Category: Reading

  • My free reading challenge: pay with a review

    My challenge to keep reading without paying for a book for myself until Christmas continues… This week I have been mostly fighting my TBR pile, which – even containing only free books – has reached teetering levels. I’ve spent this week reading, reading, reading in a vain attempt to slim down my teetering TBR pile (it’s…

  • My free reading challenge: I bought a book

    When I started my free reading challenge, I knew it was going to be difficult, so I gave myself some let-outs. This week I used my joker to buy a book from an author I’ve read a free book from in order to help with their launch. Like one – Love the next A couple of weeks…

  • My free reading challenge: a delightful glut

    Well, last week’s giveaway source of free books provided rich pickings. I’ve only started three so far, and I’ve already finished and loved two of them – the third I’m not so sure about, but we’ll see. To be fair (and to armour myself against future disappointment), I started with the ones that attracted me most.…

  • My free reading challenge: giveaways

    My endeavour to spend no money on books for myself until Christmas continues… This week I found another fabulous source of free books: giveaways. I entered a contest run by several YA authors I’ve heard of but haven’t yet read, and as well as being in the draw to win a kindle (I think that’s…

  • Free reading challenge: but that doesn’t count!

    I’ve bought four books this week, which sounds like a lot for someone who isn’t buying books at the moment, but wait, your honour, I can explain… One for me… I have bought a book for myself this week, but it was non-fiction and an excellent reference book for self-publishing (it’s Format it Yourself by Jo…

  • Free reading challenge: When FREE isn’t free

    So, I’ve now been satisfying my reading urges with only free books for two weeks. Philippa Fusspot My chief learning point for the past fourteen days is what a very fussy reader I am (actually, I already knew that; this exercise has just confirmed the fact). I often find it hard to discover books I…

  • An experiment in free reading

    I read a lot of YA fiction and review a lot, too, on the Paisley Piranha blog. Recently, I signed up as a blog tour host/reviewer with YA Bound Book Tours. As a result, I’ve been reading a lot of review books (and discovering lots of new, fabulous authors). I joined YA Bound deliberately to…

  • 3 reasons I love my library

    Libraries are a hot topic in the UK at the moment, with the government and councils seeming to view them as pointless moneypits which can easily be dispensed with without any derogation to life or culture. I’m not going to add anything dramatic to the debate, but I wanted to articulate why libraries full of…

  • Words are magic, that’s why it’s called spelling

    Wide-range reading I’ve been reading out of my genre this week – Longbourn caught my eye (and who wouldn’t want a chance to escape back into the Pride and Prejudice universe?) and I’ve absolutely loved it. As well as the story (it’s Pride and Prejudice seen from the servants’ point of view), I’ve loved the…

  • Queen of Rubies

    I’m manically busy at the moment. My next-next book winged its way to the RNA’s New Writer’s Scheme this week, I’ve written 21k words of the one to follow that since the start of the month, while simultaneously revising something from long ago which I hope might be the start of a series. This leaves me…