Tag Archives: Books

We Are All Losing Our Attention Spans

Or is it just me? In a world where the way in which we view media is becoming more and more compacted, it only makes sense that our attention spans are shortening as we look at the things around us through increasingly smaller windows. For me the change was obvious, the very way in which […]

Review: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë

I read this book for a number of very random reasons: a) it was free on my Kindle (sickening, I know). b) I kind of felt a little sorry for poor old Anne being continually overshadowed by her older sisters, and c) I simply felt the urge to read a good old old-fashioned classic. I’ve […]

I Am Writing a Book and It’s Taking Over My Life

This is going to be a little tricky to explain. Ironically, the joy that I’ve discovered and experienced through writing is hard to put down into words. I’ll give it a go nonetheless, I think it’s important to try. What began three years ago on a long car journey through America as a spark of an idea, […]

Review: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?: (And Other Concerns), Mindy Kaling

I probably shouldn’t have read this on public transport so much; I definitely got a few strange looks at my stifled giggles and silent laughs. I’ve been a fan of Mindy Kaling for a while and have religiously watched The Mindy Project through all of its low parts, because the highs are just so clever […]

Review: The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss

“I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in. I tread paths by moonlight that others […]

Review: Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn

“Who are you? What have we done to each other? These are the questions Nick Dunne finds himself asking on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it […]

Review: The Luminaries, Eleanor Catton

“It is 1866, and Walter Moody has come to make his fortune upon the New Zealand goldfields.  On arrival, he stumbles across a tense gathering of twelve local men, who have met in secret to discuss a series of unsolved crimes.  A wealthy man has vanished, a whore has tried to end her life, and […]

I Got a Kindle and Then I Read Paper Towns by John Green

So I think that the title really sums up what I’m about to say… I was very fortunate to receive a Kindle as an early graduation present, and in my literary-induced excitement, I bought the first book I could think of: Paper Towns by John Green. I then proceeded to read said book, partially because […]

Review: Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

I’ve wanted to read this book for a long time, and completing The Return of the Native last summer only whetted my appetite for some more Hardy. If you don’t know what Tess of the d’Urbervilles is about, then you must have somehow managed to avoid, like I did, any spoilers for a text widely studied […]

My Post-Graduation Reading List

As I struggle through volumes of John Donne and pages of the Medieval Welsh magical realism of The Mabinogion (?!), the light at the end of the tunnel is that glorious post-university beacon, when I know I will be able to read ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING I WANT. Now I say this as a student who […]