Sunday Funday is a weekly(ish) post I’ve started to recap the bookish (and sometimes not-so-bookish) happenings in my life the past week! Feel free to participate, just link back!
December 15-21, 2014
Life
These past few weeks have been really busy! I spent Thanksgiving with my boyfriend’s family for the first time, which was lovely and on Black Friday we drove to the coast to explore the sights and shops. Then we braved Target to hunt for Black Friday deals *coughbookscough* and I scooped up a few new titles (which you can see in my STS post) and my boyfriend took the plunge and got a PS4. That same weekend my family and I went to our local Christmas Tree lot and picked out our tree, having our house fully decorated before December (you can check out my decorations in my Holiday Tour post!)
I also finally saw Mockingjay (I waited so long because I had promised to see it with some certain people and we all had to correlate our schedules). I thought the movie was fantastic, and I was really impressed with Julianne Moore’s performance as the leader of District 13. I also wanted to rip my hair out because of the constant pining Katniss was doing over Peeta, while poor Gale continues to do everything for her. Also, Buttercup the cat was hilarious. I’m so excited for the last movie to come out, and in some ways it felt like such a tease. Also, I could not be more obsessed with “The Hanging Tree” and loved how they translated it from the text for the film; I was singing it long before I saw the movie because it was so catchy!
Books
I’m almost finished with My True Love Gave to Me, and I’ve immensely enjoyed so many of the stories. My favorites so far have been Angels in the Snow by Matt de la Pena (I loved the unique voice in this narrative!), It’s a Yuletide Miracle, Charlie Brown by Stephanie Perkins (North is my new book boyfriend), and Krampuslauf by Holly Black. Black’s work in particular really stood out to me because it did such a fantastic job adding in a dark edge of magical realism. It was my first time reading Black, so if any of you have any recommendations for what novel to try by her first, I would appreciate your suggestions in the comments! Look out for my review in my December Book Buddies Feature with Lauren from Bookmarklit!
I read Belzhar in its entirety yesterday, and just…wow. I guessed the major plot twist about 25% of the way in, but I continued to read because I was curious as to the backgrounds and mysteries surrounding not just the protagonist but the other characters as well. While the plot moved along at a good enough pace to keep me engaged, I was so disappointed by the lack of character development and the somewhat flippant handling of the topic of mental illness in this book. I’ll be posting a full review of this in the next few days, but my high hopes for this book (of which I had many, because I love Sylvia Plath) were not met.
Blog
Last week I announced my participation in The Fairy Tale Retelling Challenge hosted by the lovely Mel at the Daily Prophecy, as well as introduced a new feature entitled Life in Fiction, which I choose three authors who I believe would do the best job narrating my life depending on the topic! The Wolves of Mercy Falls Read-A-Long is also still going for another week, so be sure to participate if you still can and enter to win a limited edition copy of Sinner! (Winner will be announced on New Year’s Day!)
What happened here this week:
Monday: Linger Reread Review
Wednesday: I rave in my review for The Truth About Alice
Saturday: Stacking The Shelves with my Black Friday Finds!
North is so dreamy – I want to fall into their story. I was so sad when the story ended. I just finish Holly Black’s – it was interesting but not 100% my fave. I loved Rainbow’s too!
Missie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
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