Review of “Magic in North America” by J. K. Rowling

Posted on Sunday, 4 September 2016, 0:54 by Alexandra

Title: “History of Magic in North America” + “Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry”
Author: J. K. Rowling
Series: –
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 16 + 32
Published: 2016 (on http://www.pottermore.com)
My Grade: 5 out of 5 snakes

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

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MY REVIEW

I recently rediscovered pottermore.com and I am not dissappointed. I did not know that Rowling wrote stuff on there related to the Harry Potter universe, but she does, and it is so great! Short stories about everything. So far I have only read two of the things posted there (two bigger writings) and they are both about the wizardry world over in America. History of Magic in North America is a short description of, well, the history of magic in North America. It was too short in my opinion, it seems like a very interesting history and I would love to know some more! Maybe Rowling eventually will write a series that takes place at Ilvermorny? Because that sounds like a really cool place. That would be the greatest thing ever.

The second thing I read was the history of Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Longer than the first text and written like a short story. I haven’t really read Rowling’s original writing (since I read all the Harry Potter books in Swedish) before, but after reading this, I really really want to read the original series in English. Is that a project I will take upon myself next? Probably.

These are short texts, but if you love Harry Potter, you should most definitely check them out. On pottermore.com there are also writings on the other schools. 5 out of 5, since, well.. it is J. K. Rowling.

Review of “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding

Posted on Thursday, 1 September 2016, 20:16 by Alexandra

Title: Lord of the Flies
Author: William Golding
Series: –
Genre: Fiction, Classic
Pages: 205
Published: 1954
My Grade: 4 out of 5 smoke detectors

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

When a plane crashes on a remote island, a small group of schoolboys are the sole survivors. From the prophetic Simon and virtuous Ralph to the lovable Piggy and brutish Jack, each of the boys attempts to establish control as the reality – and brutal savagery – of their situation sets in.

The boys’ struggle to find a way of existing in a community with no fixed boundaries invites readers to evaluate the concepts involved in social and political constructs and moral frameworks. Ideas of community, leadership, and the rule of law are called into question as the reader has to consider who has a right to power, why, and what the consequences of the acquisition of power may be. Often compared to Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies also represents a coming-of-age story of innocence lost.

MY REVIEW

I am surprised at why I didn’t read this one in school many many years ago. Doesn’t everyone read Lord of the Flies in school and have to write analyses on what the deeper meaning of the book is? I didn’t and therefore felt that I really should read this and see why it is so loved by teachers. I definitely see why it is considered to be a classic. And it is most definitely a book that fits right in with today’s societal problems. The main story of young boys getting stranded on a deserted island is an exciting story in itself. It is an intriguing scenario where most people can only imagine what it would be like, what they would do and what their new personalities would develop into. I honestly felt uneasy at several points in the story and I also caught myself making faces on the train on my way to and from work. It is a brutal story and it is hard to imagine why some of the 12 year-old boys could cmpletely change personalities and become violent-loving tyrants. It is really sad. The sides, represented by the rule-abiding nice-guy Ralph and the bloodlusting hunter Jack, can be compared to society. Ralph stands for politics and democracy and only tries to do what’s best for everyone, keeping the fire alive so a ship can see them and come to rescue. Jack wants to have fun, he wants to go hunting and loves the drama and stands up to Ralph. He gets lots of followers and in the end the good side only consists of Ralph and the smart, but rather disliked boy Piggy.

One thing that didn’t really feel good when reading this, was that I never really knew the characters. Most of them were just names, but still mentioned a lot. It was first at the end where the names were fewer that you understood them better. It was also written rather inconsistently. It almost felt like there were two different authors. This is a book meant for children, but in some places it was written with many difficult words that I don’t even know and had to look up. But in most places the language was normal. It should have been consistent throughout in my opinion. It would have been easier to read, either way. The characters felt their age, however. It is not often that a book nowadays has characters that act their age, they usually come off much older. But these boys really felt like 12. Good.

I don’t really know what else to write, it was well worth my time, and I do get it why students read it in school. But maybe more kids would appreciate it more if they waited some years. I give it a 4.

Review of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” by J. K. Rowling

Posted on Sunday, 21 August 2016, 22:17 by Alexandra

Title: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Parts One and Two
Author: J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne
Series: Harry Potter #8 (of 8)
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 343
Published: 2016
My Grade: 5 out of 5 love potions

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, a new play by Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The play will receive its world premiere in London’s West End on July 30, 2016.
It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children.
While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

MY REVIEW

A new Harry Potter story? I was ecstatic when I learned about this fantastic piece of news a while ago. I had no idea what this new book was about before though, I like having no expectations on.., anything really. I did know that it was about Harry’s son, 19 years after the Deathly Hallows, but nothing more than that. So after reading four pages of this book I had to open up Google in the dark of our bedroom and look up if I really had the right version of this book (since I am reading it on my eReader – a Kobo GLO HD if anyone is wondering, the best thing I have ever bought). Turns out, this book is the script for the play. That was a surprise I did not enjoy. I was expecting a new amazing story written by J. K. Rowling, like the old books were written. So I was hugely disappointed at first. But once I got into the story I enjoyed it very much and finished it in two days. The story is amazing and very easy to read, the pages just fly by in that format. And I think that the reason I could get so into the story is because I have read the previous books and know the environments and could picture it all while reading the short environment descriptions and dialogues. My plan was to reread the seven books before this one since I haven’t read them in English and I read them when they came out many years ago. But I got impatient and it worked out well anyway. But now on the other hand, I really really want to reread the original seven.

If you have read the previous Harry Potter books, you will love this story where Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy (who is my favorite character by the way, he makes the book even better) tries to do something heroic but it obviously doesn’t go that way. Even though I was disappointed at first, it won’t take the grade down from a crystal clear 5.

Review of ‘The End’ by Lemony Snicket

Posted on Thursday, 18 August 2016, 22:55 by Alexandra

Title: The End
Author: Lemony Snicket
Series: A Series of Unfortunate Events #13 (of 13)
Genre: Realistic Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 337
Published: 2006, Scholastic, Inc.
My Grade: 3.5 out of 5 grapes

Since this is the last book in a series of 13, and I didn’t come up with the idea of expanding my blog and writing reviews during the first 12, I will try to write this review on the whole series with this one as the base. Here’s a link to all the books on Goodreads.

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

Dear Reader,
You are presumably looking at the back of this book, or the end of THE END. The end of THE END is the best place to begin THE END, because if you read THE END from the beginning of the beginning of THE END to the end of the end of THE END, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope.
This book is the last in A Series of Unfortunate Events, and even if you braved the previous twelve volumes, you probably can’t stand such unpleasantries as a fearsome storm, a suspicious beverage, a herd of wild sheep, an enormous bird cage, and a truly haunting secret about the Baudelaire parents.
It has been my solemn occupation to complete the history of the Baudelaire orphans, and at last I am finished. You likely have some other occupation, so if I were you I would drop this book at once, so THE END does not finish you.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket

MY REVIEW

It is always a strange feeling that comes after finishing a book series. And especially a long one. The End was the thirteenth book in the series about the unfortunate events the Baudelaire children experienced. Even if they are considered books for children, I am glad I decided to read them now, as an almost-adult. But I can also see the benefits of reading them as a kid since the books are not only intriguing, but they are written in a rather educational way. It would probably be appropriate to add ‘dictionary’ as one of the genres since the books are always describing both difficult words and sayings and honestly, I have learned a lot. While at the same time they were easy to read and follow.

The characters felt a bit unreal, but it is a story meant to entertain children, and a normal 14-, 13- and 1-year old would not be fun to read about, so I did not bother to think about that at all after the first two books. Their personalities are interesting though, age aside, and my favorite would be Sunny, the baby, she is cool.

Something I didn’t really like about the books was that the first five or so, had the exact same story. And it got a little boring and a little hard to want to continue like that for thirteen books. But, it changed and all the rest of the books had different stories. Another annoying thing that I found while reading these books these last few months, was that the mysteries the siblings were trying to figure out, made me curious and eager to read more. And then it made me very frustrated when no real answers were given, but rather more questions. Sorry for that spoiler.

To sum up, the series was really good, no time was wasted while reading it, but I don’t really feel that a straight 3 or 4 would be correct, so I will give a 3.5 as the final grade for this book/series.

New job

Posted on Wednesday, 17 August 2016, 18:48 by Alexandra

I think I have written something about this new job that I would get this fall. Well, three days have passed already with preparing for the upcoming school year. I feel rather confident with the role as a teacher that I will have. We are three brand new teachers (who never ever worked as teachers before) and we all got the teacher education (which is normally 5-6 years) in 2 days. The other teachers there are very helpful, but when it comes to the planning of my 3 courses I am pretty much on my own. I have read the course syllables and they feel strict, but at the same time I can do whatever as long as I go through all the points in the central contents and test the students on the grade requirements. I am glad my classes don’t start until August 31^st. That gives me 2 week to prepare. I am surprised that 3 full classes are only 30% work. It feels like a lot.

The school anyway is a small computer game developing high school where I will have one course in each year. Basic engineering for the first-years, CAD for the second-years, and Construction for the third-years.

This week is full time with preparations, next week the students are arriving and I will there to greet the new ones on Monday and then I have 2 days off (after 8 straight days of work) to prepare and I think my own studies start that same week. I will only take 2 classes this fall since I can transfer the 3 German classes I took in California. That will be so nice, study 50% and work the rest and make more money and make my debt smaller. I just hope that UCSD will be able to send my transcript to Chalmers and that it will work out, otherwise I am pretty screwd since I have now only applied for two classes and 50% loans. Otherwise I have to take one more class before getting my Master of Science.

I think it will be a fun fall. I will probably play less Pokemon Go (I am halfway to lvl 25) when it gets colder, and that will probably make me play more Guild Wars 2 (one of my new co-workers play as well, so that’s awesome!) and read more. I am almost finished with the last book in the Unfortunate Events series, but before I write my first book review I need to come up with a template that I will follow. Maybe I will do that now. I am too tired to keep doing the school planning now, there’s another day tomorrow.

One extra day in Greece

Posted on Tuesday, 12 July 2016, 1:10 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.

So, our flight was delayed by 12 hours yesterday. Instead of being home at 2 pm we came home at 4 am. We were tired, and I couldn’t really sleep tonight, so 10 hours work today was not very fun.

We got picked up at the hotel at 8:30 am, we checked in and waited for takeoff at 11. We got information that it was delayed until 12:30, but at 11, we were told that we had to wait for 12 hours and that we would be driven to a new hotel where we would get a room, lunch and dinner and then driven back to the airport at 9 pm. So our day consisted of a lot of bus rides and waiting. We had lunch at the hotel right when we got there. It was not very good. Then we had to wait until 2pm to check in. Until then, we walked around on the hotel area and looked at the pool area. It was cute, but not many sunbeds. The room was not very nice, definitely not 5 stars. We put our stuff in there, changed into swim wear and then went down to the pool and were actually lucky enough to get two sunbeds. The pool was 3m deep, and that was fun. We read some, played around in the water and just waited for time to pass. At 7 pm dinner was served and it was pretty much the same food as for lunch. The people working there were not very nice and even rude and tried to charge us for drinks when it was supposed to be included. Right after dinner we went down to the beach (this hotel was just a stone throw away from our luxury hotel) to watch the sunset before packing again and leaving for the airport and hoping for the best. The transfer was supposed to come at 9pm, it arrived at 9:45 pm and the plane was supposed to takeoff at 11pm. I was seriously getting comfortable with the idea of spending the night there.

We got to the airport 45 minutes before takeoff, but boarding didn’t start until 11, and because of lots of traffic, we didn’t takeoff until midnight. We landed in Gothenburg at 2:30 am and got home about an hour later and went to bed at 4. I am so tired right now.

It was nice to have one extra day in Greece, but it could have been better if we would have skipped the whole checking in and waiting at the airport when the personnel knew at 8am that this would happen. I will contact my home insurance and hope that I will get something for this. We didn’t have to pay anything extra in Greece, but we did have to pay for taxi since we didn’t get a ride from Jesper’s mom as was planned since she was on a plane to Portugal when we landed.

It was a great trip, still the best I have ever done, even if yesterday was sucky.

Tsambika

Posted on Sunday, 10 July 2016, 1:07 by Alexandra

I had written so much text, and then my computer crashes and this one time, Word doesn’t give me the option to open an unsaved document. Stupid computer!!

I won’t write all that again, but will do a short summary since it is really late and I am tired and have to get up super early tomorrow.

I am bad at doing relaxing vacations, I am tired, so today we spent the whole day at Tsambika where we lay on the beach, reading all day. It was warm, so we spent a lot of time in the water. We snorkeled only once since the water was rougher today than it has been. We found a cave, but didn’t go in because we didn’t want to rip us up when the waves would have pushed us against the sharp rocks.

I finished the last book in I am Number Four Series “United as One” and I feel sad. 7 books and 15 companion books are over. Because of this I decided today to expand my blog and make a travel/book review blog.

We had dinner at a restaurant here at the hotel. Fancy pancy Asian food which was delicious.

Now it is late, so no pictures from yesterday will be posted today, but will be uploaded tomorrow (it takes time to go through lots of photos, especially from a dive).

Goodnight for the last time from Rhodes.

Scuba Diving

Posted on Saturday, 9 July 2016, 0:15 by Alexandra

My 8^th dive ever was in Anthony Quinn Bay here on Rhodes. 50 Euro for everything, all gear rented and a boat dive. Crazy cheap! It was also so warm in the water that a shortie 2.5mm wetsuit was needed. Crazy! Jesper doesn’t have a certification yet so he had to wait at the beach. That was too bad. Until next trip he definitely has to have gotten it. There was not super much to see like it was in San Diego, but it was nice to do it again since it was almost a year ago I did it last time. Good to maintain the skill. We found lots of snorkeling masks, a sunbed table and a sunken boat along ancient Greek vases and stuff and fish. When we took our safety stop, we fed fishes, there were tons of them just centimeters from our faces.

After the dive we drove to Tsambika where we spent a few hours on the right side of the beach. We had sunbeds there and included in the price were two slushees. That was so needed in the heat. The snorkeling was not as good on the right side as on the left, so we will probably spend all of tomorrow (our last day!!) at the left side tomorrow.

We left at 6pm to go to Lindos so we would have time to get to the Akropolis. We followed the trail of donkeys which you could pay to ride one up. We walked, it wasn’t too bad. The acropolis was really cool. Much was restorated, and I hope they will restore more, I am sure it would look incredible. We walked down to the village, which is the cutest village ever. We found the best restaurant and had a really really good dinner there. It was called Stefany’s and was a family-owned restaurant with tables on 3 different roof levels. I loved that restaurant!

The handmade jewelry in Lindos was so cute!

We walked through the village and then drove back to Tsambika where we went for a late night swim. It was 10:30pm, very dark, and star-clear sky. There was a party going on at one side of the beach, but we were at the other side and enjoyed the warm evening under the stars. It was nice!

Now it is super late because of all our shenanigans today, so I will post pictures tomorrow. Here is one from on top of the akropolis though: Lindos Akropolis on Google Maps

Lindos

Posted on Thursday, 7 July 2016, 23:28 by Alexandra

Today was spent in beautiful Lindos on the middle of the island. I have been to St. Pauls Bay before and honestly remember the snorkeling to be better. Maybe it has been exploited since I was there last time, 13 years ago. It is still an incredibly beautiful bay with the akropolis right above it. The nature here on Rhodes are truly amazing! The beach in that bay is the smallest ever, so we just went for a swim and then drove to the big beach on the other side of the acropolis, the main beach of Lindos. I have never been there before, and sure, it was a nice beach with fine sand, and the water was calm, warm and clear, but it was kinda boring, nothing really to do than cool off in the water every now and then and read on land. I guess it was nice with that for half a day. St. Pauls Bay.

We had dinner at a restaurant right next to the beach. We were disappointed, the food was dry and not very good, there were wasps disturbing us through the whole meal and the food took forever. We were planning to go up to the Akropolis after dinner, but apparently it closed at 7pm, and we weren’t done with dinner until after 8. We will come back tomorrow afternoon and also to look around in the city.

Goats crossing the road.

~~The Wifi sucks today for some reason, so the pictures take forever to upload. They will be uploaded in this post as soon as they are all done (tomorrow I am guessing)~~. Here is one 360 picture over St. Pauls Bay for now: St Pauls Bay on Google Maps

Tassos Beach

Posted on Wednesday, 6 July 2016, 22:14 by Alexandra

Today wasn’t as warm as yesterday, but it was very very windy, even on the east coast. Sometimes it was hard to hold the eReader on the “beach”. We spent the whole day at Tassos Beach on the northern part of Kalithea. It was not exactly a beach, but rock plateaus. It was a cool place, the snorkeling wasn’t as good as Anthony Quinn Bay, and the water was a little bit colder because of the wind. It was not cold on land, it was very warm, the wind was warm, but helped a little bit. We still had to cool off in the water now and then though.

There is not much else to write, I will let the pictures speak for themselves. Here is a link to a 360 picture I took on the beach: Tassos Beach on Google Maps

In the evening we drove to Old Town again, we had dinner at a very cute little restaurant on a small square. We then walked around for a little bit, but my stomach is hurting a lot tonight so we left pretty early. I took some medicine recently and am hoping that spending some time in the Jacuzzi tub will help.

Typical example of when panorama is not working properly. These two Swedish girls were running around the restaurant after the cats and eventually sat down next to our table to watch one of the cats which we named Simba (she looked like a Lion, and names shouldn’t matter depending on gender – just take our male Cleo(patra) for example). This view greeted us when we came back to the hotel. Turkey in the background.