Nollaig
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Posts posted by Nollaig
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Hubby got a job!!! Its better than the one he was let go from and it has good benefits and NO weekends!!! The only drawback is that he doesnt start til next month. Now here's the ironic part. Two men are being hired for this position, hubby and a guy named Mike. Now get ready for the ironic part. Mike was hired to replace my husband from the OTHER job. He lasted 3 weeks. Go figure.
Wow. Definitely ironic, and a little bit funny
Hope all goes well for hubby when he starts the new job!I started my new job today and things went well! I could definitely get used to working in my pajamas with my cat hanging around for pets.
Wahey! Yeah I'm sure I could too if I could find any such job here!
I might go to a book trading evening that's tonight nearby here, if I feel up for it later on. I've not been there before but my mum said she'd have some time to go with me. I feel like if I don't go now, because it's too scary, then I probably won't ever for the same reasons. But of course I should feel up for it, if I feel too tired there's no point in going and talking with other people
.No, don't force yourself, but if the only thing that turned out to be making you hesitate was uncertainty, then it might be worth the push
I got my ticket for the gig I'm going to in 18 days! Always feels more real once the event ticket arrives.
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I just finished reading "The Universe Versus Alex Woods" by Gavin Extence. I will rate it either a 8/10 or even a 9/10.
Sounds interesting, sticking on the aul wishlist.
I've just finished reading The Giver!! Oh, that was such a great book. So now I have the
pleasure of looking forward to the next three of the Giver Quartet.
Wahey! Glad you enjoyed it, going starting it myself this evening.
I finished two books over the last two days - The Book Of Lost Things which was a reread, and Angelfall by Susan Ee which I actually thoroughly enjoyed and am looking forward to the second installment of.
I also got a whole bunch of books off my wishlist for my Kindle app:
The Spinning Heart - Donal Ryan
The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
Can Anybody Help Me - Sinead Crowley
The First 15 Lives of Harry August - Claire North
Couple of Irish ones in there, trying to get into reading more Irish authors
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Watching a Louis C.K. dvd. I like the man and he says some superb things but this show is a tad hit and miss.
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I have the book, and will be starting it this evening!
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Yeah, the cover art is very evocative. Kind of mad, cos I'm actually reading the Kindle editions (having the built-in dictionary is a Godsend with these books
) and it's enhanced my enjoyment so much, but the result is that I now love them so much I have to actually own the physical copies. Have to, no choice I know that feeling, there are several books I want to buy after reading digital copies.
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Wow, I certainly wasn't expecting people to be so into this book and start a discussion
I've enjoyed what I've seen of TBBT, but I have a soft spot for TNG because it was probably the first TV show I ever watched...and I do like sci-fi shows quite a bit. As far as genres go, I think I probably like TNG more. Oh, Battlestar Galactica anyone? Anyone?...anyone?
Stargate and Star Trek are my only two, I'm afraid!
Wil Wheaton is a cool guy. His Tabletop show on youtube has made me crave a boardgame session.
I used to watch TNG all the time as it was on about the same time we had dinner. TBBT however, not so much.
Yeah I liked the first season or so of TBBT, and I still love the theme song, but honestly, as a proud nerd, I find the mindless humour and ridiculously stereotypical depiction of 'nerds' quite crass and unfunny in later seasons.
TNG was a huge part of my childhood, my whole family used to sit down and watch it, and DS9, and then Voyager (though Voyager ain't great).
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That's a shame, that you weren't gone on the ending of Afterstory. I loved the whole thing.
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Today was my first proper cheat day since I started eating a bit better 16 days ago. However, I still didn't quite go all out - for dinner my friend and I ordered from my favourite local pizza place, but I actually got a chicken baguette instead of pizza. I did, however, get a piece of tiramisiu too
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I discovered the ending of the anime series and it ruined things a bit. Fortunately, manga covered almost all of the elements of the anime except the bad ones, and hopefully will give a more realistic and credible closing arc.
I haven't read the manga; I watched the anime and liked it, but I watched it just to get to Clannad: Afterstory, which I had been told was superb, and I have to agree. Not sure if you meant the end of the former or the later with your remarks?
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2. "Just a Geek" by Wil Wheaton
Definitely going on the wishlist.
Great review, Mona.
I haven't watched much Star Trek (although I intend to change that in the future) but I've seen Will Wheaton several times on The Big Bang Theory, and I really like him on that. Does he mention anything about that show in the book? He's also on Goodreads and posts messages there, if you didn't already know. I have this book on my TBR, I'm glad you enjoyed it
! I haven't seen a lot of episodes with Will Wheaton in it (yet at least), but like Kylie I love him in The Big Bang Theory, so I'm curious to read his book.Psh, Big Bang Theory. Everyone watch The Next Generation. Such a great show.
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Just for you
Oh my god that's so pretty. I love the roughness of paint on canvas. Despite being a digital artist who draws the cleanest images I can manage, I absolute old hand drawn animations and painted canvas. Such a lovely loose, rough quality.
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Damn, I was planning to go rat-arsed every day
Hahahaha that made me giggle.
Lovely collection of books btw. I'm not familiar with them (other than what I've seen you saying about them) but the set looks gorgeous together.
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Elizabeth is Missing keeps drawing me too .. there's just something written on it (can't remember what now) that made me hesitate .. like it might be too sad for me. I'm going to wait and see what you say
I don't know if it will be too sad for you, because I amn't familiar with your capacity for literary sads, but I didn't find it too sad. I mean, it's not the happiest read ever, given the subject matter, but it certainly didn't come close to making me cry or anything. Just my two cents
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Went to see Ex Machina again with a friend who hadn't seen it. Enjoyed it almost as much the second time around, knowing what happened.
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I've recently got into a show from the UK called Come Dine with Me. They tried to make it here last year, but it only lasted one season and was nowhere near as good, mostly because no one can beat Dave Lamb as narrator in my opinion. I love seeing the scenery and getting a glimps into people's lives and homes.
I'm not really one for reality TV shows either, so I was quite shocked at how much I enjoyed it when I sat down with my sister who loves the shows.
We currently get come dine with me, come dine with me couples, and come dine with me canada on foxtel here. One year we had come dine with me Australia.
I love that show so much, Dave Lamb is a legend. There is an Irish version - a year or two back they held it in my home county and someone I know (not well, knew her daughter growing up) was on it - and won. Which was hilarious, because her solution to not being sure if something was entirely cooked after coming out of the oven was to 'blast it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, just in case'.
I'm watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban for the umpteenth time. I'm sure they play this particular HP movie on TV more often than they do any of the others! Luckily it's one of my faves, especially the whole time-turning sequence near the end.
I loooooooooooooove that film. I was in Eason's today and there were a set of HP books that were absolutely gorgeous, particularly the Azkaban one - it had Harry summoning his patronus and fighting off a dementor on the cover. (I've been reading e-copies of the HP books, I would LOVE to get a set of all seven though.)
Tonight I started watching Parks & Rec, which is a show I had been told before was very good and that it would be my 'sort of thing' - I have to admit they were correct. Watched the first season and thoroughly enjoyed it.
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I started reading TCP&TW but I wasn't in the mood for it at the time and ended up wandering away from it. Great review though, I might go back to it this year.
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I'm glad that you have liked Angelfall - I've umm-ed and ahh-ed about trying it recently. The "very creative elements in it" is make it even more!
They're very minor elements, nothing to get too excited about. Just little things that so far have held my interest. It's still a fairly typical YA book so far but I am enjoying it for sure.
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I'm not exactly tearing through the two books I was reading, so I've started reading Angelfall by Susan Ee as well, and that I am tearing through, read 120 pages last night. Really enjoying it. Would prefer a little less teen and a little more adult, but, allowing for it being a teen book, I'm definitely thoroughly enjoying it. Some very creative elements in it.
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I take one that's like Berocca, but a cheap Tesco rip-off with basically all the same vitamins and minerals
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I'm not sure I'm going to get two books finished this week, which is not a great start to Feb. I've 80 pages left in The Book Of Lost Things and about 350 left in Deathly Hallows. Gonna try finish the former today so I can at least start making a dent in Angelfall.
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So much talk of pizza in the health thread
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Great review of Bird Box, it's already on my wishlist
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You know I'm not sure I can put it in to words. He just seems to hit an unusual spot. His characters tend to have a certain distance and yet an intimacy with each other that seems uniquely Murakami. There's a wide space that weaves between the characters and yet it carries so much weight. His novels are almost philosophical when it comes to analysing human relationships and the grind of daily life for the troubled soul.
Add a slight tint of the surreal, jazz, cats and sex with weird women and a dash of mystery and BOOM, there you go.
I didn't like Norwegian Wood because I felt like the characters were so unrealistic and flat. Couldn't relate to anyone or anything in the book. Can't relate to someone who
breaks-and-enters and leaves tampons in drawers
either. To me, that's just weird for the sake of weird. I still want to read one more full novel by him though, because I want to give him a fair go and I don't think one book and one short story is enough to judge him by.
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I had meant to get around to reading the rest of his short stories, but I think I'll do it sooner now, thanks for the reviews
Noll's 2015 Book Blog
in Past Book Logs
Posted · Edited by Nollaig
Angelfall by Susan Ee
(2012)
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Synopsis: It's been six weeks since the angels of the apocalypse destroyed the world as we know it. Only pockets of humanity remain. Savage street gangs rule the day while fear and superstition rule the night. When angels fly away with a helpless girl, her seventeen-year-old sister Penryn will do anything to get her back...
Review: I love anything to do with angels, and the more biblically accurate they are in their ruthless violence, the better. Vampires, werewolves and zombies are definitely the anti-heroes of the day, but I wish there were more, well-written books about angels. Until that happens, this one will certainly do the trick. It is a fairly light read with some unexpectedly heavy elements. I could have taken an extra hundred pages with a bit more depth - but allowing for its YA status, it ain't bad.
I didn't have high hopes going into it, as most YA fantasy tends to involve some form of romance. Not only does this one have nothing bordering on regular YA/fantasy romance, I'd even go so far as to say there isn't any in this book. Some setup for future romance, maybe, but honestly by then I'm totally going to buy it, and that's an achievement. And in the meantime, this romance-independent novel instead focuses on building a small cast of likeable, if not nice, characters and depicting a slice of world-wide catastrophe through their eyes. While quite a few Bella-Swan-esque observations about the beauty of angels irked me somewhat, the main character Penryn is actually a pretty level-headed, streetwise heroine who can really hold her own. By contrast, the main angel Raffe is a tad undercooked for my taste, but still a respectably serious character.
The story reeled me in pretty quickly, with some really interesting and creative elements - for example the mentally-deteriorated (and yet still strong and independent) character of Penryn's mother. The darkly comedic decoration of a corpse early in the book was the first point that I stopped and thought 'okay, this could be pretty good'. Some small surprises and interesting creatures sealed that appraisal by halfway through. The appeal dipped a bit at one point about two thirds of the way in, but then revved right back up into a deeply disturbing end sequence which, honestly, brings about resolution of each character's primary goals in such a twisted and borderline way that it left me dying to see what happens next. I already have the next book ready to go.
Rating: 4/5