Top Ten Tuesday #107 - Characters Who Irritate Me!

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the fabulous girls cover at The Broke & The Bookish. This week's topic is -

Top Ten Nine Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don't Get or Ten Characters I LOVE But Others Seem To Dislike

I've adjusted it slightly and gone with characters who irritate me! It doesn't mean I don't like them, although in some cases I really don't, *cough* Bella Swan *cough* but these particular characters get on my nerves without even trying...

Top Ten Tuesday #85 - Books From My Childhood That I Would Love To Revisit

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the fabulous gals cover at The Broke & The Bookish. This week's topic is -

Top Ten Thirteen Books From My Childhood That I Would Love To Revisit

What a great topic! This one really made me think but I suspect if any of you are a regular reader of the Outsider then you'll have heard a lot of these books mentioned over the years. These are all firm favorites and are books read before my teen years. If I included teen books we'd be here all week. Having listed all these titles I'm now really in the mood for a massive re-read so I might have to find time to squeeze them in. Maybe I'll dedicate a month to doing just that in the summer, always a good time for easy reading when the weather is hot/warm/still feels like winter...

These are all standalone books or the first in the series. if it's a series I probably loved every single book as you tend to do when you're a child! Also note my amazing inability to count to ten! I'm amazed I stopped at thirteen as I could have kept going forever...

The Belgariad

'Salem's Lot

Tales of Alderley

The Owl Service

The Dark Is Rising Sequence

The Hobbit

Little Women

Matilda

When Marnie Was There

Jane Eyre

The Earthsea Cycle

Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

Anne of Green Gables

Five Star Reads of 2014

Either I've (slightly) improved at rating what I read or I simply didn't read as many five star books this year as I usually do. December was a good month though, I had two 5 star reads one after the other and November's read was non-fiction!

January

February

April

May

June

July

August

September

September

November

December

December

Favorite MG Books of 2014

To finish off the year I'd thought I'd share some favorites from the past 12 months of reading and some books that I'm looking forward to in 2015. Today's list is my favorite MG books this year, including a classic and an historical with a ghostly twist!

Honorable mentions go to

Top Ten Tuesday #59 - Favorite Classic Fantasy Books

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by the lovely people at The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is -

 Top Ten Favorite Classic Fantasy Books

The topic this week is favorite classic books. I almost did my favorite classics but then thought it's going to consist of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Pride & Prejudice, North & South and all the other usual suspects. Instead I thought I'd be slightly different and post what are considered to be classic fantasy books, all of which I've read and loved!

Lord of the Rings | The King of Elfland's Daughter | Lud-in-the-Mist

The Mabinogion | The House on the Boerderland | The Once & Future King

The Last Unicorn | The Princess Bride

Gormenghast | The Dark Is Rising

Stacking The Shelves #1

So, this week we're switching things up a bit and joining in with Stacking The Shelves hosted by the lovely Tynga's Reviews. This is a continuation of last weeks IMM where I forgot to take pictures of more than half the books I've received over the last 3 months!

Drawing Down The Moon: The Art Of Charles Vess

Gossip From The Forest - Sara Maitland

Shades Of Earth - Beth Revis

The Hobbit - J R R Tolkien (a nice shiny new edition to replace my old one)

The Firebird - Susanna Kearsley

Enshadowed - Kelly Creagh

The Darkest Minds - Alexandra Bracken

The Brides Of Rollrock Island - Margo Lanagan

The Peculiars - Maureen Doyle McQuerry

The Unnaturalists - Tiffany Trent

Lovely, Dark And Deep - Amy McNamara

The Lost Prince - Julie Kagawa

The Hedgewitch Queen - Lilith Saintcrow

The Queen Is Dead - Kate Locke

Etiquette & Espionage - Gail Carriger

The Land Of Decoration - Grace McCleen

The Dark Heroine - Abigail Gibbs

Under The Never Sky - Veronica Rossi

Throne Of Glass - Sarah J Maas

The Sorrows Of Young Werther - Goethe

The Black Spider - Jeremias Gotthelf

The Devil's Elixirs - E T A Hoffman

The Good Soldier - Ford Maddox Ford

The Haunted House - Charles Dickens

Last Day Of A Condemned Man - Victor Hugo

Peter Schlemihl - Adelbert Von Chamisso

A Strange Manuscript Found In a Copper Tube - James De Mille

The Monk And The Hangman's Daughter - Ambrose Bierce

Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Yes, I bought a lot of books recently. No, this doesn't include the 60 or so library books I've had since October. No, I haven't read the majority of them yet even though I've had some since October... This is why I'm on a book diet! Having said that, yesterday I bought something I thought I never would. More on that in the next couple of days though, and I'm fully prepared for all the "You hypocrite!" comments.