Tome Thursday: The Queen of the Tearling

Hello everyone!

It's back to the books (not the drawing board this time) and I was honestly surprised in the past week when I noticed a lot of youtube reviews popping up for the one I'm going to talk about today. It's one of those coincidences I suppose, given that I honestly hadn't thought much about it to begin with (the review I man) and obviously I seem to have missed some of the reviews in the first place when I was looking through the internet to see whether or not anyone had ever said anything about this particular book before. And how did I find it? Well, to be honest, I didn't; I had seen it in the bookstore, but after checking the back of it and reading the summary, I wasn't initially drawn to it. My mother, on the other hand, thought it might be one of those easy romance books she enjoys on her downtime, but hey presto, there's no romance in this book! So it ended up with me.

I'm talking about 'The Queen of the Tearling' by Erika Johansen, which is an interesting title all in itself without knowing the details, AND there is supposedly a movie production in the works, with Emma Watson already attached to it. Hmm, this certainly did call for a read and review!

Talkie Tuesday: When Calls the Heart

Hello everyone!

Back to series this week, and I think I'm going to be doing a lot of those as the show seasons race towards their final episodes; I may actually dedicate a whole week-blog session to the finales to the series I watch, but I'm still debating on that. What do you think? In any event, this show season has seen some others come and go with being shorter in production sense (only eight or ten episodes, which is definitely a far cry from the usual twenty-two or twenty-three episode orders the shows normally get), but the one that premiered this Sunday on Hallmark channel has come close to my heart during its first season last year when I accidentally stumbled upon it: When Call the Heart. 

Now, you may remember a blog post I did way back when I first started this, and I talked about a book series of the same name, written by author Janette Oke. I liked the books and was quite happy to hear they were developing a TV series, especially since Hallmark had already produced the movies of Love Comes Softly and other titles of the same sequence, which they did beautifully (I do admire Hallmark for the family-oriented productions). I was confused with the season one premiere episode, however, since it was heavily based on the first novel, but didn't give us much of a conclusion (or Stephen Amell in a Mountie uniform, dang it!). The continuation, however, was worth the watch.

Tome Thursday: Home to Blessing series

Hello everyone!

So this blog post will be about three books instead of just one, as it's a short book series in a much grander scheme of things, but I figured I might as well talk about the lot of them since, if you read them one by one and not as a whole, they would make zero sense at all, specifically this series because it was literally cut in such places that makes it almost impossible to comprehend if you don't immediately pick up the next one and carry on from where you left off.

I'm talking about the 'Home to Blessing' series by author Lauraine Snelling. I had a blog post way back where I talked about the first book in this world she has woven into her stories, about a family of Norwegian immigrants who cross the Atlantic to move to America and then proceed to farm the land in one of the Dakota regions. I think these three books are the ... fifth series in the whole? The Red River valley is basically home to many families by this time, an established and prosperous community, and I did enjoy the return to it. Not to mention, there are some other books to follow as well, which is fine by me!

Talkie Tuesday: La Belle et la Bête

Hello everyone!

I wanted to watch a different movie for this blog, but it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it to because, with the weather turning nice and warm here, it's gardening season, and apparently, I'm helper #1 this year haha! Which means I am now intimately acquainted with vegetables all around and probably will be even more as we progress further towards the end fo April. That being said, I simply didn't have the time to sit down and watch something new, but I quickly skimmed through a movie I had already seen - and loved - and revently found a DVD of in my country! Which, for a foreign language film is unheard of when it isn't English, but there you have it, somehow, the stars aligned and it all worked out in my favour. 

I had noted the 2014 french version of 'Beauty and the Beast' when the first trailer came out and made a sort of post-it to watch it when I would eventually be able to, and I did not regret it the first time around, nor this second time when it was a little bit faster and more of a jumping through it all, really. But the story has always been one of my favourites (the Disney adaptation just brought it all home that much more) and seeing it in French was just amazing (also, how about Emma Watson as the new Belle?)

Tome Thursday: Stormbird

Hello everyone!

So I almost forgot about this blog tonight, mainly because I've had my head all over the place. I need to get a big board and hang it on the wall beside my desk so I can pin important stuff there or write what needs to be done in really big letters haha! Or maybe I need to find a gadget for my computer desktop so I can make post-it notes on it ... then again, actual post-its might work even better if I put them down in bright colours, right?

Back to the blog, since I digress, before Christmas I went to the capital to meet up with my cousins and take my sister home for the holidays, but I had some time to kill before our meeting and, as is usually the case when I'm in Ljubljana, I ended up at the bookshop (and by this, I mean the biggest bookshop in the city, obviously). I wasn't planning on taking anything home with me, seeing as I didn't want to drag along a ton of books.

BUT.

I saw two books by Conn Iggulden from his new 'Wars of the Roses' series, and I just had to have them.

Talkie Tuesday: The Expendables 3

Hello everyone!

I'm literally just out of the living room after watching this week's movie. I took advantage of the fact that I basically had the house to myself, besides my grandmother that is, and put it on the big screen TV to enjoy some cinema-magic right in my own house. Normally, I watch movies on my computer or at the cinema proper, but from time to time, luck is on my side haha! 

So tonight, I watched a movie I'd had on my list for a while but never honestly got to it before; The Expendables 3. I liked the first two installments in the franchise and I was honestly quite excited to see what they'd do with this one considering it was getting an 'upgrade' so to speak, pairing the old actors with newer ones, like Kellan Lutz and Ronda Rousey. 

And, just so we're fair (total disclosure and all that) I've been on a Jason Statham streak for a while now. I can't help myself; the man is probably one of my favourite actors.

Tome Thursday: The Shadows

Hello everyone!

So, okay, I only just realized that I should probably include a SPOILER ALERT somewhere in the description of this blog, or at the beginning of each entry, but since this is kind of a review and recap place for me to express myself and talk about what I've seen or read, I figure that, generally speaking, that should be a given. It's not always the case though so I apologize if anyone has been 'spoiled' by certain facts I state in these posts, especially on just-released movies or books, but there you go, we all learn and are works in progress along the way, right?

Right.

Back to the actual blog post - yes, with spoilers ahead - I'm going to talk about The Shadows today. A little while ago I posted an entry about Lover Avenged, which was book seven in the Black Dagger Brotherhood book series. Well, end of March saw the release of the very latest installment (number thirteen!) and I think I pretty much dropped three other books I'm reading at the moment (yes, I always read multiple books) just so I could get my hands on this one.

Talkie Tuesday: Furious 7

Hello everyone!

This week, it's back to the movies, and what movie has EVERYBODY talking right now? No, it's not Fifty Shades of Grey anymore, and it's not a Nicholas Sparks adaptation or a swansong to a Tolkien-inspired era.  

This week, it's ALL about bald (or nearly bald) muscled people, blue-eyed actors who can make you sob, scantily-clad women, Abu Dhabi ... and fast cars.

Yes, I'm absolutely, definitely talking about 'Furious 7'.

The seventh installment in the Fast and Furious franchise roared into cinemas worldwide on April 3rd, whereas we here in Slovenia were actually (surprisingly) able to see it a day early, on the second of that month. I didn't get to see the premiere, but my girls and I hopped along for the ride this past Saturday with probably everyone within reasonable (and maybe slightly less reasonable) driving distance from the cinema, considering every showing seemed to be sold out!

And yes, four girls can and WILL have a good time watching a movie about cars!

Tome Thursday: The Little White Horse

Hello everyone!

So this week I had a little debate with myself about which book I should put in Thursday's blog post, since I finished a couple more than just one prior to writing it, but I decided to somewhat follow in the line-up I read them in, which meant that the others I finished (a short trilogy) will most likely be featured next week, unless I find and/or finish another book or short book series that annoys me about as much as that one did haha! Not even joking, but back to the book I'll be talking about today, it's actually a childhood favourite of mine. I had a couple of those while I was growing up, and have since then not picked that many again for a reread, but this one sort of happened once, by accident, and then I think my mother bought me the Slovene translation and it's been sitting on my shelf in paperback version ever since.

The book I'm talking about is Elizabeth Goudge's 'Little White Horse', as you could already tell from the title of this blog. It's not a long story, it's actually a children's book, and as such you're probably thinking what on Earth am I doing reading it? Well, as a sort of fairtyle, it's something I've always had a soft spot for, and it has horses in it. It was a good enough excuse for me!