Closing the lid of June and July

Due to tumultous events and overall busy times, I missed my June recap post, so I will do a recap of two months now.

 

June-July 2013:

 

* M. Flyte "City of Dark Magic"

* R. Yancey "The 5th Wave"

* D. Leon "Death at La Fenice"

* A. Tarttelin "Golden Boy"

* A.M. Homes "May We Be Forgiven"

* T. Gauld "You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack"

 

448 + 460 + 338 + 343 + 480 + 160 = 2229 pages in two months. Jetpack-book doesn't actually have page numbers (which I found so odd!), so I'm relying on Goodreads information here.

 

This month it's Austen in August, and also Bout of Books, which I still haven't decided on.

 

I'm currently reading Mansfield Park (2 chapters a day), and The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde - I think Thursday Next are my choice for the best summer read.

Sunday Snippets #7

I missed Sunday Snippets last weekend, mainly because I was just. so. tired after arriving from the amazing concert some vague time at night, with feet aching from standing and jumping around for hours.

But, it's a new week and I'm baack!

Weather has been nice, summery but not overly hot. For some reason, I have had this unexplainable craving for snow and Christmas lately; it's actually quite common that I get it in July, but this time it has been going on for a good week or so and I'm getting slightly concerned.

Bout of Books is approaching again and I see the sign-up posts popping up in my reader quite regularly, but I haven't decided yet. I will be on vacation during the Bout of Books, but I have no idea yet whether I will be at home or not, so it might happen that I won't have much online time. And also, pushing myself to reading a lot right now can be either a very good thing or a total disaster.

 

I won this from a giveaway. Very suitable comic strip to booklovers and overall nerdy people.
Tom Gauld on Tumblr.

 

I've been struggling majorly to pick a book to read. I have a few unfinished books from June, from the time my grandmother died - okay, I get it, they are at the moment associated to a very sad feeling so I'll wait a bit before I pick them up again. I tried The Prague Cemetery, but didn't get into it at all and it went back on the shelf. Finally, some Jasper Fforde books arrived in the mail, and I managed to finish Lost in a Good Book last night. Sooo good. Now I'm on the fence whether to continue with Thursday Next or to try Robin Hobb - I also started Ship of Magic and it was going really well, maybe I need this kind of escapade that fantasy literature can offer right now...

 

Mammu with a pair of my new shoes :)

 

 

Been watching:

 

Modern Family, Season 3 - watching with boyfriend, continually hilarious.

 

I finished Season 3 of Downton Abbey a few days ago and I am happy to be caught up with this one, though this season there were sooo many cases where I rolled my eyes, but oh well. It's a guilty pleasure, so eye-rolling is part of the business :)

 

Then, boyfriend and I went a bit more into House of Cards, Season 1 - a very well done series with some ridiculously good acting (Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright). I have a good feeling about this one.

 

Aand, I am weekly hooked to my guilty pleasure number 1 - Project Runway, Season 12. I can't comprehend the warm feelings towards this series myself because aside from that, I take interest in exactly zero other reality shows/contests/whatever, but I've seen and enjoyed every single season and episode of Project Runway, so yes. It's somewhat of a conundrum.

And here's a sight you one doesn't see every day, or to be more precise, almost never.
 

Austen in August Reading Event

It's Austen in August time! As the name suggests, this event is about reading Jane Austen (and texts related to Jane Austen) and it is hosted by Adam over at Roof Beam Reader (click here for master post).

 

I have "Mansfield Park" on my bookshelf, and I haven't read it, so why not? I read "Persuasion" earlier this year and totally didn't hate it (surprise!). I haven't read her other novels (yet? yet.)

 

I'll probably get to Austen in the second half of the month during my 3-week holiday from work.

Sunday Snippets #6

It looks like Sunday Snippets is all I post these days, and maybe I am in a blogging slump as well, but I am happy I started these Sunday posts - at least it keeps me on track and not forget about the blog all together. 

Nothing particularly interesting happened this week, but it was a nice week, nevertheless. Work is easier in summer (less news means less work for me), weather has been nice (meaning not too hot). On Thursday we went to see Man of Steel, the boys liked it but I found myself falling asleep for the second half of the film... Let it be mentioned that there are plenty of superhero and/or comic-based movies that I like very much, so this one just wasn't for me. 

A dress and three pairs of shoes arrived in mail. It was indeed a nice week. 

I finished a book too! Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin - a fast book on controversial and intriguing topic (hermaphrodites/intersex people). I still have Middlesex winking from the TBRS (to be read soon) shelf here at home as I am writing this.

Been watching:

Modern Family, Season 2 - still very funny.  

House of Cards, Season 1 - started this with the boyfriend. There is so much speaking for this series, but it's a bit hard to form opinions yet as we have only seen 2 episodes. 

Downton Abbey, Season 3 - something terrible just happened in the episode I watched today. I hope the overall moods in the series will improve somewhat. 

I also finished Jane Eyre miniseries (BBC, 2006), which I started a while back. I liked it a great deal, when it comes to staying true to the novel. Honestly, I tried watching the 2011 version with Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska, but gave up half way. To me, that adaption was just butchering the whole novel and there was nothing captivating about it. 

Waiting for:

Finishing the winner of this year's Women's Prize, May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes. It was good I approached this book without any expectations and no knowledge of any hype (if there was any), since it has been a really interesting and rather pleasant surprise.

Muse stadium concert here in Helsinki next Saturday. Oh, yes.  

 

Mammucat has adopted new box, suitable for both - sleeping and chilling out.

Sunday Snippets #5

This past week has been peaceful and I am getting back my reading mojo, slowly but surely. 

Nothing much has happened aside from trying to get back to normal living (and sleeping) rhythm after the funeral last weekend (I had to wake up 4am-ish for two nights in a row and that is not cool, yo). There has been work and quite nice weathers - not too hot, but definitely summery. 

I finished a book - Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon, it's a murder investigation story. It wasn't very special and I don't know yet if I am fascinated with the detective person at all, but since I'm too lazy to pick up another detective series I'll probably continue with this one if I feel like that kind of a book again.

I started Golden Boy by Abigail Tarttelin after that (which I won from Christina at A Reader of Fictions - thanks a bunch! and here is her review). Even though I am still reading several other books, I felt like I needed a new, and a fast one. And this one is good because I'm reading like a 100 pages a day of it, which is really quite voluminous, considering. 

Robert as a giant bumble-bee. Or a furry space creature. We used ice-cream caps to change his identity.

Been watching:  

Modern Family, Season 1 - I rewatched this with the boyfriend, who hasn't seen this series. I don't find many things on screen particularly funny, but this one is hilarious, and lack of annoying background laughter doesn't hurt either.

Downton Abbey, Season 3 - I think of this as a guilty pleasure :) 

Catching up - a bunch of mini-reviews

Since I am so much behind with my book-reviewing, I decided to just take the easy way out and write only a couple of words of those books I have read in the past months. (Except for the Classics Club ones, of which I want to write longer.)

 

 
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - I loved this book so much. Booknerd's dream. I can't wait to get my hands on the sequels, if what I heard is true, the series will become even better.

 

5/5 on Goodreads.

 

 

 

The Forgotten Queen by D.L. Bogdan - this book is about a less-known Tudor, Queen Margaret of Scotland. Maybe her life has not been covered so much because there was not much to say? This is what I felt when finishing this book. Margaret's character comes out as really annoying by the end (she makes a lot of questionable decisions, especially when it comes to her relations with men, and she seemed to have some serious self-esteem issues). I appreciate all that I learnt from this book, but mediocre plot + nothing-special writing didn't suck me in that much (it took me a long time to finish the book).

 

2/5 on Goodreads (just as a reminder - 2 on GR means "It was okay", so it's not even a negative rating).

 

 

 

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker - I had problems with this book, partly maybe caused by high expectations (golems? djinn? I am bound to love it, right?) First, the writing just didn't appeal to me that much. I didn't write down a single quote from the book. It wasn't bad, but it just wasn't for me. The characters showed a lot of promise, but in the end, I wasn't emotionally invested into any of them. I see what the author was trying to do and say, but for me it just came out kind of lacluster. It's quite a long book and by the end I really just wanted to get finished. Given my slight obsession with the djinn, I was also disappointed because the djinni in the book wasn't humorous or witty at all, he mostly embodied the negative characteristics (selfish, with anger management issues). I don't know, seeing all the praise for this book I was kind of sad it didn't do that much for me. That all being said, the setting of New York in the turn of the century was kind of captivating.

 

3/5 on Goodreads.

 

 

City of Dark Magic by Magnus Flyte - this book proved how important it is to choose the right story for the right moment. I chose City of Dark Magic to read for the Prague trip, and it worked well, because the novel is set in Prague and it's the kind of easy reading that suits me when I have problems concentrating. I was bound to enjoy it because I was basically wandering around in those same places where characters of the book did. Aside from those subjective feelings, I got a lot of Dan Brown vibe from this book. At some point I had problems with info-dumping. Some of the things didn't make sense. I had no problems with the paranormal element. I will probably read the sequel, just because, you know, Prague.

 

3/5 on Goodreads.

 

 

The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey - this is a young adult dystopian book that I have seen getting a lot of praise. I am not a young adult reader, so I am always in fear that I am being unfair just because the genre is not my favourite. I think it's actually a decent book. I wouldn't jump on the fangirl/-boy wagon, but it was a decent story. A few things disturbed me - given that the novel was written by several different POVs, there was really nothing except for the plot itself to give any indication that these were different characters, so I don't think the different POV-thing was done well at all. But it was a gripping read and the whole idea of by whom the earth was taken over was kind of new and captivating.

 

3/5 on Goodreads.

 

 

Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon - I picked up this detective story after I heard the news that my grandmother has passed away and I knew for sure I won't be able to read anything heavy or actually anything that would require any kind of emotional investment. I think it served its purpose well, although it made me rething whether I want to continue with Leon's Brunetti-series. But I probably will because this being the first book of the series is definitely not the best one. The books are set in Venice, which was a huge pro-factor for me when deciding which contemporary detective series I'd like to start.

 

3/5 on Goodreads.

 

 

Sunday Snippets #4

Just a very quick note today, and a few words of explanation for why I have been so quiet lately. 

My grandmother passed away this week and just this morning we returned from her funeral in Estonia. I haven't really felt like doing much reading or anything related, I had to put all my books on halt and pick up a detective novel (by Donna Leon) because it seemed like the best kind of distraction.

I will be back once I feel better. Have a nice new week everyone!