The Grateful Book Dragon

(Manderly Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier) So if anyone is triggered by what I'm about to talk about I'm really sorry. For many the mere mention of the Leaving Certificate exams sends them into a cold sweat and brings on a spate of related night terrors. So I apologize.  I'm one of the rare creatures who the exams didn't really faze. In fairness I was going through alot that year so it was the least of my worries.  I lost my Nana in February of 2003 after years of watching her suffer thanks to the scourge that is Parkinson's. I was incredibly close to her and my Granda who I would also lose the same year on New Year's Eve. It took me a very long time to learn to live my life without them. I lived with my grandparents for the first 2 years of my life and we became inseparable spending all my weekends and school holidays with them on thier farm. I had lots of cousins whom they loved very much but I was the only one with my own room. Our relati...

This is my first sojourn into the world of Agatha Christie and I wasn't disappointed. I have never read any of her books or watched any of the countless movie or TV adaptions.  Of course I've heard of Miss Marple and Poirot. I have seen countless advertisements for them since my childhood but I have never really felt compelled enough to watch any of them. Crime/ murder mysteries not being one of my go to genre.  Although I do admit I am very tempted by Murder On The Orient Express. My only real knowledge of Christie comes from Doctor Who which was fun but by no means a good stick with which to measure her by.  I absolutely love all things supernatural so when I came across this collection on my libraries Borrowbox app i decided now was the time to finally see what all the fuss is about.  I absolutely adored the premise of most of the stories in this collection. I think she strikes a good balance between science and the occult. I also really liked the glim...

I don't like comparing authors but the style of Snowflake by Louise Nealon did remind me a bit of Sally Rooney's Normal People. If anything it was better and I say this without wanting to be crappy to Sally Rooney who is amazing in her own right. Snowflake has a wit and a very down to earth relatable feel about it that helps lighten the heavy subject matter for the reader somewhat. The varying depictions of mental illness are very well done and I really have to commend Louise Nealon for this. Pretty much everyone in it has or has had some sort of struggle with thier mental health. It is also lovely to read books like this that come from an Irish perspective and give an honest account of what it's like to come of age in the Ireland of today. I also really liked her perspective on Trinity. "You don't need to be smart to get in to Trinity. You just have to be stubborn". Trinity is like the holy grail of colleges in Ireland and often people don't f...

Nevermind Penney's ( No disrespect to people who love it, no judgement here) I'm more excited that Libraries and Bookshops get to reopen thier doors again. I won't get to visit them because I'm still housebound at present due to chronic illness but I am absolutely thrilled they get to re-open and my family will be able to pop in for me so I can continue to support them at a distance.  Is a town really complete without a bookshop.  Throughout the pandemic I've tried to support irish book shops as much as possible by buying from them online. Secret Book & Record, Dubray, Kenny's, Vibes & Scribes have all had the pleasure of my business this year. Smaller operations didn't have the advantage of a website for online orders that the larger booksellers all have, which made things tricky especially when your introverted so I'm hoping to support my local independent bookshop more now that it's back up and running. ...

I fully expected a good old fashioned gothic thriller and while Girl In The Walls by AJ Gnuse  is that, it's also so much more. After Elise loses her parents in a car accident she is sent to a foster home for the night so the adults can figure out where to send her. In her grief she decides to take things into her own hands and sneaks off in the night walking miles to an old house her family once lived in. She secretly takes up residency in the hollows of the old house coming out when the new occupants the Mason family are at work or at school or on occassion when they are asleep. She uses this time to eat, watch tv or search for remnants of her families past life in the house, things her parents accidentally left behind or lost. When they are home she stays in the walls or attic and reads books she's borrowed from the house.  Can a person really hide in another families house without said family eventually getting wise that something isn't quiet right. What wou...

I've decided I'm not going to do the my week in books posts anymore because I read way too many and all the info and ratings can just be found on Goodreads anyway. So instead I'm going to write about the books and bookish things that interest me the most and maybe the odd thing from my life I feel worth sharing. I think it will be worthwhile and way more entertaining to read than a list of descriptions of my reading habits for the week. I may do my favourite books of the month post going forward but I shall see how things go. 

This week I read more novels than graphics. I also found myself feeling very uncomfortable with a knowing pain in my gut because the book I'm about to give my thoughts on hits a nerve with me. I have since getting married in 2012 really explored my relationship with the church and if I wanted to still be a part of it so I'm probably way ahead in terms of knowing how I feel about the church than maybe the author was at the time of writing her book. The book in question is Are You There God? It's Me, Ellen by Ellen Coyne One of the things about me you need to understand is that I tend to be very understanding. I listen to people and try to see things from thier perspective. I see the merits in most things. This book is about journalist Ellen Coyne and her journey back to Catholicism. She doesn't agree with thier policies or the source material on which the religion is based but yet still feels she needs Catholicism. To me from reading my reading of the book sh...

A week filled with graphic novels. I started the week with: Roots by Tara O'Connor the story of an Irish American artist who thanks to some crowd funding sets out to find out more about her ancestry. The book ends up very different to what she set out to create and becomes more about a woman grieving from her divorce and finding love in the arms of a friend instead  3/5 Next up was Breaklands, Season One: The Chase by Justin Jordan  described as  Mad Max meets Akira, which is fairly accurate 3/5 Deadly Class, Volume 1: Reagan Youth Homeless Teenager Marcus is taken in to a school for assassin's chaos ensues  3/5. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman  is the story of London below and follows the story of Door as she escapes from assassin's and tries to figure out who is responsible for killing her family 4/5 Snow Angels Volume 1 Milliken and Mae Mae have never left the trench nothing but death lies beyond it. The Trench is brutal but it provides everything they...

Before I proceed I would like to say that this is in no way a sponsored post. I merely wanted to share the books I'm most excited about. I do not get paid to write these posts or receive free books. All the below books can be purchased/ pre-ordered from all good bookshops. I personally bought a copy of all these books from Waterstones purely because they offered special signed editions for everything except the Billie Eilish book but you do get an entry to win a signed copy if you pre-order before the deadline. Check Waterstones website for more information on that.  Girl In The Walls by A.J.Gnuse  (Due Out  01/04/2021) Girl in the Walls is a story of overcoming grief, of unconventional friendships and learning that we shouldn't always fear what we don't understand. Listening Still by Anne Griffin (29/04/2021) From the bestselling author of When All is Said comes a delicious new novel about a young woman who can hear the dead - a talent which is bo...

This week I'm just doing a quick roundup of what I read as I will be doing a post on books I'm looking forward to Instead This week I read The Lumberjanes Volume 1 Not going to lie had high hopes for this and wanted to love it but it fell short for me and if I'm honest I was a bit bored. 3/5 Next up was Terry Pratchetts Mort    which most definitely didn't disappoint. I'm slowly making my way through the Discworld series and next to Equal Rites  which is my favourite so far  Mort comes in a close second. I have a soft spot for books about Death. Terry always gives me a laugh but also never fails to make me think and if that's not the mark of a good book and a life well spent then I don't know what is. 4/5 My husband absolutely loves Brandon Sanderson and after reading the first Storm light archive book I have to say I can see why. I had heard good things about the Mistborn books and when my husband suggest I start with The Eleventh...

Its been a very good week for reading. I've been on a good roll with very few disappointing reads. Feeling very blessed. The Turn Of The Screw by Henry James (Gothic Horror) I'll be honest I rarely find horror fiction scary and this is no exception. However I do absolutely love this genre of storytelling . I find non-fiction or books that resemble reality far more chilling because the events within those can actually happen whereas, as much as I love reading about them I don't feel the same threat with ghosts or vampires and other such creations.  The scariest thing about The Turn Of The Screw for me is not the apparitions but the children. They are the creepy thing that and the governesses decent into a madness trying to understand what the hell is happening. Its one of those stories where your not actually sure who or what your meant to fear and that's what makes it what it is. Its a thriller and a paranormal mystery all rolled into one but no real resolut...

Enola Holmes, The Case Of The Missing Marquis (Children's Fiction Ages 9/12) Enola Holmes lives a very unconventional life for her time. She spends much if her time Alone which happens to also be her name only spelt backwards. She has no governess and has long been in charge of her own education. Her mother disappears on her birthday leaving her a number of gifts including a book of flowers and cyphers. When Enola calls upon her brothers for help finding her they are not all that helpful and Mycroft decides to send her away to a finishing school. Enola decides to take matters in to her own hands and taking a leaf from her mother's book she disappears off in search of her mother. Along the way she get tangled up in another missing persons case. I bought a copy of this for my niece and decided to give it a whirl. This is the kind of book I would have loved to read at that age. 4/5 Avengers The Children's Crusade (Graphic Novel) If you've read my bl...

Bestseller doesn't necessarily mean good. I can think of many bestsellers that are far from good but they are popular and sell well which makes them bestsellers. There is a different between profitable/ successful and a masterpiece.  Here's the thing though sometimes people like shit book's. They know they are shit book's but at that moment in time it's what they need.  It's the same with TV shows some are terrible even cringeworthy at times but we find ourselves only delighted to be watching them anyway even though we know they are terrible but terrible things can still be entertaining.  Take Twilight for instance. I thoroughly enjoyed those books even though they arent the Mae West. 50 Shades is arguably one of the worst book series ever written and people absolutely love it and that's okay. Your allowed like crap things. Don't feel guilty about your guilty pleasures. Just don't let on that because they are bestsellers that they are goo...

My Week In Books February 22nd-28th Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff I read H.P Lovecrafts complete works last winter and while there where elements I enjoyed I couldn't get past his blatant prejudices, classism and racism and nor would I want to. I read a lot of classics and so I'm usually able to see it through the lense of the time in which it was written but I wasn't able to do that with H.P. Lovecraft.  Lovecraft Country tackles the conjunction between the horror fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and racism in the United States during the era of Jim Crow and it tackles it amazingly well. Lovecraft Country is a book worthy of anyone's bookshelf. Every carachter came to life with ease, none of them felt forced or two dimensional. I especially loved Atticus, Letitia and Ruby.  I have yet to watch the TV Show adaption but now that I have read the book I feel like I know these carachters and can't wait to dive in and compare my imagination with that of the screen...

 Ireland Reads is a public libraries initiative, in partnership with publishers, booksellers, authors and others under the Government’s  Keep Well Campaign The idea is to take time to squeeze in a read in order to do something you enjoy and in doing so look after your mental well-being. At the time of publication 527,045 hours of reading had been pledged. Reading for even just 30 minutes has been scientifically proven to reduce stress levels. Check out this amazing initiative and pledge to squeeze in a read over at  Ireland Reads Did you know you can join the library online and use the Borrowbox App to read a wide variety of amazing books or listen audiobooks for free on your mobile, kindle or other smart device.

This Is Yarrow by Tara Bergin (Peotry) I vowed last year that I would read more poetry and for the most part I'm loving it and have even been inspired to write my own little verses here and there. I don't know what I expected from This is Yarrow I think something a bit more witchy and earthy and although it has a touch of that about it, it just didn't grab me the way I wanted it to. That being said there is a lot of merit in it and a handful of pieces did stand out enough to make it a worthwhile read for me. This Is Yarrow is also short, an excellent book to pick up if your looking for something to read in one sitting. 3/5 Charlotte by Helen Moffett (Austen Inspired) Probably my favourite book this week. Where to begin, I don't think I can say enough good about it. I was pleasantly surprised by Charlotte. For those who haven't read Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice this novel is about Elizabeth Bennett's neighbor and best friend Charlot...