Celeste, Author at A Literary Escape

First Lines Fridays: May 26, 2023

Published on May 26, 2023May 24, 2023 by Celeste4 Comments

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? The rules are as follows:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

I feel like the last person who hasn’t read this book (even though I know it’s not true). However, I hope to remedy that next month and finally check this off my TBR.

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Wyrd and Wonder: Bite-Size Fantasies

Published on May 23, 2023April 28, 2023 by Celeste10 Comments

Todays’s Wyrd and Wonder prompt is “bite-size fantasies.” While this sounds delightfully fun, it is meant to focus on short story or novella-length fantasy stories. Since last year’s Wyrd and Wonder I have read quite a bit more fantasy books (obviously), some of which were on the shorter side. Here is a list of some bite-size fantasies that might be of interest. I loosely interpreted novellas as 200 pages in under, though I believe technically they are typically shorer than that.

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Wyrd and Wonder: Celebrate Celtic Mythology

Published on May 20, 2023January 14, 2024 by Celeste8 Comments

In lieu of participating in Wyrd and Wonder on my blog this week I’ve been reading FOURTH WING by Rebecca Yarros. Or, trying to, at least, in between other things that cropped up this week. Regardless, today’s prompt is mythology, or celebrate a subgenre. If I had planned better, I would have saved my recently-created list of Arthurian retellings for today. But alas. (Please check it out if you missed it!) Instead, my focus is to celebrate Celtic mythology, which is just as fun to read.

Allow me to be frank in that I don’t know much about Celtic mythology. However, I inadvertently many times a year seem to read fantasy books inspired by it. This inspiration usually isn’t evident to me when I read the synopsis. Or perhaps it’s not evident to me because I am not educated in it. (Highly possible.) Nevertheless, I do enjoy them when I read them. So allow me to celebrate Celtic mythology and share it via a list.

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First Lines Fridays: May 19, 2023

Published on May 19, 2023May 18, 2023 by Celeste2 Comments

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

It’s been about a month since I last did one of these. But given how often you might see this book pop up these days, I bet a lot of you might be able to guess this one!

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Arthurian Retellings Reading List

Published on May 17, 2023May 19, 2026 by Celeste48 Comments

Initially created for Wyrd and Wonder 2023, I decided to pull together an Arthurian retellings list. I have always been low key interested in Arthurian legend. Like many things in life, we all have many interests but not enough time in which to truly delve deep into them. So I satisfy my interest with reading Arthurian retellings. And there are some great ones out there to read.

Since there are many works on Arthurian legend, this list is not comprehensive. Instead, this Arthurian retellings list contains books I have read. It also has some which I have not yet read, but would like to in the long term. My intention is to create a working list. That is, I plan to update it as I read my way through more Arthurian tales. I am always open to recommendations, so if you have any that fall under this topic, please let me know in the comment section.

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