My name's Ena. I'm a book lover, especially in the Fantasy, Sci-fi and Dystopian genres, and I decided to set up a place where I can review books I read.Feel free to give me a shout or recommend books - a to-read list can never be too long.
I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while, and with the recent political climate I decided there’s no better time than the present to commence it, so I’m introducing @happylgbtbooks now.
Please send me any uplifting, overall cheerful, good-ending LGBT books so we can start a reading list to remember the good times whenever.
headcanon that teddy lupin has a little “business” at hogwarts where he will change his appearance to someone and then go do whatever it is that person needs to do. like if someone needs to break up with their boyfriend but are too scared to do it, they’ll hire teddy and teddy will change into them and do it for them. or if they need to go serve detention but the professor is really shitty to that person and they can’t handle it, teddy will go to detention for them so that the person doesn’t have to deal with that professor. or if they are nervous about a date with someone, teddy will turn into that person so that they can practice talking to that person until they feel they can calmly do so. teddy just being a helpful person getting paid in sweets or tutoring or a drink in Hogsmeade
Teddy is not available to serve detentions with Professor Longbottom, who can recognize his mannerisms too well (“Honestly Teddy, your godfather makes that same face.”) or McGonagall, who took one look at him the first time he tried and announced that he could serve his own detention the next night.
I can’t believe I’ve been blogging about books for such a long time! Thank you to everyone who’s been with me through this year and something. Since I’m very very close to a huge follower milestone (5K!!!) and I’m getting a payout from the Book Depository affiliate program soon, I decided to give a little something to the lovely people that follow me!
Prize:
One person will win 15£ to spend on anything (books, notebooks, etc) from Book Depository
Rules:
Must be following me, cat-thecatlady (I’ll be checking of course)
Reblog to enter. Likes only count if you’ve already reblogged the post.
You can reblog multiple times. Don’t reblog this like five times in a row or you’ll be immediately disqualified since no one appreciates spammers
No giveaway blogs allowed
I’ll be using Book Depository, like I said, so please make sure it ships to your country (I’m sorry if it doesn’t but other websites aren’t affordable to me)
I’ll need your address so you must be comfortable in giving it to me or you have your parents’ permission in case you’re still a minor (no stalking will occur I promise)
Make sure your ask box/IM is open. If I don’t get a reply within 24 hours, I’ll have to choose another winner.
Bonus entry:
Since I’m doing this giveaway with the money I’m getting from being an affiliate of Book Depository, everyone that uses my link (http://www.bookdepository.com/?a_aid=earthtocat) to purchase anything from the website will get TEN EXTRA ENTRIES! Yes, you’ve read right. With this I don’t mean that you need to spend money to get a chance to win but since this is the only way for me to keep giving back to my lovely followers, it only makes sense. If you do use my link, send me your order number via ask or IM so I can add your entries. Any purchase counts.
Disclaimer:
This giveaway is in no away directly associated with Tumblr or Book Depository.
Deadline:
June 30th, 23.59pm GMT. I’ll hopefully be pretty much done with school by then, but let’s keep in mind the possibility of the deadline to be extended if necessary.
The winner will be chosen using random.org and contacted on July 1st. Once again, thank you! for the bottom of my heart. My ask is open to any questions you might have, feel free to contact me. And good luck!
hi everybody! @sirenastudies and i ( @studyiblr ) are super duper excited to be part of the studyblr family so we wanna show our appreciation for everybody who’ve already welcomed and helped us so much!!!!
the winner gets:
two cute neon notebooks
one book pouch
eight rolls of washi tape
one pair of muji scissors
seven muji gel ink pens
two packs of five zebra mildliners
one muji led pencil
one muji ball point pen
one pack of muji mini hexoganal water based pens
one plus whiteout tape and dispenser
one muji lead refill
one muji 6 in 1 color pen
one pack of staedtler 20 triplus color
free stickers from @arabaesque
three beyond face masks
one betsy johnson pouch
AND
if we reach more than 5000+ notes, we’ll throw in a purple kanken!!
the rules:
open internationally!
must be following BOTH me and sirena
reblog for an entry (as many times as you want)
likes don’t count
no giveaway accounts
we must be able to inbox you
must be okay with giving us an address
we’ll use a random generator to pick on jun 17th so good luck all and thanks to everyone for being so amazing!
I reached another follower milestone a while ago and I’ve also graduated! I think it’s probably about time I give something back, so yeah. I can’t give super special packages with handwritten notes and stuff, sorry, but I can definitely give out books (see url).
RULES (READ THIS):
you don’t have to follow me since I’m the king of salt, but it’d be nice if you do
reblog this post, likes for bookmarking only (I will check)
reblogging more than once is the name of the game, just maybe do it once a day so as not to spam your followers (and my activity tab lol)
must be willing to give out your name & address; if you are a minor and you win pls make sure you have your parents’ permission to do so
this book giveaway is INTERNATIONAL (non-US & non-European followers I feel u) as long as Book Depository ships to your country (you can check here)
you can choose any book you want; the only condition is that the maximum or total price of the book(s) is $25 (you can do less but not more, sorry, I’m poor, unemployed, and live in a Third World country–and yes, you can definitely get more than one book, so long as you adhere to the limit)
ends around July 10, 2016 00:00 GMT +7 time
I will choose the winner via trial by combat and may the Seven judge fairly random.org; make sure your ask boxes are open around the time this ends. if by 2x24 hours you don’t respond I will give the chance to someone else!
if this doesn’t get notes I will actually build myself a tower and be a socially reclusive salty wizard
questions are OK but make sure you read all of this first
BONUS PRESENTS:
winner may get my friendship if that’s what you want (if u liked it put a ring on it)
promo by request for the winner
handwritten poetry / letter / quotes / whatever (tentative)
two tarot readings by request
THE VOID
yeah that’s it really. may the odds be ever in your favour!
Title: The Oddfits
Author: Tiffany Tsao
Publication Date: Feb 1 2016
Genre: Fantasy / Urban Fantasy
Amazon Link: here
★★★★☆
Eight-year-old Murgatroyd Floyd doesn’t fit in—not as a blue-eyed blonde living in Singapore, not in school, and certainly not with his aloof expatriate parents, who seem determined to make his life even harder. Unbeknownst to him, there’s a reason why he’s always the odd boy out: he is an Oddfit, a rare type of human with access to the More Known World, a land invisible to most people. Yet unfortunate circumstances keep Murgatroyd stranded in the Known World, bumbling through life with the feeling that an extraordinary something is waiting for him just beyond reach.
Seventeen years later, that something finally arrives when a secret organization dedicated to exploring the More Known World invites Murgatroyd on a mission. But as the consummate loser begins to grow into the Oddfit he was meant to be, the Known World becomes bent on exterminating him. For once in his underachieving life, will Murgatroyd Floyd exceed expectations and outsmart those trying to thwart his stupendous destiny?
The Oddfits is written in the same quirky style as The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August (which I love) but lighter, or as the Insanity series (which I also love) but less insane, or as Alice in Wonderland (guess what? I love this one too!) but more mature and a tiny bit less whimsical... you get the gist. I love this realistic but humorous style of writing that I feel is getting more popular now than ever before, but this book is missing some of the depths which the others use the style to portray. Looking back at what I just read, I see no actual message or moral. It's a nice story, sure, but one without any meaning, which was especially pronounced in the rather anti-climatic, unremarkable ending, which was paced exactly like the rest of the book. Actually, when I looked at the percentage done on the bottom of my kindle at some point I was shocked to find it at 99% - no major changes happened to the action, no major lessons were learned... there was an attempt at both these things at the very end, but it feels very sudden and not properly built up, and Murgatroyd changes his perspective very quickly, after years of refusing to, because it fits the story.
However, I still love the idea of the More Known World. One of the best things about the book was slowly finding out more about it, so I won't spoil that, but the general concept is that of a world beyond ours, contained within ours, which only a select few can access. It does not conform to the laws of physics as directly as we would or to any general laws about what is what, is really refreshing and an ingenious idea which is what holds much of the book up apart from the main character, Murgatroyd Floyd.
The story is set in Singapore for no reason at all – which is absolutely amazing. Nobody is making any excuses that magic is stronger there or anything like that, and it comes across that the author entirely believes the Singapore is as legitimate and normal a setting for a story as England or the US, which I love. The descriptions of Singapore feel (to my limited opinion as a person who knows very little about the country) very genuine and not sugar-coated, but also not overly negative – it's a place people live, with some cultural differences to other places where other people live, and there are good and bad things to it. It was clear that unlike books such as The Gatekeeper's Son by C.R. Fladmark, this book is written by an author who has lived in Singapore for a long time, not by a white man fetishising a culture for their own amusement. A quick minute of research confirmed that Tiffany Tsao indeed grew up in Singapore.
While I loved Murgatroyd, the other characters had many faults. They were often very simplified and stereotypical (ahemFloydparentsahem), and while they served their in-story purpose – to make Murgatroyd feel an outsider, therefore gathering sympathy from the reader – they were two-dimensional in every other aspect and there was, in my opinion, not a sufficient explanation as to why exactly they were so cruel. There were whole sections explaining backstories, but these failed to truly expand on the characters as they should have. I will readily admit, though, that I did hate many characters with a passion, especially Murgatroyd's parents, and the narration in each chapter not focussed on Murgatroyd was genius, as while it was in third person all the way through, it was obvious the characters themselves were the ones passing judgements and making excuses, and it made me despise them as people even more.
I liked this book for the most part. I'm conflicted about the sequel, as it would have made a really great cliffhanger stand-alone, and what I really want is a prequel from uncle Yusuf's point of view. Is that too much to ask?
Do you have a book or series that you really want to read, but also kind of don’t, because knowing it’s there to read whenever is exciting, and what if it doesn’t meet your expectations, and what if it does because then it’s over and you can never read it for the first time again
Hi my name is Scorpius Malfoy (lot of people call me the scorpion King) and I have silvery white hair and icy blue eyes like limpid tears and a lot of people tell me I look like Tom Riddle (AN: if u don’t know who she is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to the dark lord but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I have pale white skin. I’m also a wizard, and I go to a magic school called Hogwarts in England where I’m in the seventh year (I’m seventeen). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly black or my quidditch uniform. Today is the day of the blood ball and It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about. A lot of preps stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them. Voldemort and valor xx
one time when they’re out Ronan sees Blue lowkey side-eyeing this box of paints, so he dreams her one with every possible colour inside and leaves it at 300 fox way. she doesn’t find out it was him until one day she finds a bunch of smaller dream boxes at Monmouth. a couple weeks later he finds an oil painting of the Barns outside his doorstep. he frames it and never takes it down
when he goes out racing (or just joyriding at night) he starts taking her with him even though she insists on playing “disgustingly cheerful” pop music with all the windows down. she’s a (not-so) surprisingly good racer though. imagine blue driving the BMW blasting Taylor Swift and enDING the entire dream pack while Ronan sits in the passenger seat filled with equal parts rage and awe. amazing
Blue is always really cold and Ronan runs super hot so sometimes when they’re out she’ll just sort of curl up into him or steal his sweater if it’s a chilly day. he pretends to be all grumbly about it but he secretly likes it
Blue starts making him these buttons with stuff like ”2 punk rock 4 u” and “gaywaren” on them. Ronan puts them all on his backpack
the first time he sees her pink switchblade, he just sort of looks at it and nods to himself. He has a matching one the next day (i just want ronan LYNCH WITH A PINK SWITCHBLADE OKAY??)
eventually Blue gets Ronan like wAY INTO her trashy pop music, like honestly you can be walking around at 2 am and hear Blank Space being sung loudly and off key from the other side of Henrietta
Ronan teaches Blue how to fight and just embARASSES GANSEY ALL THE TIME with how much better she is, like they’ll be practicing in Monmouth and he’ll just be like SEE GANSEY???? THAT’S HOW YOU THROW A RIGHT HOOK WITHOUT BREAKING YOUR MFING THUMB
Ronan just starts to copy all her stuff ok, like Gansey and Adam will walk into Monmouth and there’s Ronan casually eating a huge tub of yogurt and sketching Noah who’s posing dramatically on the other side of the room
I want to read Six of Crows. But I need to finish Oddfits. And Jane Steele. And I want to read Alice in Wonderland and the other books by Lewis Caroll, and I want to finally read Hookah...