George RR Martin and Mother Goose

I laughed so hard when I watched this. I even had my mum watch it although all I got from her was a very worried look and a disapproving shake of the head - it is difficult to impress my mum ;).

But I thought I would share the video here.

George RR Martin twisting some well known children's rhymes.



The last one killed me. Just the way he ended it so matter of factly cracked me up :)

Tata for now.

Read-a-Thon

Yay! Finally I find out about a read-a-thon BEFORE it happens. *happy dance* (Thank you Hannah! - Once Upon a Time )

You guys have no idea how annoying it is when I find out about one after it has ended or only has half an hour left to it or something. But yippeee.

The Goodread Catchup read-a-thon is running from 25th February to 1st March.

I have LOADS of books waiting for me to get to them so this is brilliant.

I will be trying to complete

1. Virals by Kathy Reichs
2. Naked in Death by J.D.Robb
2. The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3. Playing with Fire by Katie MacAlister
4. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
5. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Lets see how that goes shall we :)

I shall try and post updates as I go - maybe tweet them if I don't have time to blog... :)

Click on the picture to find out all the details and to sign up.

Or, in case the picture doesn't want to link to the site follow this link and it will take you to Once Upon a Chapter blog where you can sign up :)

Toodles.

Honestly, Red Riding Hood was Rotten! by Trisha Speed Shaskan

I actually read this last year but for some reason a post wasn't put up for it *shrug* don't know why.

Anyhoo, here it is now. I think for the under 6s this would be a great, fun read.



Honestly, Red Riding Hood Was Rotten!: The Story of Little Red Riding Hood as Told by the Wolf by Trisha Speed Shaskan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought that this was going to be a fun alternative take on Red Riding Hood. I thought that we were going to be told that the wolf wasn't really all that bad, he didn't eat Red and her Gran and was just the victim of bad publicity.

Yeah, this is not the case.

We meet Wolf having a very healthy salad as he proceeds to tell us what really happened.

It wasn't his fault that he ate Little Red Riding Hood and her Granny. He was starving. And apples are his favourite. And who was dressed all in red like a juicy apple - Red Riding Hood. And who was all in green - Granny. So as he is starving who does he eat? You got it!

I think that kids who are not yet old enough to pick this to death will love it :)

*I received this book in e-book form from NetGalley*

View all my reviews

Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Books I'd Quickly Save If My House Was Going To Be Abducted By Aliens

Top 10 Tuesday can be found at Broke and Bookish

Hmm tough question. I think I would be screaming “NO, TAKE ME WITH YOU!” lol.

Ok, but in all seriousness…

Book 1 – Jane Eyre – because is is responsible for me developing an obsession with books from a very young age.

Book 2 – The Phantom of the Opera – I have read that book so many times I have had to stick the cover together and the pages are all manky from were it has been stuffed into suitcases and school bags.

Book 3 – A Game of Thrones – because dammit, I am going to  read this books eventually.

Book 4 – My Kindle (hahah, or does that count as cheating hmm…)

Book 5 – Dragonfly in Amber – I have read Outlander and I am not letting the house-abducting-aliens get by brand new copy of Dragonfly that I haven’t even started yet.

(yeah, really showing my maturity level here aren’t I? Moving on…)

Book 6 – Naked in Death – once again, just got it, and the aliens aren’t getting a book I haven’t even had a chance to dislike yet – not that I will dislike it, I am sure I will love it)

Book 7 – The Scarletti Curse - one of my favourite books.

Book 8 – North and South – Mr Thornton need I say anymore.

Book 9 – Dork Diaries – I need some silliness in there and Dork Diaries is brilliant.

Book 10 – Wintersmith – One of my  favourite books.

 

So what would your top 10 books to save from an alien abduction be.

A Withering Tights Dream by Louise Rennison

Yaroooo! Tallulah’s triumphant Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering Heights’ the comedy musical was enough to secure her place at Dother Hall performing arts college for another term. She can’t wait to see her pals again, Charlie and the boys from Woolf Academy and maybe even bad boy Cain…
When an international visitor comes to stay could the bright lights of Broadway be calling? And for who? Find out in the next Misadventures of Tallulah Casey.


Lulah has got back into Dother Hall performing arts college and is back again with the crazy characters of the first book while some of them are moving on to pastures new.

What I love about these books is that there is NO parental involvement, so there is not parents around for me to get angry and irritated with. Love it!

Brilliant! And in my opinion so much more funnier than the first book – although I find the bit were Lula is on her own without her friends around a lot for LOL hilarious.

The one aspect of the books that I do find a little ‘yeah right’ are the breast bits. I can never remember being pre-occupied as a pre-teen or a teen with my cup size or that I wasn’t growing fast enough or whatever so the constant ‘corker’ reference did get on my nerves quite a little bit…

A fun read, I can’t believe I have to wait until next year too find out what happens.

In My Mailbox (17) Part 2

And now for part 2

First up is my Waterstones buys.

Divergent and the Somnambulist are once again the fault of my friend who said I HAD to read Divergent Exit Strategy is one that has been in my mind for a while now and Warbreaker kind of waved at me as I was heading to pay.

 

And next we have Dobbies

I have read the first of Laurie R. Kings books and I loved it so I have been trying to pick up the rest of the series whenever I see it.

 

And The Works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I may have picked up an extra copy of Wither and The Scorpio Races for a giveaway. Just saying…

 

And next there is thebookpeople.co.uk

This is the Lily Bard – Shakespeare Mysteries.

 

And that’s me. I won’t leave it so long next time

x

In My Mailbox (17) Part 1

 

I can’t believe that it has been SO long since I last did a proper In My Mailbox post. I have raked through my bookshelves and dragged out all the books I can remember getting since and wow. I think I am in serious need of some help lol.

So here goes.

First of all the books I have got from Ebay.

The Scarletti Curse is one of my favourite books so I found a new copy for cheep and I heard about the ‘In Death’ series and thought it sounded brilliant. Not to mention that there are over 30 books in the series if I like the first one So plenty of reading. And my friend said that Viral and its sequel are really good.

This is a science fiction series. Fire Dancer, Dancer’s Illusion and Dancer’s Luck –  sorry about the picture being cut off.

And next are the books I got from readitswapit.co.uk

 

I don’t really have much to say about these I am afraid other than that they sound good. I have been wanting to read Playing with Fire and Keeping it Real for some time so I am looking forward to them. Up in Smoke is the 2nd in that series so I am waiting for the 1st to arrive before I start reading

 

x

Lust at First Sight - A Rant

Been a wee while since I have had a good old rant about something hasn’t it?

Well, despair no more. I present – le rant.

Here is a topic – if you can call it that – that I had a mini rant about on twitter because I was crazy annoyed and I think it may be a bit more deserving of my time, you know, just to purge my system of the annoyance.

Yip it’s that!

We shall call it Lust at First Sight. Catchy don’t ya think? Now this little rant came about because I was reading a novel – that shall remain nameless – where our hero – who, on a side note was a complete and utter…PRAT, yip, that’s a nice safe(ish) word to use.

So yeah, we have our hero (AKA Mr Prat) and then out heroine walks into the room and suddenly he is in love. He is finding it hard to breath, his chest is tight. Oh my goodness is he having an aneurism. Uh, no because coincidently his chest ain’t the only thing that is getting a little tight.

Could this be love?

Didn’t his godfather tell him that this would be how he would react when in the presence of ‘the one’?

ME - *blows raspberry* Oh good grief pull yourself together and control yourself. You are a grown man for pities sake.

Having all of this going on in our ‘hero’s’ (oh I cringe to type that) head and then having a nice little description of how this beauty, this paragon of all the female virtues, this, this, goddess, his one true love is affecting him on a PHYSICAL level – yes I am talking below the waist line not all that chest tightening guff – does not scream TRUE LOVE at me. That my darling Neanderthal is lust! Pure and unadulterated lust.

It is a biological reaction to you undressing her with your eyes! Of course your chest is tight sheesh.

And this is something that I am finding more and more irritating in romances lately. The heroes are more often than not total letches, who chances are notice the breasts before the eyes – or maybe this is just being true to life. 

Lust and love are not the same thing.

Love lasts! Lust does not.

I suppose though that we wouldn't have the 'man falling in love with his wife' story lines then though would we if there was not this element of the relationship to things...

But it really does bug me how it seems to be portrayed in more books that I am reading that physical attraction is the same as true-honest-to-goodness-luuuuuuurve. I am not saying that it is not a factor in things but sheesh. I mean, yes she may look gorgeous when you see her and you propose marriage on the spot because OH MY GOODNESS she is THE ONE! (and after all you have never had this kind of reaction to any other women on the whole dang planet even though you are a notorious rake and have been around the block a few times) but what happens when you have been married a month an suddenly she is snoring at night and waking you up with her sneezing and covering you in her snot because she has the flu.

EXACTLY! 

Podcasts (7)

And it is Friday again. Eeeek. Thank goodness for the weekend. Getting to sleep in, spending all day in my pajamas, making some kind of a dent in the mountain of books next to my bed - seriously if it falls over during the night it will crush me in my sleep. 

Anyway, it is blog shout out time. 

This week I thought I would let you know about a podcast called Mystical Lit Lounge. It is a podcast that talks about YA paranormal/fantasy novels, they also have author interview. It is a fun listen. 

The podcast blog can be found here

And the podcast on iTunes is here

On their blog you can find all of the ways to subscribe etc.

Happy listening. 

TGIF – Love Stories

TGIF is a weekly meme that can be found over at greadsbooks.com. Every week you can find a question that is bound to get you thinking.

It has been quite a while since I have done a TGIF hop but I could not pass up this weeks question.

Love Stories: What are some of your favourite fictional love stories?

Jane Eyre hands down has always been my favourite love story since the moment that I read it. Jane and Rochester’s story just stuck with me after I read it. And because of this it has been one of the most replaced books on my shelf .

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. The romance between Justin and Léon is not the strongest part of the book (in my opinion) but it is a lovely story and I have read it more that once.

 

I admit to having a weakness for Beauty and the Beast stories. Man scarred in battle finds girl of his dreams. Drunk father wagers only daughter to the dark, brooding, reclusive earl.  Yip, can’t get enough of that kind of thing.

One of my FAVOURITES! That for some reason I don’t have a copy of anymore…weird. So we have a long dead knight and his men who thanks to a curse have been unable to move on and along come the love interest. This is honest to goodness one of those book you read and start to wonder if there will be a happy ending… The same can be said for Cindy Miles other book Into Thin Air (touch and go a bit)  

 

And I shall leave it there.

 

Tata guys

Podcasts! (6)

And I'm back - and it is a Friday (woohoo) - with week 6s podcast.

Do Nothing But Read.

This is one of those Podcasts that had fizzled into nothing, but the 32 episodes that there are on iTunes are great fun to listen too. There are two 'presenters' of this podcast - Amanda and Brandon. And they cover a wide variety of subjects from guilty pleasure reading to the classics.

iTunes

Happy listening :)

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I can now officially say that I have read and enjoyed A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – you guys have no idea how warm and fuzzy that makes me inside. I have been wanting  - well obviously not enough as it took me so long to get round too – to read this book for AGES. I have tried to read it once before but it was a collection, you know, A Christmas Carol and other Christmas Stories, that kind of thing. And the shallow person that I am didn’t like reading from this whopping hardback just for one 100 pages story.

Moving on

I have only ever seen adaptations of the book, from Muppets to Jean-Luke Picard Scrooge, so I didn’t know what to expect from the source material.

I tried to go in with no preconceived notions. but that didn’t work.

In fact, I don’t remember ever having so much fin reading a book before. I was smiling almost all the way through it and read the majority of it out loud to myself.

Why?

Because I ended up singing direct lines that had been taken from the book and put into the various musicals. That’s why!  

 

 “captive, bound, and double-ironed”

 

 

 

And also it is a smashing book for reading aloud I think. Even if it is only to yourself.

 

I have never read a ghost story – that I can remember anyway. I know when I was in primary school one of my teachers read us The Canterville Ghost…

But anyway, if I was to have any kind of introduction to a good old ‘ghost story’ I am glad that this was it. It was dark and gothicy and definitely had a haunted air all the way through it.

As this is one of the best known stories out there I won’t go into the story etc, but if you, like me, have been one of those people who have watched a film version and after thought ‘I wonder what the book is like?’ please give it a read. I think you will find it worth your while.

 

LOVED IT!

 

*skips away singing*

You’re doomed Scrooges, doomed for all time…

Podcasts! (5)

 

Hi everyone! It is Friday! And for once here is the post when it is meant to be up.

 

This week we have the Diana Gabaldon podcast.

 

Diana Gabaldon is the author of the Outlander series and her podcast is a pretty fun read. Spoilers are pretty minimal in her episodes. And in fact she hardly actually talks about specific books in her series. She talks about how a book is put together, how she writes a scene, battlefields that are in her books, where she is invited to go as a writer etc,

 

There is bout 20 episodes that were recorded in 2008 and unfortunately there isn’t anymore – which I think is a shame.

 

iTunes

February - That's What You Think!

So, its months two of the 'That's What You Think!" reading challenge. 

How have you all been getting on. 

Share the link to your posts so we can come and have a look :)