Lolita {Book Review}

(x)

Classics Club Challenge: 3/100

PopSugar Challenge: a book with an item of clothing or accessory on the cover (since mine has Lolita’s dangling feet in socks and shoes)

Time period: 20th century

Rating: 4 stars

Warning flag: 2 flags for very sensitive and gross subject material

Advertisements

The Sign of Four {Book Review}

Time to get caught up with the books I’ve been reading recently!

Classics Club Challenge: 2/100 books

PopSugar challenge: a book about a hobby, a book about someone with a superpower

Time period: 19th century

Rating: 4 stars

Vampire Stories {Book Review}

Hey all! I wanted to start getting on top of the Classics Club posts, so I’ll be posting reviews for the latest two books I read pretty quickly. Here is the first of the two.

Did you know that Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker were friends and actually influenced each other’s work? I didn’t know until this book!

Yes, this is my picture. (x)

Yet Another Reading Challenge: Back to the Classics

Yes, you may be thinking – Anna, how many challenges are you taking on this year? However, since they mostly all have to do with reading classics, I think they fit.

Basically, this is the challenge. You need to read one book from each category.

Here are my ideas of what I think I shall read for this challenge.

Another Reading Goal

I just heard about the Classics Club, so I am hopping onto another reading challenge. Basically, you are supposed to read 50+ classics over a 5-year period. I am going to aim for 100 books and see what happens since I know life is going to get very busy once I get my own classroom. But we will see. 🙂

I’m not going to list all the books I plan to read because I am very much a mood reader, but I thought I would give a starting list of the ones I know I have on my shelf right now (will add more to this list as I go along). Some of these may change and obviously, some will be added, but this is a pretty good starting point.

Favourite Music of 2018

 

Favourite Albums of 2018 (in no particular order)

There actually weren’t many albums that I liked this year so here are my top four-ish. (So very different from last year.)

1. M A N I A by Fall Out Boy

I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker colour.

Favourite Reads of 2018

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I discovered so many amazing books this past year, including a new favourite novelist (Edward St. Aubyn) and playwright (Nelson Rodrigues). I’m not going to go much further into depth since I talked about almost all of these books in my seasonal check-in posts – look to my blog for those. In sum, I am looking forward to all the books I’m going to read next year!

P.S. Alice in Wonderland is the only book on this list I had already read – an old favourite.

Bookstagrammer Life

I forgot to mention on my update-on-reading challenge that I had challenged myself to improve my photo taking and make my instagram a bookstagram. While my phone photo taking is still not great, I have been attempting to keep a bookstagram, so I thought I’d share a couple pictures I took that aren’t too shabby.

*cough* this actually is my own short story published (x)

Reads of Fall 2018 (and the reading challenge)

Well, I did end up reaching my goal of 60 books this year (I actually read 70)! I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it since I didn’t have time to read during my practicum with grade one this year, but as soon as Christmas break hit, I hit the books. (Well, maybe a week in.) I read a bunch of kid books these months, but it was either something I read to my kids (to save my butt in this read-60-books thing) or some fluff because A. my mind is still recovering from the past semester and B. I need to finish A Series of Unfortunate Events before the last season comes out on Netflix and C. ASOUE is an amazing series so you don’t even get to judge, heathen.

I’m not going to do a top books of this period since I didn’t read many really amazing books, but kudos to the paragraph above because I absolutely love A Series of Unfortunate Events and how these books are not only great for kids, but also pretty great for adults as well.

I did not do the Books ‘N Tunes challenge because none of the books I read this year really gave me any musical inspiration. Except Patrick Melrose (listen to my short playlist here). I even made some music videos for this book/tv series. You can see them here and here (pssst the second one is my personal favourite).

A Little Christmas Treat ~ Candy Cane Mug Cake

Anyone who knows me well knows that I LOVE mug cakes. Sometimes my sister and I will follow a recipe for some cool new cake, other times we’ll just dump in some leftover cake mix, add some egg and water, and we’re done! This morning, however, it being Christmas Eve, I came up with a new idea to make our leftover-vanilla-cake-mix mug cake a little more Christmassy… with some candy canes I had left over from (nervous laughter) last year from my grade five/fours.

 

Candy Cane Mug Cake

Ingredients

• 6-7 tbsp vanilla cake mix
• 1 egg
• water
• 1 candy cane, chopped
• Optional: peppermint extract

Directions

1. Divide your cake mix between two ramekins.
2. Crack an egg into a small bowl and whisk it. Divide the egg between the two ramekins.
3. Add water to both ramekins and stir. I always play this one by ear because the amount of water always seems to differ depending on what other ingredients I put into the ramekin as well. Add a drop or two of peppermint extract if you like as well.
4. Chop the candy cane. I used about 1/2 to 3/4 of the candy between the two ramekins, stirred, and then popped the ramekins one at a time in the microwave. Cook for about a minute and a half.
5. Sprinkle the leftover candy on the top of each treat. Give them a little time to melt. Enjoy your Christmas treat (with a book, if you’re like me)!