My Welcome Back Foyles Book Haul

Soooooo…since I lasted posted in August about my sailing course, a number of things have happened: I went to Scotland and avoided spontaneously combusting (read the last post if you don't get that), started school again, realised that despite the hype Year 8 is really not that different to Year 7, turned thirteen and went up the Shard (for all you non-Londoners, this is a skyscraper and one of the tallest buildings in Europe) to celebrate, also went to India in October (and unfortunately had to do holiday homework there so couldn't blog) to revel in tuk-tuks and ancient forts, and also spent a lot of potential blogging time on either Instagram or writing/practising songs for my YouTube channel (I don't mean to be a billboard in disguise of a blog but do take the time to look at that.). Sorry about that, I'll try to divide time more equally in the future. But anyway, those are all tales I'll probably fondly recap in the future because they'll bear an inch or two of relevance to the post I'll be writing. Now though, I'll celebrate my return with a post theme we all love in the blogging circles: a book haul.

My mum and I were Christmas shopping in the Covent Garden/Tottenham Court Road area today, a place which automatically drags me to the Foyles book store. Handy, especially when you have nearly £50 worth of book tokens like me. And no, I'm not a book hoarder who actually buys book tokens FOR THEIR OWN USE. I actually acquired that many as prizes for being in the winning team of the UK National Final of the Kids' Lit Quiz. Those of you who've followed my blog for a long time will also know that my school and I did this international quiz on childrens' books last year, were North London champions but failed at the national hurdle. 

But enough rambling, onto the books I bought…

More Than This by Patrick Ness

Yay, I got a signed first edition! When and if this book becomes famous in fifty years time, I can show off that I have a first edition! But about the actual book, Ness's award-winning last book A Monster Calls about a boy haunted by a monster while his mother dies of cancer, was both haunting and moving without being overloaded on either, not to mention the equally amazing, roughly sketched illustrations, so I don't need to spell out why I wanted to read this one. Also, this book is based around a recently dead boy exploring life after death, and seems as I enjoy similarly themed books such as White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick, this appealed.

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead

As with Patrick Ness, I'd previously been slightly obsessed by Rebecca Stead's previous book When You Reach Me, so much that just the author's name now jumps out to me as an essential buy. And with the unique premise of a spy organisation made up of two twelve-year-olds, and if it weren't for my school's Christmas reading challenge of five dull books of the school's choosing, this would be high on my holiday reading list.

A World Between Us by Lydia Syson

They say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but this vintage-style cover is beautiful and will draw any book store browser immediately in. Aside from that, while I haven't heardof this book or author before, and while the love-in-wartime theme seems clichéd, the Spanish Civil War is a period relatively undocumented in YA literature, so I'd be willing to give this a go.

Ink by Amanda Sun

Another beautiful cover here. As the style of the cover might suggest, this book is set in Japan, more specifically about a girl moving there and befriending a tough and aloof artist. All sounds fairly unoriginal, until his drawings come to life. A premise which I think could make a very visually attractive film, but I suppose all those thoughts depend on whether I like the book…

Dash & Lily's Book Of Dares by Rachael Cohn & David Levithan

I know what you're thinking. More than one author = trashy. And quite possibly this book is, but again I was hopelessly intrigued by a premise. Girl leaves notebook full of dares in a book store, boy finds it and participates in the dares, each time he does one the girl refreshes the notebook with a new one, they fall in love in this bizarre, old-fashioned form of communication. The kind of flukey situation everyone dreams of, and I'm sure I'll soon be looking in every book store for a dare notebook.

Every Day by David Levithan

Another book by one half of the above writing duo, and I bet you also assume this book will be trashy too. But I still think looks can be deceiving, and this in fact seems to have quite a unique premise: a boy wakes up as a different person every morning, an arrangement he is fine with, until he falls in love with a girl he will never see again from the next morning on. One of those bizarre ideas us normal people would never think up, but I'm interested to see how the author writes this without it seeming fantastical.

Once I read these (which probably won't be for a while thanks to that irritating reading challenge), I'll review them as soon as I can. It should be interesting comparing what I think when I read them to what I thought when I wrote this post. But for now, sorry for the long posting break, and thanks to all of you for not giving up on me returning! 

-DP :)

Yes, The End Of Term Can Be Inspiring In A Way

Yay! The Spring Term ended yesterday! It's Easter hols! Whoa, this is great. I'm two-thirds of the way through Year 7! It feels like only yesterday when I was having my meet-your-new-class day, my end-of-primary-school prom and my final primary summer holiday. And that sounds all gushy and enjoy-schooly, but don't think I wasn't happy when the term was finally over! Seriously, I lay on my bed listening to Taylor Swift and screaming about it being holidays all the time before my mum got back from posting eBay items! Even though we haven't even being doing much the last few days, just shopping for presents and getting my hair cut :( (but I guess it's all for holidays to America tomorrow :))!

I'm not going to lie, there will be millions of things about school I'll crave the lack of during the next two-and-a-half weeks. Getting stickies in your Geography book when the only correction is a non-underlined title, the endless cries of "not enough work is getting done here" in Maths, not to mention our epically unrehearsed fail at House Music on the last day of term, the list goes on...AAAAARGH!!! But obviously there are mixed feelings: I'll miss (slightly) the select subjects at school I like (i.e. English, History, Spanish etc., you get my taste in school subjects) and of course I will miss my absolutely epic friends (I shout out to those of my little minions - just joking - reading this, you are awesome, every one of you, and I can't wait to see you all again!). But yeah. Focus on the positives. School's over (for a few weeks anyway)!

But this term has been one where I've thought a lot about symbolism, inspiration, memories and all that jazz (sorry, I know it's a cliché, but it still sounds awesome!). I don't know why, but it's probably a mixture of Taylor Swift songs, philosophically enriching blogs and me generally maturing that's made me think in this deep way. But as I was saying, I've naturally applied this way of thinking to what the end of term means to me. I thought of intense happiness, and I thought of grief, and I thought of a mixture of both. But there was one feeling that stood out: inspiration (a word that my Geography teacher patronisingly asked us a few weeks back if we knew what it meant). You feel inspired and motivated that you've pushed down the doors of the term and not broken down in stress at that pile of homework over there you've got for the weekend, but there's also all the memories of the term, academic or not, that you can always look back on and surely utter an inch of a smile. That's another kind of inspiring. And I have to admit that I had both types of end-of-term inspiration this time. 
-DP :)
PS Here's artist Roy Hoes' jazzy impression of inspiration in our home city (this image isn't mine). Particularly love the way reflected coloured light is depicted on the skyscraper windows.

Snow Day Alert!!!

Hello everyone, and yes, as the title of this post suggests, today London was blanketed in snow so we had only a half day of school! Yeah! 

This is also a particularly special blog post for me, because the weather was exactly the same just under a year ago when I buckled down and finally started to write this blog you are reading. I don't know if you remember but I also wrote about snow, speculating about some very large animal footprints in the white stuff. Whoa, it seems like a long time ago now :).

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. So, like last year, the mighty snow demons didn't let it snow until mid-January, but at least there was some. And today has had all the elements of a snow day, from snowball fights (:)), to slipping onto my side in black ice while being watched by a film crew (:(), and even a very bizarre snow angel-type-thing on our school playing field that looked like a cross between an apple and a floppy-eared rabbit. Perhaps a UFO...shame I didn't have my camera!

Anyway, here are my spectacular snow shots (note my alliteration)...

This is a restaurant near my house that had one of the best snow coverings I've seen today. No one's going to want the umbrellas out now, hey?!

And here's a great photo (although I say so myself) of a little alley leading down to a yoga and pilates place. I'm surprised it got this much snow because it's so closed up, but do I know anything?

- DP :)

My First Go At Being Behind The Counter

The title of this post suggests that I've signed up for an after-school shopkeeping job, so I'll put your minds at rest by saying that all I'm doing is a small-scale tombola with 4 friends. Still exciting and definitely blog-worthy, though. Particularly when you're designing and making the tombola itself and also contributing to toy sales and craft sales (see my gorgeous little knitted blue mouse below). I've always wanted to participate in the organization of charity sales like this (if you're wondering about the charity, it's DEBRA, a charity dealing with EB or butterfly skin, a rare condition where the skin can blister or even cut at the slightest touch), and I honestly can't wait to see people buy/win stuff that I donated, even if it is a little saddening at first losing them. Anyway, it's a week on Monday (9th July) so I guess all that's left to do is decorate the tombola...

My homemade tombola

- DP :)

The fore-mentioned blue mouse (sooo cute, though I say so myself)