The Time Traveller

For me reading offers me two kind of escapism. The first one is diving into the book itself. I might be sitting on a bus stuck in traffic or in bed after a long day at my mundane job, but in my mind I am studying potions in the dungeons of Hogwarts or Surviving the Hunger Games. In books I have been to College in America, I have worked in a London Theatre, I've been a writer for a rock magazine, I've flown through the air on the back of magical beast and I have fallen in love over and over and over. 

But I also have a different form of escapism when I read. 

When ever I am travelling some where I like to take a new book with me. Something to help me while away the time. I spend a lot of time on trains travelling from the South East of England all the way up to Scotland, so I have plenty of time to take on an adventure. Or maybe something to read while I sit by a pool in Spain, or as I drive through Germany on my way to a Christmas market. I enjoy the journey far more when I have a book full of companions to keep me company. Then when the last page is done and the book is closed and I slot it into my book shelf and I can thank them all for the entertainment they offered. 

Then a few months later when I am low on money and want a book to read I pull one of these books down and I start to read.  Not only am I back in these fictional lands, but I am also back on that train to Scotland, or I am in Düsseldorf admiring their 10ft Christmas trees. Re-reading those words I first read doing something so exciting transports me back there. It sparks memories of those trips that had dimmed in my mind. I love it. They are like little time machines taking me back to all these great places where I met great people and have fond memories. 

My favourite, like so many readers of my generation, are my Harry Potter books. Because I have re-read these books so many times I have so many memories attached to them. I can remember my bedroom and how it was decorated. I remember sitting reading them  until the sun started poking its head above the trees after getting them at the midnight launches. I remember holding the book in one hand and making a sandwich with other because it was literally too good to put down. 

Also the first four books are paper backs. They have creased and bent over time, and when I hold the well worn covers in my hand you can see how my hands have grown over the year as the indents where my fingers grip the book have rippled out over time. Creases and folds over lapping each other as each time I re-read and fill these pages with my own stories and memories. 

When I read between the lines I am reading back my own life. The memories I book marked there for me to comes back to later. So I can relive those holidays or just sit in my childhood bed room as a twelve year old again. 

Rella 

I Owe it to Myself to Write.

I love writing, I love putting stuff out into the world, whether it be creative or a review heck I even feel good when I write a good email. Yet I have this blog which I love and I just gave up on it. Life got busy and I thought I would pick it back up when things settled down, but I forgot to make room for it. I would write blog posts in my head but I would never do anything with it, and doing something in your head just isn't creating. Locking my ideas away just makes my head fill and fill until there is no room for anything else and I just feel disappointed in myself for ransoming my own creativity.

I feel one of the reasons I gave up on this, is I was starting to get a fair few hits per post and I knew some of those people were people I new IRL and to be honest I got a bit shy and embarrassed. I felt like people have one perception of me, and this blog shows a side that people don't expect, and I worry that people might think I was pretensions or fake.

But I owe this to me, this is something I really enjoy, something I would maybe like to turn into something more then a hobby one day. I want this to lead me into the world of writers where I can make friends and read amazing things by other people. Why should I stop because someone I knew five years ago may think what I am doing in childish or lame ?

Lets shake of the cobwebs and reclaim this

I deserve to write 

Rella Reads

Re-Reading Your Story So Far

During the Victorian Era books became far more affordable. With the improvements to the printing press, national literacy skills, and in general the price of making a book fell. Not only did this mean more people could get their hands on books, but also more people were writing books. To be fair there wasn't a lot to get up too, your choices were needle point, sit  in your house and hope someone drops by, or you could always die of polio writing seemed like a pretty decent pass time. 

Paperbacks became very cheap and people could either by a whole book or some books were sold a chapter at a time. In fact paper backs were so cheap that people would tear out the pages as they finished reading them and throwing them away. 

I feel myself doing this often. I finish a chapter of my life and I was to rip it out and throw it away. Sometimes because it was a difficult time, or  things haven't turned out how I wanted, other times things have all been great but for one reason or another I just find it difficult to look back on that time. 

When a boyfriend broke up with me when i was eighteen it broke my little teenage heart. Of course being eighteen I believed we were in love, the real thing that was going to go the distance and no one had ever had a love like this before. Of course like most teenage loves, surprise surprise, it didn't quite turn out like that. So I decided to start ripping this chapter apart. I changed how I looked, made my hair go from black to bleach blonde, I wore clothes I had never dared to before, changed how I did my make up and removed all traces of him from my life. I told my friends not to ask about him, hell I made sure they didn't say his name around me. A bit extreme now that I look back but I was a heartbroken teen and I wanted to pretend like that year of my life had never involved him let alone revolved around him. 

When my Grandmother died I wouldn't walk down the road her house was on. I didn't want to see a place that was once a place so full of love and family and happiness belong to a stranger who didn't know I use to love running around the bush in the front garden, and they had never attended one of the BBQ's in the back garden where my Grandmother would always rent bouncy castle for the grand children. It was difficult to look at a place where so many memories were formed and now I wasn't allowed in. I didn't want to forget my Grandmother but I preferred her house to become a dream house that exist only in my memories and the physical form doesn't exist any more to me.

Then there are friends, because I so often scrub out sections of my life. I clean out everything I don't want, and just carry forward what I am happy with means I am terrible at keeping in contact.I mean if you rip out a chapter it is hard to go back and just re-read the bits you enjoyed. I had some really close friends as a teenager, but then my Mum sold my childhood home and I no longer had a base in the place they lived it meant it was more difficult for me to stay in contact. Then when I would visit I was almost insulted that they had carried on their life with out me, they had made new friends and got on with their lives and they grew into people with these lives I hadn't been apart of. Although I still cared about them we know longer knew  other, and now when ever I see them post on-line I feel a prang of sadness for a friendship that once meant the world to me and now had faded. I find myself telling the stories of my teen years less as I slowly tear these pages from life. 

However recently things have been going pretty good for me. I have a nice flat, and I get to spend more time with my family. I am talking to my brother more, who has always been one of my favourite people, and I have a boyfriend who is caring and funny always tries to makes me feel good. A website decided my writing was good enough to let me be one of their contributors, and I have even landed a full time job. Then just the other day I was sitting in my room and something suddenly reminded me of one the places I had hated living and I stopped myself thinking about it, while telling myself " no you are trying to forget about that" and like a blinding light I thought to myself NO. 

I am not going to keep ripping pages out of my life. Everything I have been through deserves to be in my story. Things have made me unhappy and angry and sad, but the memories of my past should also be able to make me feel happy and I should be able to enjoy where I have been.

Maybe I should reach out to more people from my past and re-connect or maybe I should remove them from social media and just be happy that I got to experience them in one of my chapters, that were shared what we did when we did. Rather then watching their lives go on wishing I was still part of it. 

I am ready to start my Hardback and stop ripping apart the Paperback.

Rella 

Xx

50 Books in a Year Challenge 2014 And how Game of Thrones Ruined my Life

So last year I didn't really set myself any New Year resolutions . Instead I set myself goals, as I felt re-branding them as goals made them less threatening. These Goals included get a new job, move out of the flat share, live a healthier lifestyle, start a Blog and complete the 50 Books in a Year Challenge. 

Well this blog now exists so I completed that one, and I did move out I also did go to the gym for a while and even went running a few times, and I am thinking when it warms up here I would like to start running on the beach, and I also feel my choices when it comes to food are healthier. I try to consume as little caffeine as possible, I have swapped sugar for sweetener, little changes that help me feel better about myself.

Now that leaves two goals that I have sort of missed the mark on. In terms of a new job I have been looking and had a good few interviews, but I am yet to leave retail but that won't stop me trying, and I am hoping that this year might offer me some new opportunities. 

And the Reading Challenge, 50 books in a year. It seemed so do-able. That's roughly one book a week, I am pretty fast reader and I own a lot of books and my To-Read list is out of control, so I wasn't short for options. I started off strong as well. I read the collection of books by Jennifer Worth, her memoirs which have also been turned into the BBC show Call The Midwife, and these books were fantastic and in particular In the Midst of Life had a real impact on me and I would urge all of you to go pick up a copy. 

I then went on to read another fantastic book The Help Kathryn Stockett, I have written about this book in a previous post if you want to find out more about it, but once again I urge you all to go read this book. After this I decided to try a genre I don't normally read by picking up Horns by Joe Hill. I picked this book because it was going to get turned into a film staring Daniel Radclife I wasn't expecting to enjoy it but I really really did. However I am still not too sure if the Horror genre is for me.

After that I decided to try a genre that I use to love but don't read as often as I use too, YA, Once again I picked a book that was getting turned into a film Maze Runner and I was totally disappointed. Characters were one dimensional the protagonist was pretty much a Manic Pixie style of character. I found it to be very weak. Though I did like the idea of the story I just wish is had been executed better. It is safe to say I did not pick up the rest of that trilogy. I had a very similar experience with another YA trilogy Matched by Ally Condie. Again I felt character were very flat,and the story was very slow and in many parts very predictable, 

I then moved on to author Rainbow Rowell. I had heard great things about her work, so I picked up Fangirl.  First of all I loved the cover for this book, and I also loved it was about an 18 year old just starting college in America, and I feel this is an age range that is often skipped. I tend to find books are either about teens ages 15-17 or then are about mid twenties plus. I loved this book. Her Characters are well fleshed out, they are flawed and they are believable. She is very in touch with this generation that has grown up on line. It was very relate-able and a down right fun read. 

So I then went a picked up her other book Eleanor and Park, I didn't enjoy this as much as Fangirl but her writing style is so good it kept me engaged. I would say this book is for people who are a fan of John Greens Paper Towns as I often thought back to that as I was reading it. 

I then moved onto Insurgent by Veronica Roth. I am still not too sure how I feel about this book. It started out very strong, but towards the end I feel the writing slipped and I found it hard to work out which character was speaking and would have to flip back to the start of the chapter to find out which chrather it was about. 

So by this type it is April and I have a good few books under my belt. And I was out in town looking for some books to take on Holiday with me as that May I was going on my first ever proper Holiday aboard. Sun Sea and all that, and of course I wasn't going to part take in that with out a book to keep me company. I was in The Works, because who doesn't love a good bargain and I have come across some great deals in there. Little did I know I was going to come across a deal that would ruin my 50 Books Challenge.

They were selling all of the current Song of Ice and Fire books, also known as Game of Thrones, for £29.99! 6 books for £29.99! Who can say no to that ? I had never seen the show, but I had wanted to start watching it but I hate watching anything that I know is an adaptation of a book with out having a stab at the book first. Because I enjoy the process of reading far more then watching something, so if something has a great storyline I would rather read it and know what's going to happen on screen rather then starting a book knowing how it is going to go down. 

So I see this offer and think GREAT its a bargain and that's an easy way to fit in 6 books into the Challenge.Oh how wrong I was. So It's the day before the holiday and I start reading the first book in the series. I was nervous that I might not like it and I had no time to go get anything else and I really didn't want to take a book I had read before, and it starts off pretty good and I finished a good few chapters and I quite confidently pack it in my carry on and the second one in my case. I thought I could plough through them both during my weeks holiday to Tenerife. 

I loved book one. It was a lot to take in with all the new characters and the relationships between them. There were about a million people with the name Rob, Robert, Robb Robett, Robbie ect but I had never read a fantasy book like this before. The idea of a book with Knights and Kings and Jousting and Feasts had never appealed to me because I thought they would either be silly romances or just blood baths and battles that just didn't interest me, but this as so much more exciting. I liked all the secrets between characters. The rivalry, and love and tensions between families. I loved that women and girls were interesting people rather then just pretty faces and I torn through the pages. It took almost the full week to read it but on the plane home I was already on book two. 

And this is where it all started to go wrong. This book introduced more families and more history and a main character from the first book was dead but I trudged through but this book took me weeks to read, the longest it has taken me to read a book in a long time. I as tempted to give up on the series by this point but felt I should at least give book three a chance, plus I wanted to know how some of the story lines were going to play out.

Book three was fantastic ! I was pulled right back in, People were killed off the you didn't expect and stories turned in unexpected directions, yeah it was still taking me a few weeks to get through the book but reading one chapter of George R R Martins work can be really tiring. He can first more description into a paragraph then you ever though possible. It can be a read joy to read and some times a total chore. 

I am sure you can see how the nest book went, I wasn't so keen on but by that point I was in too deep, and here I am the first month of 2015 and I am still working my way through what was suppose to be my Holiday reading. I am on the second to last book with 120 pages to go. But I am enjoying this one, it's just with every page you are worried about your favourite character dying, and the next chapter could be someone who you have been reading about since book one or it could be a whole new person you have to quickly learn about and why they are important, and I never felt I could take a break from the books because I was worried if I did I would be lost as to what was happening because I would forget what everyone was up to.

 I have definitely stepped out of my comfort zone with these books and for the most part I am really enjoying them. Plus I quite like the TV show as well as I have allowed myself to watch episodes as I finish the books they are based on. 

Though when I finish the final book in the series so far I know it will be a relief but at the same time I will be counting down the days till the next book it released. I have definitely got myself into something pretty deep with these books. 

This year there is anew Reading Challenge I have seen floating around Blogs which looks pretty good and i wouldn't mind having a stab at. I don't feel like I have totally failed at this challenge because I feel the point of reading 50 books in a year was to force readers out of their comfort zones and I definitely did that. 

Rella

Xx

Leaving the books at home

When I was 20 I started seeing an ex boyfriend again for the third time. I was convinced once and for all we were going to make it work because to me he was this wonderful perfect boy and we were made for each other. One day I returned home and my house mates announced a gift wrapped packaged had arrived while I was in my lesson. I very excited opened it and discovered this guy had sent me a Kindle. 

Kindles were brand new at the time and cost about £119, and I had mentioned in passing that I would like one as I had to carry a lot of books around, what with doing an English course. And suddenly a week later I had been sent one, and I was shocked and touched by this gesture. That evening I downloaded some books onto it and in my next seminar when I whipped out my flash new toy the whole class wanted to have a look and my lecturer asked what I thought of it and I sang its praises how the books were so cheap and in some cases even free, and it was so light and the battery life seemed endless. 

A couple of months later unsurprisingly, the somewhat rocky and pretty unhealthy on off relationship with this boy came to an explosive end, though we were not officially together picture of him in bed with someone else while he was at his ex girlfriends wedding, and him not wishing me Happy Birthday on my 21st birthday which all happens to be Valentines day finally did it for me. We had a heated phone call and after I sent him a strongly worded text telling him to never contact me again culminating in my throwing my phone across the room. We haven't had any contact since, and neither has the Kindle and me.

Once I cut off ties with this guy I wanted to rid myself of everything that reminded me of him. I threw out stuff he had given, re arranged my room so it wouldn't remind me of him, I dyed my hair so I didn't look like the same girl who liked this guy, and because I couldn't bring myself to throw out a perfectly good working Kindle it went into the bottom of the wardrobe where it stayed until this September where it finally made its way into the bin. 

My feelings toward e-Books also changed. A Kindle was not practical for a Uni student, I couldn't highlight important parts of the text. You couldn't quickly flip to a page to refresh your memory on what had happened, You couldn't read it in bight lights and they Uni didn't have a format that allowed you to properly reference digital books. I honestly didn't like them, I only liked them because the boy I fancied had bought me one, and I didn't use another e-book format again. 

Until the latest iPhone update where they introduced a new app rather un-inspiringly named iBook. When ever my Phone updates I have a little tinker around with the new apps, and they never touch them again ( has any one every used the Pass Book app?). So I clicked on it and it is basically the same as the Newstand on the iPhone which allows you to down load Magazines but this one it for books. I saw they had a few books which you could download for free and I browsed through thinking they would all be rubbish books because why would an author of a good book allow their work to be given away for free and I came across a book I really like Starter For Ten by David Nicholls. Which made we think the other free books might not be that bad after all.

I decided to download two books, both genres that I normally wouldn't go for one was a crime book The Woods  by Harlan Coben  which is actually pretty good and would recommend you get if you have an iPhone, and the other was a Chick-Lit book called The One you Really Want by Jill Mansell which really isn't that great. I started reading The Woods  first and it is a genuinely interesting book about a man whose sister was killed when they were at a summer camp together as teenagers and her body was never found. The story had lots of twists and turns and suspense it was a good read. 

I found reading it on the iBook meant I was reading at times I wouldn't normally read. The Advert breaks on TV, while waiting for my Boyfriend to meet me in town, and on the bus to work which is only a ten minuet journey. Because the book is right there in my pocket and the pages are only the size of the screen I can whip it out read a few paragraphs and pop it away again. I also really liked that the screen alters is brightness depending on the room your in, If the room is well lit it will display traditional black text on white, but if you are reading in bed in low lighting it will display white text on black which is easier on the eye which reading off a screen. 

Also at the bottom of the page it tell you how many pages you have to go before the end of the chapter, which is handy because if you are reading on the go rather then trying to rush to the end of the chapter you can instead plan to stop at the next paragraph break because you know you just wont make it to the chapter end. 

How there are still thing I dislike. I will never get use to not being able to quickly flip back a few pages to re read a line with out loosing my place. And the other day while reading I accidentally flipped to the end of the book and it was very hard to find my place again. Also I just don't think I could ever bring myself to pay for a book on this app. Because in the back of my mind I will always be thinking "for a couple extra pound you could have a physical book" 

So as far as my relationship with e-books, I feel we can work it out, we will never be where we were but I feel we can be friends. As for that guy ... well that ship has well and truly sailed.

Rella

Xx

The Bookshelf Tour

For every book lover one of the most important things you own will be your bookshelf. I have moved a lot in the past few years as I have mentioned before in previous posts, but not matter what I always make sure I have a book shelf. 

For me book shelves aren't just somewhere for books, they are a place where I also keep little trinkets, post cards photos note people have given, anything that I feel is important tends to end up on their either tucked into a book that reminds me of the person who gave it to me, or set next to some books that I feel reflect the item. When I moved I had to take all my books off take away all the trinkets and ferry them over to my new place, but I took some photos before I took it down and I wanted to take you on a little bookshelf tour.

Please forgive the terrible photos but I panicked last minute remembering that I wanted to take some photos before it all came down, so they aren't the best. but here it is my old book case. 

As you can  see it is totally jammed packed. Like many people my collection had outgrown the case and although there was some order there at some point it has very much disintegrated into a mess! But a very much loved mess. 

Now I wanted to take you few a through of my favourite bits starting at the very top

This is my collection of vintage books, I do have a couple more on the other shelves as well, but the main bulk is kept at the top. All of their books are either gifts from my Dad or I inherited from my Great Grandparents. my favourite one is Homers Iliad, third from the top as well as being a wonderful book in itself steeped in historical importance this old copy has a beautiful cover,  and it is in wonderful condition. 

My other favourite is a copy of Little Women, pictured just below The Iliad, that was passed down to my when my Great Grandparents passed away, the reason I love this book so much is because on the title page in a child's hand the name Nita is written, which was the name of my Great Grandmother, now I don't know if this was written by her, or later on by a child or grandchild but I love that it is there none the less. it give the book such meaning to me that makes me cherish it so much more. 

Another great book is Mrs Beeton All About Everything,below Little Women in the photo, which was a gift from my Dad on my 22nd Birthday, he gave it to me after we had spent the day at the Harry Potter Studio Tour. This book is fantastic as it is literally a book about how to do things like, make jam, polish shoes and also has how to treat medical ailment, and basically not matter what this issue is, part of the treatment will always involve giving the patient Gin. 

Now my bookcase was covered in little trinkets such as these, these were just little gifts given to me over the years which I liked and wanted to display, the Harry Potter Lego was a gift from someone at work, and though I love it constantly fell off my shelf, the trunk use to be filled with gold coins but every time it fell they would scatter across the floor and now only one remains. 

The little jars of spices again came from my Great Grandparents, they were something that were uncovered during the clearing of their house, and given to me, they remind me of something you might find in a potions class, or maybe a Victorians doctors cabinet. Although I never saw them in the house, I liked that they had been hidden away for all those years and felt it about time they were put on a shelf for all to see.

Now these a little puppies that I make  in my spare time. I was bought a kit by my boyfriend last Christmas, and once I masted the first one, the Pug, I was off. It is great fun and I love hand making things but don't always have the space or even the confidence to give it a go, now that I have moved space won't be an issue. But I was proud of these little creations and wanted them on display so up they went on the shelf, though towards the end I did end up with a few too many up there. 

Now you may have noticed that one of my all time favourite book series Harry Potter is missing from this self. That is because when I first moved out to uni I did't want to take all my books with me, as my room was only small and I needed space to keep my books I would need for my course, to the Potter books along with The Lord of the Rings and His Dark Materials all got packed away and lived in my Dads shed for the next five years, a decision I started to hate myself for because I often found myself wanting to go back and read them, but just simply didn't have access to them, but I now have them all back up on my shelves where they belong. 

And finally this is my over spill from my bookcase. I didn't have room to buy a new bookcase so as my collection grew it became too big for the selves and leaked out onto the floor, so they were caught up with the internet routed and always covered in dust. When I moved I did donate two bags of books, which although it is great that others will get to enjoy those books I always find it hard letting go of books. Especially as I do dream of one day having a room dedicated to the books I have collected over my lifetime, and even if I hate a book I want to keep hold of  it, so when peple see it on my shelf I can tell them what I really think of it, but I did finally let some of them go and I now have a much neater book case, though there is still an over flow issue that may still give me an excuse for a second bookcase soon much to my Boyfriends dismay

In a few months I will do a post about my new arrangements but right now I am still not happy with the lay out of it and it fill be reshuffled a few times before I am happy with in. But I hope you enjoyed this little tour of my old book case. there are so many more interesting little bits and pieces on these shelves that I just didn't have time to photograph in the mad rush to get packed away, but I am so glad I took some to look back on my collection in a few years and hopefully it would of grown some more. 

Rella Xx

Social Media Book Tag

So this is the Social Media book that which is basically a questionnaire based on books with the question inspire by different type of social media websites. it's been floating around for a while and I recently saw Kristina Horner do it on her YouTube channel and I decided I would fill it out on here !

▌Twitter ▌

► Your favourite short book (under 200 pages)

I Want My Hat Back by  Jon Klassen

This is in fact a children's book, and I picked it up one day in Waterstones while I was browsing with my boyfriend because I thought the cover was funny, and me and him laughed out loud in the middle of the shop while reading it. It is very funny. I find that children's story books are getting funnier these days which I think is great because it encourages adult to read more to children and enjoy the experience together

▌Facebook ▌

► A book that everyone pressured you to read.

 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K Rowling

I was about this book as a gift when I was 10 in the year of it's release in 2000. I was given it by a family friend because everyone knew I enjoyed reading, I loved Jacqueline Wilson and always have one of her books on the go. However the issue here was that I didn't own any of the other books. My brother had the first few but I had never picked them up.

I took this book to school as my free reading book, because it was massive and it made me feel smart and I liked the dragon on the front. However I didn't know the Harry Potter books were a series and you had to read them in order. So when my teacher came to sit with me so I could do my reading session with her I had no idea what was going on, and it didn't make sense and there were no dragons in the start, and after about two weeks I swapped books to another Jacqueline Wilson book, much to my teachers disappointment as she was a Potter fan !

About a year later my Aunt bought my all the current Potter books, including a new Goblet of Fire which was good as mine had been destroyed by me carrying around all the time because it made me feel important and smart !And devoured them and I fell in love with the books, and still love them to this day.

▌Tumblr ▌

► A book you read before it was cool.

Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth 

I must say though, this is one of my least favourite book covers ever!

I read these books back when the trilogy was unfinished and as I got further and further through the second book I tried to slow down as there was still no news of the Third book getting a release date. My local Waterstone didn't carry these books in stock at the time, I would often look for them as I had heard so many positive reviews about them, but they were never there and in the end I had to place and order for them so I could buy them, as I always like to support my local book store if I can afford to buy the book new ( If i can only afford second hand unfortunately I still go through Amazon) 

I loved this series for the most part, I loved Tris's character especially in the first book, because unlike many dystopian female leads, she wasn't very strong or skilled to start with, she had to work hard and she was often bullied, but she fought hard to do well and I loved that. I also loved the strong friendship bond she made and the importance they played in keeping her motivated. It made such a nice changed from the normal hard shelled loner protagonist we often see. 

I felt the series did let me down a bit in the third book, and the writing was as strong as in the second, and I felt the love story did become a little bit too central to the story but over all I love the books, and I am glad they are getting the recognition they deserve. Also Roth was only 22 when her books were published and that is awesome.

▌MySpace ▌

► A book that you liked when you were younger, but you probably would not like now.

 The boy in the Burning House by Tim Wynne-Jones

For so long I loved this book mainly for the cover, it was dark and dangerous and everything about it seemed so grown up to me. I read this when I was about 14 and I myself was getting into heavy music and dressing darkly and basically finding my own personality and this book fitted right in with it. Before this I was always reading Harry Potter or Jacqueline Wilson or something similar and widely popular. This however was unknown and when I told people about it  they were unfamiliar with it and it made me feel cool.

The book is about a young boy Jim trying to find out if his father was killed or had simply vanished, after a year of no news of him, a young girl called Ruth Rose the pastors daughter help Jim to discover a shocking truth. I did re-read this book when I was about 18 as I was still telling people it was one of my favourite books. But really it wasn't as great or dark as I remembered it. It was definitely a good book to transition me from Children's Literature into Young Adults / Teen fiction but it certainly not as great as 13 year old me made out.

▌Instagram ▌

► A book that has the most beautiful cover in existence.

Alice's Adventure in Wonderland and other Stories by Lewis Carroll Barnes and Noble Leather-bound Edition 

This photo does it no justice as to how beautiful it really is

This book is just beautiful ! and I love Alice in Wonderland, I have three copies of Wonderland books, and there is another edition I plan to get because again I love the cover. I view my book shelf both as my personal library, but also a collection, if there is a book a love and they bring out a new cover or an anniversary edition then I will buy it because books are beautiful. 

The Barnes and Noble Leather-bound books are just glorious I also have the Sherlock Holmes Complete Stories, The Secret Garden and Greek Mythology books from this collection and there are about five more book there I desperately want, and will be first thing on my Christmas list. 

There is just so much detail on the cover, the art work is wonderful, they feel beautiful as well. If you get a chance go into your local book store and pick one up and see for yourself.

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► A book that you wish was made into a movie. 

Unwind by Neil Shusterman

I picked this up as a part of the old 2 for 3 offer Waterstone use to always run, which has now been placed with the buy one get one half price offer. I took it with me to the Summer Camp I use to work at and my friend read it before me, and then told me I had to read it as she enjoyed it so much. It is about a procedure called Unwinding, which can be performed on teenagers under 16 who are either troublesome, unwanted or as part of a religious ceremony. Their body part are basically donated to others and nothing is wasted there for they aren't dead they are just spread out among many bodies. The book focusses one three teenagers who are being Unwound for different reasons and their journey to save themselves.

I loved it and I was classed as my favourite book for years, and in about 2007 Tasty Film bought the rights to the film.  However after some money issues production came to a stand still and nothing more has been said about the film. The Unwind IMbD page say the release date would be in 2016 but there is no further information. With films such as Divergent and Hunger Games doing so well at the moment and The Fault in Our Stars showing how great young adult literature can be for inspiration for films I think now would be a great time to make this film, but only time will tell.

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► A book that you would recommend to anyone and everyone.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett 

This is such an emotional and inspiring store, I owned this book for about a year and a half before I read it because I was worried I wouldn't like. It is a fairly long book, 451 pages, and has a very small print and I didn't want to have to drag myself through that and not enjoy it.

But one month, I was low on money and couldn't afford to buy any books, so I went to my shelf picked it up and start and I could not put it down. I stayed up late reading it, and picked up first thing in the morning. I was recommending it to people before I had even finished reading. 

The book is about young Miss Skeeter who has returned home from Ole Mis having got herself a degree in journalism, and she is trying to fit back into life where her friends host Dinner Parties, and Bridge club while maids raise their children. Set in the 1960's where slavery has been abolished, but blacks were not seen as equal. Skeeter sets herself the challenge or writing down the stories of The Help, but women are too scared to come forward and talk and her friends don't want her to distract their maids from their work. 

It is a brilliantly written book, written from both Skeeter, her best friends maid Aibileen and Aibileen's friend Minny's point of view it give and insight into people attitudes to race and women during this time. It is brilliant, one of the best books I have ever read. It will make you cry and laugh and you will learn something from it. Seriously if you haven't already go out and get yourself this book.

I would love it if you guys filled this out on your own blogs, Facebook page or Tumblr I would love to read your answers

Rella Xx

Welcome to the 90's

I was going to write a new post today, but sadly my laptop charge broke, and without its loyal companion my laptop couldn't carry on. 

So unfortunately I won't be able to post, I could write on my phone ( as I am  now ) but I hate editing post using my phone. I feel the little screen is too cramped to get things done properly. 

There is a silver lining though, my normal laptop time will now become book time. I am currently reading The Song of Ice and Fire seris by George R R Martin, and I've been making really slow progress on it so I will use this time to crack on with that. For those if you interested I am on book three currently. 

Anyway I look forward to post again soon, but for now I am offline 

Rella Xx

So how did that one end ?

Reading is great, but some times you just aren't really in the mood for it. You pick up a book and you start reading it but your heart just isn't in it. You try to get through it, but you find yourself picking it up less and less, you realise you've forgotten half of what going on and before you know it you have abandoned ship, you've run off with another book and the previous one get guiltily slipped back onto the book shelf half read, but you tell yourself you will get back to, and yet you never do.

Here are some of my half read books that sit on my shelf and I try not too look at them for too long as I feel way to guilty !

Escape From Camp 14 By Blaine Harden

This is a really moving story about a young man, Shin Donghyuk, who is the only person to have ever escape from North Korea's harshest labour camp. Families are sent there with no trial and no chance to escape, they work doing hard labour until they die, also any children who are born in the camp are also seen as prisoners and they do will never get a chance to leave the camp.

Shin was born in the camp, he knew nothing of life beyond the fence, he was always hungry he felt no love for his family as they could all easily turn each other in for being rule breakers and it wasn't until he was in his twenties and a new prisoners came to camp and told him about barbecued pork that he decided to try and escape, and some how it worked. 

Now doesn't this book found just fantastically intersting ? And for the most part it really was, I really enjoyed it. However there were two things that stopped me getting to the end. One was the nature of the book, unsurprisingly, is rather depressing and it is sometimes hard to keep reading when you know the next page isn't going to bring any more joy then the last, even when Shin escapes it just brings on a new wave of hardship.

Two, the book will sometimes stop the narrative of Shins life to explain North Korea politics and history to help you understand why something is happening. This is helpful and informative but I have never been one to take too much interest in politics, and if they had just been a paragraph or two I may have made it but it would some times go on for a few pages and I just found it hard to keep going. 

The worse part is I abandoned this book on the last chapter, I made it through all of it, but I couldn't give it that final push. Netflix also have a documentary about Shin's story, and you guessed it I didn't make it to the end of that either

The Remains of a Day by Kazuo Ihsiguro

I bought this book because during university we had to read two of Ishiguro's other books Never Let Me Go and A Pale View Of Hills, both of which I loved so I wanted to read some of his other works. I picked The Remains of a Day because it was his debut novel and it had such fantastic reviews that I felt I had to read it. 

However once I got it the subject matter just did not interest me in the slightest. It is about a long serving butler who decide to take his first holiday in many years and goes on a motoring trip ( I just had to look that up as I thought he had retired!) I really can't tell you more then that as I never made it much further then him getting in the car. 

I so wanted to like this book but it just wasn't one for me, its not a bad book I really liked the way it was written and I was interested in the idea of a book from a butlers point of view, but in practise I found it dull. This book sat on my Goodreads Currently Reading list for two years before I admitted defeat and marked it as unread. 

Animal Farm by George Orwell 

I FEEL SO MUCH GUILT ABOUT THIS! 

I bought this book because it is such a classic, and I had read 1984 and really loved it, and  so many people recommended this to me so I went out and I bought and started reading it and really enjoyed it. I thought it was really interesting a moving and well written, I honestly wanted to cry over Boxers story line and thinking about the scene of him in the back of the cart waving to all his friend... Oh I just can't its too upsetting. This book is great it would say it is one of those must read books for everyone.

So why didn't I finish it ? I DON'T KNOW! I literally had about 4 pages and I just never read them, for some reason I took it out of my bag put it back on my shelf and just never read those pages.

When this post goes live I am going to walk over to my shelf pick it up and read those 4 pages!

The guilt is made worse every time someone asks me if I had read, because I always say yes, but I know deep down I haven't.

The Whispering Road by Livi Michael 

I don't know where this book came from, I have had it for a long time, always telling myself I will read it. I think I got this book when I was around 15 so that's nearly 10 years of telling myself I will read this book. I have started it three times and have never made it much further then the first chapter. 

The book is about a brother and sister in 1800's England in a Workhouse and one night they decide to escape and try and find new life for themselves. they want to get to Manchester and find their mother and basically escape the cruel conditions their short lives have experienced so far. It sounds like the type of book I would love. Industrial England is an area of history I love, the reviews have called it a Dickens like book, but with more modern language, and yet I just haven't made it through

I don't know why I can't make any progress on this book, I tried to read it again two years ago, I had the mind set that I was an adult and this was a children's book and therefore I could probably read it in about a day or two. Well once again I was defeated by it. I cant get rid of it, I have to read it one day it just sounds too interesting. Plus look at that cover it is so beautiful !

So there are a couple of my bookshelf inhabitants that I shamefully haven't finished, or in some cases barely started. It is better then the handful of books that I have barely started! Does anyone else have books like this that they just can't finish the enthusiasm to make it to the end?

Rella Xx