Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.
My dad and I have a game in which we look at a book (we’re allowed to touch it and sniff it too) and can tell you when it was published. My worst estimate was twenty years out one time but, on the whole, we can date it well within a decade. It’s a great party trick but anyone can do it with the right knowledge and a little practice. To help you out, here are five ways to tell the age of a book just by looking at it.
Joe the normal soon becomes Joe the Barbarian when he finds himself summoned to Muddle Earth and expected to be a brave hero. He has been summoned by Randalf the Wise, Muddle Earth’s leading Wizard (*only wizard) to slay ogres, wrestle dragons, and bravely confront villains.
Ten books and a novella (so far) this year. Here's what I've been reading, but have I kept to my resolution to read better?
Reading is a joy. We read to learn, to relax, and to escape but we only have a limited amount of time. It can be so easy to feel guilty about abandoning a book part-way through but there are legitimate reasons to do so.
Someone keeps leaving cups of tea all over Maud’s house. And for some reason her cupboards are full of tinned peaches. It’s all very strange but she’s struggling to remember. One thing is certain though, her friend Elizabeth is missing and no matter what anyone says, Maud is going to find her.
Born in rural Shropshire around the time of Waterloo, Prue Sarn is a strong, independent soul, cursed by her hare lip never to be accepted nor loved. But this curse is her 'precious bane'.
For some reason, relationships between characters seem more powerful when they aren't the sole focus of the novel. Perhaps because there's more to life than romance, who knows? Whatever the case, these subplots are often overlooked in favour of the obvious. So, since it's February, here are five underrated romances in fiction.
Ender is the result of genetic experimentation, the perfect General to end a century-long war with an alien planet. At six years old, he's whisked away to command school where he is trained through hundreds of strategy games and simulations. But are they really just games? Or is there something else going on?
There are so many great Christmas stories out there - and so much fluff! Here are five less well-known books you may enjoy this Christmas.
What if Father Christmas was not so much an individual as an organization? Jeremy Ogden has 25 days to complete his mission and change lives but he has one big problem in the way and her name is Virginia. Good book? We'll see...
