Hayley

Me too! It took me ages to finish my last book (The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - it took me so long I was reading it during the last read-a-thon!) but I finally finished it yesterday so I'm looking forward to getting stuck into some new things. I'm hoping I can finish False Value, the new Ben Aaronovitch book .

There's a YA series by Serena Valentino that tells Disney stories from the point of view of the villain (so, for example, one is by Ursula from The Little Mermaid, one is by the Wicked Queen from Snow White etc.). I think the series is just called Villains. I'm afraid I haven't read any of them, so I can't recommend, but that's what popped into my head when I read your post! Welcome to the forum by the way

I thought the same thing with the last book and I think I left them together in the end, but I don't think it should feel like a cheat. They are always completely separate stories. We'd review it as a separate short story, so why not list it as one?

Me too! Although it does make me wonder if they’ll go down a more comedic route with it. Unbelievably, I haven’t started yet! The book I’m reading now is taking me ages, its pace is not one of its strong points but I feel like I’ve gone too far to give up on it!

Forecast keeps saying snow but we’ve only had rain

Whooooo? (I like this one!)

Oh wow, that is a lot of books! I've heard good things about Queenie, what do you think of it so far?

The Book Collector is on its way to you @Onion Budgie . I'm making a small adjustment to the rules of this thread, as I've realised I can't leave books up indefinitely... so if a book has not been adopted after a month it will no longer be available (and I'll make that clear on the original post with that book, to avoid confusion). That way I can find the books new homes outside the forum!

It's because if you have google chrome version 68 or later it shows a 'not secure' warning when the site doesn't have an ssl certificate. Not having the certificate means information that goes through this site isn't encrypted, so it wouldn't be safe to share card details here, for example, because it's less difficult for someone to access information shared through the site. The software we use does have it's own security to keep your accounts safe and, to the best of my knowledge, that includes the passwords you might se for your account (although I'm happy to look further into how they secure that information). An ssl certificate would cost an extra £60 a year, on top of the software, hosting and domain renewal costs, and I honestly just can't afford to do that right now.

I've seen people reading in my local Costa but I have no idea how they concentrate with all the noise and moving around! I find it much harder to read in public spaces, even in the library, small noises distract me much more than they would at home. I would say my favourite place to read is in bed, but I love being able to read outside when the weather's nice too. I've got a while to wait before I can do that again though... at the moment my book would probably blow away!

I'm part way through another book (although seriously tempted to give up on it) so I haven't started yet. Thoughts so far??

I went to get Ben Aaronovitch's new Peter Grant book, False Value, today and was tempted by the sale shelf, so I also ended up getting The Five by Hallie Rubenhold and Monstrous Little Voices: New Tales from Shakespeare's Fantasy World. And now I think I should start reviewing some of the books I've already read! Help the Witch by Tom Cox 3.5/5 - I really liked it. This book was completely different to what I expected. I imagined it would be a bit like Zoe Gilbert's Folk, but perhaps a bit darker (not that Folk isn't already pretty dark...) and less magical. I feel like varied isn't a strong enough word for the sheer range of subjects and styles it actually covers, but the only other word I can think of is mad, so lets stick with varied... There are haunted houses and giant, vengeful hares (those were more along the lines I expected), but there are also robots you can step inside and talking tomatoes. Cox clearly has a quirky and vivid imagination, and it was fun going on this 'varied' journey through generally unconnected stories. There was one story I didn't particularly like, which is mainly why I didn't give the book 4 stars. 'Speed Awareness' came after a part of the book I thought was really good, where you get to piece together a story through various listings in a newspaper, so maybe that made it seem more disappointing, but it really just felt didactic and predictable to me, to the point of being quite cheesy. It sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the book, which is genuinely original and clever. I can only imagine that maybe the author feels strongly about traffic accidents caused by speeding, which is fair, but it just seemed odd in the context of the book. An overall good and very interesting collection though, which I'd be happy to recommend. Soot by Andrew Martin 2/5 - It was ok The idea behind Soot sounds great. We basically begin in 1799 with a man who's in debtor's prison. A mysterious benefactor pays half his debt and buys him a month of freedom, on the condition that in that time he must find the killer of a murdered artist. The start is promising. We get introduced to some interesting and shady characters, learn a bit more about the murder and how our protagonist is going to trace potential suspects. I was quite hooked at this point, gathering clues as each suspect comes to light, but then it all went a bit downhill... I think part of the problem was that nobody really seems to care about the murder. There's really no urgency or emotion associated with it. The ending was poorly tied together and seems like the author intended there to be a second book, although I don't think there is one. I had fun reading this for maybe 80% of the book, but it fell flat by the end, so for that reason I would not recommend it.

Got mine today! Have you tried the glow in the dark front cover out yet? It’s quite spooky!

There was a man and he had eight sons. Apart from that, the was nothing more than a comma on the page of History. Sourcery by Terry Pratchett

I think it was Maidstone, I'm not sure if he did a signing there though. Will have my fingers crossed for you today!

I saw on twitter that some Waterstones shops already have their copies of False Value! Has anyone managed to get it yet?

Ah, I forgot you taught year five @willoyd! Thank you! I’ve only recently discovered that horrible science and geography exist, I used to love the horrible histories books! Although, I will admit, I also loved Jacqueline Wilson books... It’s such a shame that schools don’t have any funding for books and it’s even more sad when kids say they don’t have any books at home. It’s really not surprising that they grow up not seeing reading as an enjoyable thing.

Hi, I’m afraid you can’t promote the account here, so your link has been removed, but you can certainly use this thread to talk about bookstagram and how it works in general.

As it’s Valentine’s Day and there are hundreds of romantic quotes everywhere, it got me thinking about my favourite love stories in books. Wuthering Heights is one you see a lot of when anyone mentions romance but it’s always felt more tragic than romantic to me. Yes there is love, but it’s jealous, violent, abusive love and... well it might be realistic but it’s definitely not my favourite. So what are your favourite examples of love in books? I’m really just throwing this question out there because I haven’t decided what my own favourite example is yet. Although I do really like Terry Pratchett’s quote about love from Sourcery: ‘And what would humans be without love?’ ‘RARE’ said death.

Hi Dani, welcome to the forum! What do you like to read?

Aww, I was enjoying them

I'm glad you're enjoying The Coffin Dancer (I just looked it up and it does sound good!) and I hope you feel better soon!

Just saw this and remembered how close the publication date for the new one is Anyway, what I actually came to say... Rebellion publishing has quite a few ‘first in series’ fantasy and science fiction books for 99p until the 17th February: http://www.rebellionpublishing.com/post/3287

I just had to google what Donnen und Blitzen meant because all I could think of was Santa’s reindeer! Did you notice a lot of birds in your garden in the bad weather? I looked out at one point and had 11 pigeons in mine! There are a few trees down near me but nobody hurt by them, luckily. Today we’ve had rain, hail, sun and a bit of snow. I saw cherry blossom buds for the first time this year though, as well as some yellow crocuses and a single daffodil. I love seeing those first signs of spring coming