[BOOK REVIEW] "The Casual Vacancy" by J.K. Rowling

Last year, J.K. Rowling made a lot of people happy, a lot of people skeptical and a lot of people indifferent towards the fact that she was releasing a new book. After the moment of disappointment at it not being a new Harry Potter book had dissipated, I allowed myself to get ridiculously excited.

Then it arrived. Well, actually, it was too big to fit through my letterbox so I had to wait just a little bit longer but then I had it! It was mine!

The story is intricate and expertly woven. Rowling manages to keep a keen eye on each of her characters and what I took away more than anything is how alive the characters were. This is a character driven book and to quote Hagrid, "a thumping good one at that."

Here's the video and if you want to buy a copy, you can do so here. Interesting fact: within an hour of this video being uploaded, I had received two "dislikes". I wish these people would tell me what they dislike; my opinion?; my choice of book?; my face??

I WON!

I like to enter giveaways. I like it even better when I win!

Thank you so so so so so much to Greg at greggliesreads on YouTube for the giveaway

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One Whole Year

So it's been a whole year since I sat down and created my "thebookfox" channel on YouTube. That's just crazy! One whole year since I decided my old channel just wasn't doing it for me and I needed something, something different if I was going to make it work.

Happy First Birthday to me!

To mark this wondrous occasion, I am, once again, hosting a giveaway. I know. I seem to be giveaway mad! But Stephen J. Carroll kindly sent me a copy of his new book, "The Road to Jericho" sometime last year and it really is about time I did the giveaway I promised him!

If you'd like to enter, just comment on the video below (but like, be a subscriber yo) and I'll announce the winner on the 1st of March.

[BOOK REVIEW] "The Death of Grass" by John Christopher

First impressions when I heard the title of book #3 for book club weren't particularly good; I thought it sounded awful, to be honest. I was at the book club get together for "The Shadow of the Wind" and we had all put our suggestions into the bowl and they were getting read out in reverse order. Naturally, my choice, "Looking for Alaska" by John Green, got picked first meaning it was not going to be the selected reading. 

When "The Death of Grass" got read off that little bit of paper, there was a slight pause followed by nervous laughter.

I'm sorry, what? That sounds... bad...

The culprit was a guy by the name of Scott who, when asked, described the synopsis in just about as many words - it's about the death of grass.

Skip forward to the book club meeting where several people, myself included, praised Scott for picking such a fantastic book. Amazing, we said. Perfect! we said. The best book club book yet! 

NEXT BOOK FOR BC: The Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl. 

No NaNoWriMo

This blog post is going to be about time management (or lack thereof)... and light. It's also going to mention the lack of natural light that Scotland sees at this time of year.

This blog post is going to be about the lack of stuff. For the record, I didn't mean to come across as quite so depressed. After watching the footage back I must admit I was sitting there thinking, Sheeeesh! Get a grip! It's just a bit of light! But there you go!

The basic gist is this: it's been just over three whole weeks since I posted my Thank You video to theclaudereads (who I absolutely adore!) and while, for the most part time was a big issue what with job/college/friends/etc taking priority, I was also having difficulty with my lighting. The video for Claudia was done using a lamp and a white bed sheet in the hopes of making things a bit less gloomy but November is a gloomy looking month in the city of Edinburgh. It was just proving to be quite difficult. And not to mention the fact that pretty much any free time I did have was spent sleeping or reading. Such is life, huh?

Anyways, the result is this: a poorly lit video moan about NaNoWriMo (see below). I just can't do it. Sucks to be me!

On a brighter note, Priscilla is now following me on twitter! Eh, what? I know. I got a little buzz from that. I'm a bit curious as to why she didn't subscribe to me on YouTube because I so very rarely use twitter but I'm still happy about that!

Anyhoos, this is my attempt at trying to keep up what I said earlier. You know, about how this blog needs a good dust down (even though no one actually reads my posts lol)

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October Book Haul

Wowzers, I look tired! This whole work/college scheduling of my life has started to take its toll, not only on my sleeping pattern but also on the time I spend reading. I get home from work and I'm exhausted. I get home from college and I'm shattered. I feel like all my time is spent doing stuff that needs to be done.

So naturally, I went on a book haul! 

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Dusty Blog

I keep forgetting I have this blog.

Basically, I wanted all my blog posts to be pretty with lots of pictures of beautiful books and witty stuff written but then I quickly discovered that Scottish weather really is as bad as we say it is and I can't really rely on natural light (mainly because we rarely get any).

Sooo, I have had to reevaluate what my posts are going to be like and I think, for the time being, until I have invested in a decent set of lighting equipment, I'm just going to post links to my videos here with a bit more of a blurb about each one etc etc.

That's the idea anyways.

Here's a heart.