A Day in Bookland

Today is THE DAY. Today readers all around the world come together to read. Here in Madrid is very gloomy and it's raining slightly and a bit cold so when the clock turns 2pm I'll have my blanket, a cup of hot chocolate and my pile of books ready to readathon. For the first time, I'll have the house all to myself. My parents and sister are going away for the bank holiday. The reason I'm staying is to study for finals which are in May but I've been quite productive throughout the whole of April and I'm taking today off just because.

It's that time of the year again: The Dewey's 24 Hour Readathon where readers all around the world come together to read for 24 hours. It might sound a bit mad yes, but believe me, it is fun. We all share the stack of books we're planning on reading and then our progress as the hours go by and above all, we cheer on each other to read. Isn't that great? It is for me. I don't have anyone outside my bookish internet corner to get excited about books and reading so you can imagine how happy this event makes me. The readathon takes place this Saturday and for me it starts at 2pm, that might change depending on your time zone - you can check their web to find out your time to start.

I'm back with another mini book reviews post. Today is all about short stories and poetry.

And it's Friday again! Today, I have a lot of Uni work to do in the morning and then I have classes from 7pm to 10pm so I don't think after that I'll do much at all... On Saturday I have a hen party and I'm kinda excited because I've never been to one before so I hope we can all have an awesome time. And considering we'll be partying the whole night I will probably sleep all Sunday. However, the cosy reading night is also happening from 7 to 10 pm (8 to 11 in my timezone) so I might join in.

I got this idea from a video from Mercedes at MercysBookishMusings. And she got it from Lauren at Lauren And The Books (I will link both their videos at the end of this post). Essentially, both of them picked up books from their TBR piles that were featured in 'Best Books of 2016' videos from other booktubers. Mercedes' video changed the original idea slightly because she picked up books she thought she would rate 5 stars. And I'm doing the same. I don't want to jinx myself by saying the books I picked will be 5 star reads but I'm hoping they are really good considering they've been praised everywhere. Anyways, without further ado...

Today I'm talking about two rather disappointing books I've read recently. One of the them was a DNF.

And it's the weekend already. I reckon I won't get much reading done since I'm finally catching up on most of my university work and I wanna keep this pace so I'm fully prepared for finals. However, it is always nice to know I have two chunky books to keep me entertained when I can't be bother to study anymore . 

Hag-Seed  by Margaret Atwood { Goodreads } Published by Hogarth in 2016 Hardback edition; 293 pages { BookDepository } Hag-Seed is a re-telling of Shakespeare's play The Tempest . This book is part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series and my first time reading Margaret Atwood - spoiler alert: won't be my last. In this re-telling we meet Felix, an Artist Director at a theatre, before being removed from his position by Tony, his right-hand man, while he was working on adapting The Tempest . After this betrayal Felix disappears and forgets about the world until a new job offer - teaching theatre in a prison - presents the possibility of revenge and the opportunity to finally direct his version of The Tempest (let's count how many times Noelia types The Tempest in this review, shall we?)

The Year of Living Danishly  by Helen Russell { Goodreads } Published by Icon Books in 2016 Paperback edition; 354 pages { BookDepository } Helen Russell lives in London with her husband but when he's offered a job in Lego, their lives change. They move to Jutland, Denmark for a whole year and this book is the outcome. Russell explores the reasons behind Danes being the happiest people in the world and also documents her experiences: what she finds fascinating, confusing and weird about living danishly.

I'm bringing the weekend reads posts back. They are an easy way to update my reading weekly and write down my thoughts on the books and at the same time I can keep my blog active because we know by now I'm prone to blogging slumps. I've been quite good with my reading lately, meaning that I'm trying to read every single day even if it's just for like 30 minutes. I finally organise all the work that I need to do for Uni prior finals and it's helping me to manage my time easily and for now, reading fits perfectly well into my schedule (yay!).

The Hate U Give  by Angie Thomas { Goodreads } Published by Balzer + Bray in 2017 Hardback edition; 464 pages { BookDepository } In The Hate U Give we follow Starr, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a poor neighbourhood and goes to an upper-middle school that is mainly white and she tries to balance these both worlds. At the beginning of the novel, Starr goes to a party with a friend in her neighbourhood and once there she runs into an old friend, Khalil. During the party a fight breaks out and Starr and Khalil leave together, he offers to take her home and on their way, a police officer makes them pull over and although Khalil was unarmed the police officer shoots him. Starr becomes the only witness to her friend’s murder. The story deals with the aftermath of this event.

March is done and dusted and with it comes a new bookhaul. I had to include two books that I received in February but since I was on holiday in Bonn and Copenhagen I couldn't pick them up at the post office until March. This month I have a mix of everything; mostly novels but also two poetry books and a graphic novel. I haven't included the two novels I got in my Moth Box but I did an unboxing of that so check it out if you're interested. Without further ado, here are the books.