Fi Phillips

After the build up to Christmas and the day itself, my family and I are having a few days at home together. It's all very relaxed and with no real plans to keep to. Late nights, family games and good company. My husband and children are taking advantage of the lack of routine to have lie-ins so I'm usually first up, enjoying the quiet with my morning coffee. It gives me time to think and reflect on the year that's almost over. It's been generally a good one, in some ways quite magical, and definitely a year I want to remember. Back in January, I posted my 2015 reading list and my goals for the year . I didn't do very well with the reading list, only completing three of the fifteen (even worse than in 2014). I must read more next year. I did better with my goals. I revised and polished my novel and began the search for an agent. I returned to the partial first draft of my second novel which now requires a massive rethink because of changes to the first novel. Du...

One of the delights of my recent family holiday was having the time to read. The literary gem that I took away with me was The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern . I love a book that enthralls me so much that I forget time and my surroundings. The Night Circus was just such a book. This is a novel of magic, illusion (magical, mechanical and emotional), gameplay and love, set at the turn of the twentieth century in Europe and the USA. These are the first lines that I read. The circus arrives without warning.    No announcements precede it, no paper notices on downtown posts and  billboards, no mentions or advertisements in local newspapers. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. To me, this opening does two things. It announces the arena that the novel will take place in, the circus, and it employs the magic of the circus (that most of will have experienced) to pull us in as an audience. We want to read on and find out what happens. The various cover desi...

I first heard about the Year of Reading Women through the Twitter hashtag #readwomen2014. In Joanna Walsh's article, Will #readwomen2014 change our sexist reading habits? she writes, "It's a truth universally acknowledged that, although women read more than men, and books by female authors are published in roughly the same numbers, they are more easily overlooked". Do we place more value in and respect for books written by men? I'd hate to think so but looking at my own reading choices, I have to admit that 75 - 80% of the books I read are written by men. Do I respect male writers more than female? Not consciously, no. It's an interesting topic that I'm sure will be discussed further throughout the year but for now I'm going to add my support by making a conscious effort to read more books by female writers, not instead of books by male writers but in a larger percentage than I currently do. Adding to my previous list of writers that I conv...