To Get You Into The Christmas Spirit

Just a little something to get you a little more into the Christmas spirit!

Enjoy 🙂

Revival by Stephen King (Review)

In Stephen King’s latest novel “Revival” we meet the narrator Jamie Morton telling the story from childhood to later on in life. 

As a young boy he meets Charles Jacobs, the new minister in town and becomes instantly fascinated by this man and the rest of his family. One of the things that make a strong bond between Jamie and Charles is the reverend’s obsession with electricity. 

Everyone likes the new minister, his work in the church and his family, but when a tragic accident occurs Charles curses God, mocks religious beliefs and is banished from the town.

Years go by and Jamie grows up. In his mid-thirties, addicted to heroine and recently lost his latest job as a musician he meets Jacobs again. Jacobs helps him get back on his feet again and that time their bond turns into a pact forged in horror. 

What happens next, you will have to read to believe!

***

What can I say? I finished this book last week and had such a book hangover that I did not feel ready to review it until now. Revival is classic Stephen King and as a major Stephen King fan I absolutely loved that! You could easily see his inspirations throughout the book and a lot of the references to other authors work and his own had me giggling like a hopeless girl with a crush.

I found it thrilling, exciting and out of the ordinary. Loved the characters and the way that Jamie is such a relatable character because of all his struggles.

I read some reviews of this book before it arrived at my very own doorstep, and most of them talked about how the ending was so surprising. And I have to say (even having been warned) it was! When it comes to Stephen King you never really know what you’re going to get in the end and sometimes (like now) it leaves you with an amazingly huge book hangover to get over.

Loved it! Love love loved it! Definitely one of my new favorites! Highly recommend it if you’re a fan of his earlier work (i.e. Salem’s lot, bag of bones). It’s scary and it’s awesome!

A few of my favorite quotes from Revival:

“I almost kissed her then, but lost my courage. Boys can be dopes.”

“Charlie Jacobs was a Good Samaritan. He was also a half-mad scientist, and that day in the abandoned auto body shop I was his latest guinea pig. He could have killed me, and sometimes – many times actually – I wish he had.”

“There was a lot of talk about old days and old times, the kind of chatter that’s fabulously interesting to those who were there and stupendously boring to those who weren’t.”

***

If you would like to order your own copy of Revival click on the logos below:

      

After Life by Daniel Ionson (Review)

 In the story of After Life we meet Kaemen and his fellow warrior-elites, The Wolfhounds, getting ready for war as Seer Mecas’ return to the nation Gaescea with a premonition of darkness and doom has the whole nation worrying for their future. 

 But as they get ready they suddenly find themselves trapped in The Land of the Dead with no memory of how they got there in the first place. The Land of the Dead proves to be filled with dangers and trickery. Kaemen is the obvious leader on the quest to get back to the living but after facing (what he considers to be) failure on an earlier mission he does not feel worthy. This also weighs down on him when it comes to the questions of what will happen to them all when they get to the very end of their journey. 

Can they get back to their loved ones? Who can they trust? And where will their past actions take them in the end?

***

I got a copy of After Life sent to me from Daniel Ionson through a giveaway on Goodreads.

Thank you, Daniel 🙂

The After Life is an amazing story and Daniels’s writing took a hold of me and did not let go until the very last page.

I’ve been through my share of fantasy that was just too obvious or cliché, but After Life is a breath of fresh air in the fantasy genre. And the plot twist!! I never saw that coming!  And the way he made it work in a very unique way was refreshing!

I loved the story and loved the writing! Look forward to reading more of Daniel’s work!

After Life was very close to getting a five star rating. I would have loved to have gotten to know the characters a bit more. With so many characters and places I struggled a bit with all the names, but that could just be me. It got easier as the story progressed 🙂

If you like yourself some exciting dark fantasy then I definitely recommend that you give After Life a try!

You can get your copy of After Life by clicking on the logo below:

A few of my favorite quotes from After Life: 

“Why does being dead have to feel like a hangover every day?”

“But what is myth but faintly remembered history?”

“Hell is the promise of heaven dangled before you, and then taken away.”

The Leap of Change (photo+poem)

Once again I’ve collaborated with the wonderful and talented Kirsti Hegre Backman. 

I love that we can put our minds and our passions together.

Go and take a look at some of the other photos taken by Kirsti HERE!

Photo: Kirsti Hegre Backman

Model: Maria Berg Eriksen

Poem: Christina de Vries

Stick around for more! We will be posting a new photo and poem in December. 

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner (REVIEW)

In These Broken Stars we meet Lilac LaRoux (daughter of the richest man in the universe) and Tarver Merendsen (a young war hero) traveling on the massive spaceliner The Icarus. 

The Icarus in mysterious ways gets yanked out of hyperspace and by coincidence Lilac and Tarver ends up in the same escape pod. They end up on an unknown planet without any form of communication. They have to learn to work together and see past all their differences if they are going to survive and get home. But there are strange things happening on the planet they landed. And why aren’t there any other people around?

Could they be stuck there forever?

***

 From the beginning of the story the attraction between Lilac and Tarver is pretty clear. Lilac however knows that her father will not approve of him so she rejects him and it is not pretty. After this Tarver sees her as a spoiled and rude rich mans daughter and tries to avoid her as much as he can.

But crash landing on the unknown planet forces them to work together.

I immediately liked Tarver. A young, handsome war hero that loves poetry! Of course he came to my liking. Lilac I had mixed feelings about in the beginning of the story. I wanted her to stand up to her father. To be more independent and to rebel more, but later on I learned that there was so much more to her character. As the story went on she showed herself as a strong female character, full of surprises.

The book is written from both Lilac and Tarver’s perspective. Shifting between them from chapter to chapter. I really enjoyed the way that Kaufman and Spooner showed two sides of the story. And I haven’t read a lot of YA literature written by a mans perspective so that definitely added to the enjoyment of this book.

I thought it was exciting, thrilling and heartbreaking. It kept me on edge throughout the whole story and I definitely recommend it!

Some of my favorite quotes:

“You don’t mention death when it’s hovering near someone you love. You don’t want t attract the reaper’s attention.”

“Abandon her? If only my duty or my conscience would let me. The galaxy would be better off, if you ask me. Who’d even know we were in the same pod? Except that I would know. And that would be enough.”

***

If you would like your own copy of These Broken Stars, click on either the Amazon or the Book Depository logo below: 

The next book in the Starbound trilogy will be out on December 23rd!

Click on the cover of This Shattered World if you want to know more about it:

Dark times

hegre backman

If you can’t fly then run
If you can’t run then walk
If you can’t walk then crawl
But whatever you do
You have to keep moving forward.
– Martin Luther King Jr

It’s getting darker every day, I know I should get some work done, and I am trying, but it’s not always so easy, and I guess it’s not supposed to be. Work hard and you’ll get there right? But at this time of year everything seems to go dark. So what do you do when you feel that way? I can only tell you what sometimes works for me. But we all have to find our own way to get past it and be inspired and motivated.
I write in a book, mostly when I am trying to come up with new ideas for my pictures, but I also put down some inspirational words when I stumble

View original post 50 more words

A New Kind of Morning

For those of you who are frequent readers it will be no surprise that I’ve been struggling with my arms and shoulders the last months. After starting treatments and my life has changed. There are a lot of the things that I used to do that I can’t do anymore. I cannot carry heavy weight, I’m not able to write as much or as often as I would like to and the biggest change of all has been staying home from work.

My job involves sitting at a desk for 7,5 hours of the day something that really ruins my shoulders and arms even more. The pain was excruciating and my doctor wanted me to stay at home while we’re trying to figure out a way to treat this.

But enough about pain and illness. This is not going to be a negative post at all. I want to share a change in my day that I hope to make permanent.

My love of books will be of no surprise, and it would be a lie to say that I don’t wish my son to grow up with the same joy and love for reading as I did. My father read a lot to me when I was younger and I believe that he is the one to thank for my love of literature. Thank you Dad!!

I knew from before I was even pregnant that I wanted to read a lot to my kids. The reality of it all is that often things just doesn’t go as planed. I’ve read to my son since he was a baby, but it hasn’t been consistent. He often got restless and struggled to pay attention to the reading if it got too long.

It was not until when he turned five that reading really became an activity that he really enjoyed and requested. We started with some short books and advanced as we went. Now we read books with less pictures and more complicated stories, and I absolutely love going on these adventures with him.

The most amazing thing happened yesterday. I got up a bit earlier than I usually do when taking him to school because he’d told me he wanted to go a little earlier so that he had more play time with his friends before the bell rings.

He ate his breakfast and I made myself a cup of coffee.

“Would like me to read you a chapter of Dunderly (a Norwegian book we’re reading at the moment) before we go to school?”

The question just rolled out of me and I’m so thrilled that it did!

For every chapter I read he requested one more. It ended up with us reading for a little more than half an hour. After dropping him off at school I though about what a wonderful morning it had been and decided to ask him if he wanted to do it again. When I asked later in the evening he said yes with the most excited grin on his face and the bookworm inside of me danced with joy.

So today we woke up early, had breakfast and read for half an hour once more.

It is such a wonderful way to start of the day. Going on an adventure together with someone you love!

Even though the pain in my arms is awful these mornings of reading has been a positive thing that has come out of it. I hope to make morning read permanent in our lives even if it means getting up even earlier whenever my shoulders/arms are better and I’ll  be getting back to working.

Morning read is now one of my absolute favorite times of day!

The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer (REVIEW)

The Shock of The Fall is a story about mental illness, family, loss and grief.

We meet Matt, a boy in the end of his teens who writes about his life. He writes about growing up with his brother Simon who has Downs syndrome, about the grief and the blame he feels surrounding Simon’s death and he also writes about how it is to live with his schizophrenia. 

The book is made to look like a collection of writing, artwork and notes that Matt has written and drawn. As a way to deal with his own mental illness he takes the trip down memory lane to the time when they lost Simon and how life was like after that traumatic event. 

The Shock of the Fall gives a remarkable inside look into a life with mental illness. Nathan writes in a unique and gripping way that takes a hold of you in an instant. 

It is an interesting story with interesting characters. It’s a story unlike any other that I’ve ever read and I would definitely give it my highest recommendations! 

The Shock of the Fall has definitely earned its place among my favorites 🙂

Here’s a few of my favorite quotes from the book: 

“This is far more difficult than I thought. Thinking about the past is like digging up graves”

“I guess children believe whatever they want to believe. Perhaps adults do too.”

“When Simon was alive he could be a bit of a sponge, soaking up the attention. He didn’t mean to pr anything, but that is what special needs do – they demand more of the things around them.”

***

If you would like your own copy of The Shock of the Fall you can click on these links to either Amazon or     Book Depository

I also did a video review of this book:

Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog and the Geek Heaven YouTube channel for more bookliness 🙂

Keep the real ones! Let go of the wrong ones!

Listen to his words. Take a moment and think about it. Then go through your list of friends and delete whoever isn’t a positive input to your life. 

To Whom It May Concern

Have you ever had a person in your life that didn’t deserve to be there? Someone you thought of as maybe more than an acquaintance but one day realized that they didn’t even deserve that title?

Most of us have. Most of us will.

I’m not one to often rant on my blog but there’s something that has been on my mind for a while now and it’s been fighting to get out for too long. And now I can’t keep this in anymore.

I’ve been wronged and it makes me angry, sad and disappointed.

I wont point fingers at any particular person, because that is not what I want out of this post. The people who have wronged me know very well who they are and what they have done.

What I will say is this:

Don’t judge so easily. What any one person is going through is not for you to make any statements about to anyone at anytime unless you’ve been permitted to. Talking about what someone else is going through when you don’t have a clue is rude and borderline cruel. And to suggest that the person is lying about what they are going through is even worse.

I would never point my finger like that or make up any kind of stories. I base my believes on the truth and not some made up bullshit that someone else has pushed upon me.

For those of you whom it concerns:

I really did expect more from you. I expected honesty and dignity. I expected that you would be big enough of a person to come to me and ask me before spreading rumors that has no hold on reality.

Consider yourself deleted and forgiven, but what you’ve done will not be forgotten.

***

What’s been done is not worth more of my energy than that I’ve put into this post. I’ve had my rant and I will rise from this a stronger and even better person than what I was before.

You guys on the other hand will find yourself short of something far more valuable than what you gained from all this.

***

There.. I’ve had my saying on the matter and now that I’ve gotten rid of that I will go back to being the positive me that I know is worth a whole lot more than the way I’ve been wronged by people that need to take a good look in the mirror.

***

Rant done…

Second glass of Bailey’s down..

I’m out and will be back with a big smile on my face tomorrow 🙂

***
Oh! And last, but not least, I feel very lucky to have some extraordinary people in my life who’ve supported me through all of this! Love you guys! You know who you are as well 😉