Athena

I haven't done a lot of reading since my boyfriend arrived. I've been spending a lot of time with him instead (and also working for uni of course). The next book I'm going to read (in paper format) will probably be The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. I'm hoping to do some reading soon, but to be honest I'm having fun catching up with my boyfriend since we hadn't seen each other in a while.

I don't know yet if I'll be participating next time. It's the weekend before my big presentation so I'm just going to do what I feel helps a lot against being stressed (and of course practise the presentation). I don't know if that'll be reading, since when I'm very stressed reading doesn't always help to be honest. I haven't read a lot in the past few days, so I am looking forward to doing some reading, but I have to see how things go really.

I sometimes feel dumb when talking while I'm stressed (to people I don't know well), however writing is a lot easier for me since I have some time to think about it. Then I usually can filter out all the mistakes and silly things I would've said. I have said some really silly things, when stressed and tired . It must be frustrating for both of you .

I wish you lots of fun Devi, it sounds awesome .

That must be really exciting, Kell .

Some not very nice news here today.. 6 of our zijdehoender chicken have been killed by some kind of predator. It's really sad . There's feathers everywhere in their pen. We've found two bodies so far, it looked like they were dragged across the fence, since inside their pen there aren't any bodies (they are maybe 10? meters away from it). There don't appear to be many wounds and they weren't eaten, it seemed pretty pointless. The other bodies must be either eaten after all or dragged somewhere else in the garden, I may still find them later (our garden is big). We're having a very humid, warm day with rain and thunder storms so I don't really want to be outside atm (thunder scares me). There are also feathers somewhere else in the garden, there are some chicken from that pen missing but I'm hoping they're walking in the forest (there's a small hole in their fence so they can get out) rather than killed. I'll have another look later and see if I see anything (good or bad). These zijdehoenders were born here and have grown up here.. they were pretty tame so it's really not nice at all that we lost them, they weren't so old yet or anything (pretty young I would say). The other zijdehoenders are older, they are still all there (gladly). I've been feeling sad all morning . We're not quite sure what kind of predator it is, so far what we've thought of all treats their prey differently, ie. a fox would eat the chicken. Tonight we'll definately close the little house of the other zijdehoenders. We can't close the shed of the goats and chicken. Our dog Pamuk is still limping with her paw, so she can't chase the predator as well as she otherwise might have. She's mostly inside since she injured her leg. I'm not sure if she would chase it but it might help. The dogs did bark yesterday evening, around 9ish, I went to them but didn't see or hear anything. It's likely that they did hear something. I should've let them outside perhaps (if they had wanted that). All in all I feel pretty sad about it.. the poor chicken . EDIT: I've found two more bodies, one of a white chicken that was with the goats and one zijdehoender.

x Thanks ! x x I agree. x x This is excellent news! x x That's all good to hear. And yes, it makes sense to read the books first. I plan on reading the second book not too long from now, I'm eager to see what will happen! First though I think I might read the July read, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. Thanks for your reply .

George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 1: A Game of Thrones Genre: Fantasy Format: Paperback Pages: 804 (excluding the family trees) Synopsis (GoodReads): Summers span decades. Winter can last a lifetime. And the struggle for the Iron Throne has begun. As Warden of the north, Lord Eddard Stark counts it a curse when King Robert bestows on him the office of the Hand. His honour weighs him down at court where a true man does what he will, not what he must … and a dead enemy is a thing of beauty. The old gods have no power in the south, Stark’s family is split and there is treachery at court. Worse, the vengeance-mad heir of the deposed Dragon King has grown to maturity in exile in the Free Cities. He claims the Iron Throne. My thoughts: I saw season one of the TV series before I read this book (I haven't seen season two yet, because I want to read the book first). While I like the TV series, I believe the book is better! (as is usually the case for me, tbh) This book was really good. I admit, it's taken some time for me to read, I read some other books in between (such as for the read-a-thon) but all the while it was quite interesting, particularly the second half of the book. The writing is quite good. The book is told from several points of view, each chapter is seen from a different character. I liked a lot of the characters, though there were a few I couldn't stand. In the case of some, this is maybe meant to be as they're not exactly nice people (which is why I don't like them, they're very evil). The plot twists were quite good. I enjoyed reading it all even though I knew what would happen through the TV series. There isn't as much violence as nudity in the book as there is in the TV series, and I really appreciate this. I was able to read the book fine for the most part, without too much cringing (like I did with the TV series) (it might have helped slightly that I knew what was going to happen). It does make me a bit mad, in my opinion it wasn't neccessary to add the violence and nudity into it (the parts that weren't in the book I mean), to me it seems it's done for spectacle's sake, to get more viewers. Anyway.. I plan to read the next book before I watch the next season, I think that'd be better. However if my boyfriend really wants to see it or my reading is going very slow, we may watch season two first anyway. I've heard season three is a mixture of books three, four and five so that'll be more awkward, though the Blu-ray isn't out yet so it'll be a while until I can see it anyway (the regular TV channels here haven't even broadcast season two yet if I'm correct, HBO might have though but not RTL4 where I watched season one on). Normally I don't like starting a book series if it's not finished yet nor will be finished soon, but in this case I had already started watching the TV show so I figured I might as well read the book(s) too. This book had been on my shelf for more than four years, so quite a bit of time (though I have books that have been on the shelf longer than that). Rating: ***** (5/5)

We haven't talked much about it yet, though there is a seperate topic for I think the PS4. Here's some thoughts / a rant on the Xbox One (and PS4 a bit too): (warning, a long post ) Well for me personally, if I have the option to buy a game new I'll generally buy the new game rather than a used one (unless the price difference would be like 90%). I would rather my money go to the creators of the game rather than a shop. If the game isn't available new, ie. a ten-year-old game then I'd buy it used. (I hardly play any games these days but.. I'd hope I'd still be qualified as gamer). So while it may not bother me a lot that you can't use used games (still a bit though) on the Xbox One, I think it's a bad decision and the consumer will be limited in it. The whole thing of having to check-in every 24 hours with Microsoft, is ridiculous. I don't know how it works if you don't check in, what if there happen to be days where I don't play the game at all (ie. a lot of the time)? Does that count? I think with that in place I'd just feel as if I'm being treated as a criminal beforehand (though this isn't different from what some PC games do, ie. Starcraft II) and I don't like that. I'm absolutely against piracy (I feel quite strongly about this subject) and I don't like to be treated as if I can't be trusted. Admittedly some PC games do this too and I never like it. When my internet connection isn't good, which happens now and then where we live, rural, with a low connection speed, or several people are using it, I don't want to have to be online to play a game. If my parents are using the internet to work then I can't play a game that requires online because it lags their work. Our internet connection isn't so fast so it can't do all these things at once without slowing down. Btw, I don't mean to sound ungrateful about my internet connection. 10 years ago, everyone had cable or ADSL and we had dial-up. I'm already very glad I can do most of the daily things ! Several single player games that require an always on connection I've not played because of this. An example is Diablo 3. I was interested in the game, but there were a lot of server issues. I don't think I'd even want it as a gift now, I'm just not willing to put up with the online restrictions. I did play the demo and it was laggy and when I wanted to pause it I wasn't able to. ie. I need to go to the bathroom and then when you exit and reload you have to play the whole bit over again. Anyway.. I don't like that Microsoft forces you to be online every 24 hours. I only play single-player games (co-op on occasion) so I don't want to have to check in online. Sometimes I put up with it on the PC, because I really want to play the game, ie. Starcraft II, however sometimes I do not. When I want to play the game and the internet isn't working, it won't work and then generally what happens is that I don't play the game anymore if it happens too often. I don't like Microsoft's focus on things that have nothing to do with gaming. For me a game console is a game console. Our internet is too slow to watch films with, we don't have Netflix or anything here anyway yet, I think?, anyway it'd be too slow even if we did have it. For me a games console is a games console, I don't really need most of the other features. Of course, if in the future I move and the internet will be quicker, then I might be inclined to change my mind in some way. I generally don't watch a lot of TV anyway, if I watch things it's usually a DVD or Blu-ray. I believe in supporting the shows and films I really like. I'm also not comfortable with having Kinect on all the time. I don't like Kinect anyway period, I much prefer a controller over the whole wave your hands in the air approach. Admittedly I haven't actually ever used Kinect, I've never owned a Microsoft system though I've played on my boyfriends' Xbox360 (he doesn't have Kinect). I don't like the idea of having a camera being always on me or the possibility that I could be recorded. These things don't need to be in my single player games. One of the reasons I like to play games is to escape. That means I don't want to be confronted with my picture, my voice, a video of me or whatever. I didn't like the Social Media focus of neither Sony nor Microsoft, I don't want to share stuff with people so when it comes to it, I'll not link facebook, twitter, youtube, whatever, so even if I accidentally click on it, not much will happen. Backwards compatibility, I get why the console manufacturers (except Nintendo) would choose not to include it, since it'll cost money to do so, however I do find it a shame. It'll be very awkward if you have to have all these different consoles under your TV. There aren't many games I'll go out and buy just after they're released, often I like to wait a bit for the price to come down and for some reviews to be available (I don't always play them straight after I bought them either). Sometimes I don't play a game until a few years later, so this isn't very convenient for me. The console manufacturers might add the ability later perhaps, but I don't doubt that they'll likely make you want to pay for the game again and download it. I'm not comfortable with digital downloads on consoles (ie. you can only download 5 times before you have to buy it again), so I don't think I'd buy the game again, I'll most likely not bother with the whole thing and just go do something else (play another game or read a book). I should point out, I used to play quite a few games quite a few years ago and I used to follow many game news sites and I had subscriptions to game magazines (I was also on some gaming forums). Then slowly they started to tire me too much and playing got harder and harder. These days I don't like the direction in which the game industry is heading. There aren't many games coming out that I think I'd like to play, or that I think are worth putting up with the pain for. The kind of games I like aren't made much anymore. On the PC a lot of the games I bought two years ago were indie games rather than AAA-titles. The past year I've tried not to buy many games, because I was buying a lot and not able to play much. So I restricted myself and only bought what I felt I really wanted to buy and would be worth playing, I struggle to think of any games I've bought the past year. So, I've changed and the games industry has too. I don't miss gaming that much really, I've always liked reading more. Though I do like to watch certain games being played and their story, I find the gameplay interests me less and less, because it's so tiring (there are a few exceptions). I do like to watch my boyfriend play certain games. I do plan on playing Pokémon X, I've agreed with my boyfriend that if it does come out around my birthday ish then he'll buy it for me as a gift (and I'll buy the 3DS to play it). Pokémon RPGs (main ones) are nice and easy to play, I enjoy them and they don't tire me so much. Maybe once I'm graduated and rested I can try to play more games. I'd love to play some more Skyrim for example. I don't know, maybe. I don't know if this was interesting to anyone , but I hope at least one of you didn't mind reading all my rambling . This could well be the longest posts (words wise) I've ever made on this forum (not counting the lists of books read this year etc.) tl;dr I think the Xbox One has some bad features and much prefer the PlayStation 4.

Awww, I didn't know one of your dogs has elbow displacia. One of our dogs had that too, well, hip and elbow displacia I think (if that's possible). As she got older she started to have more and more trouble walking. In the end she just laid down a lot. We had to put her to sleep, it was really sad, she was in so much pain. We did have pills for it and they helped a bit for a while but the pain kept getting worse. She did become seven, normally dogs her breed become about ten years old. Dogs with this affliction sometimes need to be put to sleep much earlier, she held out quite a long time. I hope you have fun with your new dog, I look forward to see some pictures. It should be good for her to have obedience training etc., she'll probably like to do a lot of exercise. Have fun .

Welcome here! I'm not a big fan of thrillers anymore but I love fantasy. I hope you like it here !

I've heard that the PS4 will have a lot of nice features (and some I'm less pleased with), compared with the new Xbox (is it called Xbox One? Or did I misunderstand that). It made me more interested in the PS4 (even though there aren't many games coming out these days that I want to play). I think my boyfriend will be getting one when the time comes. If he does, I can play on his console if there'll be games that interest me. I look forward to hear/read what you think of it when you have yours. Do you know when it'll be released? A quick Google search told me in November but I don't know if this is true or not. @ Steve I hope that it gets better later on!

That's awesome!

This sounds awesome !! It's so nice she let you go through all the boxes and gave you a discount too! I'm glad you had fun .

x I agree! My cover looks like that too, it's quite pretty.

Thanks julie .

I quite like to cook (when I'm not tired). I feel most comfortable preparing cold food, ie. various kinds of salads or top a pizza. I also know how to prepare quite a few foods in the oven or on the gas cooker (ie. pasta), however I'm more uncomfortable with this because I'm afraid to get burned and you have to pay more attention within a faster time period. I can also make some cakes and pastries however I haven't done so a lot on my own, usually I do this with someone else and we prepare things together (this happens with dinner sometimes too, and then I prepare the cold salad for example). I also make ie. herb butter for on stickbread or Turkish bread, I've done that quite often, among many other things.. I cook quite a lot on my own lately. I plan to do more cooking, try out more new recipes and new things, when I'm done with university. I have some cookbooks that I'd like to flick through and make things out of as well as there is the internet, there's a pretty good Dutch site that has nice recipes that I use now and then. I'm not good with cooking things I don't like myself. I tend to not want to learn how it's done if I think I won't like it or if I don't like one of the main ingredients (does that make sense?). Maybe it doesn't make sense, in the case of most things you cook, ie. fish I can say that if I cook it I'll have to smell that awful fish smell (which I really don't like), however I don't have a big reason for some other things that stay cold. I'm just not as interested in a recipe if it's something I think I won't like.

x Thanks, I didn't know you didn't like it that much. I hope to enjoy it, will let you know what I think. I love all of her books that I've read so far, I'll be sure to post a review / some thoughts on it when I've read it. x x I haven't read those, however I'm putting them on the wishlist now! They sound quite good . x x Thank you! We've been together for more than five years and have known each other for over nine years. x x Thanks . I suppose I could edit the post on page one to include a list of all my books, would anyone like to see that? If I do it alphabetically it'll be harder to add on later but if I do it chronologically (the start of the list isn't chronologically) it'll be harder for people to find stuff. What do you think? Not entirely related topic: I used to have a blog (well, I still have it I presume, but I haven't posted much on it lately), I liked to blog but even though I posted links on facebook, at the time not many people actually looked. I'd get maybe 3 hits on a post. So I kind of felt like, why blog, I might as well write in a diary. However I might like to blog again as I do like to write (as I do here, which I love too), what do you think? Since books are important to me, some of my posts would be about books. However I'm not sure if that many people would be interested, especially since I could just post a facebook status update (which I'm not sure if they're read much either, really. Could be because some of my friends don't understand enough English?? Or I don't know..). Basically I don't know if it's worth trying again. I mean, I'd like to practise my writing in one way or another so if not a blog (obviously this'd be after I'm done with university) then maybe just on my computer in a document or in a diary. At the very least I plan to keep posting here, because I do love it here. I've also been watching book videos on YouTube and if I didn't have my condition and liked my own voice I might be tempted to do that too, especially a book shelf tour for example (however nearly all my books are double stacked so it'd take quite a while). I do love to talk or write about books (especially write). Again the problem (other than my condition, that's the biggest problem) is will anyone watch it, I don't know. Also, I don't like to feel pressured so if maybe some people were interested, I might feel pressured into something I don't feel like doing. Right now I can't really use any pressure, I'll have to see how things go when I'm finished with university. I hope to be finishing A Game of Thrones soon so I can post a review / some thoughts and start reading another book. I may read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry soon, or another book from my maybe-to-be-read-soon pile. My boyfriend should be here in a few days (yay ) so I may not do a lot of reading just after he arrives (we tend to want to talk and catch up with each other's lives, before we go and do some seperate things). It's weird, I read quite a lot during the read-a-thon, but after that my reading seemed to slow down quite a lot. I'm not really liking it! However in this stressful period, I need to do what I need to do to be less stressed so if I don't feel like reading much then I don't want to pressure myself. It's not that I don't want to read though, I do am enjoying the book. I'm not sure what it is (other than stress, I mean).

Welcome here ! What are some of your favourite authors or books? What kind of genres do you like to read? Do you read paper books or ebooks or both? Do you prefer hardcover or paperback? Okay that's enough book related questions for now . Where are you from? How old are you, what is your 'occupation'? Sorry if these are too many questions , I was just on a roll..

Nice review ! I plan to be reading it soon because it's the July Reading Circle book, it should be fun to discuss it with everybody.

That is a nice coincedence! Blaze is one of the Stephen King books I don't have, nor have I heard much about it. I hope you like it and look forward to read your thoughts once you're done .

I haven't read any other ones (I didn't know it was part of a series when I bought it, I happened to saw it for cheap in a charity shop and it sounded interesting to me). I do own two other books by Laura Lippman, one being By a Spider's Thread (according to GoodReads it's number 8 in the series, I wish they'd put that on or in the books ><) and To The Power of Three. I liked the sound of the synopsis of them, all three were found cheap (I do love a bargain heh). Btw, I bought lots more books than what's in that post, but I didn't want to list them all (I'm quite embarrassed about my shopping behaviour, even if quite a few of them were found pretty cheaply). On GoodReads you can see which books I own, though I've set it so you'd need to be my friend on the site to be able to see it. I own over 1500 books (not including children's books, I own hmm.. at least a couple of hundred more of those. I'm not sure, I've never counted them, they're in boxes). I've bought quite a lot of books this year so far.. shopping is one of my stress relieves and I've been increasingly stressed (also, this is my first year with an ereader so I've been downloading many free ebooks too). Gladly though soon most of that should be over (the stress I mean). I'm too embarrassed to post a list, it would be fairly easy to make the list, I'd just be embarrassed to post it . A few months ago I bought some new book cases (instead of one older and slightly smaller book case), when they were just up there was some space left, now most of the space has been filled up, there aren't many empty spaces left! I do love organising my book cases. I didn't know there was a film of a Maeve Binchy book, will have to look into that sometime! I haven't read any Dickens yet either, for some reason they intimidate me (as with most literature). The plan is to start with maybe Oliver Twist in the next while. I've heard lots of good things about it and I know bits of the story (even if I couldn't tell you much about it right now, I hope to remember when I read it) because I saw a children's musical of it. This book is on my to-be-read-soon pile, although I should point out it's been on that pile for two months or something at least . One of these days I'll have the courage, at least once I'm finished with university. Many people who've never been to university have read and understood Charles Dickens' work, so I should be able to I think! I'm quite far into George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 1: A Game of Thrones atm and I've also been reading bits of a book on the Kindle (which I'd rather not name in public, does that make sense? It's an information book about something that's important to me and my family). I'd love to read more of A Game of Thrones especially, since the story is quite tense, but somehow I end up doing other things instead. I'm not sure why this keeps happening. For now though what matters most is that I enjoy myself and am not too stressed nor too tired, so if browsing facebook or what not, helps me atm, then I'll do those things. I'm at page 682, only about 120ish pages left until the end. Not a lot, really. If I try, I could have that finished pretty soon. Hopefully in a few days, at latest.

Funnily enough, I think The Devil Wears Prada is one of those few cases for me where I like the film better than the book. It should be said though that I did see the film first, so that might've made a difference. I thought the book was nice but it could've been so much better. Nice review !

x Ah . I'm 27 and have been at the university for 9 years now. x x I love the books about the Witches! I don't think I've read all of them yet but I'm not sure without looking it up.

I quite like John Grisham's books, I hope you like this one! I don't think I've ever read The Associate (my parents own some of the books in Dutch and I own some in English) but it's going on the wishlist now XD.