Review of the Year #3: 2021, Books of the Year!

I still award a score to the majority of books I read – out of 10, including halfs (so out of 20 really!). Those scores are only snapshots of course, and some books fade from your memory as others, which maybe scored lower initially, stay or grow. I read 150 books this year, of which Read More

The Inside and Out Book Tag

I got this tag from Calmgrove, who got it from Bookforager who got it from someone else. (I wonder what its ‘R-number’ is? 😀 ) 1. Inside flap/back of the book summaries: Too much info? Or not enough? Unless I’m in a bookshop browsing, I try not to read blurbs in too much detail. In a Read More

Easter Bunnies

Watership Down Cover Art Richard Adams’ first novel Watership Down was published in 1972 by the publisher Rex Collings in a rather sweet, but monochrome cover (above). The novel had been rejected by several publishers, but after publication went on to win the Carnegie Medal amongst many other awards. Thinking about Easter bunnies, I made Read More

My TBR Rainbow: #10 The Medal Edit

Congratulations to all our Olympians who took part in Rio In celebration, I made a pile of gold, silver and bronze-spined books from my TBR. I chose the three volumes of HP Lovecraft’s weird tales to represent the silver incarnation of Penguin Modern Classics between 2000 and 2007, of which I have many. Interestingly, all the Read More

My TBR Rainbow #9: Pattern

Earlier this year I did a series of posts of books from my TBR piles grouping them into rainbow colours (collated here). Time for another – and something different. Spotting a multi-coloured striped spine across the room, I thought I’d look for more. Gosh it was difficult! There are many bicoloured spines – maybe different colours Read More

My TBR Rainbow

Having lost a lot of posts and comments when I moved webhosts, I’m reblogging them, grouping together sometimes. Thus, seven of my TBR Rainbow posts have been combined and edited into just one below. This series originally ran between mid-March and the end of May. * * * * * This morning while sitting in Read More

Cover Art – The Vivisector by Patrick White

My late Mum had several books by English-born Australian author Patrick White in her collection which I later inherited. All were ex-library copies, well-used, covered in stamps and flyleafs cut out, so once I decided I would never get around to reading them (they look challenging reads), out they went – but I saved the Read More

Illustrated books and crossover editions

I bought a signed first edition of the hardback of A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, which I wrote about here. After looking at some of the illustrations, I sat it in my bookcase as being almost too nice/collectible to read. The initial paperback edition is just like a slightly smaller version of the hardback Read More

Rude Awakenings!

Maybe it’s my current reading (Pride & Prejudice & Zombies by Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith), but I’ve been having vivid dreams. The latest of which consisted of a science experiment at school involving woodlice which transmogrified into giant maggots (remember the Pertwee vintage Dr Who with maggots – but not quite so big and Read More