WOOHOO!

Heck yes! I DID it! I read 8 books, I repeat EIGHT BOOKS in October! Wow! That's some sort of accomplishment, isn't it? (:
*pats own shoulder*

Even though I am super duper busy with school, I wanted to read at least one book a week, but since I also read a few small books, I managed to read eight books. Heck yes!

Gotta love reading..

Oh and by the way, I also have a Goodreads profile, if you wanna check it out. If you don't know what a goodreads profile is, that's basically this website (www.goodreads.com) where you can post which books you've read, and when, and what your opinion on that particular book is, and you can fill in polls and such, aaaaaaandd also, you can do a book challenge! I am doing the 50 books challenge, which means you have to try to read 50 books in 2013. I have already read 35 books so far, which means I am currently on 70% :D

Here's the link:

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/21544556-anne

Current Pool Reads

When the weather is so hot everyday, I pretty much hang out by the pool all day. And what's better than reading a good book while you're laying at the pool.

At the moment I'm reading two books. 

1. Travels With Charlie: In Search of America - John Steinbeck

2. What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank - Nathan Englander

Travels with Charlie is like the perfect book for me. Ever since I was 10 years old I've dreamt of studying and living in America. It may be naive but that's my biggest dream. There's just something about the USA that appeals to me. I often feel like I was born in the wrong country...

This book describes how John Steinback rediscovers his country and I really love the book so far.

(And yes, the book on the picture is the Dutch version ^^)

And the second book: what we talk about when we talk about anne frank. Which, first of all, has an amazing name if you ask me. But there are way too many capitals in the title if you have to type this on a phone (;

The book contains a few short stories which are all in a way connected to Anne Frank, World War 2 and Israel. Maybe a bit odd to read this when you're hanging by the pool but it's quite easy to read and the stories are very interesting.

Speechless.. (TFIOS review)

I just finished The Fault In Our Stars, and I am absolutely speechless. Yes, I know that sounds cheeky since almost everyone says that when they finish TFIOS, but it's true. A couple weeks back I finished Looking for Alaska, and yesterday I decided to start in TFIOS.

This is a short little review, containing NO SPOILERS. (;

So... where should I start? First of all, I want to say that John Green's books are unpredictable, which is very nice. Halfway through the book I thought I knew how it would end (same with LFO), but nothing was less true. A complete plot twist! Just, like BAM, in your face.

Another thing, a big part of the book refers to The Netherlands, Dutch writers/basketball players or other Dutch things. A part of the book is even set in Amsterdam! I know that’s not a huge deal or anything, but it kind of is to me, since I am Dutch and live in The Netherlands. It gave me a pleasant feeling, knowing that an awesome vlogger and author like John Green knows my small little country even exists! He describes Amsterdam so beautifully, and perfectly accurate. Most books just say something about the red light district, and that’s it. Such a plain image of Amsterdam, since it’s so much more. John Green did a perfect job describing Amsterdam and its magic.

The book contains a lot of literature and poetry references, and I really like that. I am a person who likes to analyze a text or a poem or a story. And John Green mentions these literary works very subtle, but it really adds something to the story.

I highly recommend this book, if you haven’t read it yet. I couldn’t put it away. Started it Sunday evening 10 PM, and took it with my to school the next morning (so I could read in my free periods) and when I got home continued reading. I finished it within 23 hours. I am typing this at 10 PM on a Monday. (this blog post will be published on a Tuesday, so yeah, I really finished it within a day, if you had any doubts)

Long story short: amazing book. Beautifully written and the story spoke to me. This book meant a great deal to me (ghehe, got that reference? If you read TFIOS, you do). John Green, thank you for writing this masterpiece.

 

PS; if you’re looking for beautiful/inspirational/hilarious quotes, you should DEFINETELY read it.

Hit me with your best shot

Hit me with your best shot dundundundun why don't you hit me with your best shot?!

Haha, I've had this song stuck in my head the entire day! Kinda catchy.
So, within 2 weeks is my CAE exam... AAAHH stressing out (again. still. uhm.), I have so much left to do! I decided to read/talk/speak english as much as I can in order to prepare. So far it's going pretty okay.
And I STILL haven't finished Looking for Alaska. Oops. Haven't read anything in the last 4 days. There are only 40 pages left to read. Think I might finish it tomorrow. And then immediately start in The Lighthouse by P.D. James (Have to read that one for the exam).

Tommorow it's time for some sailing! Ah, love it! I teach kids between the ages of 8 and 15 how to sail in a small boat. I absolutely love doing that, it's so much fun. Myself, I took my first sailing class when I was 9 years old. I did it for 3 years, and now this is my 3rd year of teaching kids. (:

And for the rest, my weekend pretty much consists of homework. Dull. But it has to be done, hm? I'll just finish watching Dear John (oh Channing Tatum, how much I love you. Seriously, have you seen those abs...?) and going to bed. Bye!

Picture source: tumblr.

Currently reading.

 

Since it is weekend, I thought, why not starting in a new book? So I did. I chose to read 'Looking for Alaska' by John Green. I bought it 3 weeks ago while I was in London (waaahhhh london a;lsjdfljasdf love it there). And guess where I bought it.... HARRODS! How cool is that (:
Actually nothing special, but hey, there is only one Harrods, and the only things that are not ridiculously expensive are books. Mwuahaha. So I bought my book there.

I only just started in the book. I am currently on page.. uhh let me look it up. Just a sec. On page 31. Not much has happened yet, except I read some guy's visions on the female body. Ah.. how interesting. But I am very curious how this book's gonna be. Heard some pretty good stuff about it. I'll let you know if it is worth a read. (:


Picture source: tumblr.

Spring, where did you go?

Ugh. And the rain is back again here in Holland. How great. It's been raining almost non stop the past couple of days. And it's been cold too! Just rain; fine with me, but it is the cold that's killing me. Last week we were tricked into believing spring was finally coming up. Too bad...

Well, the weather may be terrible when you have to bike to school every day, but when it's late at night and you have a warm cup of tea and a good book, it's lovely. So that's what I'm about to do now! Just grabbing a new book (probably gonna read The Fault in Our Stars or Looking for Alaska) and making a hot cup of cherry tea. Have a lovely evening!

Something came up

Remember when I said yesterday that I was gonna watch Intouchables with two of my friends? Well.. we ended up not watching it. Something came up, as usual. So that's too bad. Maybe another time haha, whenever that will be.

The weather has been so lovely! Last week when I was in London the weather was amazing, with lots of sun but in the Netherlands it had been a bit cold. And you need to keep in mind that in about 1 or 2 months of time we've had sun, snow, rain, heavy wind, clouds and much more! It seems like the weather doesnt know what she wants (: But the time is finally there! SUN! The weather man said on the tv yesterday that the temperatures will come above 20 degrees Celsius! Yay! Time to pull my short sleeve shirts out of the back of my closet!

I'm off! Going outside and taking a book with me! I am currently reading Percy Jackson & the Olympians.

Books and being busy

Since my exam week is coming up, my teachers apparently decided to give us as much homework as possible. The exam English will be a voabulary and reading exam, so I already learned almost all of the words I have to learn for this test, but reading tests are very difficult to me, because the entire test is multiple choice questions, and that's just what I find very difficult. So for English I decided I'd prepare myself for this test by reading some English books. Of course I already read the entire Harry Potter series in English, but that was a while back. So I went to the shop, because the English books were on sale, so I bought a couple of new books:
- Well DUH, by Bob Fenster
- The Girls Guide for Hunting and Fishing, by Melissa Bank
- The Good Thief's Guido to Amsterdam, by Chris Ewan

I hope they're all good! I didn't have much time when I bought them so I read the back of the books quickly and just threw them into my shopping cart.

For Dutch we have to read 2 books: 'Aslander', by Rien van den Berg, and 'The Dark Room of Damocles' by Willem Frederik Hermans. Good thing that 'Aslander' is a thin book with 128 pages, but unfortunately 'The Dark Room' has over 300 pages, and I am just at page 70. I have a lot of reading to do the next couple of weeks haha. But it's almost vacation! And then I'll have plenty of time to read (:

Since a couple of months, I work at the library, and I like my job, but it's quite annoying that right after I finnished school, I have to cycle straight to my work, and I have to bring my heavy school bag with me. So yesterday, there was a lot of wind and I was already a bit late, so I cycled as hard as I possible could and made it just on time to the library. But apparently it had been very crowded that day, so I had to clean all of the bookcases and shelves, and place ALL of the books right. And a thing little children always tend to do in a library is to push back all of the books on the shelves, so I had to push all of the books back again. Great, so I had two times as much work to do than I usually have to. But oh well, I get paid for it so don't mind that much. (:
The good thing about working in a library is that when you see a book you fancy, you can bring it to the office, and when you're done working you can borrow it from the library. So that is very nice! Always when I see a new Young Adult book or a book that I think is nice I bring it to the office so that I have fresh reading nutrition for the upcoming week haha.

Hm. This blogpost was pretty much all about reading, I hope that's fine with you. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more time to write a blogpost, but I can't promise you anything. Tomorrow I'll be working late, so maybe it will be online a bit later. I am thinking of doing a TAG for tomorrow. ^^

Days left till Sinterklaas: 6
Days left till Christmas: 26