Copy and Tea - Books. Blogs. Stationery.

Library Ready Reads Review

Posted in Reviews, Round Ups

on October 21, 2020

As we stare into the abyss of another sort-of-kinda-pretty-much-a-lockdown, I’m reminded of a blog post I meant to write about my local library’s solution to the last one. I thought the time had passed for this blog, but as our esteemed government has given me a second chance, I thought I’d get it up quicker this time around.

To encourage people to still use the library, but also reduce the risk of contamination with people picking up books, like many others, my library started offering ‘Ready Reads’. You pick the genres you’re interested in, how many books you want and add any notes that you like, and they’ll select the books for you. They were waiting for me by the entrance of the library and had already been checked out, so I didn’t have to use the checking out machine or anything like that. (Or at least I wouldn’t have had to, had I not been a greedy goblin where books are required and checked out another 4 or 5 at the same time. I have a problem, I know this. But right now I’m not prepared to do anything about it!).

I asked for three books (I didn’t want them to know how much of a book hoarder I am). I told them that I was after funny romance books or crime – and that I was particularly fond of cosy crime a la Agatha Christie.

When I went to pick up my books, I was told that they’d had fun choosing them for me – I think there are quite a few romance fans among the staff!

I received A Country Escape – Katie Fforde, Almost a Bride – Jo Watson and The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds – Alexander McCall Smith.

I read them all while on holiday, because that’s the sort of social being I am. My long suffering fiancé knows better than to try and jam any itinerary too full because I’ll stubbornly sit on any available chair with my book until he gets the hint.

A Country Escape – Katie Fforde

You know where you are with Katie Fforde and this was exactly the sort of book you want to read on holiday. I’ve read pretty much all of her books over the years, some are better than others, some are very silly (but not silly enough to stop me reading them because hey, a girl wants a nice romance story sometimes).

This one follows Fran who has always dreamed of being a farmer. When an elderly, distant relative aunt conveniently appears and offers her the chance to inherit the family farm – she jumps at it.

It’s country-ish and comforting. There’s a couple of bumps along the way but ultimately you know how it shouldend – you’ve just got to see how it unravels to that point. I read it in a day, I enjoyed it. I learnt quite a lot about the cheese making process. I’d probably only read it again if I was having a lazy day and wanted a quick read.

Almost A Bride – Jo Watson

I struggled with this one, I really did. At first, I thought one of the librarians might have heard of my plight (never coincide your wedding plans with a global pandemic, folks), and included this as a bit of a joke. But then, how would they know?

Oh goodness me. This was awful. It wasn’t even funny to make up for the ridiculous plot.

Annie believes her boyfriend is about to propose. Alas, that same day she finds him in bed with another woman (and nipple clamps no less..). She also manages to get fired and arrested in a particularly bizarre turn of events.

Anyway, thanks to some rich friends, she finds herself in Mauritius having a lovely time until the ex-boyfriend arrives. She finds another chap who agrees to pretend to be her boyfriend.

I found it incredibly irritating. Daft beyond belief. And there was none of the comedy I was promised. I’m all for a bit of escapism, but some of the characters have to be at least likable. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t recommend this one with a barge pole.

The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds – Alexander McCall Smith

I’ve never read anything by Alexander McCall Smith before, much to my chagrin. I’ve always intended to, and I’ve had his novels recommended lots of times before, so I don’t really have an excuse. Mind, I was about 25 before I read my first Agatha Christie novel, so I am often a little bit behind.

I really enjoyed The Uncommon Appeal of Clouds. It wasn’t what I was expecting – actually as the book went on, it kept being not quite what I expected, but in a good way.

Part of the Isabel Dalhousie series, Isabel is asked to investigate the theft of a valuable painting from a wealthy Scottish collector.

The crime mystery is set against a background of Isabel’s musings on ethics and the human condition, parenting and a few other smaller stories. This was the bit which surprised me, and I found I did really enjoy.

I’ve seen from some other reviews that a lot of people haven’t enjoyed this Dalhousie novel as much as some of the others. If I ever get to the bottom of my TBR list I’ll enjoy giving some others a try.

In conclusion…

So those were my Ready Reads – enjoying two out of three isn’t bad going, especially given how snobby I can be about books. (I know you wouldn’t necessarily think it from reading my blog. I generally just don’t write blogs about books I don’t like, unless I feel really compelled).

Given the brief of funny romance or cosy crime, are there any books you’d recommend for me to read?

ByAlice

Review: Wrong Bed, Right Brother by Rebecca Brooks

Posted in Books, Reviews, Two and a Half Star

on July 6, 2020

Thanks to Entangled Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC copy in exchange for a fair review. This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you purchase something through one of these links, I’ll earn a small commission at no cost to you.

Honestly, when you pick up a book entitled Wrong Bed, Right Brother, you kind of deserve anything it throws at you. And throw it, it does. If you’re under the misapprehension that it’ll be a serious romance book then let me disillusion you quickly….

The premise is thus:

Amanda has had a crush on her co-worker, Luke, for as long as she can remember. She sort of thinks he’s interested but she’s not sure. And he’s about to move to the other side of the country…

Seizing her opportunity on a weekend away, she sneaks into his bedroom to make a move. It all seems to be going so well, until she realises – it’s not Luke! It’s his twin brother, Noah.

Of course it was a mistake, but why is their chemistry so hard to ignore?

I think that tells you all you need to know about what you’re letting yourself in for. I’d love to say it gets less ridiculous from that point in but… I’d be lying.

Still, I didn’t hate it. I went along for the ride. It was silly. The characters were underdeveloped, there wasn’t a great deal of what we might call realistic plot. But, it kept my mind off the way the world is falling apart for a couple of hours so, there is that.

I didn’t really warm to the characters very much. They annoyed me a bit (but not enough to stop reading the book), towards the end I didn’t really care whether they got together or not. Probably because I knew they would (not really a spoiler alert – you only read these books for the happy ever after, right?).

I would have liked the romance story to be a bit more developed. The drama seemed a bit strained – the whole concept of Noah moving to LA simply to be with his brother was seemed a little forced, but I’m not going to pull it apart completely because it did the job it needed to do well enough.

When I read it, I didn’t realise that it was part of a series. I don’t think that matters particularly to the enjoyment of the book, but does help you understand why some things are just never explained. It’s tricky to get the balance right when you write something that you want to work as a standalone piece and as part of series because you don’t want to repeat yourself too much. That being said, Wrong Bed, Right Brother errs a bit too far the other way and I think the reader does need a bit more backstory before your two protagonists end up against a barn wall. (That is just my opinion and perhaps I didn’t have an exciting enough youth). It’s never really explained why Amanda and Noah don’t like each other, but you’re expected to understand it’s a long standing feud. In that respect it gallops along too quickly to build up the necessary tension for the pay off to really be effective.

Overall, it was okay – a bit of fun, a quick read and nothing too serious. It did lack a depth in storytelling and characterisation, but honestly that’s not what you’d read this sort of book for anyway. You can predict the end from the first page (I mean, quite frankly from the title!), but there’s no harm to it. It’s not written in the most sophisticated way, but also not in a way which irritated me too much either.

On balance, I won’t re-read it, and I probably won’t seek out anything else by this author, however it kept me amused for a few hours and honestly, that’s all it was designed to do.

2.5 stars

Buy from Amazon

ByAlice

ARC Tracker Printable (FREE)

Posted in Downloads, Printables

on May 20, 2020

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I find that ARCs can be a bit like buses – You don’t get any for ages and then suddenly you get three all at once. Or sometimes considerably more than three.

ARCs are one of my favourite things about being a book blogger. I mean, what booknerd wouldn’t like getting their hands on something before it is published? I am thrilled when I get accepted and try my absolute utmost to be a good little book blogger and review them in a timely manner.

Sometimes that is easier said than done!

In my bid to get more organised in 2020 ( and – let’s face it, what else do any of us have to do other than getting organised at the moment? Thanks Covid-19), I have decided to start jotting down more, and keeping on better track of the publish dates of my ARCs. I am also just generally getting myself into a better and more structured place for updating this blog and working on some of my other projects.

Since I am on an organisational streak at the moment and really enjoying creating planner printables, I’ve been at it again. This time, an ARC Tracker Printable, wahoo.

This is what it looks like:

I’m quite a visual person, so I have created something where I could quickly note down any ARCs I receive per month, and have the book publishing date VERY visible. I work best to a deadline, so highlighting that was important for me. I like to colour in the boxes once I’ve completed a review, but that’s because I love colour. (Who doesn’t?!). I also own more coloured pens and pencils than is healthy. Anyone else?

I’ve made this ARC Tracker A4 so there’s plenty of space to fill them in. They also work in A5 as well, just adapt your printer settings accordingly. (I haven’t tested it yet, but since US letter size isn’t far off A4, that should work fine too). If you have any problems with any of them, just contact me and I’ll play around with the files. Also happy to customise them if you’d like, so get in touch. I don’t bite.

Let me know if you like it and if you use it! You can tag me on Instagram (@copyandtea) or on Twitter (@copy_tea). I’d love to see how you use it and if you get creative with how you fill it in.

You may have noticed I’ve been messing about creating printables rather than actually just… reading my ARCs and reviewing them. Well observed. I have no defence and I will get back to my TBR list presently.

I’m going to build up a library of free printables, so if there is anything that you’d like to request please contact me. The more details you can include, the better chance I have of providing useful things for you.

Pssst – I have recently started a small shop here for some of my multi-page planner printables. Currently they’re all book themed and available for instant download. Check it out if you like. I am going to add general planner inserts soon, but for the time being books are my jam.

Happy ARC tracking! Now there is no excuse not to get on top of that list.

Download ARC Tracker Printable.

EDIT – Extra printables!

I had a request to make the bookshelf printable into an ARC friendly version – so I have done exactly that. See below for details – there is space for Title/Publisher/Publish Date and Star Rating, with a check box for when you’ve completed reviews. There are any number of options with these printables, so if there’s a variation on what you’d like to be included I am more than happy to accomodate (within reason). Just let me know!

Download them here:

ByAlice

Planning a Book Themed Wedding

Posted in Personal

on May 14, 2020

I thought this would be a post that I wrote after my wedding had taken place, after all the confetti had been tidied away, thank you notes had been penned, and photographs oooh-ed and aaahh-ed over, and I wanted to relive the excitement.

I was meant to be getting married in June.

That was the plan.

But coronavirus had other ideas.

Now there’s a little bit of a question mark over when we’ll get to do it. (There’s another blogpost in here on my opinion of unreasonable wedding suppliers, but I’ll save you the boredom). We hope for June 2021, but that’s by the by.

To lift my spirits a bit, I thought I’d share with you some of the things I had planned for our big day, to make it a book themed wedding. I still have a few things up my sleeve so I won’t be spoiling anything for our guests – but I’m terrible at keeping secrets so I have to share somewhere.

As with anything wedding things can cost a lot, and this is where etsy, eBay, charity shops and a little bit of DIY fun have come into their own.

The obvious place to start is with invites. I was lucky enough to come across Feel Good Invites early on in my search. These are the ones they designed for us, and I love them so much. Even if book-themed stuff isn’t your thing, I would wholeheartedly recommend them to anyone. They’ve got loads of amazing designs and have been a joy to work with. We were really pleased with the speed of delivery and the quality of the final invites – and as someone who works in marketing and deals with a lot of printed material, I’m pretty hard to impress (No, this isn’t an ad, but they’re just brilliant).

Although we haven’t been able to get to that stage, we were also going to get orders of service in the same design as well as the table and place names. (They do bookmark designs for place names, I mean, I am putty in their hands).

Which brings me nicely to the tables and decorations. Obviously there will be books. And also teacups, because I think I need to live up my blog name at all times. All the tables will be named after books. I’m not going to share them – yet! But they all have either significance to the people on the table (e.g. school related books for school friends…) or they’re a favourite of mine. My fiance isn’t really a reader, it’s not that I’ve just bullied him out of the proceedings! The top table name I will share, because it’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Well – I could hardly have anything else?

For decorations, I have been scouring ebay and charity shops for the classic style penguin books. It can be tricky to get hold of these for a reasonable price as they have become very fashionable for house decorations etc. That being said, if you don’t mind them looking a little shabby (which I didn’t), you can find them for a smaller price. It’s worth getting job lots which have a range of penguin books in (there have been a number of different designs over the years) – chances are you will get more of the type that you want for less than if you just try to buy sets of a specific type. It does depend how particular you are – I’m rather more on the shabby end of shabby-chic, so the mix match style didn’t bother me too much. You can get really nicely preserved penguin editions too, if you are prepared to spend a little more. My top tip here would be to look for any charity shop listings on eBay. They tend to be better value for money as well as having the feel good factor as it’s going towards a good cause.

We weren’t going to have book themed wedding favours, as we had something else in mind. (I had to let me non-reader fiance have some input). However, that didn’t stop me looking at them. Etsy was my go to for browsing.I really liked some little boxes that had book page details, there are also boxes decorated to look like books, and a personal favourite were book-shaped charms to mark your drinks glass.

An honourable mention goes to book-page confetti. I planned to use this as part of the wedding table decorations. I suppose this would be fairly easy to make yourself, but I genuinely don’t think I could bring myself to destroy books myself. The ones I bought were from ForLoversWithLove on Etsy and I was really pleased with them. They also sell a lot of other really cute book related things. (I have to remind myself that I’m running out of storage space or we really would be in trouble).

The last place we were going to incorporate literature was in the service itself for the reading. I hadn’t completely finalised what I wanted because there’s so much choice! I’m taking some time to really think about it again – since I’ve got more time now. Shakespeare is very popular, I’ve had friends take extracts from Bronte novels, or Austen before. I love poetry too, particularly 20th Century poets – so there’s a lot to choose from. Unfortunately my specialism when I studied Literature at university veered towards the depressing (political novels, death poetry to name but two) so that’s not too much help! Love has inspired much of the best literature – I could listen to the words of talented writers all day.

Although I’m calling my wedding ‘book themed’, I didn’t want it to become a gimmick. I opted to have a plain cake, not a book one, for example. Partly because I don’t really like icing, and I imagine a book themed naked cake would be pretty hard to come by, and partly because I’m relatively traditional at heart. There are some beautiful examples of book-cakes out there (especially if you’re a Harry Potter fan) but I wanted more of a light touch with everything.

So, there’s a little bit of insight into how I was planning my big day. Now I’ve got an extra year or so, I’ll have to think of some more ideas!

Let me know if you had any book themed elements at your wedding, or have any ideas for what else I could incorporate. I’m trying to distract myself from all the rubbish surrounding having to postpone our wedding but thinking of new ways to make it even better when it does come around.

ByAlice

3 Comments

Tags : Book Themed, Wedding

Older Posts

Newer Posts