Reading something different

I’ve finally found myself reaching the last few weeks of my university career and it’s a bit overwhelming, to say the least. So, to distract myself from the inevitable nostalgia, and from the towering pile of work looming over me, I looked for something to read.

I don’t have any unread books left on my shelves at the moment and I was running out of ideas, until I came across a BuzzFeed post one evening. It was a post about Harry Potter fanfiction. I’ve always been skeptical when it comes to the topic of fanfiction. I made the mistake of reading some One Direction fanfiction earlier this year and was disappointed in the lack of grammar, spelling, punctuation or general writing skill. Of course, I should have known Harry Potter would be different. Harry Potter fans, like myself, are no longer teens. They are wiser and more devoted. They are people who love literature and reading, and who are just as invested in the world of Harry Potter as I am.

This pic is sourced from here.
It was a fan-art sent to Bex-chan, but I couldn’t find who created it.

A Magical Escape

The story begins with Prospero and the Man in the Grey Suit starting a game. We don’t know the rules, we don’t know when it will start and we don’t even know both of the players. All we know for sure is that it is a game played with magic.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is one of the most incredible books I have ever read. It was published in 2011 and I cannot believe that I waited until now to read it. For four years I missed out on unbelievable imagination, beautiful writing and a storyline that keeps you hooked until the very last word.

Picture sourced from here.

Finally a bit more Mia

Like many girls around my age, I grew up reading The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot. In fact, I think I’ve read almost every single book that Meg Cabot has written, save for a couple of the ones from her Mediator series. I just love her style of writing. Her characters can always make me laugh and her stories pull me in when I need an escape.

Royal Wedding comes 8 or so (my math skills are horrendous) years after the end of the 10th book in the series, which many people thought would be the last. Getting to see what has happened in the life of the charismatic Princess Mia was such a delight. It was like jumping back into my teenage years, but, just like me, Mia has grown up.

Picture sourced from here.

The Heartbreakers

The Heartbreakers by Ali Novak is the first book that I read through NetGalley. It was the first of the books I requested to be approved by the publisher and I was really excited to start reading. I have to say I was not disappointed.

The book is about an 18-year-old girl called Stella, who is one of three siblings. Two girls and a boy, who just happen to be triplets. Her identical twin sister, Cara, has been fighting cancer for a number of years and her health is deteriorating as they come up to their 18th birthday.

Stella and her brother, Drew, think it would be a brilliant idea to take a road trip and get Cara’s favourite band, The Heartbreakers, to sign a CD for her, despite the fact that they both despise the famous boyband.

Image sourced from here.

A girl online writing about Girl Online

Last week I finally read a book I’ve been looking forward to reading since last year. Girl Online by Zoe Sugg, the YouTube sensation who is taking over the world.

I’ve been watching Zoe’s videos on YouTube for over a year now. She has two channels; her main channel (called Zoella), which contains fashion and beauty videos, and then her vlog channel (MoreZoella), on which she sometimes records her daily life. She is a charismatic and bubbly person, with just enough humour and charm to make me wait excitedly for the release of her videos every Sunday.

Something that I realised after watching her vlogs for a year, especially when she was a daily vlogger (she posted 10-15 minute long videos every day about what happened in her live the previous day) is that it becomes very easy to start feeling as though you know Zoe personally. You learn what she wears, what she eats and who her friends are – pretty much all of the details that you would learn about your own friends…except Zoe is still technically a complete stranger.

Take a trip to the Scottish highlands

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon was published 25 years ago, before I was even born, but has recently become popular again due to a new hit TV show based on the book. Outlander was the first in a series of 8 books, the most recent of which was published in 2014.

As usual, I could not bear the thought of watching the on screen version before reading the book, and so I delved into it despite my heavy workload. This was before my exams at the end of last year and I didn’t manage to get more than halfway before studying had to take preference. Plus the show (which I had managed to keep ahead of while reading) hit a mid-season break, which meant that I had a few months to get around to finishing the book before the show started off again.

I then forgot about the book until spotting articles all over my Facebook timeline proclaiming that the midseason break of Outlander the TV show was over. I couldn’t believe that I had put down such a brilliant book for so long and immediately dug it out again. It took me less than 2 days to finish, even with lectures to attend.

So what makes this book so brilliant? There are a lot of contributing factors – timetravel, a female heroine, a hot Scottish bloke…and quite a lot of sex.

Image sourced from http://roberthuntstudio.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Robert_Hunt_illustration_gabaldon.jpg

Better than Lord of the Rings

I’m about to make a bold statement.

Last year, in my English 3 class, we had an elective called British Modern Fantasy, and in it we studied The Lord of the Rings saga (it’s not a trilogy). I loved it of course; it is pretty difficult not to love Tolkien. However, there is a certain similar set of books which I personally think are better than The Lord of the Rings.

The books I’m talking about are the Inheritance Cycle by Christopher Paolini. The first book is called Eragon  and I read it for the first time when I was about 12-years-old. The series grew to be extremely popular among young adults as the second (Eldest) and third (Brisingr) books were released. There was a three year wait between each book, which meant that by the time the final book (Inheritance) was released I was almost 18, and I have to say that I was in no way patient in each of those three year gaps.

I had such conviction during the Christmas holidays that I was going to sit down and read every book on my list that I had been wanting to read but had not gotten around to. This failed miserably. I spotted Eragon on my bookshelf one day towards the end of the holiday and I couldn’t restrain myself from plucking it off the shelf and starting to read it. Before I knew it, I was just as engrossed in the series as I had been back in high school. I sat and read them at every spare moment. I sped through them at a pace that alarmed even me, especially since the entire cycle consists of about 2 779 pages. I realised with only 4 days to go in my holiday that I still had the whole of Inheritance to read. I knew that I couldn’t take it back to Rhodes with me because 860 pages was a few too many to fit into my carryon bag. Let’s just say I may not have spent as much time with my family as I should have in those last few days. (I did manage to finish it, in case you were wondering).

Nothing like a good tearjerker

This holiday I have finally been able to sit down and read some of the books that have been on my list this year. I came down with the flu about a month ago (terrible timing since we were visiting out of town family) and took the opportunity to cajole my mom into buying me a book on the way home from the doctor. I’m not sure why, but I thought it would be a good idea to buy the most depressing book in the shop.

That afternoon I lay outside in the Durban sea breeze and read If I Stay by Gayle Forman. The book isn’t long but it succeeded in making me cry numerous times within the few hours that it took me to read it.

The story is about a 17-year-old girl called Mia who is taking a casual drive with her family on a snow day when they get into a serious car accident. She finds herself in a coma and can see and hear everything that is going on around her (she sort of floats around after everyone like a ghost) but cannot communicate. She soon realises that she has to make the seemingly impossible choice between staying and rejoining her boyfriend Adam and loving grandparents or letting go and joining her parents and brother on the other side (wherever that may be).

Image taken from http://pgteenspace.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/forman1.jpg.

An old gem

The best thing about being home for the holidays is that I get to dig through my bookshelf and find some books that I want to reread. I’ve currently got a pile of five books sitting on my bedside table, just waiting for me to read them again after the neglect they have been subjected to over the last few years.

The first book on the pile was Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, which I sat and read yesterday for probably the third time. When I picked it up off the bookshelf a folded up piece of exam paper fell out and I picked it up in confusion. It was a page of notes for a speech that I made in high school about the book. It reminded me how much of an impact the book had on me the last time I read it, and it did not fail in having the same impact on me again.

I realised last night that the book was written in 1992, a year before I was born. This was unbelievable considering how relevant I found it to my own life experiences.

It is a beautiful coming of age story about a girl called Josephine Alibrandi, an Australian girl from an Italian family, who lives with her mother in Sydney. Throughout the book, Josie meets her father, finds love and deals with death. The reader gets to watch her mature as she goes through her final year of school.

Paper Towns

I have been taking advantage of finally having some spare time this holiday and I sat down to read Paper Towns by John Green. I have been wanting to read more of his books since I read both Looking for Alaska and The Fault In Our Stars. I was quite hesitant when I started this book, because (not surprisingly) I had expectations of being left with tears streaming down my face and no sense of fulfilment.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was not left with a soul-crushing sadness, but rather a sense of anticlimax. I thought the book was beautifully written (as are all of Green’s other books) and I was captivated from beginning to end.

I enjoyed the character of Quentin at the beginning of the book. He is a shy, somewhat nerdy, young man. He is well-adjusted (thanks to his therapist parents) and he knows what he wants to do with his life. He has good friends and good grades. The only wrench in the works is Margo Roth Spiegelman. Margo has been Quentin’s neighbour since they were two-years-old and he has been in love with her for most of his life. Margo is wild, beautiful, and full of mystery and adventure. She is a member of the popular crowd (and Quentin is definitely not) until one day she catches her boyfriend cheating on her with her friend. That night, she knocks on Quentin’s window and takes him on an all-night adventure of revenge and some vaguely illegal activities. The next morning she is gone. She ran away, taking her car and leaving only a few small clues for Quentin to use to figure out where she may have gone.