Features | Colouring Books For Grown Ups!

Saturday, 30 May 2015

Features | Colouring Books For Grown Ups!

One of the latest trends to hit the shelves of bookshops everywhere is colouring books for adults. These nostalgic titles are becoming increasingly popular as both a fun and stress-reliving activity and in recent months we've seen them featured all over the place with lots of different themed versions to choose from.

With this in mind I've had a little look around and picked out a small selection of ideas for those who are unsure where to start. So, if you're in the market for a unique gift for a friend or family member or even as a little treat for yourself, here are a few of our top colouring book picks...


The 'Colour Me Good' Series (Mel Elliot)
This series is perfect for those who love all things entertainment and includes a whole range of different titles such as individual colouring books featuring famous faces like Kate Moss, Ryan Gosling, Taylor Swift and Benedict Cumberbatch. Others from the same series include the various 'Color Me Swoon' editions featuring a selection of male celebrities as well as themed books such as different decades, record covers, movies and fashion.


Secret Garden & Enchanted Forest (Johanna Basford)
These beautifully illustrated nature-inspired titles are not only colouring books but are also treasure hunts as they include lists of items to find hidden within the pages. Created by British author Johanna Basford, Secret Garden is one of the top-sellers when it comes to adult colouring books and with such detailed and eye-catching artwork it's easy to see why.


Animal Kingdom (Millie Marotta)
Similarly to Secret Garden, the illustrations featured in this book are both beautiful and intricate. Rather than just sharing traditional drawings of the animals, here each one has been created using a variety of detailed designs and patterns, such as flowers, stripes, circles and leaves. A full book of these ornate designs will definitely take you a while to colour in!


The Tattoo Colouring Book & Postcards (Megamunden)
If tattoos are your thing you'll love these books which feature a huge variety of bold and unique designs. Although not presented in a traditional colouring book format, the postcards are perfect for a little colouring on the go and would certainly help to keep you amused on a long train journey or flight!

Images via Amazon

Are you a fan of adult colouring books?

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Features | The 5 Worst Book Covers I Own.

Thursday, 28 May 2015

Features | The 5 Worst Book Covers I Own.

Today I want to talk about what I think makes a good book cover but, because I am by nature contrary and awkward, I want to do that by talking about what I think makes a bad book cover. So I'm going to share with you the five books from my shelves that, in my opinion, have the worst covers.

1. Looking for Alaska by John Green

My main problem with this cover of Looking for Alaska is that I personally don't think it actually reflects the story inside at all. If I had just found this book in a bookshop, with no prior knowledge of John Green or his work, then I doubt I would have picked it up. When I think of Looking for Alaska I think of adventure, self discovery, and mortality, and I don't think this cover represents any of those things as well as the other Looking for Alaska covers I've seen. To me this just looks like the cover of a sad forbidden romance story, which is not what Looking for Alaska is.

2. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

This and Lola and the Boy Next Door's matching cover both suffer from a very different problem to the Looking for Alaska cover. These original covers for Anna and Lola actually both represent the stories pretty well, and I know that a lot of people love them for exactly that reason, but I just think they look so embarrassing. I imagine a lot of people were probably put off Anna and Lola because of these covers, which is a real shame because they're some of my favourite books. So I may be annoyed that Isla and the Happily Ever After doesn't match the first two in the series on my bookshelf, but mostly I'm just glad that all these books finally have covers that might entice more readers than they turn away.

3. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

There is so much going on with this cover, I just don't know where to start. It's just too busy. From the model who looks nothing like how I imagined the protagonist to look, to the terrible typeface choices and frank abuse of photoshop layering and drop shadows, to the strange background that makes it look as though the sky is on fire behind the castle, it's just all too much. This is a beautiful book and it deserves a beautiful cover, which this is not.

4. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Who is this man? Why is he leering at me from the edge of this book? Is it supposed to be Dorian Gray? I can forgive all the movies for constantly casting dark haired men as Dorian but shouldn't the book cover at least recognise that Oscar Wilde describes him as having 'golden' hair? The basic design of this cover is fine, but the choice of picture is really just ruining it for me.

5. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

This cover, like I Capture the Castle, is just so busy. Again, it looks like someone got carried away in photoshop. I have seen a few different covers for this series and they all look better than this so there really is just no excuse. The only thing I can say in favour of this cover is that it does give a sense of the adventure and action inside the book, so I can't say that it doesn't suit the story, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

So what makes a good book cover? I think it's obvious from the 'bad' covers I've chosen that I personally like a more minimal design and I'm not overly keen on big looming faces, but looking past my own personal preferences I think the key to a good book cover is in the two functions it should be performing. 1) A cover should make a reader want to pick up the book and read it. It should entice the reader, make them think that this is the sort of book they might be interested in. 2) It should do this by accurately representing the book inside. A cover should be attractive to look at, but it should also tell you something about the book you're about to read.

Let's not forget the attractive bit though, because let's be honest, we really all just want our bookshelves to look nice, don't we?

What do you think makes a good book cover? What do you think makes a bad book cover? Do you actually think my choices are all great book covers and I'm talking total rubbish? Let's talk about it in the comments!

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A Little In Love | Susan Fletcher | Review

Wednesday, 27 May 2015

A Little In Love | Susan Fletcher | Review

*image via GoodReads

Young Eponine was raised to be a thief. Her mother and father were crooks, and expect her to live up to their malicious and untrustworthy reputation. Eponine knows stealing from is bad, but her family are poor and the pretty trinkets she pinches bring her mother such joy. It’s a dog eat dog world after all. One day another young girl enters her Eponine’s life. She has golden hair and despite the rags her mother places her in she is so so beautiful. Cosette is her name and she is the only person who has ever shown Eponine kindness - even though at times she doesn’t deserve it. 

Sixteen years later and Eponine is no longer a young girl. Her family may have relocated to Paris but they haven’t stopped their criminal ways. She consistently seeks a better life. Her world is full of darkness but she tries to find happiness and goodness in the small things. One her many ‘lights' in a young boy called Marius. Charming, wonderfully handsome and heartbreakingly kind. The only problem with loving him is that he's in love with another girl. A girl with golden hair and who is beautiful inside and out. Cosette.

So what’s my verdict?

I’m gonna be completely honest with you guys here, I totally only picked this up because I’m a huge fan of Les Miserables musical and Eponine is totally my homegirl - and one of my favourite musical theatre characters of all time. 

If, like me, you’re also a fan of Les Mis or the original novel by Victor Hugo, you probably think you know Eponine Thernadier’s story back to front. And yes, the storyline for this novel is familiar and the timelines certainly do match up on many occasions - her ending is also unfortunately still canon *cries*. 

What Fletcher has done with A Little In Love, however, is take that canon story and expand it. As the love-lorn third wheel to the Marius/Cosette love story, Eponine for me is generally one of the more relatable characters from Les Mis. But by delving in her past and backstory, Fletcher presents Eponine as more than just the girl who pined after a boy. Strong-willed, brave and always striving to do good, Fletcher's Eponine deals with the struggle of with being as heartless as her family and her want to become a better version of herself. 

Though we do see a good portion of the story dedicated to her love of Marius (who is just as charmingly clueless of his effect on our ‘Ponine), equal credence is given to Eponine’s fervent quest and determination to be a good force in the world. 

Obviously Eponine is our leading lady in this instance, but there is some nice insight into the Thernadier’s world. Subplots surrounding Eponine’s relationship with her mother are also really interesting, and I do love Eponine’s ongoing contrast to Cosette’s life - something I always found irritating in the musical, but loved how it played out in this novel.

I’m being biased but I personally really enjoyed the book, though other readers will notice that A Little In Love in definitely geared towards a younger audience. However, it’s important to remember before criticising Eponine’s vernacular that she is very much a girl experiencing young love in all forms. She’s a little naive but learns every step of the way, and knowing her ending only makes her story even more heartbreakingly tragic.

Reading Soundtrack:

Songbird: Fleetwood Mac; La Vie En Rose: Edith Piaf; Dreaming With A Broken Heart: John Mayer; Samson: Regina Specktor; Beside You: 5 Seconds of Summer; My Love: Sia; Lights: Jake Nauta; Last Night On Earth: Green Day; Clean: Taylor Swift 

For lovers of...Les Miserables (the musical, film and the Victor Hugo novel), Moulin Rouge, and Never Let Me Go. 

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Being A Book Blogger | Interview With Beth aka The Quiet People

Tuesday, 26 May 2015

Being A Book Blogger | Interview With Beth aka The Quiet People

Welcome to another Being A Book Blogger post! Today I'm talking to the lovely Beth who runs The Quiet People. Here's what she had to say about becoming a blogger, switching lives with a popular Rainbow Rowell character and her love of classics...



BB: Hi Beth! For any of our readers who aren't yet subscribed to The Quiet People could you tell us a little bit more about the girl behind the blog?

I’m just your average, super-genius, pyjama wearing bookworm. Really, that’s it! (except for the super-genius part. I might have exaggerated a teeny-tiny bit there…) Oh, and I’m not really a big fan of people. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? I mean, I like people fine, just as long as they don’t talk to me or interact with me or acknowledge my presence in any way! (With the exception of online. You can be my interwebz friend any time you like!!)

BB: Where does your passion for reading come from, and how did you get into reviewing?

I’ve always been passionate about reading. At age six I was reading classics (The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett, if you must know!) and from then on there was barely a time when I didn’t have my nose in a book! Reviewing is much more recent for me though – when I started The Quiet People in January I had no idea what to write about, and I just sort of stumbled into book blogging. The rest is history!



BB: Which has been your favourite review to write so far?

Definitely Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas. It came at a time when I was actually really bored of writing reviews, and I was pretty stuck. I mean, the book itself was amazing, but I just could not formulate any words that would do justice to the intricacies of the plot. So essentially I gave up, and just wrote a list of my thought processes as I read the novel. Turns out, lists are fun write, and to read, so that was all kinds of lovely. Now list reviews are my favourite types to write!

BB: You've just started a clever series called 'Classics For Cheats', could you tell us a little bit more about how you came up with this idea and what we can expect from future instalments?

At the moment I read ALL the young adult books, but for years I read only classic literature. I’ve always liked classics – most people think they’re pretty dull, but most of them are jam-packed with things going on! For instance, did you know that there’s a buried alive scene in Les Miserables? Evidently that was too tricky to turn into a song! Weirdly though, despite people finding classics boring, for some reason they’re really rather prestigious. I’ve spoken to a lot of people who say that they’d like to read them, but just don’t have the time. From that, classics for cheats was born – a series where I paraphrase huge great long classics into just a few hundred words. I do the hard work for you!

BB: We're always looking for book recommendations, which 3 novels should our readers go out and pick up ASAP?

You’ve probably heard enough of me going on about classics now, but I believe EVERYONE should read the Count of Monte Cristo. Yes, it’s twelve hundred pages long, but it’s an incredible exploration of revenge, justice, love, hate and murder set in a background of post-revolution France. It’s beautiful and mesmerising and wonderful. For readers with more modern tastes, I’d definitely recommend Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park, or Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I’ve actually just finished the latter and loved it so much more than I’d expected to, so I think everyone should try it.



BB: Just for fun, if you could swap lives for the day with any fictional character who would you choose and why?

Without a doubt, Cath from Fangirl. The thing about being a quiet person is that you’re never the main character. Cath shares my introversion, but she’s still interesting and adorable enough that people around the world can identify with her. Plus reading Fangirl really made me miss my university – I’d love to go back and study a creative writing degree this time!

BB: Finally, we would love some recommendations, which book blogs are your favourites to read?

Cait at Paperfury is incredible. Everything she writes is hilarious, and she’s so sweet too!

Where to find Beth online: Blog | Instagram | Twitter

I'd like to say a huge thank you from all of us here at BB to Beth for taking part in this interview. If you are a booktuber or book blogger and would like to be featured in a similar post we'd love to hear from you - just email us at bloggersbookshelf@gmail.com for information!

Images c/o Beth

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Don't Stay Up Late: A Fear Street Novel | R. L. Stine | Review

Monday, 25 May 2015

Don't Stay Up Late: A Fear Street Novel | R. L. Stine | Review

*Review copy c/o Netgalley in exchange for an honest review, image via Goodreads

In this re-boot of Stine’s original Fear Street series, which was published from the late 80’s right through the 90’s, we meet Lisa a teen who after a serious car accident suffers with hallucinations.

In an attempt to help her progress with her recovery Lisa’s therapist secures her a babysitting job for a family on Fear Street, a supposedly cursed part of town. With her own family in serious need of the money this well-paid position offers, Lisa accepts the role and agrees to look after Harry a few nights each week under the instruction not to let him stay up late. However on her first night babysitting things take a sinister and terrifying turn when Lisa sees a demon-like creature run through the house and jump out of the window. But was it real or just a hallucination?

Although I’m sure a lot of readers may be drawn in by the nostalgia of re-visiting Fear Street and an author they loved growing up, I personally didn’t really read Goosebumps or any of R. L. Stine’s other novels when I was younger and therefore wasn’t familiar with his writing style. As expected I found the book to be a quick and easy read with an entertaining story and I also enjoyed the horror element. Sadly though, for me the conclusion of Lisa’s story was a little too predictable and the novel wasn’t as full of twists as I had hoped it would be.

Although I did enjoy Don’t Stay Up Late as a fun quick read, and would pick up another book from the series in future, I think this novel would perhaps be better suited to Middle Grade readers as opposed to a YA audience.

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Group Collaboration | Sight vs Sound: Audiobooks Discussion

Saturday, 23 May 2015

Group Collaboration | Sight vs Sound: Audiobooks Discussion

Welcome to May's group post! We're taking on a bit of a debate this month and delving into the topic of Audiobooks.

Though the hotter topic of e-books vs paperbacks rages on, there's another digital competitor for our beloved books. The humble Audiobook has been around since the early 20th Century, but with the uptake in the use of services like Audible and thousands of books available to listen to on Amazon and iTunes it's now easier than ever to access them.

We thought we'd get our bloggers to share their thoughts on Audiobooks, whether or not they listen to them and why?

*header image and playlist logos via Pixabay

Let us know your thoughts on Audiobooks too in the comments below! 

Our June group post is all about creating musical playlists for your favourite books! If you'd like more information about getting involved email us at bloggersbookshelf@gmail.com or tweet @blog_bookshelf

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