One Year Blogoversary Giveaway!

Posted by Amy on May 26, 2012 in Giveaways | 6 comments

Happy Blogoversary to Me!

Its been a year…

Posted by Amy on May 26, 2012 in General | 4 comments

…since I started Turn the Page. I cannot believe its gone by so quickly. Its been a pretty amazing year though.

I started this blog because I was bored, restless and had no one to chat to about my favourite books and characters. And I love talking about books.

Then I stumbled across Forever YA and from there, The Story Siren and Goodreads, and suddenly I had discovered this whole online world filled with people like me. People who love to read and can finish a good book in a single evening and get overly about new releases and fangirl over their favourite characters. But more than that, I discovered that I wasn’t the only girl in her twenties still haunting the ‘teenage’ section of the bookstore! In fact, there’s a crazy amount of us out there, and once I started searching I came across so many YA book blogs I couldn’t keep up with a tenth of them if I tried. Before I used to feel awkward admitting the kind of books I was reading, now I’ve become that annoying friend who keeps bugging you to read this and read that and read it now!!! (I’m fairly certain they all still love me in spite of that)

A year ago, I had hit a major reading slump. During uni my reading had dwindled to almost nothing, I was bored with my own collection of books and I had no idea how to find new authors. Nowadays my amazon wish list is currently over 400 and every other day I seem to come across another book I want to read. And that’s really because of all those amazing book bloggers out there who spend a lot of their time sharing, promoting and recommending their favourite reads. This past year I’ve been introduced to what I consider three of my very favourite authors of all time, Melina Marchetta, Patrick Ness and Elizabeth Wein. I’ve been in contact with a couple of publishers and had a few books sent for review, I’ve finally got my butt onto Twitter (though I’m still pretty bad at keeping up to date with it!), I’ve emailed and chatted to some amazing and inspiring authors and illustrators and even had some of them do guest posts on my little blog. I’ve finally started reading e-books. I’ve learnt a lot about blogging platforms and self-hosting and RSS feeds, all of which has directly led to me to geting this amazing internship with an illustration agent (I start on Monday!!!) I’ve been invited to write reviews for another book blog, Mostly Reading YA, got to go to my first bloggers lunch at Hachette.

And I’ve made some great friends.

It’s a lot of hard work. I still have days where I secretly worry if anyone’s really reading what I’m writing, or if my reviews are any good at all compared to the funny, thought-provoking, intelligent reviewers I ~~stalk~~ follow. I remain in awe of the bloggers who manage to post quality reviews several times a week without fail. Who are always chatting about books on Goodreads and Twitter. I have no idea how they do it. If there’s one thing I want to do this next year it’s to make better use of Twitter and to try to join in with the community more and reach out and strike up conversations with fellow bloggers and book lovers (I’m a little bit shy sometimes).

So this is a big thank you to those guys who helped me out and gave me advice when I was starting out, to my Goodreads friends who brighten up my day and who recommend books they think I’ll like, to the people give occasional shout outs to my little corner of the world. And a big thank you to my readers who come here and listen to me babble on and who leave lovely comments. I appreciate you all and I hope that I may have even encouraged you try out an author or two. along the way.

And if you read all this you really do deserve a gold star.

Or a book giveaway ;)

So check in later to find out all about my One Year Blogoversary Giveaway!

Book Review: Princess Academy by Shannon Hale

Posted by Amy on May 21, 2012 in Book Reviews, Junior Fiction, Young Adult | 2 comments

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Published: 4th July 2005

Format: Paperback

Pages: 256

Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Junior Fiction/YA

Recommended Reading Age: 11+

Rating: 8/10

Amazon/Goodreads

Miri lives on a mountain where, for generations, her ancestors have quarried stone and lived a simple life. Then word comes that the king’s priests have divined her small village the home of the future princess. In a year’s time, the prince himself will come and choose his bride from among the girls of the village. The king’s ministers set up an academy on the mountain, and every teenage girl must attend and learn how to become a princess.

Miri soon finds herself confronted with a harsh academy mistress, bitter competition among the girls, and her own conflicting desires to be chosen and win the heart of her childhood best friend. But when bandits seek out the academy to kidnap the future princess, Miri must rally the girls together and use a power unique to the mountain dwellers to save herself and her classmates.

At first glance, Princess Academy by Shannon Hale sounds like an overwhelmingly girly book, but both the title, and the UK covers (not shown here), are a bit misleading. I’m neither a twelve-year-old girl, nor a fond reader of princesses and romantic fairy tales, but I really enjoyed this book.

Children’s Book Week Giveaway Winners!

Posted by Amy on May 17, 2012 in Giveaways | 0 comments

Congratulations to Jodi for winning the picture book giveaway and to Jeanne for winning the Middle Grade book giveaway!

They have chosen Where the Wild Things Are and Kat, Incorrigible, both fantastic books and already on their way to them!

A big thank you to everyone who entered – I had hoped to have some cool posts up during the week but unfortunately I had some internet/site problems (which some of you may have noticed).

French Picture Books: Il Neige des Couleurs

Posted by Amy on May 14, 2012 in French Picture Books, Picture Books | 5 comments

I saw this book at the Musee d’Orsay and fell in love with the wonderfully expressive, scribbled illustrations and rich, orange tones instantly. And isn’t the title just beautiful? It Snows Colours.

Flicking through this in the museum’s shop, it didn’t matter that I couldn’t read the text, the images tell a story all of their own. I loved the simplicity of it, of a father and son spending a day together, exploring. It reminded me so much of Autumn walks with my own father, crunching through leaves and collecting fallen acorns before returning home to prepare them for acorn fights at school the next day.

‘Daddy, Daddy, look, I’m a squirrel!’

My Mailbox

Posted by Amy on May 13, 2012 in In My Mailbox | 17 comments

Its been about 5 weeks since my last mailbox post – I decided that I didn’t really want to do it every week, and since I also went several weeks without any new books, I decided to wait a while to do one large post for you guys!

Since my last mailbox (as I’m sure you all know) there was a lot of upset and drama involving The Story Siren. As such, several new Sunday memes have popped up – and I can’t quite decide which one to now participate in! There’s Letterbox Love, set up by a group of UK bloggers, hosted by Narratively Speaking, Showcase Sunday, hosted by Books, Biscuits and Tea and also Stacking the Shelves over at Tynga’s Reviews.

Sigh. I want to do all of them lol. Anyway – until I decide, here’s this weeks ‘mailbox’ post.

Also – today is the last day to enter to win a fab children’s book, so make sure you check it out!

Children’s Book Week Giveaway

Posted by Amy on May 6, 2012 in Giveaways | 43 comments

Okay – so I am incredibly excited for this giveaway because CHILDREN’S BOOKS!!!!

I had a lot of fun picking out exactly which books to offer up and there were so many more that I want to include but I had to stop somewhere. Hopefully there’s a nice selection here for everyone.

There are two giveaways with one winner for each.

Also – don’t forget to check back throughout the week for some special picture book reviews I’ve got lined up!

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2012 Reading Challenge

Amy (Turn the Page) has read 82 books toward her goal of 200 books.

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