Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should be Reading.Here's how it works:- Grab the current book you're reading- Open up to a random page- share 2 "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page - just don't include spoilers!!!

**Note: I personally will probably fudge on the numbers and do more than just 2 sentences...!

Once again, my Teaser Tuesday comes from my ongoing series of The Wardstone Chronicles...this week I'm on book 4/6 (technically there's 8 right now, but the last 2 books aren't out yet)...so one of these days I will do a Teaser Tuesday for a non-Warstone book!

Here is my teaser, from Book 4 of the Wardstone Chronicles - The Spook's Battle

"He gave a great roar of anger and bafflement, and for a moment I thought he was about to hurl himself down onto me. But instead I heard the sound of claws cutting into the wooden ceiling panels and a dark shape moved above me toward the door. Moments later I was alone..."

- The Spook's Battle, pg 184

The very first COVER WARS!

Okay, I've been looking forward to getting this up for a couple weeks now! Hopefully this will turn into a weekly thing...

The Book on the Hill's French Friday and Bloody Bookaholic's US vs. UK memes are similar to this one, but whereas they have a specific focus (US & French, or US & British), mine will try to be a little broader in focus! Let's get some Australian editions, some Canadian editions, some German editions, etc! Some times (like this week) there may be multiple-country editions...
So every week I will try to war the cover design of one series (or stand-alone book) with another to see who the winner is!

Do you judge a book by its cover [design]?? Well here, ahem, we do! :D
I for one love to see different cover designs and sometimes will buy foreign covers if I think they're prettier... maybe I'm just compulsive!

So for the first ever Cover Wars, I couldn't help but spotlight the series I'm currently reading, The Wardstone Chronicles by Joseph Delaney. There are 3 main cover designs: 2 British editions, and 1 American edition:

Which do you like better???

American Cover Editions

Original UK Cover Editions - these are what mine look like! I shipped them from UK Amazon

New UK Cover Editions - Oh pooh! I personally think these are snazzier!

Reading Recap - January

Note: From now on I'm going to do my READING RECAP on a monthly basis...otherwise I'll be making the same posts every week - redundant! My blog is also a little over 1 month old, so I'm still playing around with what works and what doesn't. So thank you so much for your patience and input!

** I can't seem to make them all the same sizae, aaaggh! Bear with me!

Quote of the Week!

As well as dreaming of being a writer, I definitely plan on being a teacher, and so this quote is one of my favorites. Hey college kids - we may be "grown ups" but we are still artists too, as long as we never let go of the little kid inside us! I want to try and remember that as I trudge on this semester, and just thought I'd share it with all of you <3.
Have a good week!

A Quick Recap

Books Read

Ethan Frome

Mere Christianity

The Spook's Secret

Reviews

The Spook's Curse & Aurelia

Ethan Frome

My Posts:

Cinema Weekend - "The Tudors"

An Award!

Teaser Tuesday

Cinema Weekend

Note: When I say "cinema," I mean either the big fancy movie theatre or your good'ol down-home theatre! Whichever...

Oh, the weather outside is frightful!

And we live in campus housing so there's no fire that's delightful

And since we've no place to go -

Let's have a Cinema Weekend!

The weather's bad outside, so what better way to spend an afternoon-evening than with a trip back in time? All the way back to the 1500s we go with "The Tudors" - Season 3!

Now I absolutely LOVE this show. It's so bad at times (haha) but I'm a sucker for history and period pieces, and I really have been pleasantly surprised by Showtime's storytelling. They're pretty accurate on most matters and they do an amazing job of exploring the complexities of Tudor England and all the mess that was going on! Best of all, we're all "allowed" to hate hate hate Henry 8 (fabulously played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers). He certainly isn't portrayed as a sensitive figure; everyone else around him is, but he isn't, and that's one of the things I like about the show - they're not afraid to make the main character the villain also.

And it's a fun show to watch just because of the awesome costumes and set designs!

Okay, so here's Season 3's setup:

Henry 8 has just gotten rid of that troublesome wife Anne Boleyn (Natalie Dormer - I miss her already!) by having her beheaded, and he's wasted no time in marrying Wife No. 3 Jane Seymour (Annabelle Wallis). There's this weird eyepatch dude named Sir Francis Bryan (Alan Van Spring) running around doing Henry's dirty work, and I'm not exactly sure what he's all about just yet. Henry's Secretary Thomas Cromwell (James Frain) wants nothing more than to launch a Reformation in England and rid the kingdom of all things Catholic, so he sets about burning heretics and shutting down abbeys and so forth. Meanwhile, Henry's eldest daughter Mary (a grown-up-but-still-cute-as-a-button Sarah Bolger), a devout Catholic, tries to reconcile with her father while maintaining loyalty to Rome. Cardinal Von Waldburg (Max Von Sydow) recuits the help of a rogue priest Reginald Pole (Mark Hildreth) to undermine the Reformation in England. A bunch of ticked-off Catholics in Yorkshire and the Northern Counties launch a rebellion against the shutting down of the monasteries, under the guidance of Henry's former lawyer Robert Aske (Gerard McSorley). Henry sends his oft-crapped upon best buddy Charles Brandon (Henry Cavill - the guy who was almost Edward Cullen) to crush the rebellion, and the traumatizing experience leaves Brandon psychologically scarred. Well, Henry finally gets his long-desired prince (Edward VI), but poor Jane dies shortly after the process. Henry actually shows some remorse at the loss and goes temporarily bonkers, only allowing his court fool (David Bradley - we know him better as Argus Filch from Hogwarts!) to keep him company.

What will happen next?!?! Who will Henry marry?!?! Who will live?!?! Who will die?!?!

My friends and I only have a few more eps to go, and we can't wait to see how frumped-down they make Joss Stone look!

So check out "The Tudors" - 3 seasons in all! Only be warned: there's a bit of language, some violent/disturbing scenes (like people getting beheaded, hanged, burned @ the stake, etc.) and really stupid and annoying and totally overrated sex scenes. I swear, I bet I've seen Jonathan Rhys Meyer's butt more times than his own mother! jk.

A Little Review - ETHAN FROME

Wow, this week has been excrutiatingly busy! This is the 2nd book I've completed this week - and both of them have been for school. Ugh. I know, I can't believe I have to READ for SCHOOL! but while I'm "reading" for "school," my poor little blog and fun books are getting neglected. Oh well, I do what I can. Here's my review for Ethan Frome:

Okay, so once I got over my temper tatrum at my professor's effrontery to make me read for class, I actually liked this book! Now, that's saying something, because usually I grade classics just like I would any other book - none of this: "Ohhh, gee, Author Person! You're book is all kinds of wonderful just because IT'S OLD and lots of people have to write term papers over it!" Nope. The funny thing that I can't get over is that I absolutely HATE books like this one: not a whole lot of action, really indecisive characters, circumstances that are not overcome, etc. And yet Ethan Frome really got to me. I read the whole thing kicking and screaming, saying "No! I WILL NOT like this book! You can't make me!" but it was no use. Here's the scoop (and it's a pretty easy scoop): A poor farmer with an ultra-whiny hypochondriac wife (or at least that's my professor's interpretation) live with the ultra-whiny wife's pretty and vivacious cousin, and the poor downtrodden farmer falls in love with the enchanting cousin (Mattie) but can't seem to escape his circumstances. That's it. And yet, there's so much more. I don't like Ethan, I certainly don't like Zeena...Mattie's really the only character I truly liked...and yet I cared about them all and was rooting for Ethan even though he's such a dadgum loser! Maybe my parents were a little too into the whole "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kids!!!" growing up but I really felt like circumstances weren't near as bleak as Ethan made them out to be. We talked about that a lot in class today: psychological realism novels are really big into the whole "appearances vs. reality" scenario, and I just found that so intriguing. I hate to admit it, but I found myself wishing Ethan and Mattie would just elope and get it over with, and a pox on that scurvy Zeena! Maybe that's why this book is a classic: it's so incredibly simple, and yet by the time you're finished, you feel emotionally exhausted. This book doesn't make you feel better about yourself or life (unless you thank God you're not operating a sawmill in Starkfield, MA in the winter!) and I'm still not entirely sure what message (if any) Edith Wharton was trying to send, but the story just captivated me. Now granted, this is NOT the type of thing I look for in outside fun-reading, but I'm glad I had the experience. It's like when you're in a bookstore or a library and you pass a classic, you can beam with pride and point and declare, "I READ THAT!" So thank you, Dr. Bruce, and thank you to my mom who is an English teacher/principal who let me use her teaching copy - the one with all the notes and unlined passages. :D - Definitely recommended to Classics Lovers. And if you're a student and you find Ethan Frome on your "Required Reading" syllabus, don't fret, for this is an easy read. It could be a heck of a lot worse.

*thinks of T.S. Eliot and shivers*