Tome Thursday: After the Funeral, p.1

Hello everyone!

So a little while ago I had a bit of a Hercule Poirot post in general, or an Agatha Christie one, but I'm back to going through the whole Poirot mystery series (there's almost forty books in that one, it's an accomplishment!) since I go through one book every once in a while, and this blog post will be split in half because I'm about halfway through the book. Sad, right? But real life has been a little bit of a kicker this week so I didn't get that much of a chance to read, and if I did, I read books a bit more light-hearted than a murder mystery, because with Christie, you need to be 200% in if you want to follow her plot line, and have even the slightest chance of figuring out who in the blazes did away with the a) poor old lady (fabulously rich of course, with a plethora of empoverished relatives), b) a dentist who even Hercule Poirot hated (oh, the irony), or c) an eccentric lord (who pulls together would-be murderers just for kicks and giggles; fun, no?). In this particular book, though, it's neither of the above, although at the rate this is going I have a feeling it's going to turn into Midsomer Murders back when John Nettles still played Inspector Barnaby - aka, more bodies lying around than you can count!

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Talkie Tuesday: Fifty Shades of Grey

Hello everyone!

So last week, one of my best friends called and said she had no one to see Fifty Shades of Grey with, and if I'd be game. Now, personally, I'd sworn I would never, ever read the books (because I had the misfortune, I'll call it, of reading about the infamous tampon scene), but the movie ... let's just say kudos to the marketing department. It got me wanting more, and I'm so not a person who would normally want more on these kind of things. But, okay, truth be told, I agreed to go see the movie with her, so I saddled up for what I knew was going to be an ... well, interesting ride, at the very least haha! And before anyone gets all up in arms: despite not reading the book(s), I knew precisely what I was getting myself into, what the movie was about, and what I wouldn't be getting. So, factual check: I knew it would be a BDSM movie, a movie about an unhealthy relationship, and I would so not be getting any lovey-dovey stuff. I would also like to point out that I realize and understand BDSM is something certain people enjoy, and all I can say is kudos to them, but I know it's not my cup of tea, so I won't be trying it - anyone else is welcome to if they wish though. Free world and all that, adults make adult decisions and the like. Now, on to the movie review. 

Tome Thursday: Lover Avenged

Hello everyone!

So this is a sort of cheat (unfortunately) since this isn't the first time I've read the book I'll be talking about, but it's the one I finished most recently (I think it was yesterday, actually) and so I figured it'd be better if I talked about it instead of trying to remember something else entirely. I think it was a year ago, potentially even some more, when a very good friend of mine talked about a book series titled the Black Dagger Brotherhood. When she initially told me about it, I wasn't all in for this band wagon, mostly because she said it was another series on vampires, with certain twists, and I wasn't sure I hadn't seen it all by that point.

I was so wrong.

Curiosity got the better of me, and this was before I had my e-reader so I read the books on my phone, and the poor thing died SO many times while I was devouring them haha. Needless to say, the Brothers are now some of my favourite characters and I actually enjoyed this particular spin on vampire lore.

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Talkie Tuesday: I Love You, Man

Hello everyone!

I hope you all had a good weekend, and to those of you who celebrate it (because some people do boycott the whole thing), hope you had a fantastic Valentine's Day! Me, personally, I've never understood the holiday, thinking it's overrated, but then again, I might change my mind if/when I actually have someone to celebrate it with! As far as that goes, this year's was coupled with Mardi Gras celebrations here as well, so what happened was that our doorbell was turned off, since my family and Mardi Gras (meaning the whole costumes thing) don't mesh well. At all. So my situation went something like this: my sister came home for the weekend, our parents were off for a Dalmatia-themed night at a local restaurant, and we hit McDonald's to grab some food, camped out in our living room in front of the big screen TV, and put on a movie. 

We wanted to watch The Wedding Ringer initially, but that didn't quite work out so we settled for a different one, titled I Love You, Man, which neither of us had seen before, but was titled as a comedie and we both felt like something comedic/action packed would work for the night. 

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Tome Thursday: Last to Die

Hello everyone!

I'm normally not into this whole thriller novel kind of thing, mostly because of my fearsome, vivid imagination that gives me nightmares more often than not (and another reason why I don't watch horror movies, like, ever). But during my stay at the seaside this summer, my father brought along a couple of his books, and he's basically ALL over thrillers. The more on shock value they have, the better. Name any kind of thriller author and a book of his or hers will probably be found somewhere in our home library (no other way to call the mass of books we have in this house, I mean, come on). One of the books caught my attention because my aunt also read it, and she tends to not like those kind of reads herself: it was titled Body Double, by author Tess Gerritsen. I couldn't help myself; reading the back of the book and what it offered, I just had to dig in myself ... and couldn't stop reading or put the book down until the very last page. After getting home, I discovered it was the fourth book in a series, and decided I might as well start at the beginning.

I finished the tenth book, Last to Tie, a little while ago.

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Talkie Tuesday: The Originals

Hello everyone!

So I'm cheating a bit today; my last few days have been spent running around or driving people and such, so watching movies wasn't exactly doable, but I did manage to catch The Originals this week on its actual date and not, like, five days after. In some ways, TV shows are so much more fun than movies because they have a continuity going on and last longer in a sense, but then again, a movie will always be a movie ... still, I believe I couldn't have picked a better show to talk about in this blog post. Unless it would have been Game of Thrones, but since the premiere of that is still months away ... let's just focus on the best, dysfunctional TV family that's graced our TV screens for the last couple of years, shall we? 

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Tome Thursday: The Silver Shadows

Hello everyone!

So a while back, probably in my first book blog post, I talked about some books by an author who's name is Richelle Mead (I think it was her Succubus series). I'm kind of a big fan of her vampire ones though, probably because I started reading her work when I bought the first three Vampire Academy novels, and I've been hooked ever since. It's a different take on vampire lore yet again, and a lot of hard-core vampire book fans don't like it. That's okay, because to each their own, I mean, I've read so many variations on vampires by this point that there's precious little I HAVEN'T seen, myself. But anyway, back to VA!

The six books in the first series were amazing, so imagine my surprise when the author announced she would be writing a spin-off series, again comprising of six books! This one is called Bloodlines, and man, did I fall in love with the characters there too. We get guest appearances from all our favourites from the first series, and the minor characters from there take center stage in this one. The books go, as follows, Bloodlines, The Golden Lily, The Indigo Spell, The Fiery Heart, The Silver Shadows, The Ruby Circle (out this February!). In this review, I'm going to talk about The Silver Shadows.
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Talkie Tuesday: How To Train Your Dragon 2

Hello everyone!

I'm back with another movie review, and this time it's a cartoon. Well, or animated movie really, not

quite cartoon, but I needed something light and sort of fluffy because I didn't feel like watching anything too hard-core, and since I remember really liking How To Train Your Dragon (because Toothless <3), I decided I might as well finally watch the sequel. I know, I'm about a year late, and it's something to be ashamed of, but I get so side-tracked by things that I usually catch up with movies only months after they've already been released.

Also, my sister told me there's an actual cartoon depicting Hiccup and Toothless' adventures in the five-year span between the storylines of the two movies, so I'll probably check that out at some point as well. I started it a while ago but then real life got in the way, and so I put it on a back-burner. But, on to the movie of a whole lot of dragons running around!