AnnaBookBel is 8!

My blog is eight years old today! It started off at Blogspot as Gaskella on September 15th 2008, eventually moving to WordPress. It was still called Gaskella at that stage, but later I changed the title to Annabel’s House of Books. Then, last summer I took the plunge and bought my own domain – annabookbel.net. I paid Read More

Thoughts on my header photo

I’ve been mostly writing reviews for Shiny New Books this week after finishing Frog Music, but wanted to write something on the blog for the weekend… My eye caught my header photo which when taken a few years ago, I compiled a shelf of favourite reads over the years, mostly those getting a full five stars from Read More

Scoring books, some musings on the subject

There are two definite camps in the book blogosphere: those who give/find useful star ratings, and those who don’t. I’ve always been in the former camp, but I do recognise that ratings are no more than a highly personal snapshot of opinion at time of publication. I started out giving whole stars out of five, Read More

What's in a name?

You might notice that I’ve had a bit of a re-branding for Gaskella. When I started blogging over four years ago, I tried to think of an imaginative name for this blog.  I enjoy a good pun, but couldn’t think of anything bookish that I liked that hadn’t already been used; there are some crackers Read More

Click-through clarity

While I clearly state on my ‘Info & Stuff’ page above, and mention from time to time in posts, I haven’t been shouting from the rooftops that when you click through on a book title link (or films etc), you’ll get taken to Amazon where you can order said item (or anything else for that Read More

A marvellous birthday weekend…

This post was republished into its original place in my blog’s timeline from my lost posts archive I’ve not been very active on the blogging front the past week – but I have had other things on my mind. I had a one of those big birthdays with a zero on the end this weekend, Read More

gaskella on normblog

Today, I’ve been appearing over at normblog. Normblog is the blog of distinguished academician Norman Geras who is Professor Emeritus of Government at the University of Manchester, he’s husband to Adèle and father to Sophie Hannah. While Norm’s main concerns are politics and his many short posts every day make fascinating reading, every Friday Norm Read More