review: the plague

book info:
on sale: now
copy from: the library
pages: 308
review written: 13/3/13
translation: Stuart Gilbert

A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes a omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion. (goodreads)

(a very big-word-y, adjective filled summary)

my thoughts:

First, lets talk about the cover. When I got the book, I didn't even look at the cover. I thought it was some amorphous shapes and colours, but with a closer look I realised it's blood going down a drain. That's just...wow. When one thinks of plague, it's about buboes and pus and disgust. But this cover shows the blood, which I think is more fitting because the plague in this book isn't about the disease but about the people who suffer through it. Blood is more "human" than buboes, symbolically. Does that make sense?

Just before reading this, I had read The Stranger by Albert Camus and was blown away. I had high expectations for this book, but I didn't even finish reading it. It's taken me many weeks to chew this up and digest.

In this book, Camus explores a situation that rarely anybody has experienced. What would one do is he was quarantined in a town with imminent death upon him? No contact from the outside world, and people dropping dead (literally like rats) all over? Dr Rieux carries on his job of going house-to-house and diagnosing plague victims who die at alarming rates.Others try to carry on life as normal by visiting cafés and taking strolls. However, they realise this isn't possible. So what can one do?

When I first started reading, rats were dying like crazy. It was a promising start, but it didn't improve from there story-telling wise. This book was a long read, and not surprisingly: it's the longest book Camus has ever written. It was more preachy than it was story-telling. I just got names, vague letters in my mind that formed into some vaporous image of a man.  Characters are absolutely essential in telling a story, and I think Camus focuses more on his philosophy on man and the human condition in times of stress and fear than on the actual humans themselves. I was fascinated by Camus's anecdotes and little lessons on life (French existentialism) but felt as if I was reading an essay instead of a story.

If I read this from an essay-philosophical standpoint, it was very well done. Camus has a way of explaining things that just make pure sense. For instance, what stands out from my reading was this part where a man (forgot his name) organised a group to combat plague. Camus described it as a duty and something that they should have done without being called "heroes" and compared this to a teacher and student. A teacher's duty is to teach the student, so the teacher isn't exalted for teaching the student because that's his duty.

Very much like The Stranger, The Plague has that same detached style of writing told from the third person, a mysterious narrator. Another similarity is the beautiful descriptions of scenes that make an Oscar-winning film reel roll in my head.

"On moonlight nights the long, straight street and dirty white walls, nowhere darkened by the shadow of a tree, their peace untroubled by footsteps or a dog's bark, glimmered in the pale recession. The silent city was no more than an assemblage of huge, inert cubes, between which only the mute effigies of great men, carapaced in bronze, with their blank stone or metal faces, conjured up a sorry semblance of what the man had been. In lifeless squares and avenues these tawdry idols lorded it under the lowering sky; stolid monsters that might have personified the rule of immobility imposed on us, or, anyhow, its final aspect, that of a defunct city in which plague, stone, and darkness had effectively silenced every voice."
-The Plague

Yet this narration and the way the story feels is very impersonal and hard to relate to. I felt like I was reading a medical journal instead of a novel. Once again, I think maybe this was the point? After all, it is about the plague.

I loved all the quotable material, the philosophical parts that made me halt reading and just think and re-read the words and digest them completely. This is why it's taken me so long to finish this book. It's so thick and heavy with meaning that unless one is really patient, it will be difficult to read. One bit that made me stop and think was:

"Well, personally, I've seen enough of people who die for an idea. I don't believe in heroism; I know it's easy and I've learned that it can be murderous. What interests me is living and dying for what one loves."

Isn't that amazing? I'm currently reading Julius Caesar for class, and one of the pre-read discussions I had asked a question like "Is it OK to die for any reason? For one's country or a belief or idea" and I had thought "Well yeah, if that's what the person wants." I think it's not the right of people to judge the what another does to himself that ends up hurting that one person. Like suicide. I think that if a person commits suicide, his life is over. He's gone and he's paid the price of his actions. So how can others complain and say "he committed sin" or "did something selfish" or things like that when he is dead and gone? Anyway. I love how Camus doesn't take a stand, but remains indifferent and directs the topic to an area where it otherwise would be. "Enough about dying for an idea, now dying for love--that's interesting". I would have loved to have a conversation with this man. Material like this makes everything I found wrong with the book right.

 I had by ups and downs with The Plague, a negative cancelling out a positive. However, I didn't finish the book. I felt like I was drowning in a swamp of lengthy paragraphs and put the book up when I was about three quarters of the way through. Therefore, this merits 3 trees (my new rating system is taking a while to get ready, so I'm still using the trees, haha)

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a little update + cool news!

Hello readers!
   I swear, I am taking notes and working on writing a review for The Plague by Albert Camus. I'm only about one and half quarters through with it and I've been at it for more than a week! This isn't as interesting book as The Stranger, but it's still magnificent!

  As you can see, I've had a few changes to Pages! I never made an official post about it so here we are! I have the beautiful new theme thanks to Ana from Blog Milk. She's so incredibly down-to-earth, sweet and attentive to every tiny problem I had. It's been amazing working with her, and you should totally visit her shop is you're looking for a cute and professional Blogger OR Wordpress theme! I'm so satisfied right now: I don't have to worry about my design any longer. Now I can just focus on content!

  Also, I have a new header and blog button made by my friend called Grace Anna. She's just as lovely to work with and I joke with her that she has mind-reading abilities that somehow make her understand exactly what I'm looking for. Can you guess what our inspiration was?

My Neighbour Totoro

The defining film of my childhood and life. My most favourite film ever that made me who I am today. I thought it would be fitting to join this with my book blog, another defining part of my pre-teen/teenage life. It's so cute, right? I'm so in love and so happy with every bit of my website now! What do you all think?

I also have a new blog button if you know, you'd like to ooh say...add it to your blog? ~cough~ Yes yes. Ah, sorry about that :D

Another ridiculously amazing event that's happened is that I've been interviewed! By Amelia (The Authoress) for her Saturday Spotlight! LOOK! It's the first time I've ever been interviewed (I may have forgotten an earlier one? I have no idea) but it's very exciting! I've known Amelia in the blogging world for a while, and she's one of my old friends. She started blogging two years after my own blog had started and would talk quite often to each other. Yayayayayay, I'm really happy right now!

I wish you all a HAPPY Saturday and a fun rest-of-the-week. Keep reading :D My next post will be a review, I promise!

Best wishes :)
-Kirthi

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review: the stranger

 

book info:
on sale: now
copy from: library
pages: 123
review written: February 22-

Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward.

Mersault is an average French Algerian who learns that his Maman has died. From this event spurs a chain of events that leaders the reader into the  most unexpected ending.

my thoughts:

I first heard about this book from a friend who read it for school, and then I found it on a list of cancelled readings that were supposed to be for my literature class (my teacher told me to cross out several titles that we definitely wouldn't be reading, and this was one of them). Intrigued, I checked it out at the library and had  just a tiny idea of what it's about (just that summary up above) and to be honest: I thought it'd be a disappointing, boring classic. Nope, I was wrong. Going in with an open mind and maybe even no expectations is the recommended way to approach this book.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a really good looking, incredibly intelligent and unique writer. (picture: that's him on the right. What a gorgeous man) I'm in love. Like Mersault, the protagonist of The Stranger, Camus was born in Algeria. He lived a life of poverty his single working mother (his father had been killed and died a war veteran). There were two world wars going on, independence struggles of colonised countries and so on. Camus's early life affected this work, The Stranger, in that Albert Camus's only knows one thing about his father: that he had once become violently ill after watching a public execution. This, as I've just discovered now, must have been one of the main reasons why this book was written. He was deeply interested in philosophy, which reflects in all his literary works. Later on in life, he established himself as a talented, world famous writer, playwright, and journalist. The Stranger is the first work I've read that's written by Camus.

Though this book is only just a little over a hundred pages, it took me about a week to read it. The length is little, but the emotional and philosophical impact of his words weighs the book down to make it seem like it's a three hundred page novel or something along those lines. At first, it seemed to me that  the French novel was just like my perception of French films: without any obvious plot. It seemed boring and slightly off and hard to understand told from the detached first person of Mersault. Later I would see that that's exactly how it's supposed to be.

Something absolutely magical about Camus's writing is his talent at writing little snapshots of life and describing nature in such a way that I would hear the lapping waves of the sea shore and feel the sun soak in my skin. The story, and Mersault's telling of the story, is very physical and appeals more to the five senses than anything else. Camus's style of writing is indeed French-like, focusing more on life as a whole rather than the individual. It is more physical and more fairy-tale like for Part I. Part II adds the layers of psychological depth that makes one understand the point of Part I.

Apart from the actual writing, the story itself is something I absolutely loved: it being so uniquely written that I felt my mind expand and my sense tingling and my whole mind on fire. Albert Camus is a sly, cunning writer that has the ability to make me think about so many philosophical, life-changing thoughts in just a few of his words. I felt this way because I, the reader, was given in simple sentences and plain statements told from Mersault's point of view. But instead of his explaining psychology or his reflections on his actions: I was left to decipher and interpret him (the character). And this is a freedom that readers are rarely given because the author wishes to portray his/her point of view and get the reader to understand his/her point. Camus's writing  is a freedom that we readers are rarely given and I absolutely love it. The narration of the story is completely...indifferent. And this precisely is the magical part, because it's exactly what Camus was trying to portray (or at least, what I think he was trying to portray) by telling the story. Mersault believes in indifference. In fact, he is indifferent, to everything. Both the story and the narration of the story and the point of the story all boils down to: indifference.

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the benign indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again."

All in all, this is an unforgettable classic that I'm so happy to have read! Recommended for an older teen audience and ages above that! For anyone younger than 15-16, this may just be some boring book.

This book receives all five trees! I'm coming out with a new rating system (in which it's out of a scale of 6 instead of 5, and this book would be a 5.5 on that scale :D I'll replace the trees with the new scale once it's ready!)

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feature and follow #10!

Welcome to Pages, guests and readers! I just posted the picture above to see how many avid book readers would cry out in anger. don't be mad, I disagree with this too! Maybe we're getting off on the right foot, but I've been searching for a good part of half an hour trying to find a photograph to start off with. So there.

I haven't done a Feature and Follow is so long. Plus, it's about 20 minutes to midnight right now and I should hurry up before Friday ends! My old followers will know that I changed the rules up a bit soo here you are:


Here on Pages, I kind of tweaked the rules of Feature and Follow to fit my morals about blogging. Here are the "tweaked" rules :D

If I followed you, you are NOT required to follow me back: only if you want to :)
If you follow me, I'll seriously consider following you back, but it's not guaranteed

I don't like how people are required to follow other blogs in this hop. I think one should follow a blog because he or she likes it, not because he/she feels obliged because the other blog owner/writer followed him or her's blog. You know? (Being grammatically correct is a bit wordy). Life's a bit too busy to read blogs that doesn't fit one's taste.

Today's question is really interesting and I guess that's another reason why I wanted to do a Feature and Follow!

by the way, here's to make up for the scandalous first photograph. I stared at this for hours... 

ACTIVITY:  Write a letter to your favourite character. Rant, rave or gush…just pretend like they are real and you just want to let them know a “few things”. 

All right then.I don't have a favourite character, so I'll pick one that's cliché and someone you all must be well-acquainted with. No, not Harry Potter. I have nothing to say to him because he's made me so happy and satisfied. I would just say to him "Good job, Harry" and pat his shoulder. No no no, this person, this lucky recipient is none other than the infamous Edward Cullen of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer! He's not my favourite, but I think it's more interesting to write to a character one hates. One has a lot to say to those he hates. For instance, in Anna Karenina: I detest Count Vronsky. I would much rather write to him instead of...Levin for instance. Levin, don't give up and pursue her! Vronsky you shameless bastard, let's have a talk. Do you see what I mean? Yes yes, so my letter to Edward:

Dearest Edward,

  Let's cut all formalities and get down to business. I know you. Yes yes, I know you're a vampire and to me, you're completely fictional. I know your life's story and your wife and your daughter and your entire family. Please, don't think of me as a threat to you or your family. I mean no harm, none at all. But having thoroughly examined your life through the words of another (we shall call her your Creator--just a nickname I suppose), I must propose some...criticisms. I mean no offence, even though I'm criticising your personality and actions which lead to you as a creature of the night. 

  First off, after living as a vampire for over 107 years, why don't you do something useful with your existence? Compile research for some medicinal cures, educate yourself and work for the betterment of society--why do you feel compelled to attend high school over and over again? I understand it's because you don't want to draw attention to yourself by doing monumental achievements for humans (or vampires!) but honestly, isn't sinking yourself so low as to be a high-schooler? And at that, prey on a sweet-blooded, weak human girl?

 Oh please, don't be offended by my analysis of Mrs Edward Cullen (aka. Bella Swan) but as a character, she's a bit dull. Apart from that matter, I must bring attention to your other qualities that I question. As an ancient soul, you must have developed some ideas of how to be romantic. Do you honestly think stalking your then-girlfriend, watching her sleep, and being annoying cryptic to her is in any way romantic? 

 I must go soon, so thus my letter to you must be cut off. I will part with a response question that I hope to recieve answered along with your rebuttal to my criticisms. What exactly do you love (specific, valid reasons) about Bella Swan? Do you think the reason why you love her, are married to her, and have had a child with her is because you were attracted to her blood and found out you couldn't read her mind? You once said you found her a "mystery" and maybe even called her a "challenge". Do you think this is love or lust and actuation? Do let me know.

 Good day Mr Cullen,

 -Kirthi

For all you Twilight fans, please don't hate me. I was quite polite and hopefully respectful to Mr Cullen. 

HAHA, this is what I become like after reading old Russian fiction. Ah look, it's not Friday anymore. It's 12:01. Perfect. 

As a parting gift, here is a photograph of a laughing pair of friends that you all know. Benedict Cumberbatch, the beautiful actor blessed with cheekbones of gods, and Tom Hiddleston, who IS a god. 

Bona nit, my friends. (or good morning, afternoon, evening) 

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dia del amor

Hello friends :)

   I tried desperately to find some quote, some passage, some words of encouragement for today: and I failed miserably. What I stumbled upon were steamy love scene descriptions, love-hate angst and just odd romantic quotes that would not be fitting for today.

Valentine's Day

   I personally think that today is both good and bad. It's an excuse for me, shy-in-the-matters-of-love, to make a move and have it not seem abnormal. Yet it's also a highly commercialised, shallow "holiday" where people are encouraged to "show their love" for each other. Isn't that supposed to be every day? Or at least, is giving a box of chocolates or a bouquet of roses a sign of love, or is it the actions that one does every day that defines love? Whatever it is, I think today is a fun day, like all other "holiday"s. In elementary school, I had the greatest time crafting boxes with construction paper and shoe boxes. Going to school with a plastic grocery bag full of tiny store bought Valentine's with chocolates taped to them. That exciting ten minute time period where everyone rushes to each other's boxes and slips in cards. And then that euphoric moment afterwards, full of laughter and happiness and sweet-eating. The arts and crafts of making Valentines, the free day where all we basically had done was do Valentine themed crosswords, eat chocolates, coloured pictures and socialised. I think that it was one of my most favourite holiday. Of course, I had intentions of making valentines but alas, it never happened. Next year, I will definitely go all out.

I'm not that person who hates Valentine's Day purely because he/she is single. It's not a bad thing to be single on Valentine's Day, no matter how "looked down" upon it is. It's not worth it, you know? 

 Like all holidays, I'm always interested in the historical background. Now in order to convert "pagans" (I find it a derogatory term, as it's biased against all other religions except Christianity  The definition is "non-Christian") Christians would "advertise" their religion by blending in "pagan" festivals with Christianity in order to make it more appealing to the native populations. Valentine's Day is an example of that!

Origins of Valentine's Day: A Pagan Festival in February

While some believe that Valentine's Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine's death or burial--which probably occurred around A.D. 270--others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine's feast day in the middle of February in an effort to "Christianize" the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. 

To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification. They would then strip the goat's hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city's bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. (read more)

A Humorous Note 

Apart from all that seriousness, let's add some humour. Right, so though you may not know this  that well, I actually read a lot of manga (Japanese web-comics) and I'm a sucker for shoujo (romance) mangas. In all the shoujo I've read, Valentine's Day has always been sweet and cute and romantic. The girl, having gotten a boyfriend for the first time on Valentine's Day, works hard hand-making chocolate the night before the big day. The boyfriend is always immensely popular amongst all the girls in the school, and is the object of envy for all the boys. So naturally, the boyfriend is flooded with chocolates from other girls (its a custom to give chocolate to the boy one likes. It's this girls that must do this always) and the girl feels insecure. She usually doesn't give the chocolate to him until under some circumstances, the disappointed boy asks the girl about it and she shyly gives it to him. It's a cliché, as you can tell, but it's quite sweet. Here is a page that I bookmarked from a manga where the girl makes chocolate that looks like shit to give to her boyfriend (whom everybody in the school absolutely loves and adores. They literally organise an event for everybody to deliver their chocolates to him. Usui-kun, the boy, doesn't accept any of them, except for this girl's. Which looks like shit) I laughed so much when I read this!

A note, read from top right to bottom left. 

Hoho, quite funny no? "It is a shit, no mistake" Ahahahaha ~cough~ ahem. Anyway: have an amazing, love-filled day! Even if you don't have a partner, hug your parents or call your friends! It's "el dia del amor"; the day of love :)

P.S. I'm really chuffed with myself. Finally made a move on mah crush, but I don't know the results of said move. (Remember how I said I liked Valentine's Day because it's an excuse for the shy to make a move? Well I meant me in there as well) I'll give you a hint on what I did (look at the first picture on this post!) :) :) :) I can't stop smiling, gahh.

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review: city of thieves

book  info
on sale: now
copy  from: school library
pages: 258
review written: February 7th and 8th 2013

During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested for looting and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserted name Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a shot at saving their own lives by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake. In a city cut off from all supplies and suffering unbelievable deprivation, Lev and Kolya embark on a hunt through the dire lawlessness of Leningrad and behind enemy lines to find the impossible.

By turns insightful and funny, thrilling and terrifying, City of Thieves is a gripping, cinematic World War II adventure and an intimate coming-of-age story with an utterly contemporary feel for how boys become men.

My thoughts:

David Benioff is a name that sounds like any other author’s name, and I thought little of it as I picked this book out from my school library. I’d like to express that despite my discontent with the books that my high school decides to buy (appealing to young adult readers with a massive collection of the latest dystopian/chick-flick books), there are some gems. I researched him just now, and discovered his amazing career as a screenwriter. He was actually the screenwriter of Troy (2004) and produced some of my favourite lines ever. He’s also created Game of Thrones and X-Men Origins. I had no idea that he was such a famous person, who actually had been a high school English teacher. From all this, I would not expect him to have written this type of story.

The page before the title page, reserved for dedications, has two beautiful and intriguing quotes. I’ll share the first one, since I believe it’s more relevant. The second one is one I’ll share later on, as it’s a bit confusing.

“and if the City falls but a single man escapes
he will carry the City within himself on the roads of exile
he will be the City”
-Zbigniew Herbert

The preface of the story is David asking his Russian grandfather about World War II in Russia. “My grandfather, the knife fighter, killed two Germans before he was eighteen” is how it starts.  He will later tell the story of his grandfather, weaving in fiction with fact.
I didn’t know it was possible to write an uplifting, horribly gruesome, horribly sad and yet laugh-out-loud funny story in this way.  I’ll borrow someone else’s words on this one as well:

[the book]  "features a snappy plot, a buoyant friendship, a quirky courtship, an assortment of menacing bad guys, an atmosphere that flickers between grainy realism and fairy-tale grotesquerie and a grim but irrepressible sense of humor,"
- Donna Rifkind of Los Angeles Times

This describes perfectly how I felt when reading this book, as if it were a film. This seems fitting as Benioff is a screenwriter. The book itself was something I really enjoyed. It’s crude, disgusting, sarcastically humorous and delightfully raw. One of my favourite aspects of this book is the relationship between Lev and the handsome Kolya. It’s strange how opposites attract. Lev is the shy, awkward and “unattractive” virgin whereas Kolya is the handsome, tall German-looking (Aryan) womaniser. Their friendship was odd and yet it worked. Their dynamic produced the most hilariously crass dialogues I've read in a long time. It’s hard not to fall in love with Kolya’s charming character. He who loves literature, desperately wanting to shit (pardon my language) and passionately rants about fictional characters (sounds like someone I can relate to). However, he has a cold, fearless side to him that adds layers of complexity to his character. Other than that, he’s quite comedic at times. I'm flipping to a random page (147) and I've found this:

“Kolya nudged me with his elbow and whispered under his breath “ I've got a little bit of a hard-on”
“What’s that?” asked Korsakov.
“I said my cock’s going to fall of it we stand out here much longer—pardon my language”.
City of Thieves, page 147

I can’t quite detect the subtly of their possible homosexuality. It’s slim, almost non-existent. But this is where the second quote I mentioned comes in.

“At last Schenk thought he understood and began laughing louder. Then suddenly he asked in a serious tone, “Do you that the Russians are homosexuals?”
“You’ll find out at the end of the war,” I replied.
-Curzio Malaparte

There are ambiguous hints here and there, some more obvious than others, but I love how this adds a layer of intrigue and complexity to their already honestly odd friendship. For me, this book has been worth it because of this unique friendship.

Other aspects I feeling guilty about admitting that I actually liked was the gruesome descriptions and circumstances that Lev and Kolya stumble upon. I felt nauseous, horrified and shocked. Cannibalism? This appeals to the darker side of human nature for both me and the repulsive act of cannibals. Me, for actually being fascinated by the very thought of it (in a bad way, a disgusted fascination) and for the people who were pushed to such extremes as to disregard all civility. I remember reading that in a market, sausages made from grounded human was sold. The Siege of Leningrad (St Petersburg) was catastrophic and is said to be the most “lethal siege in history”. Numerous amounts of people died under the intense conditions. Civilians were give 125 grams of bread, mostly consisting of sawdust and anything else that would not kill a human and ration cards soon became restricted. Coupled with cold (to at least -30 degrees Celsuis) and bombardments from Germans on cities, I find Lev’s story absolutely amazing. This is a history I have never read in a historical novel on this part of history before, so City of Thieves, on top of being so uniquely written also provided me with details and accounts of the occurrences in Leningrad. I'm more interested in the social impact of war on the people than I am about the politics.

 Back on the note of the atrocities: I connected with Lev on the horrors he saw, and experienced the more serious, strangely cool and creepy side of Kolya. These horrors shaped Lev. Imagine being a youthful seventeen year old, witnessing these acts that abandon all morality, witnessing death on a daily basis. City of Thieves is definitely not the first book to describe such events, but what I found even more fascinating was the location. I have read little modern-day Russian based literature. I'm ashamed to say the last historical fiction novel based in Russia was over a year or two ago with Susanne Dunlap’s Anastasia’s Secret. Time and time again, I have read about the monstrous acts of the German Nazi’s, but never before like this, in Russia.

I warn readers that this book as outrageously crass language, sex, and repulsive acts that may or not may not be suitable for the preteen. In an age where young adults are more mature than ever before (less innocent, I mean) I’m troubled on what age group I would recommend this to. Whatever best fits your judgement.
All in all, I enjoyed it! Four trees!

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new design! + updates

Hello readers! (the picture above is not related to this at all, just thought it was hilarious :D)

  I have been trying for over half a year to get a new blog design. I swam through many designers' websites, got together with the one that made my Voyage design for me and attempted to make one for Pages. She ended up taking quite a long time, and then decided to take a break from designing, leaving my blog unattended. Grace Anna is really nice and friendly, so I don't really mind. She was really patient and attended to loads of designing requests from me! But alas, the design was never done so I finally took the move into buying a pre-made design from one of my all-time favourite designers, Ana from Blog Milk. And so, wah-lah! I'm so ridiculously relieved/happy that I can finally stop worrying about my design problems for the next few years at least!

  I would love some feedback on what you like and what you don't. My sidebar's a bit bare now because some of the gadgets I had didn't look well/were too extraneous.

  I had always been wanting to modernise my blog and make it look like a website. But I realise that I don't want to go full-blown proffesional. I want to make people comfortable with a small post area and the simple boxed sidebar. The navigation bar completely adds to making this a more comfy blog and I'm in love. I may be making some minor edits, like getting a new header. But for the most part, this is it! Yay!

Updates:

1) The New Years Giveaway is over and I'll be picking and contacting winners soon. Thank you for those who participated!

2) As you may have noticed in my Dracula review, I'm taking more time and effort into writing more professional reviews. I'm actually typing them up on Word Documents, editing for a few days, making changes and touches, and then publishing them. I've noticed that many reviews, even from well-established and popular book blogs/websites are really just someone's thoughts on the book overall. I feel like I want to delve deeper into my books, observe more and give you all a feel as to how the book will be with more quotes, concepts, motifs and all that. My reviews on classics will be essay-length, haha. My young adult reviews will be less "professional"

3) I have stuck with my goal of posting reviews more than any other type of post. Lots of mini-film ones and more book ones. I'm more than happy with how Pages has been turning out

4) I miss you guys. In between schoolwork, homework, and the little free time I have, I will be visiting the blogs I follow and put more of an effort to participate. This will be the next thing to crack down on my list. When I scroll through my feed, I see that many posts are usually just cover love, memes and promotional posts and all those things that I don't place an importance on. However, I'm making an effort!

5) School related: I'm so thrilled for a four-day weekend next week! I have a shortened Thursday (school gets out early), Friday off plus the weekend plus Monday off. Ahh, I cannot wait! My grades have been improving and I also made first chair viola in one of the upper orchestras at my school.

6) MY PAGES: I've reduced all my pages down to just a few that I've been updating/cleaning up. I hope to add some more manually like the "reviews by genre" idea I had and such.

Thank you all so much for being with me this far! Let's have a splend-tastic year!

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