My neighbour gave me rhubarb..

and my boyfriend gave me an ice cream maker.

My life is awesome. :)

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The weather truly has been beautiful lately!

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As you’ve probably gathered from my inactivity here lately, I’ve been rather busy. Studies and work have occupied my time, and the few off days I’ve had, I’ve spent outdoors in the sun. It just so happens, that summer decided to visit us early this year, which is great news for my heat and sun loving soul!
One thing I have had time to though, is take my camera out every now and then to capture the beauty of the world surrounding me (pretty much only thanks to the fact that I bought a new camera a while ago, that I can carry around everywhere). So, here are a bunch of pictures.

The last picture was my view while studying the other day. Perfect!
I promise I’ll try to be a bit more active here from now on, I should have more time from within a couple of days. In the meantime, hang in there!

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Should I have spent the past 4 days writing another blog post to avoid writing two consecutive posts on kind of the same subject? Maybe, but I’ve been very busy. It just so happens that on the same day I wrote the last post, an ammonia leak was discovered aboard the ISS, and within the following 48 hours we got to witness the quickest preparation of a spacewalk ever performed. It was rather amazing, I tell you.

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I don’t know if you, like me, are obsessed with outer space, the International Space Station and the work of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and so on. I’m a huge enthusiast and I’m always trying to learn new things. One of my more obscure hobbies is to watch the video stream from the ISS (found here).

One of the first books I remember reading was a book about space and planets, I’m a little sad to have lost that book somewhere along the way but I still remember it clearly. The top thing on my bucket list is to have been in space before I die. Maybe not for months and months on board the ISS, although that would be amazing, but just in some way.

For the past 5 months we’ve been able to follow Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield on Expedition 35, he’s been uploading videos of how you do things in space (like washing your hands, wringing water out of a towel, eating dessert and sleeping), he’s been tweeting a lot and just been amazing. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling lucky and, for lack of a better term, blessed, to get to follow his journey.
I don’t have many “idols” or people I truly admire, but Chris Hadfield is definitely one of the few. He’s a hero, and there can’t be a person alive who isn’t proud of him.

Music Monday is a Canadian event to promote music education. For this year’s event, a song by Chris Hadfield and Ed Robertson was sung, with a school choir singing along. Why is this fantastic you ask? Well, because Chris is currently orbiting Earth, 400 kilometers above us. If you jump to 00:36:00 on the video below, you’ll get to hear something pretty fantastic. The CSA just uploaded it so I thought I’d share :)

I.S.S (Is Somebody Singing) lyrics

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Chocolat by Joanne Harris
This book isn’t at all as trashy as the cover suggests. It’s actually a pretty sweet (see what I did there? Do you? DO you?) story about a woman who opens a chocolate shop in a small French town. There’s magic.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
A very calm story with a good amount of humour. It’ll make you smile and feel all warm inside.

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion
No I can’t praise this book enough. It’s lovely and an easy read, and even though I didn’t really ever put the book down while reading it, it feels like the kind of book you can put down and pick up again without getting lost. If you’re going for a swim, I mean.

Across the Universe by Beth Revis
Okay so..I know it might not make much sense to recommend a book that I didn’t really like all that much, however, I think that for a lot of my readers, this could be their introduction to sci-fi. And more people who enjoy sci-fi is never a bad thing. Also I know that this book is generally considered to be very good, so I’m not going to let my anti-YA feelings get in the way of this.

Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Again, a book I can’t recommend enough. Aside from being a great read, it’s also very easy and heartwarming. It doesn’t take much effort at all to get through it, which is why it made it to this list event though it’s not “fun”. Despite the subject, it’s not at all depressing.

A Winter Flame by Milly Johnson
I bought this book to read for Christmas, because you know…it’s a winter story? It’s very sweet and calm, again, doesn’t take much effort to read. It’s beautiful and makes you feel good :)

Anastasia’s Secret by Susanne Dunlap
Who doesn’t like a nice historical fiction to read a warm summer’s day? This one definitely belongs in the YA section which naturally makes it a pretty easy read. I might be biased because I’m a bit of a history buff, but it’s still an enjoyable read!

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
This was the first book in the magical realism genre. It’s a very sweet and easy read, perfect for a warm day in the sun.

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
I don’t think I could have a list like this without adding this YA novel, it’s one of the very few that I truly enjoy. Such a lovely story!

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
A fantastic read, maybe for most people it’s a little too long to be considered an easy read, but I finished it in one day so that’s okay. This is another one of those books that gives you a really nice feeling, and it’s not very difficult to follow along.

Okay, that’s today’s list! Please link me your posts, I’d love some recommendations on the subject!

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Yeah, so I’ve been rather busy, a huge new project came up at work with which I have spent the past weeks, also I’m writing my final assignment in my social science class, and…I started watching Star Trek again. I watched Voyager years ago and now a certain someone put the idea in my head that maybe “The Next Generation” is pretty awesome too, and things happened and I’m currently on Season 5 Episode 5. (So if there are any Trekkers out there who want to discuss TNG in general or Lt. Commander Data and his awesomeness in particular, feel free to approach me).

Anyway, on to business. Except I don’t have that much to tell you, because the above is literally all that’s been going on. I haven’t even read much or ordered any books! Well the last one is a bit of a lie, I have a few books on the way.
Since I don’t have anything fun to talk about right now, I thought I’d show you some pictures instead. Because spring happened, and I’ve never been so happy!

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
Yeah, I avoided it for the longest time, because I thought it sounded so silly and childish. And then I loved it.

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld
I thought I’d love this one, I really did, I loved the idea more than the actual book though, and in the end I was pretty disappointed.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
I mention this every now and then, but wow, I really dislike this book. Again, I had high hopes, the plot even sounded decent and so many people love it. I read it and really, genuinely wonder what all the fuss was about.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
I’m not going to lie, I thought I’d hate this book, it just didn’t sound interesting and a lot of the classics which focus on families and love and drama are really not my thing. I had to read this for one of my Swedish classes, and surprisingly I loved it!

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
I didn’t dislike this book, but I didn’t like it at all as much as I’d expected. I’m a huge fan of dystopian novels and everyone talks about this one, so I thought I’d adore it. It was decent, but far from the best book in the genre.

Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
I’m going to come out and say it; I discriminate against Swedish literature. I often don’t like it. I don’t like the language, I don’t like a lot of the famous authors, and more often than not, I find the plots to be extremely forced and non-Swedish. It’s like they force a foreign setting onto Swedish culture, and the clash makes for an awful mess. Thus when I started reading this, I hoped for nothing. But hey, look, it’s a good book! Really good even! I actually enjoyed it (right up until the end, at which point I think one of my worst phobias got about 10 steps worse!!)!

Niceville by Kathryn Stockett
I usually don’t like these kind of books, that are supposed to move you but are too superficial and stereotypical. This was none of it, and it really did move me.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
There is one simple reason to why I didn’t expect to like this book. Because everyone else does. I’ve learned from experience that a lot of the books other people adore, or that are generally said to be good books, I end up disliking. Maybe because I don’t appreciate the fact that they’re classics if they’re not good, maybe because I have my expectations set too high, I don’t know. Either way, I expected to be disappointed by this, but I was not. It’s a brilliant book, fully deserving of all the praise it gets!

Chocolat by Joanne Harris
I accidentally picked up the sequel to this one at a thrift store a while back without knowing it was a sequel. I really just liked the cover, to be honest. Upon reading the synopsis for this book, I thought I wouldn’t like it at all, it didn’t seem like my type of reading. I was surprised to find that I actually enjoyed it a lot, and am looking forward to reading the sequel!

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
This book has been extremely hyped in the online book community over the past couple of months, and everyone seems to have read it. I seem to be the only one who doesn’t have an obsession with circuses, but I liked the cover and the synopsis sounded interesting enough so I thought I’d give it a shot. Turned out to be a fantastic book, I finished it in one day!

So, thats my list for today! Please link me to your Top Ten so I can check it out!

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A Million Suns & Shades of Earth by Beth Revis
Slight spoiler warning, I’m not going to reveal the ending of course, but since I’m going to discuss two books, there will be mentions of stuff happening in the last book that will tell you about what happens in the second too.

This is a combined review of the two last books in the Across the Universe trilogy. Usually I wouldn’t want to write a joint review because it would maybe take away from one of the books, but I feel like in this case, it wouldn’t be fair to separate them.
Firstly, I said about Across the Universe that I felt like Amy still had potential, disappointingly enough, she didn’t use that potential much at all. Still, I liked her a lot more than I liked Elder. I did feel like Elder could’ve been a good leader if he hadn’t been so darn pre-occupied with Amy and his feelings for her! I just don’t understand how someone who’s supposed to lead around a thousand people to their new home can be busy sitting in a corner moping about Amy talking to Chris. What? No. And you wonder why no one takes you seriously?

As for Amy, I felt like she was still rather immature, and I felt like I didn’t understand her irrational reasoning. First she’s all “I don’t want to be with Elder because he’s my only option”, which honestly is a rather hurtful thing to say to someone. And then, when Elder is busy trying to save his people, she’s silently whining about the fact that he doesn’t just let everything go to focus on her. Firstly, that’s unreasonable, and secondly, it’s ridiculously selfish and disgusting.
Amy has got some good sides too though, for example, despite the fact that so many of the shipborns frown at her and bully her from the day she wakes up, she still takes their side and defends them and their rights. The willingness to see them as human despite their earlier behaviour shows that she’s got empathy, and I like that in a character.

As you’ve probably gathered from here, I’m just not a fan of the lovey dovey stuff going on between Elder and Amy, but I’m not much for love stories to begin with. In this case, I just felt like it took away from the important stuff. I think it’s unrealistic that you land on another planet and have to set up a colony, and all you’ll focus on is whether your love interest talks to someone else or not. I don’t buy it, it’s silly. That’s one of the main reasons I avoid YA, because it tends to shove a love triangle into every possible or impossible setting, and more often than not, I don’t buy it. I believe I would’ve liked these books a lot more of Elder and Amy had just been friends and nothing more.

As for the ending, it surprised me. I didn’t see it coming at all, and I’m so glad about that! The conclusion of the story was realistic and I liked it, even if Elder’s reasons for doing what he did are, again, completely unrealistic and rather childish. He had no way of knowing that promises would be kept, yet he willingly put his entire people at risk just to save Amy. I’m not saying that what he did was wrong, I’m just saying that his reason for doing it was stupid. In this case, I actually felt like Amy was the more mature one, understanding that sacrifices had to be made in order to achieve peace.
I do feel like they should’ve left the last chapter out. The ending of the second-to-last chapter is perfect, that’s where the book should’ve ended.

Did I enjoy this series? Yes. Do I think you would too? If you don’t have a problem with slightly unrealistic love triangles, I believe you will!
I gave both A Million Suns and Shades of Earth 3 stars out of 5 :)

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