Tome Thursday: The Bourne Identity

So Tome Thursday has turned more into a Saturday than anything else. I blame it on the holidays coming up, because not one of my days has been remotely slow recently!

In any event, I went back to my bookshelves and dug out my old copy of Robert Ludlum's most famous works: I have an omnibus featuring The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, and The Bourne Ultimatum. It took me a while, considering everything, to get back into it and manage to sit down long enough to read through the first book in the trilogy - since I've sort of refused to read any more novels regarding Bourne, considering the story finished when the author originally thought it over, but I might change my mind. It is, however, a challenging book to read.

And no, the movies do NOT do the series justice.

Talkie Tuesday: The Battle of the Five Armies

Hello everyone!

So, to my intense and utter surprise, my little country got to see the last part of the Hobbit trilogy before the US! That NEVER happens, so I'm just a little bit excited, considering our premiere happened on the same day as the New Zealand one (and on top of that, my hometown showed it that same weekend, too!). So my girlfriends and yours truly decided to see it this past Saturday, and to be perfectly honest I was pleasantly surprised. Not that I anticipated a huge comeback from the blunders of the second movie (don't even get me started on that one), but I did go in with a whole lot less positive than I did then, wary of the great feelings the trailers evoked knowing how disappointed I was last year, and it turns out that, all in all, this wasn't half as bad as one would have expected. Was it still bad? Yeah, especially on topics that were introduced wrongly from the start, completely off-base, or lost somewhere in translation. It will probably never live up to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but at the very least, it WAS entertaining. One can't say anything against that!

So, spoiler alert ahead to anyone who has NOT yet seen The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, you're reading at your own risk, though if you're a book fan it gets less, considering you know what happens.

The Hobbit: TBOTFA, New Line Cinema

Tome Thursday: An Untamed Heart

Hello everyone!

So I just got back in from doing some early Christmas shopping. Brrrr, but it's cold outside now! I wish we'd get some snow as well, for the proper holiday feeling and all, but temperatures are definitely all Christmas-y now!

I was reminded of a very intriguing book I read a while back as I was perusing through the choices in our bookstore for my family, and decided to write about it tonight. The book is titled 'An Untamed Heart', and it was written by Lauraine Snelling. Now, I initially didn't even want to read any of Mrs. Snelling's books because I had gone through Janette Oke and most of hers, and thought I'd had enough of that kind of literature for a while, but in every one of Oke's books there would be some sort of introduction to a Lauraine Snelling book, so I eventually caved. For those of you who have never heard of the author before, she has written numerous children's books, but her most famous ones are the adult fiction she created about a town in North Dakota, Blessing; it is around Blessing that several of her series circle (Red River, Return to Red River, Daughters of Blessing, Home to Blessing, Song of Blessing), and 'An Untamed Heart' was the much-anticipated prequel to them all.

Talkie Tuesday: Draft Day

Hello everyone!

So a (long) while back, I saw the trailer for Draft Day, completely by accident, and decided I really needed to see this movie. One, it has Kevin Costner in it, two, there are some other familiar faces running around, three, it's football, and four - Kevin Costner. Enough said?

I've been a fan of Mr. Costner's for a while now, I can't even remember for how long, and although I know he obviously filmed before I saw any of his movies, it's a tie between whether I've seen the Bodyguard or The Prince of Thieves first. I'm fairly sure The Postman came afterwards at some point when there was nothing else to watch on TV and I saw the actor's face and decided I would just sit through it even though it didn't look promising (at the start). So, seeing him in the trailer for this kind of movie, it was a no-brainer that I would want to see it even if it did take me a long, long time to actually sit down and do it. 

So ...

Hello everyone!

So really, I've just realized that I might have taken on a bit too much with the three-day blogging, especially right now, it being December and all. I'm not sure I'd be able to keep up! Not at the moment, anyway, which means that 'Synopsis Saturday' will take a little bit of a break, and hopefully come back at some point in the future. For the time being, I'll just stick to 'Talkie Tuesday' and 'Tome Thursday', which I can definitely keep up with easily, and maybe sometimes I'll throw in a random other blog post (like this one!)

Because I had a fantastic time yesterday with my girlfriends, I'm including two pictures one of them took of what we were up to until ... around 3 am at night.

Long live St. Nick! Haha.

Have a good one x

Tome Thursday: The Wedding

Hello everyone!

I was a bit on a roll with Susan Elizabeth Phillips and ended up reading bits and pieces of some other books in between, but then I went back to one of my absolute favourites, Danielle Steel's 'Wedding'. I honestly don't read much of Steel to begin with, contrary to popular belief, I have a couple of books that I like, but that's it, because generally speaking I can't get into her characters as much as I probably should, or could. In any event, however, out of the three books of hers that I like, The Wedding was probably the first one I read that honestly sucked me in. My mother bought it as paperback, and to this day I'm still mad at her for trading it out for another Steel book with her sister. Grrr! Haha.

Talkie Tuesday: The Last Samurai

Hello everyone!

I can't believe it's December already, though looking out through my window you'd think it was sometime around April by the weather. I swear we're turning into Forks here on this end, but luckily our TV stations had some good ideas this past weekend about movies and I got to catch up on an oldie goldie while that happened: The Last Samurai.

Okay, yes, this movie has been out for more than a decade already and I'm sure there are by far more sophisticated reviews out there about it, by now ten years old, but it's one of my favourites when it comes to historical movies (even if it's not entirely accurate), and if I'm honest, one of the few Tom Cruise movies I can watch. Somehow, I can't seem to get into his vibe, although I can probably name more than a couple that were really good.

The Last Samurai, WBP