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Books I Planned To Read For the First Half of 2017

4th July 2017 by gemkarita Leave a Comment

Last week’s Top Ten Tuesday (which is sadly on holiday — how will we survive?!) was about the best books you’ve read during the first half of 2017. Unfortunately, I am unable to recall off the top of my head anything that absolutely stands out (I’m blaming depression and anxiety for this). I had to check my Goodreads shelves, and I don’t have enough to make a full list of ten books!

However, I have enough in my TBR list of books that have been published since January of this year here in the UK that I have been planning to read but still haven’t gotten to. (Is this a familiar story or what?) …

Top Ten Tuesday: Book Series I’ve Been Meaning To Read

20th June 2017 by gemkarita 5 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. More information, plus future topics can be found on this page. This week was ‘Top Ten Series I’ve Been Meaning To Start But Haven’t’.

I used to really love book series — some of my all-time favourite books are the Harry Potter books and The Lord of the Rings. The reader gets to keep coming back to that wonderful ‘verse and learn more about the magic rules/systems and the interesting characters inhabiting it. Unfortunately, some series don’t seem to have been originally planned to be such: the first book contains most of the details and the heaviest plot, and you can see the author trying to stretch it out in the following books but absolutely failing.

Here’s hoping the following books aren’t at all like that! …

Bibliophile Fridays: 5 Favourite Fantasy Books

17th February 2017 by gemkarita 3 Comments

Bibliophile Fridays is a weekly meme hosted by Whoo Gives A Hoot and Foxes and Fairy Tale. More information on the Goodreads group. This week was ‘five books from your favourite genre’.

My all-time favourite genre? That would be fantasy. I started off with fairy tales and myths when I was a wee one, and that’s what has been close to my heart ever since. I have now varied my reading choices, but I will always have time for fantasy.

The five fantasy books closest to my heart, in no special order (because that’s too hard!) —
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Bibliophile Fridays: 5 Books That Made My Heart Flutter

10th February 2017 by gemkarita 9 Comments

Bibliophile Fridays is a weekly meme hosted by Whoo Gives A Hoot and Foxes and Fairy Tale. More information on the Goodreads group. This week was ‘five books that made your heart flutter’!.

I was moaning on Twitter about this prompt because I couldn’t get past three books! I read romances from time to time, but not enough to make an impression, the way the first three on this list did.

I was trying to make a post for #BFridayPosts but I can't think of 5 books that made my heart seriously flutter. Um…

— Gemma (@gemkarita) February 4, 2017

I already gave up and shelved the idea — I don’t have a lot of time to make posts, so when I don’t have a concrete idea, I move on to something I can put together quicker. But then an email made me think of books from the past: the ones that never made a dent in the bestseller list, or the ones known as guilty pleasures. So that is what this list is made up of, with the book covers when I first read them.
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Top Ten Tuesday: 2016 Releases I Meant To Read (But Didn’t Get To)

10th January 2017 by gemkarita 4 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme created and hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. More information, plus future topics can be found on this page. This week was ‘2016 Releases I Meant To Read’.

I thought I’d do these prompts at least once (or twice?) a month since I seem to fare better at having one on instagram. Maybe it’ll make me a more regular blogger!

So I kept my ears quite close to the ground last year when it came to new book releases, and I have more than a handful of books published in 2016. Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out how to balance reading with bookstagram and blogging, so I didn’t manage to read most of them (although I’m sure most readers always feel they haven’t read as much as they would have wanted in a year). I have to re-think my book purchases for this year, which is a post for another day!

Anyway, here are some of the books that were published in 2016, and I will hopefully get to tick them off the TBR list before the end of this year. …