Strands of Bronze and Gold Review

Helloooo!

This is my second review here on my blog. Kinda my second review ever too because I don't do reviews often and I don't know if the "reviews" I've done before count. 

So as you know, here is the book:

First what it is about:

When Sophia Petheram's father dies, she goes to live with her godfather whom she has only known through letters and gifts. 

Her godfather is an enchanting man with lots of wealth and power. 

As her stay with her godfather carries out she soon discovers he is not all that he seems to be and that the abbey he owns hides terrible and astonishing secrets. 

For my un-spoiled review:

Rating 3.5 out of 5

The beginning of this book was delightful and interesting. I couldn't help smiling at the book and loving everything inside of it.

Towards the middle, when things finally start settling in, my excitement kinda waned. I began to put it down more often but I still found it an okay read. 

Toward the ending, where things take a twist, I still liked it but I wasn't sure of my feelings were conflicted because of what was happening in the book or the quality of the reading. 

All in all, though, I liked it and while it was a bit crazy, and it did kinda drag on just a bit, it was a nice read. I would recommend it to people who like fairy tale remakes and people who like historical books. 

For my spoiled review:

****SPOILER ALERT****

So as I said, I liked the starting quite a bit. I myself was kinda charmed with Sophia's godfather and his wit and their conversations. 

I kept wondering through the starting of he liked her, liked her. He seemed more flirtatious than father-figure to me. 

Anyway, after a little while, I could quickly see that he was adamant about getting his way and Sophia seemed to think that was OK. I don't know. 

Later when she finds and falls in love with the preacher(it kinda seems that it's just because he's the complete opposite of her godfather) and then got heartbroken when he said he couldn't come it seemed kinda silly to me. I guess maybe because I've never felt that way or whatever or maybe because it was kinda silly.

When he announced that he wanted to marry her it was kinda not news to me as it seemed inevitable throughout the whole book and I really didn't understand why she would think that it was sorta out of nowhere. 

I didn't like when her siblings came and her brother asked her to ask for more money and her sister was basically saying that she should marry him and that all her reasons for not wanting to were silly. I keep wondering though, should I have liked the book because the author so well portrayed siblings who were willing to take advantage of someone? 

Oh, and the ghost thing: was it supposed to have an element of paranormal as well or was the main character just supposed to be able to see stuff like this? It confused me. Then when her godfather saw then too it confused me even more. 

Now the ending wasn't really very exciting for me. When I was at an earlier part of the book I was curious about what Bluebeard's story line was as I've never heard/read the fair tail myself. So I found out that it's about a person who has a lot of wives and kills them and yes I have heard of that story. I kept wondering what I would've thought of the ending had I not decided to see what Bluebeard was about. Even though, I still thought the ending was okay and kinda gruesome too.   

So again, I liked it and the starting was nice but it didn't take the cake. 

Thanks for reading my review. That's all for today.

Read on my friend,

Sumiyya <3

Books I Own

Hola! 

I kinda forgot to post yesterday :/ So here's another Tuesday blog for you. :D

So, as promised(for once), I'm doing a little blog on the books that I own and a brief story about how I got them. Honestly, I'm not like a lot of other book lovers who splurges their money on books. Mainly because I don't have money a lot of the time and a little because I don't actually like owning books. When I own books I don't read them because I get a lot of books from the library and since those are due on a certain date while the books I own are not, I read them first and it just keeps going that way. Now that I won't be able to get library books for a while, I'm going to try and read all the books that I own. 

On that note, let's get into the books that I own:

1. Strands of Bronze and Gold by Jane Nickerson

I won this book as one of the prizes when I won the preliminary round of the Scrabble Tournament I participated in last year. I picked it out from a small selection of books. I just began reading this on Sunday while on a trip for 3 hours. I'm really liking it so far. 

2. From the Files of Madison Finn Super Edition Number 3 by Laura Dower

My mother bought this for me from a thrift store because she knew that I liked the Madison Finn series. I've already read this one but it doesn't hurt to own it if I ever want to read it again. 

3. Living with Ghosts

This is a Chinese book that I bought from the library because I was hoping that it was Japanese. Anyway, it looks really cute and interesting and I might try and learn some Chinese just to read it. :D

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins 

I'm sure everyone is familiar with this book. I got it when I went to a book club meeting that was discussing this book. The first 5 people to come got a free copy and since only a few people came, we all got copies.

5. Mysterious Messages by Gary Blackwood 

I got this book from the Free Book bin at our library. I thought it looked interesting and everything. It turns out it's a book about all kinda of different codes thought history. I thought it would've been a story with a plot that incorporated this but it wasn't so I was a bit disappointed. 

6. A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears by Jules Feiffer

I don't actually own this book, I believe it belongs to my father, but I have it anyway. It is a really interesting and really funny book. 

7. Outpost by Ann Aguirre

This book is the sequel to Enclave, which I never read. I got this book specially sent to me and signed by the author because I participated in a Skype chat with the author along with some other teens including my sister. She liked the Skype session so much that she decided to send us all new, signed copies of her most recent book at the time Outpost, the sequel to Enclave. It was very nice of her. I never did end up reading either though.

8. Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

I got this book as part of the K12 package when I did 8th grade with K12. I still have yet to finish it but I have started it and I hope to finish it as soon as I can.

9. A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck

This is a two book in one special that I got as one of the summer reading prizes. I have not read either stories yet. 

10. Sing Down the Moon by Scott O'Dell

I believe this was last year's Summer Reading prize. I picked it out because I loved Scott O'Dell's book Island of the Blue Dolphins and I thought that I'd enjoy this one as well. I still have yet to read it though. 

So that's it for all the books I own. I told you it wasn't very many. Also, sorry for the low quality pictures. It's getting late and I want to go to bed so I don't really have time to set up and edit and all that. 

Anyway, that's pretty much it. 

Read on my friend, 

Sumiyya <3

I'm Really Sorry

So I know I said I'd do the top 14 books I want to read in 2014 but I realized that there aren't actually that many books I want to read. In fact, I cannot read anything until the Summer anyway.

If you want to know why, it's because of library card issues. My mother borrowed a Minnie Mouse DVD for my little sister and when went to take it back we could not find it anywhere. We searched and searched and eventually the library put it up as lost. So we went to the library a little while ago and guess what? We found it in a case for another DVD we had. Like, did the librarians even bother checking inside the case before checking it in and sticking it on the shelf? Because if they had we wouldn't have had to waste so much time and money.

So yeah, basically we're not getting anything from the library until the summer when we can do summer reading and get fine wavers to pay off our cards. So until then I guess it's just online manga and books we own. 

I think my next blog will be about my collection of books. It's quite small but it's okay. 

So yeah, that's pretty much it. Again, I'm horribly sorry for going back on what I said. 

Read on my friend, 

Sumiyya <3

Not a Very Long Post

Hello!

This is my first blog post of 2014.

Hope you've been having a great, already book-filled year thus far. 

My year so far hasn't been exactly what I want it to be but I'm sure, I'm hoping, it'll get better as I go along. 

So I'm here today just to say that I am a little busy and I wanted to do a 14 Books I'm Most Excited For in 2014 blog but I've got stuff to do so hopefully I'll do that next week. Then the week afterwards I want to do a book review. 

So I'm sorry this is short and not much but yeah, see you next week!

Read on my friend,

Sumiyya <3