Book Gala

 I had planned to do something outdoorsy this weekend, but the weather here is kind of blah. I just finished Caraval; now I have to decide between Traitor to the Throne or Red Seas Under Red Skies . So what's everyone reading or doing this weekend? Feel free to share! Hopefully, you guys had better luck with your weather than I did!

This week I figured instead of doing more recommendations or a review, I'd post some photos for you guys that I thought you might find interesting. These are pictures of two replica ships. The bigger ship is called El Galeón Andalucia and is a replica of a 17th-century Spanish galleon. The smaller black one is a replica of the Victoria, the first ship to successfully circumnavigate the globe in the 1500's. This type of ship was called a carrack, in case you're interested. I was fortunate enough to see them when they were docked in St. Augustine, Florida; it was an awesome experience! I hope you guys enjoy the pictures! El Galeón is 170ft long and 125ft tall; standing next to her made me feel like a midget! She weighs over 495 tons.     Pictures of the Captain's Cabin The Victoria is a little smaller; she's only 89ft long and weighs in at about 85 tons. Those sailors that traveled around the...

Lovecraft is one of my favorite authors, so when I came across a game on my tablet called Elder Sign: Omens I knew I had to download it. It's available on Google Play or the Itunes store; it's a lot of fun! If you like horror or Lovecraft at all you might want to give it a peak. It's not your normal tablet game. It's complicated, and I had to watch all of the tutorial videos (yeah it's that complex), but once I got the hang of it I did fairly well. I still haven't managed to win, but maybe one day! It's $3.99 but well worth the price, and you can play it offline. I'll be putting it to good use tomorrow when I get my oil changed!

I love "true" ghost stories, and this book sounded like it had some awesome ones to share. And it did! Some of them were truly freaky, so much so that you might have trouble believing that they actually happened. Whether they did or didn't, it's still fun to be spooked. I must be ready for Halloween because all I've wanted to read lately is spooky stuff. If you're in the same mood, this might be the book for you. It's not perfect by any means. It could use a good editor, and a couple of the stories left me scratching my head. By which I mean nothing paranormal or mind-bending seemed to happen. In one of the stories a 6 man crew was flying on a bomber, and for some reason, the pilot became convinced there was a seventh man on the plane. Why I don't know, it's never really made clear at all. Or maybe my reading comprehension is lacking! If you happen to read or have already read this book, kindly let me know what you got out of that tale. One other p...

A strange and creepy carnival comes to town by train at three in the morning, witnessed by two young boys, William Halloway and Jim Nightshade. It's a good start to a book I had high hopes for. I mainly wanted to read this book because one of my favorite books, Johannes Cabal the Necromancer , was so obviously influenced by it. Well, it was influenced by a lot of things, but this book is one of them. I found Bradbury's book enjoyable, for the most part. It was a little old-fashioned, sometimes, in its prose, but it was written in the 1950's so that's not unexpected.  It's part coming of age novel and part horror, although the horror part is a little lacking; it might have been pretty dark for the 1950's, but I don't really know. The carnival's purpose in this book is to steal people. In those days, a carnival needed freaks for its shows. Well, this carnival gets it's freaks in a somewhat unorthodox way, through changing people by using their desires ...

   So after a two-week break, I finally found time to get this going again!  What've you guys been reading these past few weeks? I haven't been reading a lot of non-fiction. I did try to read Monster of Florence again, but I just can't get into it. It's not that it's poorly written, Preston tells a good story. It just doesn't hold my interest right now; I might try again later when I'm in the right mood for it. So on to the next book! I do have a few suggestions for you guys. Hopefully, one of them will spark your interest!     The Sixth Extinction: an Unnatural History  is about how humans are affecting the planet and how we could possibly (almost certainly) be causing a sixth mass extinction. Cheerful, eh? Still, it's something we should all be aware of, and maybe we can work to fix it.     In Cold Blood  focuses on the murder of the Clutter family in 1950's Kansas. Another cheerful book! It's not an unsolved murder, as the two perpetrato...

This isn't my giveaway, but I thought you guys might want to enter it. If you haven't read Robin Hobb, she's an amazing author. The first book in her Assassin series, Assassins' Apprentice , was published in 1995.  I was only 10 years old at the time; I'm now 32, so that tells you how long I've been reading her books. I usually get bored with series if they go on too long, but this one is so good I eagerly read each new addition. Her books are epic fantasy and focus on FitzChivalry, simply known as Fitz, and his companion the Fool (So far we don't know his real name, and I doubt we ever will), as well as other characters. Fitz is a royal bastard in the kingdom of the Six Duchies, and his Grandfather the King decides to make use of him by making him into an assassin. Hobb does an incredible job building her characters and their relationships, and you will feel everything they feel. I almost never cry when reading a book; in fact, I can only remember two books...

This book centers around a house on an island off the coast of Scotland, and two women who are involved with it. Hetty, who lives in modern day London, is the last of her line and inherits the house; she plans to turn it into a hotel. Beatrice, who lives in 1910, is married to Theo Blake, Hetty's indirect relative and the owner of the house. A skeleton is discovered underneath the floor in the modern day, and the story goes from there. I found Beatrice's story much more interesting than Hetty's unfortunately. She was a woman of her age, but she tries to do the right thing for the people living on her land. Hetty seems caught between her revolting kind-of boyfriend Giles and his plans for the island, her desires, and the wants of the native people. My sympathy for her is kind of limited, as the locals make it clear they don't want a hotel on their island, and she just ignores them. She even goes so far as to ignore the wishes of her ancestor, who had given land to some...