The struggles of being a book blogger

Hi guys ! So I have a quite busy week coming on and since I hadn’t had time to write any reviews, I thought I’ll be writing this quick bookish post about the struggles  ..of well.. being us LOL I love blogging omg don’t get me wrong but sometimes the things we love the most can make us have a hard time too 😉 Just like reading ! See my 8 struggles of being a bookworm post teehe 🙂

1. WHEN THEY PROCRASTINATE EVERYTHING ELSE TO BLOG

 I noticed that I DO THIS ALL THE TIME. Especially during a big rush busy week in my school semester. Instead of studying, I’m just strolling along my blog reading other bloggers, thinking about creating new posts and new graphics.

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2.  WHEN THE DUE DATE FROM ARCS IS GETTING TO YOU

I lovee getting Advanced Copies Reviews  especially from books I’ve been dying to read and being able to read them for free is amazing. But oh man, when it starts piling up on your desk and you’re drowning in the books …. #Im not readyLOL

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The Nightingale Won’t Let You Sleep by Steven Heighton

Elias is sent to Cyprus to recover, where he attempts to find comfort in the arms of Eylul, a beautiful Turkish journalist. But the lovers’ reprieve ends in a moment of shocking brutality that drives Elias into Varosha, once a popular Greek-Cypriot resort town, abandoned since the Turkish invasion of 1974.- Goodreads Blurb

MY RATING : ★★ (4.0)

Bewitchingly touching, this book is about humanity in all of its forms. When I first read the blurb, I expected a political and historical novel but it is so much more. What we have here is a protagonist, an ex-soldier, struggling with the traumas of war in Afghanistan and is sent to Cyprus to “recover”. But he spiraled down a path of no return: a brutal event happens to him and he ends up  in an abandoned town populated by a group of exiles and refugees.

“Rationalizations are daytime creatures, less plausible by night”

The focus of the novel is of course the evolution of Elias, and, oh my, the character development was on point. What’s really special is that as a starting point, Elias is already introduced to us as a broken man with his PTSD moments from Afghanistan. But it doesn’t stop there. He will undergo even more unfortunate events obliging him to fight his own demons while dealing with new encounters. Continue reading

King’s Cage : How This Book Saves the Red Queen Series

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Before starting, know that I’ll be reviewing Glass Sword first which is the second book to the Red Queen series, you can read my review of the first book here.

MY RATING : 

This book was a mistake let’s skip to the 3rd one.

No, I’m just kidding! I still have to review it 😉 This sequel follows Mare after she ran away from Prince Maven to find others like her: people who were born as peasant, had red blood ,but ended up having the abilities that Silver people have.

All right Trang, where did this book go wrong? I mean, you still gave it a solid 3, right? To start off, I expected a lot from this sequel since Red Queen was amazing for meit was a 5 stars well-deserved fantasy action novel. And I’m sorry, but I will always compare novels within their series. But 3 stars go mostly to the introduction of new characters and discovering new abilities ! That being said, let’s go around the ONE THING I found annoying : Continue reading

The Girl With All The Gifts : Book vs Movie

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MY RATING: ★(4.2)

A beautiful re-imagined zombie apocalypse plot centered around childrens’ behavior and what young minds can do. Melanie is a young girl who waits every day for 2 agents to come get her, strap her to a wheelchair, stabilize her head and push her to class. Her teachers taught her about the Hungries, those who feed on people. The minute they can smell human’s flesh, blood, they are triggered and can’t stop. Melanie can understand that but she also wonders why children keep disappearing from the classroom or why each time she tells the sergeants “Good Morning”, they look at her strangely and turn a blind eye to her.

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Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison | Read-along

MY RATING : 

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything except me.”
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

15170864Not to be mistaken with H.G. Wells’s Invisible Man (see the gif), this classic by Ralph Ellison brings another definition to being invisible. Indeed, while H.G Wells’s novel talks about the real power of invisibility in a science fiction genre, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man refers to it as a racist and ethnic term. This phenomenal classic from 1952 retells the journey of a black man in a 1930s America and how racism rages on and divides him.

For this occasion, me and Lashaan were reading along this classic so I thought it would be interesting to share both point of views. We had the same rating (4 stars) and were completely amazed by the story. Continue reading

The Midnight Star ( The Young Elites #3) by Marie Lu

MY RATING: ★

“There was once a time when darkness shrouded the world, and the darkness had a queen.”

– Marie Lu

capture-decran-2017-02-26-a-14-32-12With the last book of the trilogy read, I can confirm that this one is my favourite trilogies ever. It beats out Divergent and Hunger Games easily. Maybe because I always loved Fantasy more than Dystopian trilogies. The Grisha Trilogy was amazing but I found flaws in the 1st book. The Young Elites hasn’t. 

If you haven’t read my reviews for the other two books of this trilogy you can find them here : The Young Elites (#1) / The Rose Society (#2) 

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Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

MY RATING : 

“If you strip away all the trappings of personality and lifestyle, what are the core components that make me me?”
Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

img_1756Alright folks, brace yourselves for Trang is about to geek out about this book. Jason Denssen, a professor of astrophysics living a comfortable life with his wife and his kid until one day… he’s abducted, drugged and woke up in the same city but nothing is the same. He doesn’t have a wife, nor a kid, but is a renowned researcher who just accomplished the most amazing breakthrough of the year:  he had succeeded in creating quantum superposition of an object that was visible to the human eye.

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ARC Review: Traveling with Ghosts by Shannon Leone Fowler

MY RATING : 

Published date : February 21,2017

I16776882_10155256521982780_1992900389_omagine your doctorate thesis is about biology, marine biology to be specific. And your lover’s cause of death is a jelly fish sting. Ironic, right? I would be so frustrated with the world if that happened and that was exactly the case for Shannon Fowler. In this novel, she offers a thoughtful view of death and how she copes with it. One thing that is sure is that we all have different manners to cope with it. From page to page, you can feel all the emotions she’s been through: rage, frustration, confusion, betrayal, the sadness that I can’t even imagine. This book was so provokingly human, it makes me want to live even more.

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What Type Of Blogger Are You ? -V-Day Special

Hello lovely ladies and men!

It’s Valentine’s Day y’all and on this occasion we wanted to write a post where we can give back the love to all of you bloggers out there

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These bloggers have the magical skill to make you laugh through your laptop screen, 100000000 miles away from them. They are just naturally funny without trying hard to be that way. You would always click on their posts to brighten your day and put a smile on your face.

In this category : Hey Ashers !  ; The Orangutan Librarian

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They will give you a 300 page analysis on how a book had made an impact on them, digging out all the themes, analyzing all the character developments and personality traits. They want to make sure that they convey their thoughts without missing out on key elements! They take the time to write their reviews, their writing is impeccable and you know that THEY HAD A DRAFT. #SCHOLAR REPRESENT!

In this category we have : Zeezee, Lashaan from our blog LOL , ChocolatenwafflesLiz

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The Wicked + The Divine by Kieron Gillen (Vol.1)

MY RATING: ★

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‘ I don’t understand a word she’s saying. Nobody does. All we know is that it means everything. She’s been doing this for an hour, and it’s been all climax. Every second is the best of my life so far. ”

The artwork alone can steal all the stars from my rating. But not only  the drawings are great, the storyline is astonishing.

Imagine a world where your idols are Gods. Littereally Gods. They are selected in a particular way and they have 2 years of stardom, after that they have to die. The first volume introduces us to a young fan who got caught up with one of the wildest God of the gang : Luci… Lucifer 😉  Continue reading

Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst

MY RATING: ★

It started out great. The world building seemed good, the characters seemed lovable and not getting on my nerves. But then it suddenly shifted to something else entirely. I decided to finish the book because I had hope it would get better but it didn’t and I’m pretty disappointed.

Throughout the story you expect to understand the plot holes. But nope. You don’t get to. We never really understand why Denna was bethroned first, the wars between kingdoms how did it start? I think these information and so many other can contribute to a greater world building. Continue reading

5 Books about Mental Illness

Today, is the Bell Let’s Talk Campaign ! For every post on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the hashtag #bellletstalk they will donate 5cents to mental health initatives. For this purpose, I find it pertinent to list my favourite books having mental health issues and themes (they all have a rating of 4+ on Goodreads) 🙂

1.Norvegian Wood by Haruki Murakami 

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Probably one of the Murakami’s best work. Using his deeply visual prose, the author succeeded in bringing a character struggling with mental illness during one of Japan’s toughest times. The layers and the depth of the character are worth the shot. Murakami will offer you the most amazing reading experience ever.

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Bookporn: How to be #CozyGoal

Last year, I decided to start the #BOOKPORN theme:

I was scrolling through  Instagram and Tumblr, when I saw beautiful pictures of books and bookworm’s life style that were very compelling to my eyes. I’ve decided to create this bookporn theme to show you all the exciting pictures that is, in my opinion, any bookworm’s goal! 😀

Today’s theme is : STAY IN BED, BE COZY AND DON’T LEAVE YOUR HOUSE. Yup, if you needed an excuse to stay home this is your chance. And..these pictures can speak for themselves 🙂

I observed a trend in those pictures and if you want to reproduce a goal instagrammy pic, heres what you’ll need.

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After Westworld : What To Read

Westworld is my biggest crush and favourite show of 2016 ! The show explores a theme park built on androids, where the ”hosts” (androids) can interact and entertain the ”guests” (real lives people). It’s set in the western area, and we discover the darkest secrets of this mysterious world. After finishing the whole first season, I thought it’d be interesting to explore the books that discuss the same matters. So for you fans out there who can’t get enough of Aritficial Intelligence and Androids !

  1. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K.Dick 

7082Recently finished this, and I admit it’s a quite particular read. One of the scenes in the book reminds me a lot of scenes in Westworld and makes me wonder if their inspiration come from this book itself!

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill.
Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there, lurked several rogue androids. Deckard’s assignment–find them and then…”retire” them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn’t want to be found

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Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows #2) by Leigh Bardugo

MY RATING: ★★☆ (3.8)

Have you ever got the feeling where you’ve been hungry for a few hours but you wait to come home to get that meal. THAT ONE MEAL you were soooo looking forward to eat. Then, you go home and it’s not there anymore? HOW FRUSTRATING IS THAT. It’s my exact same feelings about this book. Six of Crows were in my top books of 2016 and I expected a lot  from this sequel. The reviews came out in Fall and most of the people love it, so my expectations were even higher.

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Foundation (Foundation Trilogy #1) by Isaac Asimov + Giveaway Winners !

MY RATING : 

The last review of the year ! I had to end the year with a banger right?!

FOUNDATION IT IS.

The amazing thing about Foundation is t15785510_10155089186957780_1588759524_ohat it’s not the typical book structure and form I usually like. There’s no character development, no character diversity (no females character ARRHHUM) they are all politicians, traders and scientists, and no action or whatsoever. Speechifying everything .

The secret key of this book is  Hari Seldon’s psychohistory. A science where you can predict mass behavior with a lot of complex mathematics formulas. Continue reading

Top 10 Upcoming Books to Screen Adaptation (Christmas Gifts Ideas Part II)

Having seen the popularity of my last christmas gifts posts I’ve decided to come back and make another one 🙂 Why not give the books that will be hitting the screen ? Read it before it hits the theatres and television 😀

Stay tuned for a little surprise in the end !

-Here’s the list in no particular order-

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Artwood

Set in a dystopian world, where the Religious Right came into power and force all the women to follow a strict set of rules. They are stripped of their freedom and rights. They get sorted as a wife, a womb , a servant, a prostitute, or a propagandists. The TV show is to be released early 2017 on Hulu. Continue reading

Book Review: GEMINA (Illuminae #2) by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

MY RATING : 

For those of you who know me or read my posts often, you know how I ABSOLUTELY ADOREE ILLUMINAE SO MUCH IT BECAME MY FAVOURITE BOOK ( Top Young Adult Books and Illuminae Review). Of course, picking up this book I had very high expectations, and oh boy, it didn’t disappoint.
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Following Illuminae, we are now on the Heimdall Station, where Kady’s Dad is in command. We follow the team of Heimdall on this new journey with ship invasion, weird parasites alien predators who came from cows (don’t ask just read it), and the amazing NARRATIVE OF ONE AND ONLY .. AIDAN <3. 

Honestly, I’m not so much impressed with the first half of the book but then THE SECOND HALF OF THE BOOK WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. I could understand they had to go through all that plot introduction to come to the second part. HOLY SHIT THAT WAS SOO WORTH IT GUYS. I’m very excited for the third book now ! Continue reading

Christmas Gift Ideas : Books

THE HOLIDAYS ARE COMING SOON! Who says holidays says…

HARRY POTTER MARATHON ❤

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And GIFTS. OF COURSE.

Here are all the books I’ll be giving out to my friends and family this christmas 😀 I think they make a perfect go-to book for anybody, from that non-bookworm friend of yours to the one who spent 24 hours at the gym. If you have a bookworm friend, PLEASE just ask them what books they want  BWAHA the chance is they already have all these books and more 😉 Continue reading
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