Thursday 30 January 2014

TV Overview: January 2014 + Community Review

    TV Overview: January + Community Review


January has been one of my favourite months of TV, this month we have had the return of the mighty Sherlock, Community was back and so much better than season 4 already, Call the Midwife has brought tears already to many british viewers, TV has been amazing. In addition to that, The Musketeers, a new BBC drama that is on 9pm on Sundays, has been very promising so far, and I cannot wait to watch the next episodes!


Community: Geothermal Escapism: Review

Opening titleThis season of Community so far has been Amazing, and this episode may be my favourite one so far, in this episode, Troy Barnes (Donald Glover) leaves and even if it was very emotional (have to admit, a few tears were shed), this episode was still hilarious! I love all these special episodes Community do, they are full of pop culture references and are usually a parody of other tv shows. In this episode, similar to the paintball episodes, All of Greendale college are playing 'Lava World', which is simply when the floor is lava, and you have to jump from sofa to table trying to not touch the lava. This episode was so funny right from the start, I liked how all the characters were involved, in the past season, Britta's character was quite a waste of space, but in this season so far, she is becoming more of an important character and not just an extra supporting character. Abed's portrayal in this episode was amazing, seeing how he reacted to Troy leaving was upsetting yet realistic (for Abed) and it was done really well. It is going to be very sad to see Troy go, but I cannot wait for more episodes in this series!

             

Poison Study: Book Review



Poison Study by Maria .V. Snyder: Review

I was a bit hesitant to start this book for numerous reasons, for one I thought it would be one of those annoying romantic books (that say they are action packed fantasy) in which the main protagonist (usually a girl) is very weak and insta-falls in love with the other main protagonist. I have never been more wrong in my life. My sister who is a massive fan of this book, has read this book countless times and told me that it is honestly the best Ya novel ever written, I put off reading it quite a few times because for some reason it just never seemed to appeal to me. A few days ago, I picked up this book (partly because my sister forced me to) and I read the first 100 pages in 1 day! That may not seem a lot but with my snail pace of reading, that is incredible. She was whole-heartedly right about how awesome this book is. There was not actually an aspect to dislike. The characters were really fun and interesting, the writing was very easy to read but very beautiful, and the plot was so unique that I had no idea what was going to happen next. If you are a fan of Assassins Creed, this book has an amazing kick-ass protagonist called Yelena, and she is so relatable and cool, Also there was a very Merlin vibe coming from this book, I loved it; there was Castles, and servants and everything that is delightful in Merlin, This book was written nearly a decade ago, but it seems so fresh and new. 

Characters:

The characters were so realistic and amazing, They went so well with the story and were wonderful to read about:
-Yelena was my favourite character, and she was so funny and cool at the same time, what I liked about her was that instead of being a 15-16 year old teenage girl who just wants life to be perfect and so on, she was a 19 year old who did things that were meant to be done, and instead of being a serious moody assassin, she did things a normal person would do and that made her so unique and relatable. 
-Ari and Janco were just the best people ever, they were so different from each other yet so similar, Janco was so hilarious and he gave the book a lot of light, With Ari, he was like an protective older brother and he reminded me a lot of Arthur from Merlin, I loved the sibling relationships Yelena forms with Ari and Janco.
-Valek was also an interesting character, at the start I didn't really like him that much, but as the novel progressed onward, he was much more of a cooler character and he fit in the story very well, Also I loved how the relationship of him and Yelena grew as the book went along. I loved the scene with the poison test at the start of the book and it was really funny to see Valek in that chapter. I feel like we got two sides of Valek in Poison Study, which I liked.

Plot: 

The plot in this book was probably my favourite aspect, it was so unique without being too abnormal, and it kept me hooked throughout (partly because of the cliffhangers that came at the end of nearly every chapter):
- My favourite scene was probably the Fire festival, since it was so interesting and intense. I also loved the last 1/3 of the book because it kept me gasping and was so action-packed. 
-The action of this book was amazing, What I loved about the book was that there was lots of action, but just enough to not make it over-powering. The end fighting sequence was so interesting to read about and kept me entertained. The magic didn't come until about half way, which was good because I think in the sequels we are going to get much more.
- There was never a boring section, it was either so intense that you couldn't breath, or so interesting that it kept you hooked. The feast was a wonderful scene to read about because it was interesting and action-packed altogether. 

Overall this book was such a great read and was perfect, I don't think there was a single thing i did not like about this book (except for a few minor things which I won't say because otherwise it will spoil the book). This book has such a great potential of becoming a tv show, I don't think it should become a movie because they would probably forget important things like 'Butterfly Dust', but like Game of Thrones, each season should be ten episodes covering one book. I do think this book is very underrated though and I wish more people read it. I definitely will be reading the sequels some point this year, so hopefully they are as good. This book is definitely 5 stars, and seriously, everyone should read it.


Sunday 5 January 2014

Bout of Books 9.0 TBR

Hello! Tomorrow is when the Bout of Books week-long read-a-thon starts, so here is my list of books I want to read during the week. Since i'm going back to school tomorrow as well, it will be very hard so I have only picked 3 books to read. I picked books that are either really short, or just that they are really fast paced. SO here is my TBR for the Bout of Book 9.0.



Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor


8490112Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real, she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands", she speaks many languages - not all of them human - and her bright blue hairactually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out.

When beautiful, haunted Akiva fixes fiery eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?



The Help by Kathryn Stockett

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Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. 

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. 

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.


The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

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     Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what.

A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Laneis told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.


Bout of Books 9.0

Bout of Books
The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, January 6th and runs through Sunday, January 12th in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure, and the only reading competition is between you and your usual number of books read in a week. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 9.0 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team