Day 6 Book Photo Challenge: Emotional Rollercoaster

None who have read it can go past Harry Potter for an emotional rollercoster. If read in the early years of your life, this one and especially the opening chapter title will live with you forever. Enough said.

My other pick is an author that I don't think gets nearly enough credit for the amazing work that she did. I read Threshold by Sara Douglas in high school and was devastated that it was a stand alone book. Then, a decade after its publication, I found the The Serpent Bride that was a continuation of the original book as the Darkglass Mountain Trilogy and made a noise in the bookstore only another book addict would understand. I cannot recommend her books enough. 

Day 22 Book Photo Challenge: Winter Theme/Setting

Yeah, I am totally rebelling against this one because I live in Australia, if you haven't already worked this out, and quite frankly I'm thinking this is a Christmas themed book challenge and I have never seen snow let alone a white Christmas. What I have had a lot of are 40 degree Celsius Christmas days, pool side, eating seafood, cold meat and salads.
For these reasons I am giving you pictures of my favorite summer/desert themed book: Dune by Frank Herbert (note how cool this guy is with his popped collar)

 I love this book, specifically this edition of the trilogy. My parents had this edition when I was a kid but it was too involved for me to be able to tackle back then and my brother read it and I have never seen it since. This copy I found at a second hand book sale after having searched for years. This series effects me so much when reading it and for weeks after, that I drink more water and feel like I have a scar coming up on my cheek from the water collection apparatus they wear.
A perfect read for the hot dry Christmases that I know and love.

Day 20 Book Photo Challenge: Blew My Mind

For mind blowing, utter ridiculousness you can never go past the ultimate cult classic House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski.

Like most people (I'm lead to believe) that have read this book i heard about it from a friend of a friend at a party and the description is always the same with the sounds that aren't actually words and the miming of turning the book upside-down to read everything and the gesticulation of how truly awesome and mind blowing it is and then the "you just have to read it!"

About a year after i got this explanation i found this book in my favorite book store Crow Books in Victoria Park and it seemed to jump off the shelf and smack me in the head, yelling look at me, buy me, read me!

I complied when I flicked through and realised that it was the same book I had been told about. I was not disappointed but i was a little tramatised.

I am now so attached to this book that I keep recommending it to people but will not, for the life of me, let it out of my house for fear of it never coming back. 

The plot line (if you could call it a line) and the visual format that mirrors the actions of the characters' actions and what is happening to them (whether they like it or not) comes together in such a powerfully effective manner that it just blows my mind. Not to mention the narrative within a narrative writing that just gives the most amazing layers and depths to the story. For these reasons and more I was completely unable to do my habitual multiple reading (several books at the same time) and had to use all my brain on following all the little threads.

Just amazing and blew my mind. 

Day 19 Book Photo Challenge: Makes Me Feel Nostalgic

This was, without a shadow of a doubt, my absolute favorite book as a child and it was the first book I went out and found for my niece, it is that important to me. Enid Blyton was my favorite author for the longest time and I read a lot of her books but I always came back to good old Pip (or not so good at sometimes, he is a pixie after all).

The stories are really short, mostly less than two pages a piece, so they were really good for me to practice reading with when I was young and not that good at reading. Sometimes I would just look at the pictures and remember the stories when I couldn't read them (too young to read and after learning how to read, to tired to concentrate around my Dyslexia.) 

For this reason, I have chosen The Adventures of Pip by Enid Blyton as my Nostalgic pick and included photos of some of my favorite illustrations. Enjoy, I do.

 

Day 17 Book Photo Challenge: Favorite Classic

I picked A Study in Scarlet as my favorite classic but, honestly, I could have picked any of the Sherlock books that I have read as my favorite because I just love the character.
As I have said previously I didn't start reading classics until I got my kindle four years ago for Christmas and was a broke university student who discovered free books from the Gutenberg Project. Since then I have read quite a few but I found that the Sherlock books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle speak to me the most because they are the most like what I normally read in modern fiction. Smart characters that get one (or several) up of the authority figures of the piece but are a little bit broken them self.

Day 16 Book Photo Challenge: Guilty Pleasure

The Sookie Stackhouse series is most defiantly my guilty pleasure. I don't want to bag it but it is a bit trashy and not exactly written in a manner that will make it a long lived classic but i love the characters and the world and they just make me feel like I'm talking to old friends without that whole tedious going out and talking to people thing.

These are one of the few things that I chew through in about a few days a book because it is so simply written.

I will admit, I watched the TV show first and after about a season, I went out and found the books. I find it's a bit like reading fan fiction becasue the characters aren't quite the same and the plot line now differ greatly but anything to slake the need.

My Guilty Pleasure (other than reading in general) The Sookie Stackhouse Series By Charlaine Harris. 

Literary Photo Challenge Day 12: I Wish I Had Read This Sooner

I couldn't pick a particular book for this one so I choose a genre.... sort of.

I wish i had have started reading classic literature sooner than I had. Unlike a lot of people who read a lot of the classics in high school, we read things that they thought we would like such as tomorrow when the war began and Lockie Lenard: Human Torpedo, both of which I hated. Not to mention the fact that some years we didn't even read a text as part of our schooling, this is what you get for going to school in the country.

When  I got my Kindle however, I was in my last year of University and hence i was broke and couldn't really afford to buy any of the new release books.  This was when I discovered The Gutenberg Project and their free downloadable mobi files for kindle.

I read quite a few classics that year and a few since then. I have enjoyed then greatly and had an epiphany as to why classics are classic.... they are so well written and even one, two or even three hundred years after being first published, they read beautifully. I honestly wish i had started reading them sooner.

Literary Photo Challenge Day 11: Frustrating Read

My frustrating read will always be the first book in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever series, Lord Foul’s Bane.

It wasn’t just the dilapidated condition of my copy that made this book frustrating.

This book actually belonged to my Dad and he would read it (and the rest of the series) in the down time on the trucks at work. To Quote him “there is only so many times you can read the paper.” He must have liked the book and read it several times because this is the condition that I found it in the bookshelf as a teenager (having been published in 1977, seven years before I was born.) complete with duct tape (because duct tape fixes everything.)

So there is the condition of the book that is frustrating adding to the fact that the old paper and the small font size is messing with my dyslexia (even if I didn’t realise it at the time) and the idea that my dad had read it so I would definitely enjoy it. conglomerated in a book that took me seven attempts to finish. To add to this, even though I at least the next five, possibly more, books in the series, I have never read them. 

All together the epitome of a frustrating read.

Literary Photo Challenge Day 10: Best POV

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister was the first Gregory Maguire book i had read. I picked it up really cheap at a "middle of the mall" book sale tables because it was ripped but the title was too interesting to resist, that and the art work of the cover. 

*spoilers*

The POV part comes right at the end when you think you have been hearing the story of one of the ugly stepsisters the whole way through but it is actually the sister that is mute and they think retarded. Great twist and great POV switch up. Really should re-read it.

Once again spoilers.

Snow Crash was my first Neal Stephenson book book second hand (its bee well loved and I wont lend this copy to anyone because its about to fall a part.) There are a couple of scenes in it from the point of view of a dog that has gone through a cyberman type process but that isn't obvious to begin with. Good little tension builder.

So I couldn't decide today so i gave you all two but i don't think anyone will complain. 

Literary Photo Challenge Day 9: Cliff Hanger

These two are like the worst cliff hangers ever! And there isn't even the threat of someone dying, which is the lazy mans cliffhanger but you just want to know what happens next.

These books are form my school library but i was lucky enough to walk in when the library lady was unpacking the books and I got to read them first.  Just goes to show that if you are nice to your local library staff they let you get in first with the books.

Photo challenge (catch up day 1) this months reading list.

Technically day 1 of the photo challenge my proposed reading list for December. I stress the word proposed because the list in my head always changes as I actually come to the end of a book.

Also I have a list of ebooks that need reading because they need reviews.

But yay for comic books, sci-fi and historical fiction.

List:

Comic Books

•  Catwoman, vol 1 of new 52, Judd Winick and Guillem March
• Witch Craft, 1,2 & 3 of 3, James Robinson, Peter Snejbjerg and Teddy Kristiansen
• Ballads, Charles Vess

Novels

• Insurgent, Book 2 Divergent trilogy, Veronica Roth
• Allegiant, Book 3 Divergent trilogy, Veronica Roth
• The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett 

Time to introduce some of my friends and where we hang out.

I thought it was high time to introduce you all to some of my friends. Some of which I have had for a very long time and some I have met and befriended quite recently. Also some of them are much older than I am but i think they are cool anyway.

This is the main place that we hang out.

I recently went and found a new large group of friends.

This group has fallen in with some high caliber, exclusive friends of a friend in a secondary meeting place (in other words my person best friend needed somewhere to store her books whilst she made room for the newest member of the family due in march, lucky me)

The bottom half being her's and the top half being mine.

I hope you liked being introduced to some of my friends and seeing where we hang out.

Why all the cats and books

In response to all the photos I am seeing of cats (supposedly cute, but whatever) and books on social media lately I give you Colin the reading dog.

He reads!

And then contemplates what he has read.

I would also like to say this was completely unstaged. I wast reading "The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities" got up and came back to this. I believe he quite enjoyed to book, as did I.