A mix of pics

Posted on Wednesday, 25 January 2017, 19:30 by Alexandra

Not too long again the river that runs next to our neighborhoos was very very flooded! One morning on my way to school, this beautiful sunrise took place! It took a while for Ramses to get used to the new drinking fountain, at first he was afraid of it, then he slowly started to get near it, then he drank the spillwater Cleo had played with and now he is drinking from the running water like nothing. We redid our hall, looks much nicer now. And Cleo approves! The same week as the sunrise (it might even have been the day after), we had an incredible sunset.

Review of “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets” by J. K. Rowling

Posted on Tuesday, 24 January 2017, 7:48 by Alexandra

Title: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Author: J. K. Rowling
Series: Harry Potter #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 251
Published: 1998, Bloomsbury Publishing
My Grade: 5 out of 5 snakes

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

The Dursleys were so mean and hideous that summer that all Harry Potter wanted was to get back to the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry. But just as he’s packing his bags, Harry receives a warning from a strange, impish creature named Dobby who says that if Harry Potter returns to Hogwarts, disaster will strike.

And strike it does. For in Harry’s second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor, Gilderoy Lockhart, a spirit named Moaning Myrtle who haunts the girls’ bathroom, and the unwanted attentions of Ron Weasley’s younger sister, Ginny. But each of these seem minor annoyances when the real trouble begins, and someone, or something, starts turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects: Harry Potter himself?

MY REVIEW

Still as good as I remember it from my childhood. Similar to The Sorcerer’s Stone in that sense that something is always happening. But not quite as much, because this book gives more environmental descriptions. Most of it I remember from reading the book and watching the movies countless times, but I still got surprised here and there. For example, I had completely forgot how Moaning Myrtle died or how Lockhart ended his time at Hogwarts as a professor or what happened to Mr. Weasly’s flying car.

It makes me happy that a story so well-known by me can still surprise me and entertain me like I was 12 again. I am so glad I decided to finally reread these books (in its original language). My original plan was to read one book, read another one between. But these are too darned good to be skipped. I will read all of them in one go! I should be done in the beginning of March or mid-March depending on how much time my master thesis will take. Now it is time for the Prisoner of Azkaban, a rather dark book if I don’t misremember.

Review of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” by J. K. Rowling

Posted on Tuesday, 17 January 2017, 18:16 by Alexandra

Title: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
Author: J. K. Rowling
Series: Harry Potter #1
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 223
Published: 1997, Bloomsbury Publishing
My Grade: 5 out of 5 owls

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

When a letter arrives for unhappy but ordinary Harry Potter, a decade-old secret is revealed to him that apparently he’s the last to know. His parents were wizards, killed by a Dark Lord’s curse when Harry was just a baby, and which he somehow survived. Leaving his unsympathetic aunt and uncle for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Harry stumbles upon a sinister mystery when he finds a three-headed dog guarding a room on the third floor. Then he hears of a missing stone with astonishing powers, which could be valuable, dangerous – or both. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

MY REVIEW

It has been 15 years since I read this book for the first time. Now was definitely time to refresh my memory. And this time with the original version in English instead of the Swedish translation. But back then, when I was 11, I wasn’t too good at speaking or understanding any foreign languages.

First of all, it was great to read it in English. I have the whole series in hardback in Swedish and that’s what I read growing up. I got too tired to wait for the translation of the 6th, so I read it in English first, and then Swedish as soon as it came out. But that is the only one I have read in English until now. I guess it is good that the Swedish books translates the names on, especially, the animals and things, because it makes more sense to younger readers. But I loved that I finally got the real feeling of the things in this book. The names of the quidditch balls still makes no sense to me though, but I have 6 more books to get used to it.

Second, this book was only 230 pages long, and there were so many events in it! Going from reading a rather heavy book with long descriptions, it was a relief to read a very straightforward, but still very well-written story. It was noticeable that this is a children’s book, but 25-year olds can enjoy it as well, obviously. I wish I had more time to read so I can sit longer times at a time to read. It took me a week to read this. Too much else going on right now.

I grew up with this story, and I know it almost completely by heart, but I got minor surprises here and there (including the full first chapter, I remember the book starting right away with Harry in his cupboard, not following the Dursley’s before Harry joined them?), things I forgot or wasn’t included in the movies (which I saw more recently than I read the books).

This is truly a book everyone should read! And this is definitely something I will read to my kids when they are old enough to understand longer stories. Can’t wait!

Kittens kittens kittens

Posted on Tuesday, 10 January 2017, 18:09 by Alexandra

Since we bought the game Munchkin and got it from my mom the very same day last week, we went back to Science Fiction Bokhandeln to exchange it to something else. The zombie version of the game is a whole new game and can’t be combined with the base game, so we decided to get extra cards instead, we got steeds, sounded funny. We also got a whole new game called Exploading Kittens. Crazy game. We played it and it turns out that it is really fun. It is a card game and you are basically suppose to just lay down cards with actions on them, and then draw a new card. You lose when you get the card with an exploading kitten on it. They have a lot of interesting-looking games at that store, we might go back soon, hehe.

And speaking of kittens, mine are also crazy. We turned the couch upside down the other day. No wonder they have no toys to play with! This time we tried a not-so-permanent-solution and put duct tape along the floor between the feet of the couch. Hopefully that works! So far there are actually still small toys not under the couch, yay!

A couple of days in Sala

Posted on Saturday, 7 January 2017, 22:04 by Alexandra

It was a while ago now that I visited my grandparents in Sala (middle of Sweden). Dad, Karin, Jesper and I drove up there on Thursday and spent two nights and came back tonight. On Thursday it was extremely cold everywhere and when we arrived at 8pm it was -19°C (-2 °F). That was cold, it hurt in my nose when I breathed. The cold was still there the day after, so when we went for a walk around the lake it was -12 and the wind made it even chillier. It was not fun! The lake, Långforsen, was frozen over and people went skiing on it. With the snow it was pretty though.

We also took the car to show Jesper what was worth showing in the small town of Sala. The silver mine, obviously. A little bit of downtown, but that is it, nothing else up there, haha! I think Jesper wants to go there in the summer to go down in the silver mine. I kinda want too, it was so many years ago I was there.

The day ended with a good dinner, a burning fire in the living room and some time spent in their sauna.

Today was much warmer, only -2 °C. The sky was blue and the walk around the lake was so much nicer today. I was only cold after a while, and that was only my hands after taking too many pictures. So here are basically the same pictures as above, but with a blue sky in the background.

Jesper, me, dad, and grandpa. On the way home it was extremely foggy, sometimes it was impossible to see the road ahead. While the sun was setting it was sooooo pretty!

Spontaneous book purchase

Posted on Thursday, 5 January 2017, 13:07 by Alexandra

Yesterday Jesper and I went to my favorite store, Science Fiction Bokhandeln (~The Science Fiction bookstore). I think it actually might be his too, since he always wants to go there. I have a long list of my favorite books that I want to have on my shelf (I have most of my library in the .epub-format), and yesterday I ticked one whole series off. Throne of Glass, one of my favorite series of all time. Next on my shopping list is Silo by Hugh Howey.

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The book bag also contained the main game of Munchkin. So we are prepared for game nights at our place from now on. A funny thing happened later when mom came over to pick up the keys (so she can feed our cats when we are away at my grandma’s for the weekend). She also brought the game of Munchkin since her group of friends couldn’t figure out (or was it something else? Can’t remember) how to play it, so I was promised it. What are the odds that she brings it over on the same day we decide to buy it? I really like coincidences, they are fun! Anyway, so now we have to return the oen we bought, and get another version instead so we have twice as many cards. I think Jesper wants to get the Zombie version. No surprise there.

One day in Denmark

Posted on Monday, 2 January 2017, 19:53 by Alexandra

This post used to contain pictures, but due to new storage limitations from WordPress, I had to fix the problem and decided to create a new blog that works as an archive for all the posts from my travels. This full post can be found here.

Today, Jesper and I did the most spontaneous trip abroad ever. We went to Denmark today and we decided it late last night. We have decided to do more stuff together this year and it has started well so far. Yesterday, even though Jesper was hungover like an egg, we went out for dinner last night and then went Pokemon hunting after spending the day on the couch watching Storks and Secret Life of Pets. It was a good day.

Also, New Years Eve was fun. We had some people over for dinner and games. And for the first time since my 24th birthday I actually had a little to drink. And I didn’t feel sick, so three 4% ciders works. Good to know. It got late, but it was a really fun evening.

So, back to today. We took the ferry at 8 am over to Fredrikshamn in northern Denmark. Three hours on a ferry actually made me a bit seasick. It was a relief to get out on the ground where we did a little bit of shopping. They had some fun home decoration shops. We drink a lot of tea, so we bought some tea, and a cute teabag plate. We also got an ice cream scoop, some small glass bottles for sand from future beaches. We then had a fika at a café which was also close to a Pokéstop and from those 40 minutes we learned that Fredrikshamn is full of electric Pokémons, weird I have to say.

We actually only stayed in Denmark for two hours, but now we get to scrape another country on our scratch map. Stena Line is by the way very cheap right now, so we barely paid anything for our tickets. What cost a little bit was the buffet on the ferry back. We had the best seats with an ocean view and it was a nice dinner.

Now we are both very tired, it has been two eventful days in this new year so far.

And here is a picture of my two cats doing this exact thing again. Ramses opens the book shelf, jumps in and Cleo is outside and very jealous.

My Year in Books 2016

Posted on Saturday, 31 December 2016, 1:29 by Alexandra

goodreads-challenge-2016

The year has come to an end and I managed to reach my goal on Goodreads, 46 out of 25 books read in a year (I am about a third in in Metro 2034, but I won’t finish it before the challenge resets tomorrow at midnight unfortunately). Not too bad if I may say so myself. Many of them were very short, and my to-read-list right now only includes long books, so I won’t take 50 for next year’s challenge, but 40. I hope that I will reach all the way to 50 and beat my all time high of 47 which I had in 2013. No wonder I read so much that year, I was living in San Diego and it was obligatory to always read when at the beach, which I was all the time!

Books read vs. pages read during the years.

My Year in Books 2016.

Review of “Resan till Mörkret” (Into the Darkness) by Andrey Dyakov

Posted on Monday, 26 December 2016, 13:48 by Alexandra

Title: Resan till Mörkret
Author: Andrey Dyakov
Translator (Swedish): Ola Wallin
Series: Metro Universe #2
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Post Apocalyptic
Pages: 398
Published: 2012, Coltso (translated 2015)
My Grade: 3.5 out of 5 heavens

COLTSO’S DESCRIPTION (translated to English by me)

SANKT PETERSBURG YEAR 2033.
A couple of decades after the big nuclear war the metro is threathened by another war. People are desperately clinging to their miserable lives on the metro stations and in the underworld tunnels and labyrinths. Colonies on two islands in the Gulf of Finland was recently discovered, but when a nuclear bomb is detonated, only a few seamen survive and seek refugee in the metro. They accuse the metro inhabitants of the attack and threathens to eliminate all life on the stations. Taran, an infamous Stalker, gets the assignment of finding the guilty. But then his stepson Gleb dissapears…

The world on the surface is an unknown wilderness and faceless dangers can lurk anywhere in the city’s ruins where barely any human have set its foot in over 20 years.

MY REVIEW

This is so far the Swedish translations in this trilogy goes. I really hope the third one gets translated soon, I really want to find out what happens next. Like the first one, it is a really good book. It is slightly less good though, I only give it a 3.5 instead of a 4. And the reason for that, is because I felt that it was a bit spread out. There was a main story, but it was left behind after just a few chapters and it instead focused on so many other things. I guess you could say it was a bit messy. But, it wrapped up nicely in the end and answered almost all questions you had while reading it. One got unanswered and I doubt that it will be brought up in the third book (Beyond the Horizon), but I hope it will.

Compared to the originals by Dmitry Glukhovsky, Andrey Dyakov’s story takes place more aboveground, this one not so much as the first (Resan till Ljuset), but still more than Metro 2033. Lots of monsters and the author definitely has a lot of imagination when inventing all of them.

Something that also drags down the review by 0.5 points is that it sometimes felt like too much. Almost all the action-filled situations went to the worst case scenario, but always worked out in the end. This is sci-fi, I know, but it felt unrealistic, and yes, a bit too much. The characters doesn’t have to be on the brink of death as soon as something happens. It gets predictable after a while, “oh no, they are dead/almost dead, but it is okay, they will survive of course, because they survived everything else so far”.

But it is still a very good story! I really like the setting of it all and it was definitely worth reading even with the exxagerations. If you enjoyed the original Metro series, you will enjoy this series too.

Christmas at Liseberg

Posted on Tuesday, 20 December 2016, 0:55 by Alexandra

It is my workplace, yes, but it is a very pretty workplace and I don’t mind going there every now and then to enjoy it. Today I went there with Sofia, Marcus and Ville and Jesper. We didn’t stay for too long, but we saw everything and went on one ride, the ferris wheel, Lisebergshjulet. And this time we went in the VIP gondola. Three years of working at Liseberg and I still hadn’t been in that gondola. It was fancy. Leather seats, glass floor, tinted windows and a screen (not sure what it is for). It was nice!

We did a little bit of shopping, found one last Christmas gift, bought a couple of board games for us (we still don’t have any and I don’t think we are proper adults until we do, so now we do!), we also bought two big chocolate balls with special flavors. I also bought a very very nice scarf. It was made by South American women from (I think) Alpaca wool. Super soft. And the blue color was amazing! I will feel even more adult in that one compared to my old one. No marzipan pig from Bräutigams today, didn’t really feel like it today. I might change my mind and get one after work one day, I wouldn’t be surprised, hehe.

Fake snow is the only snow we get here in Gothenburg nowadays, Santa’s workshop. pano_20161219_164144