Athena

x Haha, do I sound that young? I have a lot of old video tapes, mainly recordings from TV (I used to record my favourite shows). I've put them all at the attic (I bought DVDs of some of my favourite shows, if available). x x Thanks . x x That's up to you. I wouldn't mind seeing some photos of your book shelves at some point (there's a thread for it in the General Chat section). x x I love Terry Pratchett! I own most of the books he's written, I think I've read about half. A Discovery of Witches is on my TBR, I'm waiting for Shadow of Night to be released in stock in paperback in the same size as the other one (not sure if it'll happen ><). I may wait until I have all three books before I read them (I prefer to wait until I have the whole trilogy generally). My brother and his girlfriend both really like this author, I bought the first book based upon their recommendations (and the synopsis sounded good of course, if it doesn't then..). x x That's fine, that makes sense . Mine aren't overly long either, usually just a few lines with thoughts on the book. It depends on the book, some books I feel I can say more things about than others, and sometimes I'm more motivated to write or think about it more than other times.

I have The Moonstone and an omnibus of Edgar Allen Poe's work on my shelf, I'm glad to hear you liked them .

This is a very well written review! I've put the book on my wishlist, even if it wouldn't be something I'd normally pick up.

I've heard many good things about this series, I'm glad to hear you liked it ! I've put the first book of the series on my wishlist.

I've heard of some of these and not of others. I own the Oscar Wilde book, though I haven't read it yet (it's part of a big omnibus, I think it's in there at least). Did you like it? What did you think of Cloud Atlas?

@ muggle Congrats to your granddaughter ! @ pontalba Wow, that sounds very scary! I'm glad you're both okay (I hope) .

x Sounds good!

Nice review ! I'm glad to hear you liked it. I agree with your review, I also felt the ending was a bit abrupt and I loved the character of Sugar. I like William Rackham at the beginning but less so towards the end.

I generally don't have a reading list, I normally pick which book I feel like. However, every once in a while, I'll feel like reading several books so I make a little pile, which I then may or may not stick to (ie. someone on this forum mentions a book I own and then I really want to read it). For the read-a-thon we just had, I did make a pile because I felt I'd spend too much time otherwise trying to pick a book. So instead I picked a few books and then chose between those. I understand you're scared to look! Good luck on getting your TBR down, I hope there's some nice books in there ! I haven't done a recent count of my TBR, however I do know that it's probably over 1000, if not quite a bit more (this includes books I've read in Dutch but not the English version yet and quite a few free e-books I downloaded for my Kindle (when I just had my Kindle I went a bit mad with downloading free ebooks because I was excited to have found some books for on my Kindle, a lot of them might not be good or interesting at all.) I do own a lot of unread paper books). I hope this doesn't make me too bad a person. I couldn't stand the thought of not having anything to read, what I love is having a book on my shelf for a while so I can look forward to reading it and fantasise about what'll happen in the story. I realise I don't need this big a TBR for that but.. yeah. I plan to tackle my book buying 'addiction' after I'm done with university. Money might get tighter in a little while too so that'll not help at all. I have already tackled my game buying 'addiction', I've hardly bought any games the past year (to be honest I didn't play many because I'm so tired all the time) so that's excellent! I don't have a big dvd/Blu-ray buying 'addiction' though sometimes I see some things cheap and really want to get them (and then I'll buy quite a few things at any one time). This too will have to be tackled (I have to admit, sometimes I also do like shopping for clothes and food..). Along with losing weight (I gained weight because of medication), toning down my stress levels, anxiety, OCD-ish things and learning to cook more things, I'll have quite a few things to work on (I also plan on reading more from TBR)! Sorry if that was a bit rambly! Please, feel free to tell me/us more about yourself, this is your reading list after all! Do you plan to write reviews / thoughts on the books you read? Anything on your wishlist? Do you have favourite authors, books or series? I'm glad Steve introduced you to this forum (he did, didn't he? Otherwise what I'm saying makes no sense).

Nice to read your review! I might go see this when it's out here (it's not out yet).

The past few days I've been drinking water instead of orange juice (I hardly drink anything else, other than at breakfast time and on rare occasion hot chocolate, in the winter), to try and lose weight and be healthier. I've already lost quite a bit of weight! So far it's going quite well, I don't know if I'll keep it up though. I have to admit, the first few days I felt lightheaded and weak because my blood sugar level had dropped quite suddenly (because I wasn't drinking any orange juice in the day). I had a glass of orange juice on some days (one glass) to fix the problem. The past two days I haven't felt the weakness so that's good, I think my body is getting used to it. I will have to watch my vitamin C levels in a bit though, since most of my vitamin C came from orange juice (I think). My mum said if I drink some orange juice now and then it should be okay (she's a doctor so she generally knows about these things). I hope I can keep this up for a while, I should lose quite a bit of weight! Once I'm done with university, I plan to do some more exercise. Already I'm walking (at a relative fast pace) with the dog quite a lot (though that may lessen in a little while), that helps too.

Your exams sound very confusing, so many different levels of exams you have to take.. . We just have primary school (4-12) and secondary school (12-16/17/18 depending on level). Secondary school has many tests throughout the years, and the final exams in the higher years (before the final exams at the end of the last year, there are big exams now and then that also count for your grade).

That's excellent ! I've never before counted how many books I've read in a year (until I joined GoodReads last year somewhere), so far in this year I've read 55 (that includes quite a few short books, though also some bigger ones; ideally you'd count amount of words read, rather than pages or books. But we don't know how many words are in each book so XD). Good luck with making 100 would be great if you make it! What will you read in the next while, do you have a TBR plan or do you normally decide it on a per-book-basis? Dare I ask how big your TBR is? I'm curious . (I know mine is pretty big ).

Sounds like you both have been busy! My mum and I bought some plants and have planted them. I've had a headache for most of the day and woke up early this morning with a bad hayfever. So not a great day so far, but I took a paracetamol and my headache has been doing better since. I'm enjoying relaxing even though I'm still somewhat stressed because of university (which shouldn't happen in the weekends but it's been that way lately, no rest for the wicked etc (I'm not even sure what that expression means XD)).

I'm thinking of getting a 3DS in a few months (when Pokémon X and Y will be out). I might have to look into AC:NL, any other 3DS (or DS) games that anyone recommends? I should point out I don't like to play first person shooters these days, nor am I really into action-adventure (I do like to watch other people play these games, ie. my boyfriend). I'm more into "easier" games (if I fail a few times I'm likely to give up on the game, as it's too frustrating to redo too much progress, I have enough stress and tiredness in my life as it is). Role-playing games (RPGs) and tower defense games (TDs) are my favourite genre. For the DS I own some puzzle games, RPGs and Mario games. I'm not overly keen on the 3D and would prefer games that can be played with the 3D off, since it gives me a headache if I use it for a bit (and playing a game is already pretty tiring as it is so..). I'm looking forward to play a new Pokémon game, I'm quite far into Pokémon Sapphire now so it shouldn't be a lot of time playing anymore before that's done (well, before the story is done, I could go and try to collect more Pokémon but I've got a lot of the easy and slightly harder ones already). I've heard good things about The Last of Us (though mainly from people I don't know personally, ie. from websites), I hope you enjoy it, Steve .

x Yes! I've read one other book that was a bit like it, in the sense that it's about a person reading books, talking about their life and what influence the book had. The one I'm talking about is Nina Sankovitch - Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, it's about a woman whose sister dies (I believe of cancer), her sister loved to read so she decides to read a lot of books for one year, to try and come to terms with her grief. I quite liked it (and put some more books on the wishlist XD). I do own a few more books about people who read books, but I haven't read those yet (they are on my soon-to-be-read pile atm). I'm currently 665 pages into A Game of Thrones, progress isn't as fast as I'd like it to be, because I've been tired. Also, does anyone else ever have that with certain books (depending on their size) you start to read less as you get closer to the end and more in the middle, because of how easy or not easy it is to hold? Or is that just me ?

I haven't really noticed anything weird about your reviews, to me they were just as readable as any other person's reviews here . It's not nice though that it's hard for you . I can imagine it somewhat, when I just started on my current medication, I had huge memory problems. I tried to read a book but I couldn't remember anything of I read 10 mins ago. Thus I couldn't read any novels, I decided to read short stories of 5-10 pages instead (and forgot them after I finished them). It really frustrated me that I had these problems (a side effect of starting the medication I presume, though the doctor didn't say anything about it beforehand, I reason that is the explanation), especially since normally I have a pretty good memory. It must be very frustrating for you . I love reading your reviews so please know your efforts are appreciated! Isn't reading A Game of Thrones very difficult for you? I have a bit of trouble keeping up with all the names now and then.

You've read a lot so far ! I haven't read any of the books from your list I'm afraid, though I recognise a few authors.

It's nice to hear from you, julie . Sorry to hear you haven't had much chance to read lately. I hope things get better for you in the future.

I haven't read either Animal Farm or 1984. They've been on my wishlist for a while but so far I can only find them at somewhat expensive prices so I haven't picked them up yet. I would like to do so at some point though, and read them.

Nice review, I'm glad to hear you liked it! I own it but haven't read it yet, really ought to get on with reading it .

Yesterday I watched Hope Springs, I hadn't actually heard a lot about this film, but read the synopsis in the Film1 TV guide and it sounded good so we all watched it. It features Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones and Steve Carell. It's about a couple (Streep and Jones) who've been married for 30+ years but whose marriage isn't doing well. To try and fix it, they go into intensive relationship therapy for a week, with a famous therapist (Carell). The film was nice, I thought the actors were doing a great job! I really like Steve Carell and Meryl Streep (I don't know Tommy Lee Jones that well, I haven't seen him that often before that I remember), they both played their parts so well (I especially liked Carell, he was very convincing as a therapist!). This film is a romantic comedy.

x I just looked up the synopsis of this one, I look forward to hear what you think of it after you've read it.

I've read about 550 pages of George R. R. Martin - A Song of Ice and Fire 1: A Game of Thrones and am really enjoying the story. I'm hoping to have it finished in a few days (if I spend some time reading, I should be able to do it).

Welcome here !