OWLs 2020 is officially over – it has been over for 4 days already – and I decided to compile the last two weeks into one post. After the second week, it started to get a little complicated to keep the momentum. These are some exceptional times we are living in, and not every day is a good day. Also not having a book like Pachinko that would give me a lot to think of and to share, didn’t help. But now it’s time to conclude the OWLs and turn the page to start a new month. Wednesday, 15th April 2020 Well, there goes my posting schedule! I haven’t done anything today other than resolve tech issues. First, I was trying to understand how some memory cards work in a Wifi IP camera and others don’t. Having all that figured out took me hours, not even counting testing time. Then, …

Happy book birthday to Goldilocks! A space adventure to find a new planet grand theft spaceship style. In this near-future tale of women taking control over their destiny and the whole world’s fate, many challenges explore how far they are willing to go for the greater good. My many thanks to Anne Cater, the publisher, and Laura Lam for allowing me to be part of this tour. Author: Laura Lam Publisher: Headline Publishing Group, Wildfire Pages: 352 Genre: Sci-fi, Dystopian Publication: 30th April 2020 Synopsis: Ravaged by environmental disaster, greed and oppression, our planet is in crisis. The future of humanity hangs in the balance – and one woman can tip it over. Despite increasing restrictions on the freedoms of women on Earth, Valerie Black is spearheading the first all-female mission to a planet in the Goldilocks Zone, Cavendish, where conditions are just right for human habitation. It’s humanity’s last …

Another week of reading books for the OWLs 2020 is done. It wasn’t as productive as the first one, but I’m still reading and that’s all that matter. Wednesday, 8th April 2020 Last night, I entered the third and last part of Pachinko. The book is divided into three parts, each one sort of following each generation, and now I’m in the final round. This part is going to focus mostly on male perspectives, and I’m not excited about it. The characters that I’ve been loving are going to stay in the back and the ones that are being pushed forward I’m not as connected with. I hope this doesn’t affect my enjoyment. And day three of yoga complete. I have to say that it’s a challenge to try and do yoga or any other type of exercise with a bunny hopping around, jumping on top of you, and sniffing …

Back in 2017, I did a little readathon of my own to countdown the days until Christmas, and I was posting updates of my reading regularly. And last month, when Noura from the blog The Perks of Being Noura did a reading blog where she documented her weekend while she was reading Chain of Gold by Cassandra Claire, she got me thinking that maybe I could do something like that for the OWLs. When I started writing this, I wasn’t too sure about this idea – and I’m still not sure. What am I going to write about? Will I have anything to say? But I kept on doing it day after day, pouring out the thoughts I was having at the moment about the book I was reading, about tv series, about my day. So here it is the first week of the OWLs 2020: Wednesday, 1st April 2020 …

In 2020, March had 365 days instead of the ordinary 31, and being at home in lockdown didn’t help. But I’m not here to talk about these bad days we are living in. No, for that you can turn on the news. In this house, sadness stays outside the door, and if it dares to come in, I’ll fight it with a movie, a game, and a book (in no particular order). For now, I’m going to stick with the books that made my March more bearable and enjoyable. I participated in two blog tours in March. The first one was for Happy Family by James Ellis. The book is set in Spain where the main protagonist, Germaine, goes to try to break out from isolation the creator of the virtual reality game Happy Family. I’ve read books about VR games in the past, but none of those can compare …

April is just around the corner, which means the Magical Readathon is about to start. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Magical Readathon is run by G from the YouTube channel BookRoast during the entire month of April. The marathon is themed around the O.W.L.s (Ordinary Wizarding Level) and N.E.W.T.s (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests) held at Hogwarts. There is a Wizarding Career Guide with all the different careers available, and each one has different classes that you need to take to graduate. And this year, it was added a list of courses and seminars for extra credit. Despite everything about this readathon being related to Harry Potter, it’s possible to read any genre. For a muggle like me, this is the cherry on top of the cake. I’m not a Harry Potter fan, but everything was so well created that it’s a shame not to participate. I …

There is nothing like escaping Earth, and a sci-fi book is perfect for that. Vulcan’s Forge by Robert Mitchell Evans takes the reader to Nocturnia, a newly populated world with the last colony after Earth’s destruction. My many thanks to Anne Cater and the author for allowing me to be part of this tour. Author: Robert Mitchell Evans Publisher: Flame Tree Press Pages: 288 Genre: Sci-fi, Romance, Crime Publication: 26th March 2020 Synopsis: Jason Kessler doesn’t fit in the society of Nocturnia, the sole colony that survived the Earth’s destruction. Between the colony’s dedication to a distorted vision of mid-twentieth-century Americana, its sexually repressive culture, and the expectation that his most important duty is marriage and children Jason rebels, throwing himself into an illicit and dangerous affair with Pamela Guest, but Pamela harbours a secret. Soon the lovers are engaged in a lethal game of cat and mouse with the …

Games and books are two of my favourite hobbies. Whenever a book is about a game, I don’t miss a chance to read it. Happy Family by James Ellis wasn’t an exception. My many thanks to Anne Cater, the author, and the publisher for allowing me to be part of this tour. Author: James Ellis Publisher: Unbound Digital Pages: 304 Genre: Fiction, Humour, LGBT Publication: 6th February 2020 Synopsis: Germaine Kiecke was a foundling, an orphan, brought up by the infamous ‘Motherhood’ in a Belgian orphanage. Now she is a successful art academic who defines herself by her profession and prefers to experience the world through art and an augmented reality game called Happy Family. But when the artist Tom Hannah, the creative force behind Happy Family, moves to Spain, surrounds himself with high walls, three large guard dogs called Harpo, Chico and Groucho, and a runaway who teaches him …

Two months into the new year and my reading mood are as good as ever. At this point, I’m just waiting for a reading slump to hit me hard. Meanwhile, I’m taking advantage of it as much as I can! February had one more reading day this year, and even though it still has fewer days than January, I read six books one more than the month before. For someone that was reading one to two books a month, this is pretty awesome! Wrap-Up When I was presented with the opportunity to review another book by Karl Drinkwater for a blog tour, I had to grab it. Chasing Solace is the continuation of Opal’s scavenge through the universe, and I wanted to reread the first book, Lost Solace, to refresh my memory on everything that happened. I enjoyed Chasing Solace even more, and now that I know there is a …

Once again is time to explore the universe of lost ships in the second book of the Lost Solace series, Chasing Solace by Karl Drinkwater. My many thanks to Anne Cater and the author for allowing me to be part of this tour. Author: Karl Drinkwater Pages: 314 Genre: Sci-Fi Publication: 15th April 2019 Synopsis: The legendary Lost Ships exist, and they harbour nightmarish horrors. Opal knows. She barely survived her first encounter with one. Despite escaping, she failed to find what she was looking for: her lost sister. Now Opal must board a second derelict Lost Ship to seek answers, and it’s even more monstrous, a sickening place of death and decay. To make things worse, the military government wants her, dead or alive. Considering their reputation, dead may be better. To find her sister, Opal will risk everything: her life, her blood, her sanity. There’s always a price …

About a year ago, I was testing out different apps to help me learn Japanese. And now, I’m coming back with two other resources that I’ve been using and enjoying a lot. Before I explore into each one individually, I want to start by talking about the SRS. No, it has nothing to do with your car’s airbags or software development, SRS stands for Spaced Repetition System. This is a learning mechanism to help you memorize vocabulary by increasing the interval between reviews every time you are correct. The idea of the system is to focus on the vocabulary that you are struggling with instead of wasting time with the ones you already know. The system kind of works in levels. For every right answer, the word goes up a level while answering wrong brings it down. And the higher the level, the less frequent the word appears in the …