I really loved this satire on race in grad school and academic research. I think the balance of silly and serious was good and Ingrid was the right amount clueless, clever, relatable, sweet and frustrating. I will say I thought the plot carried on after the point where I‘d have wanted the book to end if I was an editor, but I loved the ending we got to in the end so I can‘t hold that against the book too much.

Here‘s two (very different) autumnal recommendations for #hauntedshelf 🎃 Into the Drowning Deep is a gorgeously written, spooky, individual horror novel set at sea which I‘ll be rereading this year I love it so much. Against the currant is the 1st in a cosy mystery series that I can‘t wait to read the sequel to - don‘t we all want to go to a Grenadian bakery in New York and solve some murders?? cute, funny and made me hungry

#skeletoncrew

Here‘s a couple from my TBR for #hauntedshelf this year! I have a pretty hefty TBR list as I‘ll be revelling in the spookiest time of year at the same time as working on my PhD applications- so a lot of reading to do! But here‘s four that I‘m most excited for. #skeletoncrew

Ahoy #skeletoncrew teammates! Let‘s talk early Let‘s Go Points for #hauntedshelf. You can get 60 points before the challenge starts for posting a book recommendation, your TBR for the month and sharing the sign up link. Tag me in your posts and let‘s start getting some points!

Hello #hauntedshelf participants and welcome to the #skeletoncrew 💀💀💀 I am SO excited to be your team captain - I hand my masters dissertation in on September 30 so October 1 is going to be a fantastic day to start dedicating myself to spooky non-grad-school reading.

Signups are open through the end of the month so please do sign up if you‘re interested- there‘s lots of time to be put on a team! I‘ll tag my teammates and put some links below

I have such a strange relationship with Tessa Bailey books - I often find myself rolling my eyes at them but then I have a fantastic time and read ten more. This was cute and funny, I loved the heroine less than some of her others but it gave me everything I was wanting and I feel like I have to give it a pick - as I will absolutely buy whatever she releases next.

I‘m not normally a YA reader but the Welsh mythology dark academia fantasy seduced me here and I loved it. Quite dark and complex for a YA fantasy (with some tw‘s needed around older men putting pressure on younger women) but the writing was beautiful and world building was very original, really swallowed me up.

#wondrouswednesday @eggs

1. Both! I love to compare and argue about them, and I'm not a 'book is always better' person. Tagging my current read that I'd love to see a beautiful indie movie of.

2. Laundry - laundry is my main job in my flat.

3. Why not both

4. Vanilla

5. Pen

6. All of the above I just wanna chat

7. Be one

8. Fish

9. Online

10. Massive rainstorm, best weather always always

This was a spectacularly creepy slow burn meta horror that I heartily heartily recommend as we head into spooky season. A man who played the mysterious ‘thin kid‘ in a cult classic 90s horror movie that never actually got completed remembers what happened to stop the filming at the same time as a remake is planned. Very Scream, very creepy, really really good

Abby Jimenez is becoming one of my favourite romance writers super quickly. This was beautifully written, really sweet and meaningful, and I loved how much detailed thought had gone into making an MC with real issues to work through that she worked on on a reasonable timeline as part of a sweet and supportive relationship.

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1. I usually read in tiny fragments through the day, so a lot in a day but only a few pages or minutes at once. I‘m always so busy it‘s a lot of snatched moments on buses etc

2. Fangirl down by Tessa Bailey was an odd one for me - maybe I‘m just not attracted to golfers

3. Tagged my absolute fave modern classic

I haven't done #twofortuesday in ages but I'm trying to get back into reading to help me stay sane through my masters dissertation so here we are! @thespineview

1. Definitely a podcast - I listen to a million podcasts and I've never really watched tv talk shows so I think I'd definitely be better at podcasting. I was a guest on one once actually so I have some skills already!

2. Tagging a summer romance I'm loving and keen to finish

This cute romance had almost no plot, which doesn‘t need to be a bad thing, but wasn‘t quite what I was expecting. An up and coming comedian with some issues related to her family falls hard for her manager/aspiring comedy writer. Then they‘re pretty much happy and hanging out for 300 pages. It was sweet and concluded nicely but maybe I‘d have liked some more plot

I had such a sudden urge to reread Death Note the other day, even though I‘m not a huge manga reader and I‘ve barely thought about this since school. It just popped into my head and I flew through jt and really loved it. Maybe I need to do a whole reread?

I always love Tessa Bailey but this one didn‘t entirely do it for me. I think I‘m just not that attracted to or interested in golf and we never quite got over that unfortunately. I‘ll absolutely read more by her I guess I‘ve just learned my lesson about my capacity to connect with sexy golfers.

A bit of an update from me - juggling my masters with my work is getting veeeeery crazy right now. I‘m writing up my dissertation and in ‘final push‘ mode and it‘s all going to be A Lot now through September. But my friend got me hooked on the acotar books and I am having the best time. I‘m reading much more slowly than I usually do but it‘s such a wonderful immersive hot bath of a series

I let this sit unread on my kindle for ages because I was worried it would be another ‘snarky sad millennial girl‘ novel of the kind I‘ve got quite sick of over the last couple years, but when I finally started it I realised really quickly this is one of the absolute jewels of the books that have been marketed that way. I loved how it leaned into the ambiguity and humour of the weird accidentally moving in with your lover‘s wife situation

I‘m having such a good time with this cute sapphic romance set on a flower farm in the midst of all my masters dissertation work!

It took me a long time to get round to the second one in this series but in so glad I did! I don‘t think anything other than Scream has ever managed to be a slasher that comments on slashers, gets a few laughs and also is a genuine good example of the genre and a love letter to the classics this well.

I love the Native American heroine too - there aren‘t enough good books with native MCs in horror and this is so well written

This was such a lush and gorgeous fantasy read - it managed to be both very classically fairytale-ish and also really original which was so cool. It felt quite YA at times, which isn‘t a criticism as much as a thing I just happen not to like, but also very violent at times. I think when I was a teenager I‘d have been absolutely obsessed with this.

I finally got to this YEARS after buying it on a friend‘s recommendation. I found it really compelling and it kept me turning the pages, but every time I stopped to think about it I was thinking ‘wow I don‘t want that‘. I think it‘s a very well-done historical romance but I think I have very different fantasies from Claire and Diana both!

This was SUCH an adorable romance and it made me giggle and kick my feet with cuteness about a lovely sapphic couple with a gorgeous healthy dynamic. It even made me kind of a bit care about football, which isn‘t easy to do. Was there piles of plot and conflict? Not really, I can‘t say the plot was mega special, but I enjoyed being there so much I didn‘t mind. It was like the best of fan fiction in those ways.

I‘m trying so hard to get through some kindle backlog in 2024! This was weird and while I usually love weird I don‘t know how on board I was for this. It‘s off the tbr though and I‘m proud I got to the end.

Ahoy there #snowangels! Can you believe the #wintergames ended so quickly?? I swear they go faster every year.

I‘ve already got some people‘s points totals - thank you so much for being so keen and making my job easy! I haven‘t finished adding all mine up yet and have a lot of maths to do 😬

We have one more game for #wintergames team #snowangels!! Can you believe how fast this has gone by??

1. Party dress ?
2. Stay up but just til like 12.30
3. Champagne all the way
4. Couch. I wanna be fancy but I don‘t wanna pay for admission for some 680 new year event that would be (d8 any other day of the year
5. Comfy but pretty flats…?

I normally do Chinese takeout w my parents but they‘re away so I‘ll be at my childhood bestie‘s house

My grad school essay has been absolutely eating me alive this week and I‘ve just finished three full days at the library in a row 🥺 but I did fit one more Christmas book in for #wintergames and this was maybe my favourite I‘ve ever read! I love Tolkien so much and this was gorgeous! #snowangels

We have some #wintergames last minute points available team #snowangels ❄️

1. The first one that came to mind was Babel!
2. I read some pretty awful TikTok romances but I don‘t remember them well enough to pick one
3. Yep I do it with my family the English way 🍗
4. Rainy but very atmospheric!

Grad school work has been SO INTENSE this month it has really damaged my #wintergames vibe, but I was delighted to get to finish this cosy Christmas mystery on the train back to London today. Perfect vibes, absolutely perfect ❄️

#snowangels

Ahoy #snowangels!! It‘s time for our last weekly game of the #wintergames this year ❄️❄️❄️ I can‘t believe we‘re this far through already.

I‘ll tag the team members and then our team read down below to get us started!

Merry Christmas Litsy friends, winter gamers and #snowangels!! I mainly got books I needed for grad school, for which I am super grateful. I also got the new Clarice bean Christmas book from my parents for a bit of recreational reading! Clarice bean was my first ever favourite book when I was about 4 years old so this is super meaningful to me 💚

Thank you SO much for my gorgeous parcel Jess! You‘ve hit the nail right on the head with the book and the chocolate 🥰🥰🥰 @jhod

And thank you so much @MaleficentBookDragon for all your hard work organising #jolabokaflodswap as always 😘

Alas I have spent the last few days of #wintergames deep deep in reading for my masters essay! Not a huge number of #wgwordsearch words here but at least I reckon I can count them all as tbr reads! They‘re certainly important to get through lol

#snowangels

Team #snowangels I am so sorry! I have to confess that I forgot to post the team game for this week 😞 I‘ve been wrapping up work for before Christmas and it completely slipped my mind I am SO sorry. We still have a few more days to play though so get those points!

#wintergames

I have absolutely loved my midwinter lord of the rings reread! I‘m getting ready for a module on imagined medieval landscapes for my masters and I‘m hoping to submit an abstract to a conference about the Lord of the rings so I had to spend Christmas rereading it all 🥰

#wintergames #snowangels

This was cute and optimistic and I‘m all for fantasising about moving to a ranch in Montana during the snow. Having said that tho, the book was very harsh on the best friend who said ‘are we sure we should be moving to the middle of nowhere with a woman you‘re in love with after four days‘. I firmly believe I‘d be that friend lol

#wintergames #snowangels

And here we are with my #wintergames points total for the #snowangels ❄️❄️❄️

Thank you so much and a HUGE HUGE well done to the #snowangels team members who have already submitted their points totals so far for the #wintergames ❄️ if you haven‘t posted yet, there‘s still time to tell me your points! You can make your own post and tag me or comment down below 🎅

I haven‘t been super festive the last couple of days for #wintergames because grad school reading has been dragging me away, but I have finally finished going through this long Italian poem in parallel translation for my paper! It‘s a lot of readathon hours for sure, and super relevant for my essay, so I can‘t complain too much.

#snowangels

I‘ve just arrived at my parents for Christmas and I‘m excited to have plenty of time for #wintergames reading and #dashingdecember! I do have a huge grad school paper to write :/ so my goal is to achieve a mix of finishing all my grad school reading in time to write the thing and also fit some fun reads in in the evenings

#snowangels @Andrew65

I‘m having a luxurious Christmas lord of the rings reread this #wintergames! Just finished the two towers which was a lot of readathon hours and a surprising number of bingo card squares - not quite the elves the bingo board makers thought of but eh its elves. #snowangels

I‘m so sorry I forgot to post about this when I sent it out! This package went to the post office about two days ago so I hope it will arrive in good time for Christmas 🥰

#jolabokaflodswap @MaleficentBookDragon

Here‘s one for #wgguessthebook

#wintergames #snowangels

Here‘s one for #wgguessthebook ❄️❄️❄️

#wintergames #snowangels

I really enjoyed our #snowangels #wintergames buddy read! This was so divinely creepy and the idea of Christmas music playing in July when you aren‘t expecting to show the wraith is coming is absolutely chilling. Having said that, I found the scary bits more convincing than the human emotional bits, but eh it‘s a horror that was good at being a horror so I can‘t hold it against it too much.

Can you believe it‘s time for the second week of #wintergames??? Here‘s the weekly game for week 2 - it‘s an oldie and a classic!

Good luck #snowangels and remember to use the tag #wgguessthebook so non-participants can block it if they don‘t want to see 🥰

For the #wintergamesphotochallenge and #wildlife I picked this wintry nature book I gave my mum for Christmas last year! She really loved it. I‘ve got her another stack of nature books for this year

#wintergames #snowangels @Clwojick @StayCurious

For #christmascardday and #decemberdreams it had to be a bookish Christmas card!

#wintergames #snowangels @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

Catching up on #decemberdreams today and for Bella it has to be this one, which is one of my favourite books I read this year!

#wintergames @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks #snowangels

For the #wintergamesphotochallenge today we‘ve got a book with Christmas lights on the cover!

#wintergames #snowangels @Clwojick @StayCurious

There‘s only one choice for #decemberdreams and #scrooge today!

#wintergames #snowangels @Eggs @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks