I am in love with this.

It injects me with all the emotions.

Book Haul! Save the Children Book Sale

Hello! 

About a month or so ago I went to the Save the Children book sale which was happening on campus at my uni, about 100 metres away from my classes, and it just so happened I checked out the sale on the day everything was half-price! By that point it was probably the penultimate day of the sale, which had been going on for a couple of weeks. But I managed to find a few good ones I think! There was still a whole BUNCH (by bunch, I mean like, an enormous amount) of books still being sold, amongst other things like dvds and cds, etc. I was quite overwhelmed by it all - there was just so much to take in. 

Watch the video below if you wanna see what I ended up getting! 

The Name Game Book Tag

I saw this book tag floating around the YouTubez and it looked really easy and fun to do so I did it!

I wasn't tagged by anybody, but I tag all of you! 

Entangled review: here

Lola & the Boy Next Door review: here

Books mentioned: 

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Rhubarb by Craig Silvey

I'd Tell You I Love You But Then I'd Have to Kill You by Ally Carter

Entangled by Cat Clarke

Lola & the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Eragon by Christopher Paolini

Original Name Game Book Tag created by KimberleysBookNook

The A to Z Book Tag! {video}

I saw JesseTheReader do this on his channel and it looked like so much fun so I had to do it too! 

No one tags me to do these things. But I do them anyway. 

HA! 

Winter Holiday Reading!

It's video time again. Just because I can. 

Books mentioned in video:

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare

Trying War by S.D. Gentill

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Radiant Shadows by Melissa Marr

(Reviews coming up soon!):

Betrothed by Wanda Wiltshire

The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Then by Morris Gleitzman

Hope you enjoyed the video! 

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

(My star rating: 4 stars)
read the synopsis here

Well, despite the 'low' ratings I saw for Wedding Night on Goodreads - I was once again thrown into the wonderful world of Sophie Kinsella.

The magic and beauty of literature is that it allows your spirit to be dynamically shifted by merely looking at the words on a page.

In every Sophie Kinsella book I have read - my mood is lifted, I end up crying, and there is always, always a happy ending. For Wedding Night however, it wasn't a happy ending. It was a BEST ending. Literally, the outcome could not have possibly turned out better for the characters.

You may be wondering why I only gave it a four star rating instead of the usual 4.5 or 5 I normally award S.K. books, so I'm going to tell you why.

The characters were lovely; I did like them a lot, and it was really cool (and necessary) to switch between the narrators Lottie and Fliss, but the hero/s and heroine/s didn't exactly have the (for lack of a better term) epic-ness that past S.K. characters had. A reason why I may have felt this is that the characters in Wedding Night are a fair bit older... Lottie is 33 years old and Fliss is 38. Lottie is all about settling down and Fliss has a 7 year old son and is getting through her divorce. Of course we still get packs and packs of crazy behaviour from the protagonists and lucky for us there are two of them. Double trouble!

The plot didn't have as many layers as I was expecting/hoping for... normally with S.K. you get a huge scandal simmering away underneath the upper layers of plottiness and relationshippy romance stuff. Wedding Night didn't really have that, although that doesn't mean there weren't any heart-wrenching, sob-inducing moments, coz there were a few of those. For example when Fliss has her breakdown in the hotel and Lorcan ushers her into the steamroom to cry it out, or when Richard goes to Arthur to find out about the fire that happened fifteen years ago all to soothe away Lottie's fears, or when he walks up to Lottie on the beachside on Ikinos island and tells Lottie he loves her even though all the hotel guests are watching and her husband is standing right there.

Wedding Night was a funny, light and easy read that still brought out of the all the emotions. So for that I give it full props! Sophie Kinsella still remains one of my favourite authors and I would still recommend this book even though it is not the best S.K. novel out there.

Bonus feature!
Watch me fail at talking about this book!

Book Mash! [video]

Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt TAG!!!

In case you didn't know... I am kinda addicted to YouTube. And I have been for many years.
I knew about the booktubers (bookish youtubers/vloggers), but I never really subbed to many. Recently though, I found this Aussie booktuber (her channel is LittleBookOwl) and she posted the Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt TAG and it looked like SO MUCH FUN. So I decided to do it too!
The last tag video I did was the Divergent Tag and that was months and months and months ago.
I hope you click play and enjoy my version of the Scavenger Hunt Tag! And if you've done it too, link me to it in a comment on this post or a comment on the video :)

P.S. Sorry I haven't been posting. I haven't had the time to read leisurely (which is a terrible excuse for not taking the effort to make the time...) and I've also been quite depressed and feeling extremely apathetic towards life.

But a few days ago I stumbled across polandbananasBOOKS... aka Christine on youtube. Her videos are passionate, hilarious and they've refueled me a bit and given me some book lovin' motivation to jump into the wonderful world of YA fiction (or just fiction in general) again.

Currently I'm trying to read Ulysses by James Joyce for my Modernism unit in English. It's really, really tough-going. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone in their right mind would voluntarily read this 800 page painstaking trek of a novel. 

Anyway enough of rambling from me. Let me know what you thought of the tag video! I love tags; they're so fun to do so if you have any other TAG rec's, throw them my way! 

x

new on my bookshelf

For this post I was simply too lazy to take photos and do the whole shebang with the writing up and everything, and I thought a video would let you see the books better than in pictures so here we go! 

Sorry for my talking and just terrible explaining skills, I think I might have made it seem like I don't know how to count. 

I suppose some writing will be necessary in this post anyway, so you don't get confused. 

The first three I showed you were given to me by the amazing Jess from The Tales Compendium.

1) Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

2) Pretties by Scott Westerfeld

3) The Tale of Despereaux by Kate diCamillo

And the last one I bought online. I failed to tell you that.

4) I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I'm most excited about Uglies! I've heard countless people rave on and on about it.

new on my bookshelf: selznick + gentill

THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET by Brian Selznick

(published 2007; read synopsis)

I first heard of this book after watching the film Hugo, which I quickly became a huge fan of. I didn't realise it was a book to film adaptation until I saw the special features on the DVD. I loved the movie so much that I quickly ordered it online. The book looks huge, but it is jam-packed with beautiful illustrations and pictures galore, as well as words of course.

Below are photos of the hardcover's jacket and the book without the jacket. And I also took a short little video of me flipping through the book quickly, so you can get an idea of what it's really like (awesome is what it's really like!). 

The Divergent Tag! {video!}

On the weekend I filmed the Divergent Tag with my sister!!! 

Questions: 

1)Which faction would you most likely choose to be in?

2)Which faction would you least likely choose to be in?

3)Which character did you most like/identify with the most?

4)Which character did you like the least?

5)What was your favourite moment?

6)What was your least favourite moment?

7)If you had the power to cast one character, which character would you cast and who would you choose to play that role?

8)Do you think Summit can pull it off?

9)What are your top predictions for the next book Insurgent?

Bookshelf Tour - The Forgotten Shelf

Like my recent post entitled "Woops!" explained, I completely forgot to show you an entire shelf from my Bookshelf Tour the other day! So I filmed the last shelf yesterday, and here is the video! I was clearly out of my mind to have forgotten this shelf... I spent so long organising and ordering these books from top to bottom.

My Bookshelf Tour Video!!!

Brace yourselves... this is a long one.

My sister and I switched bedrooms the other day so I spent most of the day moving books to and from our rooms and organising my main bookcase. This is a video tour showing you guys my finished set up! Well, not completely finished yet because I don't want to use my smaller old bookcase anymore, which means I still need to find a place for the strayers... by 'strayers' I mean the 4 piles of other books that are currently homeless. 

Hope you don't find the bookshelf tour too boring! 

Lastly I just wanna apologise for not posting more throughout May. I did warn you though! 

But I hope this video post makes up for my absence in some way. :/ 

Let me know if you'd like to see more videos in the future!

Much love,

Arielle