kiwigirl reads. . . .

Well, I am disappointed to report that I did not quite reach my goal for 2013. And while I am sad about this as I was really close to getting to 50 books, I am still pretty happy to get what I did done. My final count for the year was 45 books. Considering that most of these were read in November and December I think I did OK. I was really pushing it at the end, the last book I read on the 31st and I read it in one day because at that stage I knew I was not going to make it to 50 books so I at least wanted to make 45. So I have made the same challenge for this year. I am sticking to 50 books again, I think that a good number and I am starting earlier. I think I started in March last year so this gives me more time to get orgainsed and hopefully get a jump on things. I do have two books I have not finished from last year that I need to finish quickly as they do not count towards my 2014 goal.

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...