March’s Re-Read! An Arthurian re-telling!

 

My third book in the Booktube ReReadathon this year and I’m loving taking part in this challenge! I’m getting to rediscover old favourites and with the book below I had completely forgot the majority of it!

The prompt for March was to read a book published or set before the year you were born. I’m a 1996 baby, so this book is definitely set before my time! Set around a young lad who is given a stone through which he can see into the past, by Merlin no less, we follow both him and the previous storyline as his life seems to match up with that of the old King Arthur.

I had forgotten much about this book, the unique chapter layout of very small chapters and even the stone which allowed Arthur to see into the past (it’s in the title for Pete’s sake!), so having an excuse to re-read this book was great! It’s a YA book which I feel teeters on the younger side of YA, and I love finding those books as they’re definitely less hyped online than those aimed at the older YA audience.

There is so much to explore within this book, with the well know and well trodden storyline of King Arthur given a revamp and a heavy twist. I loved the relationships between characters and how this develops, as well as watching Arthur himself understand more of this weird world around him.

Although I couldn’t remember much about this book before I re-read it, I knew I wanted to carry on with the series. I can 100% confirm this now! It’s definitely a series I intend to carry on with and I can’t wait to see what else is in store for Arthur!

Aaru beat my expectations

Have you heard of this book? I hadn’t until the author contacted me and asked if I would review the book. I read the synopsis (click here to visit the Goodreads page) and thought that it sounded like a really interesting concept, so I said yes. It’s a dystopian book, about the possibility of storing the consciousness of an individual (whether alive or dead, as long as they had their data collected before their death) in a utopian world. Our main two characters are sisters, with one who has leukemia and is likely to pass away soon and the other is her younger sister and agrees to be the face of this new company in return for her sister being “saved” within this system.

I will say, that the beginning third of this book wasn’t great. The concept was still interesting but the writing wasn’t good enough to carry the story and I was feeling disappointed. However, I’m really glad I carried on with the book as the end two-thirds of the book are done so well and I was fully absorbed. The writing improves vastly and I was so invested in the events, that when I finished the story I knew I needed to read Halls of Hel! (The second book, click here to see it on Goodreads)

I still maintain that the beginning of this book could be improved, there’s a lot of information in there that is essential to the rest of the book so the content is important. However, the writing could be more engaging and I worry that others may be put off and not reach the more intriguing sections.

Overall, I think you should give this book a shot and be prepared to not fully click with the first section. Just be aware that it gets so, so interesting (and you could be the opposite of me and adore the whole thing) so give it a shot! I’m happy to add this to my collection!

Have you heard of and/or read this book? I’d be interested to know how many people know of this already!

My October TBR!| 2018

After such a busy start to Masters life, I attempted to cut down my tbr for this month… I failed. But let’s have a look at what I couldn’t stop myself from adding to my list! I have done a video version of this on my YouTube channel, click here to go watch that! (It’s also my first video with Closed Captions, which I intend to add to every video I upload from now on. Making my content available to even more people!)

This Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada

I was lucky enough to win a physical ARC of the second book in this series in a Twitter giveaway, but I’ve yet to read book #1! So this is definitely first up for this months tbr!

 

Hero at the Fall by Alwyn Hamilton

Book 3 in the Rebel of the Sands trilogy, I am so excited to finally get around to the final of the series!! This is also a book I’ve borrowed from the library and it has to be back by the 15th October… so this is a must!

 

A Promise Stitched in Time by Colleen Rowan Kosinski

If you’ve followed me for any time at all you know I love WWII literature. This cover seems to indicate this, and therefore I expect to really enjoy it! I hope this ends up being the case

 

This Cruel Design by Emily Suvada

Time for book 2! I put other books of different genres in between the reading of this series as I tend to meld books all into each other if I read a series in one big go. So I want to be able to differentiate whilst also reading before the publication date! That’s the plan, at least.

Weird War 2 by Richard Denham

This seems to be a book that talks about the funny and interesting aspects of WWII that aren’t very well know. I anticipate this being a quick and fun read

 

Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

I don’t actually aim to finish off this book this month, I just want to get another 100 pages in. Of course, I’d love to finish it but I’m still attempting to be realistic! But, who knows.

 

And that’s it! I don’t know if I’ll manage to get around to it all but I really hope so as this is a really interesting selection of books that promises to be a good reading month!!

Have you guys read any of these? And are you excited for This Cruel Design? I’m so excited to get to this series and I hope I love it!

Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman, a review

My boyfriend read this book, incredibly quickly for him, and then brought it along when he came to visit (we’re long distance) in order for me to read it! So I decided this was going to be my 2nd book for the 7in7readathon. I am so so grateful that he did as I absolutely loved this! I have only read one of Gaiman’s works before, The Ocean at the End at the End of the Lane (click here for my review!), so I was excited to get back into some of his writing. I also haven’t read any Norse mythology before, and I absolutely love mythology from Romans and Egyptians so I was excited about expanding my horizons within this area! Due to me never having learned anything about these myths before, I can’t attest to their accuracy so if that’s what you’re looking for here you might want to try a different review. However, if you just want to know about the book itself then please stay! I’ll tell you more!

This book is told in shorter stories, which I didn’t realise at first, and they all link together really well. They create one larger story overall and follow on from each other well. It also meant that I got through this book pretty quickly, as I always tend to do with short stories, and made it absolutely fly by. This is unlikely to be a long read!

The book introduces you to every single character and doesn’t assume you know anyone, which is great for a newbie like me, but it also doesn’t linger on them for too long. As a Marvel fan, I know about a few of the Gods such as Thor, Loki, Odin and some more, but the explanations and introductions given to them didn’t feel overly long or imposing, so if you’re already acquainted with these individuals you shouldn’t have to wade through much unnecessary backstory.

Each story comes from the mythology already present, passed down through history, and Gaiman explains where he took liberties and his reasons for this. Again, allowing more knowledgeable readers to understand his process a little more whilst also explaining to newcomers what is happening here.

If you couldn’t tell, I really enjoyed this book. The stories were written beautifully and I love how they flow into one another, also this book cemented my dislike for Loki! However, I also absolutely loved how this book was put together, with the narration style, the explanations, the flow and more. Sadly there wasn’t the little spark I get with some books, so this book is “just” a 4.5/5* read for me. There is literally nothing wrong with it that I can think of! I definitely recommend and hope that you enjoy this book as much, or a little bit more, than I did!

BookTubeAThon 2018 TBR!

I originally did this TBR as a video (if you couldn’t tell by the thumbnail-esque picture) so if you’d like to watch that then click here!

This will be my first foray into BookTubeAThon, which is spanning the 30th July till the 5th August this year, and I am really excited to take part in as many of the YouTube and Instagram challenges as possible! It’ll be a bit of a test for me as my editing skills are still in development but I’m looking forward to the challenge!

There are 7 reading challenges every year, so I’ll go through each challenge and explain my book choices.

1. Coin toss – this challenge is for my book to be decided by the flip of a coin (which I am horrendous at!). I decided it would be picking between 2 geography books that I own, one from the modern day and one a textbook from the late 1940s. I’d love to read both of them, especially now that I’ve finished my geography degree, so either one is fine by me! I ended up flipping and getting the modern day book so that is the first book on my tbr.
2. A book about something you want to do – so for me the book for challenge one is doubling up for this challenge. I really would love to have a job within the field of geography and so this fits in perfectly for me!
3. Book & Adaptation – challenge 3 is to read a book and then also watch its adaptation within the BookTubeAThon. I decided on Anne of Green Gables, which I have never read before and have been meaning to get around to for a while. I’ve also never seen an adaptation for it so I’m looking forward to this story.
4. Green – the fourth challenge is to read a book with green on the cover. The first two books I have already chosen also fit into this category as my copies both have green covers. However, I decided to pick some other books to also fit within this. I chose two books for this challenge, book #1 is Runaway by Meg Cabot (3rd book in the Airhead trilogy) and book #2 is Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett (6th book in the Discworld). I have been really enjoying reading both of these series and felt that their covers being green was a sign that I should read them soon!
5. A hat? – This challenge is to wear a hat the whole time while reading a book. Not going to lie I’m not keen on this challenge, I dislike hats for multiple reasons (I also get migraines and just… no thank you) so for me I am going to wear a hat reading Runaway as I always blitz through Meg Cabot’s books and I won’t have to have it on for long! It also means I won’t have to wear the hat outside, which is good as the only one I can find is a woolly hat and it’s July (and I live in the northern hemisphere) so I’d look like a crazy woman!
6. Beautiful spine – challenge #6 is to read a book which has a very pretty spine, specifically the spine rather than the cover as a whole. I picked a book called Unrivalled by Alyson Noël, which I picked up for no reason other than its spine! What else could fit this challenge so perfectly?
7. 7 books – the very last challenge is to simply read seven books over the course of the readathon. As I only have 5 books so far on my tbr I have just chosen random books which I would really like to get to for the last two. Book 6 is The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer, which I have owned for almost a decade now! I bought this on a school trip to the Netherlands in year 8 (12 to 13-year-olds) when we visited the Anne Frank Museum, and I was 13 at the time. I didn’t read it then as truth be told, I was kind of scared of the topic. It was stories about a dead girl which I knew were going to make me upset. I don’t think I was quite mature enough to read this book at that stage. Now I’m nearing the end of 21 years and I feel like I can pick up this book and really get out of it what the author intended. This will have a very different feel to all the other books on my tbr, however, I am happy to finally be getting around to this book. Book 7 is Alice by Christina Henry, the first book in a duology (I think) with the second book being Red Queen. My friend bought me these two books a couple of years ago for Christmas, and I was unable to get around to them as I had so many other books on my tbr! This seems to be a dystopian retelling of Alice in Wonderland and I am excited to dive into this darker version of the world.

That is my whole tbr explained and disected, so for ease of reference I’ll list all the books below:

• I Used To Know That Geography – Will Williams (Coin toss and something I want to do)
• Anne of Green Gables – L. M. Montgomery (Read a book and watch its adaptation)
• Runaway – Meg Cabot (Read a green book)
• Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett (Read a green book)
• Unrivalled – Alyson Noël (A beautiful spine)
• The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank – Willy Lindwer (Additional)
• Alice – Christina Henry (Additional)

Please let me know if you’re going to be doing the ReadAThon too, I’d love to interact and see how you guys interpret the challenges! I’ll be posting updates and responses to the challenges on my YouTube channel and my Innstagram (and lets be real probably Twitter too) so if you’d like to keep up with my progress then you can find me there! Links below (they’ll open in a new tab).

Click here for my Instagram – @autumnofpellinor

Click here for my YouTube – Autumn of Pellinor

Click here for my Twitter – @autumnpellinor

 

April TBR 2018!

 

This month has a…. vaguely disappointing tbr sadly. My 10000 word dissertation is due in at the end of the month so I’ve tried to keep it small just to be realistic about my free time. So this month I have 6 books on my tbr. If you’d like to watch my YouTube video of my tbr click here!

Book number one was Boy Snow Bird, as when I planned my tbr I hadn’t finished it and didn’t think I’d get to it. Turns out I underestimated myself! I finished this book at the end of March so it’s no longer on April’s tbr (obviously). It was a really interesting read, but I was really let down by the ending. It could’ve been a 4/5 star read if the ending had been done well.

 

Book two is Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith, and I started reading this book in March and am around a third of the way into it. It’s a non-fiction read about Octopodes and their evolution and intelligence and is an incredibly interesting read. I actually have a phobia of anything that lives in water, and I’m attempting to slowly overcome this. I think the book is helping a little as I can actually stand to look at photos of octopi! Small victories haha.

Book three is The Comedy of Errors, a Shakespeare play. I bought this along with Macbeth and Othello from a charity shop earlier this year and I read Macbeth in March. I’d really like to read more of Shakespeare’s work and I’m really hoping I’ll enjoy this play as the premise sounds interesting.

 

Book number four is Ink by Alice Broadway, which has an absolutely stunning cover! This image does not do it justice as it is shiny foil and just…ugh ♥

I really can’t wait to pick this one up as I feel like it will be a book which fully sucks me into its world.

 

The last two books on this months tbr are on my Kindle, rather than physical copies like the above books.

The fifth book is Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton. I got to see her at NYAListFest and saw her interviewed by Samantha Shannon. Seeing her talking about this book and also learning more about the concept and the background has really made me want to read it! I’m about a third of the way through so far, and I really hope I can finish it this month!

 

The final book which is on my April tbr is The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert. I actually read this on the train from my parents house back to mine, and have a review up on my blog already which you can find here! This was such a good, engrossing read and although it had it’s issues I definitely want to continue on and read the next book when it comes out!

 

I’m really hoping that I’ll manage to get through these this month, but I’m not going to beat myself up if I don’t. I need to prioritise right now, however much I’d rather just curl up with a good book and forget the world!

I have a YouTube channel!!

I’ve been interested in making a YouTube channel for a long time now, but I had always been too worried about putting my face online. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence. Somehow, and I’m not complaining about this, I suddenly don’t hate my face! Which is new for me, so I’m making the most of suddenly being a little big headed and starting my channel!

Possibly this is all just a huge procrastination device as I am supposed to be writing up my 10000-word dissertation which is due by the end of April! (For non-UK readers, this is the large project at the end of a University undergraduate degree and is a big deal haha)

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get some filming time squeezed in without compromising my degree and I really enjoyed making the first video and editing it was easier than I thought. It was made on my phone so I think I’m going to try and use an actual camera to improve the quality of the next video.

If you’re not interested than thank you for reading through this post, if you are interested in my channel then click here and I hope you enjoy! I should be making a blog post about the same topic as the video (The NYALitFest) sometime soon.

Thanks for reading!

Autumn