Tag: historical fiction

Sunday Morning Book Chats Part 12 – Morgan from @literaryloveaffair_

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This interview was originally conducted back in July of 2016, however due to my busy university schedule it is only being posted now. I apologize for the delay!

Hello lovely readers! As I’m sure some of you already know, last week I relaunched my Sunday Morning Book Chats series with an interview from the incredibly lovely Steph and this week, as promised, I’ve got another bookstagrammer for you. This week’s interviewee is Morgan from @literaryloveaffair_, who I can genuinely say is one of my favorite people in the entire boosktagram community. Morgan and I first started talking because we wanted to a buddy read a classic together (which we still have yet to do, shame on us!) and we instantly clicked. She is one of the kindest souls I have ever had the pleasure of encountering, and I truly treasure every conversation we have together. I’m sure you’ll love her and her boosktagram account as much as I do, so, without further ado, let’s hear from Morgan!

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December and Christmas Book Haul

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Hello lovely readers! I hope you’ve all had a wonderful holiday season – I know I certainly have. While December hasn’t really been a successful reading month for me, what with finals and the holidays, it has most definitely been a wonderful month for acquiring new books. I thought I would take sometime today to show you the the new books that have come into my life lately, both books I’ve bought myself and books I’ve received as gifts for Christmas. These are all books that I’ve been wanting for ages, and I can’t wait to read them in 2017. Continue reading “December and Christmas Book Haul” →

Fit for a Queen: Victoria by Daisy Goodwin

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book-coverTitle: Victoria: A Novel of a Young Queen

Author: Daisy Goodwin

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Length: 416 pages

Release Date: November 22, 2016

Summary (from Goodreads): In 1837, less than a month after her eighteenth birthday, Alexandrina Victoria – sheltered, small in stature, and female – became Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Many thought it was preposterous: Alexandrina — Drina to her family — had always been tightly controlled by her mother and her household, and was surely too unprepossessing to hold the throne. Yet from the moment William IV died, the young Queen startled everyone: abandoning her hated first name in favor of Victoria; insisting, for the first time in her life, on sleeping in a room apart from her mother; resolute about meeting with her ministers alone. One of those ministers, Lord Melbourne, became Victoria’s private secretary. Perhaps he might have become more than that, except everyone argued she was destined to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. But Victoria had met Albert as a child and found him stiff and critical: surely the last man she would want for a husband….
Drawing on Victoria’s diaries as well as her own brilliant gifts for history and drama, Daisy Goodwin, author of the bestselling novels The American Heiress and The Fortune Hunter as well as creator and writer of the new PBS/Masterpiece drama Victoria, brings the young queen even more richly to life in this magnificent novel.

Disclaimer:  This is an advertisement for SheSpeaks/St. Martins Press.

There have been a lot of exciting books released so far this year, and Daisy Goodwin’s Victoria, which comes out next Tuesday, is one I have been anticipating for a while now. Anyone who reads this blog will know how much I love historical fiction, and combine that with my love of the English monarchy and what could go wrong?! Continue reading “Fit for a Queen: Victoria by Daisy Goodwin” →

Sunday Morning Book Chats Part 9 – Charlotte from @what.i.read

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Hello lovely readers! I can’t believe that this is already Part 9 of my Sunday Morning Book Chats series. It feels like only yesterday that I started, and now it’s been running for a whole nine weeks! I want to thank everyone who has encouraged me and participated in this series. You’re all wonderful and I love you very much. 🙂

Now, on to this week’s guest! Today I’d like to welcome the lovely Charlotte from @what.i.read to my blog, a bookstagrammer from London who has over 29,000 followers. Charlotte has some of the most gorgeous photos on bookstagram, so I’m really excited that I got to chat with her for this interview. Without further ado, let’s get to the questions!

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The Classics Book Tag!

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Classics Book Tag (1)

Hello lovely readers! Today I’m here with a type of blog post that’s a bit new for me – a book tag. I know that book tags are extremely popular and extremely common in the book blogging world, but I personally have never done one here on Reflections of a Reader. There’s a first time for everything, however, and when the lovely Lauren from Where There’s Ink There’s Paper tagged me to do the Classics Book Tag I simply knew I had to do it. You can find the link to Lauren’s post here, and you can find the link to the original post here if you’re interested. 🙂 Continue reading “The Classics Book Tag!” →

Bookshelf Tour, Part One – Featuring Austen, Dickens, Woolf, and More

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Hello lovely readers! As I’ve spent this morning reorganizing my bookshelves rather than writing blog posts, like I was supposed to do, I thought now would be the perfect time to give you a quick tour of my shelves. 🙂

To give you a bit of overview, I have two bookshelves in my bedroom – a large, pretty white one from Ikea, which is my main bookshelf and the one that gets featured on my Instagram account quite frequently, and a smaller, brown bookshelf that is extremely messy and serves as a place to put all the books that don’t fit on my main shelves. My second bookcase is extremely disorganized, so I’m not going to show you that one, but I am rather proud of my white shelves so that is what you’ll see on this tour today.

My main bookshelf has six shelves, and as I don’t want this post to be massively long I will be breaking my bookshelf tour up into a six part series, one part for each shelf. By breaking it up this way, I can give you an overview of the shelf and talk a bit about all the different books on that shelf without feeling like I’m bombarding you all with information. Without further ado, let’s get to the books!

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Man Bookering: The North Water by Ian McGuire

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IMG_4445Title: The North Water

Author: Ian McGuire

Publisher: Henry Holt and Company

Pages: 255

Summary (from inside flap): Behold the man: drunk, brutal, and bloodthirsty. Henry Drax is a harpooner on the Volunteer, a Yorkshire whaler bound for the hunting waters of the Arctic Circle. Also aboard is Patrick Sumner, an ex-army surgeon with a shattered reputation and no better option than to embark as the ship’s medic on this ill-fated voyage. In India, during the Siege of Delhi, Sumner thought he had experienced the depths to which a man can stoop, but now, trapped in the wooden belly of the ship with Drax, he encounters pure evil and is forced to act. As the true purposes of the expedition become clearer, the confrontation between the two men plays out amid the freezing darkness of an arctic water.

The North Water is an interesting novel for me to sit down and write a review of because it’s not my usual sort of book, not by a long shot. For whatever reason, I tend to shy away from books about surviving in extreme conditions, long voyages by ship, or anything set in arctic environments, yet this novel has all three of those elements. Why in the world then, you may be asking yourself, did I decide to read The North Water by Ian McGuire? Why, the Man Booker long list, my dear Watson! Continue reading “Man Bookering: The North Water by Ian McGuire” →

A Hemingway-Inspired Reading List

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On July 21, 1899, a baby boy was born to a couple named Clarence and Grace Hemingway in Oak Park, Illinois. Named after Grace’s father, the young boy was called Ernest Hemingway, and he would grow up to become one of the greatest American writers of all time.

As one of the most notorious names in literature, Hemingway arouses a multitude of feelings among readers: some praise his genius, others detest him, while others just think he’s plain boring. Like him or not, however, you have to admit that Hemingway has left a profound impact on the way we think, write, and read literature. In honor of Hemingway’s 117th birthday this Thursday, I’ve put together a list of books for those who wish to celebrate the day by reading about the man himself, or just for those folks looking for a good bit of scandalous literary history (and let’s be honest, Hemingway’s life was full of scandal). Continue reading “A Hemingway-Inspired Reading List” →

Author Jennifer S. Brown on Writing, Feminism, and the Importance of Having a Support Group

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Jennifer S Brown interview

Released on April 5th, 2016, Jennifer S. Brown’s debut novel Modern Girls is a historical fiction piece set in 1930s New York City and follows the lives of Rose and Dottie, a mother and daughter who both become pregnant at the same time. Part social commentary, part family history, Modern Girls is an incredible story about growing up, second chances, and the power of new beginnings. If you’re interested in reading my full review of Modern Girls, click here. To hear more about Brown’s writing process, the books that inspire her, her time at The Debutante Ball, and if there is any possibility of a Modern Girls sequel, keep reading for my full interview with the lovely Jennifer S. Brown. 🙂

1. First thing’s first: congratulations on Modern Girls! Publishing a book is such a major achievement in any regard, but I know Modern Girls is your debut novel and to have it come out to such spectacular reviews must be a dream come true. How are you feeling now that Modern Girls has been out for a couple of months?

If anything, it feels crazier than it did than when it first came out! Because now people have read it. For so many years, Dottie and Rose existed only on my page. Now they exist on the page for anyone. It’s like my imaginary friends are now being shared with others. I’m completely excited, but a little freaked out. Continue reading “Author Jennifer S. Brown on Writing, Feminism, and the Importance of Having a Support Group” →

Mid-Year Wrap Up: My Favorite Books of 2016 Thus Far

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2016 Mid-Year Wrap UpI’m in denial that I’m writing this post, because that would mean I have to acknowledge that we’re actually over halfway through 2016 and that’s something I refuse to do. 🙂 But, deny it all I want, we are in July, so I thought that now would be the perfect time to write my mid-year reading wrap-up. Continue reading “Mid-Year Wrap Up: My Favorite Books of 2016 Thus Far” →