What does DNF stand for?
Did Not Finish – In relations to books, it means, for whatever reasons, you did not finish the reading the book.
I am actually in that predicament right now, and I have been before, but not for such a popular book. Like, I am really struggling! I bought the book instead of borrowing it from the Library, like I normally would and I am just struggling.
From Harry Potter to Little House on the Prairie: homes that inspired famous books.
Don’t English homes look so tiny, but yet so cozy. We have a lot of tiny little apartments building up around where I live and they look claustrophobic to me. English cottages, just look cozy…Might be just me.
First Impressions:
Once again this is one of the books that I haven’t read but have seen numerous times on the television. It’s actually one of my favourites in the series. I started to read this with great anticipation. I really enjoyed the first couple of chapters. This is a book with Miss Marple in it, but she wasn’t in that much in the beginning. Yet, I’ve been enjoying it nevertheless.
Positive Impressions:
I really enjoyed this book, it’s interesting, especially at the beginning it doesn’t have Miss Marple in it that much. The reason why I found this so interesting was because in the show, she’s pretty much there straight away. There were a few differences, which I was actually glad of. It meant that when I read the ending it was a lot different than the television episode, which gives it a nice surprise. Of course the writing is beautiful. I would call the book gay in it’s original word sense. Even though it was about a body and a murder, it was quiet jolly.
Negative Impressions:
The only truly bad thing that I could say about the book was that a couple of the characters in the book itself. Although it was a happy read, some of the characters, for my liking were just a bit too happy. It could possibly be about my own cynical side coming through. I have a hard time believing that even if you know your husband is not guilty and you don’t know the victim. They were still found dead in your house and your husband in being accused of their murder, no one could possibly be THAT excited about it.
Next book:
Peril at End House
If you wish to learn more about the Agatha Christie Reading Marathon, please check This is my truth now – Agatha Christie Marathon
Share Your World … August 7, 2017
What was the last URL that you bookmarked or saved?
https://therecipecritic.com/2016/07/easy-sparkling-blueberry-lemonade/ … I am excited to actually make this, but I probably wont make it just yet. It’s Winter here at the moment, so I tend to try warmer drink recipes during Winters and then cooler drinks during the Summer. It sounds really easy to make as well.
Do you believe in the afterlife? Reincarnation?
I do think there is an after life, not so sure about Reincarnation. My Gran believes that and I guess in some ways I do. For example, sometimes when you see a new born baby and you think it already looks so wise, they must have been here before.
If you were or are a writer do you prefer writing short stories, poems or novels?
I do like to write mainly for myself and I’ve written a bit of everything. At the moment I have been working on a fantasy type novel of a game that I used to play years ago. In the past though I have written a lot of “episode ideas” for tv shows. There was a online role-playing game I used to play years ago. For a while there I used to write episode ideas based on the characters my friends and I were playing. It was very X-Men Evolution type theme. Except instead of mutants, we had teenage elves and sorceress and half animal, half human type characters.
What inspired you this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.
Story – Someone made a really good point about Facebook and I had never thought about it before. I find it easy to stay off of Facebook these days mainly because of the negativity on there. The “so called” and self appointed ‘silent majority’. You know the types, horrible, racist bigoted people. Who for some reason think that first of all, they’ve been silent and that they are the majority. There was a post on Facebook and of course the “silent majority” were being very vocal, as they usually are.
Someone pointed out, even though these horrible people were being horrible and VERY vocal. This one lady pointed that if you actually look at where the “Like” button is. There was something like 500 hearts, 300 likes and only 25 angry faces. Which means that MOST people reading the article could see the positive, could see the kindness, could see the good in what was happening. The so called “SILENT majority” were NOT a majority at all, and in most cases never are. They are just very loud, so to themselves they think they are the majority, but in actual fact, are not.
That really did make me think and made me happy. When I went back and had a look at a lot of things on Facebook, the majority of people ARE positive, they are just not very loud about it. Probably because they are happy in their lives and don’t really feel a need to make something it isn’t. Unless (hopefully) it is really important…Even if it’s just important too them.
This is the final instalment to the awesome’s Bookmark Chronicles questions for This or That? So let’s make it a good one!
This week Bookmark Chronicles (and myself) would like to know?:
What do you value most in a novel?
Quality writing ~ Character development ~ World building ~ Logical endings ~ Relatable characters ~ Real life situations ~ Storytelling
Something else?
(You must pick one)
This is such a hard question, and yet such a good question at the same time. Sometimes a lot of all of those ingredients makes for a great story and can also make for a bad story if they don’t all *mesh*
I am going to have to go with though, the character development. A good character can pull anyone in and it shows at the same time good writing skills. I think that no matter how bad a plot may be or even a bad story-line. A good character who develops over time and can be shown to “human” and relatable, can sometimes all you need to have. How else could you explain stories like Twilight and 50 shades. They have some terrible plots and endings (Twilight is my most hated type ending, where it’s “like a dream” and people just ‘wake up’).
Although it probably sounds like relatable characters, I don’t know how many people can relate to characters all the time, especially Vampires. However I feel like when people grow and change, and it’s written well in a story, people will relate better. Not everyone relate to a “Vampire” but they can relate to the feelings and how they change and how people change with different situations (for example).
This week Bookmark Chronicles would like to know:
Have you ever heard of/read steampunk?
I have most definitely heard of Steampunk and I have even actually read a couple of Steampunk books…I think they have comics as well, in that genre?….I think?
I had a hard time getting into the books that I read, I kept reading them novels, but I don’t think Steampunk is the theme for me…I’ll leave it too the younger generation. I think it is definitely for people who are interested in that type of genre. The books that I read were not badly written or anything, I was just not interested in that particular theme.
23 Best Steampunk Book…Best Sci Fi books . com
This week Bookmark Chronicles wants to know:
If you were to publish a book which would you choose between writing a novel or a collection of short stories?
I have to confess that I was excited and both apprehensive about this question when I first saw it. Mainly because in my free time and although it would probably never get published and I wouldn’t even be able to guarantee I’ll ever finish. I have been writing a novel for probably about two years now?
Before that though I was writing a tv series so to speak, and both of these have been based off of games that I’ve been playing at the time. The novel that I’m writing at the moment in based off a character that I made with my now ex called Bloom from the Monster Hunter games. He made drawing of each of our characters (we played with a few others) and from there I made up this whole history of mine. With the tv series, it was more I was writing episode ideas. I think from memory I wrote about 20-25 “episodes”. I had all the intention in the world to write up a proper episode ‘script’ for each episode. Which might end up being like a long novel.
I’m not even sure that I could write a collection of short stories as I tend to get one idea and then it turns into this whole thing. I tend to expand, rather than keeping it short.
This week Bookmark Chronicles want to know:
How do you feel about breaking the spines of a book?
This is the funny thing about me, when I buy something new, let’s say a new laptop or a new phone. It generally comes with a lot of that plastic type protection stuff, I have no idea what it’s called. I hate taking it off and I get paid out a lot because of it, everyone else can’t seem to yank it off.
So I hate it when I accidentally break a spine. Sometimes though, some books come with the pages so close together that the breakage of the spine is inevitably going to happen. Once it’s happens, I tend to think to myself “Oh well, it happened” But I am very careful with it, just sometimes it seems like it can’t be helped.
I really love the website “Book Riot”. I think that they have amazing ideas and topics and they are one of the main site I go to for inspiration and to get ideas about what to write about. Sometimes they also have great ideas for gifts and which sites are good to get gifts. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I just enjoy to shop, sometimes I actually can’t stand it.
So once again they have produced this beautiful article, written by Kristen McQuinn as a guest post and I love her idea.
A Year of Literary Holidays (Book Riot)
The quick run down of this article is that Kristen McQuinn has “made up” her own Literary holidays to celebrate and some of them are fantastic ideas and I would probably be following suit. I also feel like, this is just me personally, when I give an actual day to something, I tend to be more dedicated to it. Rather than trying to get around to reading something.
A couple of my favourites from her article are:
January 18 – 19: She will either read stories from Winnie the Pooh, with her daughter and she also has a “Poe Day” when she reads poetry and drinks Absinthe.
June 14: I mainly liked her day for this “Caldecott Medal” and she and her daughter will pick a book from the list, go out and have some lunch or ice cream and then go to the book store.
She has so many good ideas! I am really tempted to come up with some of my own…What about you readers? Do you have any of your own literary holidays? Is the article tempting enough to make some of your own?
This week I want to know…
Do you ever skip pages or read ahead?
Oh no, I am going to have to put my hands up here…I have been guilty of doing this. I’ve done this with stories where I am so confused what’s been going on. I’ve done it with stories where I have liked a particular character and I wanted to make sure what happens to them during the story. Do they survive? Do they end up with the one I want them too? I only seem to do it with stories where I actually really like the characters or the stories…Is that odd?lol … I use to do it with those stories where you could choose the ending, if I didn’t get the ending I wanted to after a couple of go’s…I use to work backwards,lol
Lolsys Library 