Rainy Day Library

**Minor spoilers ahead**   In 2023, I read Cleopatra + Frankenstein  by Coco Mellors, and I really enjoyed it. Mellors has a talent for writing deep, insightful and emotional prose, so when her second book, Blue Sisters , was announced, I knew I really wanted to read it.  As an e-book reader, I rarely read new releases because they're just so expensive, and I'm also not massively fussed about being on trend  anyway, so I tend to get to new releases once they're not so new anymore. This was a very anticipated read, and I enjoyed it overall, but it didn't quite live up to the hype. I finished it a few days ago and wanted to sit with my thoughts for a little while. Like her first novel, Mellors has done a fantastic job of giving us insight into living with grief and mental illness. This is the story of three sisters - Avery, Bonnie, and Lucky - who are grieving the loss of their fourth sister, Nicky, who passed away about a year before the novel begins.  I hav...

It's probably not the answer you're expecting. For as long as I can remember, I've been a night owl. Part of it was growing up in a toxic and volatile home - night time was peaceful and quiet, and the only time I felt I could relax a little bit. The other part of it was that, no matter what time I went to bed, I just couldn't get up easily in the mornings. My mother called me lazy. My teachers always assumed I'd just stayed up all night playing video games or watching TV.  I always maintained, even as a kid, that not everyone is a morning person. I would be awoken every weekend day by my mother loudly blasting her "cleaning music" and the vacuum at about 6am. My brother and I would beg her to wait just a few more hours, to let us catch up on some sleep after a busy week. But she would always shout at us that by sleeping in, we were just being lazy layabouts. She'd tell us to go to bed earlier, but I couldn't go to bed any earlier than I already was...

I read two books in September. I've accepted that, at this point, I'm not going to meet my ambitious reading goal of sixty books this year, but that's okay. I'm currently at 27 books  and hope I can get to about 35-40. This is a reminder that your goals can be dynamic, and it's not a bad thing to change them!  Although I've been unemployed for most of this year, it hasn't led to my reading lots like I thought it would. Maybe it's the anxiety about money and finding a new job?  Overall, I enjoyed the two books I read this month, so here's a little recap.  The first book I finished was Sounds Like Love  by Ashley Poston. I'd previously read The Seven Year Slip , which quickly became one of my favourite contemporary romance books, so I was really excited to read another of hers. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it as much, but it's still one of the better contemporary romances that I've read. It was a very average read for me, a nice enough...

 I turned twenty-nine two days ago, and I've seen a lot of people make "30 before 30" bucket lists. I started making one only to realise it was mostly books I am really eager to read, so I decided to turn mine into a mini book bucket list.  I can read about 30-50 books in a year, so I should be able to get through this list with room for mood-read picks in between. It is a mix of "bucket list" classics (the ones you find on those  everyone should read once in their lifetime  lists), nostalgia picks and some contemporary choices by authors I've previously read and enjoyed.  If you want to follow my progress, I'll be ticking them off as I go on my listography ! War and Peace  and Anna Karenina  by Leo Tolstoy War and Peace  is the ultimate bucket list book for me. But it's so long I feel like I'll never actually sit down to read it unless I put it on a list like this! On a good month, I read around this number of pages anyway, so I'm trying to ...