World Book Day – Favourite Fictional Book Nerds

It’s world book day today so I thought I would share my favourite fictional book nerd characters in today’s post!

I love seeing book nerds in stories as I feel so seen. And often these characters become my favourites in their series.

Alizayd al-Qahtani from The City of Brass

Will Herondale from The Infernal Devices

Fatima Ghazala from The Candle and the Flame

Artemis from Artemis Fowl

Nesta from A Court of Silver Flames

Enrique from The Gilded Wolves

Odessa from The Never Tilting World

Elend from The Final Empire

Tell me who your fave bookish characters are in the comments. I’m always looking for books with book nerd characters!

What Made Me A Reader – World Book Day 2020

Was there a book you remember reading that made you the bookworm that you are now? I have loved reading for as long as I can remember. But I remember that reading The Magic Faraway Tree was what cemented my love for reading. I read that book so many times that I can still remember parts of the book and the illustrations even though I haven’t looked at the book in years.

I remember my parents taking all 5 of us sisters to the library every Saturday morning and me basically just spending hours there reading and finding new books to fall in love with. I found so many of my favourite childhood books in the library. From The Secret Seven, Artemis Fowl, Alex Rider, Cirque Du Freak and so much more. All 5 of us sisters are readers now because of how much time we spent around books.

Our parents are also readers so that I also helped us to become readers as books were always part of our life. Our parents books filled our house and my parents house has bookcases upon bookcases in every room and we still moved our parents older books in the attic as they don’t read as much now as they used to so we could make space for our books.

As all 5 of us were readers and have similar tastes in books we would discuss books together and especially us 3 older ones as teens would all fight over who would get to read the single copy our dad bought us first. I won because I am the oldest (it’s one of the few privileges the eldest has and I took full advantage). We fangirled about Harry Potter in our teens and discussed theories and had heated debates about our favourite characters.

Even now as we all read similar books we will still stay up late discussing and arguing about books and have all the bookish discussions. It’s like having our own book club. We also recommend (read: force) each other to read our favourite books so we can discuss it with them and we go to book events together and YALC too.

I know that for me being surrounded by books and growing up having my sisters to discuss books with has made me the reader that I am.

March Monthly Wrap Up

This month has simultaneously been really long and ended so quickly! My health hasn’t been great so I have been struggling this month but I did have a pretty decent reading month and read some really great books! Though nearer to the end I have been in a reading slump which I hate because there are so many books I want to read!

There was some really great events that I attended this month too. At the beginning of the month I met Angie Thomas on her UK tour. Then I went to the NYA Lit Festival which was really fun! And just a couple days ago I met Yasmin Mogahed on her UK tour. Meeting her was probably my highlight of the month because she is one of my biggest role models!

So back to the books I read this month:

It’s Not About the Burqa edited by Mariam Khan – I really loved this anthology full of inspiring and empowering essays by Muslim women. A book that should be read by everyone! You can read my full review here

Warrior of the Wild by Tricia Levenseller – I loved this book so much! I read this in two evenings because I couldn’t put it down!

Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo by Rick Riordan – One of the world book day books this year. I loved seeing Percy and Grover together again! I miss their adventures so much and hope we get to see more of them together!

The Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James – Another amazing book by Lauren! So thought provoking and amazing plot twists! You can read my full review here

Viper by Bex Hogan – I really enjoyed this book, there’s pirates and assassins and it’s dark and brutal and I’m looking forward to reading the next book! You can read my full review here

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell – I reread this book after reading it for the first time several years ago and I loved it as much as I did the first time! This book is so relatable and so cute! You can read my full review here

Nine from the Nine Worlds by Rick Riordan – Really enjoyed the short stories in this book. Loved seeing Samirah and Alex and Amir. And Amir’s short story was probably my favourite!

The Princess and the Fangirl by Ashley Poston – OMG this book is the geeky adorableness I needed in my life! I think I loved this even more than Geekerella. You can read my full review here

Ayesha Dean – The Seville Secret by Melati Lum – A Muslim hijabi teenager being a badass detective and chilling with her friends on holiday and I just loved this book! Keep an eye out for my review in April as I’m part of the blog tour!

I also finally posted my review of King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo. I have been thinking about this book for a while, so it took me some time to write my review. You can find it here.

So that’s everything I read this month!

What were your favourite reads? Were you disappointed by any books?

World Book Day – My Top 5 Childhood Reads

Thursday 7th March is World Book Day and a group of us book bloggers thought it would be fun to share our favourite childhood books. So there will be a blog post every hour all day today from each of us!

The blogger before me in the group is Connie at Connie Reads so if you missed her post do go check it out!

As far back as my memory goes I have always been a reader. My parents are both readers so as kids we would all go every Saturday morning to the library to spend several hours there and I completely fell in love with books and reading. I still have very vivid memories of searching and discovering new books. And it is where I discovered all of my favourite childhood books.

1 The Magic Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton – this is the book that made me the booknerd that I am. I know I enjoyed reading even before reading this book but this is what cemented my love for reading!

2 The Secret Seven and The Famous Five by Enid Blyton – can you tell I was a huge Enid Blyton fan?! I decided to include both series as one because otherwise this will just become an, I love Enid Blyton post. I have also read both series countless number of times. I adored the stories and the friendships in these books. I still remember taking them out and reading them so often that I didn’t even need to read them in order anymore.

3 Harry Potter by JK Rowling – of course I had to mention this series, I have been obsessed with these books since I first read them! I stills remember insisting that my dad had to take me to asda at midnight to go pick up the books as soon as they released! Then i would read the books in a day especially as my sisters would be impatiently waiting to be able to read it after me. It’s safe to say my original copies are battered and almost falling apart.

4 Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer – this series introduced me to antiheroes and I fell in love with complex morally grey characters! Artemis is such a great character and the amount of sass and sarcasm in these books is unreal! I love it so much!

5 Alex Rider by Anthony Horowitz – a teenage boy who becomes a spy for MI6? Of course I’m going to love it! I practically grew up reading this series and recently a new book was announced continuing his story so yup I’m definitely going to be reading it!

Honourable mention goes to the Cirque Du Freak series by Darren Shan and the Noughts and Crosses series by Malorie Blackman! I loved those books growing up!

So these are my favourite childhood books. There are plenty more but these are my absolute favourites! What books did you love as a kid? Were you always a reader?

And don’t forget to go check out Beth’s post at 2.30pm for what her favourite childhood books were over at Booksnest.

The Outcast Book Review

Recently I took part in the summoner book club on twitter hosted by @teambkmrk and I was lucky enough to win a proof of The Outcast, which is the prequel to the Summoner trilogy by Taran Matharu.

I have been wanting to read these books for ages so when I found out that The Novice was one of the world book day books I thought it would be the perfect time to read these books. And I loved the trilogy and The Outcast was amazing too!
Basically I’ve fallen in love with these books and you all need to read them! The Outcast is a prequel but I am glad I read the trilogy first.

The Outcast is releasing in the UK on May 3rd so you still have time to pre-order the book! Read on for my review!

As I’ve already said I loved this book! It was great to be back in this world and get to see some of the adult characters in the trilogy as teenagers. Like the trilogy the book is fast paced and totally engrossing. I loved the world building, the friendships and the fierce female characters that we get to see.

At the beginning of the story we see the main character Arcturus, who is a commoner, accidently summon a demon and discovering that he is a summoner, which until then is only an ability that nobles have. Because of his ability the king decides to send him Vocans academy to train him as a summoner.

Arcturus is kind and brave and I loved reading this book from his point of view. His demon, Sacharissa is one of my favourite characters! She’s loyal and protective of Arcturus and goes above and beyond to help and protect him. She is absolutely adorable! I loved the relationship between her and Arcturus.

This book deals with the social divide in society where the wealthy (nobles) think they are superior to the commoners. We do get to see that not all nobles are like this and Alice and Elaine are definitely my favourites! Elaine especially is probably one of my favourite characters throughout all the books. I loved how protective Arcturus was over Elaine but we also got to see that she is strong and brave and can take care of herself.

As I said before one of the main themes throughout these books is friendship and The Outcast was no exception. It was the love of their friends that spurred the characters on to keep fighting to not give up. There isn’t much emphasis on couples and I loved that about these books. We see glimpses of it but the platonic friendships are much more emphasised.

There is so much more I want to say! But I want to keep this spoiler free so that is all for now. But if anyone has read these books do comment and let me know what you thought!

Rating: 5/5