Week 2 of Nonfiction November is hosted by Frances at The Volatile Rune. She asks: What are you looking for when you pick up a nonfiction book? Do you have a particular topic you’re attracted to? Do you have a particular writing style that works best? When you look at a nonfiction book, does the Read More
Category: Cover Art
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
Book Spine Poetry #1
The late, great musical satirist Tom Lehrer had a song called I got it from Agnes which went: I love my friends and they love me We’re just as close as we can be And just because we really care Whatever we get, we share! I got it from Agnes She got it from Jim…. etc etc 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
It’s what’s between the covers that counts …
No doubt you can point me to countless book covers that use the same photographs – there are several that use a Victorian gent by some railings that I’ve seen commented upon, but yesterday I spotted a pair for myself… The first is Black Roses by Jane Thynne, which is set in 1930s Berlin. A 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
Black! Black! Black!
Dear friends, Today is October the 1st, and I’m about to slip off into the darkness – I may be some time… No, seriously, it’s time to begin reading for my I’m going to delve into the black-covered world of the teenage vampire novel, and I’m going to start with the biggie Twilight. Then I’ll 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
Great title, great cover …
Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Hedgehog by Paul Robert Smith Could the second book I’ve read in the past few months to feature the word ‘hedgehog’ in the title possibly be as good as the first here? Sadly, no – Up a Tree in the Park at Night with a Read More
