Like a lot of people my introduction Charlotte Brontë was Jane Eyre, which blew me away. Having read it I resolved to read more of her works. Since then I've read "The Professor" which I wouldn't recommend (It was her first novel and not published until after her death, with good reason), given this I was a little hesitant picking up Shirley since it's quite a long novel. It is though a definite improvement on "The Professor", it does not however come close to Jane Eyre.

The titular character doesn't appear until over 100 pages into the book, and it's not clear if the protagonist is Caroline or Shirley really. It is a nice read though, the novels feels very different at various stages of the story giving you the feeling of not knowing where it is going next. The characters are nicely written and easy to picture, even minor characters get a thorough viewing, which I enjoy but I can imagine will seem like a waste of time to others, but I like Dickens who does that constantly... I still have a few Charlotte Brontë novels left and I'm still looking forward to reading them.

I picked this up to read because I love what I've read of the series so far, this being the fourth I've read since I'm not reading them in order. As such I knew going in this would be a light and easy read. I've read this one the first week after my sons birth, when I needed something not too hard to follow, so the fact it's a collection of short stories was a bit of a blessing in disguise. However as a collection of short stories it's not the most amazing. They're all quite fun but quite similar. The different twists are entertaining but I'm confident in saying the Scarlet Pimpernel stories work best as full novels. So this was the weakest of the series I've read so far but still fun and I imagine will help make the recurring  characters more rounded in the future books

It's another really good installment of the Kaiji series. Distinct from the first 2 with some more established secondary characters and reccurring antagonists the whole world starts to feel a lot more real in this volume. I'm looking forward to keeping going through the series. 

You can always count on Georgette Heyer to give you a nice light fun read, even if it's a bit of fluff sometimes. It's not my favourite that I've read so far but the characters were nicely varied and well written. Miles was brilliant and I'd quite enjoy a book covering his times in India but that wouldn't quite fit Heyers genre. There wasn't any major character development for the main characters, but alot of the secondary characters went on a journey. I actually didn't see everything comming either which was a nice surprise. I'll continue working my way through her books each time I want something light. 

The 2nd instalment of the Thursday Next series really continues to build the world nicely. It's still just as funny as the first one & a joy to read. I didn't quite enjoy it as much as the original though. I found the various plot lines a little distinct and the way it was structured a little distracting sometimes. As I was settling into a plot line it would commonly switch to another disrupting the flow. I'm still very happy with the book though, and a lot of the negatives are when comparing it to it's predecessor. I've got a few more of the series on the shelf ready to be read and am looking forward to them.

The 2nd installment was quite improvement on the first volume I think. Whilst the first volume setup the main character and the premise of the series this second volume really showed different sides to characters, secondary characters become more than just placeholders, and it completed the first arc nicely. Technically I'm reading the manga online as individual chapters but mapping the chapters to the equivalent omnibus so I'll move onto the next volume pretty much immediately. I actually quite like the art style as well and looking forward to reading the next 4

Having watched a bunch of the anime I decided to try the  manga having never really read much manga before. I enjoyed it quite a bit and really liked the art style. The pacing is quite interesting, sometimes fast sometimes slow but never in between. The first volume sets up the premise of the story nicely and establishes the protagonist quite well, though lacks depth on any one else. I did find parts of it too slow, and as much as Iove the plot and the premise I don't quite gel with the characters enough to go over a 3.5. I'll be reading the rest of the Omnibus though, and I suspect it might get better later on with regards to characters.

I really enjoyed this book. Fantasy isn't my primary genre but I'm exploring it via recommendations from a friend and they're always brilliant. I definitely got invested in the story and felt the emotions coming through in the final act. The circular nature of the story was really nice, the main characters were well defined and the sisters had some decent character development throughout the book. Everyone in this book is overcoming some kind of diversity in their own subplot which really helped one engage with each of the characters. It's hard to say exactly why this 4 instead of higher but I just didn't enjoy it as much as other similar books I've read... I think for me either a book is going to be fun or serious, this treads a middle ground that I didn't fully vibe with,l. Being not quite dark enough to tick the dark comedy box and not quite fun enough to be a light read.  The writing is superb though and I'm very interested to see what else this author comes up with. 

I've read a few parenting books now and my biggest recommendation would be to read one published within the last few years. This book was published in 2005 so some of the medicine is a bit of date, and definitely some of the attitudes. I really disliked the first few chapters of this book, the section discussing the different possibilities with regards to getting someone pregnant had a part about wearing a condom and taking it off sneakily... It wasn't necessarily advocating doing this but still seemed pretty bad to have jokes about what would be classed as sexual assault quite so early in the book. I carried on reading though, and once the book moves into post natal topics it improves a lot. Some of it is still a bit out of date but this half was quite funny, had some emotional content, and had some actual good advice particularly from the testimonials of other dads. 

I decided to read some more about the Gordon Riots after reading Barnaby Rudge. It was a major event in British history, yet due to it being overshadowed by the American wa of Independence and the French revolution around the same period it's not really known about or taught except for historians. This looked to be the most recent book written on the topic and looked interesting.

The structure is very nice to this book. Largely chronological, each chapter has a very specific purpose, each is also written by a different author. This has several results; there's very little repetition throughout this book which is a common problem I've found in non fiction books, and each chapter is clearly meticulously researched, and each author clearly has a passion for the specific topic which I imagine is a lot harder when writing the entire book yourself. The downside of this, and I do imagine it's related, is the chapter covering the actual events during the riot is a little light, where's the causes and impacts are extremely well covered. I'm going to read more on this soon hopefully when I exchange this book with my friend for her copy of King Mob