T5W: Worst Synopses

Getting back into the swing of things with another Top 5 Wednesday, a weekly book meme set up by Gingerreadslainey and hosted by Sam@thoughtsontomes, you can find the Goodreads group here. This week we’re picking the back cover summaries that totally misrepresent a book’s contents.

Personally, I’ve always hated the phrase ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’, I mean, I know it’s a metaphor but there are people who spend a lot of time and effort designing them! The whole point of the cover is to allow you to quickly gauge the genre, topic or themes of a book. The synopsis should be an addendum to that, the second step, a brief, spoiler-free explanation of the story found inside.

Unfortunately of course it doesn’t always quite work out like that. That said, I actually had some trouble with this one! So here are my top 5 misleading, overzealous or downright spoilery synopses:

#DiverseAThon: Homegoing Review

~ no spoilers ~

So obviously I’m a little behind getting this review up!

[Original #DiverseAThon explainer]

I like to take a little time after I’ve read a book to let my impressions sink in. I always find it interesting to see what stays with me when the initial buzz of thoughts die down. Sometimes the rush and excitement of a new story fades quickly and you start to question or spot little holes.

I’m happy to say that has not remotely been the case with Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi.

Travel Interlude: The Peak District, Pride & Prejudice (& Zombies)

While I was back in the UK in August I was lucky enough to spend a few days hanging out with my best friend in the Peak District. We walked across moors, along ridges and up and down hills, got suddenly drenched, drank pints of cider, were dried out by glorious sunshine, ate ice cream, played board games and went to the pub. It was basically a perfect holiday.

Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet at Stanage Edge in the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice

As it happened we stayed near Stanage Edge, the location for Keira Knightley’s walk along the cliffs as Elizabeth Bennet in the 2005 adaptation of Pride & Prejudice. With that fresh in my mind, on my flight home I couldn’t resist watching the new adaptation of the Quirk Classic; Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Somewhat inspired, here are my quick reviews of Jane Austen’s original and the various iterations I’ve read or seen.

#DiverseAThon

Just a quick post to say that I’ll be taking part in #DiverseAThon this week, if you haven’t already seen the discussion online I’m just going to link the videos of the lovely BookTube hosts as I think they explain very eloquently what they hope to achieve:

Monica from shemightbemonica: DiverseAThon Announcement

Christina from Christina Marie: DiverseAThon Announcement

Whitney from WhittyNovels: DiverseAThon Announcement

Joce from squibblesreads: DiverseAThon Announcement

I finished Underworld!!

I wrote a post a while ago about whether or not you should give up on a book if you’re just not getting into it, my case in point; Underworld by Don DeLillo. I’d been reading shorter and shorter passages, eventually putting it down about 6 months ago, yet somehow by the end of the post I’d decided to give it one more try.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Travel Interlude: Down in Devon with Harry Potter & The Cursed Child

*This is not the cursed child, this is my intrepid niece exploring Dartmoor

I’m back!

August was a crazy month, I was home in the UK for a couple of weeks catching up with family, celebrating a wedding ~ Congratulations  ❤ Tilda & Sam  ❤ ~ and hanging out with old friends. It’s always hard leaving my favourite people and going back to work after a holiday but I’m finally caught up, over the jet lag and ready to get some of these blog posts out of my head and onto the page!

So here goes… [with some spoilers]

T5W: Most Recent Additions to My Wishlist

Back with another Top 5 Wednesday, a quick one this week but first as always; Top 5 Wednesday is a weekly book meme set up by Gingerreadslainey and hosted by Sam@thoughtsontomes, you can find the Goodreads group here.

This week it’s the most recent additions to your wishlist. A nice one for me as a lot of what I read is from ‘The Classics‘ but I still love the YA, Sci-Fi & Fantasy genres. This is a great opportunity to highlight some of my favourites in those categories and as I don’t have much (any) self control when it comes to book buying, all that follow are yet to be released:

T5W: Books I Wish Had Sequels

Back for another Top 5 Wednesday! As always you can find the Goodreads group here, as set up by Gingerreadslainey and hosted by Sam@thoughtsontomes.

Quite a tricky one this week, books I wish had sequels:

Travel Interlude: Penang & V.E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic

Main Image: The stepped path leading through pagodas, fish ponds and verdant terraces to Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang

I’m back! I was lucky enough to spend part of last week in Georgetown, Penang (in Malaysia) with one of my oldest friends. H and I started secondary school together aged 11 and are still close, despite now living many miles apart. Predictably that meant the sightseeing was interspersed with an awful lot of deep & meaningfuls, side-wrenching laughter, scandalous gossip, totally random chatter and considerable outright cackling.

Somehow, I also managed to get some reading in.

T5W: Favourite Books Outside Your Comfort Zone

OK so I missed last week. Work got in the way but the good news is, this week I had the whole day off! For those who are celebrating, I wish you a very happy Eid!

Back to business, Top 5 Wednesday was created by Gingerreadslainey and is hosted by Sam@thoughtsontomes, you can join the Goodreads group here. Every week a new topic is chosen and we pick the 5 best / worst / favourite etc.

This week it’s favourite books from genres you wouldn’t normally choose, so without further ado, here are my top 5:

Book TAG: Pride!

I’m not sure who came up with this one but in honour of Pride month here’s my attempt at a rainbow flag bookshelf (without spoilers):