Monday 6 May 2013

Review: Girls & Monsters by Anne Michaud

Title: Girls & Monsters
Author: Anne Michaud
Publisher: DarkFuse
Publication Date: April 30th, 2013
Page Count: 194
Buy The Book: Amazon | Barnes and Noble
Rating: 2.5/5

Synopsis

Death Song: Liz is in love with Joe, but the monster of the lake has other plans for them.

Black Dog: Scarlet is engaged in a struggle for her sanity, but according to the voice in her head, she may be too late.

A Blue Story: When Katherine's beloved dog goes missing, she fears her strange new neighbor might be involved.

Dust Bunnies: Christiane faces her childhood arachnophobia and ends up confronting even greater fears in this test of sisterhood.

We Left at Night: Brooke and her family must abandon their home and their lives to make it out of a disease-plagued town overrun by zombies.

Girls & Monsters is for everyone who has ever been brave enough to confront their childhood fears...and lived to tell about it.


Few Wild Words Quickie

An okay collection of novellas, some better than others but definitely a few I enjoyed.

My Thoughts

This was a cool collection of short stories, not all of them appealed to me or were as enjoyable as I hoped. There were definitely a few I liked and were gems in this collection, these included:

Death song - This was a pretty good story. The whole evil mermaid aspect entwined itself into the story well. At the start it was an underlying issue but as the story progressed the evil mermaid began to build itself and became the central challenge in the story.

Black dog - I enjoyed this one I great deal out of all of them, mostly because of how it presented the internal struggle as the monster. It was powerful and crafted the story in a way to portray the conflict throughout. It was eye opening to be in the mind of someone suffering from a mental illness and the rollercoaster they were on. There are flashbacks used, usually they would bore me but in this story it gives you pieces of the past which combines to tell you the character's background and how she had come to that particular point. The ending was beautifully written and I was left wanting to find out more.

A Blue Story - I actually didn't expect to like this one much, it hadn't seemed like something I'd enjoy reading. However, this one was a pleasant surprise. I liked the characters and you do get to know them a bit within a short space of time. The pace of the mystery was fast but I didn't mind as it got straight to the point. One down side for me was that I'm not really an animal lover so I couldn't relate to Katherine's pain much. Overall, it was a cool mystery.

All that said and done, none of them were particularly mindblowing but each held an original story of its own.

Anyone read any good short story collections that they'd like to recommend?

Saturday 4 May 2013

Book Buyer or Library User: Which One?

 
I'm going to put my hands in the air for library user!
 
I'm not much of a book buyer, never have been to be honest. I rely mostly on good old libraries to source my love of books.
 
My reasons for being such a heavy library user would probably be:
 
  •  Money - I usually don't have a lot of money to spend on books so I wouldn't be able to get as many books as I'd want.
  • Re-reading - I don't ever re-read books. I can't remember the last time I did except for maybe old classics that I love. If I did buy books, I'd end up with loads that I know will probably not be read again so that would make me feel kind of guilty.
  • Local libraries - The libraries that I use are AMAZING. There is awesome networking between many libraries in my city which means I can reserve any book I want online and pick it up soon after. They always have new books which I want to read. 
  • Online library - There is also an e-Library which is super fab with a large collection of e-books and audiobooks that I can borrow for a certain time period.
However, there are reasons why sometimes I think it would be much preferable to buy books:
 
  • Returning library books - I am really bad at returning my books on time and sometimes I'm so lazy I can't be bothered to actually renew my books. This usually equals in overdue fines.
  •    Reading books - I'm a slow reader. I really like taking my time with books so sometimes it can take me forever to actually finish one. This means I end up with overdue library books consistently.
  • Collection - I don't know if this is a fair reason but I'd love to have a massive collection of books in a floor to ceiling bookshelf. It would just look really beautiful.
  • Own copy of book - Sometimes I do get an urge to look up a specific part in a book that I may have really liked but then I realise I don't have a copy. When I don't have a copy of some of my favourite books, it sort of breaks my heart.
 The reasons kind of weigh up actually, there are pros and cons for sure. For now I think I'll continue to depend largely on my library but I want to start buying more books in the future, I might start with buying all my favourites!
 
I'd love to know if you're a LIBRARY USER or a BOOK BUYER, what are the reasons for why you prefer one over the other?
Maybe you like a bit of both?

Friday 3 May 2013

Bloglovin + Update

I just wanted to post a quick update before I am thrown into exam season.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I have converted myself to the way of Bloglovin as it has been highly recommended to me. You can follow me by pressing the big Bloglovin follow button on the sidebar or by pressing the link above. The only down point for me is that there is an app for it in the iPhone app store but not in the Android (Google Play) store. Well, you can't have everything.

Update:

Exams are coming up so I will probably be absent from the blog for huge periods of time. I will probably still post reviews (hopefully) as I usually still manage to squeeze in some reading while revising. I just needed to put that out there before I vanished into thin air.

Anyone else that is preparing for exams right now, I understand your pain.

That's all for now.

I hope to see you all very soon!

Au revoir!

Salut!

Bye!