Sunday Post 86, It's Monday, What are you reading? 71

The Sunday Post - a chance for bloggers to have a chat and a catch-up - is hosted by Kimba, here: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/ and It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Kathryn, here: https://bookdate.blogspot.co.nz/

It rained, it rained it rained!! Normally this wouldn't be quite so newsworthy, but before it rained the temperatures were climbing up to 30deg celsius and we were on water restrictions. Then, on Thursday, the heavens opened up. We're not out of the woods yet, but the rain brought cooler temperatures at least which was a great relief.

Spawn went back to school on Thursday. Luckily his uniform from last year still fits, and we can buy his stationary straight from the school, so it's been fairly low-stress. For me, anyway. :) He's happy to see his friends again, and also happy he doesn't have any homework as of yet.

Other than that, just work, mostly. Yesterday I went into town for a bit of a wander - with my hours and with the office being juuuuust outside the main centre, I don't really go out and about at lunchtime much. So I took the chance yesterday morning to have a quiet wander. I also bought some new makeup as it'd been a couple of years since I'd bought anything - time for a change. :)

I had lunch with some former workmates as well, and that was nice, catching up with people and getting news etc. I didn't do much else over the weekend. I read a book, and I'm helping spawn slowly build a floating Lego city. So far we have a throne room, a king, and of course, robot bodyguards.

Today I painted my nails and watched Gods of Egypt and I will never see those two hours of my life again. I'll post a review later this week.

I read One of Us is Lying by Karen M. McManus which I really enjoyed. Review coming later in the week for that, too.

I'm still working through The Exodus Quest and also It Devours. Both of which I'm greatly enjoying but it was kind of nice to just pick something up and fly through it in  a day.

How about you? What's your week like? What are you reading?

Review - Into the Woods

I was trawling Netflix looking for a movie to watch today, and came across this one. I hadn't seen it so I clicked "play".

Into the Woods is a musical mash-up of pretty much every popular fairytale you can think of. It's based on the Stephen Sondheim musical of the same name.

Uhm. There's such a mishmash of stories, it's hard to know where to start. Meryl Streep plays a witch who promises a childless couple (James Corden and Emily Blunt) if they bring her a series of items she can give them a child.

Cinderella is in there... Red Riding Hood ... okay. Honestly? I got bored. I love musicals usually, but with this one, I started reading my book halfway through and just sort of looked up once in a while. I'm sure it's amazing on Broadway, but as a film it's just... ehn.

There's lots of singing (obviously) and not really a lot of story to hang those songs on, unfortunately.

Review - Chase in Shadow (Johnnies #1)

*Trigger warnings for this one for references to suicide, suicidal ideation, infidelity and homophobic slurs.

Chase Summers has, on the outside, an ideal life. He has the perfect girlfriend, a nice apartment, and he's studying towards becoming an engineer.

However, Chase also carries the burdens of secrets on secrets - secrets that he believes he can never share with anyone. When he starts making "gay for pay" porn videos, he thinks it will give him what he really craves with no real-world consequences: the touch of another man.

Chase loves his girlfriend, Mercy. But he knows she's not who he wants to be with. When he meets Tango - or Tommy - while he's filming, Chase falls hard. He can't stay away from Tommy, and he believes he can't give up Mercy.

Until the whole fragile house of cards topples down around him.

I really enjoyed Chase in Shadow. Although maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word given the relatively heavy subject matter. Chase has a LOT of self-hatred to unpack and his journey through that is a proper rollercoaster. And, although he spends most of the book lying to - and cheating on - his girlfriend, it's really hard to hate him. He's so vulnerable that it's painful to read on occasion.

I read Chase in Shadow in two days - every time I sat down I'd be reaching for the iPad to read a bit more, because I just had to know what was going to happen.

Sunday Post 85, It's Monday, What are you reading? 70

The Sunday Post - a chance for bloggers to have a chat and catch-up - is hosted by Kimba, here: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/ and It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Kathryn, here: https://bookdate.blogspot.co.nz/

I had a fairly unremarkable week, I think. Just work and spawn and stuff really. Spawn goes back to school this Thursday and I think he'll be glad to see the back of the holiday programme I've had to put him in  and to see his friends again. Six weeks is a longggg break but hopefully next summer holidays I'll have some leave built up so I can take a bit of time off.

I went to my friend's last night for our weekly stitch-and-watch session. We're watching The Blacklist at the moment and I veer between loving it, ranting about it and absolutely hating some of the storylines. It's kind of therapeutic in a way, though. I haven't done much today - the usual Sunday bits and pieces, getting clothes ready for the next day, making lunches for myself and spawn, washing, cooking, that kind of thing.

I did finish a book today, though, so that was good. I've finished both Grace & Frankie and The Good Place on Netflix so I'm not sure what I want to tackle next.

I have a couple of review posts I'm going to schedule tonight and then ... try not to think about how hot it is.

I'm still reading It Devours, the second Night Vale novel, and also The Exodus Quest by Will Adams which is a silly Da Vinci Code style thriller, but it makes for good lunchtime reading at work.

How about you? How's your week? What are you reading?

Review - Snowpiercer

It's the year 2031, and the last of humanity reside on a massive train that spans the globe as the world is locked into another ice age.

Curtis (Chris Evans) is the leader of the lowest of the low on the train - the most desperate and poorest. They live in horrific and desperate conditions, living on protein bars and bargaining.

The train's Minister Mason (Tilda Swinton) puts in an appearance once in a while to keep order.

When two of the youngest children are taken, Curtis decides it's finally time to take action and to get to the front of the train to talk to Wilford - the former transport magnate who created the train.

Curtis and his rebellion leave a trail of destruction behind them as they go. They free security expert Namgoong and his daughter Yona so they can disable the locks on the cars that lead to the front of the train - and to Wilford.

I've had Snowpiercer on my radar for a while, and I know people who've really enjoyed it. I found it....... weird. Like, really, really weird. Chris Evans was good, and Tilda Swinton is always great, and of course John Hurt and Ed Harris were really good too.

But. I don't know. I feel like some of the story was maybe sacrificed for shock value or that something, for me, was missing. I'm not sure what.

Worth watching, but a bit on the squeamish side.

Review - La Belle Sauvage (The Book of Dust #1)

La Belle Sauvage is the first book in a new trilogy by Philip Pullman, author the His Dark Materials series.

La Belle Sauvage is set in the same universe as HDM, and begins as a prequel. Malcolm - a boy of about eleven who lives with his parents in The Trout, a tavern on the shores of the Thames - has a fairly simple life. He helps in the pub, he rows in his canoe, La Belle Sauvage, and he visits the nuns across the river to do odd jobs for them to earn a bit of extra money.

When the nuns take in a baby, Malcolm's life is about to change, but he has no idea how ...

The baby in question is Lyra, the main character from the HDM series, and rather a lot of La Belle Sauvage is taken up with trying to keep Lyra and her daemon Pan alive and away from the people who want her dead for various reasons.

When an extremely damaging flood covers most of London, Malcolm knows it's up to him to try and save Lyra and get her to the one person who might be able to keep her safe - her father.

He sets out with Lyra, his own daemon Asta, and Alice and Ben - the rather surly young woman who works in the kitchen of his parents' pub, and her daemon - to get Lyra to her father before it's too late.

I have to admit, I really enjoyed La Belle Sauvage. Malcolm is really well-realised - he has some honestly unexpectedly grown-up moments, but then he says and does something and you're reminded that oh, right, he's just a young boy. Alice as a character has a lot of growth - at first she comes across as little more than a surly and unpleasant young woman, but as she takes the journey in La Belle Sauvage with Malcolm to save Lyra, she comes into her own.

I'm very much looking forward to book two.

Review - The Hound of Death

The Hound of Death is a collection of short stories by Agatha Christie.

I'm a big Agatha Christie fan, and I love her novels, and I've read other short story collections of hers. This one is a bit ... I would say hit-and-miss, to be honest. The title story in the collection, The Hound of Death, is ... odd to say the least, and has too few pages to develop its ideas.

There are a couple of really good ones in there - The Mystery of the Blue Jar is one that ended very differently than I expected it to, and The Last Seance was a really creepy little number.

The most well-known story in the collection at the moment is probably Witness for the Prosecution that was adapted as a two-part TV series with Toby Jones as the lawyer trying to prove the innocence of a young man accused of murder. The story itself is actually pretty slight and the mini-series took a fair few liberties with it, though it retained the original ending.

Out of the whole collection, The Witness for the Prosecution is probably the story most like Dame Christie's novels, while the creepiness of stories like The Last Seance have more in common with works like Crooked House and By the Pricking of My Thumbs.

Variable in tone and quality, it was still worth a read.