Tea glorious tea || Blogmas Day 3

A silly Snapchat selfie of me cosying up with a hot cuppa

in the mug one of my lovely blogger friends bought me!

Ok, so this was not what I originally planned to write about tonight, and isn't specifically festive, but as I headed down to the kitchen to make myself a nice cup of tea and ended up in a full blown conversation with my flatmate about our favourite teas, I decided that it would be the topic of today's Blogmas! (Edit: I've also just remembered that I did a tea inspired Blogmas post last year, called 'Always time for tea') If you don't drink tea, you may just wanna skip today's post because it will probably b a bit boring for you!

I'm the typical bookworm... I love to curl up in bed with a good book and a hot drink in one of my many mugs. I do, of course, like a typical breakfast tea, brewed quite strongly, with just milk (NO sugar, but if I have a sore throat a spoonsful of honey is allowable!). However, I also really enjoy green tea, and this evening I realised I have accumulated a fair collection of different green teas which I can choose from depending on my mood, so here are a few of my current favourites....




The Pukka Supreme Matcha Green tea is a classic fave... it doesn't have a particualrly distinctive taste, but is really yummy and gives me lots of energy in the morning. A little more on the expensive side so worth waiting till its on offer, but promotional packs donate to charity, and the handy individually enveloped bags are perfect for taking to the library where I can get free hot water in my keepcup!

Staying on the theme of morning wake ups, I have recently been loving the Tetley Super Green Tea Boost in the Berry Burst flavour. A few weeks ago I was told I'm a bit anaemic, so I have been doing everything I can to get my health and energy in check, and this tea with added B6 has been great! I don't really like fruit tea very much, so wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this but I really do! When I run out, I may try another flavour, but for now I'm very much enjoying this one (I also got a Boost Breakfast Tea, and Tetley do a number of different ones, with various added vitamins, which I personally think is a great way to get in those extra supplements you may be in need of over the winter without relying on remembering to take tablets!


Last year, I heard someone speak about the Twinings Salted Caramel Green and decided to treat myself to some. I still have lots left and I think that's partly because I was spreading it out and then forgot about it (it isn't cheap either) and partly because it was slightly disappointing! It doesn't taste bad, in fact it's actually pretty nice, and better if you don't brew it for too little OR too long a time. However, it smells way better than it tastes!


Finally... Since last year, I have occasionally drank peppermint tea to soothe me and to help stomach cramp. Then the other week I was in Starbucks and really fancied a green tea, but they only had their mint green tea and I thought, why not? It was delicious and I went back for another the next day (It was Starbuck's own Teavana Mint Green Tea. However, I don't tend to pay for tea in coffee shops as a rule, as it's so cheap to do my own at home, so when shopping in Morrisons I picked up their Hint of Mint Green Tea, and that has been doing the trick! A really nice change which I particularly enjoy a mug of in the evenings.

I do also have some loose leaf Jasmine and Rose Petal green tea that my mum gave me last year, but I have only tried it once so far and I have no idea where it's from! I think I probably need to finish up the ones I have for now, but I want to try some different green teas in the future so let meknow if you have any faves! Any particularly Christmassy ones out there?

Now, go make yourself a cuppa and settle down to enjoy your Sunday evening- I know I will!

Catriona x

My First Time Buying an Advent Calendar || Blogmas Day 2

Since I was young, my wonderful Auntie has always bought my sister and me a Fairtrade chocolate Advent Calendar to share. When I moved to uni, I wouldn't be at home for every day of December (in  my first year I was home from the 10th, and last year I was home for the first weekend, and then back again from the 17th), but my Mum made sure that my sister saved me a fair number of chocolates haha, bless her!

However, this year, I won't be home till the 20th December, so will almost entirely miss advent at home! It's a little sad, as I love to see the advent candle my mum buys every year burning a little more each evening, and all the other many traditions, but I decided that I had to make up for it by buying myself a whole chocolate advent calendar just for me!

Now, a whole overwhelming array of choices were open to me! Which to pick?! Haha, the idea to treat myself to one first occurred when I was in Tesco with my friend from home, at the start of
November. She works in an independent sweetie shop that last year totally sold out of advent calendars! We decided that the Lindt one, priced comparatively reasonably in Tesco at £5, may be the one I would have to go for!

But the Advent calendar saga continues.... (who knew I could write a whole post on this, congrats if you're still reading!) When U went back a couple of weeks later, they'd sold out of Lindt. So, in the end, I went for a £3 Thorntons one because I liked the picture!

And there we have it: it's Blogmas Day 2, I have now enjoyed 2 lovely chocolates, discovered the calendar also treats me to some very cheesy Christmas jokes, and been sent a heart-wrenching silly photo of my fam enjoying their own advent pressies!

What kind of Advent calendars are 'in' this year? I think maybe next year I'll branch out, away from chocolate. How about a book advent calendar?! (Oh wait, we'd be back to book reviews only again...)

Catriona x

I'm doing it again?! || Blogmas Day 1

So... some of you may have read my Blogmas posts last year, and I hummed and hawed about whether or not I could commit to 25 more festive posts this year (if you missed last year's Blogmas, feel free to head back to this time last year and have a wee read. They may be better than this year's because it was my first year of doing it and coming up with ideas haha!)

But I really feel like my blog has been carried by book reviews this year, and not much else! So it's in need of something different, and I'm in need of festive cheer and creativity as I revise for my exams. I am currently in my longest stint away from home ever. I have seen my parents briefly on a couple of occasions, but I haven't been home since September, and won't be going back till 20th December. My coursework is all in, but I do still have 2 exams to do before I can fully relax!

Therefore, I have only come up with a few ideas so far, and these Blogmas posts will likely not be very long, of varying degrees of Christmas theme. We shall see how it goes, but actually when I decided in my head that I was definitely doing this, I felt quite excited to get started!

So, this first one is really just a welcome to Blogmas 2017 (I even have brand new Blogmas countdown art (created very unprofessionally by moi!), because I enjoyed doing them last year too!).

If you have any ideas that you would like to see me include over the next 25 days, please do comment! I'm really looking forward to putting aside a wee bit of time away from revision to write, even if the posts aren't very long. Well, I'm looking forward to it now as I sit snuggled up under my duvet. Maybe when I'm into long library days and trying to fit in shifts at work it will stress me out a little more, but I really hope to keep it fun!

I'd love to hear from other bloggers doing Blogmas too... throw all the festive creativity at me to keep all of our spirits up! So comment links to your favourite Blogmasses.... (is that a word? No? Well it is now!)

So, join me as I munch on my advent chocolate, wrap up warm to face December in Scotland, and attempt to feel a little festive despite revising my butt off for my first 3rd year exams!!

Catriona x

Book Review: 'Nina Is Not Ok' by Shappi Khorsandi

Finally getting round to finishing my backlog of reviews! In August 2016, my friend and I had a great weekend at the Fringe in Edinburgh, and got tickets to see Comedian Shappi Khorsandi perform. I had never been to a live comedy performance before, and really enjoyed it! She was also selling copies of her fiction book, and signing them. It was one of those cases of being so caught up in the show that we both bought copies! Carried it around Edinburgh and then home in our one rucksack each.... but I only got round to reading it a couple of weeks ago!

I spent a couple of days at my Gran's house during reading week, and decided to ditch the uni work while I was there and read something for pleasure instead! Luckily, as soon as I started this I was hooked by the story. I love Shappi's writing style, it's really easy to read without being overly cheesy or descriptive... like enough happens to keep your interest, but you also feel invested in the characters.

Brief summary: Nina is a 17 year old girl living with her Mum, Step-dad and half sister. Her father died when she was young, from excessive alcohol consumption. She was recently dumped by her first boyfriend and finds herself spiralling out of control... regularly getting too drunk to remember the embarrassing and dangerous things she's done. The story is about how Nina begins to admit she has a problem and, despite facing a number of challenges throughout the book, eventually begins to see a road to recovery. 

Obviously, not being an alcoholic meant I couldn't literally relate, however I am a young person wth a somewhat addictive personality, and I found that there were other ways in which I related to Nina's character too: the rocky relationship with her mum at her age; the cycle of binge and regret;  finding it hard to accept advise and admit defeat; and the realisation of actually having to work hard to maintain grades.... I have never experienced any of these on the same scale, but it did help me to connect to the story.

I think that, while 'coming of age' stories can be a bit cliche, and all will be riddled with a few unrealistic and slightly too rose-tinted elements, this book does a fantastic job of taking an underrepresented aspect of life, and an extremely serious topic, and dealing it with it both informatively and maturely, but also in a style that made me want to weep one minute and burst with laughter the next.

Nina and her friends and family and her story  definitely struck a chord with me, and I absolutely devoured this book! Shappi Khorsandi is both a talented comedian and YA author! I  recommend giving it a go!







Reading Challenge: 17/21 

Book Review: 'The Drowning of Arthur Braxton' by Caroline Smailes

However, I did get really quite bored of this book half way through. I don't know why, but I just wasn't finding it very engaging, and I had no desire to pick it up. I took a break from it to read the last

I started this book on Kindle while on holiday in Greece in early September. I had heard it mentioned by a few different people, particularly Carrie Hope Fletcher (Youtuber, West End Actress, Author), and so had bought it on Kindle a while back.

It started off well, really odd but interesting. The book was split into sections from different perspectives, and began with the perspective of Laurel, a young girl who gets a job at a strange swimming baths, thought to be 'healing', where people would book appointments to be cleansed by the water and the healers who worked there. One of the men that works there develops an unhealthy obsession with her.

I was really enjoying Laurel's narrative and the interesting characterisation developed by Smailes, when the story jumped forward to the present day, to be narrated by Arthur, a young boy who's mum left him and dad is struggling with severe depression. He flunks school following serious bullying, and finds himself at the run down swimming baths, where he sees a strange collection of people, including a beautiful girl swimming naked in the pool.

One thing I immediately liked about this section was that Arthur's narrative was very colloquial. You really imagine being stuck in the head of a teenage boy, with his crass thoughts and panicky swearing and sexual tension.

book I reviewed and watch plenty Netflix, and so only actually got round to reading the second half in mid-October.

The 'big reveal' part of the book, when the reader learns how all the characters are connected, was partly predictable, and partly plain confusing. I don't want to say to much for fear of spoiling, but I will say this... I feel as though there was way more meaning intended in the writing of this book than I got out of it. This could be for a whole variety of factors: the broken way I read it; the fact I was back at uni and tired and distracted; or simply that it wasn't my kind of book.

That said, there were parts of the book I thought were really well written and tapped into very genuine emotions of loneliness, feeling lost and helpless, etc. Maybe in a few years I'll reread this book (or watch the film adaptation that I believe is in the works!) and see if I can get a better grasp on its meaning. The eerie characters really do stay with you, so I definitely think Smailes is a good writer, and that it was just unfortunate that I struggled to connect with this book.




Reading Challenge: 16/21

Book Review: 'My Name is Lucy Barton' by Elizabeth Strout

I finished this book a fortnight ago, but just getting round to finally reviewing it. It's really quite a short book, so didn't take me too long to read. I bought it over the summer in my frenzy of book buying, because I had seen it on display a lot, the blurb sounded good, and it is a really beautiful book to pick up, with lovely thick cream paper and understated yet striking cover, not to mention the perfect book smell (ok, I'm gonna stop the weirdness and move on!).

Brief Summary: Lucy Barton is a married mum of two young girls, who is in hospital in New York following a major surgery. One day, she waked to see her mother by her bedside. The mother she has not seen in many years. As the pair chat and story tell, Lucy recollects her rural childhood of poverty, and the quirky little details that brought her to where she is now and, later on, beyond.

Other than the hospital setting and the introduction of the mother, there isn't exactly a plot to this book. Rather, it's a reflective collection of tales from the narrative viewpoint of the central character, Lucy. While many of the details to which Strout includes (and often gives a lot of space to) may, on their own, appear to be a bit trivial or small,  each contributes to this wonderful truthful story which really makes you feel the emotions of the narrator, and, for me, brought a real element of nostalgia out.

In fact, towards the end of the book, I really regretted sitting reading it in public, because the combination of these emotional family tales and being away from home had me a bit choked up!

This is a short review, because it's a short book and I didn't really have anything about it that I didn't like. I really urge all of you to pick up a copy. Not a long read but well worth it. Truly beautiful writing.




Reading Challenge: 15/21

Film Review: Everything Everything

I imagine this will be a short review, as its now been 6 weeks since my friend and I went to see this!! But those of you who read my review of this book (available here) earlier in the summer will know that I really enjoyed it and was keen to see the film when it was available in the UK.

I was a bit confused by the release date, as I think it was pushed back from June to August, and the film wasn't being shown in many cinemas. However, we opted for this over Dunkirk (opinions? Did we make a bad choice missing that?) as we were more in the mood for a romantic drama than a war film! Like little kids, we stocked up on CandyKing and took our seats.

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this film, considering it was such a short book. It didn't really strike me as the type to make for an action-packed film. I won't bother with a 'brief summary' as there's one in my book review post, and the film stuck fairly accurately to the story.

Actually, despite being a low-action film, they had in fact added to the plot to bulk it up a bit! It was interesting to chat to my friend about it afterwards, as the book was still fairly fresh for me, whereas she had never read it.

I thought the acting was really good, I particularly liked Amandla Stenberg as Maddie and Nick Robinson as Olly.

I felt as though the story portrayed very truthfully the awkwardness of growing up and painted an accurate image of 'coming of age', however my friend felt the plot was a bit far-fetched, as she prefers to be able to believe that the events would happen in real life, and to be honest I didn't totally disagree with her. I certainly noticed a kind of 'airbrushed' effect throughout the film, whereby every scene looked like it had been filtered! I'm not sure if this was deliberate, due to the insanely clean life Maddie must live or the dream-like quality of the events that occur, but it was a bit odd and made it hard to feel fully immersed in the lives of the characters.

Overall, I thought the film was a good reflection of the book and a nice film for a Sunday late-evening with my bestie, but possibly wouldn't make my list of favourite films.