Bookshop Spree

I haven't been able to find much at my favorite bookshop, Brook's Books (a.k.a the staff bookshop), recently.  I don't know if it's because Matt moans at me every time I bring home new books, or if the novelty has just worn off - but I'm thinking that the warehouse staff just aren't finding damages of the books I want to read...

Saying that, I found so much today and spent a grand total of £3.00 (I had one book of my allowance left to use, and two were in the proof section which means freebie!).

• Marco Polo New York & Lonely Plant USA - a girl can dream, right? I think I only get travel books to look up where's good to eat - everything else is irrelevant.

• Cat Out of Hell - Lynne Truss - I got serious Hell Train vibes from the title alone.

• Under My Skin - James Dawson - I really liked Say Her Name, so thought I'd try out some more Dawson!  Not that I don't have enough Dawson in my life already (Creek, Books, etc etc)

• The Well - Catherine Chanter - This is a birthday present for my Mum, as the book I had originally intended to get her was out of stock.  I liked the cover, and it sounded interesting so home with me it came.

• The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkein, Illustrated by David Wenziel - I had reached the point where I had picked up a lot of books and needed a distraction for Matt.  I have found that if I bring him home a book, he's much happier to let five others in to the house....He loves The Hobbit so this was perfect. 

Top Ten Books You Would Classify As ALL TIME FAVORITE BOOKS from the past 3 years

 Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and The Bookish.  This week the topic is "books that you would classify as all time favorite books from the past 3 years".  I thought that it would be more difficult to compose a list of just ten, especially considering I read some pretty amazing books through book club last year!  However, looking at my Goodreads, my five stars are reserved for very few books...and it was pretty easy to compile a top ten.

1. Locke and Key - Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez

2. Blackbirds - Chuck Wendig

3. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

4. Lies We Tell Ourselves - Robin Talley

5. Saga - Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples

6. Cress - Marissa Meyer

7. The Moth - Various

8. NOS4R2 - Joe Hill

9.  The Book Thief - Markus Zusak

10. Doctor Sleep - Stephen King

The Selection

The blurb: In a world of glittering gowns and priceless jewels THE SELECTION is the chance of a lifetime to compete for the gorgeous Prince Maxon's heart.  But for America Singer it means turning her back on her secret love and leaving home for a price she doesn't want.

Then America meets Maxon and all her plans start to crumble.  Can the life she's always dreamed of compare to a future she never imagined?

I've had my eye on Kiera Cass's The Selection for a while, but it never seems to be on the shelf at the library, and I've never wanted to read it that much to go through the effort of ordering it in.  So, when I found a copy in the library a couple of weeks back, I thought it was now or never (well, probably not never because I'm sure I would have found a copy eventually).

I had just finished Kim Curran's Shift, and had that "I MUST FIND A NEW BOOK TO START" high and thought a couple of pages of The Selection would be a good idea.  Cue to three hours later and I had finished the whole book!

So let me start of with stating that this book isn't perfect, in fact it's a bit generic in the terms of YA dystopian world building; but I found my self squealing with joy - good thing I was home alone - but bad thing that I was in the living room as we live on the main road so people walking by must have thought what a weirdo!  I couldn't believe that I'd found a YA book that is all about the smoochies that I actually enjoyed.

The reason why?  Because feelings are allowed to develop!  Okay, okay, they develop in an inevitable way, and thinking back on it the timeline is a little condensed but I'm a sucker for development!

The second book in the trilogy, The Elite, is waiting for me at the library - I've just got to get my lazy butt in gear and venture into the city to pick it up - and I'm hoping it sucks me in and keeps me hooked!

Rating: I liked this more than Where She Went but less than Omens.

Pretty Cover - Bad Photo

I was really lucky to receive The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan from book club at work.  I loved this book - properly magical - and I loved the cover even more!  My favorite read of the year so far, I will post my review up a little closer to publication date.

Florida 2014

Some pictures from the family Christmas vacation 2014

 Legoland

 Five Guys Burger and Fries - LUSH!

Mind the Poppins!

The HP dragon ate Jaws...

Pretty Lights at MK.

Hey Stranger...

I have been wanting to write a post for weeks...but I have got it in my head that all keyboards in this house are horrible to type with.  Especially the ones that involve using a touch screen.  However, I'm starting to think that maybe by using the touch screen it will encourage me to get better at typing and I will thus make fewer mistakes!

So, what have I been up to? Working, eating and sleeping appear to be my main priorities at present.   I have been reading, but not as much as last year, and have managed to squeeze a little bit of baking in too, when I don't feel like being a sloth (which is most of the time these days).  I've added a pic of my latest baking creation - Chelsea buns!

I've found myself getting overly stressed at the weekends when I'm by myself.  I tend to start listening to the more vicious thoughts that circle my brain, and they don't stop until Matt gets back in the evenings, at which point I'm a complete rage monkey.  Don't get me wrong, I like being by myself every now and then, but moving here has made me feel pretty lonely.

Enough of the wah-wah-wah...as you can tell I'm pretty much all in my head at the moment.  As far as reading goes, even though I've read less, I've read some extremely brilliant books this year.  A few favourites have been The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman and Lies we Tell Ourselves by Robin Lee Talley - both books that I have received from work's book club.  For Halloween, I read Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts, a collection of shorts that cemented my love for Hill.  I know that short stories are supposed to have twists, but one of the stories in there made me feel like I had been punched with a plot twist!  I also read the sequel to The Shinning, Doctor Sleep and was pleasently surprised at how much I liked it.

I'm going to try and update this blog a bit more, try and participate in Top Ten Tuesdays when I feel like I have something to contribute (does anyone else find it hard to come up with 10 books each week without feeling like they are repeating themselves), and visit other blogs.

The Silent Wife

Together for many years, but never married, Todd and Jodi appear to be a perfect couple.  Jodi looks after Todd - which goes as far as overlooking his many affairs. However, their relationship begins to crumble when one Todd's current squeeze has some life changing news.  Putting Jodi's life into chaos, events begin to take a dark turn.  

Comparable to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, what with the alternating narrative of a couple in trouble, but A. S. A. Harrison's The Silent Wife is inferior in every way. This book left me wanting so much more from the almost two-dimensional characters. I wanted Todd to be an equal to Jodi; not just a selfish guy going through a mid-life crisis, who always thought that the grass was greener on the other side.  I wanted Jodi to be more aware of her actions and the consequences.  There are sparks, when she enacts tiny acts of revenge on Todd, but as the plot progresses she loses ownership and becomes passive to events unfurling around her.  Normally I like unreliable and unlike-able characters, but not this time. Both Jodie and Todd seemed to drift through a cookie cutter plot, with neither of them taking ownership of their actions.

Admittedly, The Silent Wife is easy to read, and I did like the ambiguous ending.  However, I can't think of it as more than a book that could be taken on holiday and forgotten soon after.