"I don't want the world to keep turning without me on it." - Nathan Filer

I was buying a toothbrush the other day (I promise this is related to books) and I had a choice between three. Not a very extensive selection, but this was only a teeny Tesco Express, so we won’t judge their range of toothbrushes too harshly. I was immediately drawn to the fancier toothbrush of the three: the one that had such a fancy aerodynamic-looking shape that it looked like it would have flown through the air with great ease if you ever felt the urge to chuck it at someone (Why would you do that? Weirdo). The other two were own-brand, standard, boring. So I bought the fancy toothbrush, even though I am pretty certain that no matter how many extra features they add to a toothbrush, it will still give me the same quality of cleaning as any other toothbrush. And how similar the toothbrush is to an aeroplane will have even less of an effect on my teeth.

Anyway, my point. I am the same with books (see, I told you). However, I feel less guilty about buying books for the way they look than I do about toothbrushes – books can be beautiful, and toothbrushes are…toothbrushes. I promise I won’t mention toothbrushes again.

The two books that I have finished so far this month are Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey and The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. 5 points for Ravenclaw if you remembered that from last time! In case you didn’t catch my much laboured point about the toothbrushes (oops), I bought these books because they were pretty. I was buying Christmas presents on Amazon and since I would get free postage if my order was over £10, obviously I needed to buy something else. To save money. Logic.

I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed both of these books! Elizabeth is Missing is a mystery novel written from the point of view of a woman with dementia, which was fascinating and unsettling at the same time. It flicks between the past and the present, with the two often getting muddled up. Maud’s confusion and disorientation really gripped me – I really liked her character and felt as though we were trying to figure out this mystery together. The writing style could easily have been far too difficult to follow, and at some points I was a bit confused, but I think that was intentional and it comes together beautifully at the end.

As I probably should have guessed by it being in the related titles section, The Shock of the Fall wasn’t exactly light-hearted either. So many details about this book aren’t revealed until way into the story, so it’s difficult to talk too much about it without spoiling it. I don’t feel giving you the blurb is too much information, though:

“I’ll tell you what happened because it will be a good way to introduce my brother. His name’s Simon. I think you’re going to like him. I really do. But in a couple of pages he’ll be dead. And he was never the same after that.”

It was enough to get me to read it. You know, after I’d already bought it because of the pretty cover…
This book was dark and bittersweet. It’s written to its readers – Matthew addresses you as he writes which I found really engaging (even more than Elizabeth is Missing, which felt more like being a stranger looking down on what was happening). Halfway through the book, the text changes to being like it was written on a typewriter, because the character writes that section on a typewriter. I love it when books do that, like when characters are given their own personal handwriting when we’re reading letters written by them (prime example: the newish editions of Harry Potter. Love.).

In short, I’d recommend both of these books. They both begin with unexplained events that tease you just enough to want to keep reading, and the conclusions of both were worth waiting for (which doesn’t always happen…*cough* Ketchup Clouds). I’m loving reading more, and I still managed to find time to finish watching Making a Murderer! Skills.

Next up: The Hole in our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung and The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

I know you just can’t wait. But you have to. Don’t cry.

"Books have to be heavy because the whole world's inside them." - Cornelia Funke

Sometimes, I remember how much I love to read. Usually when I'm reading a really good book. So why don’t I read as much as I used to?  In 2015 I only read about 7 books, most of them over summer, and most I had read before. There is some comfort in re-reading a book – it gives you a foresight that it’s somewhat difficult to have in the real world. I love reading Agatha Christie novels over again and mocking all the characters for not knowing who the murderer is. Idiots. 

But picking up a new book takes a lot more willpower. I might not enjoy it, and...ugh, effort. This year, I'm going to get over that. I've set myself a goal of reading 30 books in 2016. Why 30? My reasoning is that it’s not as daunting as 50 but it allows for reading more than 2 a month during the summer. Still pretty daunting. I had already given myself a head start with a book that I had started reading before Christmas, and I have finished said book and started another, so why is some part of my brain already coming up with objections?

1. Do I really have time to read?
2. Where am I going to get all these books from?
3. How am I going to write a bazillion essays and a dissertation later on when I’m reading all of these books??

The booky part of my brain easily rebuffs these objections:

1. Yes. I’ve been doing not much except watching Making a Murderer for the last couple of days, so…yes.
2. Living next to a map library and studying in the shadows of the university library has made me forget the joys of real, good, proper libraries (although if maps are your thing, I guess the map library falls into that bracket…you do you).
3. If I’ve got time to watch Making a Murderer/countless other Netflix shows and still pass my first semester of Honours, I've got time to read. And I am unlikely to get tonsillitis again this time around.

 I am in my third year of a Linguistics and English Language degree, and while the workload this brings has contributed to my lack of reading for fun, it has also increased my love of language and words and meaning. I love a good sentence. I love good punctuation. I'm just going to say it: I love grammar. Ain’t nothing better than good grammar. I'm looking forward to reading some good grammar.

This blog is going to be…I haven’t quite decided what it’s going to be. Reviews of books with added interesting thoughts and observations?  My aim is to move away from purely reading Young Adult fiction this year, which I have a habit of falling back on even though some of my favourite books don’t fall under that category (e.g. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin by Louis de Bernières, and Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy). Right now I've got a range of fiction and Christian non-fiction to start me off.  I'm also going to allow myself to not like books, and if I can’t stand any of the characters and don’t care what happens to them, I'm not going to feel guilty about not finishing it. I've only ever really, really disliked 2 books – one of them was the second in a trilogy of which I bought all three and can’t bring myself to read the third. It was just so awful.

There. I've written it down so now I have to do it. My next post will be about the books I've read in January, but as a teaser (aren’t you lucky), the first book I finished in 2016 was Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey, and my second will be The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. I've got 10 days to finish it, which is perfectly manageable. I can do this. I can.

Thanks for reading this introductory post! If you have any recommendations for books or feedback on what is my first time writing a blog, I would greatly appreciate it.