Top Ten Tuesday | Readfresh My Memory

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 I Really Liked but Can’t Remember Anything/Much About'. I decided to play around with the theme a little this week and talk about ten of my favourite/most loved books that I'd like to reread because it's been a while since I last read them!

The Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling: It's been a long time since I last read this series and every year I say I'm going to reread them only to forsake them for newer reads. This year I'd really like to try and get to them because it's been so long since I read them I think it'll be like reading them for the first time all over again.

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman: This was the first book that made me bawl my eyes out. I'd like to reread it soon, especially as I believe there's finally going to be an adaptation on the BBC!

Sabriel by Garth Nix: I have a copy of Goldenhand that I still haven't read because it's been so long since I read The Old Kingdom series I've forgotten quite a lot about it. I'd love to reread these books because I adored them growing up and Sabriel was always one of my favourite heroines.

Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya: Fun fact! Natsuka Takaya and I have the same birthday. I love the anime and read the manga when I was younger but only read up to around volume 11, so I'd love to reread the series from the beginning and finally finish it.

Witch Child by Celia Rees: Celia Rees was one of the most formative authors of my childhood and early teens, and it's thanks to her that I grew up so interested in historical fiction and books about witches and witchcraft in particular. I loved Witch Child the first time I read it, but I do worry that I might not love it as much if I read it again now.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: A film adaptation of this one is being released later this year starring Domhnall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson so I'd like to try and reread it before I see the film. It's an excellent book and one I highly recommend if you're in the mood for a ghost story!

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie: I had to read this one during my first year of university and I really, really enjoyed it. I'd love to read it again.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett: Another one I had to read for university, although I grew up loving the 1993 adaptation, and another one I absolutely loved. This is probably my favourite children's classic, with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland a very close second, and I think this would be a lovely one to reread in the spring.

Feed by Mira Grant: One of my favourite books of all time and yet it broke my heart so much that I haven't read it from beginning to end again since the first time I read it. I think I might try and reread this one this year!

Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë: My favourite Brontë and one of my favourite Victorian novels. It's a short, quiet book, but I love its exploration of how class doesn't matter if you're a woman - either way you could potentially be treated badly by the men in your life, and that's why it's important to support each other. In my opinion Anne Brontë was the most feminist of the Brontë sisters and I want her to receive far more love than she does.

Which books 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?

The Aussie Book Tag

G'day mates! And now it's time for me to apologise to literally everyone in Australia. Cass @ Words on Paper very kindly tagged me in the Aussie Book Tag and, as you know, I'm always up for  a tag. You can find Cass's answers here and the original, created by Ngoc @ Happy Comes First and Julia @ Picnic Reads, here!

I've never been to Australia but I'd love to go (the only thing that really puts me off are the spiders because I am severely arachnophobic) and the more I thought about it the more I realised I've read barely any Australian writers; Markus Zusak, Garth Nix, Geraldine Brooks and Hannah Kent are the only ones who immediately spring to mind. You don't have to talk about Australian books and authors for this tag, but doing this has definitely made me realise it's a country that I seem to neglect in my reading. That's something for me to rectify.

If anyone has any recommendations, particularly about/written by Australia's indigenous population, please let me know!

That has to be Maia from Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor, not only is it one of my favourite novels of all time, but Maia is one of my favourite fictional characters, too. He's such a good egg and I adore him. You can check out my review of The Goblin Emperor here!

This is a tricky one because I'm usually the grumpy one who hates what everyone else loves, but for this I'm going to go with Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë. I don't think everyone hates it by any means, but I do think Anne is forgotten next to her sisters and she shouldn't be. Of her two novels Agnes Grey is probably the lesser known, but I really enjoyed it when I read it and I'd love to see more people reading Anne's work.

I can't possible talk about a fictional squad without talking about Harry Potter. If I wanted to be part of any gang, it'd definitely be Dumbledore's Army because I am all for students standing up to bad teachers.

Stay With Me by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, which I reviewed here. I can't wait to read whatever Adébáyọ̀ brings out next and I highly, highly recommend this debut!

It'd be pretty easy to mention Harry Potter again here but I think Harry Potter gets enough love as it is, so instead I'm going to go with Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman which is one of my favourite books from my early teens. It's the first book I can remember crying over and it's still very special to me and so worth reading if you haven't already.

Isabel Greenberg's The One Hundred Nights of Hero (reviewed here) is a gorgeous graphic novel but it's so huge which means it can be quite difficult to read comfortably - it's worth it, though!

George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is super depressing but it's such an iconic work of dystopian fiction and it's definitely worth checking out if it's on your radar. Is it the best piece of dystopian fiction out there? No, not necessarily, but it's a really interesting novel and I think it's worth a bit of your time.

I know I keep saying it, but no novel has surprised me more than Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (reviewed here). It's one of the twistiest, turniest novels I've ever read and it's so much fun - if you haven't read any of Waters' work, Fingersmith is a great place to start!

I adored Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (reviewed here), especially because I wasn't expecting to love it as much as I did, and Becky Albertalli has quickly become my favourite YA author following her equally excellent sophomore novel, The Upside of Unrequited (reviewed here). Yet again, I recommend reading her if you haven't already!

I'm a big mood reader so the books I reach out for when I'm feeling slumpy usually change depending what I'm in the mood to read - sometimes it's YA, sometimes it's a thriller, but it's usually something I don't tend to read a lot of - but this year I find myself turning more and more towards Fantasy of Manners books when I'm feeling slumpy, particularly Gail Carriger's work. It's so fun!

Thanks so much for tagging me, Cass! I'm going to go ahead and tag some people below, so:

Natalie @ Orchestrating a Sea Change

Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight

Mallory @ The Local Muse

Micheline @ Lunar Rainbows Reviews

Deanna @ Deanna Reads Books

Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Lynn @ Lynn's Film & Book Review

Catherine @ We'll Meet it When it Does

Vena @ Vena Isabella

consider yourselves tagged!

Top Ten Tuesday | Things I Want My (Hypothetical) Daughter to Read

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 Mother's Day freebie, which is weird for me as Mother's Day's in March in the UK. I remember doing something along the lines of my favourite mothers in fiction some time last year, it doesn't feel like long ago anyway, so today I'm going to talk about the books I'd want my daughter to read.

I don't have any children, and I don't know if I'll ever have any, but if I ever have a daughter I hope she reads these books:

We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: If I ever have a daughter, I want her to know there's nothing wrong with the word 'feminist' and there's certainly nothing wrong with identifying as one. Feminism means equality, not misandry, and I want her to grow up fighting for the equal rights of everyone, in whichever way she feels most comfortable doing it. This little book is an ideal introduction to feminism, and I hope, if I ever have a daughter, she doesn't have to fight as much as I've had to, and her daughters after her have to fight even less.

How To Be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis: I really, really enjoyed this memoir about Samantha Ellis's relationship with her favourite heroines throughout her life; she thinks about the effect these heroines had on her growing up, and returns to them to see if they still make her feel the way they once made her feel now. It got me thinking about the heroines in my life, and I'd love to share that with my hypothetical daughter, too.

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman: This is the first novel I can remember reading that made me bawl. Noughts & Crosses is something of a British children's classic now, I'm not sure how well-known it is outside the UK but I think it's fairly well-known, and it's the first book that really made me think about race and terrorism and how to see something from both sides. It's still one of my favourites.

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier: There are some books in the world that are perfect books, and Rebecca is one such book. Daphne du Maurier has quickly become one of my favourite authors after I started reading her work a few years ago. You can only read Rebecca for the first time once and it's an experience I think every reader should try.

The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister: The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a classic, but the picture book I remember loving most when I was little is The Rainbow Fish. It's a lovely story with a lovelier message and I adored it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling: Does this warrant an explanation? I was lucky enough to grow up as part of the Potter generation, it'd be great to share that with my children.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent: This novelisation of the story of the last woman to be executed in Iceland is fiction, there's no way of knowing if Agnes Magnúsdóttir was simply a murderess or a woman who wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but this book is a brilliant reminder that there are two sides to every story, and sometimes people are forced into criminality by situations they can't help and are then punished for it. I want any children I might have to be able to consider both sides of a story.

The Good Immigrant ed. by Nikesh Shukla: I'm proud to live in a multi-cultural country and recent political events have frightened me a lot. I don't want to live in a country built on ignorance, discrimination and prejudice and if I ever have children I want them to be open-minded, kind and aware of the struggles other people might face simply because they're viewed as 'other'.

The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson: Jacqueline Wilson was my favourite writer growing up, she was never afraid to tackle issues like bullying, foster care, mental health, terminal illness and many others. The Illustrated Mum was always my favourite.

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: The relationships between mothers and daughters are fairly toxic in this novel, which was my favourite read of last year, and if I ever have a daughter I'd want her to read this so she'd know that sometimes parents make mistakes, sometimes they make terrible mistakes, and it's okay for her to tell me how she feels and to pursue the things in life that will make her happy. It's her life to live, not mine.

What did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | DiverseAThon Recommendations

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 freebie, so as it's currently DiverseAThon I thought I'd share some of my recommendations with you for anyone who's taking part! There's a focus on #OwnVoices this DiverseAThon - e.g. an LGBT+ book written by an LGBT+ author - so that's my focus here, too.

For more information about DiverseAThon, check out these videos!

Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie: This has to be one of my favourite fairy tale inspired stories out there, all about the power of older stories and how they influence our stories of the future. The 1001 Nights is a particular inspiration behind this book, so if you're a fan of A Thousand Nights, The One Hundred Nights of Hero or The Wrath & the Dawn and you haven't read this yet, you're missing out!

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley: This is Talley's debut and I loved it. Set in 1959, it explores a mixed-race, LGBT+ romance in an American high school that has started to admit black students for the very first time. It's heartbreaking, but so worth reading given the current political climate.

Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: I take every chance I can get to mention this book because I love it so very much, and it's such a unique take on witchcraft. Moreno-Garcia is a Mexican writer and both her published novels, Signal to Noise and Certain Dark Things, take place in Mexico City with a Mexican cast. She's so worth reading if you haven't already!

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng: My favourite book of 2016, this is Ng's debut and follows a mixed race family in 1970s America after the death of one of the family's children. It's harrowing, but so well-written and well-plotted and just so good.

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman: This is pretty much a classic by now, right? This is a must-read.

Sofia Khan is Not Obliged by Ayisha Malik: I really enjoyed this when I read it last year, and it made me realise how few books I've read that feature Muslim characters, never mind a Muslim protagonist. It's so much fun, and funny, but also knows when to be serious and is just really worth reading.

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: If you're new to LGBT+ fiction and you're not sure where to start, may I present you with Sarah Waters. Five of Waters' six publish novels feature lesbian protagonists and Fingersmith is widely considered to be her masterpiece - it's definitely a fun one to start with if you're new to her work!

The Good Immigrant ed. by Nikesh Shukla: Such an important book. Read it, read it, read it.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin: This must be the most diverse fantasy book I've ever read, and on top of that it's written and plotted fantastically, too. Highly recommended!

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I love Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This is her only short story collection and if you're interested in fiction set in Nigeria written by a Nigerian, then you need to pick this book up.

What did you talk about this week?

Top Ten Tuesday | My Favourite 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 Favourite 2016 Releases So Far This Year', but I can't do that because I haven't read much so far this year, certainly haven't read many 2016 releases so far this year, and haven't read many favourites so far this year. So instead I'm going to talk about my favourite books of all time!

Childhood Favourites

Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl: I had a real hard time trying to decide whether I was going to put Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Magic Finger on this list. Like many, many children all around the world I grew up on Roald Dahl, he's the children's author, and while I love so much of his work, for whatever reason it was always Fantastic Mr. Fox I requested at bedtime. In fact my dad read this to me so many times (at my request) that I knew it off by heart. I loved books about animals when I was a little girl, and I think I loved Fantastic Mr. Fox so much because it was about animals outsmarting humans. This book is always close to my heart, and The Magic Finger is a very, very, very, very close second.

Witch Child by Celia Rees: I think I've mentioned this book many times now on my blog, but it's Celia Rees I have to thank for first getting me into historical fiction when I read Pirates! when I was about eleven or twelve years old. I read Witch Child when I was around fourteen and just loved it. It's influenced so much of what I read and what I write to this day, and a few years ago I was lucky enough to meet Celia Rees and get my copy signed!

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling: Obviously Harry Potter was going to get a mention on this list, how could it not? I don't think The Order of the Phoenix is the most popular book in the series, but it's always been my favourite despite the fact that it's the book in which my favourite character dies. I wrote a blog post all about why I love it so much here if you want to check it out!

Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman: I'm pretty sure I read this book around the same time I read Witch Child, maybe a year later, and it broke me. If you haven't read this book yet, you need to; Blackman addresses racism in such a clever way, and I adore Sephy and Callum.

Sabriel by Garth Nix: Another book I first read when I was around fourteen. I love Lirael and Abhorsen too, and as far as readers go I think Lirael tends to be a little more popular, but I'll forever have a soft spot for the very first book in this series, with a heroine who first introduced me to the idea that a fantasy book about a woman doesn't have to have a romance at the heart of it.

Recent Favourites

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters: Sarah Waters is one of my favourite authors, and while Fingersmith is also a fantastic book it's The Little Stranger I love most. It's slow and spooky and so well executed, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since I read it.

Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Here we have one of the only books partially set during high school that's actually reminded me of how it felt to be a teenager. This book means an awful lot to me for reasons I'm probably never going to discuss on here because they're just too close to my heart, but as well as that personal affinity I felt to this book it also just so happens to be a fantastic story with fantastic characters. If you love magical realism, music and misfits, you need this book in your life!

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison: This is the kind of high fantasy I love. It's not about the end of the world or defeating a dark lord, it's a coming of age story mixed with courtly intrigue and some of the best fictional characters I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. I love this book.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: To me, this is the sci-fi equivalent of The Goblin Emperor. It's a bit funnier, a little like reading Firefly, but it's science fiction that doesn't involve the future of the galaxy being at stake; instead the story revolves around a group of people on a journey in an enclosed space, and Chambers uses this setting to explore ideas about gender, sexuality, family and what it means to be human. This book is exquisite.

Feed by Mira Grant: I sobbed when I finished this book. I'm still not over it.

Which books made your list this week? I'm looking forward to some 2016 recommendations!

How Do You See Cinder?

Yesterday during Top Ten Tuesday Cait @ Paper Fury asked a question about the ethnicity of Linh Cinder, heroine of The Lunar Chronicles, that got me thinking: is Cinder herself Asian or not?

I've said before how much I love The Lunar Chronicles, one of the many reasons being that it's one of the most diverse series I've ever come across. There are characters from all different ethnicities, four completely different heroines who are never pitted against one another, a leading heroine who's missing an arm and a leg and a 'Prince Charming' from Beijing. It's such a fantastic series.

Now I have to admit that upon first reading Cinder I didn't picture Cinder herself as Asian, though I didn't picture her as white either. Something about the way Marissa Meyer describes her made me picture her as Hispanic, though I have seen many people picture her as Asian.

But the more I thought about it, the more I thought: Why on earth would a group of rebels hide someone as important as Cinder in China if she was going to stick out like a sore thumb? Surely she was taken to China because she could blend in.

Does that mean she's Asian? Personally, the more I've thought about Cinder the more I've come to imagine her as mixed race and there are three reasons for this:

1) I'm not entirely sure that Levana and Channary are/were Asian (though I could be wrong!), but there's every chance that Cinder's biological father was. After all, Luna itself is brimming with all different kinds of ethnicities, so I imagine a lot of the population of Luna is made up of mixed race people anyway; Winter is also mixed race.

2) I always thought that Cinder not being Asian was something else that distanced her from her neighbours. Not only is she a cyborg, but she's also 'not from around here'. I'm not trying to imply that mixed race people are social outcasts, but even today some mixed race people face prejudice from both sides of their heritage.

An Anglo-Indian Harry, art by Brigid Vaughn

3) I love reading books with diverse characters - I've had more white protagonists than I've had hot dinners - but I think I've read even less mixed race protagonists. The only one that springs to mind straight away is Callie from Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses series. I know there are some books that don't describe skin colour, leaving it open to the reader's imagination (recently there's been a lot of reimagining of Harry Potter as an Anglo-Indian character, which I love), but sometimes authors need to take it that step further and say 'This character isn't white. End of story.'

Why is this important? Because representation matters.

The people who disagree with that statement, and thankfully I've never met a single book blogger who disagrees with that statement, are also the kind of people who would immediately picture Cinder as white. So the people who do disagree with that statement also end up proving it to be true, because they picture Cinder as they are, regardless of the fact that she's described as having 'naturally tanned skin' and that she lives in China.

What are your thoughts? How do you see Cinder?

Thanks to Cait @ Paper Fury for inspiring me to write this post!

Monthly Wrap-Up | May 2015

Wow, May flew by! It was a very busy month for me, so I didn't read as much as I might have liked, but I certainly made up for it with other stuff.

Rolling in the Deep
by Mira Grant

Reviewed here!

The Great Zoo of China
by Matthew Reilly 

Reviewed here!

Rat Queens, Vol.2: The Far-Reaching Tentacles of N'rygoth
by Kurtis J. Wiebe, Roc Upchurch and Stjepan Sejic 

Reviewed here!

Jane Eyre's Sisters: How Women Live and Write the Heroine's Story
by Jody Gentian Bower

May was a bit of a slow reading month for me, but that's alright. It was very busy at work and I figured it's about time I stop making myself feel bad for 'not reading enough'. The Great Zoo of China was a little bit of a disappointment, but it wasn't the worst thing I've ever read, and everything else I read I really enjoyed - especially Jane Eyre's Sisters, which was my first non-fiction read of the year. I really need to read more non-fiction because that book was amazing.

I continued to watch Game of Thrones, until a certain episode I'm sure many of you have been hearing about. A little further down I link to a post all about sexual violence in epic fantasy that basically sums up why I was so upset with the way Game of Thrones went; Sansa is one of my favourites and the show treats her like garbage. I also wasn't impressed with the way things were going for Daenerys this season; Benioff and Weiss don't seem to understand that a woman doesn't have to be unlikable to be 'badass'.

Never say never, but for the foreseeable future I won't be watching Game of Thrones. I'm so sick of the gratuitous sexual violence that there really is no need for.

On a brighter note, Penny Dreadful returned this month and it's great! I really enjoyed the first season, and so far I'm really enjoying this one, too. Helen McRory makes for a very cool villain, and I still love Ethan Chandler. He's such a cutie.

Okay

I also got into The March Family Letters this month. I tried getting into it about a month or so a go but I wasn't really feeling it, then I discovered they were doing some really interesting things with the sexuality of their versions of these timeless characters and now I'm hooked! I think it just took a little while for the show to find its feet.
For those of you wondering, The March Family Letters is a webseries similar to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and it's a modern day version of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I really like what they've done with it so far (although their version of Amy does take a little getting used to!) and I recommend checking it out. You can find it on YouTube here.

Oh, and this month my parents and I went to see Far From the Madding Crowd. I really enjoyed it and so did my parents. This is a very important factor, as Far From the Madding Crowd is my Dad's favourite book and he's INCREDIBLY sceptical of adaptations, but he said it was a very faithful adaptation so I'm glad he liked it. Carey Mulligan was an adorable Bathsheba Everdeen (it was a little odd hearing that surname when it wasn't preceded by 'Katniss') and I thought they cast Gabriel Oak, William Boldwood and Sergeant Troy really well, too. It's a great film - I recommend checking it out if you're a lover of period dramas!

Here are a few posts I wrote in May that I'd love more people to check out!

Speculative Fiction for Austen Fans

Food from History

An Interview with Sam Roads and Kat Nicholson

My Problem with Peeta

As I said before, May was a very busy month!

It was my Dad's birthday right at the beginning of the month, on the 1st May, so that weekend my family and I - me, my parents, my sisters, my brothers-in-law, my nephew and my nieces - took a trip up to Derbyshire, where we went to The Heights of Abraham and Gulliver's Kingdom.

It was a nice trip, but I was glad to get back home. It was a very family-orientated trip, and while both my sisters are married with children and in their 30s (there's 10 years between me and my oldest sister) I'm still finding my feet in my 20s after uni, so big family holidays aren't really my thing. It was nice to see everyone, though - particularly my youngest niece, who is 6 months old.

This month I finally succumbed and bought myself a kindle, and I love it! For years I was convinced I wasn't going to get an eReader because I love physical books so much, but I'm literally out of shelf space and to be honest there are a lot of books I want to read but don't want to read enough to buy a physical copy of. Plus now I have a netgalley account and I've got the opportunity to read and review books before they're released!

It was the Eurovision Song Contest in May. Last year I was in uni, and my best friend and I watched it together through Skype which was a lot of fun. This year I went to my friend's Eurovision party in Swansea; there were around 10 of us there, and each of us had to pick a country and bring a themed snack. I chose Greece - I love that country - and took around a bowl of Greek salad, complete with cherry tomatoes and feta cheese, and a couple of pots of honey Greek yogurt.

It's a European feast!

The party was a success, and a lot of fun!

For the first time ever I went to The Hay Festival this year. For any of you who aren't familiar with it, The Hay Festival is an annual literary festival that takes place in Hay-on-Wye - the town of books - and it's somewhere I've been meaning to go for a while now. Luckily for me I got to go with work this year, which meant I actually ended up organising a drinks reception for the centenary of WW2 writer Alun Lewis and it meant I got to go to the two Alun Lewis themed events for free!

omnomnom reception nosh

I also saw Malorie Blackman. Malorie Blackman! Only one of my favourite authors from my childhood/pre-teens and only the author of one of my favourite books of all time which was also the first book that made me cry. I knew she was going to be there, sadly I couldn't go to her event as it was on at the same time as one of the Alun Lewis events, but I did take my copy of Noughts & Crosses just in case. I did see her signing books, but the queue was huge and sadly I was too busy with work stuff to wait to meet her. But one day I will!

stealthy shot

I had so much fun, and I'd love to go back to Hay next year for a shameless book festival holiday, there was such a lovely atmosphere and it was such lovely weather and it was just lovely.

This is a new little section of my monthly wrap-ups. I've seen a few bloggers sharing posts they've really enjoyed by other bloggers, and I decided it was about time I did the same because I follow some amazing bloggers and their posts deserve to be read!

Cecily @ Manic Pixie Dream Worlds wrote a fantastic post about Sexual Violence in Epic Fantasy

Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies wrote about the tropes and genres she's So Over

Cristina @ Girl in the Pages wrote a brilliant post about whether or not we're Too Hard On Our Heroines

Cait @ Paper Fury wrote a great post on Writing Diversely

Mallory @ The Local Muse wrote a great introduction to European Romanticism

Deanna @ Deanna Writes wrote a fun post about Not Reviewing Books

Kat @ Murder of Goths wrote a guest post @ She Might Be Loved all about Body Positivity

So how was your May?