The Constellation of Moon

Backgrounds for your pictures

Posted on February 1, 2018

“So Moon, what do you use for your background?”

Since I keep getting this question a lot, I am now making a full post about it. And as I am sure you’re eager to know the answer here is the short version of it: a puzzle.

Yes, you read that right! Currently it has been The Bizarre Bookshop 2 by Ravensburger/Colin Thompson. I also have a few pictures with The Bizarre Bookshop (the first one).

And how did this cleverness occur? By pure chance. I had bought a cheap low coffee table for my artwork because I am into biomechanics and trying to control pain in my body (but that is a story for another day), and I found the white table boring.

I love puzzles (either thinking puzzles or jigsaw) so I bought one and used it as my new “decoration”. I had initially intended to glue it to the table but that never happened because I loved the first puzzle so much I went out and bought a second one.

And after payday this month I treated myself to two more puzzles because I was bored of my current puzzle background. (So expect new “theme” without being on purpose).

So by chance I had to take unboxing pictures and other kinds of pictures and the table was the best place to do so, and well, they looked nice so I kept doing it, and it set a theme.

It is a relatively cheap way of doing a background (you can go to a charity shop and get a puzzle for almost nothing) and it is also a fun distraction. jigsaw soothe my mind and my anxiety and are of the few things that actually mean my brain isn’t doing ten thousand things at the same time. Once I start one, that is all I am doing.

So if you feel creative or you like jigsaw (and if you don’t maybe you know someone who does and can solve the jigsaw so you have an awesome background, you can probably convince (bribe) them with books or cake or cookies… chocolate is a good option too).

Book Review

The Girl in the Tower Review

Posted on January 30, 2018

As you know I loved The Bear and the Nightingale, so here we go on the next book.

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

The magical adventure begun in The Bear and the Nightingale continues as brave Vasya, now a young woman, is forced to choose between marriage or life in a convent and instead flees her home—but soon finds herself called upon to help defend the city of Moscow when it comes under siege.

Orphaned and cast out as a witch by her village, Vasya’s options are few: resign herself to life in a convent, or allow her older sister to make her a match with a Moscovite prince. Both doom her to life in a tower, cut off from the vast world she longs to explore. So instead she chooses adventure, disguising herself as a boy and riding her horse into the woods. When a battle with some bandits who have been terrorizing the countryside earns her the admiration of the Grand Prince of Moscow, she must carefully guard the secret of her gender to remain in his good graces—even as she realizes his kingdom is under threat from mysterious forces only she will be able to stop.

Rating:

There is so much I’d like to say about this book but a lot of it would be spoilers, so instead I can insert lots of squeals and excitement. Some of the things that were left as question marks (like that gem Vasya has hanging around her neck) get answers, but some new things show up.

We also get to see what happened to Sasha and Olga, and it was interesting to see how their personalities and them as characters developed once they moved to their new environment.

Konstantin is still being annoying and part of me wishes he’d just disappear but then again he does add a lot to the story in his own weird way, wreaking havoc wherever he goes. Poor man.

And of course Solovey is still there as are new characters, and Morozko, the sweetheart nis still there too.

Moon recommends

To read this book, if you haven’t read The Bear and the Nightingale, then read that one first then this one. Come back and despair with me that we have to wait until August to read the conclusion book.

Subscription Boxes

January Fantasy Leafer Box Unboxing

Posted on January 28, 2018

This is the other cheap (as in price) book box out there and it is like a complimentary sibling of Wildest Dreams, as it doesn’t do the Young Adult genre.

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I usually get a combo of sci-fi and fantasy but this time I just felt like having Fantasy and not both. So let’s have a look at the contents:

Oak and Mistletoe by J.Z.N. McCauley. I like the cover and it looks interesting.
A celtic charm necklace
A shamrock/clover keychain, quite cute.
A tiny tartan bow badge/pin which I think was so quite charming.
Chocolate, this time a peppermint one that I devoured.

Not a bad box at all, so if you are interested in getting you can use code KESTREL10 to get 10% off.

Book Review

Nana Volumes 1-5 Review

Posted on January 26, 2018

One of the things I love to read and haven’t actually reviewed much here is manga/graphic novels.

And for me Nana is a classic that I have slowly been buying to complete my collection. I am using the Wikipedia summary rather than the one from GoodReads just because this is a bundle of volumes being reviewed rather than just one.

Nana Volumes 1-5 by Ai Yazawa

Nana Komatsu has a habit of falling in love at first sight all the time, and depending on other people to help her. When her friends, and then her boyfriend, leave for Tokyo, she decides to join them a year later after having saved enough money at the age of twenty.

Nana Osaki, the other Nana, is the punk-styled lead vocalist of a band called Black Stones (BLAST for short). She had lived with her boyfriend, bassist Ren Honjo since she was 16, but when Ren is offered a chance to debut in Tokyo as a replacement member of a popular band called Trapnest, Nana chooses to continue on with BLAST and to cultivate her own career instead of following Ren, as she has too much ambition to be relegated to a rockstar’s girlfriend. She eventually leaves for Tokyo at the age of twenty to start her musical career.

The two Nanas meet on a train by chance, both on their way to Tokyo. After a string of coincidences, they come to share an apartment. Despite having contrasting personalities and ideals, the Nanas respect each other and become close friends. While BLAST begins to gain popularity at live gigs, the two Nanas face many other issues together, especially in the areas of friendship and romance. The story of Nana revolves heavily around the romance and relationships of the two characters as one seeks fame and recognition while the other seeks love and happiness.

Rating:

This is a manga that has been close to my heart since I first fell for it (as a teenager, quite a few years back when I had to wait until the next translated chapter came out to keep up with the story).

I hate to admit that I used to identify (and in some ways still do) with Nana Komatsu “Hachiko”. And I did use to have a lot of crushes but nothing serious. Yet, the way this manga explores not only the way relationships work and how one becomes an “adult”, it also ponders what success means. The first five volumes introduce you to most of the main characters that will be seen all throughout the story and it is being narrated by Nana Komatsu, so it has some of her thoughts, and sometimes you can see she is looking back and thinking “why did I do that?”.

The artwork has always been inspiring for me. The fashion and details Ai Yazawa has on it are wonderful and I have loved the close relationship that happens between two strangers that want to rent the same flat and have the same name.

Moon recommends

Definitely reading Nana. Another good one is Paradise Kiss (also by Ai Yazawa) which focuses more in fashion than music, but it is still a wonderful story. Both the manga and anime. And also I recommend the anime for Nana.

Discussion

Spill the Tea: The suspense of belief…

Posted on January 24, 2018

How is your suspense of belief?

Mine is an interesting convolution.

See, give me a Disney/Ghibli/animated film and my suspense of belief is on, anything goes (you’d have to be really bad at making a film to break this magic). But then, give me film with actors in it, and that is when it gets interesting.

If the film/tv show is set in real history time and it isn’t meant to be comedy (for example, Blackadder is set in historical points but it is comedy/humour and as such suspense of belief works) then my suspense of belief struggles. My engineer self goes bonkers when cars, planes, and other mechanical things don’t work. Or when you decide to replace sulfur with hydrogen in mustard gas (impossible, as it would not bond, hydrogen doesn’t hold together two sides, it is more like the end caps of molecules). Then I just can’t cope with it. Or when you take history and place it as a “historical” reality but change things.

Once again, it is one thing to tell me this is History but with Zombies/Vampires/Whatever. It is another to tell me this is history as is but things changed because the Zombie was suddenly there.

I think what breaks the suspense of belief is when they try SO hard to make it convincing, going into all the little details (like mentioning that it is hydrogen that they will use instead of sulfur, why not just say that you’ve got it and scribble a formula in gibberish?), and then those little details to make it more convincing are wrong. A simple google search could easily fix those little things and making them more real wouldn’t take away from the film or take you years to research. I don’t expect them to know everything, but that is why there are consultants (like Numb3rs or Big Bang Theory consult with scientists to make it as realistic as possible).

But that is regarding films., what about books?

I will use A Wrinkle in Time (AWiT) by Madeleine L’Engle and Throne of Glass (ToG) by SJM as my examples, I do not intend to offend or cause issues *white flag up*.

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AWiT talks science all the way through, it talks about dimensions, physics, tesseracts, string theory and some really complex ideas, but at the same time it has fantastical creatures and IT. Two completely opposing parts. Yet the science in AWiT is real, it is just what you would learn in school/degree/book/internet. And because the science is so well done, the parts that require suspense of belief work. They make sense somehow.

On the other hand we have ToG. You have the most amazing assasin that survived a terrible slave camp/prison at just 18. However, she doesn’t act like someone who has lived through all of it, eating random sweets without checking for poison, and she keeps being found sleeping/snoring by several characters. It doesn’t make sense. If she is the best assasin in the realm, how is it that the basics of protecting your life and being suspicious as technically anyone may want to kill you, aren’t there? In this case my suspense of belief breaks and I just can’t understand why she is the best when basics aren’t covered, which then makes the more complex parts of the story harder to accept.

Have you noticed you struggle with your suspense of belief when reading books or watching films? Or is it just me?

Book Review

The Bear and the Nightingale Review

Posted on January 22, 2018

This lovely book came as an extra book in December’s Book Box Club, the first in the Winternight Trilogy and we decided to buddy read it so I have enjoyed it doubly.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

‘Frost-demons have no interest in mortal girls wed to mortal men. In the stories, they only come for the wild maiden.’

In a village at the edge of the wilderness of northern Russia, where the winds blow cold and the snow falls many months of the year, an elderly servant tells stories of sorcery, folklore and the Winter King to the children of the family, tales of old magic frowned upon by the church.

But for the young, wild Vasya these are far more than just stories. She alone can see the house spirits that guard her home, and sense the growing forces of dark magic in the woods…

Rating:

This is a fairytale full of fairytales in it’s own way and I absolutely loved it. The Russian folklore seeps into you and grasps you with it’s beauty as Vasya and her family grow and find that magic and religion seem to be playing havoc in their little estate.

The forest is full of secrets and “demons” and house spirits inhabit every corner until the priest finds he is faithful and it can’t be this way anymore.

I loved th scenes of the fir-grove and was fond of Sascha, Vasya, Irina and Alyosha. I could understand Anna’s insecurities and issues (not that it makes it right that she did what she did) and Konstantin is one of those despised but well made characters that you love to hate.

I am already reading The Girl in the Tower and can’t wait to see what happens next and how Vasya copes with magic in her life .

Moon recommends

You read this book, don’t miss out. And if you like Russian stories, try The Crown’s Game, it is also a wonderful and magical story.

Subscription Boxes

Into the Jungle, Wildest Dreams Unboxing

Posted on January 20, 2018

If you haven’t heard of Wildest Dreams Box yet, it is created by Zoe and the aim is to be more affordable than the bigger book boxes (it is at the moment, the second cheapest box in my list of over 50 book boxes I have compiled).

As you can see it is a more frugal box than the main boxes out there, but you can also see the love put into each one. Starting with the book and going clockwise, here we go:

The Extinction Trials by Susam Wilson. I had been looking forward to this book and once I saw the theme for this box I refrained myself from preordering the book as I was already subscribed. (I am all for supporting small businesses).
Personalised Note exclusive for us subscribers from the author!
A Tea-Rex room/fabric spray from Geeky Clean, it is a charming green tea jungle like smell, with an earthy tone to it.
Two chocolate coins, which show how much thought Zoe puts into her boxes and adds little extras.
A test tube Dino DNA tea, which I am loving. Also, absolute kudos (you’re my favourite) to Zoe for adding tea bags! I am always complaining that most people don’t have as many loose leaf tea props as I do so it is hard for them to use the lovely teas included in boxes, but both of WDB have had tea bags included.
Also we had a signed bookplate and a print out of the contents. Hopefully we will see a theme artwork postcard at some point once this grows more (Hint: I am an artist…)

All in all it is a lovely box, with lots of care put into it and I definitely recommend it. It is the cheapest “YA” box out there (Leafer Box does not have a YA genre).

Wrap-ups and Tags

2018 “Goals”

Posted on January 18, 2018

Hi everyone,

Not late to the party because you know me, but I finally decided to post my goals for the year. As a caveat, I don’t usually have goals for the year except my reading challenge (2017 was 100 books and I barely made it, woops), so this is a bit new to me.

1. Reading Challenge of 85 books. As I mentioned above, I struggled to read a 100 so I decided to make this goal a little smaller. I am also aware that last year I had a lot of new things going on that meant I had less time to read. Did you set yourself a number of books to read per year?

My boyfriend says that I read books for myself, him and all the street.

IMAGE HERE

2. Eat more vegetarian/vegan (not become either, but just do more veg). It’s not too hard since we don’t do much red meat, just chicken and fish, but we need the vegetables. At the moment we are doing relatively well. Last week was mostly vegetarian and even though this week will have meat there are more vegetables in the menu. Go me!

(I have to say I love my slow cooker and adapting recipes for it.)

3. Try to create a bookmark design per month minimum. This one is going a little not so well. I have two designs in the works but they haven’t come out yet. Hopefully I can finish at least one before the end of January. (And of course, we need a colouring bookmark for Valentine’s in February, right?)

4. Collaborate with more book boxes (Fairyloot is on the dream list, one can dream). Last year I collaborated with Book Box Club and Leafer Box. This year I am already doing well as I have another collaboration with Book Box Club for this month’s box. Fingers crossed other boxes will notice me, right?

5. Go back to drawing and/or writing almost daily. Already failing epically on this one. I haven’t drawn daily or written daily, but I do try, oh well.

6. Write my novel (NaNoWriMo didn’t go too well last time). The thing is I have the story plot done and I have a very old (over 10 years) version of it but I want to clear all those plot holes and all the issues and write it “properly”. I also have a few other novels completed but most of them are not in English so they need translation/editing.

Those are all my loose goals for the year. Did you make any?

Book Review

The Art Of Horizon Zero Dawn Review

Posted on January 16, 2018

It is no secret I am a gamer. Not the sexy-lick-a-controller kind, but the “oh my gosh I will scream at the screen because Lara Croft just fell off a cliff after the 12th attempt to do that part”.

I am also a stupidly loyal one, I fell in love with Bethesda’s games (Dishonored and Fallout 3) so now I have all of the Dishonored games on my computer, XBox360 and PS4 (just so I can play them whenever, I’d probably have them on my mobile if it was possible).

Trust me, I can rave about any Bioshock game or one of the previously named ones (also Alice Madness Returns, Batman games, Lego games, etc). But I am also careful of trying new games from developers I have never played a game from before.

However, my love for Horizon Zero Dawn blossomed not because I saw adverts for it as a game, but rather because Loish (Lois Van Baarle) released some of the “concept art” she had done for the design of Aloy.

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I have been following Loish’s work for over 10 years, so I knew that if she had contributed to this game, I would have to play it, even if it was JUST for the artwork. I bought a PS4 just so I could play HZD, my birthday present was buying a bundle of console and game. That much I love her artwork (and gaming).

Needless to say, I LOVE this game. If you haven’t played, you have to. The story poses some very interesting technological questions (and about humanity), the gameplay is interesting and has an “Open World” feel. And of course, the artwork and design are stunning.

(I know this is the weirdest review of a book I have ever made, I promise there is a book review somewhere in here!)

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So much I love this game I preordered Funko’s (Aloy and a Watcher), bought licensed pins of Aloy and a Thunderjaw (they are awesome!), and bought the soundtrack CD for it.

The only thing missing was this book. And I couldn’t have that, so I got the book too.

The Art of Horizon Zero Dawn by Paul Davies

Rating:

I have several “Art Of” books and I have to say that the quality of this one is stunning. It does NOT lack artwork (sometimes some of the books say too much and have very little art or nothing new). This is full of artwork and details but also explanations about why they chose to do certain things.

It made me want to draw all the characters + creatures there and then as I was reading it. And it also made me want to play the game again. (And of course, it has some of the sketches/pieces Loish did, so win win).

I just have to say that is one of the best “Art Of” books I have ever had. Blown away by it.

Moon recommends

You play Horizon Zero Dawn, and maybe follow Loish. She has two artwork books (she started them on Kickstarter and the second one is just coming out in March). And of course, if you like books about the art of, buy this one.

Book Review

Here We Are Now Review

Posted on January 14, 2018

This lovely book was provided to me through bookbridgr. So here is my honest review.

Here We Are Now by Jasmine Warga

Despite sending him letters ever since she was thirteen, Taliah Abdallat never thought she’d ever really meet Julian Oliver. But one day, while her mother is out of the country, the famed rock star from Staring Into the Abyss shows up on her doorstep. This makes sense – kinda – because Julian Oliver is Taliah’s father, even though her mother would never admit it to her.

Julian asks if Taliah if she will drop everything and go with him to his hometown of Oak Falls, Indiana, to meet his father – her grandfather – who is nearing the end of his life. Taliah, torn between betraying her mother’s trust and meeting the family she has never known, goes.

With her best friend Harlow by her side, Taliah embarks on a three-day journey to find out everything about her ‘father’ and her family. But Julian isn’t the father Taliah always hoped for, and revelations about her mother’s past are seriously shaking her foundation. Through all these new experiences, Taliah will have to find new ways to be true to herself, honoring her past and her future.

Rating:

The premise of this book is relationships. And in that aspect it excels. It touches on friendships (between Taliah and Harlow), f/f (Harlow and Quinn), what happens when your best and only friend has a girlfriend, mother/daughter (both for Taliah and for Lena, Taliah’s mother), father/son (Julian and Tom, and in a smaller way Toby), father/daughter (Julian/Taliah). It is all in all packed full of the complexity of family and friends, and it is fun to read but also emotional.

However, it starts full of questions, and ends full of questions (different ones to the ones at the beginning) which was not great. The reveals made the ending feel rushed and too open. It left you with more questions than you started with and it isn’t exactly like this is planned as a series.

It was a quick read and I loved the music aspect of it and the whole “dreams and who you are” exploration too.

Moon recommends

I am not a big reader of contemporary mostly because I’d rather escape to another world, but in a way this reminded me a tiny bit of Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, so I’d suggest you read that one and if you have, why not read Here We Are Now?

PS. The props used are not sponsored, they just are the ones I had nearest to me when I took this picture.