Jolabokaflod – The Icelandic book-giving Christmas tradition, and some recommendations for festive reads!

02/12/202002/12/2020 thebeautifulbookbreak4 Comments

This year (2020) has been pretty pants, let’s be honest. We’ve all been challenged in more ways than we could’ve imagined going into this year. But hopefully, with 2021 in sight, we can start to breath easier knowing that we’ve got Christmas just around the corner, then New Years Eve, when we can press reset and hopefully (fingers crossed) have a fabulous new year.

It may be a time for us to think about new traditions and resolutions, and one that Kate and I have been doing for the last few years is the Icelandic Christmas eve tradition of JOLABOKAFLOD. (Loosely translated as YULE BOOK FLOOD.)

A Rogue of One’s Own by Evie Dunmore.

01/09/202002/09/2020 thebeautifulbookbreakLeave a comment

Do you ever fall in love with the first book in a series and then worry that you won’t love the next book as much? What if the magic from the first book is missing? What if, the author has tried to retell the first story just with different names?

Worry not, none of this happens in Evie Dunmores brilliant new novel, A Rogue of One’s Own.

Kate’s 2020 Reading Challenge – Update 3

10/06/202002/09/2020 thebeautifulbookbreak1 Comment

Hello Beautiful – anyone else ever just look at a book and talk to it like this?

House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) by Sarah J. Maas –

PLEASE NOTE THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!

If the rest of the books that I read so far this year were the warm up act, this is the main event! At 799 number of pages long this is a big meaty book which I wished I purchased on kindle as well as carrying this in my bag and reading in public was not easy to do. After concluding her Throne of Glass series over a year ago this is Maas next trilogy, and her first adult one at that, Crescent City House of Earth and Blood. Now I am a HUGE Maas fan, and if Corona hadn’t happened, would have been in Birmingham to see her on tour a few weeks back, so it pains me a little to say that so far – this book didn’t quite do it for me.

For starters, it was too long. I love big books – but this was overly long for the amount of story that happened in it. I get that Maas is building a new world here and she’s trying to get back story, personal history and political alliances in but oh lordy sometimes I was reading it and felt as though the story hadn’t actually developed.

Our Five Favourite Books Of All Time

08/05/202008/05/2020 thebeautifulbookbreakLeave a comment

Everyone has a list of their favourite books of all time. Well maybe not a physical list, but definitely an idea floating around in their subconscious, of the books that they could read again and again, or that only needed reading once, but packed a massive punch. For those of us who have a passion for reading, the list of all time favourite reads can get a little long. But if you had to pick a top… 5… What would they be..? Here are our top 5 reads each and why we love them so much. Do you agree? What are your favourites? Let us know.

March Wrap Up

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We LOVE reading other people’s round ups of their month of reading, so we thought we’d share what we’ve loved and not-so-loved this month in our bookish world. We’ve had a really good response so far to these monthly posts so Thank You x

Happy World Book Day 2019

07/03/201906/03/2019 thebeautifulbookbreak2 Comments

Happy World Book Day everyone!

A day dedicated to books – when your other half can’t shout at you for buying a stack of books, even though your TBR is 500 books long and your book cases are overflowing with unread books. A day when you don’t have to feel guilty for ignoring the pile of dishes in order to read just a few more pages.

Does anyone else treat today like a massive GREEN LIGHT to buying any and all the books?

February Wrap Up

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New for 2019 – a monthly wrap up – we LOVE reading other people’s round ups of their month of reading, so we thought we’d share what we’ve loved and not-so-loved this month in our bookish world.

January Wrap Up

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2019 A to Z Reading Challenge

08/01/201904/11/2019 thebeautifulbookbreak1 Comment

To celebrate our first New Year as bloggers, we have chosen a reading challenge. The one we’ve chosen is the A to Z reading challenge, being hosted by gingermomreads.com.

The rules are simple, just pick a different book, for each letter of the alphabet and give it a read!

The problem of the ever increasing TBR!

30/12/201831/12/2018 thebeautifulbookbreakLeave a comment

Whilst writing, Becca’s TBR on GoodReads is 100 and Kate’s is 151.

I think we all share the same trouble with our ‘to-be-read’ lists…. they are just forever getting longer and longer, with so many great books being released all the time, and so little time to fit them all in.

I recently went through mine and whittled it down to 100 (it took me a while)! There were some on there from when I started logging on GR, which, although I still want to read them, I realistically know that I won’t be getting around to them very soon.Read More »

The Beautiful Book Break

Two Best Friends sharing their love of books with some home baking and beauty tips thrown in.

Category: Bookish things