Saturday Snippet: All Saint's Day

All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows, Day of All the Saints, Solemnity of All Saints, or Feast of All Saints is a solemnity celebrated on 1 November by the Roman Catholic Church of Latin rite and various Protestant denominations, and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in Eastern Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, in honour of all the saints, known and unknown. The liturgical celebration begins at Vespers on the evening of 31 October and ends at the close of 1 November. It is thus the day before All Souls' Day.

In Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Catholic parts of Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and Sweden, the tradition is to light candles and visit the graves of deceased relatives.

*image and quotes not mine

Tome Thursday: The Dwarves

Hello everyone!

I'm back into the realm of fantasy or science fiction, depending how you look at it right now, although I have to admit that this book is pretty much fantasy when it all boils down to it. Epic fantasy, maybe? That, too, but I wouldn't be so sure according to the reviews I've seen on Amazon or Goodreads.

Not that I usually care about those.

To me, the total number of good reviews doesn't say whether or not the book is good or bad. It just tells me that I may find it to be different than what the other readers thought about it. I've seen this happen with movies more often than books, since IMDB tends to have ratings that really do fool people. If you judge a movie just by the rating, you can miss out on a lot of great ones because the only ones who actually review are the people who disliked it. Me, I try to be objective.

But back to books.

Markus Heitz is a German author, and I first saw his books on accident while browsing in the store one day. They attracted me because of the fact that they were, apparently, about Dwarves only. So I eventually decided, what the heck, let's try it!

Talkie Tuesday: Jupiter Ascending

"I am NOT your mother."

Hello everyone!

I'm once again back with a movie review from my time spent at the seaside, so it's absolutely been a couple of months since I've seen this, but luckily, I have my trusty little notebook with its productive sheep on the front cover to keep me appraised of everything I thought about then! 

Or well, if not that, then at least I've noted down what, exactly, was going on haha.

To be perfectly honest, when I first saw something for this movie, I wasn't sure I'd see it, because I just didn't think I'd have the time. But the ginormous character posters in our cinema made me at least WANT to do it, so when summer holidays rolled around I figured, why not? I was going for a lot of fantasy and biographic dramas at that time so I thought I needed something else to spice things up for myself, and some science fiction thrown in the mix sounded like just the thing.

If I told you that the movie is about intergalactic travel, planets, and royalty, what would your answer be?

Hopefully not Star Wars.

I'm talking about Jupiter Ascending.

Saturday Snippet: Apple Pie

Hello everyone!

So alright, I will admit - like I've said a while ago, me and baking or me and cooking don't really go together. BUT I have a lot of time when I'm at home (or I shovel time aside, sometimes you just have to be violent) to experiment a little bit.

Browsing through random stuff in the kitchen, I stumbled over an old notebook of my mother's, which used to be tagged with blood red letters saying DO NOT TOUCH, MOVE AWAY SLOWLY BEFORE SOMETHING GOES BOOM.

Haha that's just the way you see it as a kid!

But it was a book of her old recipes, and I found the one for apple pie that my maternal grandmother used to make (and we all LOVED to devour). Here it is below!

Tome Thursday: The Virgin's Daughter

Hello everyone!

This week, I actually had quite a pick when I was choosing a book to write about in the review section, because at this point, I've amassed SO many notes that my poor notebook is basically falling apart from the middle out.

But it's good, because it means I don't have to scramble as much as I did in the beginning!

And I will confess, I'm under the Tudor influence at the moment, as you can probably tell by looking to the right of this blog to my Goodreads currently reading bookshelf. My friend Maegan told me about the fictional Autobiography of Henry VIII she had read, and I thought to myself, sure, why not, so I'm currently munching my way through it. According to my Kobo e-reader, I'm 60% through. The plan: finish it this weekend.

In the meantime, however, I checked to see whether or not I wrote down some notes about another Tudor-esque book I read a while back, during summer, and I did!

Allow me to start with my review of Laura Andersen's The Virgin's Daughter.

Talkie Tuesday: The Imitation Game

"We're going to break an unbreakable Nazi code and win the war."

Hello everyone!

So last week, I talked about The Theory of Everything, because I seemed to have known, instinctively, that the particular biopic wouldn't hold a candle to the one I'm talking about in this blog post. 

Don't get me wrong.

I admire Eddie Redmayne for what he did with the role he was given and the Oscar was absolutely deserving. But I've been a Benedict Cumberbatch fan for quite some time now I think; I definitely consider myself part of the CumberCollective!

And so when the first teaser image of The Imitation Game was released, I practically jumped around pumping the air with my fists in glee. Because, not only was it Cumberbatch, BUT it was about a topic I'm hugely interested in despite the political debates it can spawn. AND on top of it all, it's about the Enigma!

Saturday Snippet: Bookshelf Tour, part 4

Hello everyone!

To the relief of some ( = P ) this will be the last bookshelf tour post for a while, even though this really is only the first of many shelves I have going along one whole wall in my room. To be honest though, I might actually do a DVD tour at some other point because I seem to have a rather large number of those, too ...

You get the idea.

Tome Thursday: Eight Hundred Grapes

Hello everyone!

This one is another I managed to actually read by the seaside, and I think it came hot on the heels of something science fiction related or historic or fantasy, because it's so much NOT those categories that, even though I can't remember precisely, I can see why I would have picked it.

Because, here's the thing.

I love my personal favourite reading categories, I really do. I mean, Lord of the Rings is by far and wide my favourite book EVER, and I read it once every year. But despite the amount of stuff I read, and as much fantasy as I get into, I do like something entirely non-related to that every once in a while. Like, contemporary non-related.

I will admit; I'm not a big contemporary novel reader. For some reason, I just sit better in the fantasy niche. But after following the adventures of Jamie and Claire Fraser for a thousand pages, Frodo and Sam trudging towards Mordor over five hundred, and an angel and a demon falling in love ... I definitely need a break from all of that.

Which is why I picked up Laura Dave's Eight Hundred Grapes.

Talkie Tuesday: The Theory of Everything

Hello everyone!

Back to my movies from the seaside section (this could probably be its own subtitle, I think ...), since I'm done with immediate movies at least for this week. I still have plans to watch Insurgent at some point (hopefully next week? Maybe?), but I'm defintiely distracted all around with the shows that are now in full swing and giving anything out of a movie cinema a run for their money. 

The Theory of Everything wasn't a movie I would have originally wanted to watch, because unlike some people, Eddie Redmayne isn't exactly one of my favourite actors. Well, at least not yet, maybe he'll get there, you know?

But because I was going to watch The Imitation Game eventually, and because the Oscar race this year had been pretty much between Redmayne and Cumberbatch, I thought, why not? It could be educational and fun. Stephen Hawking is a living legend, after all.

So, here we go.

Saturday Snippet: Bookshelf Tour, part 3

Hello everyone!

Back to the bookshelves again, and this time it's number three - the links for the previous two will be added at the bottom of this post if you want to look back and see what I've already disclosed of the books I own.

As for today's post, I have no clue why this photo turned out with such weird light. I took it at the exact same time as the first four, same time of day, same angle, everyting, but oh well.

Tome Thursday: Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love.

It did not end well.

Hello everyone!

Today was spent on a lot of computer de-tox as I spend a whole lot of time behind the small screen and typing and stuff, and my arms sometimes don't agree with me about it at all. Sigh, sad panda over here.

But it turns out I can actually bake apple pie! Which, for a person who hasn't done any cooking at all in her life up until moving to the capital and starting university, is a big deal. I am at war with our oven here at home though because it almost charred it with being way too strong for the settings that were in the recipe, BUT. You win some, you lose some.

Anyway.

Back to blogging, I tweeted yesterday that I had SO MANY book reviews lined up, I actually had to double check I still have enough movies left! I've been reading books left, right and centre, although this particular one happened at the seaside while I was still on vacation, and I can cheerfully say that I read the major part of it sitting at the cafe right next to the sea, listening to the sea gulls, drinking latte and enjoying the salty breeze.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone, here we go!

Talkie Tuesday: Jurassic World

"If something chases you ... run!"

Hello everyone!

My keyboard is completely acting up so if I'm suddenly missing letters here and there I assure you it's not on purpose. I've been having to double-check everything I type, everywhere. I think I type too much ... oops? 

Anyway.

I'm back with a movie blog!

This week, I managed to pretty much dangle a carrot in front of my parent's faces and offered to have a movie night with them. Surprisingly enough, despite the varied tastes of movies in our family, Jurassic Park remains a favourite, so naturally, the sequel was something I couldn't resist. And since I did remember my dad saying something about wanting to watch it, it was a no brainer to wait until we could all get together.

Well, okay, only my mom and I ended up watching the first time since dad had hockey to play, but I'm pretty sure the big screen TV in the living room will be seeing Indominus Rex run around in Jurassic World again soon!

Saturday Snippet: Bookshelf Tour, part 2

Hello everyone!

I may be a little trippy at the moment. Not because I've drank anything, or otherwise consumed anything of the illegal sort of variety - but mostly because staring at translation stuff and then on top of it all reading through Alice Clayton's Cocktail book series is seriously something to make your mind spin.

Ahem.

But I'm back with the second round of my bookshelf tour! If you've fallen behind, never fear, there'll be a link at the bottom of the post to the previous part.

Tome Thursday: Wallbanger

Hello everyone!

Okay, so I will admit - I may be just a tiny bit embarrassed by the title of this blog, and the book, but I will also say right off the bat that it's not as bad as it sounds. I mean, I've obviously heard of worse (Fifty Shades, anyone?) and never read them, but I ran into this particular book on Goodreads when a friend of mine added it to her want-to-read list, so I went and snooped around a little.

It can't hurt, right?

Well, after  finishing off The Fiery Cross (which, for those of you who don't know, is the fifth book in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, and as with each of her books, a chunk to chew on), I needed something that wouldn't make me want to do history math of who threw who overboard and where bags of tea ended up at the bottom of a bay, not to mention, I didn't need to worry about a rapist coming back to haunt me in subsequent books.

So.

To sum up, I needed a book where I wouldn't have to think along with it, which excluded mystery and thrillers, and I needed something that wasn't historical, and also, fantasy was a no go (I'm stuck at around 55% of The Elfstones of Shannara at the moment, poking myself to continue).

That was how I ended up with Alice Clayton's Wallbanger.