Bookshelf Tour #1

Here is my first EVER video on mt shiny new YouTube account for this blog. Eeek.

Since reading has been a little slow (non-existent) the past week with me having a cold and a nasty ear-infection I thought I would be brave - well, not that brave ;) - and start with a book shelf tour.

Since I talk so much I am going to so a shelf at a time :o)

Hope you enjoy...



xx

My thoughts on Meg Cabot (Meg-A Readers Blog Hop)

If you would like to know more about the Meg-A Readers Blog Hop zip on over to The Romance Bookie

One of the things that I love about Meg Cabot is the diversity of her writing.

• teenagers saving the presidents
• girls getting struck by lightning and turning into a missing-person beacon
• tween novels
• adult mysteries about ex-pop-stars solving murders
• adults vampire novels
• and more recently venturing into the Underworld

And many more. I mean, sheesh, this lady has her fingers in a whole lot of fictional pies and she is still producing fabby stories - something that ALL of her fans are no doubt very glad about. 

One thing that I have come to LOVE about Meg Cabot's work - more so now than when I was a teen - is her humor. Sometimes dry, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes self-depreciating and pointed at our main characters own expense But hilarious non the less. 

And her heroines are not perfect. They all heave their flaws which - once again - I couldn't really appreciate as a teen, but now it seems to make the characters that much more likable. 

I don't know if it is the same with everyone else but when I was younger I wanted to read about 'perfect' characters. The flaws in characters that I now view as making them more human and relate-able used to set my teeth on edge not to long ago.

I do not know what has prompted this change in my view. I do not know if my personal experiences have made be more tolerant of others - fictional or otherwise. Whatever led to the change though I am glad! :)

Enter the Grand Prize giveaway that will be running through the whole Blog Hop for a chance to win some goodies :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Chief Cook and Bottle-Washer by Rita Hestand

Emma Smith hadn't been straight with her new boss, but he hadn't given her much of a chance to explain. Trapped in her own lies and uncertainties Emma was running in fear of losing her baby. Deke Travers, oldest son on the 4 Bar None Ranch, needed one thing to make his life more peaceful, his brothers to settle down and get with the business of ranching. There was only one solution, marry them off to country girls. And Emma will be the first bride on the 4 Bar None Ranch. 

(IMAGE AND DESCRIPTION FROM GOODREADS)

This was a nice quick read and very cute - even if I did want to slap some heads a couple of times.

We have a few twists and turns to the story  but nothing that I think can detract from the light and cute factor.

The major thing that bugged me was our hero had an issue with people telling him lies, but every time our heroine tried to tell him something either something would interrupt or he would pull the 'we'll settle it later' thing and she would never get to tell him. Which of course he views as her lying to him. DUDE! It was just rubbishy timing, it happens to the best of us. But the fact that this happened so many times had me ready to scream. But he does get brownie points for not going mega stroppy when she finally tells him everything.

All of the the characters were likable and at times relate-able to with the situations they found themselves in.

7 Weeks of Jane Austen… Info

 

So I once again have some humongous plan in the works. And I am determined it is going to work *mwahahahahahaaa*

 

And what is this diabolical plan?

 

*Drum roll*

 

In August and September I am planning on doing a post a day on Austen.

 

6 weeks will be dedicated to each of Jane Austen’s major works and then the 7th week will be all things Austen.

 

Sounds fun yeah?

 

And why do you need our help? I hear you ask…

 

Well you see, 7 weeks of reading nothing but ‘me’ on the subject of Jane Austen…ouch. But 7 weeks reading a mixture. Cool!

 

So this is a request for some guest posts

 

You know you want to.

 

You can write about anything Austen related you like.

• Modern spins on the novels
• Character rants or mushy happy post
• Favourite/least favourite characters

Tell us about it

 

The order of the weeks is going to be decided by the publication dates of the major novels.

 

So

Week 1 – Sense and Sensibility

Week 2 – Pride and Prejudice

Week 3 – Mansfield Park

Week 4 – Emma

Week 5 - Northanger Abbey

Week 6 – Persuasion

Week 7 – All things Austen

 

Would you like to be involved?

 

Great!

 

Please fill in the lovely jubbly form here ---> Subscribe to our newsletter. This will add you to a newsletter list and I will be in contact with you in a few weeks with more details!

Alternatively you can email me here ----> alex.bletheringbookworm@yahoo.co.uk

 

My main aim is for this to be fun, so don’t stress about it. If you would like to contribute something go for it!

 

Thank you everyone.

 

Talk to you later. :)

My Guilty Pleasure Reads (1)

I suppose that everybody’s guilty pleasures are different as it depends entirely on how you define ‘guilty pleasure'.

Something you enjoy even though you know that you are not supposed to?
Something to be indulged in only occasionally?
Everyone has their own view of what a guilty pleasure is.

My personal definition of ‘Guilty Pleasure Reads’ is – I would die if my mum caught me reading this book (sad but true guys I am afraid to admit). But then there is no denying that reading these books cheers me up and gives me a boost of happiness.

So here comes my deep dark secrets.

So I will get this one out of the way first.

Mills and Boon!

Yes, I admit it, I went through an EPIC Mills and Boon phase when I was in my early teens, and this involved bending over backwards to try and prevent my mum from knowing that I was sneaking them into the house. She did find out and didn’t approve BTW.

But now I have 3 or 4 of my absolute favourites that I still have on my shelf (and a few that I may have torn out of anthologies at x-mas time and recovered in cereal box card ).

They are lovely just to turn back to every now and again and lose myself in. And lets face it, happily ever afters just never get old.

And yes, I would still NEVER read a romance in front of my mother. The only books that I read where she can see them are humouress sci-fi (e.g. Hitchhiker's Guide). Isn’t it funny how things like that stay with you…?

Do you have any books that you would never, ever, ever read in front of your parents?

Tune in Tuesday

Tune in Tuesday is a weekly feature that you can find at GReads and it gives us a chance to show off some of our favourite music :)

Another week of random! Yay!

Here goes,

One More Round by The BarlowGirls

Ever Ever After from Enchanted–I LOVE the cartoon section of this video. How cool would it be to see yourself as a cartoon character in the disney fashon?

Not a Dry Eye in the House by Meat Loaf–I really love this song. One of my favourites.

Fever by Michael Buble–My mum has seen him live, yes, I am VERY jealous.

See ya next week with one more bout of random guys! :)

Empty that Shelf - June Challenge Info

<a href="http://thebletheringbookworm.blogspot.co.uk/"><img border="0" src="http://i1231.photobucket.com/albums/ee508/phantomlit/emptythatshelf-2.jpg" /></a>

We are heading towards summer! We have waved goodbye to April and its showers and we are now in May with it torrential rain and gale force winds. But, it will be July before we know it.

And what happens then?

We head of on holiday.

But, being the book fiends that we are we (I) ignore the stacks of books at home (especially the big one threatening to topple over next to my bed) and head to the bookshop to find a nice, shiny holiday read. Yip, I am SO guilty of this. Actually I fins it amazing that it doesn't matter how skint I am I still manage to find the pennies to get myself a book... But moving on. 

THAT is why I am going to spend the first 2 weeks of June reading from my to-be-read pile before it tumbles over in the night and crushes me in my sleep. 

Why 2 weeks? 

Well, there is something so scary and, well, negative about saying A MONTH - 2 weeks sounds a lot more achievable - and it seems that when something lasts a week I am just getting into it when it is over. 

And why now?

I just failed the Bout-of-Books read-a-thon at an epic level, no really, I managed to read one book in one week, that is DIRE for me. So it is time to do some mega catch-up. 

I was going to make this just a challenge for me but I have thrown together a button so if you would like to join in feel free to grab it :)

It is going to be pretty easy - 

Work your way through the books that have been sitting around for AGES and start reading. They can be from your physical shelf or from deep in the dusty memory of your e-reader. 

You do not have to set yourself a goal, you do not have to even think about what book you are going to read, just go with whatever book you want from your shelf at the time. 

I will be starting June 1st to June 15th - so there is over a week to finish those stray library books :)

I will be posting my beginning post on the 1st :)

If you would like to join me COOL! You can fill in the linky below - ok, I admit I may be using this as an excuse to play with the Mister Linky - with your blog link (or the link to your post saying you are participating)

And I may be able to scrounge up some bookmarks for a giveaway at the end :)

My Thoughts–The Hunger Games Movie

I know that there are already loads of posts floating around on the movie but I thought I would throw my thoughts out there too. I went to see the film during my down time on the blog so this is a bit late in the posting, but here goes. :)

I managed to drag my mum kicking and screaming to the cinema treat my mum to go and see the Hunger Games during it’s first week out. Because lets face it, going to the cinema is so much more fun when you have someone else with you.

So here is what I thought.

GREAT!

Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a die-hard Hunger Games fan (come to think of it there are few things I am a die-hard fan off (do I smell another blog post?)) but I was really looking forward to this film and I did not find it disappointing.

It has been a while since a film has made me want to cheer in the cinema but when Katniss shot the apple out of the pigs mouth I wanted jump up in my seat.

The parade ‘flames’ seemed to be a little underwhelming but when she spun about in her interview dress and the bottom caught fire I wanted to giggle like a little girl. Brilliant.

The scene where Rue died had me crying like a baby – just like the book did (one of the few books to make a cry I will add).

The shaky camera work was a little disconcerting at first but when it came to the deaths of the tributes I think it was a good choice as we couldn’t see in detail what was happening. I know that some people didn’t like this but I think it was a very tasteful decision.

The deaths was another thing. Although I read and loved the book, seeing these children being made to kill or be killed was very disturbing. Even more so was the celebratory view that the runners of the game had and the way that they spoke of readying the canon to announce another death. I wanted to scream at them ‘these are someone’s children you are talking about!’


Cinna was lovely. Maybe I missed it in the book but they seemed to be developing a bit more of a relationship between Katniss and Cinna in the film. He knew when she was nervous and did what he could to set her at ease. In movie-land I think I would be happy to see Katniss and Cinna together.

Peeta…um, the dude was good but for some reason I imagined him to be a bit more…buff. He was a darling though.

Ceaser ------> Loved him. That is all.

And so when the end credits began to roll…

Me – *clap clap clap* How brilliant was that"
Mum – Hmmm…that was different…

Bout of Books – Challenge #6 (19/05/12)

You can find todays challenge post at Smash Attack Reads

Books Spine Poetry!

Oooo this one was hard…
But here is my try at some REALLY bad poetry …

My Pic (crumby I know - courtesy of my phone)

I Shall Wear Midnight cries the
Goddess of Spring.
Stolen to sit on
The Poison Throne.
As The Destined Queen and
Mistress of the Art of Death she rules.

Phew, glad that is over.

Feature and Follow Friday - Summer Break is Upon Us!

Follow Friday is a weekly Blog Hop that can be found over at Parajunkee’s View.

Summer Break is upon us! What would be the perfect vacation spot for you to catch up on your reading & relax?

I have always bemoaned the fact that I have ever been on a sun, sea and sand holiday (or pool). In my mind nothing would be better than to sit in the sun, by a pool and read all day. But you know something, the more I think about it the more I think that the splashing and people noise would drive me a little crazy.

So I am choosing a nice cosy chalet somewhere. I can just imagine curling up in a comfy old chair next to a roaring fire and reading :)

TGIF–A Book Blogger is Born

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.

What made you decide to start your very own book blog?



Wow, you know I have no idea…I have always been an avid reader since a pretty young age. The only reader – other than my nan – in my family so you can imagine how frustrating it was trying to find an outlet for all the book I was reading and wanting to talk about. The being the only bookie in the family part of this story has changed in the past couple of years though I will add :)

"I'm all alone..."

So to begin with a joined Goodreads which was brilliant for posting my thoughts on books. BUT that wasn’t all I wanted to do though. I wanted to write about other topics, topics that were still in the realm of books but that weren’t strictly reviews. And thoughts that reading a book may have triggered but I couldn’t exactly bung them into the middle of a book review.


And I think that is what made me decide to sign up for a Blogger account.
I wanted to go off on a tangent if I wanted without watching someone’s -who didn’t care about what I was reading anyway – eyes glaze over with boredom.


And even if there was no one out ‘there’ reading what I was thinking it made me feel better just to get my thoughts onto the screen.


Blogging I have discovered is VERY therapeutic :)


(I don't own Donkey and the meme graphic is from GReads)

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon Read-a-Long

What? Don’t Look at me like that, I can sign up for another challenge if I like,..
Ok, fine I know I said I was keeping the challenges to a minimum and everything this year, but technically this isn’t a challenge it is a read-a-long – see there IS a difference. Don’t argue with me OK. Besides I have book 2 in the series sitting on my shelf so I really need to read the first book again – I do, really I do – to refresh my memory and all that jazz – and who know my first opinion of it may have changed after almost a year. And it will be fun reading this as a group and doing weekly posts on it :)


So here are the details…


The read-a-long is going to go from June 11th to July 23rd (AKA 7(ish) weeks ;)) and is being hosted by all the lovely bloggers who are listed in the button :)


Here are the blog links -


Into the Hall of Books
Gone with the Words
Logan E. Turner
The Reading Housewives
Stalking the Bookshelves
Tangled up in Blue (Tangled up in Jess)



The idea is that everyweek a different host blogger will have the questions for the chapters for that week and we all get to have a good blether about what we thought.



Sounds fun right? :)



I’ll see you with more Outlander on June 11th ;)

Bout of Books – Challenge (16/05/12)

You can find todays challenge post at Books Devoured

Your Challenge is to choose any book cover and Re-Title it! You can choose anything you like and go the serious or humorous route!

I always find this kind of thing pretty difficult, along with the what song would you give to this character/book.


But here goes.


I give you the cover of Graceling by Kristin Cashore

And I re-title it -


“How to Chop of Your Own Head in Three Easy Steps”



My answer to Tuesdays challenge can be found here


I hope everyone is achieving their goals :)

Bout of Books – Challenge (15/05/12)

You can find the challenge post at Nyx Book Reviews

Ooooo… questions ;) I missed yesterdays challenge but here goes nothing…


Share your most shocking, embarrassing or funny book related story.


Umm… the only REALLY embarrassing books moments I have is when 
a) my mum found a Mills and Boons book under my pillow when I was 13. What she was doing anywhere near the pillows of my nicely made bed I will never know… 
And then next is when I had my copy of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon in the car along with my grandmother and as picked it up (thank fully she didn’t open as I had no idea where I had left the bookmark) and asked me if it was good. Now I know that some grandmothers – from what I have heard – have been responsible for getting their grand-kids into the Outlander series…yeah, my gran isn’t one of them. I think I would have died if she had started reading it somewhere…ummm…dodgy.

And just for the heck of it here is the 'this or that' questions :)

Physical book or eBook? – Physical book
Paperback or Hardcover? – Paperback
Reality or Make-believe? – Make-believe
Adult or Young-Adult? – Adult
Dog ears or Bookmarks? – Bookmarks
Breaking the spine or Barely open the book? – Breaking the spine
Tea or Coffee? - Tea
Reading in bed or On the couch? – In bed
Series or Standalone? – Series
Original or TV Adaptation? – Original
Defy motion sickness or Audiobooks? – Audiobooks
Author crushes or Who-was-that-guy-again? – Who-Was-That-Guy-Again
Interview or Guest post? – Guest Post


I hope everyone's reading is going well :0)

Tune in Tuesday

Tune in Tuesday is a weekly feature that you can find at GReads and it gives us a chance to show off some of our favourite music :)

More random guys! :)

Take a Chance on Me–from Mamma Mia the Movie

Billie Jean by Michale Jackson

*don’t judge me ;)* Les Poissons from The Little Mermaid

I’m just a Little Black Rain Cloud from Winnie the Pooh

Soo another scary look into my itunes library.
Yeah, like you aren’t in you 20s and have Winnie the Pooh on YOUR iPod. ;)

(ALL videos are from YouTube and the meme graphic is from GReads)

Review –The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more that he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the galaxy is a very strange and startling place.
(DESCRIPTION FROM GOODREADS)


I wanted so much to love this book, I mean, it’s a classic, but unfortunately it just kept missing the mark over and over again for me. At times it was like Adams was trying to hard and there would be these massive sentences that I would have to re-read because by the time I got to the end the first time I had forgotten what was at the beginning (Maybe that says more about me than the author though). The thing was though that I knew that the point being made by the uber long sentence was meant to be dry and sarcastic and would have probably appealed to my sense of humour but it was lost to me. At points I would perk up at a passage as it reminded me of the writing style of Terry Pratchett and then it would all go down hill again.

Marvin the depressed robot was BRILLIANT. But I will admit that this was a fall out from the film version – he was my favourite character so when I was reading I was pre-disposed to like him.

I am going to give the 2nd book a try when I have the chance as some people have said that it is better than the first – and I feel really guilty (weird I know) for not LOVING such an iconic book.

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the ‘star-spangled banner’, but in fact the message was this : So long and thanks for all the fish.

Bout of Books Read-a-Thon

Yes! Everytime a read-a-thon comes along I ALWAYS miss it but not this time baby! By the way thank you to all the bloggers who posted on their blogs about this because if I had not seen it so many times I would have gone another read-a-thon without knowing, so you guys ROCK big time. No seriously, you do :)

Sooo...Bout of Books lasts a week starting tomorrow (14th May)


My goal is to try and finish 2 books at the least - yeah not a huge goal I admit but I am trying to be realistic here and considering that I did no reading over the weekend I think 2 books is a pretty decent goal :)


I have 2 books that I have been half-way through for quite a while now so I would love to get them finished.... 

And 2 books that I would like to read are...

So lets see how that goes shall we ;)

14th May

Number of books I've read today - (seriously?)

Total number of books I've read - (ditto)

Books - [READING] Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot (pretty good too ;))

Pages in - 69 pages (too tired last night to read for long...finish work a little early tomorrow though ;))

15th May

Number of books I've read today - (*tumbleweed*)

Total number of books I've read - (*more tumbleweed*)

Books - [Still READING] Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot 

Pages in - 69 pages. Yes, I am still where I was yesterday.

(yeah today was an epic failure)

16th May

Number of books I've read today - (*whistles*) 

Total number of books I've read - (*picks at finger nails*)

Books - [Still READING] Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot (I am REALLY enjoying this book, great fun)

Pages in - 108 pages. Woohoo a whole 39 pages read. 

(So I am not getting as much reading done as I wanted but, hey, at least I got some done today)

17th May

Number of books I've read today - (yes I know, I am an epic failure at this)

Total number of books I've read - (*cough*)

Books - [Guess what I'm still READING] Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot (my opinion of the main character has gone down a bit...)

Pages in - 201 pages. So near to 100 read and yet so far...

(it's the weekend in a days time, I'll get plenty of reading done them. Pwwwomisse)

18th May

Number of books I've read today - (guess)

Total number of books I've read - (*whistles*)

Books -[Still READING (don't look at me like that)] Size 12 Is Not Fat by Meg Cabot

Pages in - 212 pages. Yeah a whole 19 pages in a day ... :/

(Soooo I am not awfully good at this am I? Saturday tomorrow though :0))

19th May

Number of books I've read today - 

Total number of books I've read - 

Books - 

20th May

Number of books I've read today - 

Total number of books I've read - 

Books -