Wednesday 29 January 2014

2014 Reading Plans!

Hey there, 

          I'm quite on a roll with these posts. Unfortunately, that's how I work, I'm binge posting. This post should have actually been written and post at the beginning of the year but alas, that's not how the cake was baked. 

         Last year, I set myself a challenge of reading 100 books in 2013. I failed deplorably.This year I contemplated setting myself something a little less, but I'm stubborn so we're sticking with the 100. I did a bit of planning in terms of how I'm going to attempt to complete this challenge. I gave myself a number of books that I want to read in the upcoming months. The number is based on the amount work I have to do in the months.
January- 5 (I am proud to say that I completed this)
February- 5 
March- 4 
April- 4 
May- 4
June- 6
July- 12
August- 12
September- 12
October- 10
November- 10
December- 10
This brings us to a grand total of 94 books and I know, that's not 100 but I'm hoping I can squeeze those 6 other books somewhere in there. 

Along with planning when I'll read, I also downloaded a bunch of books on my kindle/have some in hard copy, so that it's already there when I want to read. These include:

The Other Countess- Eve Edwards (read)

A Great and Terrible Beauty (Gemma Doyle # 1)- Libba Bray (read)

Rebel Angels (Gemma Doyle # 2)- Libba Bray (read)

The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle # 3)- Libba Bray (read)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane- Neil Gaiman (read)

The Queen's Lady- Eve Edwards

A Game of Thrones- George R.R Martin

Lily of the Nile (Cleopatra's Daughter # 1)- Stephanie Dray

Memoirs of a Geisha- Arthur Golden

Just One Year (Just One Day # 2)- Gayle Forman

Eragon (The Inheritance Cycle # 1)- Christopher Paolini

The Hobbit + The Lord of the Rings trilogy- J.R.R Tolkin (I want to reread these)

City of Heavenly Souls (The Mortal Instruments # 6)- Cassandra Clare

The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines # 4)- Richelle Mead

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer- Michelle Hodkin

Crown Duel- Sherwood Smith

Court Duel- Sherwood Smith

I also want to read more classics this year, including Dickens, Austen and a bunch of others. 

And that's it for now. Here's hoping I complete my challenge! Drop a comment or message me letting me know what your reading plans are. 
Until next time, toodle-loo :) xo



End of January + February 2014 Book-A-Day Challenge: Day #1

Day 1: Dystopian 


Uglies- Scott Westerfeld
The most recent dystopian book that I've read :) 

Until next time, toodles :) xo





"January" 2014 Book-A-Day Challenge!

Helllllooooo,

             Last year, I attempted to be a book blogger and I failed miserably. I posted quite a bit in the summer but after that my blog went dormant. Now that it's 2014 (well a month into 2014), I have decided to revive my blog because truth be told, I do enjoy writing and posting here. 

               While browsing instagram, I found a blogger called booksarelovex3 and I saw that for January she created a challenge called the BookADay Challenge. Unfortunately, I didn't see this at the beginning of January but now just as February approaches. Nonetheless, I'm still going to do it (on my blog and not instagram) but I'm going to call it the February 2014 Book-A-Day Challenge! Since February only has 28 days this year and this challenge was created with January in mind (so 31 posts), I can do either one of two things; start the challenge today and do 3 posts in January before going into Feb or emit 3 of the days from the challenge that I may have a hard time finding something for. Since I am lazy and doing the latter requires forethought, I'll probably do the former. 

The Challenge!
                      There you have it, the February Book-A-Day Challenge. If you haven't done it but wish to, we can do it together! Drop me a comment below :)

Until next time, toodles :) xo

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Ramblings: Death penalty views + Do you believe there is both good and bad in people?

*WARNING- I was writing as I was thinking and so this may be very disorganized. I apologise for that but I do hope it doesn't deter you from reading*

Hello, 
I've recently been giving a lot of thought to the above question and wanted an outlet to explain what I think and to also get some feedback, so here I am. 

A friend asked me a few days ago whether I think the death penalty should be enforced and I got to thinking. The first, and obvious, reason why you may choose not to enforce it would be that you'd have to be ABSOLUTELY sure the person committed the said crime. If they didn't, then you got a lot to answer for. 

Beyond that though, let's say the penalty for committing murder was death. If a murderer is convicted and you kill him, how different are you to him? At this point you'll probably argue, "but he murdered someone, he deserved it". Let's take a trip to thefreedictionary.com to find out the definition of murder:
 "The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice" 

Now here's where things get a bit more complicated due to that word unlawful. So if the death penalty was in motion and you kill someone, it's not permitted by the law, and so they can kill you but that's not considered murder because the law recognises it. No matter how horrible that person is, they must have still had someone, maybe their mother, who loved them or someone who they were kind to. 

Now here's where my question about good and bad in people came into play. When people hear murderer their thoughts about the person are generally negative, as expected. We think "horrible, vile, scum that deserve to die etc" but are they pure evil or do they have some good, no matter how deeply buried, in there? 

Look at babies (ages 0-1), they are all cheerful and happy. With children, it's a bit more complex because of how they've been raised and nurtured which has a very important role in determining how they behave. This reminds me now of the age old question of nature vs nurture. Is being evil/bad natural but we've been nurtured to suppress this side? Or is being good natural, but bad experiences make us evil? 
 
That same murderer may have murdered the person because he got angry at the person and didn't know how else to channel his rage. May be while growing up he wasn't taught the proper way of dealing with anger and was surrounded by violence. By the way, I am in NO WAY justifying murder, I'm simply trying to understand how humans work. 

I think we are a product of our experiences and circumstances. We have the potential to be both good or bad and what we go through in life influences which side we lean towards.
Since it is now 11 pm and I am tired which is causing the processing of my thoughts to words to be at a sluggish pace and constantly making grammar errors, I am going to end this here for now. 

Before I go though, the other reason why I am against the death penalty *brace yourselves for this one religion-hating people out there*, I believe in God and by killing someone it is as though you're taking the role of God. 

I don't know if you got what I was trying to get at, but whether you did or not leave me comment telling me what you think about the topic and/or my opinion, irrespective of whether you disagree or agree with me. 

Until next time, toodles :) xo