Hey

Hello, it’s so nice to see you again! Cracker? (got it from Pinterest)

Aren’t you a sweet duckie! Run along now, before your mum gets flighty. Uh, yes, that little fella said it for me, I think all of us bloggers need a break every so often and I’m feeling so-so right now, I’m not quite sure exactly that means too. I’ve stopped reading or at least I’m tying to because of my exams in Oct/Nov but it’s not an easy hobby to let lie. I am about a 100 and something pages away from finishing A Game of Thrones but I’m post postponing it until a later date and even though I’m brushing back Mercy Thompson during the nights, GoT wouldn’t sit well if I’m anxious as I am as of the moment. So that puts a halt in my progress in the Mad Reviewer Reading Challenge.

I’m not even sure what to write, there are ideas but not compelling enough to make me want to write about right now, and I am telling you it took a while to be compelled to write this post. More poems perhaps, yes, that might work. Also I have missed three going on four weeks of Picture it and Write! and I’m not in the last happy about it. It’s like my creative juices are drained. It could be aliens. Or ninjas.

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson #1) by Patricia Briggs

via goodreads

Rated: 5 stars                  I recommend this to: pretty much everyone, esp. UF fans.

Originally read: October 8th, 2011

This is the second time I’ve read this and my oh my was it an eye opener. In the previous review I think I stated that I felt like everything seemed stuffy, which loosely translates that I didn’t really have an idea what the dickens was going on in the most crucial scenes. Heh, I wonder how it is, or why for that matter, that I continued to the second book in the series. Now with a fresher pair of eyes and a broader frame of mind I actually got in on the action.

Mercedes Thompson isn’t your average VW mechanic. Does yours regularly service a Mystery Machine replica owned by a Scooby Doo fanatic who happens to be a hot vampire, works with an iron mage and lives over the fence to the local alpha’s house? I didn’t think so. Oh, and she turns into a coyote. I really like her, I mean she could be a badass but she knows where to draw the line.She may be physically inferior(which might be too strong a word) but she makes up for it in mouthing off to authority and those above her ,but hey I can’t blame her with all of those overbearing werewolves around, she had to stand up for herself.

Mercy’s an okay gal, she’s tough, funny, caring and doesn’t like to be out of the line of fire when she knows that she could be helping.She doesn’t have tons of magic (or any of it so to speak)so that she could just wriggle her pinkie and WAM leveling the street with vampires, nope,that’s what makes me like her even more, she relies on her instincts and quick thinking rather than power.

To Mothers

via Pinterest, click to see

Yesterday I was on a pin-athon and I made a board for the Avengers, because let’s face it people they are freaking awesome, but are they more so than moms? That might be a trick question but seeing that we all have met a real life mother than a real life super hero with mad ninja skills and wicked powers, yeah, I’d say moms are pretty fantastic. I can’t begin to imagine what it must be like to give birth to and help raise five children, and live through the grief of the death of a new born son as my mother had. Don’t you forget the house work, my mama doesn’t let me.

There were times when I swore she couldn’t understand me and never will, but I’ve grown up and saw that she knows a lot more than she lets on. She can be really silly and thoughtful, I could tell her almost about everything but I don’t sometimes because I don’t want to add more to her pressure. Over the years she’s given me advice here and there, preparing me for the time when I have to go out on my own (whenever the hell that is because over here kids live with parents for years).

Oldies Sunday: The Way You Look Tonight

Reblogged from The Excellence Asylum:

Hola! I've been thinking about how much I wanted blogging commitment and decided on committing Sundays to oldies music, be it rock, pop, jazz or country. So today I christen this new project with Frank Sinatra's The Way You Look Tonight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvQfPZCu4ns

Ah, the good ol' days, and what am I? Sixty? Heh. It's good music if you ask me, majority of my Sundays are spent strolling around this part of YouTube.

Read more… 361 more words

First love

via Pinterest

Who’s your first love the girls ask me

Music, said I

The boy isn’t worth the mention

I cringe at the memory

How pathetically stupid I was

But the sweet sound of music

Has always been there for me

It gives me wings to fly

To soar at the peak of a high note

When I feel lost and deprived of joy

It gives me hope with every beat

Truth be told,

Air drumming has prevented shiners

All Jazzed up!

Reblogged from The Excellence Asylum:

Happy International Jazz Day everyone!

There was a flash mob last year in Cologne, France, to kick start the now yearly event, I say we need more of this sort especially in the wake of the kind of music today, not all are bad and trashy and crappy I am sure, I'm just saying that the fresh generation needs to be aware of good music, the classics.

Read more… 206 more words

Why didn’t I raise my hand?

via Pinterest, click to see

It was my last year of high school, there was this guy, a pastor (Mr. Fingle?) from the US had come to give us a lecture on acceptance, loving and respecting ourselves and a few other things along those lines. I can remember what seemed to be the entire fifth form seated to the front of the auditorium, quietly listening to this confident and passionate man. I think the silence had to do with him being a stranger and a foreigner, the only white man (and very pink from the heat) in the gathering of brown and ebony. Plus no one would ever want to stand up in front of everyone and given the high chance of messing up.

I remembered feeling empowered somehow, his words excluded this contagious energy that was meant to affect me. I can’t say the same for the other kids, half of whose faces are blurs in my mind today, quiet yes, but not necessarily listening. I’ve always made a point to pay attention especially to guests like Mr. Fingle, it’s not often people around here will talk about this stuff, to address these feelings we feel, why we feel them and how we think we should react to them.

I’m afraid up to now I have been vague on what were some of the things he said, mostly because I found that a lot from that day has blanked out from me probably because one particular topic he mentioned proceeded to take up my thoughts from then on. There was this guy sitting right in front of me, let’s call him Nash. Mr. F walked over and pointed to him and asked everyone, “Okay, let’s for a minute pretend that this young man happened to be gay. Which one of you would be his friend?”

Archangel’s Consort (Guild Hunter #3) by Nalini Singh

via Goodreads

Rated it: 4 stars                  Recommend it to: UF fans and bad ass angels and vamps, with romance thrown in. It has adult scenes so I’ll have to say readers 18 and up.

Goodreads blurb

Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux and her lover, the lethally beautiful archangel Raphael, have returned home to New York only to face an uncompromising new evil…

A vampire has attacked a girls’ school—the assault one of sheer, vicious madness—and it is only the first act. Rampant bloodlust takes vampire after vampire, threatening to make the streets run with blood. Then Raphael himself begins to show signs of an uncontrolled rage, as inexplicable storms darken the city skyline and the earth itself shudders.

The omens are suddenly terrifyingly clear.

An ancient and malevolent immortal is rising. The violent winds whisper her name: Caliane. She has returned to reclaim her son, Raphael. Only one thing stands in her way: Elena, the consort who must be destroyed…

 

I think I liked this last installment much better than the previous two. I believe it’s the only series that has angels in them that I’ve read so far, and frankly I don’t want to get into that at this point, werewolves and vampires are almost run into the ground already. It’s said by a few, actually by one particularly nasty archangel of China, Lijuan, that Elana’s mortal heart will be the death of Raphael. Let’s just say that weakness had in the end revealed itself to be a strength and had Lijuan’s behind singeing *snickers*

You are …

You are

The hot chocolate blend

I’ve been searching for

All this time.

You are

The sunshine

In my garden,

The sparrow-man to my fairy.

You are

The sprinkles on top

A bad day.

You are

The sparkle in my eyes.

You are

The blanket and a bowl of soup,

In foul weather and bad times.

Masques (Shifter’s Wolf #1) by Patricia Briggs

via Goodreads

Rated: 3 1/2 stars                 Recommend to: fans of anything magic; shape shifters, medieval period fantasy

Goodreads blurb

After an upbringing of proper behavior and oppressive expectations, Aralorn has fled her noble birthright for a life of adventure as a mercenary spy. Her latest mission involves gathering intelligence on the increasingly charismatic and dangerous sorcerer Geoffrey ae’Magi. But in a war against an adversary armed with the power of illusion, how do you know who the true enemy is—or where he will strike next?

When I saw this on the shelf the cover spoke to me, not that I understood a thing except it promised it would kick butt. Then my eyes flickered upwards and into the author’s name. I’ve read about four books into her Mercy Thompson series prior to stumbling across this, and I like those so I was kind of excited to see what her earlier writing looked like. This book here was originally two separate books of the same series, Masques and Wolfsbane respectively. This I learned while reading the Ms. Briggs author note, were here first ever published works. After relatively weak sales the went out of print until recently.

So I braced myself and sure enough there were a few transparent parts when I know what will happen, there were some difficult spots here and there where they conveniently got out of relatively unscathed. This takes place during what I would say Medieval times, so that plus some magic I was set.  Aloran, I liked her, a free spirit that refuses to be chained and has a thirst for information and tales alike. She knows that she’s not her best a swordplay but utilizes what she can do for max effect, she’s a shape shifter changing appearances both human and animal, an invaluable asset to any spy.