Tag Archives: literature

Review: Reasons to Stay Alive, Matt Haig

The first book in my Summer Reading List. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FEEL TRULY ALIVE? Aged 24, Matt Haig’s world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live […]

Review: The Raven Boys, Maggie Stiefvater

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She doesn’t believe in true love, and never thought this would be a problem. But as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure […]

Review: Room, Emma Donoghue

Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single, locked room. They don’t have the key. Jack and Ma are prisoners. Room by Emma Donoghue is an extraordinarily powerful story of a mother and child kept in isolation, and the desire for, and price of, freedom. Room had been on my […]

Review: Wild, Cheryl Strayed

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America and to do it alone. She […]

Poetry Corner | Poem #13: I Was Ice

An oldie but a goodie. In my eyes anyway.

Poetry Corner | Poem #12

And sometimes I wish that I could unbelieve the person, or the people, that I create. And sometimes I think that I should just be grateful for an imagination so resourceful.  To be honest I don’t think this even counts as a poem but, hey, they’re words and I like them.

Christmas Reading | Little Women

When I first started my Literature degree, the first question I was asked in most of my seminars was, “What is your favourite book?” Now, I have to admit that I had a problem with this question, and I would like to point out that any discerning Literature student would probably not be able to […]

Poetry Corner | Poem #10 : In Autumn Time

I told you I loved Autumn. Ten whole poems I’ve shared on here, ten pieces of my soul. I’m feeling a bit braver now, a bit more like I love what I’m doing and I love the feeling that people, however few, are reading my work, however crappy. Watch this space, as ever.  

The Diary of an Unpublished Author #2

Dear Diary, So you think you’d like to be a writer? So you have an idea. Except you don’t want to use that word because it sounds like such a vague and immeasurable of a thing when yours is so concrete, so permanent, so immutable. So you have a fire lit inside of you which […]

Review: We Were Liars, E Lockhart

You know when you read a book and it starts off kind of slow, kind of dull, and then suddenly that’s it: you’re hooked, and there’s nothing you can do but think about it, wonder when you will be able to read it again, stay up all night practically inhaling the story because your precious […]