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Another October begins and another spooky season approaches! This year Asha and I are bringing back the Hallowreadathon, a halloween readathon that takes place this Halloween weekend. It features prompts and reading sprints on our HallowreadathonTwitter! Shall we look at this year’s prompts?

1. Fall Back into a Favourite!

The clocks go back, at least for those of us in the UK, on the 30th so why not use the extra hour for reading? For this prompt, we want you to re-read an old favourite, or perhaps try a new book by a favourite author? We’ll leave that up to you!

2. Read a book with Silver on the cover!

The flash of a knife in the killers hand, the gleam of the moon on a dark night, the glimmer of a coin in a deep well. Silver surrounds spooky season and in honour of that, we’re pulling the books with silver on the cover down from our shelves. We’ll also accept grey as its slightly less showy sibling.

3. Read 2 Books!

We’re going to run from Saturday the 29th, to Monday the 31st this year. So you have a whole weekend for thrills and chills! And reading two books!

Will you be joining us? What are you thinking for your TBR?

When I jumped on the blog tour for this folk and fairy tale anthology, I didn’t expect to spend the next week in bed with sinusitis. I couldn’t have asked for a better read though. Once Upon A Winter* has been delightful company as I lay up in bed with hot tea.

A shape-shifting spirit haunts a family in England during the depths of winter. 

A woman must locate a snowflake for a magical trickster to save her frozen true love. 

A witch knocks upon a young man’s door to take his life on Christmas day. 

A small boy meets a faerie housed within a snow drop.

Once upon a time stories travelled from place to place on the tongues of merchants and thieves and kings alike. Under the blanket of night they were exchanged between children, and passed on to their children, and their children after them. Details were altered from one generation to the next until thousands of tales existed where once there were few.

In the spirit of these age-old stories comes Once Upon a Winter, a seasonal anthology of folk and fairy tales from 17 authors across the globe. It covers the Gothic, the romantic, the whimsical, the frightening and everything in-between, and features both intriguing twists on classic tales and exciting original stories.

The first of four planned seasonal anthologies from Macfarlane Lantern Publishing, Once Upon a Winter is sure to have a story for just about everyone. Grab your copy in time for Christmas today!

I really like that this anthology is seasonally focused. I love Winter but I do tend to view it as Christmas and done, which makes January and February lose their magic. Once Upon A Winter embraces all the chilly months and I can see it sitting on a bedside table, being dipped in and out of for months. Until the Spring anthology arrives!

The book has a little bit of everything! If you’re looking for an atmospheric read for a dark night when the wind is howling, The Biting Cold by Josie Jaffrey has you covered. If you want a story to read in front of the fire with a hot chocolate, You Can’t See Me by Kate Longstone will warm your heart. I’m probably bias in saying that my favourite so far is A Pea Ever After by Adie Hart, since I am friends with Adie, but two words: district witch. I would read a whole series of Elsie’s adventures.

If Once Upon A Winter sounds like your kind of thing, you can find it on Goodreads here, or buy it from Amazon or Waterstones! And don’t forget to check out my fellow blog tour hosts!

*I was sent a copy of Once Upon A Winter as part of the blog tour. This has not changed my opinion.

This blog is now half a decade old. That’s wild to me. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I sat down and typed in my little domain into Blogger. And four-hundred and twenty-three posts later, here we are. If my blog was a child, it would be going to school by now in a tiny little uniform!

The past year has been a strange one in regards to blogging, I know a lot of people feel lost on occasion and I’ve been struggling to fit in blogging with my degree work as that ramps up year-by-year. I love blogging though and I’ve written some posts I’m really proud of this year.

I’ve written full book reviews on Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, Anne Boleyn: A King’s Obsession by Alison Weir, Oblivion by Jennifer L. Armentrout, The Haunting of Mount Cod by Nicky Stratton, The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams and Christmas with the East End Angels by Rosie Hendry. And mini reviews in my wrap-up posts!

I’ve been fostering kittens and cats throughout the year and started blogging about my experiences with The Kittens of Wildfell Hall and Slug & Hedgehog. These posts have been so much fun to write and I’m really hoping to catch up in my sixth year of blogging, since I’m adopting out my 20th cat today!

I’ll be taking part in Bookending Winter this December so make sure to keep a lookout for that! I’m hosting from the 4th to the 7th and you can read all about it and the prompts here and here. There’s even a Twitter. So I’m starting my sixth year of blogging on a good note.

Another Christmas has been and gone! I really like seeing what people got for Christmas, mainly because I’m nosey, and I like writing this post every year. It’s my way of looking at everything together and feeling ever so lucky. And I get to look back at what I got last year, the year before that, the year before that and the year before that. It’s wild to see how tastes change and stay the same year after year.

Plus, I’ll bet there are other people like me that just love reading these types of posts. Welcome!

Anyone who knows me, knows I do love a good mug. And this year I was treated to two; the My Favourite Murder podcast Toxic Masculinity Ruins the Party Again mug that I wished for. And one that my parents picked up on a trip to Copenhagen! It’s a Royal Copenhagen design that has silicone to protect your hands from hot contents. Perfect for a chilly January cup of tea.

On the subject of podcasts; how brilliant is the Vermilion Minotaur pin from Hello from the Magic Tavern? I’ve really loved pins this year and I’m glad to represent the best tavern in Foon with this!

As I get older I find myself more and more excited about good skincare. So you can imagine my celebratory dance at finding the Kiehl’s Midnight Recovery Concentrate in my stocking. It’s a thinner oil then I’m used to and I love how quickly my skin absorbs the goodness.

The Konjac Sponge is so weird but so cool. It’s solid when it’s dry but after a couple seconds under the tap, it starts to soften up until you have this handful of sponge that is ever so slightly gooey feeling without the goo. I’m into it, and I can’t wait to see the effect on my skin.

Since I only bought a few books in 2017 because of my self-imposed book buying ban (mini-haul here), I was really excited to get some fresh new books in my stocking. Books like the first Miss Marple novel; The Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie, Women & Power by Mary Beard, I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron, Travels with my Sketchbook by Chris Riddell, The Faber Book of Christmas, It Devours! by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor and the gorgeous Folio Society edition of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome! Gosh, there’s nothing better than a beautiful pile of books.

The entertainment continues with my new box-set of Golden Girls (in German because there’s no UK full box-set). I couldn’t be more excited to get to know Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia. And hello future foster cat/ Sims names!

The first expansion to Exploding Kittens; Imploding Kittens is going to make the game all the more fun. If you’re looking for a quick card game for a few people, you can’t beat it. This expansion also comes with a human-sized cone of shame too which is just brilliant.

Santa definitely had a theme this year! The royal cat socks are just fantastic, I’m wearing them right now and they’re keeping my feet cosy as well as making me smile every time I look down. The ‘Cat Lady’ and cat mug patches are going to be sewn onto a boring jacket I have to snazz it up.

And the big man also treated my foster cats too. The heated pet bed is currently under my desk with two very happy cats napping, and the Snuggle Kitty is going to come in handy next time I have orphan kittens!

And, of course, chocolate! The Lindt Santa had an unfortunate squash but tasted good anyway. Probably better because I didn’t have to deal with the guilt of a chocolate-y beheading.

I normally pop up my Christmas list on December 1st but since I was in Mexico, there’s been a little delay! I really enjoy looking back at my old lists (2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016) and I love reading other peoples. It’s so interesting to see the different things that different people want, and get ideas from them for what I’m going to get my friends and family.

I’m a big podcast person and some of my favourites have some really great merchandise. Like the My Favourite Murder ‘Toxic Masculinity Ruins the Party Again’ mug, an ‘All Hail the Glow Cloud’ pin from my favourite episode of Welcome to Night Vale, and a Vermilion Minotaur pin from Hello from the Magic Tavern. You can never have enough mugs or pins, right?

I tend to ask for a DVD box-set of Christmas of something that’s older because they’re generally not on Netflix and are super expensive to buy digitally, so over the years I’ve received absolute gems like Frasier, Monk and Home Improvement. This year I have my eye on Golden Girls. A true classic!

I’ve never put books on my Christmas list while I’ve been book blogging because it would make for a very long list, but I was looking for a hardcover copy of Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome over Summer and found that The Folio Society has a truly beautiful copy. And I’m a sucker for having nice copies of my favourites.

This year is the year that I’ve started fostering kittens and while the charity I volunteer for is great at providing everything you need, I keep a list of things I think will make the kittens as comfortable as possible at a pretty traumatic time. Things like a Snuggle Kitty, a heating pad, various scratching toys, and plastic toys that keep them entertained while being easy to sanitize between litters. I also really want some new kittens to foster over the season to banish those holiday blues by feeling helpful so if Santa could hook me up, I’d love that.

I’m a little late on this because I’m currently in Mexico, but it was my blogs birthday a couple of days ago. 368 days have passed since I typed out Three Years of Imogen’s Typewriter, 733 days since I wrote Two Years of Imogen’s Typewriter, 1098 days since A Year of Imogen’s Typewriter, and a whole 1463 days since I sat down and typed out my first post. Wild!

The past year has actually been a quiet year on the blog, as I’ve been writing about half the amount of posts that I usually write in a year. I’ve been busy and feeling a little lost. Though on the other hand, I’m prouder of the posts I’m actually hitting publish on. By putting less pressure to hit 2-3 posts a week, I’ve found myself able to really concentrate on good content like I predicted in my 2017 goals. Although I’d like to be able to hit a better balance in my fifth year.

I’ve been writing more in-depth reviews this year like; The White Road by Sarah Lotz, Yesterday by Felicia Yap, The Child by Fiona Barton, and so many half-drafts that I’m going to be finishing as soon as possible.

I’ve been replacing books I’m not going to read again like these and these with books I desperately wanted to buy- in fact, by following my 10 out, 1 in rule, I’ve only bought two books this year which has been a major change and helped me save for my current trip in Mexico!

I also started my second year of university which has been a big leap especially with the level of books I’m studying, I’ve suffered some big personal losses, I’ve been fostering kittens, I’ve been to France, Corfu, Norway and now Mexico. And through it all, I’ve been blogging.

It’s been over a month since Christmas but considering I just finished packing up my decorations this morning, I figured it wasn’t totally too late to show what was under my tree this year. I really like writing these posts because I like the memories that are associated and looking back at the years that have come before. There’s like a secondary rush of gratitude which is nice as well.

I totally spoiled myself when I picked up my mums phone to play a game of Tetris and found a text from my brother telling her he was buying me Pokémon for Christmas. My bad! I just need to finish Alpha Sapphire and I’ll be right into this one, Lauren’s review has me super excited.

I asked for the Home Improvement DVDs. I loved that show when I was a kid and you just can’t find a good version of it online. I really want to just dive in but- self control prevails. I’m saving it for my week off in summer, not that it has stopped me doing the Tim Allen Grunt whenever I catch sight of my snazzy new boxset.

And chocolate, of course! My new Lindt mug is a welcome addition to my collection and the chocolate Santas were a welcome addition to my stomach. Chocolate coins are a classic. And my dad knew I was really upset about the new Toblerone so he got his friend at the newsagents to hook him up with a box of ten of the old versions. 2017- possibly the year my heart explodes? We’ll see!

What did you get for Christmas? Can you even remember?

This morning, I woke up with my Christmassy powers returned. Then I remembered that for the first time in three years, I hadn’t written my Christmas list post in advance. It’s not that I forgot, just that I have literally no idea what to add. This that definitely been a theme in past years. In 2013 there were 14 things on my list. In 2014, there were 10 on the list. Last year, we were down to 5. And now…

It’s my blogs birthday once again! I say it every year, but I can’t believe a whole year has gone by since I wrote Two Years of Imogen’s Typewriter, two years have gone by since A Year of Imogen’s Typewriter, and three years have gone by since this little blog began! It always surprises me, but the great thing about having a blog is easily looking back at your year.

I’ve learnt a lot from book blogging over the years, much more than these 5 things, and I’m so glad to still be here doing what I love. I went to YALC this year and it just solidified how much reading, and readers, mean to me. Big books or small books, we all have something amazing in common no matter what. And we got to read together when the #Hallowreadathon happened again.

This year I read some great books: If You Go Away by Adele Parks, Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen by Alison Weir, Tenacity by J.S. Law, Green River Killer: A True Detective Story by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case, and more!

I started writing seasonal TBRs to narrow down the books I wanted to read. With these I wasn’t reading only more books, but audiobooks entered my life again this year. And I finally figured out a way to talk about my favourite podcasts, even if I’ve only written one post so far.

And as a little bonus, on my third year blogging I thought I’d giveaway the trilogy that started it all. Just go here to enter!