Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past. [blurb from Goodreads]

When I discovered this classic:
I'm not actually sure when I discovered Cider With Rosie. I have a vague recollection of the title floating around the periphery of my brain for a while before I saw this cover in a bookshop and decided that I absolutely had to have it. I am a cover-buyer and I'm so not ashamed of that.

Why I chose to read it:
I'd put it on my wishlist after seeing this beautiful Vintage edition and I was lucky enough to receive it for Christmas last year and knew that I wanted to read it sooner rather than later. After reading A Month in the Country last month, I was in the mood for more countryside nostalgia so decided to pick it up.

What makes it a classic:
Cider With Rosie is a nostalgic snapshot of a place and time on the verge of indescribable change and yet it remains somehow timeless. It captures the essence of childhood and countryside living that is still relevant today, almost 100 years later.

What I thought of this classic:
I think I went into Cider With Rosie expecting a lot and although I didn't love it like I thought I would, it was still a really pleasant and enjoyable read. Each chapter was thematic rather than chronological; this added to the sense of nostalgia and allowed me as a reader to be completely submerged into the book's idyllic rural world. As well as being beautifully lyrical, Lee's descriptive passages were so rich and intense that I could almost picture his childhood kitchen, dappled with dusty beams of sunlight and see the lush, green Slad valley, dotted with cottages and farms.

Even though Lee was growing up almost 100 years ago and much has changed since then, Cider With Rosie still captures the essential essence of childhood. As I grew up in a rural village before computers were very common, I found that I could actually relate to a lot of Lee's childhood experiences and feelings, particularly the focus on nature and the seasons:
It was nice to be able to dip in and out of the book, taking a chapter at a time, and it's shorter length (just over 200 pages) makes Cider With Rosie the perfect light escape to a simpler time.

Will it stay a classic?
Most definitely, with a number of television, radio and stage adaptations Cider With Rosie is not only fondly-remembered but it is being brought to life and exposed to new audiences over and over again.

Who I'd recommend it to:
Fans of location-based memoirs, fans of the rural idyll, people who like heavily descriptive prose (think of The Great Gatsby or the Brontës) or the British countryside.

The 2016 Classics Challenge is hosted by the lovely Stacey of Pretty Books and you can find out more about it here.

Have you read Cider With Rosie? What did you think?

When the lovely Daphne over at Winged Reviews started up brand new book subscription box service, Illumicrate, back in October I was incredibly excited and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Alas, funds were low and I missed out on the first box. However, Daphne contacted me recently to ask if I wanted to be sent the February box to review and obviously I jumped at the chance! Illumicrate is a service I would definitely be subscribed to anyway if I had any money at all, so I was really pleased to be given the chance to review a box!

Illumicrate is a quarterly YA book subscription box service. That means that when you sign up, you receive a box every quarter which contains a new YA release and a good handful of bookish items - surprise bookishness in the post; what more could you ask for?! So let's get to the unboxing!

When I opened the box I was greeted with a beautiful sea of yellow! The box is well packed and all the items are cushioned with that cute squiggly packing paper to make sure that nothing arrives damaged. It came with a beautiful bright card on top emblazoned with the 'Illumicrate' logo and on the back was listed what was inside so I didn't look at that as I wanted to be surprised!

Then I basically lost my shit and started pulling out all the bookish items before getting to the glorious new book at the bottom. I'm not gonna lie, I actually squealed when I saw everything inside!

I currently have around 135 unread books on my shelves. I know - that's a lot. Somehow over the years I just accumulated more books than I could keep up with reading. I blame university, I was only really doing required reading for my course and hardly reading for pleasure. But I was still buying books and getting books as presents and eventually the humongous pile just kind of crept up on me. That's when I realised that I should probably be reading some of the books that had been hanging around on my shelves for a while instead of just picking up the shiny, new ones. Thus, the TBR jar was born.

My first TBR jar was a little tin filled with folded up scraps of paper, on which were written the names of some of the many unread books I own. The idea was to pick one out every once in a while and I'd have to read that book. But I found that this kind of ended up being neglected; it sat on my shelf collecting dust and my books continued to be unread. Thus, the second TBR jar was born, and it's a whole lot prettier than the first!



I got the idea for this from Sam from Thoughts on Tomes 'Star Jar' video, where she had a jar filled with origami stars for each rating she'd given to every book she read that year. I decided to do a similar thing but inside each origami star is written the name of an unread book on my shelf. I followed this video tutorial to make the origami stars and just used whatever coloured paper I had around.

I've decided that when I'm putting my TBR together for each month, I'll pull out one of the origami stars at random and pledge to read whatever unread book it is, within that month. This updated TBR jar not only looks cute on my shelf but inspires me to actually use it, because I want to unfold each little star to find what's written inside - it's like a little surprise each month!

Do you use a TBR jar? What does yours look like? Let me know in the comments!

I haven't really talked about this on here but right now I'm on a self-imposed book-buying ban. Partly because I can't actually afford to buy any books for the foreseeable future and partly because I already own around 126 unread books and that's just a bit ridiculous.

However that apparently doesn't stop me from going to the library and filling my arms with as many books as I can carry and definitely more books than I can read before they're due to be returned. There were just so many awesome YA books that I've been dying to read and quite a few new releases so I just couldn't resist.

I thought I'd do a little library haul to show you the books that I got out this month and hopefully give you a few more to add to your TBR!

These books are all published by HotKey, which I'm pretty sure is my favourite publisher because I want to read every single book they release.

These Shallow Graves - Jennifer Donnelly.
First of all, I love love love this cover, and the fact that it's a beautiful hardback makes me really sad that it's a library copy and I don't actually own it. Anyway, this is a YA historical fiction with elements of mystery and romance, which sounds right up my street. It's not very often that you come across historical fiction in YA so I had to grab this.

Moth Girls - Anne Cassidy.
I actually saw this in the supermarket the other week and had to restrain myself from buying it because it just looked so damn interesting. It's another YA thriller about two missing girls and an abandoned house which just sounds super creepy and interesting. I can't wait to get into this one!


The Manifesto on How to be Interesting - Holly Bourne.
I've been wanting to read something by Holly Bourne for ages as I always see people talking about her books on Twitter. This is a YA contemporary about an average teenage girl who's determined to become more interesting, even if that means breaking rules and making huge mistakes. I love a good contemporary so I'm all for it. Also this paperback has red sprayed edges so I was immediately sold.

Asking For It - Louise O'Neill.
Last year I read Louise O'Neill's Only Ever Yours, and although I had mixed feelings about it I was really impressed with the quality of the writing and I've been wanting to read more from her ever since. Asking For It is about rape culture, and after reading All the Rage by Courtney Summers I really want to read more on this topic because I think it's so important to talk about. Asking For It has had so much praise in the book community so I'm really looking forward to reading it.
 
If You Find Me - Emily Murdoch.
This is another book I almost bought a while ago and had to stop myself because of the looming TBR pile. If You Find Me is about two young girls who have lived in a trailer in the woods with their mentally ill mother for as long as they can remember. But one day, their mother disappears and two strangers arrive, changing their lives forever. This seems like such an intriguing premise and I can't wait to read it.


In Real Life - Cory Doctorow and Jen Wang.
My local library is really quite small and doesn't have the best selection so I was really surprised to find a small stand of graphic novels in amongst all the mainstream fiction. I picked this out because the art style drew me in and the main character is a girl gamer, so that's just awesome. I've actually already read this and really enjoyed it, but you'll be able to find out more of my thoughts in my monthly wrap up.

Tinder - Sally Gardner.
I picked this up because I'd heard a few booktubers including Jean from BookishThoughts and Sanne from BooksandQuills talking about it. Tinder is an illustrated retelling of Hans Christian Anderson's fairytale The Tinderbox, which I've actually read, so this should be a really interesting read. I absolutely love fairytale retellings and the fact that this one includes stunning illustrations just makes me swoon.

Have you read any of these? What did you think? 

Bullet journalling was created by Ryder Carroll and it's basically a notebook system which incorporates planning, organising, list-making, doodling (basically anything you want) in an organised way. I've always kept notebooks and diaries/planners and I've always struggled to use them effectively; to decide what should go in which notebook and not finding most dairy systems effective. The bullet journal basically solves all my problems. It allows for me to make monthly, weekly and daily plans but I don't have to, and it also gives me the space to be creative and to make lists and doodles and whatever else I might want to do. The bullet journal system is quite difficult to explain but once you get the concept it's super easy, I'm not going to try and explain it here, so I really recommend watching Ryder's video.

I thought I'd just show you how I've used my bullet journal so far, and maybe it'll give you some ideas for starting your own. I use just a regular notebook (UPDATE July 2017: For my past two bullet journals I have used the infamous Leuchtturm1917 A5 dotted*, and I probably always will) I'm hoping it's going to become not only a daily organisational tool but also a record of my year, and as it's all completely designed by me, mostly by hand, it feels really special and personal. So let's take a look at some of the spreads I've completed so far:


On these first couple of pages I decided to put a word for the year and a 2016 calendar, mainly because it looks pretty but also because it'll be helpful to refer to if I need to check a date.


This spread is all about my goals for 2016. My word for 2016 is 'focus' and at the beginning of the year I decided that there were a few areas in my life that I particularly wanted to focus on and improve. The left hand page just sums up those areas and has some more specific goals for each area. On the right hand page I have created a chart for each goal area and the idea is that I will fill in monthly on how I think I did in that area. I'm obviously hoping to fill each section by the end of the year.


I can't quite remember where I came across this idea, I think it might have been on the #bulletjournal tag on Instagram, but it's a great way to keep track of my physical TBR and the idea is to colour in each book as I read them. That way I'll have a visual representation of how well I am doing at reading the books I already own. The great thing about the bullet journal is that you can put whatever you want in there, in whatever order, and it'll be easy to navigate using the 'index' system.


Over these two spreads I have my 'Future Log', which basically can be used to mark out any upcoming events or tasks for the year and I'll easily be able to refer back to it when making my monthly spreads. The next page is a little calendar of the current Twitter chats that I'm interested in so I can refer back to it easily when daily planning.


This is one of my favourite spreads and one that I think I'm going to find the most helpful, particularly at the end of the year when I'm looking to collate my reading statistics for a post, like I did for 2015. I'm going to add to it every time I finish a book, so that it won't take me hours to collect this data at the end of the year!


These spreads are examples of weekly and daily logs. As you can see, I basically just use them as to-do lists for each day and with the daily logs I like to record my water intake and how many pages I read that day, just for fun really but to encourage me to keep these things up. I find it kind of relaxing to sit down each night, look over my daily log and create the next day's log. I enjoy being creative with the pages as it just makes it more fun. I haven't been too well lately so my days have been a bit unpredictable so I've ended up migrating quite a lot of tasks over to the following days but I don't beat myself up about not getting everything done. In the end it's all just a fun way to try and be a bit more productive and a good way of expressing my creativity.

At the moment I just use this bullet journal to organise my daily life and to-do lists, I actually have a separate blog planner but I find I'm not using it as much as I should be so I think I might actually incorporate that into my bullet journal soon. If I keep up this journal system then I might do an update after having used it for a few months to let you guys know about my experience and how my use of it changes as time goes on. That's the beauty of the bullet journal, if you don't like something then you can just change it on the next spread!

Do you keep a bullet journal? Or would you consider it? Let me know!

# of books read: 5.
Total # of pages read: 1424.
Genres: 1 YA Fantasy, 2 YA Contemporaries, 1 Graphic Novel, 1 Classic.
Gender of author: 3 Female, 2 Male.
Nationality of author: 2 USA, 2 UK, 1 Canada.

It's the first reading wrap up of the year! Woooo! *runs round room whooping then slumps into a chair because JEEZ January was hard*.

Yes, that's right, well done everyone, we've survived January and I even managed to read a respectable amount of books. Seeing as we're well into February now I figured it was about time we had a chat about the books I read in January. Let's get into it!

The Assassin's Blade by Sarah J. Maas | ☆☆☆☆☆
This set of YA fantasy novellas serves as a prequel to the Throne of Glass series. I personally decided to read this series in order of publication so I read The Assassin's Blade after finishing Crown of Midnight. I kind of think you can read these novellas at any point during the series, but it is probably better to read them sooner rather than later as they give some important context and background information to some of the characters and events that occur in the main series. I absolutely loved this book, I found each individual story so interesting and the writing was really fantastic. Sarah J. Maas' world building and character development across these novellas is incredible, I felt really connected to so many of the characters and I just couldn't put it down. This might be my favourite of the series so far.

Saga: Volume One by Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples | ☆☆☆☆☆
I'm so glad that I finally got my hands on this incredibly-hyped graphic novel in January, and I'm happy to say that it's just as brilliant as everyone has been saying. It's basically a epic fantasy space opera that initially focuses on two star-crossed lovers from warring planets who are on the run. The art is beautiful, the world-building is awesome and the dialogue is so sharp and finely-tuned. It's kind of the perfect graphic novel and I need the next volume now!

All the Rage by Courtney Summers | ☆☆☆☆☆
I won't go on about this one too much as I posted a full spoiler-free review which you can read here. All the Rage is a YA contemporary about rape culture and the story of a survivor of rape in small-town America. It is raw and honest and painful and you absolutely need to read it.

A Month in the Country by J. L. Carr | ☆☆☆☆
This was my first pick for the 2016 Classics Challenge hosted by Stacey of Pretty Books. At only just over 90 pages, A Month in the Country is a beautifully constructed mix between a rural idyll and a commentary on the human condition. Again, I've posted a review of this classic here, so you can head over there to see what I thought.

How Not to Disappear by Clare Furniss | ☆☆☆☆.5
I received this new release from Maximum Pop Books after they heard that my MP Secret Santa had been lost in the post, which was such a nice surprise and very thoughtful of them! How Not to Disappear is a YA contemporary which follows 17 year old Hattie who has just found out that she is pregnant with her best friend, Rueben's, baby. Meanwhile Reuben is off partying in Europe and Hattie's other friend Kat has disappeared off to Edinburgh with her girlfriend. Hattie feels completely alone, until she is contacted by a great aunt in the early stages of dementia, who she didn't even know existed. Cue a spontaneous roadtrip, several intense trips down memory lane and some heartfelt reflections on the importance of family. Furniss' writing is wonderful, the characters are so loveable and the dialogue is excellent. How Not to Disappear is at once heartbreaking, hilarious, shocking and hopeful and I can guarantee that you won't be able to put it down.

What did you read in January?

With a new year comes a fresh batch of monthly favourites posts. These have become one of my favourite kinds of posts because it gives me a chance to reflect on the month and really think about the little things that have been making me happy.

This month's favourites is a bit of an odd collection. I haven't really been wearing makeup or doing a lot of things apart from resting after the hectic festive period and going about my usual daily life. But there have been a few things that I've been enjoying and I thought I'd share them with you today.

01. Emma Hardie Cleansing Balm.
In December my lovely friend Emma gave me this travel sized pot of the Emma Hardie cleansing balm to try, along with a whole bunch of things I haven't got around to yet. I was insanely grateful when she gave me this wondrous box of goodies, whispering 'are you sure? I couldn't possibly...' whilst clutching the box for dear life in my greedy little hands. Anyway, a few weeks later and I'm so completely smitten with this painfully expensive cleansing balm that I'm pretty sure I'm going to cry when it runs out.

It works really well as either a first cleanse to remove makeup or as a follow-up to cleanse and moisturise the skin. It leaves me skin feeling silky smooth and it's not stripping or irritating at all. I'm in love!

02. Buying random crap on eBay.
I got really bored one day and started browsing eBay for random little things to use as photo props and the next thing you know I've got 17 rolls of washi tape, endless little silk flowers and 3 lots of fairy lights on their way to me. All for less than a fiver. I really need to stop but who can resist 5 rolls of washi tape for 37p?! Not me.

03. My new phone case.
This was another eBay purchase and cost a whopping, *drum roll*, £1.47. That's right folks, a beautiful phone case for just over a quid with free delivery. I don't mind if I do. It's actually really good quality too.

04. H&M spotty jumper.
I have basically been wearing this jumper non-stop since I bought it in December. It's loose-fitting but flattering, ridiculously comfy and warm and goes with EVERYTHING. I'm not sure it's still in stores but I'm pretty sure it was crazy cheap so grab one if you see it.

05. Mac 'Syrup'.
After going crazy over bold lipsticks last year I'm ready to embrace the nudes once again (*wink wink, nudge nudge* hahaaa. I'm not even sure what joke I'm making, but I'm laughing.) 'Syrup' is kind of a plummy nude and it's just the perfect everyday colour. I love the Mac lustre lipsticks because you don't have to worry about them fading awkwardly, or reapplying without a mirror. Back to basics feels great sometimes.

06. Bullet journalling.
This is my new found obsession. I'd been aware of the term 'bullet journalling' for a while but hadn't really looked into it until I saw Lily Pebbles instagram last week, which made me want to find out everything about it. It's basically my perfect journalling/planner system. I won't try to explain it because it's kind of difficult but this video explains it all perfectly. I love it so much I'm thinking about doing a whole post on the concept sometime soon, and showing you all my bullet journal so far. Let me know in the comments if this is something you'd be interested in seeing!

What have you been loving this month?