Book Blogger Confessions #18

Book Blogger Confessions is a new bi-weekly meme hosted by Karen @ For What it's Worth Reviews and Midnyte Reader. It was formerly co-hosted by Tiger @ All Consuming Books

Are there blogs you visit and comment on because you like their style, voice etc.(maybe you even converse with the blogger on Twitter & Facebook) but those comments are never reciprocated on your blog?. Do you get a bit offended or do you understand that they may be busy? Or do you comment just because you like a post not expecting anything in return?

There are about 3 blogs where I visit and leave comments and the bloggers reciprocate by visiting my blog and commenting but beyond those three I don’t expect other bloggers I visit and give comments to also come back and visit me and leave a comment. 1. Because the blogs I usually comment or follow are rather large and they get at least 10 comments per post and I know it would be extremely time consuming for them to visit every blogger who leaves a comment on their blog, so I don’t expect them to visit and don’t feel “hurt” if they don’t. 2. I just don’t have that kind of relationship with them probably because I don’t visit them often enough to establish that sort of connection. On the other hand there is one particular blog I visit and comment on regularly though that I don’t even get replies to my comments on the blog itself which at first had me feeling indignant and thinking (I am going through all the trouble to read your post and leave a meaningful comment and you can’t even reply?) Because well it’s not like the post had a large amount of comments but after a while I notice the poster doesn’t reply to any comments, which I find to be a bit odd but I no longer take non-replies personally :P.

Do you comment just because you like a post not expecting anything in return?
This is me most of the time – commenting just because I like the post but I do leave a link under my name like a sort of signature just because it doesn’t hurt to give the poster a little incentive to visit your blog xD. The only times I comment expecting something in return is on posts like Blog Hop, Follow Friday and Waiting on Wednesday when visiting other people’s blogs and commenting is a part of the meme.

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Book Blogger Confessions #17: Following

Book Blogger Confessions is a new bi-weekly meme hosted by Karen @ For What it's Worth Reviews and Midnyte Reader. It was formerly co-hosted by Tiger @ All Consuming Books

How do you follow blogs? Do you use Google Reader? Are you on an e-mail list? Are you more apt to follow people who have less followers? Would you follow a blog to enter a contest? What makes you unfollow a blog?

How do you follow blogs? Do you use Google Reader?
I use google reader and on a much lesser note Bloglovin. Google reader because I use blogger and it’s just super easy for me to scroll through my dashboard and check updates from blogs for the day. Bloglovin is for the blogs I find the most interesting and who I want to keep up to date with so I get a daily digest of the blogs’ latest updates right in my email inbox.

Are you on an e-mail list?
 I am only on email lists for a couple of author blogs.

Are you more apt to follow people who have less followers?
Mostly I follow who ever I find interesting but when it comes to memes like follow Friday I do tend to focus on following blogs who have a small or smaller number of followers because it indicates to me that they are new and I remember being a new blogger.

Would you follow a blog to enter a contest?
I have followed blogs as part of entering giveaways, I have also become twitter followers of bloggers to enter their giveaways but I draw the line at email subscriptions just because I am terrible at consistently checking my email and the updates would pile up in my inbox. After saying that I wish there was a way you could customize your subscriptions so followers could have the option of getting bulk updates once a week instead of every time an update happens because I have people who have subscribed to my blog by email and I sometimes update two or three times in one day and I could imagine what their inbox must look like.

What makes you unfollow a blog?
I have a rule, if you haven’t left a message to your followers saying that you are taking a break and have not updated in 3 months I unfollow you, because what’s the point of following a blogger that is no longer maintaining their blog? If the majority of your posts are giveaways/contests or memes I unfollow you. Seeing nothing but giveaways/contests on a blog makes me think of spam, seeing nothing but memes on a blog gives me the impression that the blogger has nothing individualistic or personal to contribute. I haven’t had to do this for blogs yet but I have unfriended/unfollowed at least two people on goodreads because their updates were hate-filled, flaming rants that they have written or they have liked and I didn’t feel comfortable being associated with someone that is so mean.

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Book Review: I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
I've lost it. The only thing in the world I wasn't supposed to lose. My engagement ring. It's been in Magnus's family for three generations. And now, the very same day his parents are coming, I've lost it. The very same day. Do not hyperventilate, Poppy. Stay positive!!

Poppy Wyatt has never felt luckier. She is about to marry the ideal man, Magnus Tavish, but in one afternoon her 'happy ever after' begins to fall apart. Not only has she lost her engagement ring but in the panic that followed, she has now lost her phone. As she paces shakily round the hotel foyer she spots an abandoned phone in a bin. Finders keepers! Now she can leave a number for the hotel to contact her when they find her ring. Perfect!

Well, perfect except the phone's owner, businessman Sam Roxton doesn't agree. He wants his phone back and doesn't appreciate Poppy reading all his messages and wading into his personal life.

What ensues is a hilarious and unpredictable turn of events as Poppy and Sam increasingly upend each other's lives through emails and text messages. As Poppy juggles wedding preparations, mysterious phone calls and hiding her left hand from Magnus and his parents... she soon realises that she is in for the biggest surprise of her life.

In Sophie Kinsella’s latest standalone novel I’ve Got Your Number the heroine Poppy Wyatt has lost her engagement ring and not just any ring, it is Magnus’ (her fiancé) great grandmother’s emerald engagement ring, a ring so valuable that Magnus had to go into a vault and retrieve the ring before proposing to Poppy. And now Poppy has lost it, on the day she is supposed to see Magnus’ parents for the first time after getting engaged. It would be an understatement to say that Poppy is panicking and of course things get worse after Poppy loses the one way anyone who has found the ring to contact her (her cell phone) so what does she do? She steals a phone or well saves a phone since the item in question was taken from the trash. Who cares if it’s a company phone and that the person calling it (Sam Roxton) demands that she returns it (turns out the phone belonged to his personal assistant), Poppy NEEDS it and she’ll return it as soon as she gets her ring back. In fact she even offers to substitute as Sam’s PA until this whole mess is over. Oh the trouble this girl gets herself into.

In I’ve Got Your Number Poppy Wyatt is a people pleasing physiotherapist about to be married into a family of over achieving geniuses. Sam Roxton is a high level executive who isn’t big on socialising or writing messages that are more than a sentence long and by a series of unexpected events they both get tangled up in each other’s lives. Initially both Poppy and Sam clash as they are both very different personalities and neither can really understand the other but they both also have what the other needs and in the end really help one another to realize their faults and their strengths.

Ever since I read the humorous Can You Keep A Secret a few years ago I have been a fan of Sophie Kinsella's standalone books. They are what you want to read if you need something funny and cute to put you in a good mood, the novel equivalent of a romantic comedy. This book was both a light and quick read and the heroine, like all Sophie Kinsella heroine's, is a likeable character who after getting herself in to a few ridiculous situations realizes how strong, smart and capable she really is. Some people may dismiss books like these as pure fluff but I just desperately want to read the next book this author writes.

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Book Review: Hammered by Kevin Hearne

Hammered by Kevin Hearne
Thor, the Norse god of thunder, is worse than a blowhard and a bully—he’s ruined countless lives and killed scores of innocents. After centuries, Viking vampire Leif Helgarson is ready to get his vengeance, and he’s asked his friend Atticus O’Sullivan, the last of the Druids, to help take down this Norse nightmare.

One survival strategy has worked for Atticus for more than two thousand years: stay away from the guy with the lightning bolts. But things are heating up in Atticus’s home base of Tempe, Arizona. There’s a vampire turf war brewing, and Russian demon hunters who call themselves the Hammers of God are running rampant. Despite multiple warnings and portents of dire consequences, Atticus and Leif journey to the Norse plain of Asgard, where they team up with a werewolf, a sorcerer, and an army of frost giants for an epic showdown against vicious Valkyries, angry gods, and the hammer-wielding Thunder Thug himself.

By the end of Hexed, the second book in the Iron Druid Chronicles, Atticus had made two deals and was in debt to two very powerful people. The first, an Indian witch named Lashka who in turn for helping Atticus kill a dozen bacchants requested that he steal for her an immortal youth-inducing Golden Apple. The second person was Atticus’ long-time friend and lawyer Leif Helgarson a Nordic-vampire who in exchange for helping Atticus take down a coven of evil witches and demons would require Atticus’ help in killing Thor, the Norse God of Thunder. Both favours require Atticus to travel between planes and to the world of Asgard; both favours also put Atticus in a lot of trouble.

Atticus does not want to go to Asgard, he does not want to make his existence more known to those that might want to smite him or put the ones he loves in danger but he gave his word and despite receiving two warnings from two gods of two different religions he is still going to go ahead with his quest, a quest that he might not walk away from. Hammered definitely had a different feel to it than the first two books in this series. It was still a fun and humorous read but there was also a more serious tone interspersed throughout the narrative as well as an obvious hint that things were about to change forever and not necessarily for the best.

I enjoyed this third volume but not as much as its predecessors. Although there was interesting back stories revealed on not only Atticus but Granuille (Atticus’ apprentice), his friend Leif, and Gunnar, the Alpha werewolf of the Tempe pack, there were also stories shown about other characters that were introduced for the first time in the novel that I wasn’t too interested. It was my least favourite part of the novel and wished would have been done differently or cut down shorter. Still, if you are a fan of the series this is definitely not an instalment you should skip; many changes take place in this volume as well as hints of things to come. I believe this book was not only the end of an ARC but a set-up to the next one.

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The Infernal Devices, volume 1 manga COVER

Not sure if this is well known already but I just saw this on the YenPress website and had to share.

A prequel to Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series, The Infernal Devices is the story of Tessa Gray, a sixteen-year-old American girl traveling alone to Victorian London who runs afoul of the city’s sordid supernatural underworld. Rescued by the Shadowhunters of the London Institute, Tessa quickly finds herself caught up in an intrigue that may very well destroy her new friends – including the two enigmatic young men, Jem and Will, who have taken her under their wing…

Dark hair and brilliant blue eyes hmm I wonder, could this be Will? I was surprised to see this image as the cover because below is a cover of an issue of YenPlus magazine that also has Will on the cover, and usually the cover shown on an issue YenPlus turns out to be the cover for the next upcoming volume in a a series.

Maybe the powers that be finally realized the position of the sword could be sending off the wrong sort of message ;).

What do you think of the cover? Prefer it to the image on the magazine or not?

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Movie Review: Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter

Production Company: Abraham Productions/Bazelevs Production/Tim Burton Productions
Director: Timur Bekmambetov
Writers:Seth Grahame-Smith (screenplay/novel)
Main Stars: Benjamin Walker, Rufus Sewell and Dominic Cooper

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.

Once again, I have only glimpsed the trailer for this movie and was not sure what to expect. Somehow I just could not wrap my head around the thought of the once President of the United States being a vampire hunter. It just looked like a good movie and Reeshe and Sandy were hyped to see it, being vampire buffs.

The base of the story revolves around a young Abe vowing to kill the man he witnessed kill his mother. Later coming to finding the man he finally got up the nerve to kill could not be killed because he is a vampire.

Abe meets up with Henry who tells him he is a vampire hunter. Henry promises Abe that he will have his revenge, but first he must become a vampire hit man for him. He must have no friends and no family, and be ready when he tells him. There is not much more I can say without spoilers, but I must say there is an interesting twist.

There is plenty of action which is slowed down like in Sherlock Holmes, to allow you to see the blow by blow. It is also very interesting the way they incorporate some of the historical facts of his political life into the movie, like the battle of Gettysburg.

We highly recommend you go see this movie and hope that this review, though short will want you to go and check it out for yourselves.

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Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

In the aftermath of the recent tragedy in Colorado, we decided to still go see this movie. It is so sad that there are people in this world who prey on innocent victims in there moments of insanity. Our blessing go out to those have lost loved ones, hurt or suffered any traumatic damage in this incident.

Production Company: Warner Bros. Pictures/DC Entertainment
Director: Christopher Nolan
Writers: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer, and Bob Kane
Main Stars: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway

Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham's finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

I think we all agreed that this movie was well worth the wait. Somehow I expected more with all the hype. But I guess I should have watched the trailer before. Reeshe and Sandy know a lot more about the character of Bain so it was more to their expectations.

I was never much a fan of Christian Bale as Batman fan; I must say he did a really good job. In this movie you see a more emotional side of the Dark Knight, as he struggles with his inner turmoil dealing with his lost love and choosing to protect his beloved Gotham City.

Anne Hathaway as the catwoman/burglar I thought was no Hallie Berry or Michelle Phiffer, but she did a wonderful job. The chemistry between her as Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne was spectacular...and she sure can handle the bike! Her quirky personality is always a plus too.

My favourite casting was Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays Detective Blake. I think he has really come a long way from his role as an alien in the popular 90s TV show Third Rock from the Sun. We can look forward to seeing big rolls from him in the near future.

Although I think this movie could have had a bit more action, we all greatly enjoyed the story and of course seeing all the new bat gadgets.

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