It’s well and truly Autumn here now and sadly not the crisp clear Autumn but the dingy, damp Autumn with blustery rainy days. So it’s time to sweep away the rainy day blues with the Autumn book tag! I was tagged by the lovely Jemma at Fantastic Books and Where to Find Them and it’s such a great tag, please play along too if you would like!

Hot Chocolate – what is your comfort book?

I could re-read Harry Potter over and over, it’s such a comfort blanket of a book. Whilst it wasn’t a book of my childhood, when I first read it in my early 20’s it was at a time of great change in my life, and I’m forever grateful to my mum for asking me to give it a read.

Pumpkin Carving – what is your favourite creative outlet?

Outside of my day job and blogging I also have a side project which I love, which is formatting books for print and digital. How does a book go from a word document into a book? That’s where I come in, I love decorative flourishes and pretty chapter openers and I find it really theraputic as it’s something I can zone in with and forget about everything else whilst I make sure every page is a perfect as can be –  I wish I had more to do to be honest!

Falling Leaves – changes that appear bad but you secretly love?

This is a really tough one as I am very much a creature of habit and even more so the older I get. I honestly don’t like change at all and to much of a change really sets off my anxiety. I can’t think of any kind of bad change that good could come out of.

Pumpkin Spiced Latte – something you love that others tend to judge

Forever I feel judged about my love of books, so many of my friends just don’t really understand what an amazing love I have for books and the worlds they let me escape to. I forever feel sad about the friends who roll their eyes and tut about yet another book thing that I’m doing. I think I can count on half of one hand the amount of my friends who actually read my blog – I just wish I understand what I was that they found so awful about it!

Bonfire Night – what makes you explode with joy?

I’m going to go with the obvious one here and say my children. Nothing beats the rare occasion that they actually get along well enough to play and laugh together, that sound just fills me with the biggest joy ever ❤

Fright Night – favourite scary book or film

I really don’t like being scared and I hate horror films, but my favourite spooky film with a slight scare is Sleepy Hollow. Ironically I loved horror books when I was in my teens and the point horror and Christopher Pike books were my total go to!

Halloween candy – favourite thing to eat

One of my favourite reading treats is a lovely slice of buttery toast with peanut butter, I have a huge thing for sour dough at the moment too, but honestly toast is utterly yummy and you can chuck pretty much anything on it!

 Scarves – your autumn ‘must-have’ accessory

I’m so not a fashion person, but I do enjoy a floaty scarf as I bridge the gap between summer dress and full out wool wear, my favourite is a scarf with a deathly hallows print that I got from the Harry Potter studio, I also got a lovely bookshelf one from a Fairyloot box.

Fire – a book or film that burns your soul

The Hunger Games will always be up there for me with all out heartache when it comes to Rue, I wasn’t expecting that at all and I was properly ugly crying – typical that I was on a commuter train at the time. More recently my heart broke with fiery rage when I was listening to Morning Star by Pierce Brown, if ever there was a time for me not to be driving it was when “that” loss happened, one of my favourite characters – I still feel gutted about it now and I’m halfway through Iron Gold!

Toffee apples – a book or film that seems one thing but really has a different inside.

I’m going to have to totally go along with Jemma with this one and say The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James – I honestly would never in a million years have seen that coming, utter genius and such an amazing story. Similarly, The Quiet at the end of the World by the same author had another insanely brilliant twist to it. If you’ve not read any of her work I would highly recommend checking her out.