New Website!

I finally made the plunge back to being privately hosted using Wordpress! Let's hope this host is here to stay huh?

Anyway, this post is for anyone following me on GFC to say I'm no longer blogging here and am now at:

http://digestingthewords.com/

I haven't decided if I should close this down and have it re-directing to my .com or not yet. I still have traffic coming in here so it's a bit of a problem still. We'll see I guess! :)

Now go over to my .com! ^___^

http://digestingthewords.com/
http://digestingthewords.com/
http://digestingthewords.com/

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Leaving Blogger! :)

I'm currently in the process of moving from blogger to a privately hosted blog elsewhere (which is why my domain looks like a mess right now!)

I'm going to try to get it all set up and cleaned up asap :) I might even do a giveaway since I have yet to celebrate buying my domain! Seems like a great excuse right? :P

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In My Mailbox (3) - Sunday 22nd April

"In My Mailbox" is a meme in which you post you weekly book purchases, started by thestorysiren.com.


I've only got two books this week :)

Silver Hand by Steve Finegan

Synopsis: Gabe Wrenn is unsettled by his family’s move to the creepy old house on Byrnmor Street. Even more unsettling is the prospect of being the new kid in school on Monday, and the object of everybody’s gawking stares, when all he wants is to be left alone with his sketchpad. 

But unsettled can’t begin to describe how Gabe feels when he first stands in The Woods, an old oak grove bordering the park behind his house, and a mysterious voice summons him to “The Door to the East.” It’s a epileptic hallucination for sure, and another sign that his bullying older brother Sam is right: Gabe’s nothing but a brain-damaged freak. 

This opinion is not shared by Ellie Yvonne, the impetuous girl next door. With disturbing conviction, Ellie declares that Gabe’s epilepsy makes him special. It could even be the key to unlocking the secret of the Brynmor Witch’s bramble-choked grave at the heart of The Woods. 

Into the Mist: Silver Hand is the first book in a two-part fantasy adventure story about an unlikely hero who triumphs over isolation and adversity through friendship and a strange new sense of self-confidence that results when he takes possession of a relic of unknown origins.

I was sent this by Steve Finegan to review but of course I still have exams right now, so I've yet to read this! The blurb looks awesome though right? :)

The next one is an ARC (advance reader copy):

The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell

I was happy to see the back cover had this:

Synopsis: In a hospice in Bury St Edmunds, a man called Daniel is slowly fading away. His friend Maggie sits with him listening to the story of his life. He tells her about the children he has never met and never will, conceived with women he never even touched. Four of them: two boys, two girls. His legacy, he calls them. 

Lydia, Robyn and Dean don’t know each other. Yet. They are all facing difficult challenges. Lydia wears the scars from her traumatic childhood and although she is wealthy and successful, her life is lonely and disjointed. Dean is a young man whose life is going nowhere. Robyn is training to be a doctor, just like her father – a man she’s never met. When she falls in love with a man who is like her in every way, she needs to be sure. It's time for her to open the envelope her mother gave her on her eighteenth birthday. 

I was sent this one by Cornerstone (Random House) to read and review. The book is out on May 10th and I should hopefully have the review out in time for the release!

Wishing everyone an awesome Sunday!

P.S. My 20th is in a couple of days! Eeek I won't be a teen for much longer!

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TGIF (2): Book Blogger Influences

I'm back with another TGIF post! This is a feature hosted weekly by greadsbooks.com.

This week's question:

Book Blogger Influences: Has there been a particular book blogger who's influenced what you read? Share with us a review/book blog that convinced you to pick up a certain book.

I don't think I have any book blogger influences in terms of what I read, to be exact: I don't read book reviews before buying/reading books. I know it sounds silly considering I write book reviews myself, but I prefer to read book reviews after reading a book in order to see if other people's opinions match my own. Think what you want, but I like to read books without having someone else's thoughts and opinions clouding my judgement!

On the other hand, I recently came across a blog that I absolutely fell in love with: Parajunkee's View! I absolutely love the blog owner Rachel - she's so down to earth and lovely. I had somewhat of a book blogger's life crises last week where I couldn't help but question if I really wanted to be a book blogger or not. But then I read a "Book Blogging 101" blog post and realised I wasn't alone in what I was going through and what I was thinking. I have since read all of the series to date and though I don't really look at her book reviews, I love reading her posts! I guess you could say I was influenced enough to keep at book blogging, without the fear of losing myself.

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In My Mailbox (2) - Sunday 15th April

"In My Mailbox" is a meme in which you post you weekly book purchases, started by thestorysiren.com. Personally I prefer to post this whenever I've bought more than 3 books so I don't tend to do my posts weekly.

This week I bought The Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin. The series is actually 5 books, but A Storm of Swords and A Dance with Dragons were made into two parts for this edition.

A Game of Thrones

A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords part 1

A Storm of Swords part 2 and A Feast for Crows

A Dance with Dragons part 1 & part 2

I was initially planning to go to his book event/signing in London but due to certain circumstances I was unable to attend. I also had an annoying experience with Amazon in which despite my choice of next day delivery, they arrived two days later. However, I did get them on a 2 for £7 offer so I saved a ton whilst buying them!

I also received 2 eBooks to review :)

The Brotherhood of Piaxia by Michael Drakich

Power Within by C. L. Causer

And that's it for this week! Sadly, I won't be getting to any of these until May due to exams and deadlines!

Have a lovely week everyone!

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Book of the Month: March

I skipped February's book of the month because I only managed to read one book - Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - which was anything but enjoyable.

However, my book of the month for March actually surprised me whilst I was reading it. I developed an unexpected attachment for this one - unexpected in light of the fact that I only read it because it was on my University reading list!

Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincy

In this remarkable autobiography, Thomas De Quincey hauntingly describes the surreal visions and hallucinatory nocturnal wanderings he took through London-and the nightmares, despair, and paranoia to which he became prey-under the influence of the then-legal painkiller laudanum. Forging a link between artistic self-expression and addiction, Confessions seamlessly weaves the effects of drugs and the nature of dreams, memory, and imagination. First published in 1821, it paved the way for later generations of literary drug users, from Baudelaire to Burroughs, and anticipated psychoanalysis with its insights into the subconscious.

Confessions surprised me not only because it was actually very easy to read (it was a nice break from Wordsworth/Byron/Austen, 5 points if you can guess which of my modules this is from!) but also because I found myself able to relate to Quincy during his lower moments. Not that I'm a drug addict with racist tendencies suffering from hallucinations and nightmares due to my long term consumption of opium as a means of escape.

Feeling low is something we all experience in life and it's something not a lot of people, myself included, find easy to talk about. But there's something cathartic about being able to observe the beginning, middle and ending of someone else's suffering. Reading Quincy's experience; including the reasons why he began taking opium and why he found it difficult to stop, made me realise just how easy it is to become reliant on something external to distract you from internal conflict. A modern day equivalent to Quincy's opium addiction would probably be smoking, taking drugs, drinking (alcohol) and possibly even self harm.

It's not often that I find myself relating to a character in a book - especially one written so long ago, but I think this just goes to show that literature is universal.

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2012 Reading Challenge: Progress Report 2

For some reason my introductory post to my Goodreads 2012 reading challenge has disappeared from my blog, which is pretty upsetting. I haven't noticed anything else go missing so I hope it was a one off. To re-introduce the "challenge" my aim is to read 50 books by the end of the year. I can add to this number if I reach my goal (which I'm pretty sure I'll be able to do, since it's about 4 books a month to get to 50 in a year) but I can't take away from the number otherwise I've failed! (You can actually take away but this is a personal rule I set up) It's all in efforts to get me back into reading after I realised late last year that I hadn't read much that wasn't course related.

My progress at this point in time:

According to Goodreads:

Actual books:

 4 books read in March which is progress in comparison to February, but nothing at all finished this month. It is early into February though, so there's plenty of time to read! Since I've got exams until May, it'll only be course related stuff read but hey reading is reading.

May's update should have a lot more to offer but let's just wait and see!

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In My Mailbox (1) - Sunday 8th April

I previously posted a January Book Haul including pictures of the books I'd bought recent to the time of the post. Since then, my sister has introduced me to "In My Mailbox" a meme started by thestorysiren.com. It's a pretty cool idea in which you post your recent book purchases/books you've received every Sunday.

I've got quite a collection since the January haul post, but here we go!

The Girl with the Glass Feet by Ali Shaw and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (both from Foyles)

I bought these two on a whim because I was trying to hunt down a couple of other books to go with my 3 for 2 offer at Foyles whilst buying 1984 for my sister.

I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 already and really enjoyed it! :) Within the first 12 pages I fell in love with Bradbury’s writing style; it's so poetic. Whenever I found a sentence I liked, I went back, read it again and then proceeded to hunt it down on Goodreads to "like" publicly.

I haven’t started The Girl with the Glass Feet yet since I haven’t had time. The description made it seem like an adaptation of Cinderella which tickled my fancy at the time (considering the majority of the other books on 3 for 2 were Charles Dickens in honour of his birthday!)

Bake! by Nick Malgieri (from Amazon), The Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days and Step-by-Step Baking (both were given to me as gifts by my sister).

As you can tell.. I enjoy baking! :)

Pure by Andrew Miller (from Amazon)

I bought this after reading the blurb online. I think I discovered it after it won the 2011 Costa Book of the Year. I’ve read one chapter so far (around 3 pages haha) but had to ditch it for uni books…

The Vagrants by Yiyun Li (from Waterstones)

I bought this from on sale for.. yup 99p!! I was rummaging through the sale section back in February and happened to come across this. The blurb seemed interesting so I decided to pick it up!

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (from Oxfam)

I remember eyeing this at some point in the past but never getting round to buying it. I can’t tell you how happy I was when I saw the spine staring back at me on the bookshelf at Oxfam. I was even happier when I saw the price! £1.99 for a book that looks like it’s barely been touched? YES PLEASE!

Tokyo Year Zero by David Peace (from Oxfam)

I picked this one up on a whim whilst picking up Inkheart. The reviews on the spine looked good, the blurb looked interesting and generally I was just hoping to find another good book that was super cheap. I’m not sure how good it’ll be, but for £1.99 I can cope :)

Please Look After Mother by Kyung-Sook Shin (from Amazon)

I discovered this through twitter after the author won the Man Asian Book Literary Prize (she’s the first woman winner to win!) and then read the excerpt. As soon as I started the long excerpt (which I can no longer find.. sorry) I knew I needed to buy the book, so by the time I got to the end I was already ordering it off of Amazon…

P.S. Isn’t it interesting that the American version is “Please Look After Mom” whilst the English version is written “Please Look After Mother”? Haha my inner nerd finds cultural discrepancies within the same language interesting. I wonder if the translations inside differ at all or if it was just to make the cover seem less American for us Brits...

P.P.S. If I haven’t said it already, buying books from your local charity shop is an awesome way of discovering books (or even finding old books that are no longer in print) without breaking the bank. Plus by buying from a charity shop of your choice you’re supporting an awesome cause and keeping that shop alive!

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Updates: Book Review Hiatus

As you may have realised, I have a ton of stuff to read right now so I'm extremely busy with reading. Not only that, I also have revision to do for each of these books in preparation for my exams this year. It's a lot of work and due to personal issues I'm having trouble concentrating as it is. As a result, I'm taking an offical book review hiatus until May/June once my exams are over with and I've had time to breathe and sleep off all the late nights. Reviewing takes me a pretty long time to do (a few hours) because I only review books I have a lot to say about, so it only seems natural that I stop for now.

I'm going to queue as many other posts as I can in between now and then. It seems odd that I intend to continue blogging about other things anyway, but blogging does in fact help to concentrate on my writing. I also find that it helps me to de-stress so there will be a bunch of smaller posts to come.

I originally wrote this blog post in regards to Book Review Requests and what it means for this blog but I feel like since that was aimed more towards the reader, it's time to write something aimed towards anyone requesting a review. So now this page exists which I hope potentional author's with Book Review Requests will read before emailing me as it will get updated regularly.

In slightly more positive news, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy and register DTW as a domain! Hooray for being a .com website :)

Beware the barrenness of a busy life. - Socrates

I am reasonably happy, providing I keep busy. - Burt Sancaster

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TGIF (1): Book Series Finales

TGIF (Thank God It's Friday) is a blog hop hosted by greadsbooks.com. Every week a question is posed for bloggers to answer. I think it's an awesome idea to keep my blogging regularly, so I've decided to try to answer these as often as possible!

Note: This post has some spoilers!

This week's question:

Book Series Finales: Which book, from any series has been your favorite ending? What about your least favorite ending?

I'm such a picky reader that I'm finding it difficult to think of a single book I enjoyed the ending of. I tend to hate endings because they never satisfy me so even thinking of a least favourite will be difficult! Haha.

Favourite Ending:

I haven't actually finished many series' but of the ones I can remember not hating the ending of I'd say L. J. Smith's The Secret Circle Trilogy and The Vampire Diaries (the original books that came out in the 90s, I haven't read the additional ones/the books by Ghost writers, I'm also not a fan of either show) have to be at the top. I read the books back in high school around 7 years ago so I don't have that much to say about them. I did become an obsessed fan to the extent of late night fanfiction and roleplaying!

Least Favourite Ending:

The most recent unsatisfactory book series ending for me is a slightly easier question which I can actually elaborate on! It has to be Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins; I read it in February so the bitter taste of discontent hasn't left yet. I was planning to do a whole post on this (which may still happen if I ever decide to read the series again) but here's one of my reasons:

Katniss' behaviour towards Gale and Peeta continuously irritated me throughout the series. I was never a huge Katniss fan and frankly started to hate her at the end of the first book (the train scene!!). Slowly as the books progressed I found it more and more difficult to enjoy reading about Katniss because at no point was I happy to root for her without Peeta.  Peeta, on the other hand, had my heart from the moment Katniss described the scene with the bread. The fact that Katniss repeatedly broke Peeta's heart throughout the series made me develop a slow burning fire of hatred for her. I don't hate Katniss for being confused, I hate Katniss for being selfish in love. She told Peeta she couldn't return his feelings for her, yet spent nights sleeping in his arms. I will admit, I didn't hate Gale but Katniss prevented me from loving him as much as I could have. By the last book, I wasn't unhappy that Peeta loathed her (although, I would have been happier if he had got to that stage naturally rather than through torture). Katniss spent the entire three books "confused" and unable to decide between the two boys - effectively playing with both hearts. Then at the last minute, when things went wrong with her setup she just ended up with Peeta whilst pretending it was her own decision.

Ha this became more of a rant than anything else. Sorry about that, on a more positive note: happy weekend!

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