April, April, you came and now you’re leaving. At least the weather’s finally getting nicer and I got to wear some nice spring clothes again? 🙂 Regardless of the weather, the blog was pretty busy:

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1. Books reviewed this month include: Ilana C. Myer’s Last Song Before Night (review), Andre Alexis’ Fifteen Dogs (review), and Cynthia Swanson’s The Bookseller (review). You can check out all the books I’ve reviewed recently in the book review tag.
2. Two ARC were reviewed this month: Gaito Gazdanov’s The Flight (review) and Ashley Hay’s The Railwayman’s Wife (review). You can check out all of the ARCs I’ve read and reviewed to date in this tag.
3. Several movies were reviewed/posted about this month: The Martian (review), the 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet (review), and the 1996 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet (review). You can check out all of the movies I’ve read and reviewed in the past in this tag.
4. Also in conjunction with the 400th death anniversary of William Shakespeare, I also watched and reviewed two stage adaptations done by The Globe: one for As You Like It (review) and one for All’s Well That Ends Well (review). You can check out all of the theatre adaptations I’ve watched and reviewed in this tag.
5. I also compiled a list of Shakespeare characters that I found most memorable. And participated in the Shakespeare Awards hosted by the Orang-utan Librarian.
6. For this month’s So You Want to Read…, I focused on Poetry round 2 in conjunction with National Poetry Month. You can check out my recommendations in this post as well as my first batch of recommenations over here. For all my previous recommendations under this feature, check out this tag.
7. On a final note, to anyone who is interested: series 4 of Orphan Black has started but unlike previous years, I won’t be making batch posts recapping the episodes. Instead I will make just one general post about the season when it is over (as I don’t have time right now to do the batch episodes and scheduling my posts this year has been rather, err, advanced). So stay tuned with that!

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And that’s about it from me for the month! How was your April? Wishing everyone a lovely May! 🙂

I think every March I’m just going to post the following meme:

(image source)

😛 Anyway, March, goodness, where did you go? Granted, it wasn’t an easy month with Daylight Savings deciding to hit us over the head (I woke up early the following day after the change because I had to be somewhere and I was like “It’s only 6am, not 7am” -_-;) and then Easter came early, lol. But it was also a busy month offline for me (as I noted here) as well as here on the blog 😛

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1. Books reviewed this month include: Winston Graham’s Ross Poldark (review), Jane Gardam’s Old Filth (review), and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Story of Kullervo (review). You can check out all the books I’ve reviewed recently in the book review tag.
2. Three ARC reviews was posted this month: the anthology The Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War (review), Amy Stuart’s Still Mine (review), and Tricia Dower’s Becoming Lin (review). You can check out all of the ARCs I’ve read and reviewed to date in this tag.
3. One comic was reviewed this month, Rocket Raccoon: A Chasing Tail (vol. 1) (review). You can check out all of the comics I’ve read and reviewed in the past in this tag.
4. Tolkien Reading Day was celebrated on March 25th and this year’s theme was on life, death and immortality. I reflected on these themes in this post
5. For this month’s So You Want to Read…, I focused on books by Susanna Kearsley which was a lot of fun as I got around to reading almost all of her books in the past year. If you haven’t checked out her books and want to for the first time, here’s my list of recommendations to check out first. For all my previous recommendations under this feature, check out this tag.
6. You may have noticed that I have a shiny new title card to go with this post as well as earlier this week for my Top Ten Tuesdays post. In the coming month you’ll actually be seeing more of this as I recently purchased a graphics bundle to help prettify my blog 😀 I’m still working out what posts will feature title cards, what will work and what won’t, but in any case, expect more updates in the coming months!
7. You may have also noticed this week that I have a Book Depository banner on the static menu side. This blog is now an affiliate of The Book Depository (after years of ruminating whether or not to join). Just a quick rundown (this is also on my “About The Site” page): for every purchase made through my affiliate link, I will receive a 5% commission. This revenue will be used to help maintain the blog and books (like giveaways hosted here).
8. And on a final note, earlier today I posted up the results to the reader survey I held last month as a part of my blogoversary. Suffice to say the results were interesting and informative. You can check them out in this post. Thank you again to all who filled it out! 🙂

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And that’s about it from me for the month! How was your March? Read any awesome books, did anything particularly cool? Happy reading & a happy April to all 🙂

Hmm, wow, well, February was quite an interesting month for me IRL (see post) but also online here with my blogoversary and a whole slew of book reviews 😛

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1. As I mentioned at the end of last month, all of my book reviews this month were from the historical romance genre, lol 🙂 So books reviewed this month include: Julia Quinn’s Ten Things I Love About You (review), Sarah MacLean’s Eleven Scandals to Start to Win a Duke’s Heart (review), and Brandon Sanderson’s Shadows of Self (review). You can check out all the books I’ve reviewed recently in the book review tag.
2. Two ARC review was posted this month: Lori Ostlund’s The Bigness of the World (review) and Patricia A. McKillip’s Kingfisher (review). You can check out all of the ARCs I’ve read and reviewed to date in this tag.
3. So of course in keeping with this month’s theme, the author I featured for this month’s So You Want to Read… was Julia Quinn who has quickly become my favourite author in the historical romance genre. If you haven’t checked out her books and want to for the first time, here’s my list of recommendations to check out first. For all my previous recommendations under this feature, check out this tag.
4. Early February marked my web space’s ninth blogoversary. My, how time flies! I’m also hosting a wee book giveaway (as well as a reader survey) in celebration of this milestone. It ends tonight at midnight so if you haven’t entered and wish to do so, there’s still time! Details on the giveaway & general celebratory remarks can be found here, lol 🙂
5. My brief reader survey is still up if you haven’t had a chance to fill it out yet. I’m just curious to hear from readers and visitors of my blog. Results will be posted sometime next month. Many thanks in advance!
6. Kate @ Parchment Girl invited me to a Q&A over at her blog this month. You can check it out over at this link.
7. Another post of Eclectic Ponderings is up! I have questions that need answering/input 😉
8. On a final note, I found out about Litsy over the weekend. I’m eclecticreading over there; if you have an account there, let me know what your username is and I’ll add you 🙂

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And that’s about it from me for the month! How was your February? Happy reading & a lovely March to all 🙂

Happy New Year! I hope everyone is off to a great start with 2016 🙂 It was a bit hectic earlier this month for me, partly on the technical side of the blog, partly offline and taking my board exam, but all is well 🙂 (more on stuffs next week when I post my Bookish & Not-So-Bookish post 😉 )

So interesting this about this month’s activity on my blog, which is going to be the case for the first quarter of the year: all of the reviews featured were from books I read late last year. You may remember me mentioning at one point that my blogging schedule had spilled over to 2016, so here we are 😛 (This will actually continue until…*whispers* the end of April (more or less) *blushes* With some notable exceptions of course (namely eARCs and Brandon Sanderson’s books)

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1. Books reviewed this month include: David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (review), Susanna Kearsley’s Named of the Dragon (review), and Julia Quinn’s Romancing Mister Bridgerton (review). You can check out all the books I’ve reviewed recently in the book review tag.
2. One ARC review was posted this month, Federico de Roberto’s The Viceroys (review). You can check out all of the ARCs I’ve read and reviewed in this tag.
3. One movie was reviewed this month, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (review). You can check out all of the movies I’ve reviewed in this tag.
4. For this month’s So You Want to Read…, I decided to feature Sarah Addison Allen. I’ve pretty much read all of her books to date save for her latest, First Frost (which from the premise I wouldn’t have included in this list anyhow so we’re safe), so yeah, if you’re interested in checking out her books, my recommendations can be found in this post. over here. For all my previous recommendations under this feature, check out this tag.
5. On the technical side of things, the blog did experience a bit of downtime earlier this month; I do apologise if you were trying to access the blog later in the week of January 11th, I think it had something to do with a plugin update that didn’t mesh well with my other plugins that were active. It was a good time to prompt me to clean out and reorganise, which I’m slowy getting around to doing (in conjunction to some of my New Year resolutions for the blog 😛 ).

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And that’s about it from me for the first month of 2016! Not much going on here other than catching up on book reviews from last year, really. I do have some bookish resolutions that I hope to fulfill this year so fingers crossed! Meanwhile, be sure to stick around next month as it’s going to be my blog’s 9th blogoversary 😀 Wow how time flies!

I suppose I should warn you–and I admit, it seemed like a good time to do it as Valentine’s Day (-_-) is next month–but about two-thirds of my book reviews next month are going to feature historical romance titles. Don’t say you weren’t warned 😉

Anyway, how was your January? Have a wonderful weekend! 🙂

And here we are, at the end of 2015. It’s still pretty surreal to know that tomorrow is 2016, haha (how long do you think it will take you to get used to writing that down?). I hope everyone had a wonderful 2015 and a wonderful holiday season thus far. December was fairly busy, especially with the initial stress earlier this month (thank God that’s over with!), but the blog was pretty busy too!

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1. Books reviewed this month include: Jasper Fforde’s The Eyre Affair (review), Susanna Kearsley’s The Firebird (review), and Nuala O’Connor’s Miss Emily (review). You can check out all the books I’ve reviewed recently in the book review tag.
2. One ARC was reviewed this month, Anthony Marra’s The Tsar of Love and Techno (review) which OMG, I cannot recommend enough. You can check out all the ARCs I’ve reviewed in this tag.
3. For this month’s So You Want to Read…, I decided to feature Russian Authors. A bit of a cheat as it’s not just one author but a whole category of classic literature, but hey, winter is the perfect time to read classic Russian literature 😛 You can check out my recommendations of Russian classics to check out over here. For all my previous recommendations under this feature, check out this tag.
4. No movie reviews but I did post up my remaining mini-reviews of series 9 of Doctor Who as well as the 2015 Christmas special that aired recently. You can check out those posts and other Doctor Who-related posts I’ve made in this tag 🙂
5. I contributed to the November/December issue of Femnista. The article I submitted is a little different than my usual submissions, talking a little bit about my experience reading William Shakespeare’s works. You can read more about it and here to check it out in this post.
6. Last but not least, I posted up my answers to the annual book wrap-up for this year. It was quite a year in reading! Check it out my answers in this post 🙂

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And that’s about it from me for the month of December! Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, I hope you had a lovely one/lovely holidays, and I wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2016! See you on the flip side of the calendar 🙂