book series – Imogen’s Typewriter.

It’s was my birthday this week! And to quote Charlotte Lucas from Pride & Prejudice (2005); “I’m twenty-seven years old, I’ve no money and no prospects. I’m already a burden to my parents and I’m frightened.” So why not write a list to take the edge off the existential panic? I generally read around 50-60 books a year so 27 hits right at that middle point. This will hopefully mean it’ll work with both my indecisiveness when faced with a hundred options, and my need to sometimes mood read outside of a set TBR.

Starting with the big chunk of the 27… I’m going to be reading the 2nd to the 13th book of the Women of the Otherworld series by Kelley Armstrong as part of the Otherworldalong I’m doing with Rosina from Lace and Dagger Books! Most of the group have read the books before but I’m going in fresh so that’s been really fun. If you want to join, we have a Discord that is separated into the different books of the series so you can avoid spoilers!

This series are all set in the same world with a few books for each different woman. There’s werewolves, witches, ghosts, vampires… all vaguely connected, I think! It’s the first time I’ve picked up an urban fantasy series and been immediately in love since my adored Sookie Stackhouse. So I’m really looking forward to continuing the series, one book a month, for the entire year.

So that leaves 15 books. Top of that list is some other books by authors I’ve read in the past couple years. Books like Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey; I loved The Franchise Affair when I read it last year so I’m excited for more Tey.

Then there are a lot of sequels; Maresi: Red Mantle by Maria Turtschaninoff (my review of the first book is here), Storm of Locusts by Rebecca Roanhorse, Prime Deceptions by Valerie Valdes, Haunting the Deep by Adriana Mather, Before Mars by Emma Newman and The Bitter Twins by Jen Williams* (my review of The Ninth Rain is here). All these had exceptional first books and I loved them deeply, so I’m confident that they’ll be amazing. I just have to get over my fear of sequels!

I started a lot of series in 2020, so I want to reign it back slightly? These are the firsts that I’m most excited for. Enough that I will willingly stress myself out about being in the middle of a hundred and one series, just to start them.

The Plot is Murder by V.M. Burns is one of many cosy mystery first-in-a-series books that I have. I seem to be collecting them- but this is the highest rated and I need to start somewhere!

The other two are books to replace my beloved series: Six Tudor Queens by Alison Weir, which concludes this year. Katherine, The Virgin Widow by Jean Plaidy is technically the second book in Plaidy’s Tudor series… but I’m really only interested in the Queens. I found her in The Book of Forgotten Authors by Christopher Fowler and finally managed to hunt down a copy of this one. I’m hoping it’ll give me a different view of the time.

And The Drowned City by K.J. Maitland* was sent to me by the same person in publicity who originally sent me the first Six Tudor Queens book so I have high hopes! Set at the beginning of the Stuart period (the monarchy after the Tudors), its focus is the aftermath of the Gunpowder plot!

And then there are some classics that I’m almost certain that I’m going to love. I studied both The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot and The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford for my degree so I want to read some of their other works too. Middlemarch by George Eliot and Parade’s End by Ford Maddox Ford are said to be both authors best, so onto the list they go.

I didn’t study The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë, I read it while procrastinating on Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, which I actually was studying, but it was incredible. If I’m going to keep defending Anne as the best Brontë, I need to actually read her only other novel, Agnes Grey.

Then there’s The Master & Margarita by the same author as A Young Doctor’s Notebook, Mikhail Bulgakov. And finally, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, which doesn’t quite fit with the others because I read it as a child. Except, I’ve read Chris Riddell before (lots!) and he illustrates this incredibly beautiful new edition.

What do you think of my picks? Have you read any of these?

Re-Read Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins!

When the news of the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, came out I knew I wanted to re-read the original Hunger Games trilogy. It’s been six years since I first read the trilogy and they were really important in my journey of becoming a reader again and book blogging! My original reviews were.. sparse, and very much about my emotional response which is perfectly valid, I just wanted to do a bit of a deep dive into what makes these books so dang good in my opinion. So!

Contexts of Reading

I remember reading this series for the first time really vividly. Not so much the actual story, because I definitely forgot most of the plot points in the past six years. But my life surrounding reading this. I even remember the song I was listening to on repeat at the time. And I think that it’s really interesting that in however many years until I read this again, I might remember things like being in lockdown, playing a lot of Animal Crossing and working really hard at my last university essay. I think only a special kind of book can effect me in this way. I’ve re-read books before and mostly it’s just remembering bits of the story.

The Writing Style

I’ve mentioned a couple times this year that I’ve been struggling to read lately because I’m so focused on the act of reading. However, Collins writing style is so unique and crafted to be bare-bones that it’s incredibly easy to read. There’s no info-dumping or huge chunks of thinking, you’re just in Katniss’s head and immediately in the action. The story is left open just enough that your own thoughts and feelings can fill the gap. I thought that the pacing on the second and third books was a little weird, but by Mockingjay, I was locked in and finished it incredibly quickly.

The Epilogue

I’m not a big fan of epilogues in general. As a reader and an attempting writer, I prefer it when the ending happens and what goes next is left to the imagination. If you want the main character to live happily ever after, you decide what that looks like. But I do like the epilogue in this case, because I think that considering how much she mentions not wanting kids because they’d have to play in the games, it was important to see Katniss no longer have that fear. Plus, Collins got to talk a little about how best to teach younger generations about bad things.

The Messages

The Hunger Games trilogy are political books. Oppressed people hating other oppressed people instead of their oppressor, revolutions galore, people being used as pawns in a game they don’t understand. I mean- very applicable to almost every age of humanity.

Marking my books

I like to keep my books pretty neat and unmarked in general. I use sticky notes to mark them up for reviews and bits of writing I like. But this time I decided to underline, in pen! Mainly because I know these books are going to stick around on my shelves. I don’t have any immediate plans to re-read them, maybe I’ll wait another six years, or more, but when I do- I’ll get a little snapshot into this read and what stood out to me, and I think that’s pretty neat.

Do you re-read a lot? What is your favourite book to re-read?

Tag: book series

27 Books I Want to Read while I am 27!

Re-Read Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins!