April Reading Round-off - Wait, where did it go?

I thought this year was going to be a little different and maybe not keep running away from me like last year seemed to. But since we're now over a third through 2014, I guess I've got to accept that time will just continue to stream through my fingers while I shout obscenities at it.

April vanished in a blur of words and dirt. Lots of writing and a heck of a lot of gardening. 15K for my novel and much destruction for my front and back garden (seriously there's much to be said for the therapeutic value of hacking down a tree when you've had a really shitty day at work). But more surprising was that I actually got 8 books read last month, which is about the combined total of February and March. Of course having 2 whole weeks off work was a help since I was at home all day with time to procrastinate from writing.

What I read in April 
I started off my reading month about a week in because y'know, writing was eating my brain. My first book was Storm & Stone by Joss Stirling. I loved Joss's Savants series and I'm tres excited for the new book Misty Falls which is due out in October, so I thought I would give her new series a try. It's set in a boarding school which are always hot-beds of mystery and nefarious shenanigans. Throw in a strangely absent friend, two gawjus new students and you have Raven Stone's dilemma on returning to school after the Easter break. A very enjoyable start to what will be a fun series I reckon.

My next two batches of reading are pretty obvious because of the two books that I was *immensely* excited for that came out around the middle of the month. That being Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor and The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa. So of course before I could read these two I needed to re-read the first two books in each trilogy.

My fabulous signed pre-order of DoGaM arrived on the 17th which spurred me on to finish my re-reads so I could spend Easter Sunday reading and live-texting my reactions to Jess. It was a fantastic end to a gorgeous series and I really do hope that Laini decides to go back to Karou & Akiva's world even if it's to explore other characters (major props go to Jess for actually asking Laini that question on Thursday night in Birmingham *more on that later*).

After I had had my feels mauled about by Laini I decided to very cleverly hand them straight off to Julie Kagawa, whose muse lives for the feels and tears of fans. Rather worryingly for my boyfriend I dashed through both the first two books of the Blood of Eden trilogy in next to no time at all. I think my ability to read a 400pg book in only 2 hours both appalls and scares him in equal parts. :P I stayed up until 2am reading The Forever Song which I cannot regret because it was fan-fucking-tastic. I am rather sad to reach the end of this trilogy as it's been such a fabulous series and I adore the characters but since Julie's new *dragon* book Talon is coming out soonish I shall very much look forward to throwing my feels after that series.

The last book I read in April was a bit of a sudden thing. I am slowly ingratiating myself with the librarians at the school I work at, mostly because I would like to maybe work in a library once I leave this school and also there is loads of cool books I can borrow. Earlier in the week I was in the library and the reading group they have was reading a little book called Rooftoppers by Katherine Rundell it has a super pretty cover as you can see and just from looking at the first 6 pages I knew this was a book I had to read.
It's more towards the middle-grade end of things but it's such a lovely story and so whimsically written that it is very deserving of its Waterstones' Children's Fiction Prize. Eccentric characters, nefarious insurance fraud schemes and rooftop adventures in Paris, what more could you want?
I devoured it just before I went to bed and spend my free hour the next day scouring the book for all of the wonderful quotes I'd seen. My particular favourite is from the main character Sophie - "I think, actually, everyone starts out with some strange in them. It's just, whether or not you decide to keep it." If you guys are super lucky you may actually see a proper full-blown REVIEW from me about it!! *lays out cushions for the swooners*

So that's everything I read, I also made a few vlogs over on my Youtube channel that are mainly book hauls and also a rather special freak-out over the YALC announcements whereby ALL THE AUTHORS are going to be there in July. And also moi. And Jess because we twinnies must go to all the things this year! But seriously it's going to be awesome and I can't wait! More on that maybe in the near future.

Also even though it happened in May, I *have* to mention the amazing happenstance which was when Jess and I went to Birmingham Waterstones to see Laini Taylor talk, answer questions and sign books!! It was a fantastic evening, with gorgeous cakes, great questions and also Laini was so lovely and sweet. She did actually say that she liked my t-shirt *dies*. Jess is gonna do a proper write-up of the night soon so look out for that!

Anyway this has taken about two hours to write and I meant to do productive stuff today like laundry and writing a lovely cute scene to cheer up my Twinnie since I broke her heart yesterday with my evil writerly ways :P

Hope everyone's April was both chocolatey and booky and that May is gonna be just as awesome.
Ray

p.s. No really Jess, a cute scene is gonna be coming your way before the Bank Holiday is over PROMISE. It may be Stella it may even be a Kid!Deryn/Keelan scene because of reasons :P

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Hogwarts and Horrendous Weather

Thursday was a mixture of Awesome Nerdy times and seriously insane rain. To my extreme joy we went to Universal's Island of Adventure which if you don't know is the home of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter!! Last time I'd been to Florida the park was still being built so I've been dying to visit it for *aaages*!

The day started off looking bright enough although it still took a beastie-sized cup of coffee to de-zombiefy my lazy ass. When we got to Universal it was batshit-crazy busy in Hogsmeade, seriously there was a line that looked nearly an hour long just to get into Ollivanders! That's not even mentioning the 75 minute line to get into the Hogwarts Castle ride.

We first hit up the Triwizard Dragon Challenge ride (formally the Duelling Dragons ride) which is a fab way to make yourself light-headed early in the morning. Strangely the queue for this ride was tiny in comparison to the Hippogriff ride which was nothing more than a glorified runaway train, being the adrenaline junkie that I am I found that odd since who'd pass up the chance to get flung around upside down and instead sit and go round and round in speedy circles with a bit of steep banking?

After retrieving our bags from the teeny-tiny-omg-why-are-they-so-small? lockers we wandered towards the castle, shuffled our way through the *extremely* packed shop by the exit to the ride, drooled enviously over purdy scarves, ties and $50 Marauder's maps (yipes that was crazy), before escaping to freedom in the baking sunshine. That's when we noticed the cart selling wands.

Spot my Mommy in Hogsmeade!

Now before this trip I knew that what I wanted most from TWWoHP was a wand, so that I could finally stop messing about like a pathetic muggle with the crappy wand I made from K'nex donkey's years ago (no, really). So my sister and I had a nosy at the different character's wands and decided that we both really liked Ginny's and Luna's wands so we batted our eyelashes like suck-ups and the rentals agreed to let us have them *happy dance*. We also got Hermione's wand for a very special Twin of mine - Jess m'dear we are gonna Accio nerdytimes like nobody's business! I think we should mock-duel in the middle of the cinema when we meet oui?

Ahem, moving on. Thus wandified we then had to decide what to do next and with a choice of humungous queue for Hippogriff ride or humungous queue for the Hogwarts Castle ride... Hogwarts won out. Once again we had to stuff our bags into lockers I swear someone had hexed to be that tiny and useless, and join the endless queue which snaked *outside* of the normal park area into hidden, special staff only areas because it was *SO FREAKING LONG*.

For an hour we shuffled round all the queue lanes, getting baked by the sun (which later became sunburn),  and fanning ourselves frantically with maps so our entire faces didn't melt off. It was actually kinda cool being in the queue as you end up in the Herbology greenhouses just before you enter the actual castle, there were mandrakes behind a little cage thing and what I think might have been a Venomous Tentacula but alas there were no staff around to ask and I'd hate to reveal my extreme nerdiness by asking the general queue-folk.

The House Points system

This is my sister and I just as we get to the castle entrance (praise be to sweet, sweet air conditioning), please ignore how hideous I look as I am not suited to hot climates :S

Inside was super-cool and chock-full of awesome Hogwarty stuff as we continued queueing to the actual ride. Check out ze pics.

Entrance to Dumbledore's Office

 The ride itself was an awesome amalgam of a simulator ride with a big-ass projector screen (like Soaring at Epcot) and a crazy coaster. You have to run down one of those conveyor belts and jump into the four-seat box thing and chuck your harness down as everything keeps moving the whole time so you gotta be quick!

Then you get lifted off the ground and away you go! There's an awesome bar on the front of your harness which you hold like you're on a broom and it seriously feels like your flying round Hogwarts. Occasionally the scene changes and bam! You're in the Forbidden Forest and there's fecking SPIDERS EVERYWHERE! Then everything goes back to nice and normal for a while... wait no NOW THE DEMENTORS ARE COMING FOR YOU!!! *Freaks the frick out*

Sorting Hat!

I will hands-up confess to being genuinely scared when the Dementors appeared because damn... that's one thing the movies did perfectly *shudders*. I will also own up to being a major spaz and yelling "Expecto Patronum" like it would bloody do something, oy vay I'm an idiot.

Overall the ride was absolutely amazing and dang if you didn't feel like you were really flying (I know I was leaning forward to go faster), it was a total rush and *so* worth the hour's queue time. If we could have I would have ran back round and rejoined the line as I wanted to live in that castle!

By the time we got finished in Hogwarts we were starved so we went and sat at the back of the Three Broomsticks and ate our sandwiches whilst cooing over our wands (Beth and me that is, our parents just thought we were mental :P). We still had a few more places we wanted to go in Hogsmeade, like Honeydukes so after lunch we joined the crush in the sweet shop. There were so many awesome looking sweets in there (although jeepers they were pricey) but we eventually got a chocolate frog and some Bertie Bott's beans for my sister and I to share. Later however when my sister butchered the poor frog we realised that the chocolate wasn't all that great so we still haven't finished it *oops*. On the bright side we got Rowena Ravenclaw as our Wizarding Card.

Beth  & Me outside the Post Office

As the day was getting on we had to finally try and do some other rides cos we'd done only two so far and we'd been in the park for 3 hours or more. So we started walking round toward the Hulk ride but as we got into the Jurassic Park area it started. The Rain. The Torrential Monsoon Season Rain. The OMG Will It Ever Stop Rain.

We were stuck inside a restaurant for probably getting on for an hour waiting for the downpour to ease off, in the end we just manned up and got out there in our super-cool yellow ponchos (I was lucky enough to have my special pink mac instead :P). With how shit the weather was the two rides that we'd wanted to go on (Hulk and Dr Doom's Fearfall) were now closed cos of the lightning risk so we decided to schlep our way to the exit and went for an early dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe (the food was really nice btw).

So that was our Epic-turned-Epicly-Wet day at Universal's Island of Adventure where we managed an amazing TWO rides due to the horrific turn in the weather. But in my eyes it was totally worth it because we got to go to HOGWARTS for crying out loud! I kinda wish that the other shops in Hogsmeade were actually accessible instead of just being cool shopfronts with "just popped out" signs on the doors cos that would have been super-awesome. I also think that it would rock if they built a full-size Hogwarts Express that you could travel round the outside of the park on cos then you could sit with other Harry Potter nerds in the compartments and revel in the awesomeness! (Alas I realise that Universal has like no space for expansion unlike Disney who have practically a county to themselves).

But yea, it was a fab day and I gots to say thanks very muchly to my parentals for tolerating my nerdiness enough to take us to the park (not that they'll read this but at least the thought is there).

Has anyone else been to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? If so what bit did you like best? Do you think that it could have been even more awesome? What HP goodies did you buy? Let me know!

Witchily Yours
LadyV

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In My Mailbox #33 The One after Christmas!!

Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone has recovered from Christmas Dinner and that they had some ah-mazing presents! This vlog today is showing a selection of what I got from my awesome family and friends.

As you should know by now In My Mailbox is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Kristi of The Story Siren and inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie



Books & Stuff I received for Christmas!
The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
Checkmate by Malorie Blackman
Entangled by Cat Clarke
Nightshade by Andrea Cremer
Sing Me to Sleep by Angela Morrison - Thanks Jess!! *hugs*
Doctor Who Annual 2011
Beauty & the Beast DVD
Atlantis: The Lost Empire DVD
Atlantis: Milo's Return DVD
Prince of Persia DVD
Torchwood DVD box set (Not shown cos my sister has yoinked it)
Stargate Atlantis Season 2 DVD box set
Gorgeously Pretty 2011 diary
Awesome I heart Nerds t-shirt
UNBELIEVABLY COOL MOOSE HAT!!

Plus since I ordered *ahem* 12 books with my Amazon vouchers (and one book off Book Depo) the next few IMM vlogs should be awesome!! :D

So that's some of what I got for Christmas - What was in your Christmas sack?
LadyV

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In My Mailbox #29 The best one Evah?

Howdy y'all once again it's Sunday and I have really had an *Epic* week in books - no joke. Nothing is gonna top this week for a while at least.

In My Mailbox is a weekly bookish meme hosted by Kristi @The Story Siren and inspired by Alea of Pop Culture Junkie

Vlog time!



Books Acquired this week
For Review
Last Sacrifice by Richelle Mead (Thanks *SO* much to Penguin UK for that)


Borrowed
Spirit Bound by Richelle Mead (From Public Library)
Delirium by Lauren Oliver
Boys Don't Cry by Malorie Blackman (Thank you Jess for lending me these)


Bought
The Poison Diaries by Maryrose Wood
The Sisters who would be Queen by Leanda de Lisle
The Frost Fair by Edward Marston


Seriously what a great week I've had! I was a jittery mess on Wednesday when I heard from Jess that her copy of Last Sacrifice had arrived but I couldn't get mine until I came back from my lectures that day. I was stupid enough to re-read Spirit Bound in the evening and then stayed up ridiculously late reading Last Sacrifice unbelievably quickly. I honestly may have to re-read it before I review it on the 7th of December.

What's in Your Mailbox this week?
LadyV

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Nanowrimo Day 16

Ugh worst day so far! I literally had to squeeze blood out of a rock today to actually write something and I have no idea what I've done all day! All I managed was a pathetic 612 words and I've still not finished with Chapter 9. I just haven't been in the mood today at all, I'm too busy thinking about the uni work that is gonna bite me in the ass pretty soon although when you think about it how hard is it gonna be to write a 2,000 word essay on Balzac when I've already cranked out nearly 28K of a novel?

But I'm really hoping I get past this feeling of "ugh" cos I don't wanna fall behind and bugger up my chances of actually succeeding first time although I'm thinking that this weekend could be "Hang up Nano for a couple days so I can blitz my work weekend". Stressing about not writing is making me not do as much of my proper work as I really ought to :(

Gah but anyway it's late I have to be up tomorrow (*cough* today technically) morning for a 10am class - which I foresee being slept through because I fail like that.

Oh and tomorrow there is a *very* high chance that the MOST AWESOME BOOK OF THIS YEAR will arrive through my mailbox so forgive any squealing tweets, vlogs and blog posts that may appear.

That is all
LadyV

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It's Monday What are you Reading (20)

Sorry about the lack of post for last Monday but I hadn't read a single book in November until last Tuesday. With Nano munching all my time (not to mention my soul X_X) I have very little time for reading although I'm determined to not get to the end of this month with less than 10 books read (for me that would be horrifying cos I'm aiming for 200 books read this year).

Thankfully in the past week I've managed to get some stuff read :)

It's Monday What are you Reading? Is a weekly bookish meme where we get together to share what books we've read in the past week, what books we're currently reading and what new books we're planning on reading in the coming week along with any reviews or interesting posts. It's hosted by Sheila @Book Journey

Books read in the last Week

J.R.R. Tolkien: a biography by Humphrey Carpenter (Seriously awesome bio of a fascinating man. If you love LotR then this is well worth reading)

As You Wish by Jackson Pearce (Hopefully will review this soon - really enjoyed it!)

The Ambassador's Mission by Trudi Canavan 

Leaving Paradise by Simone Elkeles (Will be reviewing soon - SO AMAZING!)

Not Currently Reading Anything :(

Books I'm Planning on Reading This Week

Well my Awesome Bestie Jess is lending me her copies of Delirium and Boys Don't Cry so they will be priorities... that is until the Super-Duper-Top-Secret-book-of-Fantasmagorically-Awesomeness arrives. When that book hits my doormat *Everything* is gonna be dropped, I will not eat, sleep, study or write until I've devoured it and then of course I'll break down crying and read it again. :P

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Boys Don't Cry by Malorie Blackman

Mystery Book of AWESOME!

So that's what I read this week, What are *You* reading this fine Monday?

LadyV

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Jess and Rach's Book-Hauling Trip of Awesome - The Conclusion!

Even with the trip being cut short we still managed to buy almost 40 books between us in just two days which is pretty good by anyone's standards. I'll now list the books we each got and show you the pics of them all laid out on the floor.

Rachel's Books
A Kiss in Time - Alex Flinn
Noughts and Crosses - Malorie Blackman
The Sky is Everywhere - Janny Nelson
Prophecy of the Sisters - Michelle Zink
The Alchemist's Daughter - Katherine McMahon
The Lightning Thief - Rick Riordan
Twenty Boy Summer - Sarah Ockler
Gone - Lisa McMann
Crusade - Robyn Young
The Summer I turned Pretty - Jenny Han
Dreamland - Sarah Dessen
Sister's Red - Jackson Pearce
Requiem - Robyn Young
Cracked Up to Be - Courtney Summers
Guitar Girl - Sarah Manning
By Midnight - Mia James

Jess's Books
Leviathan - Scott Westerfeld
The Magician's Guild - Trudi Canavan
The Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
Petals on the Wind - Virginia Andrews
Desire - Louise Bagshawe
Be Careful What you Wish for - Alexandra Potter
Living Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris
The Bed I Made - Lucie Whitehouse
The Forbidden Game - L.J. Smith
Into the Garden - Virginia Andrews
My Single Friend - Jane Costello
Dead to the World - Charlaine Harris
Lucky - Alice Sebold
Numbers - Rachel Ward
Hunger - Michael Grant
Cross Stitch - Diana Gabaldon
Club Dead - Charlaine Harris
My Worst Best Friend - Dyan Sheldon
The Other Boleyn Girl - Philippa Gregory
By Midnight - Mia James
Flowers in the Attic - Virginia Andrews
Cuban Heels - Emily Barr

Phew! My 16 books to Jess's 22 means she wins on the quantity front but since this wasn't exactly a competition it doesn't matter all that much how many we both got. A lot of these books were from charity shops so we got some awesome bargains on books we really wanted. As much as I love Waterstones and their evil 3 for 2 offers I do much prefer to pay either Amazon prices or even cheaper for books even if that means they are not going to be top quality condition.

All 38 books in their prettiness - considering how many books we both have already we're gonna have *soo* much trouble finding where to put all these new additions.

I have loved doing this trip with my best friend especially since we don't get to see each other very often - although we're only an hour apart it's a bit too far for frequent meet-ups :( We spent so much time talking and laughing that my throat was actually quite sore by Tuesday night but heck I didn't mind.
We were incredibly lucky to have found each other as neither of us have another friend who is anywhere near as compatible and bookishly nerdy so I have to thank the Twilight Lexicon for providing the means of beginning of a most valuable friendship that I will cherish for a very long time.

Jess, I miss you already and I can't wait until we next get to meet up. Love ya hun! *hugs*
Now if you good folk will excuse me I'm going to get a cup of tea, get in to bed and watch the third Little Mermaid Film just because I feel like it.

Night
LadyV

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Jess and Rach's Book-Hauling Trip of Awesome - Day 2!

I've had to split up the two days worth of stuff cos the post was going to be *waay* too big with four videos and several photos as well the text.

Day 2 of our trip was staying local since in the towns around my house there are loads of charity shops and several Waterstones shops (the bane of any book lover as there's *always* something you want in the 3 for 2 offers). Firstly we went to the town closest to me and raided every single one of the charity shops on the High Street - there's about 8 or so it's crazy- and the WH. Smiths which has a really crappy selection of books although it did have a copy of Kaleb Nation's book Bran Hambric that I thought was really cool (If you don't know who Kaleb is look him up on YouTube he's so awesome). Anyways after we'd exhausted the book selling shops in that town we drove on to the bigger town nearby where we went mad in the two Waterstones there. When I say "mad" I mean totally freaking insane because we probably bought 11 books between us in just those two shops. 

We'd bought so many books in just two towns out of the previously planned FOUR that we decided to just drive back to my house and conserve our money while we were ahead. We did another vlog showing off our purchases before we went and fetched my sister from school and all of us went to see Eclipse. Much to my surprise I rather enjoyed it - it was the best out of the three so far although RPattz and KStew still irritate the heck outta me. Taylor was ah-mazing, my sister almost died of excitement when you nearly-but-not-quite see *Everything* of that incredible bod of his (yea he's a few years younger than me but hey I'm allowed to look aren't I?). Overall I was glad to have seen it although I'm not exactly going to be re-watching the dvd with much enthusiasm because I simply don't care about the series anymore, only for the eye candy :P. 

Here is the vlog of our second day's purchases.

Unfortunately we had to cut short our originally planned 3 day trip because Jess was feeling pretty ill by Tuesday evening so we took some last photos of all the books and said our goodbyes before her dad came and fetched her home. It was a massive shame that we couldn't spend Wednesday together as well because we so rarely get to see each other but at least we had an amazing time on Monday and Tuesday (despite the crappy weather). We're gonna do our level best to meet up again before I go back to Uni in September although we'll probably *not* do another book-buying spree just yet :P.

That was the box of books from just 3 hours of shopping in two different towns *facepalm* We're a menace to our bank accounts seriously.

Now I shall really go to sleep since it's quarter past 3 in the morning and I've spent nearly 4 hours working on these posts. The summary post and pictures will be up later when I'm awake again plus while I'm lazing about I'll try and update some stuff and maybe get some reviews done.

Night, really

LadyV

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Jess and Rach's Book-hauling trip of Awesome - Day 1!!

Right ok I know I said I would post *aaages* ago since I've been back from Barbados for over a week but it's only now that I'm able to get back to a normalish posting schedule. But I have an excellent reason for my absence - on Monday and Tuesday, my best friend Jess (From JessHeartsBooks) and I went on a little roadtrip with one purpose - buying books. Being the book addicts that we are, the mere idea of running about the country raiding whatever bookshops we can find is immensely exciting, actually getting to do it though was fantastic.

On Monday I had to get up rather early to drive and pick Jess up (we live about an hour apart) so we could both head up to a lovely little town in Derbyshire called Bakewell. We have a friend called Ellie who lives there and also runs her own second-hand bookstore (jealous? Heck knows we were :P) so we were determined to go visit her and find some books of course ;-). The one downside to the day was that it absolutely chucked it down all freaking day and since I was wearing bloody sandals I got rather wet feet *sigh*. We also went to visit Chatsworth House while we were in the area (you know in the new P&P movie when Elizabeth is in the statue room at Pemberley? That's Chatsworth and some of those statues are actually there). It was a gorgeous mansion and I wanted to take a load of photos but I was daft and didn't charge up my camera before we went so I had to be sparing with the battery and couldn't take many photos. I'll show you the good ones from the visit.

When we got back to my house we recorded a couple of vlogs for you lovely people, one explaining what the hell we were up to and the other showing off the books we bought over the day. God I apologise for the insanity of these videos - we should *not* get in front of a camera when we're together cos there will be mayhem!

This is (L-R); Jess, me and Ellie in her lovely bookshop. We spent nearly an hour talking to her and it was a terrible shame that we couldn't stay all day. Hopefully we're going to go back again later this summer for a lengthier visit when Ellie's not working. Also check out Ellie's blog Musings of Bookshop Girl where she does reviews and hilarious stories about some of her weird and wonderful customers.

This is the rack of gorgeous bookmarks in Ellie's shop which Jess gleefully raided with abandon. If she could have bought one of each she would have done it in a second.

The amazing Chatsworth House from part-way across the grounds. I actually stopped the car on the road through the estate to take this because the view driving up to the house was so fantastic.

Just for Jess- NEKKID BABY CHERUBS!!! hehe We're *soo* mature.

Of Course I had to get a picture of the library in Chatsworth although this is only a little bit of it, soo many books!




So there you have our first day of bookish mayhem, I'm sorry that this post is so unbelievably long but if you've stuck with it then well done you! Please do continue on with the second day's post (when it's up tomorrow) and once I've got that finished I'll do a final summary post actually listing properly the books we bought and I'll throw in some pictures of them all laid out on the floor.


I'm hoping also to do a Booking through Thursday Post tomorrow and I will be working on a review for Dreamland by Sarah Dessen because it had quite an impact on me and I really want to say thank you to Jess for lending me her copy to read (thankfully I now have my own) *massive hugs* for you my dear.


Right to sleep with me, I'm shattered and I'm having a massive lie-in tomorrow :D
LadyV

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