Top Ten Tuesday | Series I'd like to finish

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Series I’ve Given Up On/Don’t Plan to Finish', but I feel like I've talked about this fairly recently or at least recently enough that my answers won't be any different, so I decided to talk about the series I'd like to finish instead!

I'm a terrible finisher, but since devouring the Six of Crows duology earlier this year I've rediscovered my love for reading whole series so I'd like to finish some more series this year if I can.

The Broken Earth trilogy by N. K. Jemisin: I read and really enjoyed The Fifth Season and started reading The Obelisk Gate and then just got distracted by other things. I'd really like to return to this series, though, because it's one of the most original fantasy stories I've come across and I love the way it straddles fantasy and science fiction.

The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan: I tried reading A Natural History of Dragons a few years ago and couldn't get into it, but earlier this year I ended up listening to the audiobook during my commute to work and enjoyed it. I'm not desperate to continue this series, but I'd definitely like to try the other books via audiobook at some point.

The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger: So far I've read Soulless, Changeless and Blameless and this series is one I turn to when I'm in the mood for something quick and fun - I'm hoping to finish this series this year!

The Glamourist Histories series by Mary Robinette Kowal: Another series that's light, fun and easy to read. I've only read the first two books so far but I've liked them enough to want to finish the rest of the series.

The Mistress of the Art of Death series by Ariana Franklin: This series is unusual in that it never got to end properly because the author sadly passed away after completing only four books, and I've seen from reviews that the fourth book actually ends with a cliffhanger. I don't actually love this series, but like the above series I find it really easy to read and I like the characters enough to want to know what happens to them. I've read three books so far so, even though I know it doesn't have an ending, I'd like get to the fourth book at some point.

The His Fair Assassin trilogy by Robin LaFevers: I really enjoyed Grave Mercy and I loved Dark Triumph, and yet for some reason I still haven't read Mortal Heart. LaFevers is bringing out some more books following these characters next year, though, so I definitely need to get to it soon.

The Fruits Basket series by Natsuki Takaya: Fruits Basket is one of my favourite animes and I started reading the manga but still haven't finished reading the series - I'd like to, though!

The Newsflesh trilogy by Mira Grant: Feed is one of my favourite novels of all time and I loved Deadine, too, but I'm ashamed to say I still haven't read Blackout. Oops.

The Girl From Everywhere duology by Heidi Heilig: I thought The Girl From Everywhere was so fun with such a unique take on time travel, so I'd like to try and get to The Ship Beyond Time this summer.

The Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix: I adored The Old Kingdom series when I was younger, Sabriel remains one of my favourite books from my childhood/early teens, but I haven't read Clariel or Goldenhand yet and, to be honest, I think I might have to re-read the earlier books before I do.

Which books made your list this week?

Pride Month Reading Challenge | TBR

Happy Pride Month!

This month Simon @ Savidge Reads and George at @ The George Lester are hosting a reading challenge to celebrate Pride, and as someone who doesn't identify with any kind of label but definitely doesn't consider herself 'straight', I couldn't resist joining in.

They're hosting some fun challenges on Instagram that you can take part in, so today I thought I'd share my very tentative TBR for the month. Now as many of you know already I don't do well with TBRs, but it's my goal to read at least one LGBT+ book this month and there are several I can choose from, so today I thought I'd share them with you!

The Night Watch is the only one of Sarah Waters' novels I've yet to read. I've actually started it a couple of times and haven't been able to get into it, but as she's one of my favourite authors I'd really like to have all of her novels under my belt until she releases her next one, whenever that may be. The Night Watch is set during the Second World War and is told backwards, following a group of characters in London during The Blitz. As with all but one of her novels, The Night Watch is a book with at least one queer protagonist - although her non-queer novel, The Little Stranger, has a side character who it's fairly heavily implied is not heterosexual - and I'm looking forward to reading another novel from one of my favourite storytellers.

Yet another favourite author of mine, I've adored both Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli, who is now my go-to author for YA contemporary fiction. Now her latest novel, Leah On the Offbeat, follows one of the side characters from Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda who just so happens to be bisexual. It's very rare to come across bisexuality in fiction, especially a bisexual main character, so I can't wait to read this one.

One of my friends is a big Alexander the Great fan and she's been recommending Mary Renault's novels to me for a while now, so really it's about time I picked up a copy of Fire From Heaven and I now have a copy of this gorgeous new Virago 40th anniversary edition. It's so warm in the UK right now that I've been craving some fiction set in Ancient Greece and this novel is the perfect opportunity for me to merge that desire with Pride!

All I know about Emily Skrutskie's The Abyss Surrounds Us is that it's the first book in a duology, something I'm very into right now, and it's a book about lesbians, pirates and sea monsters. What more could a girl want? If I enjoy this one it'd be nice to to read the whole duology this month but we'll see how my reading goes as I recently started Ken Liu's The Grace of Kings, which is quite a beast.

Gail Carriger has become one of those authors I turn to when I'm in the mood for something comforting and fun, but whether or not I read her two novellas, Romancing the Inventor and Romancing the Werewolf, depends entirely on whether or not I finish her Parasol Protectorate series this month. To be honest I might just read Romancing the Inventor as I'm fairly sure Romancing the Werewolf is set over Christmas, so it'd be nice to save it for December, but if I feel like I need some gay werewolves in my life this June - and when don't I, let's be honest - I'll be picking this one up too.

Have you got any reading plans this Pride Month?

Top Ten Tuesday | Yellow, is it me you're looking for?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted at That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Books With My Favorite Colour On the Cover (or In the Title)'. So I have two 'interesting' facts for you: 1) my favourite colour is yellow and 2) I'm slightly colourblind. Usually I don't struggle with it at all, but from time to time I'll find it difficult to tell the difference between two very similar colours or a top that's a really bright lime green or light orange will look bright yellow to me. The only time I really had a problem was the first time I had my own TV in my room when I was younger - I was convinced it was purple but according to literally everyone else who came in my room it was actually blue. Oh well.

Anyway, I just thought this would be worth mentioning just in case you look at any of these covers and think 'Uh... that's gold/green/orange' - I promise I'm not being dumb, it just looks yellow to me.

P.S. There seems to be this weird urban myth that only boys can be colourblind - it's much more common in boys, but it does happen to us gals too from time to time.

P.P.S. Why aren't there more bright yellow books?

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley: I love it when bright colours like yellow are paired with greys and blacks. This is still Talley's best book so far in my opinion, but if you're interested in checking out some wlw YA stories Talley is definitely an author you should seek out.

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: It's in the title and on the cover! I haven't read any of Adichie's novels yet but loved her short story collection, so hopefully I'll get to them soon.

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: This was one of my favourite books of 2017, and my edition also has beautiful, bright yellow sprayed pages.

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently by Emer O'Toole: I'd like to read more non-fiction this year and this one's been on my radar for a while now. I love the cover.

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg: I've only heard of this one in the past few months and it sounds amazing, I'd like to get my hands on a copy soon.

Manners & Mutiny by Gail Carriger: I haven't actually started Carriger's Finishing School series yet, but I think the covers are so fun and I love this one in particular. I'm like a magpie; I will gravitate towards any book that's bright yellow.

The Bees by Laline Paull: I've owned my copy of The Bees for a while now and still haven't read it. Oops. It does sound interesting and I do want to cross it off my TBR at some point, but I can't deny I mainly picked it up because of the cover.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier: Not my favourite novel of du Maurier's, but Jamaica Inn is still a lot of fun - it's the perfect book if you're not feeling dark enough for Rebecca or light-hearted enough for Frenchman's Creek. I recommend reading it over Christmas if you are going to pick it up!

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers: It's mainly blue, but I was probably more excited than is normal to see a bit of yellow sneaking onto the cover of Chambers' latest sci-fi. I'm looking forward to this one!

Mistress Firebrand by Donna Thorland: I was very kindly sent an ARC of this book by the author and I still haven't read it because I'm a terrible human being. I was sent this back when I was starting to blog regularly after uni and I'd never been offered an ARC before, so I said 'yes please!' without realising that I'm the kind of person that doesn't always do that well with reading ARCs. I still have it, though, and one of these days I'm going to read it because it sounds so fun.

Top Ten Tuesday | Santa Claus is Coming to Town (With Books)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Books I Hope Santa Brings'! To be honest I'm not really sure what I want for Christmas this year, although there'll always be books I'd like to get my hands on, so this week I've mentioned some of the books I've included on a wishlist for my bookish secret santa as well as a couple of books I hinted at my parents that I wouldn't mind owning. Whatever I get this year, though, I know I'm going to love it!

And as this is the last TTT before Christmas - MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope you all have a wonderful day, whether you celebrate Christmas or not, and, if you do, I hope Father Christmas brings you everything you wish for.

Prudence by Gail Carriger: I own all of the Parasol Protectorate books, with only Heartless and Timeless left to go, so it'd be nice to have the first book in the follow-up series to hand.

New World Fairy Tales by Cassandra Parkin: I love short story collections based on fairy tales, so I definitely wouldn't complain if I found this book under my tree.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: All I've read of Okorafor's so far are her Binti books, but Akata Witch has intrigued me for a long while. It's the first book in a duology (I think?) and recently had a makeover with this stunning cover.

The Grace of Kings by Ken Liu: I haven't read any Asian-inspired high fantasy and that's something I'd like to change, especially as I've heard great things about Ken Liu's work.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban by J. K. Rowling, illustrated by Jim Kay: I've been collecting these illustrated editions, they're beautiful, and I think this one in particular will be gorgeous - I can't wait to see Jim Kay's versions of Lupin and Sirius!

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg: I've heard lots of very good things about this one, so I certainly wouldn't be disappointed to get a copy this year.

Elizabeth of York: The First Tudor Queen by Alison Weir: I've always been fascinated by Elizabeth of York but I feel like she gets forgotten quite a lot. Whenever I come across a history documentary featuring Alison Weir I'm always interested in what she has to say, so this book is the perfect pairing of two lovely things.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: This year is the year I discovered I like Jane Austen and Mansfield Park is the novel I know the least about, so I'm very interested in checking it out.

Unicorns: The Myths, Legends, & Lore by Skye Alexander: This book's about unicorns. What else needs to be said?

The Stuart Princesses by Alison Plowden: I read Plowden's Women All On Fire: The Women of the English Civil War recently and enjoyed it, and it's made me want to learn more about the women of the Stuart era. I know very little about the Stuart royal family so I think this will be the perfect book to widen my knowledge.

Which books made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Playing Dress-Up

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Christmas will always be my favourite holiday, but Halloween is a very close second - which is probably why I love The Nightmare Before Christmas so much. Today's theme is a Halloween freebie and, while I thought recommending you some Halloween reads would be fun, I thought I could do something a little different: today I'm going to talk about couples in books, and who I think they should dress up as, from another book/movie, for Halloween!

Molly and Reid from Becky Albertalli's The Upside of Unrequited as Arwen and Aragorn from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Given that Reid is the ultimate Tolkien superfan, I'd be very surprised if he didn't want to dress up as Aragorn with Molly beside him as his beautiful elf queen.

Aileana and Kiaran from Elizabeth May's The Falconer as Titania and Bottom from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream: An opportunity for Aileana to be a faerie queen and dress Kiaran in donkey ears - why would she say no?

Cress and Thorne from Marissa Meyer's The Lunar Chronicles as Leia and Han from Star Wars: Honestly, can't you imagine Thorne taking great delight in dressing up as Han Solo? And if it meant he got a chance to see Cress dressed as Princess Leia, he'd definitely be all for it. Besides Cress loves make-believe, she loves pretending to be someone else, so I think she'd have a lot of fun pretending to be the galaxy's greatest princess and general.

Nix and Kashmir from Heidi Heilig's The Girl From Everywhere as Elizabeth and Will from Pirates of the Caribbean: From one pirate ship to another, I think Nix and Kashmir are both accustomed to having to pretend to be someone else and they'd enjoy playing the part of these two. Then again, Kashmir might think of himself as more of a Jack Sparrow than a Will Turner...

Bella and Edward from Stephenie Meyer's Twilight as Mina and Dracula from Bram Stoker's Dracula: If the two of them never do this then they're missing out on the one good opportunity their relationship can give them.

Pei and Ashby from Becky Chambers' The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet as Zoe and Wash from Firefly: TLWtaSAP has been compared to Firefly a lot, and I can understand why - I think Ashby would be missing a trick if he and Pei didn't dress up as these two.

Maxim and Mrs. de Winter from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca as Mr. Rochester and Jane Eyre from Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre: I've always wondered if du Maurier was a little inspired by Jane Eyre when writing Rebecca, and I don't want to say much more than that - if you haven't read either novel I don't want to spoil them for you, but they're both great books!

Meche and Sebastian from Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Signal to Noise as Anne and Captain Wentworth from Jane Austen's Persuasion: I can't imagine Meche is a big fan of Austen, but given he's much more of a reader than Meche is I like to think Sebastian has read some Austen and would get a lot of fun out of seeing Meche in a bonnet. Both these novels share the theme of second chances, something I think Sebastian, at least, might appreciate.

Alexia and Conall from Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf: If I was married to a werewolf, I'd take great pleasure in dressing him up as the Big Bad Wolf for Halloween, and I'd be disappointed if Alexia never thought of doing the same to her husband.

Sue and Maud from Sarah Waters' Fingersmith as Carmilla and Laura from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla: Carmilla is one of my favourite pieces of Victorian literature, a vampire story that pre-dates Dracula and has some serious homoerotic vibes. Given that Sue and Maud are also lovers from the 19th century, I think they'd have a lot of fun pretending to be these two.

What did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | They #$@&%*! you up, your mum and dad...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Ten Books That Feature Characters...' and I've decided to talk about books with protagonists who are parents, because so often parenthood is the end of someone's story and I've never been entirely satisfied with the idea that a person's life comes to an end as soon as they have a baby. You're still you, you just have an extra responsibility and that doesn't mean your life and your interests have to come to a stand still. Isn't it much more interesting for children to be raised by parents that actually have personalities?

Five of these books I've read and five are on my TBR!

The title is a line from This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin.

Books I've Read

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin: I think Essun is the most bad-ass mother I've come across in fiction. There's not much I can say about this book, and this series, without giving too much away, all I will say is that you should read it.

Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: The main conflict of this series is that a child has been born to two people who should be on opposing sides of an intergalactic war. That the series is narrated by that child is a lovely touch, I think.

Knife Edge by Malorie Blackman: Noughts & Crosses is one of my favourite books and the series continues to get darker and darker. Again there's not much I can say about Knife Edge without spoiling the series, but its honest depiction of early motherhood has always stayed with me.

The Death Maze by Ariana Franklin: I don't love this series but, when I'm in the mood for an easy to read historical thriller, I do find myself turning to it. Set in the middle ages, protagonist Adelia is one of the earliest working single mothers I've come across in fiction!

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney: One of the driving forces behind this novel is protagonist Mrs. Ross's search for her teenage son who is suspected of murdering one of their neighbours. Really the book is about the town as a whole but it's an interesting read and one I'd recommend for the winter months!

Books on My TBR

The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss: I've heard nothing but amazing things about this novel, told from the point of view of a stay-at-home dad which isn't a perspective you see often in fiction.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry: Cora, recently widowed and glad to be rid of a husband who wasn't particularly nice, decides to use her widowhood to pursue her love of science, with her lady's maid and young son in tow. I'm determined to get to this one soon.

Timeless by Gail Carriger: Another one I'm aiming to read by the end of this year so I can finally finish the series and move on to Carriger's other books set in this world. I'm just about to start Heartless, in which Alexia is heavily pregnant, so by Timeless she'll have a mini-Alexia to keep her eye on. It's a nice change to come across a series that doesn't leave the characters behind as soon as they 'settle down' - Alexia's married and pregnant, but she's certainly not ready to settle!

The Untold by Courtney Collins: I'm not 100% sure but I believe this one is based on a true story. I've realised this year just how little I read about Australia and it's something I want to rectify, starting with this book!

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: I've read bits of this book but still need to sit down and read it from beginning to end. I really should get to it soon. Like Cora in The Essex Serpent, the heroine of this novel also has a young son to think of and, considering the time in which she lives, it's pretty damn admirable what she does to keep him safe.

What did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be...

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is a fandom freebie, so I'm going to talk about some of the characters I'd love to cosplay as. I love a good Comic Con, though I've never been able to go to the biggest one in the UK which is, of course, in London, but I haven't cosplayed since my teens. These are the characters I'd love to be for the day if I ever have the confidence to cosplay again!

(Sorry, I think only people who can remember Stars in Their Eyes will get the reference in my title...)

Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas: This is one of my favourite films from my childhood and every Halloween I try to dress up as Sally before I go out for cocktails, but unless I want to try making her dress myself (which would be a terrible idea) her outfit is either too expensive or the cheap ones aren't made of very nice (or flattering) material. One day!

Katrina Van Tassel from Sleepy Hollow: Another much-loved film of mine, and to be honest the main reason I'd love to cosplay as Katrina is down to the dress she wears right at the end of the film - I call it her Beetlejuice dress.

Belle from Beauty and the Beast: My favourite film of all time, I love it so much. I actually had a fancy dress party for my 18th and dressed up as Belle in her ball dress, but I'd love to cosplay her in her blue dress; she looks most like herself in that dress.

Violet from Rat Queens by Kurtis J. Wiebe and Various Artists: This is probably my favourite graphic novel series and I just adore Violet, plus I think one of my friends would be a fantastic Hannah - I'll have to try and convince her to cosplay with me.

Alexia Tarabotti from the Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger: I've only read Soulless (reviewed here) so far, but I still think Alexia is such a fun character and I could have a lot of fun putting together a 19th century outfit.

Evy Carnahan from The Mummy: If Beauty and the Beast is my favourite film, The Mummy is a very close second and most of that is down to Evy. As you can see, I have a thing for nerds and bookworms in films - I think The Mummy is the first time I saw a person a bit like me in an action movie, and that was quite a big deal.

Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs: Another cinematic heroine of mine, though I enjoyed the book, too. I like Clarice because she's not perfect; so many women in thrillers are unrealistic because filmmakers feel the need to make a woman flawless to make her likeable, but they didn't do that to Clarice. She's still learning and she can make mistakes, but that doesn't take anything away from her successes.

Éowyn from The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien: This lady is the mother of the Warrior Princess trope, and she's fantastic. She's one of my favourite characters from The Lord of the Rings and I'd love to swish around in one of her dresses while also feeling bad-ass.

Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: This is another one of my favourite classic stories, and I think so much fun could be had with an Alice cosplay; you can be as innocent, as mad or as dark as you like, that's why the story's constantly being retold.

Rowena Ravenclaw from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling: All I'd need is a medieval blue dress and the Ravenclaw diadem and I'd be set! I'm still waiting for Rowling to write me a book about the Founders to be honest...

What did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | O Captain! My Captain!

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Authors I'm Dying To Meet / Ten Authors I Can't Believe I've Met  (some other "meeting authors" type spin you want to do)'. You may or may not know this, I have no idea, but I studied Creative Writing for four years at university and got tutored by some brilliant writers, but today I thought I'd talk about some of the authors I wish I'd been able to have some lessons with while I was a student - they're all writers I still wouldn't say no to a lesson with now!

Sarah Waters: I love Waters' fiction, The Little Stranger is one of my favourite books, and I think the stories she chooses to tell are fantastic. The focus of my MA was how historical fiction can be used as a tool to write women, the LGBT+ community, poc and any other form of 'other' back into history, so to be tutored by a woman who specialises in LGBT+ historical fiction would have been amazing.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I read Adichie's story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, earlier this year and loved it. She's also a very political, outspoken person and I think I could learn an awful lot from her.

Margaret Atwood: The woman's a genius, what more is there to say?

Samantha Ellis: Some Creative Writing MA courses in the UK make you choose between focusing on solely prose or solely poetry, but what I liked about my course at Lancaster University was that you could explore anything you wanted to. Having said that, I've never tried my hand at writing scripts and I think part of that is because we didn't have any tutors who specialised in them, and Ellis is a playwright as well as a writer of non-fiction. She also seems like a genuinely nice human being and I think a workshop with her would be really interesting - if nothing else we could gush about Anne Brontë together.

Alison Weir: I haven't actually read any of Weir's books yet (something I'm hoping to change this year!) but I think she'd've been a great tutor for me during my MA because she's both a historian and a novelist, and I think I could have learned a lot about knowing when to separate fact from fiction and knowing how much research to do without driving myself around the bend as I sometimes found myself doing.

Gail Carriger: I've been struggling to write fiction since I finished uni and entered the world of full-time work, which I'm finding really frustrating and it's making me lose my confidence when I sit down to finish an incomplete short story, and there's something about Carriger's work that seems so indulgent and fun that I think a workshop with her would encourage me to actually get some words on the page.

Angela Carter: Sadly Carter died in 1992 when I was a measly 4 months old so I'll never have the opportunity to be taught by her, and, if I'm being honest, I'm not actually the biggest fan of her work aside from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. She did teach at the University of East Anglia, one of the best unis in the UK for Creative Writing, and I think workshops with her must have been fascinating because she was so radical.

Robin Hobb: Another author I haven't read but I'm planning to read this year. I think we can all agree that Hobb is the biggest female author in the world of high fantasy and I think she'd have a lot to teach me about building a whole world, with its own countries and cultures and environment, from scratch.

Kurtis J. Wiebe: Something else I wasn't able to explore at uni is writing for comics and graphic novels, and as Rat Queens is my favourite graphic novel series I'd be happy to have a workshop all about writing for comics with Wiebe.

Roald Dahl: Yet another author who has shuffled off this mortal coil, and one who would be 100 now if he was still alive. Dahl died the year before I was born but he was still a huge part of my childhood - I got my dad to read Fantastic Mr. Fox to me so many times that I think we both knew it by heart - can you imagine having a workshop about writing for children with this man? Yes please.

Who did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Best Books of 2016

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten Best Books Of 2016'! Now as many of you may know, 2016 hasn't been a great reading year for me at all. I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a bit of a crap year in general, and unfortunately a busy job and generally feeling low have meant I haven't been reading as avidly as I'd like to. I read half the amount of books I read last year, and so many books were a lot more underwhelming or disappointing than I would have liked them to be, so I have a top eight rather than a top ten. I could have picked another two, but I decided just to go with the books that have actually stuck with me this year in some way or another!

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: This one's a re-read after I read it for the very first time last year, in fact I re-read it twice this year: I read the paperback and also listened to the audiobook and I loved every minute of it. It's still one of my all-time favourite books, and I'm confident I'll be reading it again in 2017, too.

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig: This one was such a pleasant surprise. I loved the sound of the premise so I was sure I was going to like it, but I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I was going to. It was a real adventure, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on The Ship Beyond Time.

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I think we all know by now that I adored Moreno-Garcia's debut Signal to Noise, so her second novel was my most anticipated read of this year and I really enjoyed it. It's the first vampire novel I've read in a while that felt fresh and new, and I can't wait for her next novel!

Soulless by Gail Carriger: I'm glad 2016 was the year I finally read some Gail Carriger and it was so much fun. I'm planning to finish this series and then I'm looking forward to reading Carriger's other work.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn: This was a strange one in that I finished it I was a little disappointed with the ending, but I also haven't been able to stop thinking about this book since I finished it and the more I think about it the more I appreciate just how brilliantly plotted it is. I didn't care for Flynn's debut, Sharp Objects, but I think this is a fantastic thriller.

The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney: I had a very similar experience as Dark Places with this one, too. After I finished it I felt a bit underwhelmed, but like Dark Places I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and I think it's actually a really well put together novel and a perfect read for those cold winter months.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: Probably the best book I read this year. It's heartbreaking but it's so, so beautiful and another one that's plotted so well. I can't recommend it enough!

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik: One of the best adult contemporary novels I've read in a long time. This was so much fun to read but was also really thought-provoking in places and just a really good book. I'm looking forward to The Other Half of Happiness!

Which books made your list this week?