Top Ten Tuesday: Books Read During Hiatus

Life chose to become complicated and difficult for a little while back there! Following on from the stress of the landlord giving us notice to quit, the process of finding a new house, deciding to investigate buying rather than renting, negotiating mortgages and making offers and putting together deposits and instructing solicitors... all took some time and generates some stress. And alongside that, my dad's health took a rapid down hill plunge. He had been suffering from cancer for some years but it had spread from prostate to bowel to bones. In the space of ten days he went from being active enough to be considering going for a drive to unable to manage the stairs to bedbound and then died. Over the last couple of months, I have been travelling up and down to Kent, a four and a half hour trip at the best of times, to initially visit and provide and arrange care, to support my mum when he died, to sort out funeral arrangements and the will... Some things had to give and for a while, the blog was one. There were things that I did keep going to maintain my own mental health though: I kept up my Italian lessons and completed DuoLingo's course, I kept up my running and of course, I kept up my reading.

Top Ten Tuesday:ย Secondary/Minor Characters Who Deserve Their Own Book

I am not entirely sold on this topic: there have been too many cheap re-hashes of existing novels, claiming to be original by being from a different point of view. I might sigh dramatically in despair as I point out Suzanne Collins' A Ballad of Songbird and Snakes, or E. L. James... or for that matter Disney's Cruella and Maleficent... That said, when done well, when the right character is chosen, we get gems like Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys. And the propulsion of a minor character into their own novel is the identifying quirk of the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French. So, who might I put forward?

Top Ten Tuesday: Books Iโ€™d Want With Me While Stranded On a Deserted Island

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Previous Top Ten Tuesday Topics June 1: Freebie: The Last Ten Books… Continue reading Top Ten Tuesday: Books Iโ€™d Want With Me While Stranded On a Deserted Island

Top Five Saturday: (Over) Hyped Authors

The Top 5 series is back! Top Five Saturday is a meme hosted by Devouring Books to discover and share books that all have a common theme. Previously on the blog I have focused on witches, werewolves, thrillers, faeries, fairy tale re-tellings, high fantasy and many more. I am going to try and bring this series back for… Continue reading Top Five Saturday: (Over) Hyped Authors