Library Love - Library at Orchard

New libraries always get my adrenaline pumping and senses tingling. The Library @ Orchard recently opened in Oct 2014 with an emphasis for design, photography and fiction. It's layout is minimalistic and totally gorgeous with bright lights streaming in and lots of seating areas.

And the books! Brand new books that smells so good and feels so crisps! How can I resist them?

With this incentive plus the recent end of my exams, I hope this will get me out of the reading slump that bugged me for 2014.

:)

Library Loot: 24 to 30 November 2014

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Getting back into the joy of reading. I have been in a slump for this year with the stress from work and studies that I haven't been really able to read for enjoyment. Hoping that it will change and this can be brought forward to 2015. 

3 Books this week:
1. My kind of Christmas - Robyn Carr
2. The Wanderer - Robyn Carr
3. The Sherlockian  - Graham Moor
    (Because I have been watching Sherlock  and Elementary)

Spare Brides - Adele Parks

 

My first venture into historical (?) fiction, post WW1. Not my usual genre but it's an OK read. Inspired me to watch Downton Abbey.

Lots of adjustment going on after WW1 and the return or death of many husbands and brother. It's the time where women needs to adjust their mentality and do more than succumb to fate or the choices of their parents.

The 1920s, an era of The Great Gatsby is an interesting time of music and alcohol and short bobs. Wouldn't mind picking up more reads of this era.

Synopsis:
"Damaged and beautiful, they were the generation who lost so much and became 'spare brides'. The richly compelling and emotional new novel from Sunday Times bestselling author Adele Parks is the powerful story of four extraordinary women left to pick up the pieces of their lives, in the scarred, glamorous and endlessly fascinating post-First World War era.

New Year's Eve, 1920. The Great War is over and it's a new decade of glamorous promise. But a generation of men and women who survived the extreme trauma and tragedy will never be the same.

With countless men lost, it seems that only wealth and beauty will secure a husband from the few who returned, but lonely Beatrice has neither attribute. Ava has both, although she sees marriage as a restrictive cage after the freedom war allowed. Sarah paid the war's ultimate price: her husband's life. Lydia should be grateful that her own husband's desk job kept him safe, but she sees only his cowardice.

A chance encounter for one of these women with a striking yet haunted officer changes everything. In a world altered beyond recognition, where not all scars are visible, this damaged and beautiful group must grasp any happiness they can find - whatever the cost."

From Goodreads. Read more here.

2013 - Movies and TV series

2013 Google Addict

Movies:

Feb
1. Mission Impossible 3: Ghost Protocol

Mar
2. Wreck it Ralph
3. Deadfall
4. Step up Revolution

Sep
5. The perks of being a wallpaper
6. The Expatriate
7. Alex Cross
8. Paris at Midnight
9. Melancholia
10. Gone
11. Restless

Oct
12. Ballet Shoes
13. A Civil Action
14. Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunter
15. Erin Brokovinch (R)

Nov
16. Jack Reacher
17. Hotel Transylvania
18. A mother's nightmare (TV movie)



TV series:

1. Rookie Blues 3
2. Rizzoli & Isles 3
3. The Good Wife 2
4. The Secret Circle
5. White Collar 4
6. Covert Affairs 3
7. CSI 13
8. Bones 7
9. Criminal Minds 8
10. Perception
11. NCIS 10
12. Bones 8
13. Hannibal
14. Law & Order, SVU 14
15. King and Maxwell
16. Blue Bloods 3
17. NCIS: Los Angeles 3
18. The Good Wife 3
19. Major Crimes
20. Castle 5
21. CSI : NY 9
22. Body of Proof 3
23. Sherlock
24. The Good Wife 4
25. Revenge
26. Unforgettable

2013 Reads

1. The Charm Bracelet - Melissa Hills (2012)
2. Kiss me, Kill Me - Allison Brennan (2011)
3. The colour of tea - Hannah Tunnicliffe (2011)
4. A Discovery of witches - Deborah Harkness (2011)
5. Voices Carry - Mariah Stewart
6. Want to play? - P.J. Tracy (2003)
7. The end of your life book club - Will Schwalbe
8. Live Bait - P.J. Tracy (2004)
9. The other depression - Robert Grieco & Laura Edwards [NF] (2010)
10. The happiness code - Domonique Bertolucci (2012)
11. Did you miss me? - Karen Rose (2013)
12. The other typist - Suzanne Rindell (2013)
13. A Secret Rage - Charlaine Harris (1984)
14. Silenced - Alison Brennan (2012)
15. Coming of age on Zoloft - Katherine Sharpe [NF] (2012)
16. Last to Die - Tess Gerritsen (2012)

++++++

An extremely slow reading year due to time constraints, pure tiredness and reading block. Lots of books are actually half way through.

May 2014 be a better reading year!