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Showing posts from February, 2016

Spring Cleaning: Ten Books I Recently Removed From My TBR

  Welcome to another round of Top Ten Tuesday - a weekly feature hosted by the girls of The Broke and the Bookish . Each week you can post a new fun list. Click on the link above if you want to learn more.   Happy first day of spring everybody! And though it's still freezing outside, the sun shines a little bit brighter, bright enough to the possibilities of improving your home and your life with a little bit of spring cleaning. Like vacuuming the living room, or cleaning out your storage space. Or, cleaning out your TBR on Goodreads. Over the years, I have added over two hundred books to my TBR, and this list just keeps on growing. As we all know, some of the times we click on that Want to Read button, we do it on a whim, never actually planning to read every single one of those books. While going through my TBR I thought it was about time to get rid of some titles. There is no hate for these books, nor for their authors. It's simple math - Í don't have

February Wrap-ups

Okay, so this past month I have written two book reviews and one movie review And that's it. Thank you for another month here at my blog. And stay tuned for March, because that's when I'm going to do my long overdue review for the X-files, season 10, as well as new book reviews and other exciting projects.

A Dance of Dragons Review, Part 1

In the land of Ourthuro, cruelty is a way of life. The king rules with an iron fist and no one dare defy him--no one except his daughter. Princess Leena is keeping a dangerous secret, she has fallen in love with a soldier and it would mean both of their lives if her father ever discovered their affair. But Leena will risk it all to be with the man she loves--her heart, her life, her freedom. And when her brother's birthday celebration takes a dangerous turn, Leena is forced to make a decision that will change the fate of her nation and eventually the world. *** When Jinji's home is destroyed, she is left with nowhere to run and no one to run to--until she meets Rhen, a prince chasing rumours that foreign enemies have landed on his shores. Masquerading as a boy, Jinji joins Rhen with vengeance in her heart. But travelling together doesn't mean trusting one another, and both are keeping a deep secret--magic. Jinji can weave the elements to create master illusions and Rhen

Thursday Quotables (Feb 25)

  Welcome to Thursday Quotables,  a weekly meme hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book that you're currently reading. It can be meaningful, funny, a real tearjerker or just something beautifully written. You decide. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. Right now I'm reading a book by Robert Eggleton, called Rarity from the Hollow . It's about a very smart young girl, Lacy Dawn, who is being abused by her father, and who escapes reality with the help of her imagination. This line is from the first chapter. I just love this analogy. It's so simple and precise.   "Don't complain. Complaining is like sitting in a rocking chair. You can get lots of motion but you ain't going anywhere," What about you? What analogies do you use in your everyday life?

Five Times I Stepped Outside of My Reading Comfort Zone and Loved It

Welcome to another round of Top Ten Tuesday - a weekly feature hosted by the girls of The Broke and the Bookish . Each week you can post a new fun list. Click on the link above if you want to learn more.   There are a few genres I never delve into, like erotica and romance with shirtless guys on the cover. Then there are genres that I'm not very familiar with. For instance, classics, sword and sorcery, and poetry. Every once in a while, I do like to make an exception, and sometimes I find real literary gems.   Here are five books that I found outside of my usual reading comfort zone that turned out to be pretty great.     1. The first and only Gothic romance I have read so far is Jane Eyre . Click on the picture and find out why I loved this book so much.   2. Tooth and Claw   Romance and etiquette among dragons. Not my usual cop of tea. But this book was a pleasant surprise (link to the review in the picture).       3.

Movie Review: Deadpool

I'm going to keep this review short and sweet. I saw Deadpool last night, and it was great. Deadpool  has great reviews, but when I went to see it, I didn't know what to expect. I didn't know much about the character, other than the most basic stuff. Ryan Reynolds I knew from the awkward romantic comedies and the early guest appearances in two of my favourite TV-shows: X-files and Scrubs . The first thing I should mention is that the atmosphere in the theatre was great and warm. There were mostly young people there (no children, though, for obvious reasons), and everybody was laughing their behinds off (especially during that IKEA-scene). I'm guessing that most people in the audience were aware of what kind of movie they were going to see and that they got exactly what they wanted. There wasn't anyone texting or talking during the movie, which I was very grateful for. I liked this movie. A lot. Can't say that it was a spectacular mind-blowing experienc

Thursday Quotables (Feb 18)

  Welcome to Thursday Quotables,  a weekly meme hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book that you're currently reading. It can be meaningful, funny, a real tearjerker or just something beautifully written. You decide. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. This week, inspired by the new season of the X-files , I want to share some of the best lines delivered by our favourite skeptical scientist, Dana Scully. This line is a testimony to great writing and consistent character development. I also find it very inspiring, in science and in everyday life. "Nothing happens in contradiction to nature, only in contradiction to what we know about it." X-files, season 4, episode 1, Herrenvolk          

Top Ten Science Fiction Songs and Music Videos

Welcome to another round of Top Ten Tuesday - a weekly feature hosted by the girls of The Broke and the Bookish . Each week you can post a new fun list. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. Now here's a list I've been wanting to do for a long time. It's a countdown of my favourite sci fi- themed songs and music videos through the ages. Enjoy this post now, because at some point I will most likely have to delete these videos because of the copyright stuff :) 1. '39 , Queen   What can you expect from a musician who's also an astrophysicist? I'll tell you what: a song about deep space travel, time dilation and coming back to a home where everyone you knew is long dead. This is one of my favourite Brian May songs.     2. Starman , David Bowie       3. Thriller , Michael Jackson   Thriller is one of the first music videos I remember watching as a kid. I was a huge MJ fan even then, and this video was just so muc

Thursday Quotables (Feb 11)

Welcome to Thursday Quotables,  a weekly meme hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book that you're currently reading. It can be meaningful, funny, a real tearjerker or just something beautifully written. You decide. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. Sometimes it's fun to start a new book without knowing anything about the plot or the story behind it. That's what I did with  A Dance of Dragons , by Kaitlyn Davis. It's an Epic fantasy series, and the first book is called The Golden Cage.     The heroine is an Ourthuri princess, who is in love with her personal guard. The only problem is that her father - the king - is a ruthless tyrant who likes to maim his servants for fun. There's no way he will let the princess be happy with her true love. She hates him with all her heart. But she loves her little brother - the crown prince. And she can do nothing but watch as the king turns the sweet innocent

|Review| Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison

Title: Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison Author: Piper Kerman Year of publishing: 2010 Published by: Spiegel and Grau Language: English/Swedish I read the Swedish edition, by Norstedts.   With a career, a boyfriend, and a loving family, Piper Kerman barely resembles the reckless young woman who delivered a suitcase of drug money ten years before. But that past has caught up with her. Convicted and sentenced to fifteen months at the infamous federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut, the well-heeled Smith College alumna is now inmate #11187–424 — one of the millions of people who disappear “down the rabbit hole” of the American penal system. From her first strip search to her final release, Kerman learns to navigate this strange world with its strictly enforced codes of behavior and arbitrary rules. She meets women from all walks of life, who surprise her with small tokens of generosity, hard words of wisdom, and simple acts of acceptance.

Thursday Quotables (Feb 4)

Welcome to Thursday Quotables,  a weekly meme hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book that you're currently reading. It can be meaningful, funny, a real tearjerker or just something beautifully written. You decide. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. First of all, my latest post - Top Ten Futuristic Worlds I Want to Live in - got six likes on Google+. I don't think I ever had this many likes in the short time that I've been running this blog, so I'm a little surprised, but also grateful. A big thanks to you guys :) Back to the meme... Orange is the New Black is one of the most interesting books I have read in a long time. While writing about her experience as inmate at a women's prison, Piper Kerman tackles some very serious issues about American judicial system and the treatment of inmates. The book is sad and disturbing on a multitude of levels. But at the same time, there is a lot of humour and

Top Ten Futuristic Worlds I Want to Live in

Welcome to another round of Top Ten Tuesday - a weekly feature hosted by the girls of The Broke and the Bookish . Each week you can post a new fun list. Click on the link above if you want to learn more. If you could live in any fictionalised time period, which one would it be? Would you live ancient Egypt and be witness to the rise and fall of a magnificent empire? Or would you hitchhike across the Galaxy with your alien best friend? I would choose the future. My ideal futuristic society is a giant world, consisting of a multitude of planets, all connected with hyperspatial traffic. A world with great diversity, where there are planets with monstrous cities and small farmer worlds. On the other hand, I would love to spend some time on a future Earth where there are no cities, wars or pollution. In this top ten list of futuristic worlds I want to  live in, you'll find both types. 1. The Galaxy. The Galaxy as envisioned by Douglas Adams would be my dream vacat