Read This Month

September

1. Metamorphosis (CftM) REVIEW
2. The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up Non-fiction
3. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
4. The Ask and the Answer
5. Monsters of Men (Series Finisher)
6. Furthermore REVIEW

Fairytale Retellings pt.2

Top 10

I did a part one 2 years ago, link, and felt the need to do another one, since I really love fairytale retellings!

1. Goose-Girl / Thorn
One of my favourite fairytales is the Grimm brothers' story Goose-Girl, so I'm kinda always looking out for retellings of it.
So far Goose-Girl by Shannon Hale which I love (and it has three companion novels in the series!)
Another one I've read is Thorn, which was an interesting take but could've been more developed.

2. Wrath and the Dawn
This retelling duology has been really popular in the last year, and it tells the story of Shahrzad and retells the story of A Thousand and One Nights.

3. Alice in Zombieland
Loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, it tells the story of Alice Bell and you can gether what it's about from the title.

4. Just Ella
This is a very clever take on Cinderella where Ella tries to deal with her new-found status and a prince who is certainly not charming.

5. Isle of the Lost
This is the book prequel-type-thing to Disney's movie Descendants. The book is about the children of the banished villains who are trying to escape their island.
I liked the book and movie and the premise is really interesting, but I won't be continuing on with the series.

Read on lovelies,

Sally

Things We Don't Know We Know?

Language

Many of you probably saw Matthew Anderson's Twitter post circling around bbc, twitter, tumblr, pinterest - anything and everything. If not though, here is the BBC article regarding it - link.

“Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.”

He raised multiple good points on things that native english speakers know, but don't know they know. I for one was tought this rule - I'm not a native speaker - but still when I came across this post I was amazed at how I haven't thought of it in years! While writing I don't think of this rule since when getting the order wrong, it just sounds horrible.

Green great dragons? Nope.

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Then he raises another rule with a bridge from the previous one.
There are some exceptions to the previous order rule like: Big Bad Wolf. But apparently not, since it follows another rule: the rule of reduplications.

Reduplication in linguistics is when you repeat a word, sometimes with an altered consonant (lovey-dovey, fuddy-duddy, nitty-gritty), and sometimes with an altered vowel: bish-bash-bosh, ding-dang-dong. If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O.

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Then he goes to the tenses. Daunting to starters, natural to natives. To start of do you know what the future present is? Exactly. Daunting.

There are so many tenses you can use without even thinking about it, and almost certainly without being able to name them. It depends how you count them, but there are about 20 that you deploy faultlessly. The pluperfect progressive passive for an extended state of action that happened to you prior to another action in the past is, when you put it like that, rather daunting. But then you’d happily say “I realised I’d been being watched” without breaking sweat or blinking.

Another thing the author mentions is the rules of stress... I'll let you read more on that from the article.

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I remember two poems we read in class five years back and thought they would be a great addition to this post - on the daunting prospect of english as a language.

Hints on Pronunciation for Foreigners

By TSW

&

De Chaos
by Gerard Nolst Trenité

(both can be found here)

So try reading them outloud. There are also videos on YouTube to check how you did.

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Also to get a grasp on the fascination of intuition in regards to the english language check out this link I was sent: http://english.printexpress.co.uk/  to test out how well you can do with the order of adjectives.

Read on lovelies,

Sally

Giveaway!

Penguin Classics

! ! ! THE PROBLEMS SHOULD BE SORTED OUT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, AFTER WHICH YOU'LL BE ABLE TO ENTER ! ! !

As I told you yesterday, I've got some exciting news, and as you can tell from the title it's a giveaway! Beware this post will be filled with exclamation points...

So Penguin kindly provided me with some Penguin Pocket Classics to send to one lucky winner! And let me tell you, I'm ecstatic!

For the prize, one of you will be winning these:

  A Little Black Classic: Three Tang Dynasty Poets
                       This has loads of poems by these three chinese poets, and I really enjoyed it!

  A pocket book: n.27 Wind, Sand and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Most of us have read The Little Prince, which I adore, and this one is a non-fiction book:

The aviator and author of The Little Prince describes vast,

otherworldly landscapes, crash landings and magical encounters

in his transcendent account of flying over the Sahara and the Andes.

  Another pocket book: n.10 The House of Ulloa by Emilia Pardo Bazan
I chose this for some variety and I hope the winner will get lots from this book:

Set in a crubling Spanish mansion, this gloriously comic and

gothic novel follows the fortunes of an innocent young priest as he

enters a world of moral decadence, sexual intrigue and corruption.

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At this point you're all wondering how to enter the greatness, and I decided to do it on Goodreads, since that is the place I go for all things books: catalogs, lists, new releases & other people.

So the link is on the top right side of this page!

-> you just follow the link and press the button to enter the giveaway, no commenting or following needed for entry :D
You've got til the end of the month + a week & all the countries eligable will be listed there as well.

Read on lovelies & good luck to you all,

Sally

Penguin Classics : Metamorphosis

Pocket books, little black classics & review

A new series of thirty distinctive, unforgettable Penguin Classics in a beautiful new design and pocket-sized format, with coloured jackets echoing Penguin's original covers.

www.pocketpenguins.com

From the classic orange paperbacks to the clothbound covers, the Penguin that we all recognize has lots to offer. Penguin launched a new set of classics in the classic design, with the covers coloured to show the original language.

Among this new set of pocket classics, they launched a set of 126 short books - the Little Black Classics. Like every girl needing a little black dress, these tiny books are a fantastic way for diving into the world of literature. I've only read a couple, but I am officially in love with them! Poems, short stories and other stuff (though some only have a chapter or few from a whole book and I don't know what to think of that, maybe as a sample to see if you like the style?)... You can chuck one in your bag for wherever you go and read them in a moment. That is also the beauty with the sizes of the pocket book series.

www.littleblackclassics.com

I live in the faraway country of Finland and wasn't sure if these new books could be found. So I went to Helsinki and strolled around through multiple bookstores - and there they were, in Akateeminen kirjakauppa. A table of pocket books adorned with a penguin. The pricing is also very affordable - considering the quality - and the thing that sold them for me is the floppiness! Yup, you heard me, unlike most mass market paperbacks, and small paperbacks in general, these are not the stiff ones that are hard to read and inept to keeping a clean spine. And for that I give it an A+.

Then to the review of Metamorphosis:

*book kindly provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review!*

  This pocket book: n.8 Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

Featuring an ordinary man who wakes up to find himself turned

into a giant cockroach, Kafka's masterpiece of unease and black

humour, Metamorphosis, is brought together here with the best of his short stories.

I'd heard lots of things about this particular novel and had been wanting to read it for quite some time now. And at the same time it was worth the wait, but on the other hand, why didn't I pick this up sooner? So, yes I really liked the book and do recommend it. Also the fact that between the covers, this edition has lots of other goods to offer.

Goodreads' link & text:

From Meditation, a collection of his earlier studies; The Judgement, written in a single night of frenzied creativity; The Stoker, the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional peace, and The Aeroplanes at Brescia, Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909.

       Metamorphosis brought change, and alienation to a whole new level. As a cockroach one does not exaclty continue on like before. Then again a good way to impact people is to magnify and highlight the problems.

       The main character Gregor has to work through alienation and the disgust toward him from his family, not to mention trying to roll out of bed when your stuck on your shell.

    Kafka's imaginative ideas really brought to life the unforgettable struggles and thoughts that are enclosed in this book, and I think by reading it, one can learn quite a bit.

'I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.'

And for some exciting news come back tomorrow!!

Read on lovelies & good luck to you all,

Sally

Series I'm in the middle of

Currently

This won't be updated, last update: February 7th 2018

I've been trying to finish series, so here's a list that I'm currently reading (though most of these I am up-to-date with). And I didn't put the series that I don't plan on continuing! (I made one October 2016 though link, but for updated ones for both finished and the won't continue series go to my Goodreads shelves link)
Red marks that they're all out

   Kiss of Deception 2/3

The Raven Cycle 2/4

Pennyroyal Academy 2/3

An Ember in the Ashes 2/4?

The Fray Theory 1.5/?

My Lady Jane 1/3?
Renegades 1/2

    And I Darken 1/?

    Three Dark Crowns 1/?

    A Court of Thorns and Roses 1/?

    Throne of Glass 3/6

Will these continue?
Heist Society 3
Imposter 2

Graphic Novels
Fables 8/22
Batgirl 1
Bombshells 1
Ms Marvel 3