So, still no reviews...

...I will have so much to catch up with in the next months! I'd like to say that I have being writing like a mad thing, but sadly I've actually slowed down a lot. First I got discouraged by reading The Goose Girl. The writing and the imagination was so superior I just couldn't bring myself to love my story anymore. So then I decided to put The Goose Girl down for the moment. I tried to read only non-fiction while in writing mode, but fiction just lured me to it again when I was innocently browsing a library shelf. I ended up taking out "How I live Now" by Meg Rosoff, and man, that was good! And thankfully I didn't compare it to my writing that much, because the genre is so different. The ending wasn't what I hoped for, but still the characters, the style, and the story itself was worth it.


Now I'm reading a book that's not published yet. It's called The Thirteen Treasures by Michelle Harrison. It could be chosen as Kids Book of the Month in our shop and our buyer wants to know what we think of it. So far I'm liking it even though nothing has happened yet. There's nasty fairies, and a girl who can see them, and a mysterious ancient house, and an old gypsy woman living in a caravan in the forest. And some children disappearing. It sounds very promising, doesn't it?
Anyway, today I should get lots of writing done. But I'm scared because I got to a very important part, maybe the key scene for the whole story, and I've thought about it so much and put so much expectations on how it should be that now I'm intimidated by it! So instead I've been "researching" without actually writing anything :P
Maybe I should stop thinking how important it is and just write it! I can always edit it later...hmmm. Easy to say...

Ok, I should get going and stop procrastinating!

Christmas Swap a.k.a. Secret Santa is here again!

Yay! Go and join now, it's great fun!
Here all about it from Nymeth,
or Dewey!

If you're not convinced yet, read my posts from last year:
Here
and
Here

Jill from the Well-Read Child was my santee, here is was she said when she got her presents :-)

Can't wait for this year's Secret Santa!

A little update...

I've been writing. A lot for my standards, if you consider I didn't write anything for months and months!I get up early to write, I even brought my laptop at work to write during lunchtime, because I knew I wouldn't get much done after work. It's brilliant.
I visit NanoWriMo's website regularly to keep me motivated, even as an outsider. And yesterday I was surprised to find out that apparently Water for elephants by Sara Gruen was written doing NanoWriMo! I couldn't believe it. That's got to be inspirational, to say the least ;)
But this wasn't the only inspirational thing I found on their website yesterday. My highlight was Philip Pullman's Pep Talk! This is a wonderful idea. All these famous writers are called to write some motivational/encouraging/understanding words to all the Nanowriters and then they're sent by e-mail to them. Thankfully, they're eventually published on the website, and that's why I could read Philip Pullman's yesterday. I loved it. At the end he talks about how being readers and lovers of stories will help us to become writers as well:

...if you do love reading, if you cannot imagine going on a
journey without a book in your pocket or your bag, if you fret and fidget
and become uncomfortable if you're kept away from your reading for too
long, if your worst nightmare is to be marooned on a desert island without
a book - then take heart: there are plenty of us like you. And if you tell
a story that really engages you, we are all potential readers.

Yes, that's me. Does it mean I have potential? :P

Oh if you have time,read Jonathan Stroud's too, that's worth it too!

ps: I don't know how people, like Dewey for example, can do Nano, have a job and all that goes with it, and post reviews on their blogs too. It's beyond me. So unless days suddenly stretch to 48 hours, I won't be posting reviews for a while...Or maybe I'll try tomorrow if I'm lucky!

Look what I got today in the post!

I've recently discovered Etsy and I wish I could buy almost everything there....
So I treated myself and bought some earrings! Actually I'm thinking of giving one pair to a friend as a Christmas present, because they're really lovely:
From Blinkingmouseshop:



and...




I'll definitely keep the first pair, cause I love stars! and will painfully give the second away and make a friend happy (I hope!)

I also got a book!


I mooched the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood, which I believe will be my next read!or the Goose Girl? hmmm tough choice!

Ok now I should DEFINITELY start writing...

It's National Novel Writing Month!

and I'm not doing it! I wouldn't mind taking part, it sounds like a lot of fun and I'm sure it would be immensily satisfying to finish a novel in a month. But I still have my story to finish, that I started 3 years ago, and I don't want to start anything else till I finish this. The good news for me though is that I decided it's time to do it! Let's write this, and get over with it. And what best time then NaNoWriMo to get a writing boost? So I'll be trying to write at least 1000 words for the next month..well, 28 days now. I wanted to start yesterday, but I was hindered by a bad cold and a very annoying temperature. Today I felt much better so I opened that word document again and wrote my 1000 words! well done me.

It's been a great day, after a not so great Halloween weekend. Actually, it must have been the worst Halloween I had since I'm in Ireland! Almost nothing went like it was supposed to. I didn't have a costume till two days before friday. I finally decided to dress up as Daphne from Scooby-doo after seeing it in a fancy dress shop's catalogue, but unfortunately it was gone. Then I said to myself:"How hard can it be to find an orange wig, a pink dress and a green scarf?"
VERY HARD! If you're looking for them two days before Halloween. Never again.
I went into all the shops I knew but didn't find the right dress so had to settle for pink top and pink skirt. Then I ordered the wig online with 24 hours delivery, but they were out of stock. Then ordered it from another shop, and they called me to say they were also out of stock! So I thought, ok, I'll die my hair! Not permanently, only with the colour spray that washes off. Take my word: NEVER try those things on your hair. It was awful! My hair looked like a wig that was used to wipe floors after it was too old and ugly to do anything else!
I was in the shop already, and had to get ready to start the day. So thankfully we had a bright pink wig that I used to cover my sorry-looking hair and a witch hat, and that was it. I was a punk witch. I later bought some punk looking black gloves with white starts and similar leg warmers....and it wasn't too bad! but not what I wanted...
Anyway, life had to go on. I got ready to organise the Halloween party with the kids. Callista kindly emailed me few games to play with them and I used one of her suggestions. It was a creepy story to tell in the dark about a dead woman named Brown, and as you tell the story you pass around her "body parts" which were actually bits of food or other things that feel like body parts. It sounded all very scary and promising. *If only* things were done like they were supposed to be done. But we couldn't have a place which was dark enough, so the kids could see what was inside the bowls, even though they were covered. Some of them were also too old and they spoiled the game. Then, the person that was supposed to be the ghost at the end, was busy doing something else, so the scariest bit didn't happen properly.
Yeah, it was a bit of a disaster, but I was very relieved it was over. I swear this is the last Halloween party I organise.

But not everything bad happened in the last few days. In fact, last Thursday was a very exciting day because I went to the signing of.....drum rolls.....Neil Gaiman! You'll hear all about it in my review of the Graveyard book very soon:)

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

I loved this book so much, I giggled all my way through it. I had seen the film but it was enough time ago not to see the differences and make too many comparisons. This was pure pleasure reading.
It's not really a story. It's more a window into the mind of a 30 something guy, Rob, who is not ready to be an adult yet, but feels like his life is slipping away from him. The trigger to everything is his girlfriend Laura breaking up with him. He starts remembering his past top five break-ups, in chronological order, and try to find an answer to his current situation. My favourite of his break up is probably the first one, with Alison Ashworth. They were only twelve or thirteen and their relationship, based on snogging in the park, lasted only three days:

What did I think I was doing? What did she think she was doing? When I want to kiss people in that way now, with mouths and tongues and all that, it's because I want other things too: sex, Friday nights at the cinema, company and conversation, fused networks of family and friends, Lemsips brought to me in bed when I am ill, a new pair of ears for my records and CDs, maybe a little boy called Jack and a little girl called Holly or Maisie, I haven't decided yet. But I didn't want any of those things from Alison Ashworth. Not children because we were children, and not Friday nights at the pictures, because we went Saturday mornings, and not Lemsips, because my mum did that, not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies.

At page 4 I was in love with the book already. Not that I sympathize with the guy at all. But it was fun to read into his mind. It felt so real sometimes I had to remind myself that this was not a memoir but fiction. He made me laugh a lot, but I couldn't help to be annoyed sometimes, because I could put myself into all his girls' position and totally see their point of view!
Poor Penny Hardwick who was dumped because she wouldn't let be touched, but was secretly mad for him. She only needed more tenderness.
And what about his pining for Laura? It's all a matter of ego:
I'm unhappy because she doesn't want me; If I can convince myself that she does want me a bit, then I'll be OK again, because then I won't want her, and I can get on with looking for someone else.

Arghhh!

But despite all this, he is irresistible. The writing is irresistible, his snobbish obsession with music is irresistible. His friends and employees, Dick and Barry, are irresistible. The whole package.
Of course Nick Hornby knows his Rob is a bit of a tosser, but it's probably why he feels like a real person who's trying to analyse the reasons why he manages to mess up his love life all the time.
Some of the most insightful conclusions about Life come from Rob's relationship with music:

What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands – literally thousands – of songs about broken hearts and rejection and pain and misery and loss. The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives."

Some other conclusions, like the one about unrealistic expectations that pop music puts into young impressionable minds, I think are due to Rob not having found real love yet, otherwise he'd know what those romantic songs talk about:)
But I should stop arguing with him as if he was a real person! I wish he was, so I could have a proper chat with him about some stuff :p

So, to put an end to this messy review...You should read this book. Even if you are not a music nerd, or 30 something, or a man. You're in for a brilliant read.

other blog reviews:
Books I done read
Where lemon melt like lemon drops
Trish's reading nook
Know any more? Please let me know!

The Resistance - Gemma Malley

I was extremely excited when The Resistance came out. I was looking forward to it since reading the first installment, The Declaration. But, alas, its sequel didn't live up to the expectations at all. It wasn't near as gripping as the first book. It was mainly focused on Peter, instead of Anna. Anna actually makes her first appearance only after maybe fifty pages! (I borrowed the book so I can't check now, but trust me, it took way too long for her to appear). It also dedicates too much time to scientific speculations about Longevity and its role in the world. The book was going to be called Longevity+, and although I preferred The Resistance as a title, imagining actual actions of resistance from the Underground, I have to say that the previous title would have been more appropriate. Almost the whole story revolves around the concept of Longevity, with its supporters praising its virtues to the (initially) skeptical Peter, and the resistance doing nothing more than sporadically and basically ineffectively attacking some vans. I was also annoyed by the way Malley treated her characters, showing us their absolute commitment to a cause in the previous book and then portraying them as relatively easy to be convinced that they might have been wrong. Maybe I'm being too harsh. To be fair, Peter and Anna are only teenagers, and although they acted almost like adults at the end of The Declaration they're still young, unexperienced and probably not so hard to manipulate. But I expected more from them, so it wasn't pleasant to watch Peter and then Anna capitulate.
On top of that, I grew increasily uncomfortable about the whole good versus evil issue. I'm ok with moral versus immoral, freedom versus repression, justice versus injustice. But when angels and demons are mentioned I start to shift uneasily on my seat. Gemma Malley made it a matter of religion, or the lack of one. According to Peter's grandfather, Longevity has suppressed the need of the people to believe in God. They are not mortals anymore, so they feel like gods themselves. This, it is implied, is what's wrong with their world. The devils are running it and they're not afraid of God anymore. The Declaration could have been read in many ways. I saw the similarities between the Surplus and the immigrants in the real world, with the way they are despised and accused, but they are also needed to do the hardest jobs. Someone else might have interpreted differently and see the lack of religious views. Fine. Now, though, it was all less subtle. It was definitely a battle of Science versus God, and it didn't go down well with me.

Other blog reviews:
Jen Robinson
Karin's Book Nook
Becky