A twenty year old British student's rambles on novels, from classic literature to epic fantasy. I especially love Victorian Literature, Jane Austen, and historical fantasy novels. I live off tea and cake.
This is possibly the most disturbing book ive ever read. I really want to know how you felt while reading it, it makes me so angry the whole online thing. Thoughts?
I thought "I Am Malala" was really wonderful! It's an easy enough read, and given the complexities of Middle Eastern conflict and Islam, it really helped me to understand Pakistani perspectives, at least in the Swat area where she used to reside! I learned so much.
I was kind of on the fence about this one as I, like you, really enjoyed the mythology aspect but I thought Twylla was a really inactive character for the first 60% of the novel, as in she just goes along with what the queen says and doesn't make much of her own choices in the beginning part. Then at the end when everything is revealed then she becomes more active. I kind of wish that she had been active for a larger portion of the book. I also agree with you on the love triangle aspect and i really don't like seeing them in every single YA book. If they were sporadically placed into one or two series and not every single one then i'd probably be more open to them.
I feel like I'm the only one who hated this book, the guard/prince love triangle has been done so many times and has been done 100 times better, the writing wasn't good, Twylla was a really annoying character (I love strong female characters, which Twylla was definitely not) and I also hated Lief, the only character I liked was Merek. The author ruined the only thing I liked about the book, Twylla's ability.
Really enjoyed this video, especially the aspect regarding the goodreads tbr. I am also attempting 0by16 (I have a video for it too) and whilst it's a tough challenge it's not unreasonable for me. (I hope!) Good luck with your reading. :)
Portal in the Pages Thank you! Yep, I'm finding it tough but enjoyable at the same time, and I'm really excited to be getting to some of the books that I've had on my goodreads tbr for years! Thank you, and you too :D
I just found your channel this morning and I've just been sat watching a few of your videos and I'm really enjoying them!! :)) and well done on the fantastic reading month you had! Can't wait to watch your march wrap up in a moment also :,)
there are so may series that i want to read and finish! i watch these video's and realize how little i have read in regards to series DX great video! cant wait for the next two :)
I just got the book for my birthday (I'm including it in my birthday book haul)! I can't wait to read it, even if I have an intense hatred of love triangles! :)
Not sure if you're still interested, but the Changeling was written sort of in two parts, with Middleton writing the more serious dramatic sections and the other author contributing the comedic scenes. Plays were sometimes collaborated on based on the specialties of the authors
Woo, Prudence! I have it on preorder and am going to read it ASAP too. That'll be a great birthday present! :-) I adore Gail Carriger. Have you read any of the YA Finishing School series? I'm looking forward to the concluding book in that series too.
Yay another Gail Carriger fan! I can't wait for it to arrive I am SO excited! Yes I've read all three that are out so far! I do really like them, but just not quite as much as the Parasol Protectorate series! I'm excited for the last book though, the third was my favourite so far and the way that it ended was just so painful D:
BloomTV I agree the Finishing School series isn't quite as good as the Parasol Protectorate (adult vs. YA comparison in there too... for me at least) but they are such good fun! I was rather upset by the end of the third book too! But we'll get our conclusion in November :-)
From what I've gathered from Novels and Nonsense, Pickwick Papers has a bunch of humor in it, yet it's intricate & an intro to a longer, more mature work of Dickens, Bleak House. CD has lots of options. It'll be interesting to see which CD book you choose next.
Yes I'd like to read PP, it sounds like the sort of thing that I'd enjoy. I'd love to read Bleak House too because I've got the dvd of the BBC show, but it's so long! I look forward to whatever I do choose though :)
PP is likely more humorous, & easier. If you have seen the BH DVD you know the story already & it makes the book easier to read. BH is a long book but the last 300 or so pages go by at a swifter pace. It took me 2 evenings & a Sat. & Sun. to finish it but I have an advantage. I know the politics of the period somewhat well & almost all of the long words CD sometimes uses I'm already familiar with. BH is cake compared with Eliot's Middlemarch. NovelsandNonsense will be talking about BH, soon I think. It'll be interesting to hear what she has to say about it.
the edition of to kill a mocking bird! ahhh so pretty, i also haven't read that story i do own it, and i have been meaning to read it for too long! i'm definitely reading it before the sequel, i read my first jenny colgan book this month west end girls and i really enjoyed it :) usually my go to chic lit author is jill mansell :D a thousand pieces of you has such a beautiful cover :D
I know, isn't it lovely?! Yay I'm glad you enjoyed the Jenny Colgan! I've never read anything by Jill Mansell (mainly because I hardly ever read chick lit or even adult contemporary fiction) but maybe next time I'm feeling something like that I'll check it out, I know how popular she is! I know it really does, definitely one of my favourite covers for sure :)
i loved the sky is everywhere! god i read it so long ago but i think i read it at least 4 times :) great video! i love seeing people favorite books! :)
Yay another person who loved it too! Yes it's such a beautiful book to re-read :D Thank you very much, I love seeing them too, I think it's a great insight and I always get loads of reccomendations from them :)
I can understand what your saying, and thank you for replying. I have too many books to have any kind of TBR shelf . I HAVE to have all my series together so it would just never work. I've read a lot of my books but I still have far more unread books then read. So if that works for you I say yay! Anything that gets more reading done is good.
No problem! Aw I feel you with the seperation of series, that's partly what motivates me to read and finish series, so that they can all be together on my shelf! Yes, exactly :')
Great TBR! I definitely plan on reading an E.M. Forrester novel this summer! I'm still trying to figure out if I can actually get my TBR down by 2016, but I don't think it's going to happen. :( It's too massive! :D
Thank you! Ooooh you definitely should, he's a great writer. If you're not sure where to start I'd recommend A Room With a View, it's pretty short and it has a good film adaptation! Aw no, that sucks :( At least you can try and minimise it!
Yeah, I just picked up A Room With a View at my local used book store, and it's one of my more anticipated summer reads! I'm majoring in English right now, so I'll probably come across him multiple times as well! :D And that's my summer goal, to at least get it down to a more manageable level! :)
I always wonder with these types of videos. What will you do when you run out of books to read? Will you just reread the books that you have? Will you buy more to read? If you buy more, doesn't that then give you another TBR shelf? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of getting your TBR down to zero? I have so many questions about this project zero thing that nobody ever seems to answer. I hope these questions don't come across as rude. I just genuinely want to know. I always get a little anxious watching these videos because all I can think about is the running out of books to read part, lol. It would be tragic for me to look at all my book shelves and not own a single book that I haven't read. But that's I guess just a personal fear of mine, lol. I have just been wondering. I would love to hear more about this. Thanks
No worries, I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense, and don't worry about it, you're not being at all rude, I don't mind answering! I'm actually not an official creator of the #0by16 project so I'm not in complete understanding of the purpose. However, I took it to mean that I would eliminate all the books on my TBR, some of which have been there for years, going unread. I used to have a process where I would buy books, read them all, and then buy more books, ect., so it was a continuous cycle. However it got to the point last year where I had so many unread books, (and I was keeping up with my book buying habits), that I just wasn't reading enough to reduce my TBR. So I decided that I needed to concentrate on my unread books before buying more. I'm still trying to work on this, but I am getting better, and my TBR is slowly reducing. My goal is that I'll get back to that cycle I did have, where I bought books, read them all, and then bought more. That way I'm reading things as soon as I'm buying them which is generally just a better practice. Also, I find it quite stressful that I have a physical TBR of about 30 books! I also have a goodreads TBR shelf though, and this year I want to reduce that too, and read all the books that I've had on that online shelf, by either buying them or getting them from the library. (My goodreads TBR shelf is pretty different from my physical TBR shelf, although there is some overlap.) I definitely know what you mean about being anxious about having no books to read! That thought still makes me worry, but I guess when I use 0by16, I mean that I want a small number of books (say 5 or 10) that I've got, and then I'll read those before buying new books. I really hope that answers your questions, let me know if you want to know anything else!
Finish all of the 'A song of ice and fire' series! Honestly I love it so much and it is waaaay better than the TV series! It is so good it has even surpassed my love for Harry Potter. and that is extreme obsession! You won't regret reading them :)x
I will definitely try to! I'm not in too much of a rush too because I want to finish all of my shorter series and I know there's going to be a long wait for the next book! Gosh you must really love it if it stands above Harry Potter!:') I'll definitely try to read more of the volumes this year though x
The next book probably won't be out until 2016 so there isn't a big rush, savour them :) I still love HP a lotttt (She says wearing her Hogwarts shirt) but ASOIAF is superb! x
Call the Midwife is one of my all-time favorite shows! And I can see how the episode you talked about could have been triggering: It was very intense! Personally, I can see why publishers don't add trigger warnings to books. They might not want to spoil the book for readers who might not be triggered. But I can definitely see your position. As someone who suffers from VERY MILD anxiety (I have a mild case of OCD, and I've had one anxiety attack), minor things can be triggering. For example, in Lord of the Flies and If I Stay, the graphic description of brains was extremely triggering for me. Maybe publishers could add a TW page in the front/back of the book. That way people with anxiety can look at the page and see if it's something they can read without being triggered, and people who don't can skip over the page. Great discussion! I love your videos! :)
Yay, high five! Yeah it really was, I mean I should be used to it by now from CtM but I'm really not! Yeah I can understand that, I feel bad even telling people in videos what books have trigger warnings so I always try to say if it's a spoilery one. Oh no, I definitely feel for you with the anxiety as that's what I suffer with. My friend has a similar issue with body parts and those kinds of things, although she doesn't have panic attacks, she faints, which is awful for her. That's a really great idea, I hadn't thought of that! Thank you very much, I'm so glad you enjoy them!:)
Looks like you had a really good month! Unfortunately, I only got through two books in January, :( I'll definitely check out all of the books on this list though! :)
Call me awful but I'm mostly into writing rather than reading at the moment. However, here's some women fantasy authors you may like: Robin McKinley and Dianna Wynne Jones.
That's always a good alternative though, what are you working on?:) I'll definitely check out Robin McKinley and of course I am so desperately behind on reading Dianna Wynne Jones, I've been meaning to read her books for ages, as Howl's Moving Castle is one of my favourite films! Thank you for the recommendations :')
What I'm writing is threefold: I'm scribbling a piece on booktubers, on questions & issues of all kinds related to HP, & an exercise in worldbuilding inspired by Beauxbatons. B'batons is fascinating 'cause the magical systems are the same as HP but it's different enough to be unique vis a vis familiar Hogwarts. My reading is just curtailed at the moment. Some day I'll go back to reading the likes of Prydain, Middlemarch, HP Page to Screen & Bleak House again.
I just finished it a couple of days ago and absolutely adored it! I really loved everything about it, from the setting to the characters to the romance. I'm really looking forward to picking up the rest of them, I've heard that they just keep getting better :D
Have had Throne of Glass on my kindle for some time. I think I'm going to read This Song Will Save Your Life. I just finished Crazy last night by Amy Reed so I'm kind of in the mood for dramatic contemporary. I also have Soulless that needs to be read a sap! So many books so little time. 😳
You should definitely try ToG soon if you can :) Definitely pick up This Song Will Save Your Life, its so fantastic, hopefully you'll enjoy it :') Oooh and read Soulless too - it's one of my all-time favourite series and I can't stop recommending it to people. Indeed, such is the booklovers problem :')
It seems like every time I get on Book Outlet they are recommending Meant to Be and I have been eyeing it for a while. I am finally starting the Throne of Glass series this month. Have you read Assassin's Blade?
You should definitely try it, I was pleasantly surprised! Yay Throne of Glass is awesome, though I have to admit it took until the third book for me to really fall in love with the series. I haven't read Assassin's Blade yet, although its really high on my to-buy list and hopefully I'll get to read it soon!
No totoro today? (-: In Jan. I read learned stuff. That's why I like reading the Prydain series or HP or HG & the like. It's a break from The Technological Society et al. Here's some books with religion in them. Death Comes for the Archbishop/Cather, Inherit the Wind (play), The Crucible (play), Man for All Seasons (play), Murder in the Cathedral (play), The Power and the Glory/G. Greene, Silence/Endo, the scifi trilogy/CS Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia/CS Lewis, Lord of the Rings/Tolkien, Silmarillion/Tolkien, Shantung Compound/Gilkey, Middlemarch/G. Eliot. Warning. Not all the above books shrink from the disturbing, eg. the Endo book. Further, Lewis & Gilkey can get preachy. What uni do you want to go to? JKR went to Exeter. UK booktubers have gone to eg. Oxford, Birmingham, & Edinburgh.
No totoro that day! Ah books are great for giving one a break from studying and/or work! Thank you for all the awesome recommendations, I've read some of them but will definitely check some of the others out. I'm hoping to get the grades to get in to my first choice which is Southampton! Exeter is a popular choice with my friends though, and one of my best friends just got into Oxford so I will definitely be visiting her :')
Oxford has the Bodleian library where Hogwarts library scenes were filmed if I'm not mistaken. So you've read some of my recommendations. Ok here's more: The Selfish Giant/O. Wilde; Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed/P. P. Hallie; The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Hugo; The Vicar of Wakefield/O. Goldsmith; Brothers Karamazov/Dostoevsky; Scenes of a Clerical Life/G. Eliot; Elmer Gantry/Sinclair Lewis; Divine Comedy/Dante; Canterbury Tales/Chaucer; The Decameron/Boccaccio.
i read this book last year and loved it so so much! i understand what you mean about the amount of information, i'm currently re-reading it and i'm enjoying it more the second time round, i think its because i know more about the world and the different voyants and also the unusual slang seems easier to understand, i found it all a bit hard to keep up with last time i read it, although i still loved the story :) i'm really excited to read the mime order, it was horrible having to wait a whole year!! great video! :D
Really enjoying your videos! I get so excited by classics but takes me so long to actually get to reading them! I think it's because I know they can be quite heavy to read at times! I've subscribed and followed you on goodreads :) xxx
Thank you!! Yes same, I've got quite a few on my shelves which I've had for months and still haven't gotten around to reading! Thank you lovely, it's much appreciated :) xxx
