June 10, 2019

Wrap-Up| March 2019

Hello.
Long time, no see. I'm going to try to catch up as much as I can, as I wait for my last essay and dissertation grade to drop. I've been gone a while; it's been about a month since I last posted on this blog and two months since I started writing this specific blog post. 
I've missed doing this. I missed talking about what I'm reading and sharing it with a community. 


 The Old Nurse's Story
  Elizabeth Gaskell
     
  Goodreads
  My Thoughts:
  For a module, I had to respond to a Victorian source with a creative outcome and a commentary exploring why I responded the way I did. For this, I choose Gaskell's short story The Old Nurse's Story. I really enjoyed it, very typical of the Victorian 'ghost story' so I gave it three stars.
Heartstopper: Vol 1
Alice Oseman
My Thoughts:
Thank you, Hachette, for my copy, which I won in their Valentine's Giveaway.  I read this back when Alice first started posting this on Tumblr and unfortunately haven't been able to catch up, but I'm hoping that will change as they keep publishing them as volumes.
If you want soft gay vibes, this is one for you.

The Near Witch
V.E. Schwab

Goodreads
REVIEW
My Thoughts:
If you don't have a moment to spere to look at my review, here is The Near Witch in summary, 
A feast of atmospheric and beautifully crafted writing, characters that leap of the page and somehow perfects the strange and quiet storytelling that suitably fits this modern fairytale. 

The Ash-Born Boy (The Near Witch #0.5)
V.E. Schwab
My Thoughts:
This added to the backstory of Cole, whom we meet in The Near Witch and the events that have to lead him to be in Near. I wasn't particularly blown away by it, but really enjoyed it, all the same.

The Fall of the House of Usher
Edgar Allan Poe

Goodreads
My Thoughts:
Another one of those stories that I had to read for class - this one was in relation fo Del Toro's Crimson Peak. It was everything I would expect from Edgar Allen Poe, but I think I still prefer his Gothic poetry. 
The Essex Serpent
Sarah Perry
 
My Thoughts:

I ended up reading this on audiobook - which I really enjoyed! I'm really fussy about audiobook narrator, but I really liked Juanita McMahon and what she brought to the story. Not my typical cup-of-tea, The Essex Serpent still managed to have my attention whilst I tried to speed read before class. 

Big Bones
Laura Dockrill

Goodreads
My Thoughts:
A review was meant to go up for this at the start of April, but I just never got around to posting it due to a rush of deadlines that I hadn't prepared for. One will appear as soon as I start finding a sense of normality again. As I have quite a few thoughts on this one.
Hotel World
Ali Smith
My Thoughts:

This book inspired quite a bit of my dissertation, or at least the first 70-ish pages or so as it follows a homeless protagonist. I really loved the way that all these character's lives all interlinked with one another as we went from tense to tense. It was a wonderfully crafted story.

Vampire Academy (2014)
Dir. Mark Waters

This film literally sucks. And not just because it is a film about vampires. For a film that is actually quite close to a being a truthful adaptation based on plot, it does somehow miss the mark completely.  That being said, I still find myself going back to the story as a little blanket of comfort when things are not going to so well. 


American Gods (2017)
Dir. David Slade; Crobel Zobel; Vincenzo Natali; Adam Kane; Floria Sigismondi

March saw the return of the Amazon Prime/Starzz adaptation of Neil Gaiman's American Gods. 
This month I ended up rewatching Season One before heading into the week-by-week watch of Season 2. 
I really love Neil Gaiman adaptations, and this one is no exception. It adds a lot more to the original source material and adds to the multilayers of characters of human and Gods in a way that makes sense of who the characters are, and as we know them from the book. This one is definitely stylized and takes a lot to keep with it. But, if you do, you're sure in for a treat.
I went to some really interesting places, in the month of March, and even got to go home for a few days before spending the entirety of the Spring holiday on my own at University in April. 
You'll have to excuse how vague I'm about to be due to the nature of writing this up three months afterward. 

Chester Zoo
Penguins!!
Flamingos!! They 
I barely even remember the last time I went to a zoo. I might have been three/four and all I remember is the journey back with my mum on the Tube.
This trip was courtesy of Abi giving me her Campus Life ticket for the mighty price of £15 (thank you!) and a day in the rain (not
so thank you). 

You bet we got on the soaking wet boat cruise.
From Lions to Penguins to Elephants to Bats flying over my head (it's as terrifying but incredible as it sounds). 








Beaumaris

I didn't get much time to recover from our trip to Chester Zoo, as we were going straight on another Secret Adventure Society trip to Penmon Point. 





However, things didn't go the way that they had been planned and we ended up getting to Castell Aberlleiniog, spending some time totally not doing anything even remotely dangerous. 

Why didn't we get to Penmon Point? 

Rain! Typical UK weather. 

So we ended up heading straight back round and waited for a bus to Beaumaris to try and make the most of the day whilst we were already out of Bangor.

But, luck wasn't on our side. We were stranded for a solid 40 minutes while we had to wait for the next bus. 




Hamilton
I finally went to go see HAMILTON!

I came home for three days, risking a deadline on Thursday after I had to travel back to University. 

I booked my ticket maybe nine months in advance, and even though I only had a Slip ticket - the view was still brilliant!
I might have lost count of how many times I teared up watching the performance. Seriously, just hearing the opening lines brew tears. 

On my way to the Victoria Palace, I decided to take a detour due to how early I was. First heading to Covent Garden and Fopp, where I finally picked up a copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea Quartet for £2 and then walked back to Trafalgar Square and through the Mall to pass Buckingham Palace. Considering I have lived in London for my (almost) whole 20-years of my existence on this planet, it is so very rare for me to witness Buckingham Palace in all its glory, to which I cannot deny it's beauty.


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