Hello my lovelies!
Belated New Year Greetings.
My New Year was spent quietly drinking away the trauma of The Holiday Season – it was lovely. (The drinking, not the Season (!))
Tag: covers
Bingo @ BlueCastle, November, (or just when I was about to truly despair, I tied in a win….!)
It has been one of THOSE months.
You know, the ones where each week is ascendingly more awful than the week preceding it, until you are at this zenith point of Terribleness, but there is nowhere escape and you think: yep, this is it. Hell has frozen over and I am just waiting for a nod from one of the four horseman before the End of Days is officially declared.
Yeah, one of those Novembers.
September TBR: Joan Wolf (or Castles, Prince Charming & Blackmailing Love…)
This month’s TBR Challenge from the luminary Wendy The Super Librarian (as dictated from her Fortress of Solitude & Books) was No theme! No Theme! No Theme! This should have made it very easy – the reality?
Far far from the madding crowd… Nothing seemed quite right. I was overly picky, underly decisional and the result was just a big ole mess.
SO I made my OWN theme: The Joan Wolf Theme.
Lovers, Haters & Lost Recipes (or July’s TBR Challenge – which almost kicked my butt…)
I think I have possibly mentioned in the past that I’m not usually favoured by Lady Luck in the winning department. As such, I have a rather jaundiced view of people, … Continue reading Lovers, Haters & Lost Recipes (or July’s TBR Challenge – which almost kicked my butt…)
Everywhere and Every Way, Jennifer Probst, (Or one trope sandwich – hold the cheese…)
Last month I was late with my TBR challenge (*hangs head in shame*), so I was determined to be AT LEAST almost on time with this one…
This month’s TBR Challenge, pulled from Wendy the Super Librarian’s Cliffs of Insanity was Favourite Trope. Which is kind of like asking me which of my cat-children I love best, or which M&M flavour I horde secretly so I don’t have to share…Or my favourite type of alcohol…
I mean really who can decide?
Wodehouse Shorties, (or chocolate box change and escaping the rut…)
I have a rut. It’s comfortable and secure. Located deep in a dell by BlueCastle, it contains THOUSANDS of romances.
Sky-high piles of romances.
In fact so many romances, I have considered becoming a sort-of endangered species-rescuer of romances; whisking them away from their unfortunate situations and perilous existence in op-shops, garages and the back of wardrobes everywhere and releasing them at BlueCastle…where they can roam freely, without prejudice or fear of poaching…
APRIL B.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.I.N.G.O (Or Dirty knees, All the threes & Sherwood Forest…)
SO, Valancy never wins at anything. ANYTHING.
Not at knocking over the milk bottles or ring toss. Laughing clowns have NEVER paid up. And, it is always the person next to me that guesses how many jellybeans in the jar.
But I will lament my horrid luck more
Not a Review (a book brag, with a side of cover wince…)
I have to share – because REASONS!!! All 290 of them!!!
Do you see my pretties??
They followed me home so I kept them.
Dixie Browning, (or how Valancy blatantly, unrepentantly over-used brackets in this post…)
TBR CHALLENGE: MARCH 2016
It’s been a little while since I posted…IRL has been NUTS – and I’ve missed posting and commenting and friendly-stalking pretty blogs (or is that something only I do…?)
House By Mouse (a Statement on 80s Feminism, or an Occupational Nightmare of Mammoth Proportions?)
I have book hoarding tendencies. It’s true (and you probably don’t find that all that shocking) but I just can not get rid of any book.
It is unfortunately, a family trait. My father had to build an extra room onto our house when we were young, specifically to house all the accumulated masses collected over the years.
He built this before our bedrooms.
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake, Amy E. Reichert (or the only food book not to make me hungry…)
If there is one thing I can not resist in the world – it’s a romance with food & food peoples. You know how some people are about cowboys? How they start fanning themselves and getting heart palpitations at the mere mention of a jingling spur??? Well, Foodie Romances (is that a thing? I’m not sure – but BlueCastle is making it so), are like my own personal catnip. I can’t resist them. Chefs, cooks, B&B’s with food, kitchens, restaurants, food vans, catering, fast food* – it’s like a book buffet.
Carbon Copy Companion Reading II (or is everything a vague reflection of GEORGETTE HEYER??)
So was reading a book… perambulating through it really – when I was slowly overwhelmed by this feeling. Not all at once mind you – more like an encroaching tide of inevitability, coupled with a sense of ineluctable destiny. Like all roads would lead to this point, regardless of the path I took. No Robert Frost for me thank you. I was like: no, wait…there is something about this that is soo familiar… It was elusive (not unlike the scarlet pimpernel). It was liminal. It was Georgette Heyer. Again. It did make me wonder: do all roads lead to Georgette Heyer?
Again (or How I’ve Climbed onto the Gilles Seidel Love Wagon)
For those following – or caring – I was last writing in the midst of a terrible, horrible, no-good, purple-spotted book slump. It was like being in the fire swamp from the Princess Bride: flame spurts, lightning sand, rodents of unusual size and worst of all: deeply terrible stories.
Fortunately, I managed to stagger through, out into the light, and when I did, I was clasping Kathleen Gilles Seidel’s Again.
A Valiant Bride or Revisiting The Past & Endangering Childhood…
I offer this post in the light of a cautionary tale. Much like the mouse that went to town and wished he was back in the country (or vice versa), I have discovered that revisiting innocent days gone by can be somewhat surprising and even down right dangerous to one’s mental well being.
Cold Comfort Comfits: The Convenient Marriage, Part I
There has been a cold snap – sudden, ruthless and seemingly endless – which has made me completely hungry for rich, slow cooked meals, Yorkshire puddings and all things warming … Continue reading Cold Comfort Comfits: The Convenient Marriage, Part I
The Beautiful & The Damned
I have compiled a list of covers – but because I am nothing if not fair – I thought I would evenly distribute them between the terrible and the great; the beauties and the beasts; the beautiful and the dammed
Blue Castle Considerations 
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