This is another post from 2010 that I was working on… I’ve finished it slightly, but mostly it was written then!

I’ve spent this morning looking at blogs, doing chores, and thinking, oddly enough about passions.

What I mean by passion is something that I can’t live without, something that could almost be described as a need, except I view need as something that you have no control over – you *need* to breath, whereas I am passionate about reading, and other things, but I’ll come on to those.

Reading is one of those things that I was slow to warm up to. I struggled when I was at primary school, but I seem to have been making up for that struggle ever since. I am, as best can be described, a bookworm. I read anything and everything, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion on what I read.

Other things that I am passionate about would be my fiance, my friends and family, writing (note from present me – I’ve not done much of that the last couple of years, and this blog is my return to writing!), and history in general. These are the things that make me up, and I think that if you take one of them away, then I wouldn’t be me, or at least not as much!

But where does passion become obsession? It’s very easy to point at the craze of vampires, and to look at Twilight fans, and say that they are obsessed, but is that because of their age (the books are written for young adults), or is it just that vampires are a subject that has fascinated us for many years, and that we’re seeing how many people are fans because of the media and the internet? Look at Anne Rice, and now True Blood, the series based on the books by Charlaine Harris. Many people are reported to have flocked to New Orleans over the years, to see the setting, and to imagine the characters that Anne Rice made, walking down the streets.

It could be the case that these are just the books that are now available. When I was growing up, the books that I could find in my local library were Anne McCaffrey, and Diana Wynne-Jones if i was lucky, and I’m only in my late 20s (another note from present me – I am no longer in my late 20s….!). The books that young adults/ teenagers have access to now is amazing – there are so many fantasy and sci-fi books written for them specifically, which I think is fantastic, but is a very interesting comment on the way that authors have changed over the years. Is it that more fantasy and sci-fi authors are writing for young adults, or is it that publishers are publishing more of these? Either way, I look forward to introducing my niece and nephews to these books when they’re older.

I read a lot, and I’m quite a fast reader normally, but this year has been so busy that I’ve not read anywhere near the normal amount,  but some of the books I’ve read this year have been amazing, and so I thought I’d share them!

I’m steering clear of ones that are in the middle of series, because that’s useless to someone who hasn’t read the series to date, and I know a lot of people are intimidated by the idea of reading a lot of books in a series, so let’s just skip those!

I’m part of the Sword and Laser bookclub, which reads one book a month, and it’s discussed on their podcast, and also on the forums on GoodReads.

This year, we’ve read the following books, which I’ve thought were brilliant!

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison – best described as court intrigue, and so well written!

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett  – gods have been killed, and the country is trying to recover after various miracles no longer work.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik – the Dragon, Lord of the land, takes a girl every ten years to be his servant, but this time there’s a couple of changes.

Previously, Sword and Laser have read Ready Player One by Ernie Cline, but I was lent the book this year, and enjoyed it so much!  I’m a little reluctant to try Armada, Ernie Cline’s latest, as I’ve heard it’s not as good, but I might bite the bullet in time!

And on the same lines, Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (of whom I’m a bit of a fangirl!) and Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Robinette Kowal, which is Regency romance, but with a magical twist, and I shall be looking for more of her books!

I really enjoy the Freakonomics podcast, and their 3 books (Freakonomics, Superfreakonomics and Think Like a Freak)  have also been really fascinating, although you can read basically the transcript of a podcast episode in some of the chapters, so you have been warned!

Yes Please by Amy Poehler was an impulse pickup at the library, and was so good!  I’m now trying Parks and Recreation, because I want to keep her around somehow!  You need to read her book, and have youtube on standby to go and search for the various standup sketches! My favourites have to be the award ceremony hijinks though!   Beauty Pageant, George Cloony and of course Bono.

There’s still a lot of 2015 left, so I might still come across something that blows everything out of the water!  What’s yours been?

I do love Goodreads – they make keeping track of what I’ve read before, and what I want to read so much easier than it used to be!

This is my username and picture, because I love(d! Nom!) that bird!

Whenever I go near a bookshop or library (usually after having smelt it out, according to some!) I am normally looking at my phone, and then at a book in my hand, working out where I am in a series, or if I’ve liked anything else by the author, or even what other people have thought of the book (anything with a very low star rating gets set gently back on the shelf!  Too many books, too little time!)

This is my current view when I look at my stats, and I do love the information that I can see, such as longest book, how many books read, and you can see what I’ve rated them!

Yes, I do rate a lot of books as being 4 stars…

And then I remember how many books are on my to read list…….