The Smell of Ink/Lukten av Trykksverte

As we're so close to Halloween, of course I felt the need to do another Halloween-themed book tag. I found the Hyped For Halloween Book Tag over at  Life of a Female Bibliophile  and decided to play along. What book gave you the creeps? The Midwives by Duncan Ralston most certainly gave me the creeps, in addition to making me sure in NOT wanting to birth any kids. I'm all okay with potentially being a stepmother though. What book gives you the best Halloween vibes? Halloween: A Short Story Collection by Matt Shaw is a suitable spooky read for Halloween. What’s your favorite vampire book? As I'm a bit of a Dracula geek, I obviously had to say that classic by Bram Stoker for this prompt. Otherwise I suspect a few of my friends would be wondering if I'm ill or something. What book scared you so much you had to sleep with the light on? Ahem, none has that effect on me, especially as I started reading Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe when I was around 12 years old. I'm ...

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of  That Artsy Reader Girl  and as it was a Halloween freebie this week in terms of themes, I decided to write a list of spine-chilling books to read for this upcoming holiday. Some of them are even set during Halloween and/or the autumn. Here's my ten picks. This Is Halloween by James A. Moore Description from Goodreads Author James A. Moore offers up ten autumnal tales of the darker things that lurk just around the corner of Indian Summer. A man learns of a town's obsession with scarecrows and tries to find the answers as to why they are so important. Children move through familiar streets and find that Halloween makes everything different. Tis' the season when ghosts are real, witches soar through the night, and things in the Beldam Woods are not always what they seem. Sometimes it's the monsters that wear the masks. Halloween: A Collection of Short Stories by Matt Shaw Description...

As it's soon Halloween, I couldn't resist reading the poetry anthology Poems Bewitched and Haunted edited by John Hollander and today I'll post my review of the book. Description from Goodreads A delightfully ghoulish array of specters and sorceresses, witches and ghosts, hags and apparitions haunt these pages–a literary parade of phantoms and shades to add to the revelry of All Hallow’s Eve. From Homer to Horace, Pope to Poe, Randall Jarrell to James Merrill, Poems Bewitched and Haunted draws on three thousand years of poetic forays into the supernatural. Ovid conjures the witch Medea, Virgil channels Aeneas’s wife from the afterlife, Baudelaire lays bare the wiles of the incubus, and Emily Dickinson records two souls conversing in a crypt, in poems that call out to be read aloud, whether around the campfire or the Ouija board. From ballads and odes, to spells and chants, to dialogues and incantations, here is a veritable witches’ brew of poems from the spirit world. My Th...

I came across The Halloween Book Tag over at  Pretty Purple Polkadots  and I decided to play along as it looked like a fun tag to do. Favorite scary must-read for Halloween? The Exorcist's House by Nick Roberts is such a good read in my opinion. Scariest book cover? It's perhaps not the scariest cover I know of, but The Prettiest Girl in the Grave by Kristopher Triana most certainly has a creepy Halloween vibe to it. If you could go Trick-or-Treating with any author, who would you go with? Edgar Allan Poe If you could dress up as any bookish character for Halloween, who would you be? The Headless Horseman from Sleepy Hollow. If you could find anything (from any book) in your trick-or-treat stash, what would you hope it would be? Any of the foods from LOTR. In what fictional world would you like to go trick-or-treating? I would probably enjoy trick-or-treating in the world of LOTR. What book villain would you like to not meet in a dark alley on Halloween? Well, I can't say I...

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for a new Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of  That Artsy Reader Girl . Today's topic was cosy/atmospheric reads, and as the majority of the horror books I read most certainly doesn't qualify as cosy, I decided focusing a bit more on light-hearted paranormal and/or fantasy novels. Some of the books has even an autumnal theme to them. Here's my ten picks. The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling Description from Goodreads New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins, writing as Erin Sterling, casts a spell with a spine-tingling romance full of wishes, witches, and hexes gone wrong. Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but with only an “orchard hayride” scented candle on hand, she isn’t worried it will cause him anything more than a bad hair day or two. That is until Rhys P...

I came across the All About Halloween Book Tag over at  Unwrapping Words  and I decided to play along as it's soon Halloween. What are your favourite Halloween movies? I rarely watch any movies in general, but you can't go wrong with the classic horror movie Halloween after all. What is your favourite Halloween book? That has to be The Long Shadows of October by Kristopher Triana for me. What other Halloween books would you recommend? A few others worth mentioning are Halloween: A Collection of Short Stories by Matt Shaw, Small Spaces by Katherine Arden and This is Halloween by James A. Moore. Small Spaces may not be a "proper" Halloween book, but the cover and the story has a bit of an autumn vibe to it. Do you own any Halloween ugly sweaters? Sadly not, but I really want one, so if anyone knows of any stores selling Halloween ugly sweaters that ship to Norway, feel free to let me know. What are some of your favourite Halloween costumes? Honestly, I kind of like the...

It's Friday and perhaps it's time for another Let's Talk Bookish post courtesy of  Book Nook Bits  and  Dinipanda Reads , and today's topic is horror fiction. Here's the further prompts for today's discussion. Do you read horror? What do you think of when you hear the word horror? Are there any books you read that are not practically horror but have some horror element in them? As this book blog is mainly about horror and paranormal, yes, I do read horror. For me, horror is a genre that's dark and meant to put a shiver down the spine of the reader in one way or another, even though this is a very concise definition. That said, as I've read so many horror novels and watched so many horror movies, I'm not that easily scared anymore. Although this isn't horror, I honestly find reading non-fiction about WWII more frightening than any horror novel sometimes, especially about the treatment of Jews and other "unwanted people", as it's som...

It's Tuesday, which means it's time for another Top Ten Tuesday post courtesy of  That Artsy Reader Girl  and today's topic is books I wish I couldr read again for the first time. Here's my ten picks. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness Description from Goodreads Deep in the heart of Oxford's Bodleian Library, Diana Bishop—a young scholar and the descendant of witches—unearths an enchanted alchemichal manuscript. Wanting nothing to do with sorcery, she banishes the book to the stacks. But her discovery has set a fantastical underworld stirring, and soon a horde of daemons, witches, and other creatures descends upon the library. Among them is the enigmatic Matthew Clairmont, a vampire with a keen interest in the book. Equal parts history and magic, romance and suspense, A Discovery of Witches is a mesmerizing and addictive tale of passion and obsession that reveals the closely guarded secrets of an enchanted world. The Woman in Black by Susan Hill Description...

Earlier this month, I read the novel Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas, which combines paranormal and historical fiction, and today I'll post my review of the book. Description from Goodreads Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author of The Hacienda. As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago. Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind. When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together...

Recently, I read the sapphic paranormal romance novel Pumpkin Spice & Poltergeist by Ali K. Mulford and K. Elle Morrison and today I'll post my review of the book. Description from Goodreads Get ready for a bewitching tale of love, laughter, and supernatural shenanigans in the heart of Maple Hollow! The last thing apothecary witch, Jordyn, had on her mind was romance, but when she got witchy-wasted, she cracked open the coffin of her love life and conjured the ghost of her ex-girlfriend. Jordyn is in for a spell of trouble now that the snarky specter is determined to haunt her until she finds someone new. Enter Harlow, the new girl in town, who just wants a job in her sister’s cafe but she discovers that the spooky town of Maple Hollow is more than just a gimmick. Real magic lives here. But after run-ins with vampires and one too many grave cafe blunders, she's ready to hop on a broomstick and fly out of town. Until she finds herself falling under the spell of the enchanti...

Recently, I read the children's poetry collection Fire Burn, Cauldron Bubble edited by Paul Cookson and today I'll post my review of the book. Description from Goodreads Can you hear the distant dragon's rumble of thunder? And smell the sweet swampy aroma of the ogre? Can you taste the tangy tarantula tarts? And see the girl who's really a wizard? From magic carpets and wands to unicorns, potions, creams and lotions, Paul Cookson's brewing a spell of fantastically magic poems. On this tattered magic carpet You can choose your destination For nothing's quite as magical As your imagination Beautifully illustrated by Eilidh Muldoon, this enchanting anthology brings together work from a range of classic, established and rising poets. Whether you're in the mood for a haunting or a spell gone wrong, this collection of mesmerising poems will have you bewitched from beginning to end! Poets include: William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Benjamin Zephaniah, John Agard,...