Category: Reading

  • Spread the (book) love

    I love books. You might have noticed. I don’t love ALL books, though, that would be impossible (and ambitious, given how many now exist in the world). I have my go-to genres, and even within them there are books I pick up and put down, books I abandon after reading the first couple of pages, those…

  • Please Release Me

    My blog this week is in support of the hugely talented Rhoda Baxter, whose new novel, Please Release Me, is on sale RIGHT NOW! Please Release Me features characters who are all ‘stuck’ in some way, so I’m taking that as my theme for today. What I’m stuck on right now is the dreaded edits for…

  • Book Lovers Rock

    Okay, so we all know that books are fabulous and the people who read and write them are brilliant, too. This isn’t something new, I’ve just been particularly reminded of it recently. Firstly, I’d run out of things to read. Yeah, I know, my TBR pile is always huge, but nothing on it leapt out…

  • Terrorised by punctuation

    Now, this probably isn’t going to be what you think. While I wouldn’t describe myself as an expert I’m quite comfortable with grammar and I absolutely know where to put an apostrophe, so punctuation actually holds no horror for me. What prompted this post was a blog I read about reading with your children, how…

  • Midsummer Dreams

    I’m blogging in support of a friend today, on the topic of dreams. I had a Dream… I dreamed of being a published writer once. Ah, wait, no, I don’t mean a day dream. Of course I had the “dream” of being a published writer, otherwise I wouldn’t be here now, but long before I was…

  • Character is King

      I picked up something new to read this week. Well, something old, actually – in a lull between books I grabbed any old something from my bookshelf and started to read. The writing wasn’t the best. Well, no, I’ll be honest – the novel simply wasn’t written in the style I prefer. I like…

  • Seasonal energetic disorder

    I love the long days of spring/summer. I’m sure I’m not alone in that, but it’s not so much the sunshine, or watching the flowers come into bloom that makes me smile. It’s the amount of stuff I get done. The only things I’ve ever read about the seasons and the affect have on people…

  • The Fussy Reader

    If you’re a writer, you must read. That’s the one piece of advice that’s universal – every writer you meet will tell you that reading widely is key to developing your writing skills. And I completely agree. What you aren’t warned, though, is that reading to improve your writing can make you an incredibly fussy…

  • 26 = infinity

    I was going to rant this week, but it’s spring, the trees are blossoming, my WIP is progressing well and I don’t want to spoil the sensation of everything being right in the world. So instead, I’m going to share a fact that blew my tiny mind when it was pointed out to me. There…

  • The end isn’t in sight

    I’m cross and crotchety today. I feel like I’ve wasted my reading time this week on two books that didn’t end. Now, I don’t mean they were long, nor that they were dull. They didn’t end because their writers (and their editors and big, commercial publishers in turn) had failed to comprehend the fundamental requirement…