Emma Types Stuff

With the Victorian era being the source of so many Christmas traditions, Victorian stories are a staple of Christmas. A Christmas Carol may be a popular choice, but for a slightly less moralistic read, many adore Arthur Conan Doyle's Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle .  "I had called upon my friend Sherlock Holmes upon the second morning after Christmas, with the intention of wishing him the compliments of the season." - The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle In it Holmes and Watson work out the series of events that led to a priceless gem being found in a goose. It's a good-humoured and heart-warming tale, and well worth reading if you are looking for a moment of relaxation rather than spooky Dickensian social justice. But what if you have already read it, and are seeking out more festive Holmes tales? Luckily you are spoiled for choice, as other authors have penned their own festive pastiches...  What Child is This? by Bonnie Macbird You may recognise this as one of the ...

I don't like Romantasy. There, I said it.  If you aren't familiar with the genre... yes, you probably are. It's the fantasy book that's the size of a doorstopper but not written by Tolkien or George R. R. Martin. It will have a precious metal, royal term, element, or flower in the title ( A Saint of Elderberries , A Throne of Dew and Wildflowers, you get the idea.) It will be a trilogy, minimum, and will normally have a teenage girl as the protagonist.  Hundreds of pages will be devoted to a fairly interesting fantasy world and several thousand more will be devoted to the misunderstanding-filled romance she has with the love interest. Depending on their target they are sometimes 'spicy' which is fine, so long as nobody uses a term like 'erotica' or 'porn'. Only spiciness is allowed when talking about fantasy fap material.  It strikes me that I sound both snobbish and sexist, as I write the above, especially as there is a certain amount of dram...

Hey there,  Small Town Love Interest in a Holiday Movie , mind if I call you Small Town for short?  I know life isn't easy for you. Good flannel shirts aren't cheap, stubble takes maintenance, and you are no doubt extremely busy with your successful coffee shop/bakery and the single-fathering/reading to sick children/rescuing kittens you do on the side. Plus all that wood-chopping and cookie-making really eats into your Netflix time. You didn't ask for a feisty blonde/redhead to come from the city and bring back memories of your teenage heartbreak and/or put you out of business.  You probably wanted to watch TV this Christmas, not pretend to be engaged to a stranger for reasons that, let's face it, even you aren't clear about.   When are you going to get some time to yourself, Small Town ? After the big happy ending? Whilst navigating a new relationship you've committed to far too early? Will you both be the same person once the Christmas Tree comes down and t...

Witness me striding over to the window.  I throw said window open and lean out, startling an urchin below. (Naturally, I have a comical olde-world sleep cap on.) "You there! What genre is this?"  "W-why... it's traditional romance ma'am!" I step back and dance around my bedroom in delight. A miracle has occurred. My cold, dead heart is beating once more - because I read a traditional romance novel and it was fantastic.    Unlike Scrooge, who we are assured stuck to his new do-gooding lifestyle, I am probably not going to become a romance devotee, but in this particular case I am delighted to be proved wrong.  Traditional romance is traditionally the stuff of Mills and Boon. Where they once had covers of men and women in various stages of their clothes falling off, contemporary romances now have covers with characters drawn in a cartoonish style, looking wistfully at each other like they are part of a the syllabus textbook for a GCSE in Pining.  The Norther...

I'm genuinely not sure where I heard about The Cherry Robbers [Sarai Walker].  In my head, I assumed some BookTuber had mentioned it and I have a vague recollection of adding it to my wishlist, in a half-hearted ' probably never get around to it ' way. People were talking about it, I assumed, which is why I knew the cover well enough to pick it up while dashing through an entire warehouse of books .  It's only as I finished it and breathlessly looked around to see other people's thoughts that I discovered... no one is talking about it. A big queer gothic novel with literary elements and a gorgeous cover and there are (at time of writing) maybe three mentions of it on YouTube? I honestly feel gaslighted.  As such, you probably don't know the premise of this book, which is a queer coming of age story set in the fifties. Sylvia, an elderly, reclusive artist, deals with the unwelcome resurfacing of a life she has long forgotten - when she called Iris, and was one of...

Believe it or not, despite being a massive chocolate fiend, I don't like chocolate Advent calendars. Nor do I like the over-the-top-ones for adults filled with gin, or jewellery or make-up (usually costing a ridiculous amount of money.) For me, Christmas begins more simply, with either an Advent candle or paper Advent calendar (with the only treat behind each window being a little picture.) But the latter is hard to find these days, and the only space I have to put a candle makes them gutter so badly that burning them evenly becomes a complex act of turning and timing.  As my Christmases are increasingly bleak ( no decorations either at home or work, some unhappy memories, little time for friends, extra work responsibilities, body issues, and the prospect of going home not being appealing ) I wanted something to bring me at least a little Christmas joy. So this year I've decided to do something different.  I own five collections of short stories with a festive theme, all havi...

Practical Magic was probably my biggest book surprise of last year. For one thing, I wasn't wild about the movie the one time I saw it (I am considering a rewatch) and for another, cute-witchy-romantasy isn't my brand of fantasy. But somehow, the book sucked me in with its magical-realism Americana and fairytale twists. I liked it enough that I was willing to pick up the other books in the series... which brings us to The Book of Magic [Alice Hoffman].  The Book of Magic is a direct sequel to the events of Practical Magic, taking place several years later. Elderly Aunt Jet receives her 'death beetle' notice, and brings the family together for her final days. In her last hours she discovers the way to break the family curse, and leaves it for her sister to find - only for it to fall into the wrong hands.  The sisters have managed to live with the family curse - which kills any man they fall in love with - but are both unhappy. Sally's children, now adults, have b...

At last, at last. A book that makes me want to run around shaking people by the shoulders, forcing them to buy it immediately. KJ Parker is my discovery of the year. After picking up Prosper's Demon  (a renaissance-inspired fantasy novella about demonic possession) I was blown away by the subtle richness of his writing and the sheer audacity of his storytelling. Get comfortable , the book seems to say as it shows you around its detailed world, but don't get too comfortable.  Inside Man , the sequel, was honestly better. It flipped everything we thought we knew on it's head - never cheaply - and created a Dante-inspired hellscape and a philosophical, depressed demon we desperately wanted to trust.  So then we get to Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, a full novel this time, and the first in a trilogy. We've moved on from Fantasy Renaissance Italy to Fantasy Ancient Rome, which after my summer of Roman reading  suited me just fine.  Orhan is an engineer who b...

The one natural law of being a book-lover is that you never, ever address just how big your TBR pile is. That, as far as we are all concerned, is a private matter between our bank accounts and God.  Well, no longer! As part of my Read What You Own challenge, I've been picking up books I ordinarily wouldn't have got to for years, if ever. I therefore decided to catalogue the books I own, across all formats.  Let the judgement commence!  This is going to be an ongoing list of what I actually own - not as a guilt-inducing tool, but a reminder of the wealth of options I already have. Notes: A great number of these books were either free or low cost. My usual price range is 99p to £5. This list has also built up over ten or so years, so I'm not spending thousands annually on books!  Around sixty to eighty of these titles came from Storybundles, so were not bought individually but as a group, often with the intention of only reading a handful of the titles.  I have n...