Top Ten Tuesday | All You Need is Love (and Books)

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 a love themed freebie, so today I thought I'd talk about my bookish otps. I usually struggle with otps - something I've mentioned before is that, for whatever reason, I have more otps from films and tv shows than books - but today I decided to challenge myself to sit down and think about the romantic couples in books I love and was pleasantly surprised to discover that almost half of them are from books I read last year!

(Please be aware that there may be some spoilers in this post if you're the kind of reader who doesn't like to know who ends up with who!)

Cinder and Kai from The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer: There are plenty of sweet couples in this series, Cress and Thorne are especially adorable, but I've always had a soft spot for these dorks.

Judith and Lucas from All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry: I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book as much as I did and I loved it, and I was especially surprised by how much I enjoyed the relationship between these two.

Monty and Percy from The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee: Well done romances that grow from friendship are hard to do - quite often they come across as a little lazy to me - but the relationship between Monty and Percy was my favourite thing about this book.

Molly and Reid from The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli: These two are just the cutest nerdy, body-positive couple and I love them.

Saba and Jack from Blood Red Road by Moira Young: When it comes to fictional characters I have a genuine soft spot for guys called Ben and Jack and I love this Jack in particular, but I loved Saba even more and their chemistry is fantastic.

Achilles and Patroclus from The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: I went into mourning after I finished this book and I adored the way Miller wrote the relationship between these two from childhood through to adulthood. If you haven't read this book yet you're severely missing out.

Rosemary and Sissix from The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: The relationship between Rosemary and Sissix was such a pleasant surprise. I loved their chemistry and hoped something might happen but thought 'nah, the author's probably not going down that road' and then she did! This book is another one of my all-time favourites.

Meche and Sebastian from Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: The above quotation is one of my favourites and always tugs at my heart. This is another one of my favourite novels and I loved the relationship between Meche and Sebastian, both their awkward teen years and their awkward reunion as adults. This is another example of platonic to romantic love done exceptionally well.

Laura and Carmilla from Carmilla by J. Sheridan Le Fanu: Definitely not exactly the healthiest relationship on this list, but Carmilla is one of my favourite classics and I've always loved the strange, intoxicating relationship between Laura and Carmilla.

Maia and Csethiro from The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: If someone held a gun to my head and asked me to pick my favourite novel of all time, this is the novel I'd pick. What I love about the relationship between Maia and Csethiro is that we only ever see its potential, but I love the way they interact with each other and I love that they work at becoming friends before anything else.

What did you talk about this week?

Winter Reading Recommendations for Historical Fiction Lovers!

Happy New Year!

I don't know about you, but I love reading books set in cold, barren landscapes during the winter months - particularly after Christmas. In the run-up to Christmas (if it's a holiday you celebrate) it's so easy to take refuge from the miserable weather when you have time off work to watch your favourite festive films, eat lots of food that's incredibly bad for you and maybe curl up with a hot chocolate, a warm blanket and a holiday-themed romance.

Then the thrill of Christmas and New Year pass into long, dreary January and it's time to go back to work against a backdrop of adverts for work-out DVDs and the latest diet. Apologies to anyone with a January birthday, but January is probably my least favourite month of the year because the world becomes Narnia - always winter, never Christmas - without all the talking animals to make it exciting.

One thing the cold, Christmas-less months of January and February are great for is reading wintery books. I'm sure you all know by now how much I love historical fiction, and the kind of historical fiction that unravels amidst a bleak, snowy landscape is the kind of fiction I love to read at this time of year. There's nothing more atmospheric than reading a book set in winter when the weather outside is frightful.

So if you're in the mood for a wintery book, some historical fiction or you have no idea which book you should pick up first this year, below are three books I would highly recommend reading before spring arrives!

I've mentioned Burial Rites a lot on my blog and that's because I found it so powerful. In this debut novel Hannah Kent explores the final days of the last woman to be executed in Iceland, Agnes Magnúsdóttir, who was beheaded on the 12th January, 1830. Kent captures who Agnes might have been wonderfully, but the most memorable character is the bleak, isolated Icelandic landscape itself. I went to Reykjavik in December and visited the National Museum of Iceland where I happened upon the block and axe head that were used to execute Agnes. I left that museum feeling quite hollow.

I always find it difficult to explain the plot of The Tenderness of Wolves. The simple explanation is that a woman in 19th century Canada goes searching for her son when it appears he could be guilty of the murder of one of their neighbours. In reality, though, the novel is about the entire community and weaves several different story threads into one overarching plot; when I finished this book I didn't think I'd enjoyed it that much, but it's a novel that I'm still thinking about even though I read it two years ago. The setting makes it the perfect book to read during the coldest months of the year - especially if you have a cosy fireplace to snuggle up in front of.

All the Truth That's in Me is similar to the previous two in that it's also set in the 19th century, this time in the United States, and it also includes a crime. In Burial Rites we have the story of the criminal, in The Tenderness of Wolves we have the story of the outsiders, and finally in All the Truth That's in Me we have the story of the victim. Judith becomes something of a pariah in her community when she returns home after being held hostage for four years, a time in which her best friend was murdered and she was left without her tongue. What follows is Judith trying to tell her story, trying to learn how to speak again, and trying to learn how to fit back into her community. The story is told in second person as Judith addresses Lucas, the boy she loves, throughout and I fell in love with the way it was told. Like the previous books this is a slow, quiet story, and I loved it a lot more than I thought I was going to.

Have you read any of these? What kind of books do you turn to in the winter?

Top Ten Tuesday | New Year, New Authors

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 New Year!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten New-To-Me Authors I Read In 2017' and I'm going to interpret this as authors I read for the first time in 2017, not necessarily authors I first heard about or came across in 2017. On with my list!

Alison Plowden: I read Plowden's Women All On Fire: The Women of the English Civil War in 2017 and have since picked up copies of Henrietta Maria: Charles I's Indomitable Queen and The Stuart Princesses. I'm a huge history nerd, particularly of women's history, and the Stuart era is an era I'm starting to develop much more of an interest in. I think Plowden's work is going to help me learn so much more about this period of history.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I didn't love Shades of Milk and Honey, but I enjoyed it enough to want to seek out more of Kowal's work in future.

Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: Stay With Me was one of my favourite reads of 2017 and I can't wait to get my hands on whatever Adébáyọ̀ releases next!

Julie Berry: All the Truth That's in Me was another of my favourite reads of last year, I loved the way it was written, and I'm interested in reading more of Berry's work.

Camilla Grudova: The Doll's Alphabet is probably the weirdest short story collection I've ever read, full of grotesque, unpleasant stories that were so well written I'll definitely picking up whatever Grudova releases next.

Riley Sager: I don't read many thrillers so, when I do, I tend to enjoy them a lot which is exactly what happened with Final Girls. I'm looking forward to the release of The Last Time I Lied this summer!

Mackenzi Lee: The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue was so much fun, I loved Monty and Percy so much, and I can't wait to read The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy and Bygone Badass Broads later this year.

Madeline Miller: I finally read The Song of Achilles in 2017 and it easily became one of my favourite books of all time. I'm so excited for the release of Circe this year.

N. K. Jemisin: I've been slowly getting back into high fantasy over the past year or so and have been especially keen to read high fantasy books written by BAME authors. I picked up a copy of The Fifth Season after seeing so many good reviews and now understand why it has so many good reviews. Jemisin's writing and world-building is exquisite and I'm looking forward to reading more of her work.

Kirsty Logan: A Portable Shelter was one of the best short story collections I read in 2017 so I'm hoping to read Logan's other collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, very soon.

Who did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | Best Books of 2017

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 Favourite Books of 2017', and it's a topic I'm not quite comfortable with this year. Out of all the books I've read this year not many have wowed me, in fact most of them have left me feeling a bit 'meh, and in all honesty I don't really like choosing the best books of a year before the year is over, just in case I read something amazing in the last few weeks of December, so look out for another post at the end of this month/beginning of next month in which I'll make myself choose my Top 3 books of 2017!

While most books did leave me feeling a bit cold, the more I thought about it the more I realised that, actually, I did read some really fun, really well-written books this year, and I think it'd be doing the books and their authors a disservice not to mention them. So, in the order I read them, here are my top ten books of 2017:

The Good Immigrant ed. by Nikesh Shukla: An essay collection that really opened my eyes to the kind of racism I have contributed to and not noticed in Britain because of my white privilege. That makes this book sound so preachy, and it really isn't, but it made me think a lot of thoughts and, frankly, I think it should be required reading in schools alongside Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's We Should All Be Feminists.

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Speaking of Adichie, I decided to finally explore some of her fiction with her short story collection this year and loved it. It was so different from everything else I've read and it's made me really excited to read her novels.

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin: One of the most original fantasy stories I've ever read, told in one of the most interesting ways I've ever seen a story told. 

Final Girls by Riley Sager: This twisty and twisted thriller plays around with the 'final girl' trope in horror films and that made it so much fun to read.

The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli: Be still my beating heart! I didn't think it would be possible to love this book after I enjoyed Albertalli's debut, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, so much, but I think I loved it even more. I found Molly to be such a relatable heroine, something that rarely happens for me when I read Contemporary YA, and the whole story is lovely. This book is like a warm hug.

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀: After reading The Thing Around Your Neck, this debut confirmed that I really enjoy fiction set in Nigeria and I'm eager to check out more. Whatever Adébáyọ̀ releases next, I'll definitely be getting my hands on a copy; this debut is a fantastic page-turner, so much so that I read it in one sitting, and full of twists and turns. I highly recommend it!

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee: Another really fun read with such a charming protagonist and a romance brimming with chemistry. This novel was so full of character and Lee didn't tone down on the historical accuracy for the sake of romanticising the past and, as a history nerd, I really appreciated that.

All the Truth That's in Me by Julie Berry: This one took me by surprise. I was expecting it to be more of a thriller than it was, but the story turned out to be quieter than the blurb made it out to be and I really, really enjoyed it. I loved the way it was written and I loved the way the story unfolded - this is a great one to read in the winter!

Persuasion by Jane Austen: Can you believe it? The book that turned me against Austen when I was eighteen has appeared on my best books of the year list eight years later. Pride and Prejudice is fun but, having reread this one, I think I agree with the many other Austen fans who regard this one as her masterpiece. I also watched the 1995 adaptation this year and thought it was brilliant, so I recommend it if you haven't watched it.

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: Last, but definitely not least - this one isn't only one of my favourite books of 2017, but has become one of my favourite books of all time. It's a masterpiece. I adored it, and I can't wait to read Circe.

Which books made your list this week?