Hi everyone, I recently updated the range of bookish tote bags available in my Zazzle store. These would make a great gift for the book lover in your life đ
All bags priced at âŹ18.90
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âOctober extinguished itself in a rush of howling winds and driving rain and November arrived, cold as frozen iron, with hard frosts every morning and icy drafts that bit at exposed hands and faces.â
âÂ
I have a hankering for some fantasy fiction this month after reading Victorian literature in October for Victober. Despite this, I will most likely join in with Nonfiction November. I just won’t let it take over my month.
I plan on reading one or two nonfiction books, some audiobooks, an ebook or two, print books and a couple of magazines.
Nonfiction November
Nonfiction November is a readathon in November aimed at reading nonfiction books. There are a few challenges but I’m not bothering with them. It’s hosted by ABookOlive and NonFicBooks.
Hunger by Roxane Gay
From the bestselling author of Bad Feminist: a searingly honest memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself.
âI ate and ate and ate in the hopes that if I made myself big, my body would be safe. I buried the girl I was because she ran into all kinds of trouble. I tried to erase every memory of her, but she is still there, somewhere. . . . I was trapped in my body, one that I barely recognized or understood, but at least I was safe.â
In her phenomenally popular essays and long-running Tumblr blog, Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as âwildly undisciplined,â Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she explores her own pastâincluding the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young lifeâand brings readers along on her journey to understand and ultimately save herself.
With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and power that have made her one of the most admired writers of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to learn to take care of yourself: how to feed your hungers for delicious and satisfying food, a smaller and safer body, and a body that can love and be lovedâin a time when the bigger you are, the smaller your world becomes.
How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease by Michael Greger, Gene Stone
From the physician behind the wildly popular website NutritionFacts.org, How Not to Die reveals the groundbreaking scientific evidence behind the only diet that can prevent and reverse many of the causes of disease-related death.
The vast majority of premature deaths can be prevented through simple changes in diet and lifestyle. In How Not to Die, Dr. Michael Greger, the internationally-renowned nutrition expert, physician, and founder of NutritionFacts.org, examines the fifteen top causes of premature death in America — heart disease, various cancers, diabetes, Parkinson’s, high blood pressure, and more — and explains how nutritional and lifestyle interventions can sometimes trump prescription pills and other pharmaceutical and surgical approaches, freeing us to live healthier lives.
The simple truth is that most doctors are good at treating acute illnesses but bad at preventing chronic disease. The fifteen leading causes of death claim the lives of 1.6 million Americans annually. This doesn’t have to be the case. By following Dr. Greger’s advice, all of it backed up by strong scientific evidence, you will learn which foods to eat and which lifestyle changes to make to live longer.
History of prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet whenever you can. Have high blood pressure? Hibiscus tea can work better than a leading hypertensive drug-and without the side effects. Fighting off liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival. Worried about heart disease (the number 1 killer in the United States)? Switch to a whole-food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to prevent the disease but often stop it in its tracks.
In addition to showing what to eat to help treat the top fifteen causes of death, How Not to Die includes Dr. Greger’s Daily Dozen — a checklist of the twelve foods we should consume every day. Full of practical, actionable advice and surprising, cutting edge nutritional science, these doctor’s orders are just what we need to live longer, healthier lives.
Audiobooks
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik, read by Katy Sobey
Fantasy
Will dark magic claim their home? Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her fatherâs too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge â and if she fails, sheâll die. Yet if she triumphs, it may mean a fate worse than death. And in her desperate efforts to succeed, Miryem unwittingly spins a web which draws in the unhappy daughter of a lord. Irinaâs father schemes to wed her to the tsar â he will pay any price to achieve this goal. However, the dashing tsar is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of mortals and winter alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and Irina embark on a quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power and love. As with her standalone novel Uprooted, Naomi Novik has once again been influenced by classic folktales. Taking Rumpelstiltskin as her starting point, she’s woven a rich, multilayered new story which is a joy to read.
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RELATED: Uprooted by Naomi Novik Review
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Do You Want To Start A Scandal by Tessa Dare, read by Carmen Rose
Historical Romance
On the night of the Parkhurst ball, someone had a scandalous tryst in the library. Was it Lord Canby, with the maid, on the divan? Or Miss Fairchild, with a rake, against the wall? Perhaps the butler did it.
All Charlotte Highwood knows is this: it wasnât her. But rumors to the contrary are buzzing. Unless she can discover the loversâ true identity, sheâll be forced to marry Piers Brandon, Lord Granvilleâthe coldest, most arrogantly handsome gentleman sheâs ever had the misfortune to embrace. When it comes to emotion, the man hasnât got a clue.
But as they set about finding the mystery lovers, Piers reveals a few secrets of his own. The oh-so-proper marquess can pick locks, land punches, tease with sly wit . . . and melt a womanâs knees with a single kiss. The only thing he guards more fiercely than Charlotteâs safety is the truth about his dark past.
Their passion is intense. The danger is real. Soon Charlotteâs feeling torn. Will she risk all to prove her innocence? Or surrender it to a man whoâs sworn to never love?
Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire, read by Mary Robinette Kowal
Urban Fantasy
Things are starting to look up for October “Toby” Daye. She’s training her squire, doing her job, and has finally allowed herself to grow closer to the local King of Cats. It seems like her life may finally be settling down…at least until dead changelings start appearing in the alleys of San Francisco, killed by an overdose of goblin fruit.
Toby’s efforts to take the problem to the Queen of the Mists are met with harsh reprisals, leaving her under sentence of exile from her home and everyone she loves. Now Toby must find a way to reverse the Queen’s decree, get the goblin fruit off the streets – and, oh, yes, save her own life, since more than a few of her problems have once again followed her home. And then there’s the question of the Queen herself, who seems increasingly unlikely to have a valid claim to the throne….
To find the answers, October and her friends will have to travel from the legendary Library of Stars into the hidden depths of the Kingdom of the Mists – and they’ll have to do it fast, because time is running out. In Faerie, some fates are worse than death.
October Daye is about to find out what they are.
Ebooks
Poison Princess by Kresley Cole
Young Adult Fantasy
She could save the worldâor destroy it.
Sixteen-year-old Evangeline “Evie” Greene leads a charmed life, until she begins experiencing horrifying hallucinations. When an apocalyptic event decimates her Louisiana hometown, Evie realizes her hallucinations were actually visions of the futureâand they’re still happening. Fighting for her life and desperate for answers, she must turn to her wrong-side-of-the-bayou classmate: Jack Deveaux.
But she can’t do either alone.
With his mile-long rap sheet, wicked grin, and bad attitude, Jack is like no boy Evie has ever known. Even though he once scorned her and everything she represented, he agrees to protect Evie on her quest. She knows she can’t totally depend on Jack. If he ever cast that wicked grin her way, could she possibly resist him?
Who can Evie trust?
As Jack and Evie race to find the source of her visions, they meet others who have gotten the same call. An ancient prophesy is being played out, and Evie is not the only one with special powers. A group of twenty-two teens has been chosen to reenact the ultimate battle between good and evil. But it’s not always clear who is on which side.
RELATED: Shadow’s Seduction by Kresley Cole Review
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
Young Adult Fantasy
Graceling meets The Selection in debut novelist Victoria Aveyard’s sweeping tale of seventeen-year-old Mare, a common girl whose once-latent magical power draws her into the dangerous intrigue of the king’s palace. Will her power save her or condemn her? Mare Barrow’s world is divided by bloodâthose with common, Red blood serve the Silver- blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own. To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guardâa growing Red rebellionâeven as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction. One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.
Print Books
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Historical Fiction
Haunting and harrowing, as beautiful as it is disturbing, The English Patient tells the story of the entanglement of four damaged lives in an Italian monastery as World War II ends. The exhausted nurse, Hana; the maimed thief, Caravaggio; the wary sapper, Kip: each is haunted by the riddle of the English patient, the nameless burn victim who lies in an upstairs room and whose memories of passion, betrayal, and rescue illuminate this book like flashes of heat lightning. In lyrical prose informed by a poetic consciousness, Michael Ondaatje weaves these characters together, pulls them tight, then unravels the threads with unsettling acumen.
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
Classics
The lively comedy of this novel in which a young woman comes of age amid the distractions and temptations of London high society belies the challenges it poses to the conventions of courtship, the dependence of women, and the limitations of domesticity. Contending with the perils and the varied cast of characters of the marriage market, Belinda strides resolutely toward independence. Admired by her contemporary, Jane Austen, and later by Thackeray and Turgenev, Edgeworth tackles issues of gender and race in a manner at once comic and thought-provoking. The 1802 text used in this edition also confronts the difficult and fascinating issues of racism and mixed marriage, which Edgeworth toned down in later editions.
About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Magazines
Books Ireland
Established in 1976, by Jeremy Addis, Books Ireland is Irelandâs longest-running book magazine and is dedicated to showcasing and reviewing the vibrant range of Irish literature being published at home and abroad. Published bi-monthly, Books Ireland, offers a range of features, reviews, listings and opinions from âthe world of Irish booksâ. We cover circa. 1000 Irish books each year.
https://www.booksirelandmagazine.com/
The Simple Things
The Simple Things is published monthly and is all about taking time to live well.
We celebrate slowing down, enjoying what you have, making the most of where you live, enjoying the company of friends and family, and feeding them well. We like to grow some of our own vegetables, visit local markets, rummage for vintage finds, and decorate our home with the plunder. We love being outdoors, mindfulness, microadventures and the satisfaction that comes with a job well done.
And we like to think that the small things we do will make a difference in the long run â whether thatâs making, upcycling, growing, cooking, escaping or relaxing.
http://www.thesimplethings.com/
Synopsis and covers from Goodreads. Photos from my Instagram @elainehowlin_
Hi everyone đ it’s tag time. I’m not going to tag anyone directly. If you want to do the tag then please do. I found it on Talk Less Read More.
1. Pick a book for each of your initials⌠EH
E – Embrace the Night by Karen Chance
Recently named the worldâs chief clairvoyant, Cassandra Palmer still has a thorn in her side. As long as Cassie and a certain master vampire – the sizzling-hot Mircea – are magically bound to each other, her life will never be her own âŚ
The spell that binds them can only be broken with an incantation found in the Codex Merlini, an ancient grimoire. The Codexâs location has been lost in the present day, so Cassie will have to seek it out in the only place it can still be found – the past.
But Cassie soon realizes the Codex has been lost for a reason. The book is rumored to contain dangerous spells, and retrieving it may help Cassie to deal with Mircea, but it could also endanger the worldâŚ
H – Halfway to the Grave by Jeaniene Frost
Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of these deadbeats is her father – the one responsible for ruining her mother’s life. Then she’s captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter, and is forced into an unholy partnership.
In exchange for finding her father, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her battle reflexes are as sharp as his fangs. She’s amazed she doesn’t end up as his dinner – are there actually good vampires? Pretty soon Bones will have her convinced that being half-dead doesn’t have to be all bad. But before she can enjoy her newfound status as kick-ass demon hunter, Cat and Bones are pursued by a group of killers. Now Cat will have to choose a side . . . and Bones is turning out to be as tempting as any man with a heartbeat.
2. Count your age along your bookshelf, what is it?
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Eimear McBride’s debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator’s head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn’t always comfortable – but it is always a revelation.
Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny â and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.
3. Pick a book set in your city/country.
Old Ways Old Secrets Pagan Ireland by Jo Kerrigan
In a land like ours, the old beliefs bring pleasure and wisdomâŚ
Exploring the legends, special places and treasured practices of old, Jo Kerrigan reveals a rich world beneath Irelandâs modern layers.
So many of todayâs Irish traditions reach back to our ancient past, to the natural world: climbing to the summit of a mountain at harvest time; circling a revered site three, seven or nine times in a sun-wise direction; hanging offerings on a thorn tree; bringing the ailing and infirm to a sacred well.
Old Ways, Old Secrets shows us how to uncover the wisdom of the past, as fresh as it is ancient.
4. Pick a book that represents a place youâd like to travel to.
Hogwarts from the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
âWhether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.â
â J.K. Rowling
5. Pick a book thatâs your favourite colour.
The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
Set in Victorian London and an Essex village in the 1890’s, and enlivened by the debates on scientific and medical discovery which defined the era, The Essex Serpent has at its heart the story of two extraordinary people who fall for each other, but not in the usual way.
They are Cora Seaborne and Will Ransome. Cora is a well-to-do London widow who moves to the Essex parish of Aldwinter, and Will is the local vicar. They meet as their village is engulfed by rumours that the mythical Essex Serpent, once said to roam the marshes claiming human lives, has returned. Cora, a keen amateur naturalist is enthralled, convinced the beast may be a real undiscovered species. But Will sees his parishioners’ agitation as a moral panic, a deviation from true faith. Although they can agree on absolutely nothing, as the seasons turn around them in this quiet corner of England, they find themselves inexorably drawn together and torn apart.
Told with exquisite grace and intelligence, this novel is most of all a celebration of love, and the many different guises it can take.
6. Which book do you have the fondest memories of?
Falling for a Dancer by Deirdre Purcell
If the bus hadn’t broken down that August afternoon on the road between Dublin and Cork, Elizabeth Sullivan would never have met George Gallaher, a travelling actor of infinite charm and fatal weakness. She would not have been forced to marry, nor found herself trapped in an alien landscape.
- I’ve read this book 3 or 4 times since I was a teenager. There’s no one thing about it that I can say I love. The book as a whole just seems to resonate with me.
7. Which book did you have the most difficulty reading?
Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
I hated Breaking Dawn so much the entire time I was reading it but I was determined to finish the series.
8. Which book in your TBR pile will give you the biggest accomplishment when you finish it?
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Sophisticated, witty, and ingeniously convincing, Susanna Clarke’s magisterial novel weaves magic into a flawlessly detailed vision of historical England. She has created a world so thoroughly enchanting that eight hundred pages leave readers longing for more.
English magicians were once the wonder of the known world, with fairy servants at their beck and call; they could command winds, mountains, and woods. But by the early 1800s they have long since lost the ability to perform magic. They can only write long, dull papers about it, while fairy servants are nothing but a fading memory.
But at Hurtfew Abbey in Yorkshire, the rich, reclusive Mr Norrell has assembled a wonderful library of lost and forgotten books from England’s magical past and regained some of the powers of England’s magicians. He goes to London and raises a beautiful young woman from the dead. Soon he is lending his help to the government in the war against Napoleon Bonaparte, creating ghostly fleets of rain-ships to confuse and alarm the French.
All goes well until a rival magician appears. Jonathan Strange is handsome, charming, and talkative-the very opposite of Mr Norrell. Strange thinks nothing of enduring the rigors of campaigning with Wellington’s army and doing magic on battlefields. Astonished to find another practicing magician, Mr Norrell accepts Strange as a pupil. But it soon becomes clear that their ideas of what English magic ought to be are very different. For Mr Norrell, their power is something to be cautiously controlled, while Jonathan Strange will always be attracted to the wildest, most perilous forms of magic. He becomes fascinated by the ancient, shadowy figure of the Raven King, a child taken by fairies who became king of both England and Faerie, and the most legendary magician of all. Eventually Strange’s heedless pursuit of long-forgotten magic threatens to destroy not only his partnership with Norrell, but everything that he holds dear.
- At over 1,000 pages long it will definitely be an accomplishment to finish this tome.
Synopsis from Goodreads. Photos from my Instagram @elainehowlin_
This blog reached 2000 followers today so I just wanted to thank everyone who follows đ You’re all awesome and amazing and I love you!!!
I’m so happy to have found so many amazing people who love books and reading as much as I do through this blog and Instagram (#bookstagram đ ).
Instagram | Facebook | YouTube
It’s been ages since I done a haul post. I don’t normally buy lots of books in a month (it’s usually maybe two) but I discovered the wonders of second-hand shops and thrift stores in September and I bought some. I still didn’t go nuts with the purchasing! I managed to just buy five then I received a book from Harper Collins and my mother gave me a book.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned â from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren â an enigmatic artist and single mother â who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the alluring mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
When the Richardsons’ friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town and puts Mia and Mrs. Richardson on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Mrs. Richardson becomes determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs to her own family â and Mia’s.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
 Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
The marriage of Gertrude and Walter Morel has become a battleground. Repelled by her uneducated and sometimes violent husband, delicate Gertrude devotes her life to her children, especially to her sons, William and Paul – determined they will not follow their father into working down the coal mines. But conflict is evitable when Paul seeks to escape his mother’s suffocating grasp through relationships with women his own age. Set in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire, Sons and Lovers is a highly autobiographical and compelling portrayal of childhood, adolescence and the clash of generations.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
In a small New England town in the late 1960s, there lived three witches. Alexandra Spofford, a sculptress, Jane Smart, a cellist, and Sukie Rougemont,the local gossip columnist. Their supernatural gifts were intriguing, to say the least. Divorced but hardly celibate, content but always ripe for adventure, one day all three witches found themselves under the spell of a new man in town, Darryl Van Horne. His hot tub was the scene of some bewitching delights, but that doesn’t being to conjure the half of it.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
Labyrinth by Kate Mosse
July 2005. In the Pyrenees mountains near Carcassonne, Alice, a volunteer at an archaeological dig, stumbles into a cave and makes a startling discovery-two crumbling skeletons, strange writings on the walls, and the pattern of a labyrinth.
Eight hundred years earlier, on the eve of a brutal crusade that will rip apart southern France, a young woman named Alais is given a ring and a mysterious book for safekeeping by her father. The book, he says, contains the secret of the true Grail, and the ring, inscribed with a labyrinth, will identify a guardian of the Grail. Now, as crusading armies gather outside the city walls of Carcassonne, it will take a tremendous sacrifice to keep the secret of the labyrinth safe.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
After her award-winning trilogy of victorian novels, sarah waters turned to the 1940s and wrote the night watch, a tender and tragic novel set against the backdrop of wartime britain shortlisted for both the orange and the man booker, it went straight to number one in the bestseller chart in a dusty post-war summer in rural warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at hundreds hall home to the ayres family for over two centuries, the georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine but are the ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life little does dr faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his prepare yourself from this wonderful writer who continues to astonish us, now comes a chilling ghost story.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
The Nightwatch by Sarah Waters
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners: three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching. Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret. Viv, a glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover. Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets, connect in sometimes startling ways.
War leads to strange alliances. Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is a thrilling and towering literary achievement.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
Barren by Peter V. Brett
Each night, the world is overrun by bloodthirsty demons. For centuries, humanity survived only by hiding behind defensive wardsâmagical symbols with the power to repel the demons. Now, the rediscovery of long-forgotten combat wards has given them the magic they need to fight back.
In Tibbetâs Brook, the fighting wards have brought change, but the factions and grudges of a troubled past remain. Selia Square, the woman they call Barren, has long been the force that holds the Brook together. As a terrifying new threat emerges, she rallies her people once again.
But Selia has a past of her own. And in a small community the personal and the political can never be divided. If Tibbetâs Brook is to survive, Selia must uncover memories she has buried deepâthe woman she once was, the woman she once lovedâand retell their story.
Get the book: Book Depository / Amazon
Synopsis from Goodreads. Photos from my Instagram @elainehowlin_
