Athena

I've been kind of slacking on posting the topics. February 21st: Favorite Romance Novels Author's Note: -- Romance as a genre is very under-appreciated in lots of circles. So recommend your favorite romance books. These are books where romance is the main genre, not a secondary one. February 28th: Favorite Urban Fantasy Books *Book Babble Crossover Topic* Author's Note: -- Urban Fantasy tends to feature a heavy romance element, so I figured it fit in this month.

Nice to read the reviews !

I haven't read 'Salem's Lot yet, but I find the title confusing (that is what the title is of the book I own though). Why is there that first apostrophe? Shouldn't it be Salem's Lot, or "Salem's Lot", instead of 'Salem's Lot? I feel like it's bad punctuation to open with one apostrophe, then have a second one there meaning a different thing, and then no closing apostrophe. I am confused. I wonder if I'd get an answer to my question if I read the book lol. I'm happy you enjoyed the novel though ! I hope you enjoy The Handmaid's Tale . I liked the film The Iron Lady too . Meryl Streep did a great job.

Below follow three reviews of books I read during the past few days. I read Seanan McGuire - Wayward Children 1: Every Heart a Doorway. I quite liked this book. I did guess the mystery, but I still really enjoyed spending time in this world with these characters. I hope we get to find out more things in the other books in this series. I would've liked it if the book had been a bit longer, that would have been nice. On the other hand, I do feel like a lot was packed in this small book (some people have called it a novella, but I'm not sure if it is one or not, others say novel, so I don't know). I read Seanan McGuire - Wayward Children 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones. The events in this book happen before book 1, but it is better to read book 1 first, as things will make more sense that way (of the world) (so, read the books in publication order). It was nice to explore the 'origin story' of 2 characters that we met in book 1. One of the themes of the book is gender roles. I thought the book was interesting and enjoyable, and I liked reading it. I read Seanan McGuire - Wayward Children 3: Beneath the Sugar Sky. This book takes place after book 1 and there are spoilers in the book for what happens in book 1, so I definitely recommend to read book 1 first (best to read the series in publication order, so 1-2-3). This was another nice read. It was nice to see some of the old characters again and have some events wrapped up. It was also nice to learn more about the different worlds. I really like the diversity of the characters in these books. In most cases it is done in a very natural way and I loved that. These books have LGBTQIA+ elements and I really liked that, there are also some minor elements regarding different cultures. Book 2 talked about gender roles, that was good too. One thing about book 3 is that the main character of book 3 is fat (that's the word she and others use in the book), and I feel there was maybe a bit too much emphasis on it, I guess I would've liked to read a bit more about other parts of the character, ie. hobbies or things like that. But I did enjoy reading about a character who was bigger and it was good to see this represented in a book. There are a couple of illustrations in each of the books (in my editions anyway). Overall I really enjoyed reading these 3 books. I've heard that more books are planned in the series, and I definitely plan on buying those and reading them once they are published.

Nice to hear you liked Kid Normal . I bought it a little while ago as my third book for a 3 for £10 deal.

Sounds good !

Hand

Great reviews! I'm glad you really liked The Goldfish Boy. I've heard great things about it and I can't say I've read a children's book before with a main character who has OCD. I have read a couple of Young-Adult books with main characters with OCD. I look forward to reading The Goldfish Boy, I'm happy to hear the book dealt with the OCD in a good way.

Way before I discovered GoodReads (which was in 2012; and thus also before Book Collector (early 2013) and before I catalogued what book I read when (June 2013)) I had a spreadsheet/mini-database on the computer with all the books I owned (this was maybe15ish years ago when I started it for the first time? It could have been less time ago, I'm not entirely sure how old I was.). I started it because I started to own more books and I wanted to make sure I didn't buy double copies. I always listed the genres of the books on the list, because I organise my books by genre (I think? I have very few old pictures of my bookshelves) and have done so for a long time (I listed author, title, genre, and whether I'd read the book yes or no, which is of course now horribly outdated; Later I added my ratings and the amount of pages each book had. I have a version of before I added ratings and pages, with 325 books. Then I added the ratings and the pages, and way more entries over the years as I bought books.). Hmmm... I just looked and found my old database files (so much nostalgia ). Apparently I had a genre called 'crime' at the time that shows up a few times (my file was in Dutch of course, back then I didn't speak much English other than for English class in school), I had thriller, fantasy, sci-fi (science-fiction), horror, crime (like I mentioned), roman (that means novel in Dutch, some Dutch books have it written on the cover; I didn't distinguish between contemporary fiction and rom-com and historical fiction!), non-fictie (non-fiction, which are memoirs & biographies), informatief (information), literatuur (literature, this would be classics and Dutch newer literary fiction). Ah, and then at a certain point, while scrolling through the database, I find the first mention of 'detective'!; when I bought my first Baantjer book and when I bought 2 books of the No. #1 Ladies' Detective Agency (the database is organised chronologically, so first all the books I owned, then I added books as I bought them). I knew Baantjers were detective novels, that's what I'd always heard. Ah, and I find I called a few books 'Vampire' as a genre, which would now be what I call 'paranormal' or what others might call urban fantasy or supernatural. I also have a genre for kookboeken (cookbooks). A while later in the database is the first and only mention of 'Young-Adult', alongside 'roman' (this is/was a YA contemporary fiction book in English), though I did buy a few other English YA books that do not have 'Young-Adult' written under the genre column. I find a genre called 'manga' which is listed once, when I bought my first manga book. The database does not mention any children's books from my childhood, nor my Dutch YA books. At the time I was a teenager wanting to grow up and be an adult. When we moved house (I was 14, this was before I started the database), I put all of my children's books and teenage books in boxes. I never unpacked them, so the database almost exclusively contains books for adults (that were on my bookshelves), with that one exception that I somehow bought an English YA book at the book fair (I think that's where I bought it). You remember when I found some of those boxes with my old books in the attic, right? And how ecstatic I was? . It wasn't until last year that I really found all of the books. A few of the books in the old database I no longer own, some I didn't like (or even hated) so I gave them away, others I lost interest in and so gave them away to people who were interested in them. This was such a nice trip of nostalgia, thanks for that ! I hope I didn't write too long a post . Thanks! Ah that makes sense! At the time I was happy to read some of the books my parents read too, and they liked thrillers at the time (well, they still do, but they also read other types of books). Did your family read books when you were growing up? Woohoo, well done on finishing it ! I've yet to read Dumplin'. I saw you gave it a 3/5 on GR. I'm glad it was at least an okay read for you . EDIT: I think I started my database when I was 19, so 13 years ago, because book #37 is Wit'ch Fire by James Clemens (Banned and the Banished book 1), and I bought that book because someone I met at university in I think my first year, recommended it to me, so I must have been around 19.

The next read-a-thon takes place in the first weekend of March, which is not this current weekend (it's Saturday for me now), but the weekend after (2nd, 3rd, 4th of March). I'm planning to start read-a-thon-ing on Thursday (the 1rst of March) myself. I've got some graphic novels and shorter books planned to read (that I've recently bought). Hopefully some people will be able to (and will want to) join me the weekend after this weekend .

I'm sorry he wasn't that taken with it . The monkey looks awesome to me! I looked that app up, it looks interesting! Might have to have another look at it some time . Oh no , I hope it will get there on time. This sounds interesting . Good luck with your masters!

I hope you have amazing holidays !

Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop by Abby Clements (book 1 in the series).

I hope you enjoy your new books ! I've got Kid Normal on my TBR, I haven't heard of the rest of the books you mentioned though.

Did you like The Goldfish Boy? It's on my TBR (or, if you plan to write a review, I'm happy to wait until you've done that, if you don't feel like answering this right now). I'm currently reading Wayward Children 2: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire. After this I plan to read book 3 in the series, Beneath the Sugar Sky.

That Girl From Nowhere by Dorothy Koomson.

Good luck, that sounds like a huge job . I hope you'll be allright for water, food, electricity and all those things .

I looked up what a budgie was, they are beautiful !! Now your username makes a whole lot more sense .

I don't know anything about that myself, but found some titles on this page of Wikipedia. But maybe someone else will be able to give a more personal recommendation .

Radio Silence by Alice Oseman.

Wow, well done, Frankie, Andrea and Onion Budgie! That's really well done of all three of you !! Onion, what kind of birds do you have? It's so nice you still have the same birds!

You can use a bullet journal in any way you want (I mean, unless you only use it as coaster for a cup of coffee or something ), so I'm sure what you are doing is fine . It sounds interesting and I'm glad it's worked for you so far ! I have a monthly page and a to-do and future log, and not much else. But it works for me right now, so .

I wish you a wonderful year of reading in 2018, Kay !

My library has those genres together in one place, thrillers/detectives/horror or something like that (at least.. that's what it was last time I was there. They re-organised a few months ago. I must go back to the library some time and see how it is now!). It must be awkward having both thrillers and crime, if you're looking for a specific book (it does make sense to go by what your library classes them as, though!). It's nice to hear (read?) what books you like .

A Proper Family Christmas (book 2 in the Proper Family series by Chrissie Manby).