Stupid Directors.

I was trawling through Facebook when I came across this photo, and it struck something inside me that made me think, 'I have to agree with this on some levels'. I love the book Tonks and Remus, I love their relationship because there was so much love between them, despite the odds and what society thought of them - it was beautiful, and proved how the power of love can beat anything, even being a werewolf.

I love David Thewlis and Natalia Tena too -they're exactly how I pictured Remus and Tonks would be, they were fantastic as individual characters and I generally love them both. But the lack of attention and focus the film put on them made their relationship come across as something that didn't even seem like it happened. I was horribly disappointed. They tried: you can see how the actors tried to show the chemistry between the characters, but with the lines and the screen-time the directors gave them, it ended up as a pathetic attempt to show a beautiful love story.

          

These are two beautiful people, who, despite their age gap, manage to suit one another very well. Now I don't generally ship real people together but I stand by myself when I say that they would go well together. However, since I'm avoiding that topic because I don't like it, I will say this: the actors get on well. They appear to go well physically. They both portray their individual characters brilliantly. The characters the film characters are based on book characters who have marvellous chemistry and made a beautiful love story, and when we do see the characters together in the films we can see the actors' efforts to make it seem like they are in a relationship, albeit a strange one, but that's kind of what it's like in the books. What the films lack is content on their part of the storyline. That is why the couple seem to be a pointless ship to anyone who has not yet read the books, not because they have no chemistry (I can see it between them, even if nobody else can) but because the films don't show that chemistry. The actors can't go against the script and just add bits in, as much as I'd love them to. They do whatever's written on the script, and fill the bits in between with their own characterization. It wasn't "hi we're here, we have no chemistry but OH LOOK WE'RE HAVING A BABY and dead", it was more like "hey, we're here, we're trying to show you something about us... hey, no, back to us, let us just show you something about us... no? OKAY NOW WE'RE HAVING A BABY, YOU MISSED THE REASONING AND YOU'RE STILL NOT LOOKING! Now we're dead, and apparently we have a son but nobody has any idea why because YOU SKIPPED THAT BIT. Great. Thanks."

Argh.

Dyeing my Hair Purple

New video. Enjoy.

The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

"Ginny Blackstone spent last summer travelling around Europe, following tasks her laid out in a series of letters before she died. When someone stole Ginny's backpack - and the last little blue envelope inside - she resigned herself to never knowing how the adventure was supposed to end. Now a mysterious boy has contacted Ginny from London, saying he's found her bag. Finally she can finish what she started. But instead of ending her journey, the last letter starts a whole new one, and Ginny must hold on to her wits... and her heart. This time, there are no instructions."

I cannot express how glad I am that I had the sequel right here as soon as I finished 13 Little Blue Envelopes. I loved this just as much as I loved its prequel, if not a little more. This novel held more mytery, kept us in suspense more often, and never ever allowed me to put it down without wondering what was going to happen next.

It is difficult not to love Keith's easy-going character, even if he sometimes does seem to be a bit of a dick. Even Ellis, who Ginny tries to dislike, turns out to be a very likeable character. Oliver is rather mis-portrayed in the first half of the book, but even so, he's a very strong character, and absolutely key to everything that happens. I don't think there was nearly enough Richard in here, but that may have bee intentional.

The link between the first book of this series and this one was brilliant. So completely unlikely, and yet so utterly brilliant and kind of obvious. I was able to make a sort of prediction within the first few chapters, which turned out to be fairly accurate, although not at all in the way I expected.

This also gets 9 out of 10 from me, because I really really really loved it. Really. A lot.

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson

"If your free-spirited aunt left you 13 little blue envelopes: Would you follow the directions? Would you travel around the world? Would you open the envelopes one by one? Inside envelope 1 is money and instructions to buy a plane ticket. Inside envelope 2 are instructions to a specific London flat. Inside envelope 3 tells Ginny: Find a starving artist. Because of envelope 4, Ginny and a playwright/thief/man-abut-town called Keith go to Scotland together, with disastrous - though really romantic - results. But will she ever see him again? Everything about Ginny will change this summer, and it's all because of 13 little blue envelopes..."

I think it's fair to say by now that I am a huge fan of Maureen Johnson. She's almost completely mental, which really shows in her ability to create amazing characters who are both insane and easy to relate to. The plot of this story is fairly simple, but the way everything weaves together is utterly perfect. The character of Ginny is someone who we initially don't know that much about, other than her love for her runaway artist aunt. This enables us to make up our own mind about her, and find much more of ourselves in the character. Each letter brings a new task, and with every task we learn a little more about Ginny and her Aunt Peg. Each task is something that I think very few of us would be able to do with as much ease as Gnny seemed to do, which doesn't seem very out of place as we the readers know that Aunt Peg found it very easy to uproot herself and so it might be expected that Ginny would follow some similar traits.

This book made me want to travel to a rather desperate extent where I wanted to drive own to Cornwall in the ran because it seemed like the closest I might actually get to travelling the world right now. This inspired me so much, and I really can't explain how much I want to travel right now.

I give this book 9 out of 10, because I really can't fault it, but I'm still waiting to find the "best book I'll ever read".

Update on the Reading Thing

A while back I said that my plan for this year would be to read 50 books, and review all of them on here. You may have noticed that I haven't posted a book review here for several months, and the reality of that is not that I haven't been bothering to post those reviews*, it is simply that I haven't been reading nearly as much as I should have been doing. I'm not trying to make excuses, but things have been occupying my time a lot more than I could have predicted (exams, love life, life in general, laziness, etc.) so  I've not really had that much spare time to actually sit down with a good book (or indeed a terrible book) and read.

*I admit that I have not posted reviews for Catching Fire and Mockingjay from the Hunger Games Trilogy. I did read them, I did enjoy them, but they weren't anything to shout about and I didn't feel like giving a bad review. Also, I'd borrowed the books from a friend so I had to give them back pretty soon after I read them.

 However, my inability to sit and read has changed over the past few weeks. After my last exam, I was able to finish school to go on a supposed study leave with the rest of my year. Since I have nothing to revise for now and usually only one day a week that I tend to spend socialising, I have more free time which I have already taken advantage of. I was given two books for my birthday (thank you!!) which I have already finished and will be reviewing later on today. First though, I need to explain what is going to be happening with this book thing.

Books I've read this year so far: 

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
• The Abused Werewolf Rescue Group by Catherine Jinks
• The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson
• Let it Snow by Maureen Johnson, John Green and Lauren Myracle
• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
• Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
• Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
• Looking For Alaska by John Green**
• An Abundance of Katherines by John Green**
• Paper Towns by John Green**
• 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
• The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

** - Books read around Christmas and New Year that I can't remember if I read this year or the very end of last year but I'm counting anyway just in case. 

Books I've bought and intend to read soon: 

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
• Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Rupture by Simon Lelic
• Birth of a Killer by Darren Shan
• Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Click by Bill Tancer***
• Moab is my Washpot by Stephen Fry***
• Star Trek: Vanguard by David Mack
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine by Una McCormack
• Nudge by Thaler and Sunstien***
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen 
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
• Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
• Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
• Summer Fling by Sarah Morgan
• Once in a House on Fire by Andrea Ashworth
• Jane Slayre by Charlotte Bronte and Sherri Browning Erwin
• Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson
•  Fallen by Lauren Kate 
• Torment by Lauren Kate
• Thud by Terry Pratchett
• Hogfather by Terry Pratchett

*** - Books I've started but not yet finished due to the distraction of other books.

I'll update this list whenever I finish a book.