books: 2016

Top Ten Tuesday: 2016 Releases I Meant To Read (But Didn’t Get To)

10th January 2017 by Gemma 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. …

2016 Memorable Reads

25th December 2016 by Gemma 7 Comments

Another year has gone, and it’s that time where readers round up and look back at the books they’ve read the past year, and see which ones stand out. My list is not the order of most to least; I’m looking at my Goodreads challenge page, and going from beginning to end of 2016.

So, without further ado — …

Subscription Box: Illumicrate August 2016 Unboxing

4th September 2016 by Gemma 4 Comments

In case you have been living under a rock this year, themed subscription boxes are now all the rage, and I’ll just direct you to the wiki page to read all about it.

Illumicrate is a book-themed subscription box curated by Daphne, who has established herself as a UK book blogger over at Winged Reviews. It’s a quarterly service, which I must admit is the basis of its appeal for me, since I figure she gets time to really source out which books are coming out to include in the boxes, as well as speaking to various creatives and independent retailers about bookish merchandise.

This is also my first ever subscription box, and I was very impressed with the contents! And so without further ado…

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On The Nightstand: The Muse

4th September 2016 by Gemma Leave a Comment

I can’t exactly remember how I felt about The Muse before its release. Everyone was waiting excitedly for it, and while I was enthusiastic, I didn’t feel it was with as much intensity compared to those who have read The Miniaturist. I admit I haven’t read that one; I missed the month when we read it for book club, and the comments were quite divisive that I did not feel particularly keen to find out which side of the debate I’d fall.

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From the Publisher’s Desk: The Girls

30th August 2016 by Gemma 3 Comments

Who has not heard of this book? Written by Emma Cline, her debut novel The Girls has been dubbed as the book to read this summer, and even the UK cover starkly reflects the idea of summertime — sun-streaked hair, loose summer dresses, and bright blue skies. One of the ladies from a book club I’m part of actually took it along as one of her beach reads!

Unfortunately, if your definition of a beach read does not involve cults and murders, then you might prefer to not bring this book along. On top of this, if your idea of a holiday read does not involve a lot of introspection and analysing and should, instead, contain quick-paced plotting, then I might suggest scheduling The Girls for another time.

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