Mad Max: Fury Road and how awesome I think it was

Sometimes you go see movies by yourself because you don't have anyone to go with. Sometimes it's an almost empty movie theater, sometimes it's full and you feel a little anxious being there. Sometimes the movie is just okay. And sometimes you come home screaming internally because the movie was so good and you have no one to talk about it with, so you write a review less than an hour from when the movie ended.

Mad Max: Fury Road was so good that I kind of want to see it again right away. (I just realized, I could have. The next showing was like 20 minutes after mine ended. Hmm.) Here is the trailer.

It's basically about a chase through a desert, with awesome cars and stunts and kick-ass female characters. And Tom Hardy. I've not seen the previous Mad Max movies, and to be honest I don't know if I ever will. This worked on its own perfectly.

I wanted to see this because everyone seemed to like it, a lot. And because it was said to be feminist, and I can see that. And it was awesome. Some men have been upset about that, but from what I heard as I left the theater, many groups of guys were saying how awesome it was. And yeah, I kind of felt like shouting a giant "hell yeah" when it ended. Also I want more.

It's a beautiful movie. Some shots were just gorgeous, and the colours were really beautiful. The cars were super cool, the stunts insane. And knowing that they were really real people that did that made it so much better. I love that it was so real, in an age when it would have been easy just to create everything on computers. You can tell it was real, or more like, you can tell when something isn't. The music was awesome. The acting was awesome.

I don't know what to say anymore, other than just that it was really fucking great. Go see it if you like action even a little bit. And even if you don't, you might like it anyway. One of the reasons I went to see this was Tom Hardy because I kind of fell in love with him this spring. It happens.

Okay I'll probably come read this again tomorrow and facepalm, but in the meantime, here, have my immediate reaction to Mad Max; Fury Road. It was so awesome.

Ooops.

The Penultimate Peril, part 12 in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman. The latter is about a man whose father dies and turns out to have been a god. And the main character finds out that he has a brother as well, who shows up, and things just go on from there. I don't know more, I don't need to know more, it's my favourite author, I'm going to buy every single one of his books if I come across them.

Please don't let me anywhere near where books are sold for a while, please. I have more than enough and can't buy new shelves until maybe next month.

#crushyourtbr wrap up

Sorry it took me this long to write this wrap up, I've been ill since Sunday and am only today feeling good enough to write this. If I do write something that doesn't make sense, blame the sickness. :)

Okay. My goal on Friday was to just finish George Orwell's 1984, which I did. I read the last 93 pages I had left of that book. Then for the rest of the weekend, I just focused on reading Resurrection by Steve Alten. I didn't feel the need to read something else to break it up a little bit, so I read almost the whole book during the read-a-thon. On Saturday, I read to page 134. On Sunday, I read 324 pages.

And the thing that annoys me the most is that I finished the book 15 minutes past midnight. I only had about 15 pages left, but, the read-a-thon ended at midnight, so I'm not counting those 15 in my total page count. Which is 552. I think I did okay. I had a small enough tbr for the weekend, and I read what I had planned to read. I feel like I could have read a little more, but I don't ever want to force myself to read. It's supposed to be fun, and I want to keep it that way.

1948 was really good, I gave it 5 out of 5 stars. I might write a review for this later this week, or maybe next week, so stay tuned for that.

Resurrection was not that good. It was okay, and good enough that I read it in about two days, but not great or anything. There was too much going on, and it tried a little too much. The surprises weren't that surprising, and the cliffhangers were mostly just stupid. The idea for the story was good, but I really didn't enjoy how it was written. 2 out of 5 stars.

It was a very interesting first read-a-thon, one really great book and one not so great. Next time, maybe I'll do a week-long one.

#crushyourtbr read-a-thon

A read-a-thon is a set amount of time when you read as much as you can. It can be 24 hours, three days, a week, or maybe something else. There can be contests and challenges during the read-a-thon as well. There are many during the year, and this one for example happens monthly. (If you want to know more, you can just write read-a-thon on Youtube, there will be a lot of videos explaining it a little better than I just did.)

And the one I'm going to talk about today is #crushyourtbr read-a-thon. It is hosted on twitter by two people, and lasts three days. The idea is to read the books in your tbr, I think it could be about the set tbr for the month, or all the books you own but haven't read. For me, it's the latter, since I don't do 'to be reads' monthly. This read-a-thon is going right now, it started at midnight on Friday and it ends at midnight between Sunday and Monday. Three days of reading.

I have never participated in a read-a-thon before, so I thought this would be a nice one to start with. The week-long ones scare me a little, to be honest, and right now I'm kind of in the middle of studying so trying to read a lot during the week wouldn't be very smart. So I'm just doing this one. :)

I just wanted to share my tbr for this read-a-thon, so here we go. First, I'd like to finish George Orwell's 1984, I have about a third of the book left. Then, during the weekend, I'd like to read as much as possible of Steve Alten's Resurrection, which I picked from my tbr-jar this month. And third, if I feel like reading something else, I'll pick up a Jane Austen book, either Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey.

I'll be back in the beginning of next week to let you know how it went, now I have to start reading.

Red Rising - a review

I kind of made a rule for myself and this blog, and that is to review every book I give 5 stars to. Because if the book is that good, I want more people to know about it. The same would go to books that I give only 1 star. There haven't been a lot of those, but the same goes; if it's that bad, people should know why I think it is that bad. Does that make sense? I will try to review other books as well, because let's face it, there can't be too many five star books in one year, or I'd start to question my ability to rate them.

Red Rising by Pierce Brown is about a teenager called Darrow, who lives on Mars. He is of the lower class called Reds, and he thinks they are working to make Mars habitable for humans. Turns out there have been humans on Mars for a long time, and the Reds are lowest of the low in the society. After some happenings I will not spoil, Darrow finds himself with a group of rebels who help him disguise himself as a Gold, the highest class in the society. Then it just goes on from there. I don't want to write too much about the plot, and that is basically what it says in the summary anyway.

This book is brilliant. Just utterly brilliant. I loved just about everything in and about this one. The writing is just beautiful, and I kind of wanted to underline page after page of it sometimes. It's easy to read, not necessarily fast but the writing flows nicely. Everything about the world is interesting, from the history to how things are in the present. I loved how it was explained little by little, not all in a big chunk.

The characters are interesting and scary and brilliant and lovely and horrible. Even if you can't remember the names, you can recognize them by how they talk or move. Darrow is a brilliant character as well, and I kind of grew to love him by the end. The characters are human, as in they make mistakes and just try to make it in this crazy world.

The plot is interesting, surprising, and gripping. I couldn't put the book down easily, I just had to read more and more. I have mentioned earlier how I'm hard to surprise, right? Well, this book did it, and not just once. I don't remember crying during this, but I sure gasped out loud very often, and smiled or laughed when something funny happened. And I was afraid and anxious, because this is that kind of a book.

I don't know if I'd say this is a dystopian novel, but more of a fantasy or science fiction book. And even if Darrow is a teenager and the book could be a young adult novel, don't let that fool you; I think adults would enjoy this just the same. Hell, I'm 22 and loved this.

The sequel, Golden Son, came out in January, so now I'm just waiting until it gets a little cheaper and then I want it. 

Used books - a haul

Me and my friend went on a quest to find a lot of cheap books yesterday, and ended up with seven for the price of one new book. Five of those seven were for me, and two for my friend. I'd say it was a pretty good day. All of these books are in Finnish, but I'm going to go through them from top to bottom with the English titles.

Angels by Marian Keyes is about a woman who catches her husband having an affair and gets fired from her job, and decides to go visit her friend in Los Angeles. This seemed like a fun, summery read, and I do like to read some chick lit every now and then. I have read one Marian Keyes novel before, and it was okay, so I hope I can get to this soon.

The next book is the Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket, part nine in the Series of Unforturnate Events. I have been slowly but surely collecting these books since I was a child, and I'd really like to have them all and finish reading the series. I think I have read about the first ten, but I don't know for sure. This series is about three orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, who go from family to family, distant relative to another, just trying to find a place to stay safe.

Then the books I'm probably most excited for as Jane Austen is one of my favourite authors, and I'd like to read all of her books. Northanger Abbey is about a young girl who visits Northanger Abbey. I don't really know anything else, I don't really want or need to know anything else. It's Austen, of course I want to read it and own it.

The second Jane Austen book is Mansfield Park, and it is about a girl, Fanny, who is brought up with her rich cousins. Then some people arrive to the neighbourhood and charm everyone but Fanny, who is very suspicious. Again, I don't know a lot of the story, but I don't want to know a lot. I really want to read both of these as soon as possible.

And last, the Water Horse by Dick King-Smith. This is about two kids who find an egg on the beach and bring it home. A creature hatches and the family keeps it, but as it grows bigger and bigger, they soon have to find a better place for it. This is a lovely story about how the Loch Ness Monster came to be, and as I love this book and the movie as well, I had to buy this.

Those are all the books I bought yesterday, and will be all I'm going to buy for a while. Next investment has to be a bigger bookshelf, so I'm saving money for that. No new books until I have a new shelf, it seems.

All the Bright Places - a review

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven is about a boy called Finch and a girl called Violet. Finch is a little different from everyone else, and is struggling with depression and other issues, and thinks about suicide quite a lot. Violet has lost her sister in an accident, and has a hard time moving on with her life and recovering from that loss. They meet on the ledge of their school's bell tower, and that's where everything starts.

I read this in two sittings, in two days. It is a long book, but it didn't really feel like that. At first I didn't really like this, but I wasn't going to stop reading, so I just kept on going. Then at some point it started to get better and better, and in the end I liked it. It was never going to be a favourite, but I did like it. The last few dozen pages felt a little long or slow, but given what happens, it didn't really bother me. And well, maybe it was just me who felt that way, anyways. It did end the story, and the book would have felt incomplete without those pages.

The story was very realistic, and true. There were funny parts, and sad parts. Some passages I really really liked, and some made me cry, just because I could really recognize the feelings and relate to some of the things that happened. In the end, I felt very emotionally drained. And at the same time, there were really adorable and sweet parts. I laughed, and I cried. Not just once, but a few times.

I had a love/hate relationship with some of the characters, most of all Finch. I really liked him at some parts, but sometimes he just felt very fake, pretentious, and like he was trying way too hard. But I have to say, that got better the more I read. I really liked Violet and her story. The book is written in two points of view, and I liked to read more from Violet than from Finch. Some characters I felt a little 'meh' about, but then they said something or did something that made me like them.

I gave this book 4 stars, but I feel like that is a little bit too high a rating. 3 is too low, though, so I'm just going to stick with 4. I would also like to add that there is a lot of things about suicide that could be triggering. This book deals with it really nicely, and ten points for that, but still. Think before reading.

Violet creates a web magazine in the book, which is actually a real thing. You can click here to check it out, if you like.