Noll's Reading Log 2017

[Athena]

I wish you both the best together and hope you're just being paranoid .

[chaliepud]

I'm sure he's just busy, maybe caught up with family Easter commitments? Hopefully you'll have a little time to read/cross stitch and you can catch up with him soon. 

 

How did you meet him? 

[Madeleine]

Things do seem to be happening pretty fast, perhaps he's having some free time, or is just busy catching up with things you've distracted him from!

[Nollaig]

On 4/13/2017 at 4:23 PM, Michelle said:

I'm quite sure you're being paranoid.  I hope it continues to go well. 

 

On 4/13/2017 at 4:24 PM, Athena said:

I wish you both the best together and hope you're just being paranoid .

 

On 4/16/2017 at 1:11 PM, chaliepud said:

I'm sure he's just busy, maybe caught up with family Easter commitments? Hopefully you'll have a little time to read/cross stitch and you can catch up with him soon. 

 

How did you meet him? 

 

On 4/16/2017 at 5:16 PM, Madeleine said:

Things do seem to be happening pretty fast, perhaps he's having some free time, or is just busy catching up with things you've distracted him from!

 

Hello ladies! I was gone over Easter to Kerry, no laptop, so haven't been on. 

 

I was in fact being paranoid, he text me a few hours later and as it turned out, even though I left him Thursday morning for work and then Kerry, he missed me/was looking forward to seeing me by Sunday evening, so I was there Sunday evening and yesterday, and just came home to my own house this morning (I took the week off work) to do a massive clothes wash as its 10 days since I spent more than five minutes here! Also tidying a bit and generally regrouping for going back to his house later! When I saw him Sunday, he kept commenting on having missed me, it was really very sweet.

 

@chaliepud, I met him on a dating app called Plenty of Fish. I've been a bit reluctant about saying that as there is still a degree of stigma around them, but when I told another friend that's where I met him she said, 'oh yeah, I actually have a friend who got engaged off that!' It's a pretty good app.

 

@Madeleine They are happening very fast - even faster than we intended, because initially we said we'd do a trial run of living together in May for a full week, and then decide in June, but realistically, I'm mostly living with him now. So yeah. Trying to be cautious but it's not really working   

 

Thanks everyone for the good wishes

[Athena]

I'm glad to hear you were just being paranoid and that all is well .

 

I understand you were reluctant to say you met him through a dating app, there is indeed a bit of a stigma. I believe dating apps and dating websites can work. I get a bit how you feel though, sometimes I'm reluctant to tell people I don't know very well, that I met my boyfriend 13 years ago on a forum for modding games. There are definitely success stories out there and I wish you both the very best together .

[chaliepud]

I've met a fair few people that have met their partners on dating websites, I think it is just a modern way of meeting new people..look at all of us on here, ok, not many of us have met up but I'm sure we would if we lived closer. I'm glad you are happy and enjoying spending time with him, relationships always come with a degree of anxiousness, Steve and I have been together 20 years this years and we stil have our moments  - all his fault of course! 

[Raven]

4 hours ago, chaliepud said:

look at all of us on here

 

iNtERneT pEoPLe aRe WeiRd...

[frankie]

I know people who've met their significant others online - either on a dating website or something else. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, although I do know where you're coming from, what with the stigma. 

 

The main thing is you've found someone you're obviously keen on and who you seem to be comfortable with and vice versa.  And that's pretty awesome! 

Edited April 21, 2017 by frankie
typos are not my friend

[Little Pixie]

Aw, congrats Noll.

[Nollaig]

On 18/04/2017 at 10:49 AM, Athena said:

I'm glad to hear you were just being paranoid and that all is well .

 

I understand you were reluctant to say you met him through a dating app, there is indeed a bit of a stigma. I believe dating apps and dating websites can work. I get a bit how you feel though, sometimes I'm reluctant to tell people I don't know very well, that I met my boyfriend 13 years ago on a forum for modding games. There are definitely success stories out there and I wish you both the very best together .

 

13 years ago, the stigma would have been much, much more strong. It's only in the last 5 or so years here, since the advent of things like Tinder really, and 'casual use' mobile dating apps, that meeting partners via dating sites has become more widely accepted. But as you say, there are tons of success stories out there, just look at you and Michael!

 

On 18/04/2017 at 5:15 PM, chaliepud said:

I've met a fair few people that have met their partners on dating websites, I think it is just a modern way of meeting new people..look at all of us on here, ok, not many of us have met up but I'm sure we would if we lived closer. I'm glad you are happy and enjoying spending time with him, relationships always come with a degree of anxiousness, Steve and I have been together 20 years this years and we stil have our moments  - all his fault of course! 

 

I completely agree, and honestly I've been making friends/meeting friends off the internet all of my adult life. I'd definitely love to meet a load of you, if I wasn't so far away. I'd still like to do a little trip round the UK at some point and stop off to meet some BCFers on the way.

 

On 18/04/2017 at 10:03 PM, Raven said:

 

iNtERneT pEoPLe aRe WeiRd...

 

They certainly can be!

 

On 21/04/2017 at 8:36 PM, frankie said:

I know people who've met their significant others online - either on a dating website or something else. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, although I do know where you're coming from, what with the stigma. 

 

The main thing is you've found someone you're obviously keen on and who you seem to be comfortable with and vice versa.  And that's pretty awesome! 

 

Yup, you're absolutely right, and I'm very grateful

 

On 22/04/2017 at 6:50 PM, Little Pixie said:

Aw, congrats Noll.

 

Thanks

 

Still pretty much all smooth sailing with me on the boy front, so I won't keep nattering on about it. So - I've actually finished a book, for the first time in a month!

 

The Roanoke Girls - as I started it a month ago and most of the book is faint in my memory, I probably won't review it properly. I enjoyed it though - I think maybe it was a little thin - it really just had a main plot and despite involving several generations of the family, dedicated very little time to anyone other than the main two girls, Allegra and Lane. It felt a bit like a YA novel in the way it was written, even though the contents weren't. It was an interesting idea with some excellent writing, but I think a little confused in its execution/target audience.

 

I'm currently reading The People At Number 9 by Felicity Everett. It's.... odd. But readable. Bought myself another few books on Amazon as it's payday, so hoping to do a lot of reading this week.

 

 

[frankie]

6 hours ago, Nollaig said:

I completely agree, and honestly I've been making friends/meeting friends off the internet all of my adult life. I'd definitely love to meet a load of you, if I wasn't so far away. I'd still like to do a little trip round the UK at some point and stop off to meet some BCFers on the way.

 

 

I'm the same, I've made many friends online. I never really made any friends at the uni, except for one, but we became real friends after she'd graduated All my uni-time friends I made on IRC or somewhere else. 

 

I can definitely relate re: living far away from the UK and not being able to meet everyone just like that, as some others have done. It's a pain, but some day...    

[Athena]

I've made some friends online too, I love having online friends . I love that online you can think a while about what you're going to say, whereas in a real life conversation / situation you have to respond straight away. When I'm sending a message to someone I can think about how to respond to their message, what I want to say, how I want to say it, and whether it could possibly be interpreted in a different way than I intended (this happens).

 

For me, having an online friend is a lot easier than having a friend who wants to come over every weekend (some people want to do that, that I've known when I was younger). Being around most people really tires me, but because my friends live in different countries, it's kind of a given they don't show up every weekend (though sometimes I wish I saw them a bit more often than never ; I've only met Anna Begins, once, I'd like to meet her again some day though). People find it hard to understand that spending a lot of time with them very often, is very tiring for me, and that I don't have the energy to meet up with friends very often. I'm quite close with my family, and when I see them for birthdays I take care not to spend too long with them. They understand that and are fine with it. When I meet someone new, well, some people don't understand how my autism affects me and the way I experience things. They can perhaps imagine a little bit that other people tire me, but certainly not them?! It takes a special person to understand me, I really believe that. I'm lucky there are so many nice people here on BCF .

[Nollaig]

@Athena I totally understand what you mean - I am very introverted, and being around people drains me. I need space and time to myself, always have, so online friends have always appealed to me too. I'm lucky to have a few people in real life who understand how I am and can deal with it, but this forum in particular is a great refuge for me when I want to talk online.

[Nollaig]

I've really gotten back on track with my reading since my last bookish update, which I'm very happy about.

 

I've read:

The People at Number 9 - Felicity Everett (2/5)

Tattletale - Sarah J. Naughton (4/5)

Annihilation - Jeff Vandermeer (3/5)

 

And I'm currently reading:

Good as Gone - Amy Gentry

 

I haven't reviewed in ages, but must try cobble together something.

[Nollaig]

Just for you @Michelle Most reviews of this books are very mixed on Goodreads, I'm definitely in the minority!

 

Annhilation - Jeff VanderMeer

 

Genre: Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Mystery
Synopsis: Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer. This is the twelfth expedition. They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

*** 

Review: I seem to have had a lot more patience with this book than other readers have. While it is definitely flawed and I can understand the mixed reviews this book is getting, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The only way I can think to explain how I felt reading it is this: I was dumped into this fantastic, possibly otherworldly environment named Area X which is genuinely fascinating, and forced to wear blinkers while observing it. The blinkers, in the story, are the immensely dull narrator. I constantly felt like if the narrative could just break free of her inanity that there is actually an amazing world to be explored.

That said, I didn't find the retrospective insights into the narrator's life as dull as some reviews have described them, but they were very long-winded. For the most part, she recounts her past experiences in order to relate them to her experience of Area X, but the reality is she could really shorten these reflections and still make an adequate comparison. There was simply no heart in the narrator or in her memories of her husband, nothing for the reader to connect with emotionally. I frequently pictured her just stopping dead in Area X, with a glazed look in her eyes, while she spent fifteen minutes reminiscing about tadpoles, before continuing on her merry way.

There's definitely a lot of creativity in this book, and right up to the very end I was absolutely enthralled by Area X and wanting to know its secrets. Because of this, I'm going to chance reading the other two books.

All in all, I can see why this book gets mixed reviews, but for some people - myself included - sheer fascination with Area X is enough to overlook the flaws.

 

Rating: 3/5

[Athena]

It's nice to read another Noll review again . You have a way with words.

[Michelle]

1 hour ago, Nollaig said:

I frequently pictured her just stopping dead in Area X, with a glazed look in her eyes, while she spent fifteen minutes reminiscing about tadpoles, before continuing on her merry way.

I love this line!  It is a difficult one, and I think you sum it up well. I'm also interested in the next two books, but have a few more other ones to get to first.

[Nollaig]

16 minutes ago, Athena said:

It's nice to read another Noll review again . You have a way with words.

 

Thanks Gaia, I appreciate that

 

2 minutes ago, Michelle said:

I love this line!  It is a difficult one, and I think you sum it up well. I'm also interested in the next two books, but have a few more other ones to get to first.

 

Hehehe it's a funny mental image! I kind of feel about the book the same way another reviewer I know on Goodreads does - and she absolutely loved how the third book wraps up, so for that reason particularly I'm gonna plough through them soon. Taking a slight detour down Thriller lane before that, but I won't leave it too long. Apparently book 2 has a very different feel to it!

[Nollaig]

Short review time!

 

28. Girl Number One - Jane Holland 2/5

 

The premise for Girl Number One was pretty awesome - woman whose mother was murdered in the woods in front of her encounters, as an adult, another dead body in the forest with the number 2 on her forehead. The body is removed before police arrive, and the reliability of the narrator is questioned. The book continues to be pretty good for a while, and remains readable right up to the end, but long before the end loses all credibility. The villain has a very flimsy motive, and overall the bad outweighs the good of this book. Wouldn't really recommend it, which is a shame, because it did start off brilliantly.

 

29. Lock The Door - Jane Holland 3/5

 

I decided to give this one a go on the grounds that it also had an intriguing premise, and that Girl Number One had enough good qualities to warrant another chance for the author. Lock The Door was definitely better - I found the writing to be better throughout, although it definitely suffered some of the same issues as Girl Number One. Essentially, I think Lock The Door held itself together for longer than Girl Number One, providing a more credible story for longers, before crashing at the end with an even more outlandish ending than the other book. The ending really was pretty bizzare - I was giving my partner updates as I read it (because I kept gasping and he kept asking "what") and he thought it was hilarious how outlandish the ending was. That said, the narrator this time - also unreliable - was more convincing, I felt. While I couldn't really relate to her (I don't even really like kids, let alone being able to imagine the horror of losing my own one) - I could understand her 'madness' and random outbursts. Her husband, however, was a pretty thin character. His actions and his words really didn't line up at all. All in all, an improvement on Girl Number One, but still very flawed.

 

30. Ararat - Christopher Golden 3/5

 

I read this to give myself a break from thrillers as I felt I needed something a little different. There are a few premises and situations I love in books - and cold bleak desolation with an unknown horror is one of them. For this reason, I loved Michelle Paver's two novels, set in the Arctic and up a mountain. Actually, I also love unknown horrors in hot humid jungles, like undiscovered cannibal tribes. Any unknown horror in any inescapable place, really, is cool with me. So I had high hopes for Ararat, a story about the discovery of 'Noah's Ark', or some such giant ship somehow buried up a mountain thousands of years ago. There is an unknown horror inside the ship, which is also population by a Muslim and Jewish exploration duo, an archaeologist, a dude sent from DARPA, a Catholic priest, some natives of the mountain and a few others. This book should have been scary, but it was not. Very little even really happened in it - it's not that long a book, but I still have no idea how Golden filled the pages. The characters weren't overly interesting, the 'horror' was dull and underdeveloped, and the only real action happens near the very end of the book. In fact, the action ramps way up and is incredibly over-the-top, as if this somehow makes up for the earlier dullness of the book. No solid explanation or outcome for the horror is ever really given, and I didn't care what happened to the characters, until the really dumb epilogue which made me want to smack Golden with his own book. All in all, I'm not sure why I didn't give this book a 2.

 

New rating: 2/5

 

31. Sometimes I Lie - Alice Feeney 3/5

 

I had high hopes for this one - it got great reviews and started off well. Ah sure, don't all thrillers start off well. To be fair, it kept my attention better throughout than any of the three previous books did. It is told from the perspective of a woman in a coma in the present day, her days leading up to the accident that put her in a coma, and diary entries from 25 years earlier. The way the three time periods tie together is actually very well done, revelations of the past or realisations of present day naturally feed into story progression in other time periods, and the twist really got me. Yes, there's a twist, it's written all over the book. Actually, to be fair, there's more than one twist. The book is so twisty that it A) becomes (typically) unblieveable in the end and also B) left me with zero clue what the end result actually was. Very good writing, very well put together, but it all just got a bit much in the end. Still, I'd probably recommend this one the most out of these four reads.

[Athena]

Shame none of the four reads were really great for you Noll. It's nice to read some Noll reviews again though !

 

I hope your next reads will be a bit more enjoyable.

[Madeleine]

I find that happens so often with thrillers - they start off really well, keep you gripped - and  then fall apart in the last few pages (or minutes if it's a TV programme or film).  They never seem to know how to finish things do they?  Shame to feel let down after you've gone along with it.

[Nollaig]

It's been a month since I posted in here! Tut tut. I have read a few books since then, I'm up to 37 books now and I have had a couple of 4 star thriller reads, so I must write up my reviews on those

 

I've been doing quite a bit of gaming and cross-stitch lately, as well as working on my medical admin course, so while I am getting reading done, I'm not devouring them.

 

I had a proper chat with my partner's mum for the first time, this weekend just gone. Partner loves springing his parents on me. He was up in Mayo with them and other family for a couple days, and he rang me Friday night to say hello, then put his mam on the phone. He had told her I was nervous about meeting her later in the year (as the one time I saw both parents on a Skype chat, the dad was chatty with me but the mam said nothing). So she wanted to put me at ease with a quick chat. She did seem lovely to be fair

 

Also, partner met my mum last week - mum stayed with us to come with me to see Elton John. Partner was nervous, but it went about as well as can be expected - few awkward silences but decent conversation too.

[Athena]

I'm glad your reading is going allright .

What kind of games have you been playing, if you feel like sharing? Are you still working on the Zelda cross-stitch?

 

I'm glad your partner's mum seems lovely and that things are going well with meeting each other's families etc .

[Nollaig]

I recently played Uncharted (I've never really had access to a PS3 or PS4, so a lot of older games are firsts for me!) and really enjoyed it. It wasn't without flaws, but I'll happily play the rest in the series. Partner recently finished the most recent one (four, I think?) and said it was fantastic.

 

At the moment I'm playing Beyond: Two Souls, which is the game with Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe in it. It has some serious pacing issues and I'm not mad about the quick time events, but it's worth a play. It's made by the same crowd who did Heavy Rain, so I'll probably check that one out next as we got the two in a boxset.

 

Steam apparently also has 12 games on my wishlist on sale, so I may get a few of those at the weekend after I get paid Friday

 

And yes, my cross-stitch is still the Zelda one. Will be working on it for a few months yet! I'll take an updated picture this evening, I've gotten a bit more done since my last monthly update on Facebook, and tons more since my last update on here which was ages ago

[Athena]

Nice . Uncharted 4 was the most recent one, I saw my boyfriend play it a few months ago.

 

I own Heavy Rain, but someone spoiled a large plot twist for me so I don't know if I still want to play it some day or not.

 

It's the Steam Summer Sale, there are lots of titles on sale . I've not bought anything the past two years (though it could still change), but a few years ago I used to buy a lot of games during their summer sales, as they usually have very good prices for things.

 

I'd love to see an updated picture of the Zelda cross-stitch !