Name: The Sky is Everywhere

Author: Jandy Nelson

Published in: 2010

Genre: YA fiction

This book was probably everything I expected- sad, quirky and gooey at the same time. But it was also a few things unexpected- well-written, funny and tear jerking and kind of profound. I love books that incorporate other types of media for writing, like Thirteen Reasons Why with the tapes and this one did it with a photo of a poem that Lennie wrote, maybe on a sweet wrapper, or on a tree trunk or a wall or a takeaway cup, before each chapter.

This story is about a girl named Lennie (Lennon, after the John) who’s sister Bailey dies suddenly and she and her eccentric family (Gram and her Uncle Big) can’t really deal with the grief. She finds herself suddenly making out with her sister’s boyfriend every time she sees him and then there’s this new boy at school and she finds herself falling for him as well. What to do?

I love the characters. I love Gram, who’s an awesome gardener and paints in only green, and Big, the jack of all trades mad scientist who smokes weed and lives in a tree and has had five marriages. Sarah, her best friend is so indescribably awsome, I’m not going to even bother. Joe Fontaine, the new kid who just fell from the heaven which is Paris is so full of life and light that without him, the book would have been incredibly gloomy.

What’s different about this book is that, right, how to say this? With a lot of these books, when the main character is dealing with death, they often become ridiculously consumed with their own grief and don’t consider anyone else. This is normal, and exactly what happens to Lennie. What Jandy Nelson does to Lennie is get her grandma to tell her to snap her out of it, to tell her that she’s being selfish and self absorbed. That’s quite a minor part of the story, but it’s just important to tell what sort of book it is.

Another sub-plot was the disappearance of Lennie’s mother, who left her at the age of one. She always seemed to Lennie and Bailey as a sort of hero or explorer because Gram told them that she was one. This is also a very interesting part of the story, even though it’s been approached before, missing mother etc., Nelson wrote it in quite a nice way. What was interesting was that never once was Lennie’s father mentioned, I know this was because nobody knew who he was, probably not even Paige, Lennie’s mother, but still, what about the dad?

Anyways, this was a great book, I actually cried! Well I cry when reading books quite a lot, but this one actually got me thinking a lot. Ok fine, I think a lot about books after reading them too but it’s just good, ok?

Rating: 5 out of 5

Doctor Who The Girl Who Waited Review S0610

Name: The Girl Who Waited

Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Andrew Darvill

The handbots, Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill)

I’d love to say that this was a fantastic episode, in fact, I’d like to say that all of the Doctor Who episodes were fantastic. This one was quite intricately written but there were a few flaws, sorry, I’m picky, that’s just how I am.

To summarise: the gang go to Apalapucia which the Doctor said was the 2nd tourist destination in the Universe. But when they get there they end up in a quarantine centre because the planet is being plagued by Chen7, which affects only two-hearted species, surprise surprise, the Doctor. At first, the Doctor and Rory go into a room by pressing a green button with an anchor on it because Amy had to go back into the TARDIS to get her phone and then she presses the red button in the waterfall on it and ends up in an accelerated time stream. They say they will rescue her from it because they can’t just go out of the green room and into Amy’s red room,oh no. Oh yes, and they communicate through a giant magnifying glass which can see through time.

The Doctor stays in the TARDIS and gives Rory the screwdriver, the lens and a pair of glasses that act as a webcam. He finds Amy, but this is Amy 36 years later. She is angry, bitter and battle weary from fighting these handbots in the facility that don’t recognise them as aliens and continue trying to inject them with doses of medicine. She refuses to help her younger self to get out of the TARDIS but after Rory finds now Amy and gets old Amy to talk to her, old Amy changes her mind and decides to help her, but only if she can go on the TARDIS too. They manage to connect the two time streams and now there are two Amys (Amies? I don’t know).

They manage to get back to the TARDIS and then there is this EPIC battle scene where old Amy cuts of heads and stuff. The Doctor then shuts the door on old Amy’s face because they can’t both be in the TARDIS, spacey wacey timey wimey stuff. She ends up dying so that now Amy can live.

What I liked about this one was that it was quite sci-fi, which is always great, with the handbots that see with their hands and the time stream thing. Another thing was that Karen Gillan was actually really good at playing this hardened and old and vigilante (because of the interface in the facility that she managed to hack to tell her everything) Amy who hates the Doctor now. Also, the lurve between Amy and Rory, aww. The worst thing that the writers could do now would be to separate the two as a heartbreaking season finish. They wouldn’t would they?

What I didn’t like. Erm… there were two buttons… didn’t it ever occur to the Doctor and Rory that instead of saying ‘press the button’ they’d say ‘press the green button’? And when and if they hadn’t specified, Amy might have looked at the TWO buttons and said in her little Scottish accent: ‘Which button?’ It would never have happened if she had just asked one simple question. Seriously.

It was also a tad obvious from the beginning that old Amy (whose make-up was incredibly dodgy if you ask me) wouldn’t be travelling with them, ’cause that’s not how Doctor Who works folks.

Rating: 4 out of 5

PS. The next episode? Very scary, reminds me a bit of probably the only horror film I’ve ever watched, 1408 ’cause you know, it’s in a hotel and it the rooms focus on people’s fears. No? Is it like that? Oh I don’t know…

Night Terrors S0608 Review

Title: Night Terrors

Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darvill, Daniel Mays, Jamie Oram

George (Jamie Oram), The Doctor (Matt Smith) and various creepy peg dolls

Let me just set this straight: I’m not easily scared by Doctor Who episodes, it’s true. My friend says that the Cybermen really freak her out, eh; Silence in the Library scared my other friend. The only episode that I was sort of creeped-out by was Daleks in Manhatten but that was because there were pig people in them, Daleks to scare me no siree, I’m made of stronger stuff. 

This one was, I admittedly, the stuff of nightmares. It seems that the most innocent of things are the scariest in Doctor Who: the dolls, the nursery rhymes, things in the cupboard. The innocence of it all is blood curdling.

The story: the Doctor, Amy and Rory receive a distress call on psychic paper saying ‘Please Save Me From The Monsters’, while a family of three living in a council estate and George, their eight year old son, is terrified of everything- the sound the lift makes, dolls, old toys etc- and his parents are very worried. The gang arrive and look for a George. The Doctor spies a boy peeping out of the windows but sends Amy and Rory down the lift to carry on looking after searching in lots of the houses.

Of course, the lift snaps and hurtles down into gawd-knows-where and the Doctor gets to the right house. He talks to Alex, the father and then to George and realises that there are really monsters in the cupboard (no really?) while Amy and Rory find themselves in a giant replica of a doll house.  It also shows other people living on the estate, the old lady and the mean landlord, getting sucked into it too. There is a creepy peg doll following them.

Alex suddenly realises that he’s forgotten that Claire, his wife, can’t have kids, so George isn’t his kid (perception filter and everything, v. complicated) and then they open the cupboard and get sucked in. Amy is turned into a peg doll, the Doctor does a lot of yelling to get George (who is really a Tenza child, think of it as a magpie who puts her eggs in other people’s nests) to overcome his fears and his dad embraces him, saying that he loves him and that he doesn’t care what he is.

Happy ending all around.

I… liked this episode, I suppose. Creepiness [check], heart-warming ending [check], reminiscent of Fear Her and the one with the gas masks [check] but one thing. This is supposed to be a sci-fi TV show (yeah so it’s not got real science ever but they at least try…) but there was hardly any science in it, yeah okay, Perception Filter seen ‘em and also that Tenza thing got about 10 seconds of attention. Really Mark Gatiss, really. So expected to see more science there! Also, creepy music and song singing got slightly annoying and the song sang something about the Doctor so… is that supposed to mean anything? We’ll see next week!

Rating: 4 out of 5

Doctor Who Let’s Kill Hitler Review S0608

Amy Pond (Karen Gillan), The Doctor (Matt Smith), Rory Williams (Arthur Darvill))

Name: Let’s Kill Hitler

Cast: Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Andrew Darvill, Alex Kingston, Nina Toussaint-White

This was a Steven Moffat apparently, and usually, he writes really good episodes. You know, The Pandorica Opens, The Empty Child, the really scary and plot-y ones. This one, however, was a little bit of a mess.

Right, so picking up where we left off, Amy and Rory have had their child taken from them, just realising this child grows up to be the River Song that we know and love and somehow everything’s going to be ok. 

Right… so it starts off with the Ponds making a crop circle to get the Doctor’s attention, that’s quite cool, you know, crop circles made by aliens, crop circles to get their attention… No? Anyway, this great pink car comes whizzing through the crop circle and I thought, ‘well that’s River’ and I wasn’t far off. Stepping out of the car however, was this sassy, wild ass girl who is Amy and Rory’s best friend, how did they not mention that before? Gosh. That was annoying.

So she points a gun at the Doctor- very rude by the way- and says ‘Let’s kill Hitler’. Then shoots the TARDIS!!!!

So they end up in, guess where?, (oh yes, and Amy always thought Rory was gay haha.) in 1938 Berlin. Where there’s this  ”Justice Vehicle 6019″, a Teselecta, a robot that takes human form and contains miniature humans from the future, I’m guessing pupil sized, who go back in time and punish people who committed war crimes. Why they were there I still don’t understand. So they’re, yes, trying to torture Hitler.

The crew land and save Hitler and then he shoots Mel and she tada!- regenerates because she was River Song all along, but the evil psychotic one, not the one who is in love with the Doctor, the pre-Doctor River, who doesn’t even called herself River. So she turns into Alex Kingston. Oh yes, and they put Hitler in a cupboard.

Ok, stop for a second: so this Melody, when she was a kid, was planted in Leadworth to grow up with Amy, her mother. Isn’t that kind of… twisted? A very odd mother daughter relationship. So Amy named her daughter after… her daughter… not weird at all.

Moving on: she goes and tries to kill the Doctor, succeeds but he’s going to die in a while and then goes into Berlin and basically creates havoc.

Amy and Rory end up in the Teselecta, River saves the Doctor by using up her regeneration cycles, saves Amy and Rory by driving the TARDIS into the Teselecta and is put in a hospital with that TARDIS diary for her troubles.

Also, now the Doctor finds out more about the Silence. And then there is The Question, that when asked, will bring Silence to the universe, bit Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy no? Then he finds out about his death at the end too.

Rating: 3 out of 5, bit messy, why were they in Berlin?, what was the significance of the Teselecta?, why that whole thing about fish and chips? Steven Moffat is trying to do everything and everyone in an hour, and Hitler spends most of it in the cupboard… I expected better!

Name: Beastly

Released: March 2011

Starring: Alex Pettyfer, Vanessa Hudgens andMary Kate Olsen

Genre: Romance, Fantasy

And the poster is sucky too

 

Right, first of all I’m not sure if I’m allowed to write a review of a movie seeing as I hit the stop button on it halfway through. It was obvious from the very start what was going to happen but here are a few thoughts on the movie.

First of all, Alex Pettyfer’s god awful accent. Don’t get me wrong, I love Pettyfer, I think he was gorge when I first saw him in Storm Breaker a few years ago. I knew that he’d be putting on an American accent in the film but I didn’t realise that when his voice came through to my ears on the aeroplane a few days ago that it would be close to incomprehensible until you tuned into this weird accent, he’s so much hotter with his English one. Also, his acting wasn’t that amazing either.

Secondly, Vanessa Hudgens. Of all the movies I’ve seen of her (which is a grand total of this one and all those High School Musical ones), she’s always played that cutsie, whiny,good girl talking from the back of her throat. Couldn’t they given her a more interesting role? I guess her acting was ok but there’s something about her that makes me want to strangle something.

Also, Neil Patrick Harris. Just to clarify, I LOVE Barney on How I Met Your Mother, really I do. The problem is that the whole time he was on, right, interesting choice to play a blind tutor, yeah but all I could hear in my mind was BARNEY BARNEY BARNEY BARNEY, kind of distracting.

Soo… anything else? There were so many weird things in this movie. Like how Kyle isn’t creepy when he starts stalking Lindy (what sort of stupid name is that anyway?) but it’s sweet. Sweet? I mean he’s even got the creepy hood! Plus the whole movie was about him being a brat and going ugly, winning over some girl who he just happened to-you know, being a selfish and vain person- fall in love with. Then he forces her to live with him to ‘protect’ her but really he just wants to have his pretty face back. I am so annoyed with that film.

Which is why I’m giving it a…

Rating (of): 2 out of 5

The List of Books Recommended by Me!

This is The List, The One, The Only List of Books! Enjoy. (By the way, it’s not in any order in particular.) Made on 9th of May, 2011

1. The Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. Genre: Fantasy, Horror
2. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. Genre: Fantasy
3. The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Genre: Dystopian, War
4. The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. Genre: Fantasy, Mythological
5. The Olivia Kidney books by Ellen Potter. Genre: Fantasy
6. The Poirot books by Agatha Christie. Genre: Mystery
7. Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. Genre: Fantasy
8. The Thief Lord by Cornelia Funke. Genre: Fantasy
9. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Genre: Gothic, Mystery
10. The Diamond Brothers books by Anthony Horowitz. Genre: Comedy, Mystery
11. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Genre: Mystery
12. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Genre: Science Fiction, Comedy
13. The Noughts and Cross series by Malorie Blackman. Genre: Action, Adventure, Romance, Dystopian
14. His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman. Genre: Fantasy, Action

I realise that most of these books are slightly juvenile but that’s what I enjoy and I’m not forcing these books on you, merely recommending… I’ll add more as this blog progresses. This is all just off the top of my head and they’re almost all series books… so yeah.

His Dark Materials

Name: His Dark Materials book series (Northern Lights [sorry North Americans that's what it's called, tough], The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass)

Author: Philip Pullman

Published in: 1995, 1997 and 2000 respectively

Genre: Fantasy

So yeah… I’ve only just finished the His Dark Materials series at the old and senile age of 14, shame on me blah blah blah. I didn’t really get into it a few years ago mostly because the second book changed main character all of a sudden and I hate it when books do that, no offense to Will. So… let’s move on. How much do I love Phillip Pullman’s incredible work of art?

First of all, the writing, once you move past it being somewhat superfluous, is incredible. All of the worlds, with the history and the setting is unimaginably detailed, from the fact that everybody has a dæmon to the minute similarities between the worlds, it was just wow.

Secondly, the characters. How fun does Lyra sound? Half wild tom cat and strong willed child whom we watch grow up into a beautiful independent woman and Will who’s strong and scared at the same time. Iorek Byrnson, Serafina Pekkala, Lee Scoresby, Mary Malone… The characters are so believable, where there is no really bad person: Mrs Coulter, who at first seems the Cruella de Vil but is then shown to save her daughter time and time again; Lord Asriel, who comes off as cold hearted is really doing what he thinks his right. They’re ‘something beautiful, a contradiction.’

Thirdly, the plot. Set in all these amazing worlds with these contradicting, complex and charismatic characters (just look! at that use of alliteration!), how could use go wrong? Well, Philip Pullman didn’t. The plot is intricate without being confusing and I lie awake crying at night thinking how I wish I could write to this standard.

Also, I love how religion plays the antagonistic role in the books, usually the angels and you know, God is the good guy but in this book, Lord Asriel actually sets off to literally kill God, or the Authority. I just think that’s a great ice breaker at parties, you know? ‘Hi I’m Lord Asriel, I like travelling the world, I have a snow leopard for a soul and oh yes, I want to kill God.’

Rating: 5 out of 5. Yeah.