At the weekend, I visited The White Horse Bookshop, an independent bookshop in Malborough, Wiltshire. It was the second time I’ve visited the shop and each time is just as lovely as the other – it’s such a friendly and welcoming shop.
I love exploring bookshops because each one is unique and after my time working in one during the summer, I have a greater appreciation for them. There’s nothing better than wandering into a bookshop and getting lost in the bookish atmosphere – the smell of books new and old, the feeling of eyes flicking back and forth between words on the page, and that innate sense of coming home.
The YA section in the bookshop contains a table full of wonderful new titles and I was especially pleased to spot Never Evers by Tom Ellen and Lucy Ivison and Deep Water by Lu Hersey. Plus, the paperback edition of The Art of Being Normal (more on that in a bit!).
It would be possible to browse the different sections of the shop for hours if I had the time and there are literally tens of thousands of books contained within the two floors. It’s a book lover’s heaven!
In the end, I decided to buy two books – The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson and an illustrated version of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Alice Pattullo.
I was extremely pleased to find out the other day that I was quoted in the new paperback of The Art of Being Normal, especially as I loved it so much when I read it at the end of 2014. I, of course, had to buy a copy after discovering that and I’d definitely recommending picking your own copy up if you haven’t read it yet because the book truly is brilliant.
I first heard about the illustrated Pride and Prejudice in Zoë’s video and thought it looked amazing – I love Pride and Prejudice so much so an illustrated version is perfection to me! It’s always nice to see classics books reimagined in different ways.
After watching (and loving!) Zoe’s video, I knew that as soon as I found a copy I would buy it, but it turned out that there either weren’t any copies in the shops I was looking in, or I wasn’t looking hard enough. But, by chance, I finally found a copy and I am IN LOVE! I can just picture myself reading this to my kids in years to come.
All the Rage is a harrowing look at rape culture and the way we treat people who have been raped. Loosely inspired by the Steubenville case which was in the news at the time of Summers writing the book, protagonist Romy is bullied and thrown out of her social circle because nobody in the small, US town she lives in will believe that she has been raped by the “golden boy” of the town.
The plot line is extremely gripping and so unpredictable – I could have never guessed the massive twists. They had me gasping in shock because I couldn’t believe what had happened! I felt so connected to the story that the events really affected me as I was reading them and I had to read on to find out what happened.
It’s clear when reading All the Rage that Summers is a master of the writing craft. The way that she tells the story is perfect and I was hooked from beginning to end; I kept telling myself, “Just one more chapter!” and then it turned into five and six and then seven… I loved how natural it felt, as if you were in Romy’s town and witnessing the hate she received. Summers’ writing is perfect and works so well with the story; it has its own voice and comes alive with every word.
However, what Summers does best is include diverse characters that blend seamlessly into the story line. It doesn’t feel as if diverse characters are added so that they can be ticked off on a checklist, but because they’re real people too. I loved the secondary characters in this book and how they fitted in to Romy’s story – they had their own lives but also worked towards creating a bigger picture too.
All the Rage is definitely going to be my go-to recommendation for the future. I’d love to see more of Courtney Summers’ books published in the UK soon because the UK needs more Courtney Summers books! I know I’d be the first person to buy them if they were published.
You’ll Love This If….
You’ve read Asking For It by Louise O’Neill! They tie in nicely together as they’re inspired by the same case, and the stories do overlap in places.
You’re looking for a thrilling read that you can’t put down.
You’re a feminist and want to read more YA books with feminist topics!
Have you read All the Rage? What did you think of it? If you haven’t read it, let me know if you’re going to!
I tested out a feature called Sunday Diary in September 2014 and, whilst I loved writing it, I stopped after the first post for some reason, but it’s back!!
I’ll be sharing what I’ve been up to in the past week each Sunday – bookish and non-bookish. As I said in the first post, “It’s a chance for me to ramble away and hopefully you’ll learn a bit about me at the same time.”
What I’ve Been Up To This Week:
At school, I’ve had to make the scary decision of choosing my A-Level options. We’ve had taster sessions in the subjects for the past fortnight and I think I’ve finally decided on French, Business Studies, English Literature and Religion, Philosophy & Ethics. So, pretty much, just carrying on the options I’ve been taking for GCSE. I know it will be a massive jump up, but I’m actually really looking forward to it – is that weird?
I’ve also been working on my French writing controlled assessment. When it comes to French, I probably go a bit overboard and so on the day I did feel very nervous, despite having learnt it to within an inch of its life. However, it did go very well and I’m so pleased to have it done with! Hopefully no more writing assessments for me for a while!
At the weekend, I went out to buy my prom dress (I’m sure I’ll share it closer to the time!) and then for cake, as you can see above. And then today I’m planning on doing some pigture shoots for Book Pigs, my guinea pig blog. If you haven’t heard me talk about it before, then probably dedicate a whole day to looking at the pigtures because you could get lost in the cuteness. 😉
What I’ve Been Reading:
I’m in between books at the moment and haven’t read anything entirely this week, but think I’m going to be starting How to Disappear by Clare Furniss next. I loved The Year of the Rat so have high hopes for it. I’m sure it won’t disappoint!
Let me know the exciting things you’ve been doing this week, and what you’ve been reading in the comments!
This year marks my fourth year of blogging about books and I’m beginning the process of turning it into a business. However, there is a problem with this: money in the book blogging world can be a bit of a taboo subject. If you’ve been on Twitter in the past few days, you’ll have seen the conversations that us book bloggers have been having about being paid for promoting books – at the moment we get absolutely nothing in exchange for our hard work, time and huge promotion of book titles. Seriously – bloggers can make a difference between a title being a flop or a massive success.
I’m one of the few lucky bloggers who have received payment off the back of my blog – through events. However, out of the four festivals or events I’ve spoken at, all of which have been ticketed events, I’ve received payment for only two. Not even expenses for the other two that included travel by train or car, plus the cost of car parking on top.
The majority of other blogging categories – for example, lifestyle bloggers, beauty bloggers and fashion bloggers – are paid in exchange for featuring certain products or reviewing certain products on their websites or YouTube channels. Book bloggers? It’s pretty much unheard of.
There has been debate over whether paid reviews are dishonest due to the nature of wanting to speak positively about something you’ve been paid to write about. But reviews make up only a small portion of the work that we do as bloggers. At the moment, if I was thinking about blogging full time, I wouldn’t even be able to cover the cost of website hosting – it’s not viable or sustainable. You do not have to pay for reviews; there are other content options too – featuring books in Instagram or Tumblr pictures, reading a book as part of a book club that you’ve set up, or creating a fun challenge video on YouTube, to name a few.
The question I get most often from people when I tell them that I blog is: Do you get paid? They assume that I’m rolling in money because I live in a corner of the Internet; it’s such a common misconception that we receive payment for the hard work that we put in.
Think about it: Would you turn up for work one day, work for five hours and then expect nothing in return? Not likely. So why should bloggers do the same? For many of us, this has become more than a hobby – it’s a lifestyle.
After reading Stacey’s review of The Fox and the Star, I knew I had to read it so when I went into my local Waterstones a few days later, I bought it immediately.
I’m so pleased I saved this as my first book of the year. It was such an enjoyable book, full of wonderful illustrations that capture your imagination and make you feel as if you’re wandering the woods too with Fox. It can, and will, be loved by children and adults alike – it’s universal. As I was reading it, I could picture myself as a two year old again, being read stories and looking at the wonderful illustrations that accompanied them.
The way that The Fox and the Star is illustrated adds a maturity to the words and Coralie Bickf0rd-Smith has a very unique style that is instantly recognisable; she is well-known for her work on numerous covers for Penguin, including the Clothbound Classics series and the Penguin English Library series. After reading this, her début, I will definitely seek out other books that she has illustrated and she will most certainly be on my radar for future releases.
There’s also a hint of innocence in the protagonist, the Fox, that you see change over the course of the book and the journey was lovely to watch. I think this is what makes it so appealing to people of all ages: there’s a sense of dramatic irony for the adults, who know exactly who, or what, Star is, and a sense of magic for younger children who will be able to look up at the sky and see Star for themselves.
The Fox and the Star would make a perfect present for book lovers and little to-be book lovers. It’s one that I know I’ll be saving to read to my own children because the magic is still with me now, even a while after reading it.
In previous years, I’ve always tracked what I’ve been reading on Goodreads and only Goodreads. Whilst, yes, I post reviews on my blog, I don’t review everything I read so lots goes undocumented. I decided that 2016 will be the year that I create a physical document of everything I read, including re-reads (I’m looking at you, Goodreads!).
So this is my plan: I’ve set out a notebook where I plan on keeping a list of all the books I’ve read, plus a page dedicated to a short piece of writing on each book. Then, I’ll either write up that piece on my blog or write a full review.
I think it’s so important to document everything I read because often those memories you have right after reading a book are fleeting and reading back through them helps to bring them back. I love the idea of keeping a notebook for each year and being able to look back on it in years to come, seeing what I thought on each book I read .
It will also help with my writing, by setting time to write each week. I’d like to improve my writing but I don’t do enough of it, so even writing blog posts is helping. It’s important to me that I keep using the part of my brain that loves writing, but if I sit down all day and write nothing, it’s being lazy and isn’t being worked enough.
I’ve set my goal on Goodreads to read 1 book again this year, which worked very well last year. It took all the pressure off of me to read lots and anything after the first book is a bonus (I actually ended the year on around 105 books!). I’d highly recommend doing this if you don’t like the pressure of set reading challenges because you can still track what you’ve read, but there’s no daunting number.
How do you track your reading? Are you doing anything differently this year?
2015 was such an amazing year for UKYA releases and I feel very lucky to have been able to read lots and lots of them. If 2015 was such a brilliant year, I can’t wait to see what 2016 will be like!
Seed by Lisa Heathfield
In Seed, Lisa Heathfield creates a beautiful but dangerous world where the people are ruled by the enigmatic Papa S. Although Pearl loves the life she leads, worshipping both Nature and Papa S, when a new family join the community Pearl begins to realise that the cult society she lives in isn’t idyllic after all.
I loved Seed because of how creepy it felt because you know that Pearl is being brainwashed into loving her life so much. Lisa Heathfield is perfect at making the setting come to life and whilst you do want to scream at Pearl at times and tell her to RUN, you’re also rooting for her and wishing that she’d shake off the chains that Seed has enforced on her.
Counting Stars by Keris Stainton
One of my favourite books of 2015 out of the 100+ I read, Counting Stars caters for an older YA audience. Dealing with flat sharing, friendship and exploring sexuality, it feels as if you are part of the novel when you read it and it is definitely one of Keris’s best novels yet.
I especially enjoyed how modern it felt: one of the main characters, Anna, has her own YouTube channel and it’s not often, surprisingly, that we see huge parts of the novel revolving around Internet life. Keris has written it in particularly well by including transcripts from Anna’s videos. Major LOVE!
The Next Together by Lauren James
Lauren James is one of the UKYA community’s best new talents and The Next Together showcases just how exceptionally she can write. The Next Together tells the story of Katherine and Matthew who are reincarnated throughout the ages and in each life they are destined to fall in love. However, their love tragically ends in each time landscape, despite it also changing the course of history.
Whilst I love historical fiction, it’s not always greatly welcomed but one of the things that Lauren James does best is to mix history with science and romance to create a book that will have you gripped from page one. I became so invested in Katherine and Matthew’s story as it progressed throughout the ages that I found it impossible to put down and I know that many others have felt exactly the same way as I did.
The Sin Eater’s Daughter by Melinda Salisbury
The fantasy novels I love the most all have a feel of medieval society to them and The Sin Eater’s Daughter definitely delivered on this point. You have a castle, peasants… and also a girl who can kill with a single touch.
Melinda Salisbury has imagined a world in which the reader can delve right into the events and feel as if they are a part of them. Twylla, the main character, is so whole and authentic – she has an equal amount of strengths and weaknesses, just as we all do. I’d like to see more protagonists like Twylla in the future, when authors aren’t afraid to show their characters’ flaws.
Am I Normal Yet? by Holly Bourne
Holly Bourne is an extremely talented writer and her latest book, Am I Normal Yet?, demonstrates that. Am I Normal Yet? is the first in a trilogy and is narrated by Evie, a teen with OCD and anxiety. Evie is trying to get off her medication and lead a “normal” life, whilst navigating the troubles of college and relationships.
The BEST part of Am I Normal Yet?, however, is that Evie and her friends set up their own Spinster Club, where they discuss feminist issues and these were my favourite parts of the book. I would LOVE to be a part of it! It makes me incredibly happy that teenagers will be reading Am I Normal Yet? and following their own feminist path. It’s incredibly empowering!
Crow Moon by Anna McKerrow
I don’t think the YA world has quite seen a book like Crow Moon before, which is a massive shame. It’s both racially and religiously diverse and I don’t think we see enough religious diversity in YA at all – something that definitely needs rectifying! Set in a futuristic world where oil reserves have dwindled, Devon and Cornwall have set themselves apart from the rest of the UK – the Greenworld. The rest of the UK is filled with gangs and is desperate to find a new power source to run the world on.
Crow Moon is teeming with characters that I adore (SABA!) and would like to be, and is also my favourite UKYA book of the year, perhaps my favourite book of the year, full stop. With climate change being a hot topic at the moment (as it should be!), Crow Moon is very relevant and will make readers think about the world we live in.
2015 has been an incredible, whirlwind year. I can’t believe we’re now going into 2016! I thought that it would be nice to look back on the year that has passed and share some of my favourite moments!
Starting Book Pigs!
At the start of the year, I started a blog on Tumblr called Book Pigs, where I share pictures of some of my guinea pigs with books. It’s taken me by surprise just how much people have fallen in love with my piggies and it’s also made me try and up my photography game. It’s one of the best jobs, although there have been some funny moments, like when one guinea pig ran around under my bed for ten minutes!
UKYABA Prize
It came as a total shock to me when I won Champion of YA in the UK Young Adult Blogger Awards earlier in 2015. It means the *absolute world* to me to be recognised for something I love doing so much and I still can’t believe it, really!!
Visiting the Harry Potter Studio Tour
It was SO amazing to visit the Harry Potter Studio Tours for the opening of the Hogwarts Express with Holly, C.J. and Josh (and my dad!). It’s so weird, but so great, to feel as if you’re walking around parts of Hogwarts and living in the world of Harry Potter. It’s such a memorable experience because I don’t think there’s anything quite like walking through the doors of the Great Hall for the first time, a place that has inhabited your imagination for years and also a place you’ve seen so many times on your TV screens.
Stonewylde Gathering
I have discussed my favourite book series many times on my blog, and this year I got to go to the annual Stonewylde Gathering. It was so much fun and lovely to see Kit again. There was also a quiz later on that I’m sure I got very competitive at… It was nice to test my own knowledge on the books (because I’ve read them so many times!) but it also reminded me how you can read a book a million times and return the next time and find tiny details that you didn’t pick up the first million times. And…. I won! I’m pretty sure that is going on my CV now. LIFE HIGHLIGHT!
UKYA Events!
One of the best things about being a blogger is getting out and meeting like-minded people, and this year I’ve had the pleasure of attending quite a few events – publishing ones, book festivals, and others like the UKYA Extravaganza in Birmingham and the Young Adult Literature Convention. The above picture was taken at the UKYA Extravaganza (full post on it here) and it’s been amazing to see this event flourish this year, especially as it is author run. Emma Pass and Kerry Drewery have put a lot of work in it, so to see it doing so well is a credit to them.
#ukyachat
Running #ukyachat on Twitter is always the highlight of my week and this year I’ve been lucky to watch it turn from my baby into my child. Being able to talk to such wonderful people, and making lifelong friends out of it, is one of the best parts and I’m looking forward to a year of chats in 2016!
I’d like to take this moment to thank each and every person who has participated and supported #ukyachat in the past year – the authors, bloggers, and passionate readers who take part and have championed it. Thank you!!! You always put a massive smile on my face.
—
2015 has been one of the best blogging years and I’m looking forward to watching how it develops in the year ahead. THANK YOU to all of you who have made it extra special!
