I have a secret admirer, I have a secret admirer! And he's sending me books! (Does a secret admirer get any more dreamy than when they send you books instead of flowers? It's almost as if they knew me!

And it's almost as if I knew them. Especially when they tell me about the imminent arrival of a parcel with books months in advance. (Hi, Dennis! ♥ )




Incidentally, I'm still struggling to find proper words of gratitude. And I'm still failing miserably. My bookshelf would be desolate and I'd be forlorn without my incredible friends who send me books for no reason at all. In this case, as the card says in the picture above, my beautiful, amazing friend thought that the Divergent box set was something I simply needed to have on my shelf. So he buys it and sends it to me as soon as it becomes available. I'm speechless, I'm giddy and I can't even express the depths of my gratitude.


And Then There Were None is Agatha Christie's best-selling novel for a reason. I can't recommend it sincerely enough to any reader who appreciates mystery, or any reader who likes attempting to puzzle things out as the story unravels before them. As this beautiful cover suggests, the story takes place on a desert island, where ten men and women are lured under the guise of a fancy dinner party. When they arrived in the only mansion on the island and a brutal storm makes it impossible for them to leave, the mansion owner's true intentions are revealed: he blames each of them with getting away for a crime in their past, and has resolved to punish them by picking them off one by one... until there are none left. Except it doesn't seem that there is anyone on the island apart from the ten dinner guests. So it follows logically that it's one of them who is the one who lured them all there. One of them is the murderer. (The call is coming from inside the house! I repeat: the call is coming from inside the house!)

As for this second puzzling non-fiction dream interpreter, I was as surprised as anyone else to receive it. This was a secret Dennis kept throughout. As it turned out, I've been having bizarre dreams lately (no more bizarre than usual, but I guess to anyone who doesn't reside inside my head, they appear entertaining at best, and concerning at worst). And so, one day I wake up to discover a dream interpreter in my mailbox... so to speak. To anyone who is interested in this brand of dream interpretation, I can highly recommend this guide - it's enormous (the picture doesn't do it justice), it's comprehensive and various themes are listed alphabetically, to make it easier to look anything up. And I won't lie: flashing back to my Harry Potter days and Ron and Harry's unsuccessful attempts at dream interpretation in Divination always puts a smile on my face.

Ron: "Well, I dreamed I was playing Quidditch the other night. What d'you reckon that means?"
Harry: "Probably that you're going to be eaten by a giant marshmallow or something."


As for the box set, if this means anything the way dreams do, it's that I finally need to buckle down and read Allegiant, thus finishing the Divergent trilogy. I should be ashamed of myself for taking this long. The same Dennis who bought me this lovely box set was the one to who I recommended Divergent back at the start of this year. And he put me to shame by going through the entire trilogy in about a week. Meanwhile I've been cowering at the sight of Allegiant for the better part of 2014, partly because I was heavily spoiled as to the ending, and partly because it would have meant the end to Divergent, which is an amazing dystopian trilogy. This box set comes with the bonus content, World of Divergent, as well as the recently-released Four, a bind-up of novellas written from Four's point of view. In case anyone is interested, the box set is paperback, except for Four, which came in glorious hardcover (much to my surprise). They look stunning on my dystopian shelf, they match my Hunger Games set, and I can't express my gratitude enough. Dennis has done more for my bookshelf than I have done for it myself, and I can't even fathom how one goes about repaying such a gift... especially when you're a book-lover and you can appreciate fully just how grand of a gift it is. Thank you ever so much, Dennis! I've begun sculpting your head for a golden bust.

My dystopian shelf... isn't it glorious?





Do you own any of these books? Are you interested in reading them in the future? Looking for suggestions? Or you have some suggestions for us? Feel free to leave a comment below or stalk us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. We're always up for a book talk!