The Tbr Book Tag!

Hello! I was tagged ages ago by Panic at the book store, thanks for the tag!

How do you keep track on your TBR list?

Goodreads is the only way I can remember all the book on my TBR list. I also made a hand written catalog that I keep at home, near the bookshelf. I cancel a title from that everytime I finish a book.

Is your TBR mostly print or e-book?

I have a lot of print books, and I was thinking that I have just a dozen of e-books. Guess what? I was wrong. They are hundreds.

How do you determine which book from your TBR to read next?

I’m a mood reader, and I always try to diversify my reading: I can read one horror book, then a middle grade and after that a classic. I’m also easily annoyed, and that’s why I didn’t read two books of the same genre (or the same series) one after another.

A book that has been on your TBR the longest.

Well, the italian edition of Pride and Prejudice is on my bookshelf for years.

A book that you recently added to your TBR list?

 

A book on your TBR list strictly because of its beautiful cover.

A book on your TBR that you never plan on actually reading.

Sorry, no translated title for this one. This book is on sale for years now, and I’ve bought it a long time ago. I read a couple of pages and seems terrible. Also, the GR rating is 3,2.

An unpublished book on your TBR that you’re excited for.

 

It’s Cat Winters!! With a book about Edgar Allan Poe!!

A book on your TBR that basically everyone has read but you.

A book on your TBR everyone recommends you.

I see this book everywhere!

A book on your TBR you’re very excited to read.

 

This tag seems a collection of morbid books. I’m sorry.

The number of books on your Goodreads TBR shelf.

Right now there are 873 books on my TBR shelf!

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Review blog tour: The Spyglass and The Cherry Tree

Title: The Spyglass and the Cherry Tree
Author:  Matt Beighton
Genre: Upper MG/YA Fantasy
Release Date: June 2017
Signed copies on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/577769183/the-spyglass-and-the-cherry-tree-the(£1 off at Etsy with the code SPY100 (until end of November).

Add to: Goodreads, Amazon

Rating: 3,5/5

Summary:

Some people fall down rabbit holes. Others hide inside magical wardrobes. Skye Thistle looked through an old spyglass.

Lost and alone on a world filled with Goblins, Orcs, Dragons and others that, until now, she was convinced existed only in fairy tales, Skye wants only one thing: to return home.

If she’s to have any chance of getting home safely, Skye must overcome her own fears and prejudices and embrace the prophecies that she fears have already sealed her fate on the distant world of Ithilmir. All that stands in the way of restoring peace and balance is a fearsome and worryingly familiar Dark Queen.

Goblins are very real, and whether Skye believes in them or not, she’s their only hope.

Readers around the world are enjoying the complex mythology and descriptive world building of The Spyglass and the Cherry Tree, the first adventure in the Shadowlands Chronicles.

Review:

First of all, thanks to YA Bound Books Tour for giving me a free copy of this book.

The cover is the reason I decided to request this book, because it’s the perfect cover for an MG/fantasy/adventure book.

The beginning is like a lot of other fantasy: a normal girl who has a mother who strongly believes in Fairies and Goblins, is forced to spend her holidays with her grandparents.

But when she watches throught the old spyglass she doesn’t believe at her own eyes! A new planet? Skye hasn’t the time to be happy about that, because the Spyglass transport her on that planet!

She is lost and alone, afraid of the dark and the sounds of a forest, and soon she is surrounded by Goblins. And not the kind of Goblins we usually know.

I must admit that I didn’t give a high rating at this book because a lot of world-building information are given to us step by step, with long and sometimes boring monologues by this or that character.

When finally the long journey of Skye began, I was there thinking that this story reminds me of another: The Hobbit. We had a main character who is afraid in a perilous world; we had a group of people that are not the same race of the MC; we had a powerful enemy and a long journey in the wild world.

However, this book is really adventurous and it’s not predictable. I like a lot all the mythology of the different species and the background story. Skye is really a likeable character, totally human at the beginning and who grows during the entire book.

 

About the Author

Matt Beighton was born somewhere in the midlands in England during the heady days of the 1980s and continues to spend most of his days in the same shire. He is happily married with two young daughters who keep him very busy and suffer through the endless early drafts of his stories.

When he’s not writing, he teaches primary school (Kindergarten to some of you), messes around on canals in his inflatable kayak and supports his beloved Leicester City.

To find out more and to join his mailing list, visit http://www.mattbeighton.co.uk.

He is currently recruiting avid readers of children’s books for his Street Team. Find out more and request to join at http://mattbeighton.co.uk/street-team.

Author Social Media:

Website: http://www.mattbeighton.co.uk

Amazon author page: http://author.to/mattbeighton

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mattbeightonauthor

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mattbeighton

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mattbeightonauthor

 

 

Blog Tour Organized by:

YA Bound Book Tours

 

 

October 2018 Wrap Up

Hello everyone! Another month has passed! How was your reading month?

I read a total of 7 books, with only 1 DNF.

Who let the Gods Out? by Maz Evans: I Loved this book!! I laughed so hard, the Gods are so funny and this is a wonderful middle-grade fantasy! 4,5/5 stars!

Shadow of the Ripper by Tom Schafer: a horror “sequel” of the infamous Jack The Ripper story, very gruesome. I didn’t like it, 2 stars.

Casper and Jasper and the terrible Tyrant by Tilia Keblenov Jacobs: thanks to Netgalley for this e-book, it’s a fantasy middle grade excessively long. 2 stars.

Death or ice-cream? By Gareth P. Jones: it’s strange, I read two books with a question in the title this month! I love this cover, and this book is original and quite amusing. 4 stars!

And that’s all!

Happy Halloween!!

 

Netflix Movie Review: Errementari

Title: Errementari, The Blacksmith and the Devil.

Director: Paul Urkijo Alijo

Cast: Kandido Uranga, Eneko Sagardoy, Uma Bracaglia

Release Date: 12 October 2018

Genres: fantasy, horror, retelling

Rating: 5/5

Trigger Warning: it’s a horror, so death, Satan, suicide, blood, visions of Hell and Demons.

Plot:

Errementari: The Blacksmith and the Devil is a re-telling of an ancient fable about a Blacksmith who finds himself battling the Devil. In this story, the Blacksmith has captured the Devil and lives a life of hermit-like seclusion away from the prying eyes of the townsfolk. All is going well until a desperate little girl, Usue, accidentally stumbles across the devil and unknowingly releases him. It is then left to the Blacksmith to reclaim his bounty, but this is easier said than done as he also finds himself at the end of a lynch mob that have come searching for the missing Usue.

Review spoiler free:

You know you have found a good horror movie when you and your dad, who sacrifices himself every time this blogger want to watch a horror movie, at the end of the movie, turn to the other and say simultaneously: that was awesome!!

Errementari is a retelling of a fable, is located in Spain and is written in Basque (but they translated it in italian!): after the artistic prologue we are introduced in a world dark and gloomy, devastated by the war. And we first meet The Blacksmith.

Then we skip 8 years, and we found Usue, a little girl living in the same village as The Blacksmith, and a mysterious stranger who is searching the Blacksmith. But nobody in the village wants to enter the property of the Blacksmith, because it seems an old, crazy and nasty man.

The scene, dark as usual for a Netflix movie, are fascinating: the old village with a forest deep and strange, with twisted trees and fog; the property and the house of The Blacksmith, completely covered with cross; the church of the village, with demons statues.

It’s the perfect setting for Halloween! I’ve loved it!

That was me during the entire movie.

 

 

The plot: I hate when for the first 20/30 minutes of a horror movie nothing happens. But Errementari doesn’t fail, and every minute of the movie is interesting, or sad, or funny. Yes, you hear me right: there are a lot of scenes so funny, and let me say it, it’s all because of Sartael, the demon.

The characters: Sartael is the best. I want a fan club for him. And I want to protect Usue and The Blacksmith, because remember if “Not all tales always have a happy ending”, you can’t judge a person by their appereance.

I want to applaud the make up artist: as a cosplayer I’m so impressed by their work.

As always with a positive review, I’m not sure if this is a “professional” or “convincing” review, but I just want to say this: this is an original movie so well done, with a lot of emotions, perfect for Halloween, and it became one of my favorite horror movie of all the time.

 

 

 

 

 

Creatures of the Night Book Tag

Hello! As I already said, October is all spooky here! Here’s the Creatures of The Night Book Tag that I found on Another Book In the Wall.

Go and check Kelly’s blog, it’s fantastic!

The rule is simple: choose a book or character that features the creature listed.

Vampire: Count Dracula.

 

Werewolf: Remus Lupin

I don’t like so much the werewolfs, but Remus Lupin is probably the character that has helped me to find a new obsession: the harry potter series. I cried for days after you know what.

Zombie: Resident Evil

I don’t like Zombies. At all. I don’t like The Walking Dead, or books with Zombies. But I like Resident Evil.

Ghost: The graveyard book

This book is full of ghosts!

Witch/Warlock/Spellcaster: Princess Olive

 

Fairy/Fae: Flights and chimes and mysterious times

Angel/Demon: Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens

I cheated a little here and I combined the two characters. But seriously, how cool is this poster? Have you seen the trailer?

Alien: The Long way to small, angry planet

 

Superpowered Human: Van Helsing

Maybe you don’t know, but there’s also a book from this movie (that I love so much!)

 

 

Come little children, the time’s comes to read all this spooky books!

I love books with original and strange titles, and I love to adapt the lyrics of songs to something more bookish.

Here’s my recomendation of horror/spooky books:

I try to including more genres, so we have Death or Ice Cream? that’s a Middle Grade (and I love the cover so much!) and The Woman in Black, still my favourite classic ghost story. Shutter Island is the best thriller that I ever read; Coraline is fantastic. The Other Mother scares me a lot, even if I am 31 years old.

Underworld London is a non-fiction book and it’s scary and very gruesome; The Last Necromancer is a fantasy/historical/gothic, the first of a series with gorgeous covers and last but not least The Uninvited by Cat Winters: she can writes about ghosts and paranormal like no other.

I know that are more and more horror books out there, so stay tuned for my horror TBR books and my favorite horror movies!

Do you know some of this books? Who else love Peter Hollens? I adore him!!*_*

The ABC Book Challenge (C)

The challenge is to post some books that I loved and some books that are still on my TBR (please TBR, don’t hurt me), corresponding to each letter of the alphabet.

Please remember that maybe some books will be in italian. I will write the english title too.

The ABC Book Challenge (A)

The ABC Book Challenge (B)

My selection of Favourites books:

The Chess Queen Enigma(Stoker & Holmes #3) by Colleen Gleason: A steampunk series featuring the niece of Sherlock Holmes and the sister of Bram Stoker, with gorgeous covers!

Coraline by Neil Gaiman: Coraline is one of the few books that really scares me. I re-read it recently, perfect for the Halloween mood.

Il Coperchio del mare (Umi No Futa) by Banana Yoshimoto: an italian title for this beautiful book.

Cacciatori di Vampiri (The rest falls away/The Gardella Vampire Hunters #1) by Colleen Gleason: this is the first adult series about vampires that I’ve read, a long time ago. I still need to finish the series.

My TBR books:

The Carnelian Crow (Stoker & Holmes #4) by Colleen Gleason: can’t wait to read this book, and the last of the series will be out in 2019.

La Cacciatrice di anime(First grave on the right) by Darynda Jones: I added this book after the recommendations of other bloggers!

The Casquette girls by Alys Arden: I’ve heard a lot of beautiful things about this book!

Cat Out of hell by Lynne Truss: the goodreads rating isn’t high, but I’m still interested in it.

Did you know this books?

Any recommendations?

September 2018 Wrap Up

Hello everyone!

October hasn’t started very well, and september was a really busy month, and that’s why I read only 6 books.

Underworld London: crime and punishment in the Capital City, by Catharine Arnold: this is the best book of September! A non-fiction book about gruesome crimes and worse punishment, I will post a review (hopefully) in October, because it’s a perfect Halloween read! 4,5/5 Stars!

The watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley: unfortunately, I DNF this book, but only for now. I want to try to read it and hopefully, finish it. The writing style was really difficult for me to understand, and some things were predictable.

How was your reading month? Have you read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street? Do you liked it?

Prepare yourself, because October will be spooky!

 

Netflix series review: The Good Cop

The Good Cop

Cast: Josh Groban, Tony Danza, Monica Barbaro, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Bill Kottkamp

Executive Producers: Andy Breckman, Howard Klein, Randy Zisk

Episodes: 10

Release date: 21 September

Rating: 4/5

I only watch the first 2 episodes, so this will not be a review of the entire season 1.

I’m a great fan of Josh Groban, so obviously I was expecting this series. Groban is the son, Tony Caruso Jr, and Danza play the father. The son is the good cop, the too much good cop, so stickler for the rules. The father is a corrupt cop who is now forced to live with his son. I read a lot of nasty comments and reviews online, written by “famous website” who didn’t reccomend this series, because it’s boring.

Well, I admit it’s not like “CSI” or “Criminal minds”: there isn’t blood on the crime scene, no violence or s*x scenes (for this 2 episodes!) and I really like that.

I really enjoy crime series, but I don’t want to watch constantly gruesome shows. The news are bad enough, thanks. This is the perfect show to watch with all the family: it’s funny, quiet and the episodes are about 21 min long. There’s only a mistery for episode, so they’re pretty simple, but original and the other characters contributes to the light and easy atmosphere.

There was a scene in the first episode that makes me laugh so hard. And I really like the father/son scenes. I will definitely watch all the 10 episodes.

I hope for just a little “sing a song” scene with Groban in the next episodes. This will be perfect.

 

Any other fan of Josh Groban out there?

Have you watched this series?

My summer book haul

Hello to everyone!

This post is a little different from the others, because it shows my summer book haul.

As the last August, I spent 10 days of vacation in the U.K. so I have buy one book. Or maybe two or…13.

Strange Star by Emma Carroll: love this cover! I’ve never read a book by Emma Carroll but every one of them seems interesting.

Bedlam and Necropolis by Catharine Arnold: I recently finished “Underworld London” and I really liked it. I was always fascinated by the dark history, so when I found this two books at half price, I took them!

Frozen Charlotte by Alex Bell: give all the horror books to me!! Want to know what I’m really scared of? Dolls. So it’s a good idea to buy a horror book about dolls. High five to me.

The silent companions by Laura Purcell: love the cover, and the plot seems really my ideal book. I didn’t like Jackson’s book, but Susan Hill has written my favourite ghost story. And I found it for 2£!!

The invisible library by Genevieve Cogman: this book was on my wishlist for years!! Found it near The Silent companions, for 2£. God bless the charity shops!

The ghost hunters by Neil Spring: this was on my wishlist, and it was in a little bookshop of Tenby, Wales, with a promotion 2×1 (buy 2, pay 1) so I took this and…

The Brief And Frightening Reign Of Phil: (Includes The ‘In Persuasion Nation’ Collection) by George Saunders: never heard about this book, but seems strange and funny.

The wild robot by Peter Brown: again, this book was on my wishlist for years. Love the illustrations!

The Wingsnatchers by Sarah Jean Horwitz: I always like a good Steampunk book! Buy it at Blackwell bookshop, Oxford!

My best friend’s exorcism and Horrostor by grady Hendrix: the first was on my wishlist, because everyone seems to love it. I really like the cover like a 80’s VHS. The second was a surprise. I was in a little bookshop in Sidmouth and my dad says: look Diana, a book that seems an Ikea catalogue! And I was: omg, I want it! I didn’t know that they are from the same author!

Circe by Madeline Miller: The song of Achilles is one my fave read of 2018, and I’m not a person who want a specific edition of a book, or a fan of hardback books. But then I saw this beautiful edition of Circe, and I decided that I want it. I’m so happy to have found it!

Oh, and don’t forget the Niffler plush! Love it, so cute!

And this is my August Book Haul!! What do you think?

Have you read one of this books?