Emma Types Stuff

For December I will be attempting to read as many festive books as I can. You can check out the original challenge here and follow my progress below... The Prompts: 1. A Classic Christmas Story  A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas A sweet little prose piece that brings back atmospheric memories of a Christmas that is incredibly specific and yet somehow universal. The Chimes by Charles Dickens Another festive morality book from Dickens, though it was never as popular as A Christmas Carol. This sees and elderly but kind ticket porter go through a similar process to Scrooge over the course of a New Year. Dickens champions the poor and takes vicious aim at the condescending attitude and conditional charity of the rich - but this is still a colder, meaner story and far more mawkish. This actually feels ripe for a modern adaptation in this world of zero-hour-contract grind culture.   2. A Murderous Christmas Story The Snowman by Jo Nesbø A serial killer is stalking mothers of q

In case you missed the marketing juggernaut, Tim Burton's take on Wednesday Addams was released on Netflix last week. I was thrilled - as a lover of the original series, the 1990s films, and even the recent cartoons, I enjoy literally any version of the Addams Family. (Except the Tim Curry movie. I'm kooky, not insane.)     This inspired me to begin a new series called Character Book Club in which I take a fictional character and suggest books I think they'd enjoy.   So here are four titles I think might bring a - small, wicked - smile to Wednesday's face.  My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix   Wednesday's schooling is the source of numerous storylines throughout The Addams Family history. The potential for her to unleash chaos on the blandest of highschoolers is too delicious to pass up.  However, she can sit this one out, because in My Best Friend's Exorcism, a demon does it for her.   This story begins in a way that would give any member of th

Last year Amazon released the criminally underrated Kevin Can F*** Himself . It's the story of a perfect sitcom housewife. In one moment she is standing in the brightly-lit living-room, performing to the fourth wall and setting up her manchild husband's punchlines, the next she is in her dingy, cockroach infested kitchen, shaking with anger while she fetches him a sandwich. The show moves between the two worlds, as Alison realises how trapped she is and fights to escape her husband's control. It's a beautiful metaphor for an abusive marriage, with a fantastic queer love story and it deserves more attention, but I digress.  Redshirts by John Scalzi is Kevin Can F*** Himself meets Star Trek: Lower Decks . Five new Ensigns arrive on a suspiciously Starship Enterprise-y ship. They all have interesting and trope-filled backgrounds - a former monk, a sexy but tough medic, a billionaire's son trying to make it alone, and a rogueish minor drug dealer. They are ready to lea

I've always associated 'romance' books with the Catherine Cookson books my nan used to read in front of the TV, or the books I skim past in the 'free eBook' section of Kobo. As a queer woman, most heterosexual romance stories don't appeal, and even the queer romance I read tends to cross over with other genres. If I want romance, I usually read fanfiction, which is free and about pairings I care about. But, the modern romance market is currently packed with self-aware, interesting titles, and one of them is this book: Love in the Time of Serial Killers (Alicia Thompson). I'm trying to be more open and less judgemental about my own reading, so I was willing to give it a go, especially since I am a millennial woman and therefore have a subscription to every true crime channel available to me. Phoebe's having a hard time, and not in a cute romance book 'I got locked out in my pyjamas and my boss was a jerk to me!' way. In a 'my dad just died, I

If you are my age (which is Millennial, to be clear) you had Enid Blyton forced upon you from the start. Childhood was basically an exercise in levelling-up on Enid Blyton books. You started with Noddy, then moved on to The Wishing Chair and The Faraway Tree , before you entered your 'boarding school era' with Malory Towers and The Naughtiest Girl in School. Then came either The Famous Five or The Secret Seven , at which point you had to choose whether you were a Five Fan or a Seven Stan. For some reason no one was ever both. (Side note, Enid Blyton was a terrible person in many ways so I'm not going to over-romanticise her. She was a person with prejudiced opinions who wrote decent-but-twee books that aged really badly. The End.) I was a Famous Five girl, mainly because the BBC made a series for children's television at around the same time. Even if you haven't read them, you know the trope - two boys, a useless girl, a tomboy, and a dog. They solve mysteries an

I have an uneasy relationship with recent historical gothic books. It's my suspicion that far too many publishers see a white, middle-class lady author and think that if they slap an arty cover on the manuscript they will magically find their next Miniaturist. I think of them as Kitchen Island Authors (posing for author photos while leaning against the countertop of their airy kitchens) whose privilege seeps from the pages. It's not just gothic novels - Greek myth retellings are another branch of the same tree - but the genre is by far the worst offender. Perhaps you think I'm overly harsh - certainly classist - and maybe that's true. Shouldn't I champion women writers full stop? Do I get pissy about posh male writers? Actually, yes I do. The publishing industry needs to have a word with itself. But my point is that you don't often see arty, flowery covers on the works of working class and/or BAME authors. Even when you do, their background is the selling point

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I dislike Guy Fawkes Night, the UK's answer to the 4th of July. We celebrate our opression with bonfires, fireworks and funfairs. I personally sit indoors crying and working through my own opressive grief.  So what I'm trying to say is that I REALLY needed cheering up. Legends & Lattes (Travis Baldree) is one of those books that sounds too good to be true. 'Low-stakes' is often code for 'lack of plot' and 'queer romance'... well... we've been hurt before. To my great surprise, all the other excited reviewers were right. Legends & Lattes is fantastic.  We follow Viv, an Orc with a dream. A dream of putting down the sword and putting on a barista apron. She wants to open a coffee shop in a city that hasn't heard of coffee. Of course, she can't do it alone, and so she gathers a ragtag group of misfits along the way. They progress from coffee to lattes, from lattes to pastries,

Being a 90s kid was great. As those Facebook nostalgia posts regularly remind us, we were the last generation to play outside and we were free from the pollution of texting and the internet. We had mysterious Pogs, troublesome Tamagotchis, decent mid-budget movies, and only mildly-embarassing fashion. We also had our future stolen from us, but hey, we didn't know that yet! Our parents were still telling us we could have a comfortable 2.4 kids life and any career we wanted.  Suffice to say, when times are tough, nostalgia is a comforting tonic. There's been a trend for books that trigger our nostalgia recently - so I've rounded up three that should send you back to the 90s so hard your hair will re-perm itself.  Practical Magic The Practical Magic trailer was at the beginning of a VHS video I loved, so I saw it a LOT. Inevitably, I was rather underwhelmed when I eventually rented the movie from LoveFilm (I am not nostalgic for LoveFilm, by the way).  It was fine . Sandra Bu

What I Read in 2022 This is a place to see everything I read in the year 2022 and find links to reviews and mentions of the book across the blog. It also details reading challenges I participated in and other general reading information.  2022 has been a strange reading year. After several years of struggling to read, I found the joy in it once more. January The Hunting Party [ 1 ] Unseen on TV February Hawk [Men of Bird's Eye Book 1] March April Dumb Witness  The Witchfinder's Sister Three Act Tragedy May June July A Monster Calls The Ideal Cut Gil's All Fright Diner The Poisonous Solicitor  Convenience Store Woman The Route of Ice and Salt A Deadly Education [Scholomance Book 1] Farenheight 451 August The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club [Lord Peter Wimsey Book 4] The House in the Cerulean Sea The Last Graduate    [Scholomance Book 2] Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe [Aristotle and Dante Book 1] Cultish Mrs. Mohr Goes Missing [Mrs. Mohr Book 1 ]