Tag: Gyles Brandreth

Sunday Summary – 1st November 2020

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s weekly Sunday Summary post! This week’s post is a little later than usual since I shared a blog tour post this Sunday just gone. Since the rule of thumb with these things is to not post again on the same day, my update is coming to you a couple of hours later.

If you haven’t taken a look at yesterday’s post, which is a publication day push review of Unbroken Truth by Lukas Lundh, please do! I also shared a Hop Tu Naa (that’s Halloween to you) post on Tuesday, listing my Top Ten reads for the spooky season. If you are still in the mood for a sinister read you can still go and check out that post too. If you like horror, psychological thriller or even a humorous take on the holiday… there’s something for everyone on the list. Enjoy!

 

Books Read

My main priority of the week has been reading Unbroken Truth by Lukas Lundh, as I needed to have the book read in advance for yesterday’s blog tour. As of last week’s Sunday Summary post I had only just started the first few chapters, so I have read pretty much the whole book this week. At just over a couple hundred pages, it wasn’t a long read and so worked well with my schedule this week.

In addition to Unbroken Truth, I have also read about 25% of Sherlock Holmes and the Ripper of Whitechapel this week. This particular book will be featuring on my blog in the next few days. This also is a similarly short read and it feels like I have barely put any effort in to get to 25% through. I’ll be reading a lot more of this in anticipation of my upcoming review – find out below when this is going live.

I’ve spent this week off work and investing some more time into decorating. I’m pleased to say I am VERY NEARLY done now and I’m happy with all my hard work. It’s given me the opportunity to make more progress with audiobooks, which I’ve enjoyed. My first listen of the week involved finishing Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Gyles Brandreth. I only had a couple of hours or so left, so I wrapped this up on Monday.

I’ve been in a Game of Thrones-y mood these past few weeks. I’ve listened to the soundtracks a lot and toyed with (and dismissed) the idea of reading the books again – I’ve only just finished them!  I have, however, decided to listen to the audiobook! I think that’s a fair compromise. I’m enjoying it well enough so far, although some of the narrator’s pronunciation of names etc gets on my nerves as I don’t agree with it! It’s still enjoyable though and I’ll continue to listen to it.

 

Books Discovered

I’ve been good again this week and not added any books to the TBR. Who knows, at this rate, I might stand a chance of dropping some off instead of my usual breaking even (or adding books!)

 

 

Coming Up…

The first post I will be publishing next week is my review of Sherlock Holmes and the Ripper of Whitechapel. This will be going live on Tuesday morning, so I hope you can join me for that. Based on what I have read so far, I expect the review will be a glowing one!

Since it is now November (seriously, where is this year going?!), I’m going to share my next reading list on Thursday. At the moment I only have a couple of books in mind to read, so I’m going to have a think between now and then and by Thursday I should have made my mind up about what I’m going to read.

Last, but not least, I’ll be publishing my Sunday Summary update at the end of the week, as expected.

 

That’s all from me in today’s Sunday Summary post! What have you been reading?

 

 

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Sunday Summary – 25th October 2020

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s weekly update post! I hope you have had a good week, whatever you got up to!

Mine has been a little unusual as I curbed the reading and blogging for a few days in order to finish studying for an exam, which I sat on Wednesday. All went well and I passed the exam, so it was worth the effort! Consequently, though, I only shared one post this week. I decided my one post would be a review since I wanted it to be a more in-depth post. With that in mind, I shared my first audiobook review in three months, which featured Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff.

 

Books Read

I’ve only made a brief start on a read I am reviewing for another blog tour next week. Unbroken Truth has a definite sci-fi vibe from the first few chapters I’ve read. I like how the introduction has set the scene for the novel and I’m looking forward to reading this over the next week.

I haven’t read so much this week, but I have been listening to audiobooks. I’ve made a bit more progress with Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Gyles Brandreth. I’ve only got a little way to go to the finish, and I expect to do this in the next day or two.

I have also had the urge to read and enjoy the A Game of Thrones series again this week, and so I have started listening to the audiobook of the first book in the series. I’ve read the kindle and physical copies of the books to date, but not listened to any of the audiobooks.

 

Books Discovered

I’ve added a book to my TBR for the first time in MONTHS! I watched Des on ITV player earlier this week and loved it – I hadn’t realised there was a book about Des Nilson and the murders. Since I really enjoyed the series I have added the book written about him, Killing for Company, to my TBR.

 

Coming Up…

Since I have a couple of blog posts scheduled towards the end of the week, I want to take part in another Top Ten Tuesday post. This week’s scheduled post is a Halloween ’freebie’, and so I think I’ll be sharing my Top Ten Chilling Hop Tu Naa reads (Hop Tu Naa is the Manx equivalent of Halloween).

On Sunday I will be taking part in the blog tour for Unbroken Truth and sharing my review of the book. As a result, my usual weekly update post will be published first thing on Monday morning.

That’s all from me in today’s post! I hope you have a good week and I’ll see you in the next one!

 

 

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Sunday Summary – 18th October 2020

Hey everyone and welcome to today’s Sunday Summary post. It only feels like two minutes ago since I wrote last week’s update, but here we are! I hope you have had a good week, whatever you have been up to.

I have shared a couple of posts with you this week, which I hope you have enjoyed reading. The first of those posts was a Top Ten Tuesday post, with a theme of hobbies (other than reading). This post subject has been suggested for the 3rd November so I’ve jumped in a bit early. That’s only because I have another commitment on the 3rd November.

On Thursday I shared a blog tour post for Parasite: The Secret Diary of a Landlord. I really enjoyed this non-fiction account of what being a landlord is really like. It is a real eye-opener, written in an entertaining diarised narrative that’s easy to read. If you haven’t read that post yet, please do! I have a lot more praise for it in my post!

 

Books Read

As of last week’s Sunday Summary post I had read around a third of Parasite: The Secret Diary of a Landlord. With the blog tour post scheduled for Thursday, my priority at the beginning of the week was to finish this in time for the tour. I finished this early on Wednesday evening ready to write my post for the tour the next day.

Since finishing Parasite I haven’t started anything new as I have focussed my attention towards studying for my exam next week. In my downtime, however, I have picked up listening to Jack the Ripper: Case Closed again. I’ve listened to a few more hours of this and I only have 1hr 40mins left to go. The narrative is definitely getting to the wrap-up part, so I expect I’ll be listening to this next week to find out how it all ends!

 

Books Discovered

Once again, nothing to report here!

 

Coming Up…

With my exam on Wednesday morning, I won’t be putting any time into my blog in the first couple of days next week. I am going to try and draft a post on Wednesday afternoon/evening though. Failing that, it’ll go live on Thursday instead.

Since I’m going to be a little lighter than usual on the posting schedule, I have decided to post a review of an audiobook I listened to at the beginning of this year. Darkdawn is the conclusion to the Nevernight Chronicles by Jay Kristoff. I pre-ordered the audiobook last year as I had listened to the other two and loved the series already. You can find out more about my thoughts to the conclusion of the series in my post next week!

As always, I’ll wrap up with another Sunday Summary update post at the end of the week.

 

That’s all from me for now – have a great week and I’ll see you in the next one!

 

 

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Sunday Summary – 27th September 2020

I can’t believe I’m sat here writing another Sunday Summary post already. This week has been busy and seems to have flown by!

I shared a couple of posts with you earlier this week. My first post was a review of a book I read and adored earlier this year. The fact that I went on to read the rest of the series published to date in around a couple of months speaks volumes! If you haven’t checked out my review of The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson, please take a look.

Friday saw the return of my regular feature post, Shelf Control. It has been over a month since I last shared one of these posts. It was good fun to have another look at my TBR and feature the next book on the list and share why I want to read it.

 

Books Read

I’ve spent a fair amount of time reading this week, but not as much as usual. Work has been quite busy and on top of that I’m stepping up with studying for my exam next month. I don’t count that towards my blogging (I’m sure a textbook on how securities are settled across the global financial market would bore you all half to death), but probably half of my reading time was spent on this over the course of the week.

When I wasn’t studying, I picked up Rags of Time by Michael Ward and picked up where I left off last week. I had only really just started this as of last week’s Sunday Summary update, so I’ve probably read around 40% of the book this week. Not the best, but not worst either. Honestly, I’ve been feeling a little burned out over the last week and I haven’t read as much as normal, purely because I didn’t want to. I can’t force myself to and I won’t. I read for fun – if it becomes a chore then it’s time to stop.

During one particular day when I was feeling burned out, but also slightly guilty for it, I turned to the faithful audiobook by way of compromise. I said I wanted to keep going with Jack the Ripper: Case Closed and I have. I sat and listened to more of this whilst working on a knitting project I’ve started. Even though I was doing two things at once, I felt like I could switch off a bit more. It helped me wind down a bit, but also feel more motivated to get back into reading again. Around 15% of my progress reading of Rags of Time was done this morning after that night – put it that way!

 

Books Discovered

Again, I haven’t added a single book to my TBR this week. In fairness, I have been doing other things (blogging, studying, knitting etc)so I haven’t really been looking at books…

 

Coming Up…

Since I am stepping up the studying and trying to catch up on my TBR, I’m only going to share next month’s reading list mid next week. I also have a blog tour early in October that I will need to do the reading for (pretty sharpish) so I’m not going to overburden myself with too many posts.

I’ll round off the week with a Sunday Summary as usual.

 

That’s all from me until next week! Have a good one and I’ll see you around!

 

 

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Sunday Summary – 20th September 2020

Hi everyone and welcome to today’s catch up in this Sunday Summary post! I hope you have all had a good week, whatever you have gotten up to.

Mine has been a busy week! Aside from reading and blogging, I’ve spent a good deal of time on home improvements. I’ve spent a good few evenings this week re-painting my downstairs loo. I have friends coming over next week for afternoon tea, so I wanted to get the most garish room in the house dealt with before then. I’m not joking when I say it was Kawasaki green…

It’s not anymore!

Around that, I’ve been writing blog posts about my Top Ten Fantasy Novel Covers in Tuesday’s ‘Top Ten Tuesday’ post and on Thursday, I shared my review of The Rue Stone by Janet Stock for the book birthday blitz blog tour. Try and say ‘book birthday blitz blog tour’ quickly five times, I dare you!

 

Books Read

Although I have been doing a lot of work on the house, I’ve still managed to get a fair amount of reading done. My top priority at the start of the week was to read The Rue Stone since I was taking part in the blog tour on Thursday. The Rue Stone is an 80-page or so novella, so I actually read this in one sitting one evening. It was nice to read something short for a change and I enjoyed the storyline!

I’ve also started reading Rags of Time this week. I haven’t made huge progress as I’ve been decorating and general house bits, but I’ll dive into this properly tonight once this post goes live.

Since I haven’t really been in a position to sit and read a book, I’ve made a lot more progress with listening to Jack the Ripper: Case Closed. I’ve now listened to around 4-and-a-half hours this week, so I’m nearly halfway through the audiobook. I’m finished with decorating again for a little while, but I’ll definitely have to keep up with listening to this and finish it soon.

 

Books Discovered

I haven’t added a book to my TBR since the 5th August. For once, it’s actually starting to go down. I’m starting to think there’s something wrong with me…

I’m actually quite glad about it, to be honest – the length of it is entirely ridiculous and I need to get on top of it. It’s nice to see the number dropping!

 

Coming Up…

I want to share another book review with you this week. I have a few on my list that I need to catch up with. Next week I’ll be starting with a follow-on series to a trilogy I read years ago. The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson is set in the Mistborn universe but in a completely new timeline far into the future of the previous books. I’ve gone on to read all of the published books in this second follow-on series since,  but I’ll just be reviewing the first book in the coming days. I hope you can join me and check out what will be my glowing review!

Nearly a month after I planned to share this post (I got my blog tour days/dates mixed up so I realised last minute I had to postpone), I’ll be sharing a Shelf Control post on Friday! Yes, blog tour commitments and such have meant that I haven’t shared any regular Friday features for a month now. But, Shelf Control is back this Friday and featuring a humorous non-fiction book that’s all about the psychology of the mind.

As always I’ll round off the week with another Sunday Summary post.

 

However, that’s all from me in this week’s Sunday Summary update! What have you been reading? I’ll catch up with you in the next one.

 

 

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