About me…

I did an ‘about me’ in my first post, but I guess the more posts I do, the less people will want to go back and search for that post! So thought I’d make it easier by doing a seperate page! So here’s some info you might like to know…

The basics:

I’m Kirsty, I’m 26 and I live in Manchester, England.

As much as I would LOVE to do a job that involves books and reading, I don’t… I’m a Customer Services Adviser for now, but who knows what the future holds?!

I’ve been an avid reader since I was a small child… I have my mum to thank for this – although she wasn’t (and still isn’t) a reader herself, she always took the time to read with me and books were always given to me as gifts for birthdays and at Christmas. As well as owning books, I used to go to the library every two weeks and take out 18 books (the 6 I was allowed to take out on my own library card and 12 that I took out on my mum’s card!) and I would have read them all by the time I went back to the library two weeks later!!! Obviously as I’ve gotten older I can’t read quite so many books, however I average around a book a week, a lot of times more, sometimes less depending on how busy I am and how much I’m enjoying the book. I’m still in my first year of blogging, but have been very active on Goodreads for a few years and have also posted reviews on Amazon and Waterstones.

As well as being passionate about books, some of the things I like are (in no particular order!):

My amazing friends, singing, music, yoga, movies, animals (especially dogs), long walks, dancing, acting, watching TV, Just Dance on the Wii, magazines, coffee, chocolate, Indian food, Chinese food, Thai food, I guess food in general!! making lists, history, America,  London, travel, shoes, American sitcoms, musicals, theatre, alcohol, horses, elephants. I’m sure there’s more, but thats all I can think of right now!

Books I read in 2011:

1. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie – Alan Bradley
2. Room – Emma Donoghue
3. Candor – Pam Bachorz
4. Sharp Objects – Gillian Flynn
5. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood & The Story of a Return – Marjane Satrapi
6. Cell – Stephen King
7. Meryl Streep: The Reluctant Superstar – Diana Maychick
8. Water for Elephants – Sara Gruen
9. Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl – Tracy Quan
10. The Thing Around Your Neck – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
11. Ripley’s Believe it or Not 2011 – Robert Le Roy Ripley
12. How to Read Literature Like a Professor – Thomas C. Foster
13. Entangled – Cat Clarke
14. The Memoirs of Cleopatra – Margaret George
15. You Against Me – Jenny Downham
16. Under the Microscope – Dave Spikey
17. Swim the Fly – Don Calame
18. Repeat it Today With Tears – Anne Peile
19. Pride of Baghdad – Brian K Vaughan
20. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
21. Cancer Vixen – Marisa Acocella Marchetto
22. Things We Didn’t See Coming – Steven Amsterdam
23. The Perfect Murder – H.R.F. Keating
24. Beatrice Munson – Lorena Bathey
25. The Book of Lies – Mary Horlock
26. Something Missing – Matthew Dicks
27. The Tapestry of Love – Rosy Thornton
28. St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves – Karen Russell
29. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic – Alison Bechdel
30. Bears, Recycling and Confusing Time Paradoxes – Greg X. Graves
31. Hungry For You – A.M. Harte
32. Great House – Nicole Krauss
33. Inklings – Aparna Warrior
34. Finn: A Novel – Jon Clinch
35. Between – Cyndi Tefft
36. Pigeon English – Stephen Kelman
37. Go Ask Alice – Anonymous
38. The Book Lover’s Tale – Ivo Stourton
39. Strings Attached – Judy Blundell
40. The Luxe (Luxe, #1) – Anna Godberson
41. Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything – Joshua Foer
42. Grundish and Askew – Lance Carbuncle
43. A Visit From the Goon Squad – Jennifer Egan
44. The Bee-Loud Glade: A Novel – Steve Himmer
45. House Arrest – Ellen Meeropol
46. Treasure Me – Christine Nolfi
47. The Chocolate War (Puffin Teenage Books) – Robert Cormier
48. Random – Craig Robertson
49. jesus freakz + buddha punx – M.E. Purfield
50. Joe is Online – Chris Wimpress
51. We Need To Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver
52. The Gutenberg Rubric – Nathan Everett
53. Knife Edge – Malorie Blackman
54. Yes Man – Danny Wallace
55. One Day – David Nicholls
56. Child 44 – Tom Robb Smith
57. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
58. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson
59. The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern
60. The Lightning Thief – Rick Riordan
61. The Land – David Barker
62. A Tiny Bit Marvellous – Dawn French
63. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything – Steven D. Levitt & Stephen Dubner
64. Lovers and Beloveds – MeiLin Miranda
65. The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove – Susan Gregg Gilmore
66. The Complete Maus – Art Spiegelman
67. The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
68. Ghostly Terror! (BBC Audiobooks) – Charlotte Perkins Gilman et al
69. Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader – Anne Fadiman
70. Bossypants – Tina Fey
71. Stolen: A Letter to My Captor – Lucy Christopher
72. Comedy Daves Book – Dave Vitty
73. The Difficult Second Book – Chris Moyles
74. Six Geese a-Laying – Sophie Kinsella
75. Witch Child – Celia Rees

Books I read in 2010:

1. Helpless – Barbara Gowdy
2. Captured – Neil Cross
3. Weathercock – Glen Duncan
4. The Sunne in Splendour – Sharon Penman
5. The Chrysalids – John Wyndham
6. Rebel Angels – Libba Bray
7. Living Dead in Dallas – Charlaine Harris
8. Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher
9. Shutter Island – Dennis Lehane
10. The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
11. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
12. The Medici Secret – Michael White
13. Catching Fire – Suzanne Collins
14. Wildthorn – Jane Eagland
15. Animal Farm – George Orwell
16. Marked – P.C. and Kristin Cast
17. Suite Francaise – Irene Nemirovsky
18. Balthazar Jones and the Tower of London Zoo – Julia Stuart
19. Queen Emma and the Vikings: A History of Power, Love and Greed in Eleventh-Century England – Harriet O’Brien
20. One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Jhumpa Lahiri et al.
21. Stargirl – Jerry Spinelli
22. Madame Serpent – Jean Plaidy
23. Possessing Rayne – Kate Cann
24. The Knife That Killed Me – Anthony McGowan
25. Twelve Red Herrings – Jeffrey Archer
26. Sex and the City – Candace Bushnell
27. The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner: An Eclipse Novella – Stephenie Meyer
28. In The Woods – Tana French
29. The Ghost Whisperer – Katie Coutts
30. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
31. The Lost Symbol – Dan Brown
32. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
33. The Help – Kathryn Stockett
34. Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer
35. Mockingjay – Suzanne Collins
36. Tickling the English – Dara O’Briain
37. The Maze Runner – James Dashner
38. Tales of the City – Armisted Maupin
39. Atonement – Ian McEwan
40. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks
41. The Tales of Beedle the Bard – J.K. Rowling
42. Noughts and Crosses – Malorie Blackman
43. Sister – Rosamund Lupton
44. The Weight of Silence – Heather Gudenkauf
45. Eat, Pray, Love – Elizabeth Gilbert
46. The Inimitable Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
47. The Girl in the Flammable Skirt – Aimee Bender
48. 253: A Novel – Geoff Ryman
49. The Almost Moon – Alice Sebold
50. Along Came a Spider – James Patterson