Tag: Tress of the Emerald Sea

Top Ten Tuesday: Books On My Winter 2023-2024 To-Read List

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Some of you may have noticed that I have missed a couple of Top Ten Tuesday posts recently - which is unusual for me - and also that I've become very much behind in my reviews - which is distinctly not unusual by this point in the year! Things had got a little on top of me recently, I have to say - my father's illness, my daughter's needs, my own health (a burst ear drum, minor in the big picture!) And then an Ofsted Inspection on top of everything else, with mock exam marking... But, I am back and let's return to the books with the regular seasonal tbr update. As always, please bear in mind that I never really have a to-be read list, nor do I really plan my reading at all. I am - as I have said before - totally a mood reader. But, at the moment these are the books that I might get around to reading over the winter. Let's start with my current read: the gentle, familiar milieu of Sophie Hannah's Poirot in a Christmas setting, and the final parts of the Children of Blood and Bone...

Top Ten Tuesday: Water

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Water is such a potent symbol in writing: it is a setting that takes humanity literally out of its element, creating a vulnerability that we don't always feel on land; it remains largely unexplored and alien and home to utterly foreign and incomprehensible creatures; it is an image of chaos, calmed by the word of God in so many cultures and mythologies. What is one of the most iconic lines in film? "Release the kraken!" The ocean can be a metaphor of our minds and emotions and imaginations - look at the language we use for our interiority be it shallow or deep, turbulent or calm, we apply maritime language to it continually; it can be symbolic of female sexuality, birth and the creation of life. There are so many oceans to choose from that this is in no way an exhaustive list, nor could I limit it to ten!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books on My Summer 2023 To-Read List

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This week's Top Ten theme is a look forward to the books on our TBRs for the summer - those books that will fill up the long six weeks of the summer vacation, books that will be taken to the beach with us, to the parks, to gardens. For me, books that will come with me and my family to Rome on our first 'proper' foreign holiday ... ever. Unless you count EuroDisney which I don't: EuroDisney was great but so unreal that it really didn't feel like visiting France in any way! With next week's theme looking at books to be released in the second half of the year - and I love the chance to research upcoming books - I'm going to limit my list this week to the ten books that I currently own but have not yet read.