Christmas Book Tag (ORIGINAL)

Christmas is a month away! That's exciting for some and terrifying for others, and I definitely fall into the former category. I love Christmas. I love the atmosphere and the carols and the cheesy songs and the lovely movies and the warm fuzzy feeling it gives me.

So to celebrate I've created my very own Christmas Book Tag. I feel I should say I'm sure there are other such tags out there, but this is one I've made entirely on my own and if there are any similarities to any other tags I promise that's pure coincidence.

I'll tag a few people once I've given my own answers, but whether you're tagged or not please feel free to do this tag and share the festive love!

I have to go with Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop by Jenny Colgan. It's cheesy and festive and lovely; I read it over Christmas a couple of years ago and really enjoyed the experience.

I didn't really like The Great Zoo of China that much - which is a shame because it's essentially Jurassic Park but with dragons - but it was a shamelessly fun, quick read. If you want to know my thoughts in more detail you can check out my review here!

I don't know why, but I feel like Taylor Swift's 'Style' would be a great movie. It's one of my favourite songs from 1989 and something about it always makes me think there must be a bigger story someone can write in there somewhere; the lyrics make me think it'd be a great movie about a pair of doomed lovers who appear in different incarnations every century throughout history.

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged features a heroine who is a practicing muslim, and it's one of the best contemporary novels I've read in a long while. Check out my review here!

I have to go with The Disreputable Dog from The Old Kingdom series, who first appears in Lirael as Lirael's much-needed companion. She's so much fun and I love her, although Mogget is a very close second.

I read Burial Rites over new year a couple of years ago and it was the perfect read for those cold winter months. The setting was one of my favourite parts of Hannah Kent's debut - it was as much a character as all the people within it - and she writes those bleak, Icelandic landscapes beautifully.

Maia is one of my favourite fictional characters from one of my favourite books of all time. I adore The Goblin Emperor, it's like Rivendell meets the Tudor court, and when I was poorly with quinsy earlier this year the thing that comforted me most was curling up in bed and listening to the audiobook. If you haven't picked this up yet, I highly recommend that you do!

There are plenty I could have chosen, but I've always had a soft spot for The Secret Garden. I adored the 1993 adaptation when I was little and I finally read the book for my Popular Victorian Fiction module at university and loved it. I love Mary Lennox; she's grumpy and heartwarming, and a very good gardener to boot!

I'm still not over it.

I'm sure my lovely friend Natalie @ A Sea Change won't be too impressed with my choice, knowing how much she loved this book, but Uprooted was one of those books I really had to struggle through to finish. I liked a lot of things about it but the writing style and I just didn't get along very well which is a real shame, but I'd like to try more of Naomi Novik's work in future.

Okay so The Nutcracker certainly isn't without adaptations. Not only is it one of the most famous ballets around, but it also has numerous film adaptations - I just haven't found one I've completely fallen in love with yet. I want an adaptation that's nostalgic rather than juvenile; I'm a big fan of slightly creepy fairy stories, so I'd love to see someone like Henry Selick direct a stop motion adaptation of it.

I think The Good Immigrant is such an important book right now, so I'm hoping to get my hands on a copy of it over the Christmas period! Then again, there are a bunch of other books I want to get my hands on, too...

If you'd like to have a go at this tag then please do! I'd love to know what your answers would be. For now I'm going to go ahead and tag:

Natalie @ A Sea Change

Micheline @ Lunar Rainbows Reviews

Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Mallory @ The Local Muse

Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight

Top Ten Tuesday | Anticipated Releases for the First Half 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 Most Anticipated Releases For The First Half of 2016', so I'm going to talk about the books that will be released in January, February, March, April, May and June of next year that I'm most looking forward to!

Stars Above by Marissa Meyer: Marissa Meyer is releasing a book of all her short stories set in The Lunar Chronicles universe and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. I read all of them online but I'd really like to own a hard copy of them all, plus I want to sit it on my shelf with the rest of the books in this series.

A Tyranny of Petticoats ed. by Jessica Spotswood: An anthology of female-led historical fiction including authors like Marissa Meyer, Robin Talley and Elizabeth Wein? GIVE IT TO ME NOW. *grabby hands*

Unicorn Tracks by Julia Ember: It has unicorn in the title. Obviously I want it. Plus it just sounds really cool!

The Amber Shadows by Lucy Ribchester: I'm all for books set at Bletchley Park, especially if they're books which just so happen to have a female lead.

My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows: I'll be honest, I'm a little unsure about this one. I love the cover - it reminds me of Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette - but I think this is either going to be really cool, or appalling. I love my Tudor history and I've always had a fondness for Lady Jane Grey, so the fact that these three authors (and the fact that there are three writers here always has me a little unsure, as I don't know how fluid it's going to be) have turned her story into a funny one intrigues me. I'm interested to see what this book's like!

The Little Shop of Happy Ever After by Jenny Colgan: I'm weak for Jenny Colgan's adult contemporary novels, they're my guilty pleasure, and in this book her heroine opens her very own bookshop. Yes.

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders: This book sounds so cool. I love stories that explore the relationship between magic and science, so I'll definitely be getting my hands on a copy of this one!

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler: This is one of the books in the new Hogarth Shakespeare series, a series in which a bunch of really well-known authors are retelling Shakespeare's plays. Vinegar Girl is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew and it sounds really fun; I'm also looking forward to Margaret Atwood's retelling of The Tempest and Gillian Flynn's retelling of Hamlet.

Love, Lies and Spies by Cindy Anstey: This book sounds like everything I love to read - it sounds so fun! - and I really like the cover, too, so I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy.

Blackhearts by Nicole Castroman: Yay pirates!

Which books made your list this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Summer TBR!

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!

I'm travelling from South Wales to North England with work today, so I won't get around to leaving my own comments and replies until tomorrow - I promise I'm not just being rude!

I'm not a fan of setting myself TBRs, but I do love seasonal TBRs! This is the first time... ever, really, where I haven't had a free summer. I'm working now, I'm not in school or university anymore, so I don't know if I'll have plenty of time to read, but I'm hoping I will because I've actually found myself reading more since finishing uni.

Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan: With a title like that, how could I not put this book on my summer TBR? Colgan's books are so much fun, and I love a bit of light reading during the hot summer months.

Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier: If you've been following my blog for a while you'll know I fell in love with Daphne du Maurier last year when I read both Frenchman's Creek (reviewed here!) and Rebecca. I've been meaning to read Jamaica Inn for a while, and a story centered around smuggling on the Cornish coast sounds like a really fun summer read.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: This book is set during the post-WWII summer in a decaying Georgian mansion. It sounds gloriously atmospheric, and I'm looking forward to crossing it off my TBR this summer.

Past Perfect by Leila Sales: As a history nut, I'm totally up for reading a story about a girl spending her summer working at a village dedicated to Colonial Reenactment.

Lumberjanes, Vol.1 by Noelle Stevenson, Grace Ellis and Brooke Allen: A group of girls fighting monsters at summer camp? Yes please!

Ms. Marvel, Vol.3: Crushed by G. Willow Wilson, Takeshi Miyazawa, Mark Waid and Humberto Ramos: Due to be released in a week, I've already pre-ordered my copy of this. I can't wait to see what Kamala gets up to next!

Rebel Heart by Moira Young: I really, really need to continue with the Dust Lands trilogy, and with a post-apocalyptic desert for a setting I think this'll make for a pretty good read during the summer months. 

Raging Star by Moira Young: I'd like to finish this trilogy over the summer - it's been long enough since I started it!

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan: It's time to confess: I still haven't read this series. Much like Lumberjanes, though, Percy gets sent to summer camp, which sounds like an ideal setting for a summer read! I love Greek mythology, too, so it's about time I read this series.

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray: I have another confession: I have yet to read anything by Libba Bray. I'm dying to read her Gemma Doyle trilogy and her Diviners series, but this book sounds like so much fun, too, and definitely a good read for summer!

Which books made your list?

#TBRTakedown Readathon | TBR

Over on BookTube Shannon @ leaninglights has announced a casual reading challenge to run throughout the first week of June, and as May was very busy and something of a slow reading month for me I thought I'd join in!

The TBR Takedown Readathon is all about crossing books off your TBR. Shannon has created five challenges that you don't have to follow if you don't want to, but I'm going to see if I can at least tackle one or two of them. 

A book that's been on your TBR shelf for over a year

Stargirl

by Jerry Spinelli

I'm pretty sure I've owned this for at least two years, if not more, after I found it for just 99p in a local charity shop. I've heard lovely things about it and it's not even 200 pages long, so I think it'll be a good read for a readathon!

An unread sequel sitting on your TBR shelf

Mortal Heart

by Robin LaFevers

I got this for Christmas and I still haven't read it. I'm terrible at finishing series no matter how much I love them, and it's about time I finished this one!

A first book in a series on your TBR shelf

A Darker Shade of Magic

by V.E. Schwab

I've heard nothing but amazing things about this one and I've owned it since February, so it's about time I read it.

An "out of your comfort zone" book on your TBR shelf

How To Be a Heroine

by Samantha Ellis

I'm not sure if this is out of my comfort zone exactly because the last book I read was a non-fiction book about heroines and I loved it, but I still don't tend to read much non-fiction. I'd like to cross this one off my TBR!

A book from your most recent book haul

Resistance Is Futile

by Jenny T. Colgan

This is the most recent book I hauled after I pre-ordered it. This is probably the book I'm least likely to get to, only because it's been on my TBR shelf the shortest amount of time!

Are you taking part in the readathon? What are you planning to read?

Monthly Wrap-Up | April 2015

Is it just me or did April fly by? It went so quickly! It's actually a little scary how quickly 2015 seems to be going, so I try not to think about it too much. Things at work got a lot busier last month, but I still managed to read quite a bit and have a pretty good month!

Ms. Marvel, Vol.2: Generation Why by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona and Jacob Wyatt (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Copperhead, Vol.1: A New A Sheriff in Town by Jay Faerber, Scott Godlewski and Ron Riley (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Well-Read Women by Samantha Hahn (5 Stars)

Fables, Vol.1: Legends in Exile by Bill Willingham, Lan Medina, Steve Leialoha, Craig Hamilton and James Jean (2 Stars)

Reviewed here!

Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan (3.5 Stars)

Reviewed here!

American Vampire, Vol.2 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Mateus Santolouco (4 Stars)

Reviewed here!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (4 Stars)

American Vampire, Vol.3 by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque and Sean Murphy (4.5 Stars)

Reviewed here!

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler (2 Stars)

As you can see I'm still loving graphic novels - in fact I enjoyed all the ones I read bar one - and I was able to read a bit more work from Shirley Jackson and Jenny Colgan. Very, very different authors, but I enjoy both of their books!

GAME OF THRONES IS BACK AND I AM VERY NERVOUS.

I'm very, very, very worried about Sansa and I want to take her away from all of the creepy men in her life. I want her and Arya to let Brienne take them to Dorne, and then I want the three of them to stay there in the land where they don't hurt little girls.

STOP HURTING HER!

As always I'm tired of the constant female full-frontal nudity. Do we get to see any dicks? Nope. Now I'm not saying I want to see a dick because, sorry boys, they're not particularly attractive, but I think it's only fair we get male full-frontal nudity, too. I'm sick of the way women are treated in this show, and I know a lot of people wonder why I watch it if there are so many issues with it, but the truth is none of these issues are going to be solved if we all just turn a blind eye. If something's wrong we have to acknowledge it and try our hardest to fix it, not just pretend it isn't there.

On the completely opposite end of the scale, I also watched the 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility last month. I'm probably never going to get around to reading all of Jane Austen's books because unfortunately I've never really enjoyed her books that much, but I do enjoy the storylines whenever I've watched an adaptation in the past. I love Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, and it was certainly a nice film to sit back and watch, but honestly I found it a little boring and I didn't particularly like the ending. I feel like both Marianne and Elinor deserved better.

I bought myself the season 2 boxset of Orphan Black and I've been watching that again, along with my Dad, in preparation for season 3 which isn't in the UK yet. Boo! It's such a good show, and so far my Dad seems to be enjoying it, too, which is quite something! I think I get my fussiness about TV shows from him...

This has nothing to do with watching Season 2, this is just one of my favourite Felix quotes.

Oh, and my brother-in-law went to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron. I thought it was alright. It was entertaining enough to watch but I'm not a massive superhero fan, although I do love the new Ms. Marvel comics. I'm more of an X-Men girl than an Avenger girl.

I had a great blogging month in April. I took part in the A-Z Blogging Challenge for the very first time and I did it! I was really proud that I actually managed to schedule my posts so I was never typing something up at the last minute, and though I missed a few days (three, I think - I couldn't think of any authors whose surname began with Q, U or X) I wrote something for the majority of them. The only thing I really failed at was regularly looking at other people's posts, which is very naughty of me, but to be honest I just wanted to take part in the challenge to see if I could do it, and I could!

Because I was on such a blogging high I wrote a bunch of other blog posts, too; not only for April, but for this month, too. I have a lot of posts scheduled already, which is good because May's going to be a very busy month at work.

It was Easter last month - hooray! I had a pretty quiet Easter, not that it's a holiday I've ever done anything special for, it was nice to get a few days off work. My sister and her family came to visit and on Easter Sunday we all went to Folly Farm, which is a diabetes-inducing name of a local zoo/farm. There's everything there from pigs to giraffes to lions to owls, and it was a really nice day weather-wise, too!

I found myself in Swansea a couple of times last month, too. For any of you who might not know I live in south Wales, and one of my friends from my MA course recently moved back to Swansea (she did her BA there, but her MA in Lancaster like me!) so it's been nice to have a friend nearby. The two of us went to a book launch together - the launch of New Welsh Short Stories, published by Seren Books where I work! - and then on the last Sunday of the month I travelled through to Swansea to go to a new book club that my friend has started.

There were six of us in total who turned up - which actually worked out really well because we read The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler, which just so happens to have six main characters! - and while I knew two of the ladies already, one of them being my aforementioned friend, I also met some really lovely new people. It was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to the next meeting where we'll be discussing Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment!

The book club doesn't have a theme exactly, but those of us who attended the first meeting are all really interested in gender, feminism and sexuality, so if that sounds like your kind of thing and you happen to live in the south Wales area why not join us? You'd be more than welcome! Check out the Facebook and the Twitter.

How was your April?

Review | Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan

Little Beach Street Bakery

by Jenny Colgan

My Rating: 

Polly Waterford is recovering from a toxic relationship. Unable to afford their flat, she has to move miles away from everyone, to a sleepy little seaside resort in Cornwall, where she lives alone above an abandoned shop. And so Polly takes out her frustrations on her favourite hobby: making bread.

But what was previously a weekend diversion suddenly becomes far more important as she pours her emotions into kneading and pounding the dough, and each loaf becomes better and better. With nuts and seeds, olives and chorizo, with local honey (courtesy of local bee keeper, Huckle), and with reserves of determination and creativity Polly never knew she had, she bakes and bakes and bakes.... And people start to hear about it. Sometimes, bread really is life...and Polly is about to reclaim hers.

I don't read contemporary all that often, although it's definitely a genre I've started exploring a little more over the past year. Contemporary settings I can handle, but I love my speculative fiction; if a book doesn't even have a hint of magical realism in it then I'm immediately less likely to pick it up, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes I need something fun and light to fill me with the warm fuzzies, and contemporary is ideal for that.

Little Beach Street Bakery isn't the first Colgan book I've read, I fell in love with her Rosie Hopkins books at the end of last year and have been eager to check out more of her contemporary since because I love the way she includes food in her stories, from sweets to cupcakes to chocolate and, now, to bread! Who doesn't love a bit of bread? Apart from people who can't have glucose...

Perhaps it's my love for Daphne du Maurier, but for whatever reason I have a weakness for books set in Cornwall. I knew I wanted to read more of Colgan's work outside of the Rosie Hopkins series, and to be honest it was the Cornish setting that sold Little Beach Street Bakery to me. The setting was beautiful; Colgan really brought Cornwall to life, to the extent that the setting felt like a character in and of itself. Writing place is something Colgan does incredibly well.

At first it felt a little strange to be reading a Colgan book that wasn't about Rosie, but Polly soon grew on me; she's a really fun and honest protagonist to follow around, and I certainly empathised with the predicament that she found herself in at the beginning of the story. She makes mistakes, she learns from them, and she grows. What more could you want from a protagonist?

I also loved her trusty sidekick Neil the Puffin, even if he was a little unrealistic. Then again if I wanted realism I wouldn't read fiction!

However, while I enjoyed this book I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the Rosie Hopkins books. I felt no real chemistry between Polly and either of her love interests - though I did appreciate that Colgan gave her more than one relationship, unlike many other contemporary reads I've come across - and judging by a lot of the other reviews I've read I'm not alone here. In fact there were times when I felt as though the story would have been just as good, maybe even better, without any of the romantic elements at all. 

I did like her best friend, Kerensa, despite being a little unsure about her at first, but I thought the subplot involving her nearer the end of the book got a little too silly for my taste.

I will definitely read Summer at Little Beach Street Bakery, which I already own a copy of, as I'd like to return to Cornwall and see how these characters are doing. With any luck there'll be a little more chemistry there than I felt in this first book! I did enjoy it, though, it's just a shame Colgan spent so much of the book talking about chemistry that wasn't there.

C is for Colgan | Blogging from A to Z

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams
by Jenny Colgan

I'm not a big reader of contemporary. I don't dislike the genre - in fact whenever I do stray into contemporary it's very rarely that I don't like what I read - but it's not one of my favourites. I love genres like historical fiction, magical realism, fantasy and, recently, science fiction, so if I'm given a choice to read about a book with magic and a book without, nine times out of ten I'm going to read about magic.

Jenny Colgan's one of those authors whose work I always saw on the shelves and never paid much attention to. I thought her books looked cute, but they didn't seem like my thing. Then one day my sister told me about Welcome to Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop of Dreams and how much she'd enjoyed it and a couple of weeks later I stumbled across a brand new copy for just £1.99, so, naturally, I picked it up.

I finally read it in November and I was pleasantly surprised. I expected to like it, it sounded sweet (hurr hurr) if nothing else, but I didn't think it was going to touch me in the way that it did. Then over Christmas I read Colgan's two other Rosie Hopkins books, Christmas at Rosie Hopkins' Sweetshop and The Christmas Surprise, and thoroughly enjoyed them both!

I'm hoping to read some more of Colgan's work this year, and recommend the Rosie Hopkins books to anyone, whether you're a fan of contemporary or not!

Top Ten Tuesday | Recent TBR

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 You Recently Added To Your TBR'. For this I turned to Goodreads, and picked the ten books I'm most eager to read from the fairly recent additions to be TBR shelf!

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley: This hasn't been released just yet, but it sounds utterly enchanting. I'd definitely like to get my hands on a copy, even if I keep wanting to say 'magnolia' every time I see the title.

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott: When it comes to non-fiction it's history books I read the most, and as someone who loves learning about women in history this book really interests me.

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber: I'm always really interested in stories that combine religion and science, so a story about an intergalactic preacher is right up my street.

This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I loved Moreno-Garcia's novel, Signal to Noise, so I'd love to read some more of her stuff and this collection sounds great. Plus I've been really into short story collections lately.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell: I just love how bizarre this story sounds. It has quite mixed reviews - I'm fairly certain it's an extension of a short story in one of Russell's collections, which is something that doesn't always work - but I'd like to give it a go myself purely because I haven't come across anything like it before.

Resistance is Futile by Jenny T. Colgan: I'm a big fan of Jenny Colgan's contemporary stuff, but she also writes sci-fi and I think this book is sort of a combination of science and a rom-com. It sounds really cute, and I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a copy!

Mosquitoland by David Arnold: This book just sounds really quirky, and I've heard wonderful things about the way it's written. I'm a sucker for a pretty sentence.

Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear: This just sounds really cool.

Also

The Princess and the Guard by Marissa Meyer: I love The Lunar Chronicles, and I need my fix before Winter is finally released in November!

Summer Days & Summer Nights ed. by Stephanie Perkins: This won't be released until 2016, but I really enjoyed My True Love Gave to Me so I'm hoping this anthology will be a lot of fun, too. Even if it is missing all the fun of Christmas.

Which books made your list?