I don’t believe in originality. You take inspiration from whatever moves you and you find your voice in those things.
— Tim Walker
From March 9 of '94, a language enthusiast, a budding pharmacist-to-be, a fake athlete, a person who's neither skinny nor fat, someone socially-awkward, a music aficionado, an untalented artist, one who appreciates good writing and photography, self-proclaimed person of excellent yet diverse taste.
Friday, January 11, 2013
3:10 PM

Helen and Peter Radley have a huge secret they really don’t want to tell their children, as they want them to live a normal life as possible - but things aren’t gong to plan.

Rowan can’t sleep at night and thinks it’s a bad case of insomnia, he then wants to sleep all day. He’s also allergic to the sun and has to apply factor 60 otherwise his skin gets covered in a sore itchy rash. He constantly gets bullied at school and is totally in love with a girl at school who’s friends with his sister and is totally out of his league. Basically, Rowan hates his life.

Clara doesn’t have the same problems as her brother, but she does have her own. Clara is sick all the time, literally, and her parents keep telling her that she really should eat meat and stop this nonsense of becoming a vegan, but they just don’t understand, although she doesn’t get why she’s so nauseous all the time, but her father, who’s a doctor, keeps telling her it’s probably just a virus. Animals also hate her, even though she’s really nice to them, so she’s become an advocate of several ‘against animal cruelty’ societies and covers her bedroom walls with their posters.

But one fateful night, Clara is feeling worse and worse and then does something that changes her life and those of her family forever. Because of this, Helen and Peter are pressured into telling Clara and Rowan their secret; they are abstaining vampires and haven’t tasted blood for seventeen years. In a fit of panic, Peter calls his brother for help, but for some reason calling Will fills Helen with dread, as she has even more secrets of her own, which she doesn’t want even Peter to know about.

Helen and Peter’s relationship is full of tension and the strain of trying to be normal all the time is taking it’s toll. Individually they reminisce about the days they drank human blood and how much they miss it. And when Will flies in to help, things just go from bad to worse.

It's a fun read actually. Each chapters are short and the longest will be about 4-5 pages. It's quite fast-paced and the vampires in this novel are not similar like in Stephenie Meyer book. They don't drink animal blood instead they drink vampire blood kept in a bottle. Rowan is so sweet for his love towards Eve. There are some dark/adults moments in it but whoever reads it is mature enough to differentiate which are good or bad for themselves. After all this is just a work of fiction.

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Sunday, December 30, 2012
10:17 PM
The novel begins in the fall of 1984 when Aomame, in a taxi rushing to an important appointment gets caught in a traffic jam on a highway. The driver tells her about an emergency stairway she can use to get off the road while making some cryptic remarks about the nature of reality, remarks that turn out to be central to the metaphysics of the novel. Aomame descends the staircase and eventually discovers she is in a world that seems like real world, but is not. She is sure about it when she discovers that in this world there are two moons. The 'Q' in the novel's title means questionable. It is no longer 1984; it is a new world, a questionable replica. The rest of the novel takes place in this replica.


This novel is the story of how Aomame and a boy, Tengo, she once held hands with in elementary school, are eventually drawn back together, in the world of 1Q84, via the machinations of a religious cult called Sakigake, which has established a connection with the creepy Little People. Sakigake hires a private detective named Ushikawa, an incredibly ugly man with crooked teeth and a huge misshapen head, to track Aomame down, for reasons that can’t be divulged.

In my opinion, this is a lovestory between a boy and a girl who once held hands in an empty classroom but then separated over 20 years and how fate entangled them together again. Yeah it is a lovestory but the long plot, along with the intricacy that rose up, is what made this novel super thick, mine is 1318 pages. It took me a month to finish the whole book. You might be tempted to stop reading about two-thirds of the way through—but I would encourage you, if you’re the kind of person to read such a strange book in the first place, to finish the novel. It is well worth it.


source :  google / firstthings / seattlepi

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Thursday, December 27, 2012
3:08 AM
The front cover of le book. See it's not overly thick. You can finish reading it in 1 day.

The Summary:
Girl meets boy.Girl loses boy.Girl gets boy back…
…sort of.
Ava can’t see him or touch him, unless she’s dreaming. She can’t hear his voice, except for the faint whispers in her mind. Most would think she’s crazy, but she knows he’s here.
Jackson. The boy Ava thought she’d spend the rest of her life with. He’s back from the dead, as proof that love truly knows no bounds.

I actually was very surprised at how well the story flowed, even though it was written in verse. Sometimes you expect stories to be broken up due to the verse, but that was not the case with Lisa Schroeder’s book. The storyline is simple, not complicated. The boyfriend died, girlfriend felt guilty, the spirit of the boyfriend refuse to go to the other side until his deferred business on Earth is settled...okay I'm becoming a spoiler. But yeah it is an interesting book despite written in verse. At first, my friend though that I was reading a book of poems when she saw the page but naah, it's so much easier to finish a book like this. I might say that this is a pageturner, although I'm not a chickflick novels enthusiast myself. 
My favourite verse in the book
He's looking at a newspaper.
She's looking at him.
She says something.
He looks at her.
He smiles.
She smiles.

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