First Lines Fridays: May 19, 2023

Published on by Celeste2 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!

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

Arthurian Retellings Reading List

Published on 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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A Spindle Splintered book cover

Book Review: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow

Published on by Celeste11 Comments

Today’s review is for A SPINDLE SPLINTERED by Alix E. Harrow. It’s a novella-length retelling of The Sleeping Beauty set in the present day. One of my favorite things about the physical copy is the illustrations used throughout from Arthur Rackham.

Author: Alix E. Harrow
Series: Fractured Fables, #1
Age Category: New Adult/Adult
Publisher: Tordotcom
Publish Date: October 5, 2021
Print Length: 128

Want to support local bookstores? Buy a copy of A Spindle Splintered on Bookshop.org!*

*These are not affiliate links and I do not make a commission from any purchase made using these links.

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Wyrd and Wonder 2023

Wyrd and Wonder: Frequent Recommendations

Published on by Celeste10 Comments

The Wyrd and Wonder prompt challenge for today is “most often recommended to you (or by you).” I don’t usually find myself asking for recommendations often, simply because I have a huge backlist at home. As this is the case, I’ll focus on fantasy books I tend to recommend to others. If you know me, I bet you know what will be first in this Wyrd and Wonder frequent recommendations list! This list is on the shorter side because I really have to like something to constantly recommend it to others. Call me a critic, if you will, but that’s just my nature!

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