Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl to bring bookish friends together. A new topic is posted each week.
Books I have full reviews on are linked!
I mean, how can you not be interested in the folklore, and then fantasy, born from mountains like these?
I’ve written a lot of reviews, read a tiny bit of a lot of books at once and not listened to any audiobooks at all really. So I haven’t finished a lot of books these past two weeks because of reading for school and trying and failing to not be already behind one month into the semester. I do have to write an extensive essay, fifteen pages or so, about literature. It’s a so broad task that it has been hell to narrow it down. What I should write about is modernism as a literature time period, maybe take one book by Virginia Woolf and one by a norwegian author (as that’s the subject). What I want to do is analyzing “The Golden Compass”, aka Northern Lights of The Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman as a “bildungsroman” which is a more narrow definition of a coming of age story. As you may know, I am very into fantasy. But every time I’ve chosen fantasy or genre fiction with past teachers, my grade seem to magically drop even though they agreed to the choice. If everything goes to hell after the first draft, I’ll start tying in folklore or something. I need top grades on this thing, but I also need my sanity and it won’t stand up to reading Peer Gynt for four months.
So here’s the books I’ve been thinking about the past two weeks!
Sea Prayer by Khaled Hosseini
It’s time for the quote of the week. I want to read more poetry again, especially since I’m planning of having a calm and productive weekend. Unlike the last one, where I was dancing until 4am and had a lot of fun, but also can notice how it wears down my chronically ill body afterwards. This weekend is comprised of tea and baking and studying and hopefully poetry. And I won’t feel bad about any of it, that’s the plan at least. So. Over to the quote, and how I weirdly relate to it.
It’s from one of Anne Sexton’s letters to Stanley Kunitz. I’ve been struggling physically and mentally this week. I should be better, I expect to be better. People have told me I’m tough often this past two weeks, past two months even. I needed it to be said before, I’m somehow past that point now. What I need is someone to tell me I don’t need to be tough anymore, and for it to be true. “You’re tough, you’ve made it this far”. Yes, but I won’t be able to keep it up. The thing about surviving is that you do it until you don’t, and then it’s too late. So instead of going deep into that, comparing myself to a cooked broccoli is what I am going to do at least once next week. That’s a goal if I’ve ever heard one. Hope your week was great and if you have any thoughts on this let me know.
Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl to bring bookish friends together. A new topic is posted each week.
Tales by Light (on netflix) shows incredibly footage and stories by photographers visiting places all over the world. Fav episodes is s1 e2 photographing the holi festival and a ritual, s1 e3 Adrenaline where freedivers take photos underwater, s1 e5 penguins!!, s1 e6 aboriginal/indigenous groups and culture.
Terrace House (on netflix) is a japanese reality tv show, but very calm and low-risk drama. They’re just living together and talking and cooking, mostly. Choose a season and have it on in the background.
The Good Place (on netflix) was so much recommended to me that I finally picked it up and saw the first season in two days, it was fantastic. Need to watch the second season soon.
How To Get Away With Murder (on netflix) have you surely heard of already, if not it is fantastic and I whole-heartedly recommend it. College and murder and lawyer students. Reminds me of a modern day The Secret History by Donna Tartt.
Elementary got bad for me after season four or five somewhere, but until then it was a fun version of Sherlock Holmes.
Queer Eye (on netflix … see a trend?) is great.
Jessica Jones is nearly everything I want and I just need more. Please.
The handmaid’s tale (after I read the book I guess)
Timeless is a tv series I just heard about, and like the description is: “mysterious criminal who steals a secret state-of-the-art time machine, intent on destroying America as we know it by changing the past.” Come on, I have to give this tv series a chance.
Patriot seems to be in the same theme as Timeless, in that it’s about intelligence and nations (this case Iran is involved) and politics I guess. I’ll give it a shot, heard it recommended from someone and immediately forgot who.
Pages: 270
Genre: young adult fantasy, witch
A century ago, Rona Blackburn made Anathema Island her home. She was a witch and her neighbors didn’t want help from her skills. Fear led the original eight settlers to turn against her, which led Rona to curse them. A century later Nor Blackburn is still living with the remnats of that curse, she doesn’t want to be a witch and her mother is horrible. Or was, before she disappeared. Her mother has a special control of people, that Nor doesn’t want to have inherited. As her powers seem to grow and signs of her disappeared mother is everywhere again, Nor tries to be a normal teenager, as long as it will last.
The narrator Whitney Dykhouse did a great job, and her voice is very calming, but also brings out tension and perfect for the varying tone of this book, which switched quickly betwen light to dark and calm to trouble.
Rating out of five: two
I started this book wanting to like it. The plot sounded a bit average, but I liked the originality brought in Leslye Walton’s other book “The strange and beautiful sorrows of ava lavender”. “The price guide to the occult” is a fantastic name and the book is full of witches, living on an island and their magical abilities starting to fade with each generation. I should love this book. I didn’t, for a series of reasons.
The book started out great, with vivid descriptions of the inhabitants of the island, mainly the history of Nor’s family of witches. The writing changed as more “action”, mainly Nor being a teenager and noticing a few a bit out of the place things, were happening. It was obvious in what direction the plot was going, but I was waiting for a surprise, some kind of twist or creative addition. It didn’t come. There were a few bright moments, where I really felt Nor’s and her friend’s emotion was conveyed well. I almost felt that near the end, where Nor is taken in for questioning, was the highlight. It was funny, which would’ve been a nice twist on a much used story of powerful witch trying to take over the world.
Aside from the introduction that is basically separate from the whole rest of the book, I got to know barely anything about this island the whole plot was bound to. Things like the forest coming alive could’ve been done better.
I couldn’t buy into the characters either, the main character Nor has some fears that make her more real, but she over-justifies even those. The first time I heard she was afraid of becoming like her mother, especially with her similiar powers, I found it interesting and wondered how it would play out. But you get constant reminders, to justify why she isn’t using or practicing her powers, instead of showing her really being afraid. The other characters mostly lack depth. On a smaller island like this, or in any smaller community, you should play more on the together-ness or icecold enemies living together. Everything that was promised from the start was sacrificed for the sake of having a story of a more “normal” teenager, dreaming about the cute guy, having fights with her friend and very understandably fearing her mother.
aquapages 