Athena

I don't think there's something like this in my country, at least not that I know of. Book shops do do their own sales sometimes. Would be great if there was a national annual book sale, it sounds like a great idea .

Welcome here . I live on a farm too (with my parents), though we aren't farmers. We have dogs, goats and chicken and just have them because it's nice (as pets I suppose). Our drive is muddy too though with this weather XD, so I can understand where you're coming from.

@Nollaig Good luck Nollaig (or has the meeting already been *insert unsure emoticon*?). @risingdawn Hopefully you won't drop it! @Chrissy Nice that you cleaned!

Nice article . You make me want to go read more of his books now XD.

I love Runemarks and until recently wasn't aware that there was a sequel (Runelight)! I may buy it soon.

I'm personally not in a rush to go out and get it, since I hardly play any (console) games these days (due to my tiredness), but I know my boyfriend is mostly likely very interested. I'm of course intrigued to hear more about it. The controller looks allright. It's a shame about the backwards compatibility, I mean I was kind of expecting it not to be backwards compatible, but it's still a shame.

Nice review, it's good to read your thoughts on the book. I liked reading about the forms of the combat and I like the little phrases such as "Light!", I thought it made the world unique, to me they weren't overused. Sorry you didn't like the book that much. I guess to each their own. I didn't like Gardens of the Moon when I read it (I'm hoping that will change when I reread it), you really like that book. I hope your next read will be more enjoyable.

I don't think I've read The Summons but I've read a few other books by John Grisham. Unfortunately I don't know the English title and tbh I don't remember the Dutch title (I read them in Dutch when I was younger). The Client was my favourite (that's the only one whose title I remember). I've recently purchased some used John Grisham books (in English) and look forward to reading them.

Welcome here . Wow, you've lived in several different countries!

Sorry to hear that. I guess we can't all like every book.

Does this mean you're not enjoying it?

I finished reading Forbidden Places by Penny Vincenzi. Penny Vincenzi - Forbidden Places I thought about posting Amazon's synopsis, but in my opinion it kind of spoils some of the book, so I won't. The back of the book doesn't spoil anything, it's much more vague. Anyway, the book is about three women. Most of the book takes place before, during World War II and just after, in various places in Great Britain. The three main characters are all married but aren't completely happy in their marriage. I liked this book, but I had a few issues with it. Firstly, I'm not too keen about reading about war. This however turned out to not be a big problem, the book was well written in this respect and I could somewhat imagine what the people were going through. There were no brutal, grotesque paragraphs about what people looked like dead or something. Of course things happened in the war, Britain got bombed etc., but it was written in a good way, not a cringing way. So this issue kind of resolved itself. Secondly, towards the end of the book, from the second half on perhaps, I was a bit disappointed in one of the main characters (the main one, really). I wish she was stronger, that she stood up to people more. She says sorry a lot and blames herself for things, while it's clear other people are to blame. I do understand, I mean, back in those days, the men were considered much more important than the women, they were considered the boss, but I would've liked to see her be a bit stronger, not going along with everything men say just because they are men. If that makes sense? Sometimes I can stand this kind of behaviour better than other times, perhaps I was just tired while I read the second half of the book, I don't know. I'm all for equality, in the sense that I don't believe men are better than women, in this case. Thirdly (this is minor), the beginning of the book started with a scene with all three women, in their older age, meeting. After that everything takes place before or during, or just after World War II. I was expecting the book to go back to the first scene at the end, but that didn't happen. So the second thing was my main issue with the second half of the book. It was also a little bit predictable at times (not the plot twists, they weren't, but how certain characters would respond to a situation), also because I've read other books by Penny Vincenzi and there seem to be certain recurrent themes throughout her books. That's one of the reasons why I like (so far) An Absolute Scandal and The Best of Times the best (out of her books), because they also had more other things going on. I'm looking forward to read her trilogy, though I might save it for last, because it's considered the best. Is that weird XD? Rating: **** (4/5) I'm still reading Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins and I may start Marley and Me by John Grogan soon. Several people on this forum have recently read it so thought it might be a good time for me to read it too.

Hmm.. dinner wise, I think it'd have to be pizza (chicken pizza or meat pizza more specifically). Second would have to be a meat dish (ie. shoarma, pita bread, garlic sauce, chips and salad). I also like some Chinese food (which here is also somewhat Indonesian food sometimes) and chips and burger (kroket is nice too but for dinner I prefer a burger). I haven't had that many different kinds of takeaway dinner tbh, here you only have a few different options. They seem to have more different things in ie. the UK, or perhaps in larger cities here. We don't do takeaway that often normally, it costs quite a bit of money and is usually not that healthy (also, in the case of Chinese or chips you have to drive there yourself, in the case of pizza or meat dish they deliver it). I do like it, though XD.

I want to watch a film, but I'm feeling tired so I can't ><. Maybe I can do so in a few days or something. At least the weather is being a bit better, yesterday we had some lovely sunshine. Today it's a little bit rainy and quite cloudy but the temperature is quite good, I think it's about 5C. There's not much wind atm, so it doesn't feel very cold. My university work is going allright, though I'm a little bit stuck.

I use Firefox, I haven't actually tried using a different browser, that's an interesting idea (though I love Firefox XD).

There seem to be quite a few free ebooks for Kindle. I use the site Kindle Buffet there are others too but so far I've just used this one. Most of the books listed on the website seem available for free in my country (the Netherlands) from Amazon.com, at the time of the writing of their posts. If you're in the UK though the Amazon.co.uk website has different deals and availability, I'm not sure how much overlap there is to be honest. And yes, I have downloaded some Kindle freebies (and read a bit in some of them, on the computer), though I don't actually have my Kindle yet!

PotNoodle Curry flavour

I use that mode nearly all the time. When I type enters just after the [ / quote ] (without spaces) tag, they don't show up.

I think so, let's see if it works. EDIT: Thanks, that's fixed it! @ frankie Thanks to you too . EDIT2: Hmm but then I edited the post and the enters disappeared ><.

Most of her books are standalone novels. According to GoodReads there's two series: Before the Storm (including Before The Storm and Secrets She Left Behind, and Kiss River (including Keeper Of The Light, Kiss River and Her Mother's Shadow). I haven't read any of those yet, but when I read the synopsis of Secrets She Left Behind, the names don't match the synopsis of Before The Storm, so I don't know if it's correct or not. I own Keeper Of The Light but not Kiss River (Her Mother's Shadow isn't out yet in paperback as far as I know). I do know that that's a series, because in an interview the author mentioned this. I've only read four of her books, I found The Midwife's Confession and Breaking The Silence the best, so I would start with one of those (out of those I've read). I'd go for The Midwife's Confession, maybe I'm biased since that was my first book by her, but I really love it. There were so many plot twists I didn't see coming, Breaking The Silence has of course plot twists too but I could predict a few of them. P.S. How do you put "enter's / new lines" after a quote? What I used to do (pressing enter), doesn't seem to work anymore. Thanks! I haven't won any fiction books before (well, I've never entered a giveaway that had one as a prize), so this is pretty exciting. I have won cookbooks before (I was pretty surprised I won there, too!), they're great though I need more time/energy to really make some recipes etc.

I look forward to hear what you think! I've heard good things about them but I'm not sure if they're my kinds of books.

I think I'd read A Memory of Light instead, in that case.

I've just got a message that I've won The Stag and the Hen Weekend by Mike Gayle in a giveaway (from http://debrasbookcafe.blogspot.com/) !! I don't normally enter giveaways, this is pretty awesome . I'm currently over halfway in Penny Vincenzi - Forbidden Places and a few chapters into Suzanne Collins - The Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire. Both are pretty good so far, I look forward to read more later today. EDIT: Now that I look at it, I'm about two thirds into Forbidden Places.

I hope you have a good year reading! I own Kafka on the Shore, it's on my TBR. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it, I've heard good things about it so hope I'll like it to when get around to reading it.

How far in are you? Are you interested to know how it will end?