Storytime: LOOK UP

What do you want for dinner, hun?

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Dunno. Mac n Cheese or somethin :$

Whoosh.

K.

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:)

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Instagram.

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Caption: Bout to eat Mac n Cheese w/@alli879 on this nice day.

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Likes: 1.

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(...)

40 likes. 3 new followers.

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Twitter.

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What's on your mind?

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Biut to eat Mac n Cheese w/@alli879 on this nice day.

Posted.

Comments: Have fun!

                     U guys r so cuuuttteee.

                     Ugh. Mac n Cheese.

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Google Maps.

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Search for a place.

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Lively Street 1818

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14 min. by foot.

5 min. by car.

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Route by car starts now.

After 40 m turn left.

Volume high.

Turn left now.

The arrow on the blue road turns left.

Lockscreen.

21:48 PM

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Netflix.

RECOMMENDED: 22 Jump Street

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Watch on other nearby devices?

YES. NO.

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YES.

iPad.

Smart TV.

Alli iPhone.

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Smart TV.

Switching screens.

Lockscreen.

23:09 PM

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Facebook.

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Liked. Commented.

Instagram.

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Liked. Commented. Followed.

Twitter.

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Unfollowed.

Notification: Whatsapp: 4 new messages in 3 chats.

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DA SUPAAHH NINJAAAAS   2 messages

Alex                                             1 message

+0499 872 653                             1 message

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+0499 872 653

Tell me something: is it nice to watch pixels all day?

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Who is this?

Whoosh.

Can you even remember what a house looks like? In real life, of course.

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Who is this?

Whoosh.

Or what a garden looks like?

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Or a frog?

Whoosh.

Have you ever seen them without those tiny squares?

BLOCK THIS NUMBER.

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Unknown number is blocked.

Lockscreen.

10.01 AM

Notification: Insta: @da_coolest_nugget3 is following you

                      Twitter: @milli_xx placed a new tweet

                      Whatsapp: 2 new messages

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Alex                    1 message

+0678 466 315    1 message

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Yo bro! Wanna hang out 2day

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Sure. Where?

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Park. Millstreet.

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K.

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+0678 466 315

Have you ever seen the sun with your own eyes?

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Blocked.

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Caption: @ the park w/ @a.bradley :)

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BUZZ.

Notification: Whatsapp: 1469 messages in 1469 chats.

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+0879 455 563    LOOK UP

+432 721 7771    LOOK UP

+024 391 8781    LOOK UP

(...)

LOOK UP.

And I tear my eyes away from my telephone screen.

I have to close them immediately for the light here is blinding.

I have to put my hands on my ears for the sounds are deafening.

After a minute or so I slowly open my eyes again.

And I look up.

I see a blue sky and a white yellowish sun.

Wow. No pixels.

I hope you enjoyed today's blog post!

What do you think of this story? Let me know in the comments or on social media!

Until the next blog post, then! :)

Mosquitoland by David Arnold

I got this book from a friend of mine for my birthday.
That friend has a really good taste for books, so I always tell her when she asks me what I want for my birthday: "Pick a book yourself. You're good at that stuff."
And, damn she's goooooddddd!
She gives the most unknown (at least for me then), most un-Nadi-like books and I just really enjoy them. Like really enjoy them. No kidding.
Mosquitoland was one of those books and man, this chick is good at picking out cool books.

Summary

When Mim Malone finds out that her mom is sick back in Ohio, she sets off on a journey to check up on her, leaving her dad and the stupid stepmom in Mississipi without a word.
On this journey Mim meets a couple of different, unique people who make her trip a tad different from what she'd expected.

My Opinion

Rating: 8/10

Well that was a great laugh, haha!

I don't mean this in a mean way - on the contrary, I really enjoyed this book (which you could expect since it was that good ol' bookish friend of mine who gave it to me - thanks! <3).

Mim is a really fun character to read about - she describes everything in such a fresh, airy way that makes you scim through the pages without even knowing that you're going so fast. The other characters are also very unique, like Walt who has the Down syndrome and lives on his own in the woods. Like most characters who have a psychological illness, he manages to give us such a beautiful, heartmelting, and very simple view on the world - I like collecting shiny things and I don't give a crap about anything else, is basically his survival-motto. Which is so cuuuttteeeee <3

And then you got hottie Beck, who isn't just hunk, but also sensitive and smart and helpful and gawd - HOT.

It's not necessarily in the way they are that makes them unique but in the way they add up to the story, the way the story turns around them. Mim's journey becomes a lot more interesting and deeper because of these people.

She faces her fears with them, she learns how to be okay, with them.

Well, with most of them. ( I'm looking at YOU, Poncho Man)

As for the writing style - FABULOUS.

I really love it.

Mim really is talking to us like she is some passenger in the Greyhound Bus (in which she's travelling to Cleveland, Ohio) and is basically following herself during this journey.

At some moments you really feel like she's turning her face towards you, explaining her lifestory or something like that.

At other moments she's putting her story in a new perspective; she makes some events seem like following the white rabbit to the hole like Alice, when she's in reality just following Walt who probably has her lipstick which she. Must. Get. Back.

It feels like an omniscient storyteller is mocking with her life, which I absolutely love.

I mean, come on, it really is funny.

And those are actually the two peaks of this story! 

These two made it a really fun reading experience. The additional character development of Mim as a girl who is facing her fears and learning how to be truly okay, was definitely important for the story and interesting to see, but these two were the things that really had done it for me.

What can I say - I just love it when someone's mocking her own life. IT'S JUST SO FUNNY HAHAHAHHAAH.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this blog post!

Until the next one, then! :)

More Than This by Patrick Ness

After reading the Chaos Trilogy, I couldn't wait to read more by Patrick Ness.

So when I found this book, More Than This, I immediately had to buy it. But then, you know how it goes with bookworms, I also found other nice books to read or I had to read something for school and I never got around doing it until recently...

BUT O MY GOD WHY DID I WAIT?!?!

This book is something in some way similar to the Chaos Walking Trilogy - a kid who needs to survive on his own - but also something entirely different!

I'm really glad I got to read this one by Ness and got to see a different side of his writing!

Summary

Seth drowns.

But then he wakes up. He's naked, alone, thirsty and starving - alive.

He remembers actually dying, so how did he end up here then? Where is here?

It all seems so familiar but he just can't place it.

Is this his own personal hell? Or is there more than that?

My Opinion

Rating: 9.5/10

Wow wow wow!

Ness has really done it again - this book was amazing, fascinating, mindblowing!

I didn't expect anything different, though; having read the Chaos Walking Trilogy, I was pretty sure that his other books would be just as great or greater! 

But just wow - this was something really different, so deep and mysterious. It really forced me to think while reading, which reminds of books by Marcus Sedgwick - which I absolutely adore by the way - and that gave me a boost to keep on reading; there's more to this story than may seem at first (hey hey - title reference hihihi).

First of all, I'm ought to say this, since that fact has blown my mind even more - the story is incredible simple.

Really, though, if you would just look at the storyline without thinking about the (philosophical) meaning to it and the actual content, you might think that it's a wonder how this book can be this good.

The first part is basically more than hundred pages or so filled with a naked guy trying to survive in abandoned world, getting these flashbacks that don't make too much sense to him; then, in the second part, something happens and this is the only big thing that happens in another hundred pages or so; in the third part happens a bit more but those flashbacks are still a bit vague and then at the end of the fourth things get crazy and clearer but not really.

Like how could this book have amazed me then?!

I'll tell you what - I REALLY HAVE NO IDEA. Especially as I'm writing this down, I'm thinking again - how did he do it? How?

But that's the thing - the fact that I don't how he made such a vague, simple story something so good makes it an even better book! It shows us what kind of incredible talent Ness has for writing - he gives so much depth to such a simple story by using simple language, simple feeling, simple characters.

He uses flashbacks that follow an entirely different story, not at all relevant to this boy's situation, but manages to make it fit in the story. In some way it does affect how our main character changes and how the main character acts.

Furthermore, I find it amazing how obviously the title seems to come back in this book. We start out with a naked dude in an absolutely abandoned world with almost nothing but woods and broken houses and then as we further progress to the story there is something and that something leads to more something, to so much more than you would think at the beginning! THERE WAS INDEED MORE THAN THIS!

I can understand that this review may seem vague and chaotic, perhaps, but the thing is: you just have to read it. The best way to read this book is by not knowing to much about it - it really makes it a much more fascinating and cool reading experience, especially the ending and the overall message will be literally mindblowing - like: WHAAATTT???

I say it's a simple story, but it's not easy to follow: like I said before; th book forces you to think about its simplicity.

I might as well have written in this review: A SUPERAMAZING, FANTASTIC, MINDBLOWING, AWESOME BOOK BY THE O SO GREAT PATRICK NESS. READ IT ALREADY!!

Yeah, that would've worked too. :P

Well, that's it for this blog post!

Until the next one, then! :)

She Is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgwick

WOOHOO - I've read another novel by Marcus Sedgwick!
Thanks to my lovely friend, who got me this book for my birthday, I FINALLY got to read another book by my favorite author. Perhaps it's too soon to call an author your favorite after reading just one - now two - of his books, but well, Sedgwick is an exception to that rule!

Summary

Laureth Peak has a father who's a very good writer. For his job he tends to travel a lot to find inspiration, but this time he seems to have been away for quite a long time. Laureth grows worried and so sets out to find him, taking her little brother with her. They fly from London to New York, where he's supposed to be, and have to try to find him through little, cryptic hints and clues. Laureth has the use all her skills and courage to rescue her father, because there's one problem - Laureth is blind.

My Opinion

Rating: 8.5/10

Ahh - I'm so glad I got to read another one of his books!

Just like the first one I read, this book had something puzzling, something that forced you think more about the things that were said and done by the characters. A really fun element was that it wasn't only me, the reader, who needed to think harder and deeper, but Laureth, our protagonist, too. That made it so that I felt like I was one with the character - talking about spiritual stuff, huh, haha.

In The Ghosts Of Heaven, it was really me trying to figure out what the events in the book, the stories of these diverse characters meant: what did Sedgwick wanted to tell me? It made it really philosophical and deep, while in She Is Not Invisible it was more about cracking puzzles and solving the big mystery: where is Laureth's father?

I liked how similar these two books were - Sedgwick putting in some scientific matter to discuss - but at the same time so different - the one is more like a common, young adult story, while the other is a collection of stories that only have one thing in common and a philosophical message to tell.

I do have to say, though, that the story itself wasn't that mindblowing. The storyline was rather predictable, the characters plain and flat - there wasn't much more to it than what you got to read. 

But it wasn't a thing that turned me off, strangely. 

Maybe it's because it's Sedgwick, and I loved The Ghosts Of Heaven veeeerrryyyyy muuuccchhhh, but I think it was also because of the fact he discussed coincidences so thoroughly and well, scientifically :$. 

He literally put it there in the diary of Laureth's father, who happened to think the same things about coincidences as Sedgwick (this was shown in the Q&A that was added to my copy), and made it so that it also came back in the story. As in that Laureth gets to assumptions of him planning to commit suicide, or for her to try to find a place that's related to the number 354 - which I'm not going to explain any further; it's actually way more fun if you dive into the book without knowing too much about it.

The point is, that I just loved how he put his research on coincidences and the number 354 in his book and how he made a story around it. I also like him as a writer, since he combines science and writing - my two favorite things, next to food, books, of course, and sleeping and watching anime and... Yeah, I'll just stop there.

And that's actually all I've got to say about this book; it's simple, but fun to read since it's so scientific and mysterious. The storyline itself isn't that mindblowing, but his research on coincidences and the number 354 have really done it for me.

GO READ BOOKS BY MARCUS SEDGWICK - THEY'RE REALLY FUN TO READ!

Well, that's it for this blog post!

Until the next one, then! :)