kiwigirl reads. . . .

This year I started off the year knowing that I was not going to be very good at keeping up with my blogging, it's really hard to keep the momentum running from the initial start up of the blog when it's all new and exciting. That being said I knew I wanted to keep it going and I hope that I can continue to blog about the books that I love when inspiration and time permits. Knowing how bad I had been at the reading challenges last year I decided to only do one this year and that one was just the Goodreads Reading Challenge where you set yourself a goal. I even made it a much more realistic goal than the 100 of 2012 which of course I did not even get anywhere near. I settled on 50, thinking that would be an easily achievable number, when I think about how many books I used to read in a year this is laughable but with the invention of TV on the internet I have to say my dedication to books is not what it used to be. At the start of this month I was startled to realize tha...

Well it's November again and as such time for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. This is the time when people all over the world challenge themselves to write 50,000 words. If you are interested in finding out more you can visit the website at www.nanowrimo.org . Best of luck to those involved for 2013 and if you did not get a chance to do it this year why not start thinking about it for next year.

Kiwi Eleanor Catton won the Man Booker Prize for 2013 becoming the youngest author to win, she is 28 years old. Her novel The Luminaries is also the longest book to win the award. This is a great honor for any author and it's awesome to see a fellow New Zealander doing well in the world. 'The Luminaries ' is a mystery set in the West Coast of New Zealand during the Gold Rush of the 19th Century. Follow this link for a full article about the win and to watch Eleanor Catton's acceptance speech on Stuff.co.nz . For another good article about the Man Booker Prize, the other nominees and a more in depth description of 'The Luminaries',   The Telegraph has a good article here .

There are a few movies coming up that are based on supernatural/fantasy/science fiction books that I wanted to mention.  Books from these genres especially the YA ones are now regularly becoming fodder for the Hollywood engine as more and more of them either make it to the big screen or to TV (I guess we can thank Twilight for that - if for nothing else).  I generally prefer the TV series because they are longer so get to tell the story in more depth but I also think that movies often stick more to the plot of the book than TV does.  This is probably for the exact same reason why I like TV more, it's length - when you have to fill so much more time you often have to add filler characters and story lines in order to keep it interesting and not overwork your main actors too much. I really like seeing books that I have read come to life, I do prefer it with ones that are a bit older and have had time to reach a good audience   I don't really see the point o...

Omens: A Cainsville Novel By Kelley Armstrong Release Date: August 20, 2013 Synopsis from Goodreads : Twenty-four-year-old Olivia Taylor Jones has the perfect life. The only daughter of a wealthy, prominent Chicago family, she has an Ivy League education, pursues volunteerism and philanthropy, and is engaged to a handsome young tech firm CEO with political ambitions. But Olivia’s world is shattered when she learns that she’s adopted. Her real parents? Todd and Pamela Larsen, notorious serial killers serving a life sentence. When the news brings a maelstrom of unwanted publicity to her adopted family and fiancé, Olivia decides to find out the truth about the Larsens. Olivia ends up in the small town of Cainsville, Illinois, an old and cloistered community that takes a particular interest in both Olivia and her efforts to uncover her birth parents’ past. Aided by her mother’s former lawyer, Gabriel Walsh, Olivia focuses on the Larsens’ last crime, the one her birth mot...

Fin & Lady: A Novel By Cathleen Schine Release Date: July 9, 2013 Synopsis from  The Book Depository : From the author of "The Three Weissmanns of Westport," a wise, clever story of New York in the '60s It's 1964. Eleven-year-old Fin and his glamorous, worldly, older half sister, Lady, have just been orphaned, and Lady, whom Fin hasn't seen in six years, is now his legal guardian and his only hope. That means Fin is uprooted from a small dairy farm in rural Connecticut to Greenwich Village, smack in the middle of the swinging '60s. He soon learns that Lady--giddy, careless, urgent, and obsessed with being free--is as much his responsibility as he is hers. So begins "Fin & Lady," the lively, spirited new novel by Cathleen Schine, the author of the bestselling "The Three Weissmanns of Westport." Fin and Lady lead their lives against the background of the '60s, the civil rights movement, and the Vietnam War--Lady pur...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Neil Gaiman Release Date: June 18, 2013 Synopsis from Goodreads : THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac - as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly's wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark, from storytelling genius Neil Gaiman.  It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed - within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it.  His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duckpond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang. From kiwigirl: I love what I have read of Neil Gaiman so fa...

The Willows  Plot Overview: Evelyn Magwire used to have it all, a happy family, great friends and a loving boyfriend. After her parents are killed in an accident things just keep getting worse and worse for Evelyn. Her grief isolates her from her friends and remaining family and it’s not until another tragedy strikes that she is forced to pull herself together. When one of her brothers goes missing in mysterious circumstances Evie finds that she is the only one who believes he is still out there and wants to track down the truth. Her enquiry leads her to The Willows – what was her brother doing out there, could he really be a killer, and what dark secrets are hiding in the chilled and deserted woods? Evie finds herself pulled deeper and deeper into a new world of darkness where it’s hard to tell who is friend and who is foe. In the end Evie must make a choice – will she give in to temptation and even if she can resist, will she ever be the same again? What I thoug...