As a child, I loved poetry. My first experiences of it were via nursery rhymes and children’s books: Oranges and Lemons, Lynley Dodd’s Hairy McClary from Donaldson’s Dairy, A.A. Milne’s Winne the Pooh. I liked the way the words tripped off my tongue, the shape they made in the air, the fun of anticipating the next rhyme.

As a pre-teen, my knowledge ( Read more... )

I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I really don't. Apparently some libraries over in America have  banned the book 'Fifty Shades of Grey'. I found this great comment in this article: http://www.inquisitr.com/232608/fifty-shades-of-grey-banned-from-florida-countys-libraries/

“We felt the book didn’t meet the criteria for what we put on our ( Read more... )

Recently I’ve been thinking about the elements of good and bad cover design, mostly because of a project I’m working on as part of my course. I’m not a designer so I don’t have any expert knowledge on the subject, but a lot of the things about cover design seem to be basically common sense. The rant below is me trying to put my thoughts in a ( Read more... )

I hate love triangles. More accurately, I hate the poorly executed and overdone love triangles currently infecting the YA paranormal genre. If I could wave my magic wand and remove a single trope from the currently popular tropes pile it would be - well, actually it would probably be the jerkass boyfriend who’s only ‘virtue’ is his hotness, but ( Read more... )

Although the fantasy genre is becoming increasingly popular and more mainstream, I’ve noticed there’s still something of a stigma attached to reading it in certain circles. Remarks from non-readers don’t particularly ruffle my feathers (I’ll clearly never understand them anyway), but frequently I’ve found myself forced to defend my preferred genre ( Read more... )

Last weekend, my sister and I went to see ‘Breaking Dawn’.  We saw it on a Saturday morning and it was pretty quiet, considering it was only a week after it opened. There were maybe 20 people in the theatre, tops. We went in with very low expectations, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been and sadly there were far fewer inadvertent lols ( Read more... )

Last night, as part of working our way through Dr. Who, the Flying Monkey and I watched the episode "Blink". It scared the pants off me. I generally avoid horror, and get freaked out easily, but this was by far the most terrifying thing I have seen all year. Maybe in the last two years. I had to cling to the Flying Monkey like a frightened limpet ( Read more... )

Well, I am glad that we won, mostly because it means I don't have to deal with a bunch of grumps at work tomorrow. I am also glad because the final represents the end of the Rugby World Cup 2011, which means I can stop hearing about it ALL THE TIME. If I have to listen to one more person tell me I'm not patriotic and not a real New Zealander ( Read more... )

This year I discovered Buffy. Turns out I’m a little late to the party; I hang my head in shame at how long it has taken me to achieve this geek milestone. I realise that Buffy has long since been analysed, discussed, squeed over etc. by the vast majority of geeky people but I haven’t had a chance to do that yet, so I’m going to shout my belated ( Read more... )

I hate writing job applications. Faced with such a task, my brain tries to wander off and I have to wrestle it into submission. By the time I’ve gotten all three of my brain cells lined up and pointing in the same direction, whatever train of thought I previously had is gone. The minute my focus shifts as I  try and remember what on earth I was ( Read more... )