Since I did a mini summary about Owlcrate, and I am eagerly waiting to receive the January Book Box Club box soon, I shall do another mini summary about them.
I bought their last first box back in September 2016 (?) and haven’t looked bad. They were the first ones to do a proper author chat and it was the one thing I loved the most. Nowadays I don’t join the chat so much, but it is thanks to them I found some of my good friends and reading buddies.
But let’s see what was in the December box, which was all about being cozy with our reads, starting on the theme card on the bottom right and going clockwise:
Theme Card. Cute fits the theme.
A proof book, for me it was Are You Watching? which I already have a proof copy for, but still, extra book.
The main book, Dangerous Alliance which is very pink and apparently Jane Austen-ish… I am a bit unsure what to expect.
White chocolate and & Raspberry bar, which fits nicely with being cosy. Yum!
A Christmas wishes card from the girls and the new four paw addition.
A gorgeous beanie hat, it is a deep green that for some reason looks very black in videos and pictures. It is warm and comfortable and cute. win all around.
A pin to match the book.
The 2020 artwork calendar I’ve come to expect from them, and it is gorgeous! A great way of discovering new artists.
A woodmark, with the most gorgeous art ever that it put aside my woddmark dislike (plus it is a little more sturdy but not that much thicker than the usual ones in other boxes, so far better).
All in all, a very cosy box to be enjoyed and I am looking forward to the treat of two books in the January box too!
A friend I’ve known since we were 14 or so, was in Spain and made a small trip to come see me in the UK (we’re both from Mexico). On the last day she was here, she gifted us (husband and I) this book. I teared up a little.
For starters, this is about a fox “stealing” a chicken. We keep chickens and my logo is a fox. No need to say more, right? This book has no words in it, a language agnostic book. All of it is pictures and the pictures do their job amazingly well.
Our fox steals the chicken and runs away, when ehr friends find out they pursue them. And so goes th story as they are being pursued so the chicken can be rescued. But does the chicken need rescuing?
It is a gorgeous book, the artwork is brilliant, the story is very well doen and as mentioned, not even need for words. And well, it questions preconceptions and assumptions on others very well, plus choices and reactions to things.
I highly recommend it because it is a sweet one and charming.
Since it is almost the time when book boxes start shipping for January, let’s do some unboxings of the ones that came through in December. For today, it is Owlcrate. I’ve been getting them on and off. My first Owlcrate was I think their 4th box of them all, way back in 2015 (if I remember correctly), and I kept it going for quite a while until it was the same items with just a little difference. I stopped and then restarted it recently as the quality went up again.
So let’s unbox this one, starting with the book in the bottom left:
The Guinevere Deception by Kiersten White. It was highly hinted this would be the book for December, and I am glad. Even though blue is one of my favourite colours, the green cover version they gave us is stunning. Underneath it has emerald foiling and white hardcovers.
Mount Ruin candle. It smells delicious and warm and cosy (maybe not actually like doom, but I am okay with that).
A book sleeve with a quote from Sorcery of Thorns. It is a good size, which is something I like (my favourite so far was one that has a front pocket and a popper button on the top so it is extra secure plus can add other things up front.
Theme card.
A set of colouring pencils that are meant to accompany the next item…
A colouring book of all the yearly pin designs that have been included in Owlcrate. I thought this was an awesome idea and a way of making the most of the amazing designs. Not only as a pin but bonus colouring book!
A hand warmer, based on Sky in the Deep. This was great to receive because I had been raving about them in the office and when I unboxed it, I could show it to my colleagues easily.
Earmuffs. A win for me since they are relatively portable and cute and comfortable. And a unique item.
The pin of the month.
In general I liked this box, it is very well coordinated in colour and even though not all items feel like Tales of Trickery, they do give me a cooridnated vibe and I like it.
Wish is a story about the power of kindness and the magic of friendship.
Rabbit has never had a wish before but one day he gets not one, but three! He asks his friends what they would do if they had a wish to get ideas. He hears their ideas, but what does he want?
Rating:
I got this as a Christmas gift. It was on my wishlist for a while as I like having some children’s books to read sometimes when I want to read but don’t have the energy to fully commit to an older book. But with pictures it is easier and just nice.
Wish is about a bunny rabbit who gets three wishes and he isn’t sure what to wish for. So he goes around and asks his friends, and they each tell him their wishes and what they would like. Adventures, nice things, all of them very unique to each of the friends, but none of them seem to be exactly what the little rabbit wants to wish for.
So when he makes his wishes, he finds out sometimes wishes can be good and shared. It is a cute story with soft artwork, the kind that makes you believe in wishes and just makes you feel warm inside.
All in all, it was a lovely gift and it was a good book to cuddle with after being tired from all the festivities. Something to relax with and just enjoy and smile about.
The acclaimed graphic novel world of The Witch Boy and The Hidden Witch comes to a thrilling conclusion in this story of friendship, family, and finding your true power. Magic has a dark side . . .
Aster always looks forward to the Midwinter Festival, a reunion of the entire Vanissen family that includes competitions in witchery and shapeshifting. This year, he’s especially excited to compete in the annual Jolrun tournament-as a witch. He’s determined to show everyone that he’s proud of who he is and what he’s learned, but he knows it won’t be easy to defy tradition.
Ariel has darker things on her mind than the Festival-like the mysterious witch who’s been visiting her dreams, claiming to know the truth about Ariel’s past. She appreciates everything the Vanissens have done for her. But Ariel still craves a place where she truly belongs.
The Festival is a whirlwind of excitement and activity, but for Aster and Ariel, nothing goes according to plan. When a powerful and sinister force invades the reunion, threatening to destroy everything the young witches have fought for, can they find the courage to fight it together? Or will dark magic tear them apart?
Rating:
I was very excited to read this and had it on preorder. The two previous books had me hooked and I wondered where this one was going to take us and what interesting adventures were coming.
The focus of it is Ariel, and the internal fight she has on being a good with rather than just evil and ruining everything. I wanted to enjoy it as much as the other two, but there was a lot of making the adults do things that didn’t go very well with their characters for the sake of making the plot a bit more intense and more confusing. I didn’t want to try to rethink my whole view of a character that I thought was good for the last two books and is now giving bad vibes (worse part, the reason for the shifty behaviour is silly, something a child might do not an adult and not the character that does). So I guess, that made it less good to me.
I still liked seeing their friendship finding new spaces and figuring out what is best and how to go along with having a new witch that is adept next to Aster. Good competition. There is still a lot of Aster having to prove himself which detracted a little from Ariel’s story. I can see the reason behind wanting to explore that part, but it meant you split the story too much between Ariel and Aster and their conflicts and tried to pack it all one book. Maybe it would’ve been better to have it be a set of four books rather than a trilogy. That way there’ll be more space to explore both things, including Ariel’s past and family and all that.
The big reveal about Ariel’s family is too short and rushed, which felt like a shame. However, their friendship between the three of them is still strong and they’re a good team of friends.
The art is still good, the world was nice to go back to, I just wished it had been done a little better, as it left me feeling like “oh, it finished already? This is the end of this story/trilogy? Really? That’s it?” rather than with a bang or at the very least some internal satisfaction of seieng htem grow into themselves (which they kinda do, but it is rushed and it feels a little forced).
Still, the trilogy itself is fun, I enjoyed it and it was an interesting concept. Wish there were more to come.
You are invited! COme inside and play with G.O.D. Bring your friends! It;’s fun! But remember the rules. Win and ALL YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE.™ Lose, you die!
With those words, Charlie and his friends enter the G.O.D. Game, a video game run by underground hackers and controlled by a mysterious AI that believes it’s God. Through their phone-screens and high-tech glasses, the teens’ realities blur with a virtual world of creeping vines, smoldering torches, runes, glyphs, gods, and mythical creatures. When they accomplish a mission, the game rewards them with expensive tech, revenge on high-school tormentors, and cash flowing from ATMs. Slaying a hydra and drawing a bloody pentagram as payment to a Greek god seem harmless at first. Fun even.
But then the threatening messages start. Worship me. Obey me. Complete a mission, however cruel, or the game reveals their secrets and crushes their dreams. Tasks that seemed harmless at first take on deadly consequences. Mysterious packages show up at their homes. Shadowy figures start following them, appearing around corners, attacking them in parking garages. Who else is playing this game, and how far will they go to win?
And what of the game’s first promise: win, win big, lose, you die? Dying in a virtual world doesn’t really mean death in real life—does it?
As Charlie and his friends try to find a way out of the game, they realize they’ve been manipulated into a bigger web they can’t escape: an AI that learned its cruelty from watching us.
God is always watching, and He says when the game is done.
Rating:
When Stevie mentioned this “GOD” game book I was hooked. (This was a review copy, provided by the publisher for free in the hopes I would like it and join the tour, which I did) I was brought up in a religious environment and it has taken some time to work through that, and I did some work with AI(Artificial Intelligence), neural networks, machine learning and cybersecurity. This book felt like a very interesting one for me.
The God Game is a wonderful display of what an AI that has been fed all data about religion and has to then make a choice about humanity and religion and the common denominator in it. The conclusion as to what the motivations of the AI behind the God game, left thinking “oh wow, that is a very interesting question” and it made sense. It fit the way AI process data and come to questions and conclusions, and it also fit the panorama of religion.
I am aware Tobey is heavily involved in AI, so not a surprise here, however, what was interesting was also seeing each character be fleshed out as their own. They all have their own motivations to be part of the game, and to keep winning, but it is also their compasses and own morals that define how far they’re willing to go, and what parts of it they will question or go against.
Some of the concepts where very far fetched but it was still interesting to see this “futuristic” approach to AI mixed with some of the data that is already available but is too big data that processing is usually quite costly compared with the return it provides in useful information for those processing it (in this case, since it is an AI and fiction, there doesn’t seem to be that type of limitation).
Another thing explored here that was interesting was the way games and being “online” and outside of “real life” can warp you and give you an odd sense of being in control or of things being harmless and no consequences coming from it. “It is just a simple joke, a simple dare, no one was hurt”, that type of thing.
As interesting and well developed as the GOD game is, I wouldn’t want to play it. And I had the issue that every adult and “responsible” person that has more than a sentence or so of action in this book is a terrible person. They have horrid secrets, have failed the teenagers and are just a combination of selfish and bad, even if some are trying to make it better or hide it or whatever. That was my least favourite part. I know it works for what the story is trying to say, but it made it not as good as it could’ve been, because all the “NPC (non playable characters)” where more or less made to fit exactly the plot and make it make less bad of what the main cast was doing, and I just wish there had been more contrast, more to work on.
One last thing, this book explores how far someone can go towards “bad”, so there is an incredibly long list of trigger warnings that I honestly couldn’t comprehensibly list. To me, due to the context of the game they were less of a shock, but I expected that and worse given the premise, however, if you are coming to this book without expecting the worst, it is going to slap you in the face badly. Take care when reading this.
“You cannot have a funeral for your mother without also having a funeral for yourself.” This book poses the ever-lingering question: What happens when someone dies before they’re able to redeem themselves?
From the bestselling & award-winning poetess, amanda lovelace, comes the finale of her illustrated duology, “things that h(a)unt.” In the first installment, to make monsters out of girls, lovelace explored the memory of being in a toxic romantic relationship. In to drink coffee with a ghost, lovelace unravels the memory of the complicated relationship she had with her now-deceased mother.
Rating:
This book was a title + cover buy. I saw it as I was looking for some books to gift for Christmas, it caught my eye, I skim read a few of the poems to try to see if I’d like it and went “yeah, sounds okay, buy”.
I read it quickly, and gosh, this spoke to me more than I thought it would. My mother isn’t dead, but a lot of what is touched in the book is either things I have encountered myself or seen people close to me live through. A few poems, I felt like someone had taken a peek at my life and gone “this is one of those do or die moments, this was a turning point”.
Before this little book I hadn’t read any of Amanda’s other books because a) I mostly don’t do poetry, but I have sudden bouts of liking it. Poetry in English confuses me, it feels way less poetic and makes less sense than it does in Spanish. And b) her other poetry books have been hyped and I have been burnt enough by “overly hyped bookes” that I mostly steer away from them because they’re 90% of the time not my type of book. I am not sure her other series is for me, but this one, it most certainly is.
One thing that made me smile is that it has an extensive list of trigger and content warnings so you know what to expect when you read it and it won’t shock you or do you wrong as you’ve been warned. Maybe it even helped knowing what may be coming to connect better with it, as I knew what parts of it would speak the most to me.
Now I have ordered the previous book on this collection and I have keep this one in my limited collection of poetry books (so far there’s 3 of them, not counting the one on the way). I guess that is high praise for this book if it is actually staying on my shelves…
Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck & Fortune by Roselle Lim
At the news of her mother’s death, Natalie Tan returns home. The two women hadn’t spoken since Natalie left in anger seven years ago, when her mother refused to support her chosen career as a chef. Natalie is shocked to discover the vibrant neighborhood of San Francisco’s Chinatown that she remembers from her childhood is fading, with businesses failing and families moving out. She’s even more surprised to learn she has inherited her grandmother’s restaurant.
The neighborhood seer reads the restaurant’s fortune in the leaves: Natalie must cook three recipes from her grandmother’s cookbook to aid her struggling neighbors before the restaurant will succeed. Unfortunately, Natalie has no desire to help them try to turn things around–she resents the local shopkeepers for leaving her alone to take care of her agoraphobic mother when she was growing up. But with the support of a surprising new friend and a budding romance, Natalie starts to realize that maybe her neighbors really have been there for her all along.
Rating:
First review of the year, even though I read this last year (this is so weird to write), and breaking away from the usual puzzle background because Vixy was being a good model.
Natalie has been working on learning new foods and growing her repertoire of food and has been chasing her dream away from home as she didn’t see eye to eye with her mum. And as such she also didn’t see eye to eye with her neighbours.
However, after her mother dies, she returns and decides that maybe she’ll open the restaurant she inherited and fulfill her dream. And as she does this, she also starts seeing her neighbours differently, tries to help them and cooks lots of delicious food.
The main thing was that this book made me SO hungry! Do not read while hungry or with any hint of hunger because you’ll be craving the food so bad. I kept drooling over the recipes, loving the simple and interesting magic in the “dishes” and just that hint at a slight bend between magic and reality as we see it.
The writing flowed, I felt for Natalie and her neighbours and I just wanted them all to be happy and succeed. And to make food. So bad. It was interesting to see her mother’s agoraphobia define her childhood and then to slowly find out why it got so bad and why her mother was so against Natalie’s dreams.
Another thing that I found interesting is how sometimes we think we know what is best for someone else and what the fix is, but it isn’t always what is best and meddling has consequences. Natalie has a good heart even if it is a bit broken, patched and mended, and she has a fear of commitment so it was interesting to see her grow through the story and find that confidence in herself, and to learn more about her family history, her grandmother and the neighbourhood in general.
Worth the read, keep snacks available while reading. I ended up being lucky that I was reading at a Thai restaurant while waiting for my food, so my cravings were relatively quickly satisfied but at other times, it was tricky not to want to immediately get delicious food.
Closing the year with lots of foxes, Vixy, my family, art and books.
2019 is coming to an end and to be fair, it doesn’t feel like anything so far. Today is just another day, the last one in the calendar and apparently the last one of the decade (we’re approaching the twenties, what fun crazy parties are there to come?!) but so far, the hype, the excitement is not there for me.
This year and decade have been dissonant and odd. And as much as I used to plan ahead like crazy and overplan and have everything “perfect”, that is one of the lessons learned this decade. Even the best laid plans can go awry and not turn out to be the best. You can plan and plan and plan, I had plan A to Z and still, somehow that wasn’t enough for some of the things that happened this decade.
And you know what? That is actually fine. I still plan and I am known to be that person who you approach when you need something. You need sewing supplies in the office, or different types of glue, or food, or whatever, I’ve got it. I am still very much a planner. But I am also aware I can’t cover everything and plans don’t always go the way you planned.
If the plans I had at the beginning of the decade had worked out I’d be married to a first husband, with kids, a successful research career and potentially a high level job as manager or close to CEO of something. And so far I have none of those things. (Yes, to those gracefully pointing out, I did get married this year, but this was not my first rodeo).
Instead, I on my second marriage, no kids (just Vixy and some chickens), on a job that was as far away from my dream job as I could consider that is turning out to be even better than my dream job, and in a country where I am a stranger, an immigrant and unwanted and at the same time, I am not.
Heck, during this decade, I got married twice, had a divorce (something I never expected to have to do, one of the few things I never planned for), became homeless, had all my money stolen away, fought a massive legal battle to be able to have a life and be my own person, survived mental illness, moved countries and moved so many times in a new country. Went from speaking my native language the most, to barely using it.
And relationships. I broke away from my biological family (and then we agreed to come back). Found a new family (where I fit a little better). Tested old friendships (in a few days I will be seeing a friend I have known since we were 13-14 years old, one of my oldest friendships), made new ones. Some of them broke, some never stuck, some have become a massive blessing and grown my network.
In this decade, I have been scared as I had never been before, but I have also exprienced joy and gratitude like never before. I have grown so much.
Even my looks have changed, and my confidence.
I have no big plans for 2020 or the full decade. I do have little (and big) things I’d like to accomplish, but we shall see how they come to fruition:
Complete writing a novel.
Publish it
Write the WBT comic and illustrate it.
Draw more
Read more
Things I plan to do this coming year is to draw almost everyday. I used to and then got out of the practice for many reasons, and now want to get back into it.
And I am going to be better at choosing books I spend my money on. I had been on a rampage to support as many authors as possible and I end up not reading them all (for example, Contemporary Romance is something I rarely read and yet I had preordered so many). So my intention is to think better what I purchase. In the end, all my efforts to support authors feel like they’ve been mostly wasted (I know in a way they haven’t) and I would rather do this with more care.
I also went on a rampage of bookboxes, but I am slowly culling that down as some are loosing the shine and spark. It is a tough world and there’s only so many *insert overused item in bookboxes here* you need. I just wish there were ways to customise or tailor it a bit better. And I would love a UK version of what PageHabit did (annotated books by the author, with post it notes).
A thing I won’t stop is the generosity and kindness I have. This has been used against me (I have been considered a threat or “evil” for being nice, or that I have an ulterior motive, or that my kindness is a way to mistreat people) but I still won’t stop. I like helping and being nice to others.
What are you musing on today? (If you are musing at all)
I am now off to finish working for the day, then have some pizza with my husband and watch a film and some documentaries.
If you followed the saga of “I just realised it is the 23rd and I urgently need to draw an elaborate holiday cheer thing for the 25th” on Twitter, you know I only finished this after midnight and well…
But I did finish it!
Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, if not, whatever you do celebrate, may it be good and peaceful and bring generosity and comfort to you.
Thanks for reading this blog and being part of it and interacting with me throughout that time. ~I truly appreciate it and I hope I managed to share of my love for books and book boxes with you all.
