Back from Hiatus

Well hello there readership of maybe one or two people.

I went on holiday.  And it was fabulous.  And I went to libraries and took pictures.  However, that is for another post.

In Australia we are well into summer.  I am sweltering.  It is 10am and 29C and should be hitting 41 today.  Ugh.  So I want to get into the pool asap.

But my friend Abigail said that I needed to do a post so here it is.

Although my blog was supposed to be about the books I get from the library, I have actually made a little pledge with myself that I am not to get any more books from the library because I have a whole stack sitting beside my bed that I have not read and just never seem to get around to.  So I am planning on working my way through these bad boys.

And I got a dog!!  Which is irrelevant for my blog but super important for my life.  She already hates photoshoots but if she is to be my dog, she must learn to love them.  Ally, you have about fifteen years of photoshoots to look forward to…

This pic is from instagram when I got tagged to post all my blue coloured books.

Who am I kidding?  I can’t stay away from the library.  I got these ones out last week…

I am about fifty pages into “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth Wein and not loving it at the moment.  Two of my favourite book people absolutely adore this book so maybe I had high expectations but I am persevering.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Also, one of the other books I got out from the library is the first in a series… so I’ll probably have to get the remaining ones out too…

First review

“Sweet Valley Confidential” by Francine Pascal

Oh man.  I was so excited about this book.  I was an avid Sweet Valley reader back in the day, which was a series that chronicled the adventures of identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield.  I was more of an Elizabeth fangirl, she was beautiful, smart and had a gorgeous steady boyfriend.  What else could I possibly want from high school- or that confusingly American “middle school”?

So when I stumbled across “Sweet Valley Confidential” my eyes almost popped out of my head.  Here was a new story featuring the twins, but the twins had grown up alongside me.  It was set ten years after the twins left high school.

Unfortunately once I started reading, my excitement faded.  And really quickly.  The story was overly angsty and featured a “huge secret that had torn the twins apart”, that honestly I don’t think would ever have happened.  The writing wasn’t fantastic.  And I hate saying something like that because who am I to criticise an author.  If you have the willpower to sit down and write a book, and then get that thing published, then right on sister.  But this was not great.  It seemed to be pitched at the same intelligence level as the previous books for younger readers.  The content was certainly for older readers, but not the writing.  I actually spent most of the time rolling my eyes because it really was that bad.

It kind of sullied my enjoyment of the previous books and combined with the moroseness of the storyline, I stopped reading.  I want to remember my Wakefield twins as those fresh faced blonde twins from high school, not these girls.  I’ve evolved from the simplistic writing and storylines of the Sweet Valley series- apparently the Wakefield twins haven’t.

I looked up on the internet what happened in the rest of the book and felt validated that others felt the same as me! 

I wouldn’t recommend this book.  If you are really hankering to find out what happens to the Wakefield twins, read the Wikipedia entry for this book, don’t read the book itself.  Relive the good old days with the Sweet Valley High TV series that I just re-discovered on youtube!  Or make up an alternate storyline for the girls.  Mine is where Elizabeth becomes a reporter and Jessica finds success on the stage.  They both move away from Sweet Valley because really, who stays the same as they were in high school? 

First post

This is the first post in what I hope will be many, many posts but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  I’m starting this blog as I try and get back in touch with my first love- reading.  Ok, maybe my second love after animals.

This blog will be what it says on the tin: pictures of my haul of books from the library, and then we’ll go from there.

First haul:

Not pictured “Sweet Valley Confidential” by Francine Pascal because I was also taking pictures of certain passages to a friend because they were amazing.

And because this is the internet, here is a picture of a cat and some books.  This is Charis, who of course thought that I needed to take a picture of her.

And here’s Merlin loving the books too coz I can’t leave him out.

He kind of looks like he’s wearing a pointy wizard hat, but that’s just some tissues behind him.  He doesn’t have magical powers that I know of, despite his name being Merlin.