Dinara Tengri

  Welcome to Reading on a Sunday Afternoon , a weekly feature that is all about books you're currently reading and/or the ones you're going to read next. Why the weird title? I was inspired by an old Queen song, "Lazy on a Sunday Afternoon". It's almost February, and I have some books on my TBR that are just waiting to be read next month. Plus there's a few new releases that I want to look into, so there's a good chance I will collapse on the floor in the pile of books and curl up in a crying ball at some point next month. Or any other month. There is no endgame when it come to reading and reviewing. You just read and review. Anyway, once I'm done with Orange is the New Black , I will be reading A Dance with Dragons . Not a George R.R. Martin epic, but a fantasy/young adult series by Kaitlyn Davis. I have no idea what this book is about. I just wanted to read something new.

Allow me to start off by apologising for missing this week's Thursday Quotables. Sorry. I have been busy with other projects and my mind has been in some distant Place and I just forgot about it. And now let's round up this month, shall we? 2016 has had a great start with well-written and entertaining books. Creepypasta , by Jack Werner (5 stars) You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) , by Felicia Day (5 stars) Soul Breaker , by Clara Coulson (4 stars) I also interviewed the author of Creepypasta - you can read the interview right here . But the highlight of this month is without a doubt, the birthday presents I received from my family. Behold, the whole Foundation series in all its Asimov-ish glory!     I already had the first book in the original series, and its two sequels. Now thanks to my awesome family I have the remaining OT books plus the two prequels. Just look how beautifully they all line up. It's like a...

Earlier this month, I reviewed a book of scary stories on the Internet, called Creepypasta: Spökhistorier från Internet . I thought it was a great book, and I didn't hesitate to contact the author, Jack Werner, and ask him a few questions about the book. So without further ado, here's Jack Werner, award-winning journalist, podcaster and author. Tell us more about yourself. I’m a 27-year-old uneducated but curious boardgames-and-beer lover who lives in an apartment on Reimersholme in Stockholm with my girlfriend. At the age of 22, I wrote a series of blog entries on the topic of ”The greatest mysteries of the internet” (which you can read in Swedish  here ), and thanks to the massive response I promptly discovered that not many other people in Sweden wrote about the internet in quite the same way. Since then, I’ve started the fact-checking effort Viralgranskaren (the Viral Reviewer in English) that was awarded the Swedish Grand Prize for Journalism, written...

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. Today is not just any other day. Today's my birthday . Today, I'm 30 years old. That's almost one third of a century. Scary, huh? And while there are some downsides to not being a 20-something anymore, being a 30-year-old can also be pretty awesome. So I have come up with a list of ten perks that make 30 a great age. There are more than ten (I think), these are just at the top of my head.       1. While talking to someone in their teens or early twenties, you finally get to start a sentence with "When I was your age..." and "In my days...". Let me illustrate: "In my days, we couldn't stream movies online. We had to watch them on big bulky cassettes and we had to rewind the tape after each viewing!" 2. Your...

"Don't panic!" I said to myself. "It's okay to DNF. Occasionally." "But what about perseverance?" said my other self, the perfectionist, the one who always has the most unrealistic expectations. "If a book is too boring and slow you're just gonna stop reading it? You're one hundred pages in, there's only under three hundred left, you'll endure!" This is an illustration of the inner turmoil I was experiencing yesterday. The realist vs the perfectionist. I had this same conversation with myself way too many times, about books, about work, school etc. "You'll endure" is never a good argument when you're contemplating throwing a boring book in the wall. Okay, I do not actually promote violence against books (even bad ones). I'm speaking figuratively here. The book in question was Ancillary Justice , by author Ann Leckie. The first book in an epic space opera trilogy. The only reason I even pi...

I have a guest writer with me today! Please welcome my brother, Dijar Tengri , who has joined me so we can list six of our most beloved moments of the X-files in the anticipation of the Grand Revival. We grew up watching the X-files together, and I can't imagine our childhood without that spooky music playing in the background. So, of course, we're going to do this list together.   And if you're wondering why there's only six best moments, and not ten (we humans do love the decimal numeral system), it's purely symbolic. You see, there's six episodes in the revival, so our list is going to have six moments. Of course, there are way more moments and scenes  that deserve to be on the list, and there are some favourites that didn't make the final cut. 1. The Hearing - Redux II   This scene from season 5 opener is probably the most intense moment we've experienced while watching TV. Scully is dyi...

Welcome to Thursday Quotables,  a weekly meme hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book 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 I'm going to share with you one of my favourite quotes by my favourite stand-up comedian, George Carlin. It's not a book quote, but what fun are rules if you can't break them? When I see schools trying to force books down children's throats, I can't help but think about what old buddy George had to say about the importance of teaching children to read. "Not important to get children to read. Children who wanna read are gonna read. Kids who wanna learn to read are gonna learn to read. Much more important to teach children to question what they read. Children should be taught to question everything. To question everything they read, everything...

Title: Soul Breaker Author: Clara Coulson Year of publishing: 2015 Publisher: Knite and Day Publishing Language: English I requested this book on NetGalley Two years ago, Cal Kinsey was an up-and-coming cop in the Aurora Police Department. But during a fateful nighttime stakeout in search of a prolific killer, Cal witnessed the darkest corner of his dreams come to life. A rogue vampire slaughtered his partner — to put it nicely — and introduced Cal to the supernatural world he never knew existed in the shadows. Now, Cal is a newly minted detective at the often mocked Department of Supernatural Investigations. By day, the agents of DSI are called “Kooks” by local law enforcement. By night, they’re known as “Crows,” reviled by the supernatural underworld. Mere weeks out of the academy, Cal catches his first real case, a vicious murder at a local college. An unknown sorcerer has summoned a powerful creature from the Eververse, a realm of magic and mayhem that borders Earth, a...

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. Before we get down to business, I just want to say that you can now read my guest post on Book Bloggers International. As a part of their Bookish Beasts theme, I wrote about technology as a monster in literature and film. Ray Bradbury's The Veldt plays a big part in this little essay. And some technical stuff I need to get out of the way: for some reason, the subscribe box on your right isn't working the way it should. I subscribe to my own blog (yes, I am an ego-maniac), but no fancy e-mails are being delivered to my inbox every time I post something new. So, if you're experiencing the same problem, you can contact me . And while I work on that annoying issue, you can follow my blog with Google Friend Connect . You'll find the link on you right,...

Welcome to Reading on a Sunday Afternoon , a weekly feature where you can tell us about you're currently reading. Why the weird title? I was inspired by an old Queen song, "Lazy on a Sunday Afternoon". What are you reading this week? What will you be reading next week? Leave your answer in the comment section, or bring this little feature to your blog. Just don't forget to link back to me. This week's Sunday Afternoon, I feel is a little redundant, because I'm still reading the two books I wrote about earlier this week. I'm almost through with Soul Breaker . That's going very fast. Not because I'm a particularly efficient reader, but because it's nearly impossible to put the book down. Orange is the New Black is a different story, though. I've been dragging it for too long and now I don't even want to read it. What to do, what to do... DNF or not DNF? That is the question.

Title: You're never weird on the Internet (Almost): A Memoir Author: Felicia Day Published in: 2015 Publisher: Touchstone Language: English How I got this book: at the library "... I don't think it's unreasonable to make a stab-in-the-dark assumption: You're either extremely excited to read this book (inner dialogue: OMG, FELICIA DAY WROTE A BOOK!"). Or extremely confused (inner dialogue: Who is this chick again?") " So writes Felicia Day in the introduction to her memoir. Which of the two categories do I fit in? Well, none of the above, actually. I'm somewhere in between, and when I read that Felicia  wrote a book, my inner dialogue went something like this: "Oh, that girl from Supernatural who I also saw on Youtube once wrote a book! I like the title, it's very appealing to a geek like myself. Wonder what this book is really about." Now I've read it. What did I think about it? Let's break it down, shall we...

  Welcome to Thursday Quotables which is a weekly feature hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies . Every Thursday you can post a quote from a book 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. Now Before we get to the quote, I have a little announcement to make. Recently, I have gotten an account at NetGalley . It's a website that allows "professional readers", a.k.a. book reviewers, journalists, book bloggers and librarians to request and read books for free, some of which have yet to be released. I first read about NetGalley in a discussion thread on Goodreads, and now I have an account there. I'm very excited, since it will give me  the opportunity to read some of the latest releases and review them for you guys. So excited I got that I downloaded two books on my tablet. So right now I'm reading So...

Top Ten Tuesday is 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. Here is my list of ten books I wanted to read and/or buy last year, but didn't. 1. Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World , by Bill Nye Bill Nye "The Science Guy", is one of the most popular advocates of science in the world, and in this book he continues his quest to educate and to enlighten us.   2. Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things , by Jenny Lawson I'm not one hundred percent sure what this book is about, but Lawson talks about her Life-long struggle with mental illness, among other things. 3. Armada , by Ernest Cline A very talked-about sci fi adventure about gaming and alien invasions. It went completely over my head when it first came out, but I've read some pretty positive reviews on other blogs, and it's one of those book...