NaNoWriMo

Okay, I’ve been neglecting my blog for a while. That is stuff that happens, sometimes you just have to take a break and take care of other things instead. And I am not here to tell you that I am so sorry and promise to start blogging more often. Nope, I am here to tell you that I won’t blog much during November.

Why? I am doing NaNoWriMo baby!

Yes, I have thrown myself into this whole crazy thing. I hope that everything will go fine, and that I get to 50 000 words by November 30th. But as they say, even if I don’t get that far, I have written several thousen words that I wouldn’t have written otherwise.

It’s the beginning of day four, and as off the end of yeasterday I had 8000 fricking words! It is crazy! I have never attempted to write a big thing like this (not seriously anyway) and it has been a dream of mine for a long time to write a book. Ever since I was eight I have wanted to be an author (although now I have started to think about more likely carreers).

You probably won’t hear much from me here on my blog. So if you want to hear things from me, follow me on twitter! I am magical_books and I tweet a lot about my NaNo word count. You can also add me as a writingbuddy on NaNo’s website. My name there is oliviaherber.

Are you doing NaNoWriMo? Do you have any tips for a newbie NaNo:er like myself?

Happy writing!

I'm finally on Pottermore (and my overall thought of it)

Ever since J.K. Rowling announced her new mysterious project I've been so excited for Pottermore. The day she was going to release the information about it, I sat bunked in front of my computer screen and watched the seconds tick down to zero. And then I found out that I would have to try follow some owls on July 31st to gain access to the website. What a disappointment. Especially since I was in England on that exact date, so I wouldn't have time to be on the Internet. Well, somehow I succeeded with getting an account on the fourth or fifth day I think. And yesterday I finally got my welcome email.

I spent about two hours on the site that Sunday and have played through the ten first chapters. And well, I've had some fun with it. The pictures of the scenes are amazing and I really enjoy the extra information you can read. It's a bit slow though and the site crashes from time to time. And it lacks in sound. Also, I'm not really sure what I'm going to do there after I've played through the first book, but I like it at the time being. 

If anyone would like to add me as a friend, my name is NightChaser95 (seriously Pottermore, what's with all this super high privacy stuff, I want to choose my own username!) I'm in Ravenclaw! (so happy about this, me luvs it!)  I feel like I'm one of those few lucky people who got in the house they wanted, haha. And I got the best wand ever; Elder, Pheonix feather core, 14½ inches, hard. A little tip to Pottermore, can't you start up an online shop where I can buy the exact wand I got and some Ravenclaw clothes? Please? It would be so cool!

Have you gotten into Pottermore? Do you like it? 

My TIme in England

I spent three weeks of my summer vacation in England. Or rather, a small town on the south west coast called Torquay. I was there together with 30 other teenagers, without any parents. We lived in local families, went to school a few hour a day and did a lot of different activities and trips. We were at something called a language course. Even though it was very, very exhausting due to a packed schedule, I had a ton of fun and have many amazing memories.

A picture of Torquay harbor

The meaning of these trips is to learn more English. The books we used in class were pretty easy, so I didn't learn much from there. But since you're exposed to the language all the time and have to speak it to get understood, it now feels more natural for me to speak English. I've always felt great with writing, reading and listening, and now I can finally add speaking to that list.

We spent the last two days of our trip in London. It's been my favorite city since I visited London for the first time, five years ago. It was awesome to come there again. We saw the truly amazing musical Wicked, the story of the evil witch in The Wizard of Oz. I highly recommend everyone who can to see it!

There's a lot of countries that you can visit for your language course and they arrange them for teenagers from all over the world. If you're interested in more information, you can visit STS-education.com or EF.com (And no, I'm not writing this post just to tell you about how amazing these companies are, I just want other people to be able to experience the same things that I did.)

Five Best Things With School Starting Again

Hello you guys! I've really missed you all. I know that I've been lacking in blogging these last couple of weeks, I'm sorry about that. I've been really busy during summer break and still haven't really get used to school after the vacation. So what if we just forget it all and start out with a clean slate?

Now, even though school is a big, time sucking hole with tons of exams, boring lessons and my personal hell, gym class. There's still some pretty fun things about it. You just have to see everything from the positive side when you're sitting at your desk at 2am covered in homework and knowing that you're going to fail on your english test.

Being on Schedule Again
During vacations you have all the time in the world, which is great. But I'm a person who works best under pressure, so I never get anything done when I'm on a break (hence why I haven't blogged the last days on summer break when I didn't have anything to do). Now when I don't have much time to spend, I make every second count. No more pointless TV watching or Internet surfing!

Learning Interesting Things
The whole point of school is to learn! And you do get to learn fun stuff in school. I seriously want to be fluent in French, know everything about World War 2 and know how to convert meter per second into kilometer per hour. And it would be an awful lot of work, that I probably wouldn't do, if I wanted to learn all these things by myself.

Meeting All the Friends Again
You know those classmates who you talk a lot to in school but never spend time with outside of school? It's fun meeting them again.

Those Awesome Teachers
Even though many of the teachers are annoying and not good at their job, there is some really good ones that make you stare at the clock waiting for their lesson to start. Those who are funny, kind and really good at teaching.

Weekends!

Let's face it, if you were on vacation the whole time, weekends would be nothing special. 

Croatia in pictures

As you might know, I spent two weeks in Croatia a while ago. I tried to put my experiences and what I thought about the country into words, but didn't succeed. So I decided to let you guys see some of the few pictures that I took there. 

Even though Croatia is a beautiful country, I unfortunately didn't photograph that much. Which is very unusual being me. But I'll work with what I've got.

We stayed in a small town called Vodice. It's at the southwest coast of Croatia, and we only had a few hundred meters to walk from out house to the beach. Which would be awesome if I actually enjoyed swimming, but still. This is a picture of what we saw from our house. I know that the picture isn't that good, but bare with me.

One of the first places we visited, except for the town we lived in, was an island called Trogir. This is not the island, but the city you had to leave your car in to then walk over a bridge to come to the island. I managed to get a part of Trogir into the picture, look at the upper right corner. This is the best you get when you try to take pictures from the back of a car ..

This is what you saw everywhere. Clear water, palms and beautiful houses.

More palms!

The city you had to visit in order to get to Trogir. To the left you can see a part of one of the bridges that connected the island to the city.

A part of Vodice.

One day we made a four hour trip to get to the city Dubrovnik. This is the gate that leads into the old Dubrovnik, which is pretty small and has a tall wall surrounding it. The newer parts of Dubrovnik is built around this "old city".

 Here you see the wall that surrounds the "old city" and some of the new houses in the background.

Since Croatia was in war about ten years ago, you could see bullet holes and destroyed houses everywhere. It was really sad to drive through abandoned towns with completely ruined houses everywhere. 

This amazing waterfall is somewhere near Vodice. It's very long and you can't see the whole thing at once. Instead you have to climb up a high mountain to be able to see more parts of it. The waterfall was amazing, but climbing up a mountain in 40 celcius degrees heat when you have a fever, is nothing I can recommend.

This is a book blog, so let's wrap this up with some Cratian editions of english books.

Bye, I'm going on vacation!

The title pretty much sums it all up. I'll be leaving home and all types of Internet access. I'll be in Croatia from July 2nd to 16th. Then I'll leave for England on July 20th and will be back home on August 9th.

I won't have any Internet access during that time, so I won't blog regularly. But if I find a place with free wifi I'll probably upload videos in which I talk about the books I've read. I won't write long blog posts since I don't like writing long texts on my iphone and we won't have a laptop with us. I might tweet through text messages, so I won't need any Internet access for tweeting. If you want to know what I'm up to, you can follow me @Magical_Books.

Now, reading. I hope that I'll read a lot (when I am on vacation I usually don't do much more than read all the time, since I'm not a person who enjoys bathing on tanning. Well, to be honest, I don't really like being outside.) I haven't read much in a really long time, I've been stuck on a few books. But I hope that I'll get on with reading again.

Of course I'll tell you guys everything about my trips when I come home again! I hope you have an amazing summer!

For the lazy crowd:

• I'll be in Croatia July 2nd - 16th and in England July 20th - August 9th
• During that time Magical Books will probably be quiet
• Although there might be a series of mini reviews in video format if I can find an Internet cafe of sorts
• I probably will be tweeting, you can follow me on @Magical_Books

Update - To My Grandma

Hello!

I'll be going to my grandmother today. I don't know if I'll be able to blog from there. If I won't, the blog will be quiet for a few days. If I can blog from there, you'll be getting reviews of Divergent and The Summer I Lost It!

Bye! :)

May Recap

This month has been both good and bad. It was bad because I haven't read as much as I've wanted to, haven't written as much reviews that I've wanted to, I've had a lot of work to do in school and I've been really stressed the whole time. It's been good because I had a blast doing Armchair BEA, found a lot of new bloggers, got my first books for review, hit the 50 followers mark on my blog and went to two book signings! And oh, I turned 15!

Books I've read this month (4):
Encalve - Ann Aguirre
Cirkeln - Mats Strandberg & Sara Bergman Elfgren
Divergent - Veronica Roth
The Summer I Lost It - Natalie Kath

Books I've reviewed this month (2):

Enclave - Ann Aguirre

Parasite Positive (aka Peeps) - Scott Westerfeld

Best book read this month:

Though I really loved Divergent, I'd have to say Enclave.

Currently reading and will read next:

I'm currently reading a Swedish book (that I do not enjoy at all) that we're going to review as our last assignment in school. And for what I'll read next, I'm not completely sure. But I'm thinking Ultraviolet.

Expectations for June:

Summer break, baby! I'll just chill for the whole of June and try to relax and do nothing. Because the rest of my summer break will be crazy, I'll be in Croatia for two weeks and England for three weeks. And one thing is for sure, I'll read a lot more in June than I did in May!

Happy June everybody!

Update and my first ever book signing!

Hello!
I'm sorry that I've been absent from my blog these last couple of days. I've not posted as much as I've wanted to. But I've been really busy. There's only three weeks left of school, and because our teachers have to officially turn in our grades to the school next week, we've had tons of tests. But fotunately, our last test of the year will be on Tusday!

Today I was on my first ever book signing. It was for the Swedish book Cirkeln, which I've told you guys about in an IMM post a couple of weeks ago. It was a lot of fun, there was a little Q&A with the authors and then they signed our books and everybody got a Cirkeln bag. I also found out that Holly Black will have a signing at the same bookstore next Thursday! I'll definitely be there.

Happy birthday to me!

Yes, today is my birthday! I'm turning 15. According to Swedish laws, that means that I can drive a moped if I want to, I can watch whatever movies I want and if I do something illegal I can be thrown into a teenager jail! Sound fun, huh?

April Recap

April has been a really good blogging month for me. I've written a lot of posts, written an "about the blog" page and started two new features for my blog. Even though I was in Finland for a week and Coopenhagen for 4 days and couldn't blog during that time! During April I started scheduling posts. Not like several month in advance like other bloggers, but posts for a few days ahead.

Books I've read this month (6):
Lies - Michael Grant
Beautiful Creatures - Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Zombicorns - John Green
Frostbite - Richelle Mead
Anna and the French Kiss - Stephenie Perkins
13 Little Blue Envelopes - Maureen Johnson


Books I've reviewed this month (5): Links go to my review
Lies - Michael Grant

Beautiful Creatures - Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl
Frostbite - Richelle Mead
Anna and the French Kiss - Stephenie Perkins
Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver

Best book read this month:

Anna and the French Kiss!

Currently reading and will read next:

I'm currently reading a swedish adult novel called Snabba Cash (Translates to Fast Cash, but the meaning is the same as Easy Money) It has gotten a lot of attention lately, and I believe that there's going to be an english version. I like it, but it takes a really long time to read! 

Expectations for May:

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Olivia, happy birthday to me! Yeah, that's right! It's my birthday! I'll turn 15 on May 11th. In Sweden 15 is the highest age limit for films on the cinema, so now I'll get to watch every frickin movie I want! Because of that, my month will probably be filled with movies, I'm going to see Red Riding Hood, World Invasion: Battle Los Angeles, maybe (only maybe) Scream 4, Black Swan and a lot of others! This is going to be awesome!

I hope you get the most wonderful May ever!

Update - I'm going to Coopenhagen!

Hello everybody!

I'm going to Coopenhagen today and won't be back until Sunday night. The Monday after my arrival our exchange students from Finland are coming to us. I probably won't have any time to blog during that time, and haven't had the time to write posts that would be uploaded while I'm gone. So, unfortunately, you won't hear much from me on this blog until Friday next week.

xoxo, Olivia

March 2011

Hello fellow book lovers! For me, March has been a really busy week. I was one week in Finland for an exchange student program, had lots of exams and been pretty tired the whole time. I've been trying to blog and read as much as I can. I've read six books this month and only have about fifty pages left of Lies.

Books I've read this month (6):
If I Stay - Gayle Forman
Där Drömmar Blir Till - Emma Andersson
Parasite Positive - Scott Westerfeld
The Replacement - Brenna Yovanoff
Before I Die - Jenny Downham
Beastly - Alex Flinn

Books I've reviewed this month (2):
I know I've been lacking in reviews, which I don't feel good about at all. I've started to write reviews on a few and planned a video review. They're coming soon.
Beastly - Alex Flinn
The Awakening and The Struggle - L.J. Smith

Best book I read this month:
Beastly or Parasite Positive. Both were very short, really good reads that I enjoyed a lot. If I had to choose only one favorite it would be Beastly. It showed me that retellings could be awesome, something that I didn't believe in before.

Currently reading and will read next:
As I said I'm currently reading Lies by Michael Grant. Just as the first two books in the series, I'm loving it! And if I can get my hand on the next book in the Gone series, Plague, before I finish Lies, that's what I'll read next. But I probably won't buy it before that, so for my next read I'm currently undecided between Frostbite and Beautiful Creatures.

Expectations for April:
I have one blog related thing to tell you. The exchange students from Finland are coming to Sweden soon, so that week there won't be any blogging. But I'll try to schedule a few posts before that. Otherwise I'm hoping for a light month with a lot of reading. We're starting with new subjects in almost every class I'm taking, so hopefully there won't be any exams this month!

Have an awesome April!
I hope you didn't fall for any april fools jokes today ;) Nobody has pranked me (yet), but I've seen a few around on book blogs that I haven't fallen for. At least not what I know of.

Gaah, school taking over my life!!! - update

Unfortunately, I really don't have much time to blog right now. We have three tests this week and a big english paper, due tomorrow. Which I even haven't started on yet. I know, I'm really good at planning. So I probably won't blog much this week, I just wanted to tell you that. So you don't think I'm ditching my blog or anything. I will be back. I promise.

In My Mailbox #4 + Update

In My Mailbox is hosted my Kristi at The Story Siren

I got a few books from the library this week. So now I have about 7 or 8 books that all have to be returned in one month. Really good Olivia -.- All the links go to the book's Goodreads page.

The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff I'm really looking forward for this one. Sounds good and creepy ..

Frostbite by Richelle Mead  It feels like I'm the only one who hasn't read all the Vampire Academy books yet. And that I'm the only one who doesn't love them. I own the first one and I liked it, but not so much that I would want to spend money on the next one.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr I've read lots of good reviews on this series and my best friend liked it a lot and begged me to read it.


Before I Die by Jenny Downham I've been meaning to read this for a long time and once almost bought the swedish copy. But for some reason I never did.


I'm going to Finland today and won't be back until on Friday! But I'll write a few posts and but them on timer! And I'm sorry for the lack of blog posts this week, even though I promised to blog a lot. But actually (and this is no excuse to not do it) our Internet went down.

February 2011

Hello book lovers! I hope you've had a wonderful February! Mine hasn't been the best, I've been sick almost the whole time. At one point I had to stay home for one week and couldn't do anything more than sleep and watch tv. So no reading or blogging for that week. And the first half of February was filled with lots of student council meetings for our big party on Valentines Day. So hardly any reading or blogging for those weeks either.

I made myself a new layout, which I like a lot. I've read 19 books for my goal of 70, which is 27%! I think I'll have to make a new goal if I continue at this speed ... And I've gotten lots of awesome books this month! I've also officially went on a book buying ban, something I'm not as excited about ..

Books I've read this month (6):
The Awakening - L.J. Smith
The Struggle - L.J. Smith (I'll be reviewing these two books in one review, which is coming soon. I've actually already written the review but not posted it yet, oddly enough.)
Gossip Girl the Carlyles - Cecily von Ziegesar
Håpas Du Trifs Bra I Fengelset - Susanna Alakovski (A Swedish title, won't review it.)
Before I Fall - Lauren Oliver (Review is maybe coming soon. I really liked it, but can't really remember much about it.)
Will Grayson, Will Grayson - John Green & David Levithan (LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE <3 <3 <3 <3)


Favorite books this month:
Do you really have to ask? Look at the last book in the read-this-month list. Still don't know? Will Grayson, Will Grayson of course!


Currently reading and will read next:
I'm reading a swedish fantasy novel at the time (Där drömmar blir till by Emma Andersson). I've got about 50 pages left and actually like it. Even though I only bought it because the main character is named Olivia (just like me!)
I've got about five books from the library that have to be returned in one month. So I'll be reading those. I'll probably start with If I Stay or Parasite Positive (also known as Peeps)


Expectations for March:
I'm currently on my "sports break", a thing that we have here in Sweden. So I don't have to go to school for this whole week, wihoo! That means lots of blogging and reading! The week after I'll go to Finland for a exchange student program, which means no blogging for a week. (Sad face) 


Hope you'll have an awesome March!

Featured in Behind the Blog at The Babbling Bookworm

Alyssa at The Babbling Book Worm has this awesome feature in which you get to know different book bloggers a little better. I was featured in it a few days ago, so if you'd like to read the interview click here.

You should really visit her blog and follow, she's a relly good blogger!

A little side note here in this post. I know I haven't blogged in a while, but we've had 4 exams this week! We even have a rule at our school which says that we can't have more than 3 exams a week, but obviously no of the teachers respects that. So I've been busy with studying. School goes before the blog, sorry. But next week we in Sweden have this thing called "Sports Break", which means no school for one week, and therefore more blogging! Hooray!

New Layout (but it's not finished yet)

Yes, I've made a new layout for my blog. Though it's not really finished yet, I have to fix a few small things. Per example the header, it probably looks really weird compared with the background to you. I kind of forgot that I wasn't the only one visiting my blog, and that there's a lot more people who do it, with lots of different screen sizes. But I'll fix it tomorrow, don't really have time today.

But none of this really matter, does it? Since most of the people visiting do it from the google reader .. =P

January 2011

Hello lovely readers! Now that one month of 2011 is behind us I thought that I would make a recap of what I've read and reviewed in this month. I've only blogged for one month (one month anniversary yesterday, yeey!) and I'm loving it! January has been a good reading month (but I've already finished 12% of my challenge to read 70 books this year!) School has started again and I've been one week on a skiing vacation (I was sick, so I only skied one day. But I'm happy with just sitting inside with a cup of hot chocolate and a good book).

Books I've read this month (9):
Gone - Michael Grant
Hunger - Michael Grant
Här ligger jag och blöder - Jenny Jägerfeldt   (I haven't reviewed this since I've decided not to review books only available in Swedish)
Specials - Scott Westerfeld
Angel - L.A. Weatherly 
Awakened - P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast
Jonas - Eden Maguire
Angels and Demons - Dan Brown   (I haven't reviewed this cause I won't review adult books on my blog)
Fallen - Lauren Kate   (Review coming soon! I have a special type of review in mind for this one, but haven't had time to do it yet due to lots of extra student council meeting the last couple of days)


Favorite books this month:
Tough one! I really loved Gone and Hunger, Angel and Awakened. Can't decide between these ones!


Reading right now and will read next:
Right now I'm reading The Awakening and The Struggle by L.J. Smith (Liking it so far, though I can't stop comparing it to the tv series!)
I'll soon begin reading Before I FAll by Lauren Oliver. I bought it today, broke my book buying ban for the hundredth time.


Expectations for February:
School will begin for real this month. We're going to have lots of tests and homework. We're planning a big event for Valentines Day with the student council, so lots of my free time will go to meetings and planning. Even though I'll have a lot less free time I'll try to find as much time for reading as I did in January. I'll also try and catch up on all the tv series I'm following, and work on a new layout for my blog!! :D *overexcited*


Hope you've had an awesome month and that the next will be more awesome than ever!

Update - Vacation!

Hi!

I'm writing this to tell you that I'm not going to blog in about a week. Why, you may ask. Well, because I'm going to a ski resort here in Sweden for a week's skiing vacation. (No, I'm not gonna spend all the time reading books. What makes you think that? <- sarcasm) And my laptop thought that it would be fun to see what happen if it breaks down just before I need it the most. But I will have my iphone, and therefore twitter, with me! If you want to follow me on that, my name is magical_books.

But if you don't follow me on twitter, see you in a week!
/Olivia