Tessa Dare

Reading – January and February bingo wrap up

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Bingo card with circles around the squares that are listed.Yeah! Bingo is back and both Willaful and SuperWendy are already up on their blogs with their February wrap ups! This year, anyone that takes part in Bingo gets to call a square for the next month. Yep! Because I am soooo kind!

As for my reading, it is still very slumpy as the whole month was a write-off again as the heat has been horrid. So slumpy that I am counting both January and February in my wrap up and I STILL didn’t score a Bingo run!

But I did get to circle some:

Hot Hot Hot Hot

It has been so hot that and horrid that I am counting this March news article on how this was Australia’s hottest summer on record. This explains my inability to sleep, read, think and function.

an extraordinary theory of objects a memoir of an outsider in paris by stephanie lacavaSelf

Stephanie Lacava’s An extraordinary theory of objects: a memoir of an outsider in Paris. Lacava recounts her parents taking her whole family to live in Paris when she was 12 and discusses her loneliness, depression and subsequent attachment to objects to help herself to deal with her displacement. Displacement and migrant stories deeply interest me as they are so close to my own heart as the child of two migrants. However, this book’s layout, though quite interesting in that there are footnotes discussing the (hi)stories of the objects that Lacava is attached to, ended up being a big distraction away from the narrative of her experiences. My reading become fragmented between story and footnotes and this disjointed reading impacted on my immersion into Lacava’s recollections. I feel that I should have been moved but sadly, I remained distant to her experiences. Continue reading →

ShallowreaderBingo! July Edition!

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It’s the end of July and @Bardsong over at Flight into Fantasy won the call early in the month! Wooot! Here is a link to her entry. Meanwhile, the audience goes wild!

As for my own efforts…well! Having had a rather dismal fiction reading month, I was all prepared to admitting to only crossing off one square and then a few days ago I decided to read the last book left on my library TBR. It has been sitting on my shelves for 3 months and I could not renew it again. I thought I would give it a shot, DNF after 2 chapters and wallow in my fiction slump. But no! Not only did I get out of my slump but I also scored EVERY SINGLE SQUARE ON THE JULY SHEET WITH THE ONE BOOK!

Continue reading →

Romancing the Duke: Tessa Dare, meta and the TBR challenge

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After several false starts, I have finally finished reading Tessa Dare’s Romancing the Duke from the Castles Ever After series for this month’s TBR Challenge. And to avoid even more false starts (particularly of the blogging kind), I’m going to do a quick blurb cut-and-paste:

Romancing the Duke by Tessa DareAs the daughter of a famed author, Isolde Ophelia Goodnight grew up on tales of brave knights and fair maidens.  She never doubted romance would be in her future, too.  The storybooks offered endless possibilities.

And as she grew older, Izzy crossed them off.  One by one by one.

Ugly duckling turned swan?

Abducted by handsome highwayman?

Rescued from drudgery by charming prince?

No, no, and… Heh.

Now Izzy’s given up yearning for romance. She’ll settle for a roof over her head.  What fairy tales are left over for an impoverished twenty-six year-old woman who’s never even been kissed?

This one.

Spoiler alerts early on in this review:

I enjoyed this book. Isolde inherits a castle but it comes with a duke (Ransom) who was not aware that his castle had been bought as he has been in a self-imposed exile to recover from injuries he received in a duel. He is mostly blind and he is adapting to life without full sight. Izzy is the daughter of a famous (now deceased) English author who wrote stories of romance and adventure with Izzy as the central character. Though she has been left destitute, there is national goodwill toward her and she has a strong, though a tad overthetop fans who follow her to her castle. Ransom has never heard of her father or Izzy and treats Izzy like an adult unlike most people who she comes across in her life. Ransom wants Izzy to leave his castle immediately but homeless Izzy refuses to give up her inheritance even if it seems to be an illgotten gain. Izzy decides to help Ransom tackle his paperwork which has not been read in months due to his inability to read. She becomes his eyes and reads aloud all his correspondence in order to uncover how his castle was sold without his knowledge. Continue reading →

It’s August already!

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Every month I have plans for blogging at least twice a week and every month I fail. So this month I decided that if I put my aim up on my blog, I will possibly achieve it. So here goes!

What have I been doing:

Screen Shot 2015-08-03 at 2.52.46 PMEntertainment wise, I bought my husband a record player for his birthday. Our old one died about 5 years ago. We spent several nights driving our kids nuts while we spun some discs and danced crazy parent rhythmless jigs in the kitchen. A fun night had by the two of us. The rest hid in their rooms and cringed. I found my inability to skip songs and to fast forward (unless you want to have the full Chipmunk experience) a throwback to my analog teens. I don’t have a big digital music collection, nor do I stream music but I do use Youtube occasionally to listen to new music.

The image is of my first ever album which I received at the age of 7. She (assumption is being made) has an awesome arse! And check out the lettering on the cover. As my friend Noula Tsavdaridis pointed out – it is the comic sans of the 70s. Continue reading →