Top Ten Tuesday: authors I hope I’m going to love

For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, it’s a freebie – so I thought I’d choose the topic of authors I hope I’m going to love. I’m sure we’re all familiar with the sensation of really, really wanting to like a particular author, and here are a few that I’m very much looking forward to reading! You can find all details about these lovely bookish posts on The Artsy Reader Girl’s blog.

Book Review: Blasted Things

Thanks so much to Sandstone Press and FMcM Associates for sending me a copy of Blasted Things by Lesley Glaister! I’d heard of the author before, probably because she’s a Scottish-based writer, but I’d never read any of her books. And, after reading this, I’m really not sure why she’s not more widely-known!

Blasted Things is set in 1920 – Clementine was a VAD nurse during the First World War and, after a tragedy, has settled down with her husband Dennis. Vincent received a disfiguring injury as a NCO during the war and is at a loss on how to proceed with his life.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Enjoyed But Rarely Talk About

If you live in the land of book Instagram or Twitter (like I do), you will be very aware that it can often be an echo chamber. Certain books get talked about again and again (and again), and the hype is very much, um, hyped. I’ve only been active for just over two years, though, so there’s plenty of books I’ve enjoyed that I haven’t shared – which is why I was so happy to find this as a Top Ten Tuesday pick! I’d love to talk more about the books I’ve adored but seem to fly under the online book world’s radar. And these are all, of course, five stars… You can find all details about these lovely bookish posts on The Artsy Reader Girl’s blo

Classics Club #10: The Weatherhouse

I read The Weatherhouse for the third-last Classics Club spin back in May or June and, as seems to be consistent with my reviews at the moment, just never got round to writing about it – so hopefully my reminiscences aren’t too hazy!

This was a cover buy back when I was still new to Waterstones and transported by the idea of 50% discount (not that that excitement ever went away, really.) Back then, I was so excited to try all these bestsellers and different genres and expand my reading, but that was an experiment that didn’t really work and now I’m back to good old feminist historical fiction.

Classics Club Review #4: Testament of Youth

As I’ve mentioned once or twice on here, I’m currently writing a novel set during the First World War (although the phrase ‘currently writing’ is probably stretching the truth…) It’s really important to me that the novel is historically accurate, so over the past year I’ve been reading histories and memoirs focusing on the period. And the one I was most excited to read is Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth.

I watched the film a couple of years ago, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s beautifully made, although I’m such a fan of Alicia Vikander and female-focused histories that my love of it was fairly predictable. The book, however, is quite a different entity: much more nuanced and impressively analytical, Testament of Youth is much more than a heart-rending romance (although it is that, too).

2018 Reading Wrap-Up

Welcome to my list of my favourite books of 2018. That’s me, holding up three of my faves in the bookshop I work in, because I’m in charge of the social media there, so I like to do stupid things like get people to choose their favourite books of the year.

Book Review: All Quiet on the Western Front

I was immediately impressed by All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque’s classic 1929 novel about the First World War. Set on the Western Front, it follows a German soldier as he struggles with army life and the loss of his friends and, more disturbingly, his own selfhood. The novel is narrated by Paul Baumer, whose eloquent expression of the war’s lost generation and their purposeless existence equips him perfectly for the role of the ‘unknown soldier’: a youthful archetype of a soldier whose sense of self has been contaminated by the war before he has even begun in life.

Image credit: All Quiet on the Western Front

Theatre Review: Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme

May – June 2016, directed by Jeremy Herrin, Citizens Theatre

A truly excellent war drama has the potential to leave the audience reeling; exploring the rawness of grief and humanity in the context of such a disruptive force, it can affect the viewers in a visceral way that no other form of drama can quite capture.  As poignant and revealing as the Citizen Theatre’s production of Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme may be, it lacks this potent transformative impact and suffers all the more for it.

Image credit: The Guardian