The Prince of Thorns or the Tale of a Psycho?

The Prince of Thorns or the Tale of a Psycho?

*this contains spoilers for the book The Prince of Thorns*

The story starts out as a young boy experiences his mother and brother being murdered right before his eyes. He is only saved from the bravery and quick action of a body guard who tosses him into…can you guess? A bush of thorns. These thorns are poisonous or magical…or both? They seem to infect him not just physically but also mentally. Urging him to kill or hurt the people around him. But then again that could just be his mind…or it could be a wizard who has cursed him…or that he is really just a mean child. Because that’s what he is. 

The author plays around with switching the main characters aggression to different causes but the honest truth is he was a mean child before he met the wizard. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the second book we found he was just missing a heart all together. Instead of him trying to win a kingdom he goes to the wizard in the Land of Oz and asks for a heart.

The book wasn’t badly written and is a quick read if you don’t get tired of the constant aggression and descriptions of death with a bit of story plot in between. I liked the concept of the story and the writing itself is good, but as you can tell it just didn’t sit well with me. 

As another funny side note…I’m pretty sure aliens…or some futuristic beings were in the story also. It could have just been magic but the way the wording was phrased it sounded like he was breaking into alien technology right out of an episode of Dr. Who. It made me wonder where the story was going to turn next but then the whole idea was just dropped. Maybe I misinterpreted it? Who knows. What I do know is that it will be unlikely I will be finishing the trilogy unless I really can’t find anything else to read.

All in all I gave it 2/5 stars. Well written just not really for me…

Blood, Beauty and a Happy Easter!

Blood and Beauty the Borgias a Novel by Sarah Dunant(though the picture is from the show which is available on Netflix and is equally fabulous).

It seemed only fitting that I read and reviewed this book right around Easter time about Pope Alexander the 6th and his infamous, illegitimate children. 

The novel starts with Rodrigo Borgia winning the papacy and making his son Cesare a Cardinal. The author dives into Cesare's love for Lucrezia that borderlines on inappropriate the whole book before finally taking the plunge per say three quarters of the way through the novel after forced divorce to her first husband, the death of her innocent lover and very handsome second husband. You of course can't have a book about the Borgia family without delving into the loosest of the cannons Juan and Jofre both completely unstable and married to beautiful woman used as pawns to enable to future of the Borgia family.

The book ends with Rodrigo and the whole Borgia family going strong(well minus the tragic unsolved death of Juan-though we all know he deserved it). Cesare is getting everything he is willing to admit he wants in his life(besides his love of Lucrezia). Jofre is unhappily married but that is the theme throughout the whole book and Lucrezia is finally hoping to escape the insanity of her family by an third marriage to another powerful family.

I would definitely give it 4/5 stars. It starts out a little slow but quickly gains momentum as the stakes  of the Borgia family increases. A historical drama for the ages...or at least the fifteenth century. 

The Magic of An Eight Year Olds Imagination

  This is the first story I have read from Jeff Wheeler but after reading this book I know I will at least be reading the second and then final book in the trilogy.  It either has yet to be released or is just now being released. The synopsis sucked me in when I had the opportunity to purchase it through the Kindle first of the month deal I've signed up for(which I really recommend for anyone interested). 

The story is from the point of view of an eight year old boy, Owen,  who has been traded by his parents to the current King to prove their loyalty. 

    Owen has been special since his first day of life. He was stillborn at birth before suddenly awakening in his mothers arms. Since then he has always had a patch of white hair on the side of his head and a shyness to his behavior. 

Owen must prove his worth to King Severn by proving he can dream the future, save his family and loved ones from plummeting to their deaths down a waterfall that proves the innocent from the traitors. 

My favorite part of the story which Jeff discusses at the end of the end of the first novel is how it is based on historical facts and also folklore from the time of Richard the Third and his brother George. What would have happened if Henry hadn't won the last battle and put the Tudors firmly in line for the throne?

Can You Be Too Competitive With Yourself?

I'MMMM  BAAAACCCKKK!

What the heck happened? Where did I go? It was the classic tale...Girl loves to read, girl starts book blog and talks about her Goodreads reading challenge...girl falls behind in reading challenge, panics and goes reading crazy(is there such a thing?) and forgoes blog.

I mean I also started working a bunch but I think the internal competitiveness was a huge contributing factor. My goal last year was a hundred books and I did reach/surpass it with 107 books finished in 2015. 

I of course am doing the same thing to myself this year with another goal of a hundred books for 2016. The only thing I'm changing about the goal is I am going to try to focus on reading more classics since my two favorite books of all time are Jane Erye and Little Women.

If you want to check out my reading challenge from 2015 heres the link: 

https://www.goodreads.com/user_challenges/2495260

So how has my 2016 reading challenge been going this year? Pretty good, I think I'm on track to not have the same panic this year as last year. I am 22/100 books with quite a few classics thrown in. The favorite so far has been Pride and Prejudice which to be honest was a surprise for me because I've honestly always been kind of Prejudice towards it. I loved it though Darcy is such a heart throb and Elizabeth is just the best protagonist. The romance, the catty gossip, I understand now why it has remained such a favorite among the public since it was published.

On a different note a read Lolita which has HORRENDOUS. It wasn't the concept of it...I was well aware of what the story was about. It was the writing and how it seemed to DRAG on much longer than its three hundred and something pages.

Will You Be My Best Friend Samantha Ellis?

       A complete turn around from my last book review I will start out by saying how much I absolutely loved How To Be A Heroine  or What I learned By Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis. Easily 5/5 stars. 

       The book is a memoir about the authors fascination with literatures greatest heroines and her connection with them. Samantha Ellis realizes that her whole life she has been trying to be a Cathy Earnshaw when maybe she should have been trying to be Jane Eyre.

I completely connected with everything the author had to say and though I hadn’t read every book the author described I loved every second of it. Samantha Ellis is the kind of friend every avid reader wants to have, a literary feminist. 

“ From Greer, I learned that there was a stereotype of female beauty and I didn’t have to conform to it-and that it might be fun and liberating to ‘undress with `eclate’. I learned to stop laughing at men’s bad jokes.”

From The Little Mermaid to Valley of the Dolls to Scheherazade Ellis covers that and everything in-between with a refreshing sense of humor and an interesting look at life and the things life throws at you.

George R.R Martin Can Be Wrong

     

     One of the fun things about moving to a new town is that everything is unexplored and waiting to be discovered. About a month ago I went to a book store that I had driven past many times passing through down town Corvallis but had never stopped in until that day. It was my favorite kind of book store…chaotic. There were piles of books along the isle ways and books crammed tightly on the shelves. The kind of book store where you have to work to discover the good finds.  After searching I finally thought I found THE book. It was buried among all the tacky science fiction covers…Pavane by Keith Roberts. It had such amazing reviews, and a GREAT review written by George R.R Martin about how this book is a masterpiece and a landmark in the history of the genre(science fiction and fantasy). 

Let me start off by telling you this…George R.R Martin can be WRONG. The book doesn’t quite reach 300 pages but I had to struggle to finish it and force myself to read till the end. Each chapter section is a new character and most characters aren’t interconnected. There were a few chapters where I thoroughly enjoyed reading the characters story line but those moments were far and few between. Most was a lot of finger tapping and waiting for the plot to thicken, the story line to develop more but it just didn’t happen. And not only did that not happen but the ending was just as disappointing as the whole rest of the book. 

     Overall, I would have to say I give it 0/5 stars!!!!!

It Was a Blog and Run or Long Time No Blog

~Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! And well everything in-between!~

(old pic of me and the boyfriend in Tahoe, California)

      Okay guys, I am going to be honest and say I couldn't make up my mind with which title I liked better for the blog post and since the only vote to be calculated is mine I decided to go with both! Haha!

      

     So what have I been up to lately??? I was hired for a job, I quit a job. I have been crocheting up a storm...working on granny squares, beanies and creating a few patterns of my own. I can't wait to share some of my pattern creations with all of you! I am also going to have them listed in my etsy shop soon as I have them tested and all the bugs worked out( I can't wait and am crazy excited about it if you can't tell!).

      

     On another creative note, I have undertaken the longest project I've ever worked on! It's illustrating a children's book my boyfriend wrote, "Wesley the Brave". It's quite a lot of fun and playing with my new copic markers might be my latest obsession haha.

     Another project the boyfriend and I have been working on is a table painting project that I will be hopefully sharing on here soon!!!!

     

      I keep wanting to do some book reviews on here but I have mostly been reading the Game of Thrones books because my new friends in Oregon are SUPER into them. I just finished the 5th book(finally) and as much as I would like to review the books I think the million and one book reviews that have already been written probably have any unique thought on the books already covered. I might end up doing a break down of my favorite characters buts it's highly unlikely. Especially since I just bought three new fabulous books at my local book store that I cannot wait to read and review!

  

What else have I been up to? Watching Game of Thrones, I’m currently finishing the second season and almost to the third. Just finished Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the second or third time…I know I’m obsessed but it’s just so good. And I am starting the last season of Angel. It’s my first time watching it and I am surprised how much I enjoy it though I have to say I’m team Spike for life haha. And then to add to the television watching(what? it’s the best way to crochet) I have been watching the Mindy Project…I am in love. Mindy is my super girl crush. My more serious girl show I (watch without the boyfriend)

is Greys Anatomy(I know I’m late on the Greys Anatomy band wagon).

The Paris Wife...A Tale of Affairs, Adventure, and Babies

Alright! The first book review! It was actually inspired by a local book club in Corvallis who picked The Paris Wife by Paula McLain as its book club book for the month of October. It is a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway’s first marriage to Hadley Richardson, and I must say that marriage was quite a doozy. 

       If you love the drama that extremely creative people tend to create then this is definitely the book for you. Ernest married Hadley at a very young age, twenty-one to her almost thirty. He loved her because she supported him, was loyal, and honestly didn’t challenge him intellectually or really on any level of their marriage. They move from the United States to the creative streets of Paris where they go on adventures all over Europe with the likes of fashionista’s who worked with Chanel, the F. Scott Fitzgerald, and many other famous writers in a time where people were challenging gender roles, their sexuality, and what it meant to live in the modern era.

What you can take without me giving any spoilers away is this…

• Hadley is such a badass, awesome name! Why aren’t more women named Hadley!?
• This book contains sex, drugs and rock and roll …okay no rock and roll but there is enough writers, artists, and musicians to make it worth your while
• Honestly Ernest Hemingway was a huge jerk, but he makes for some entertaining reading and your heart just aches for the characters and their struggles. 
• Everything is wrapped up nicely in the epilogue which the more you read my reviews the more you will discover is very important to me…I absolutely HATE loose ties.

Overall, I’d give it 3.5/5 stars. Worth the read but won’t be on my list of favorites any time soon.