The Lightbringer Series

This is a four book series written by Brent Weeks. I read the first three books this term and will read the fourth book when it comes out in October. Having read and enjoyed Brent Weeks' previous series, the Night Angel series, I looked with much anticipation to the Lightbringer series and was not let down. The books were extremely good, speaking of a fictional world where there are the normal people, and the light-users (aka drafters in the book) who are able to split the white light and draft a color or colors into a solid form. The books take place in the Chromera, the main city of this world, and follow Kip, a bastard only claimed by his father in his teenage years, his father who is one of the most powerful men in the world. I greatly enjoyed the books, and would definitely recommend the series.

Me before you by Jojo Moyes

This is one of my private reading books I have read over the last few weeks, I am almost finished with it and I wish there would be a sequel since it is such a fascinating and beautiful story. The book is about a paralyzed young man who falls into a deep depression because of this severe, life changing accident. His life is going downhill until a very chaotic but happy and energetic young woman comes along to work as a "carer", helping him eat, changing his bed sheets etc. The book takes many positive and negative turns which keeps the reader very interested. I absolutely loved the book and I can mostly recommend it to the girls since its more of a love story. Still, based on a true story, it is very inspirational and insightful.

Leonardo Da Vinci by Giorgio Vasari

The little black book by Giorgio Vasari is a Brief Biography of three Italian artists: Da Vinci, Filipipo and Botticelli. The book had some very inspiring phrases in it, describing different paintings about these world famous artists which was my favorite part about it. One of the many beautiful phrases describing the Mona Lisa was 'In this painting of Leonardo's there was a smile so pleasing that it seemed divine rather than human.' The book is amazing for anybody which is interested in art history, which I definitely am therefore I was very pleased when I finished it. A great read, I can only continue recommending it! 


I have almost finished the second little black book from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Sketchy, Doubtful, Incomplete things."  The book has a selection of the most insightful maxims and reflections from one of Germany's greatest ever thinkers like Goethe.  The book is slightly harder to read, and certainly takes longer to read than the last one. I would not recommend this one unless very interested in these writers or thinkers. Still, it is very educational and insightful. 

The Scarlett Letter

I started reading "The Scarlett Letter" a few weeks ago, but I didn't reach that far. The main character, Hester, is condemned to public shaming for "adultery" and she goes on stage holding her kid. She has cheated on her husband, because he had left her. Another punishment of hers is to have the letter A embroidered on every gown she wears, in order to embarrass her even more and draw more attention to her "crime". Her husband had left her to go to America, but she recognises him in the crowd, but he tells her not to reveal who he is. The two meet later and he makes it clear that he wants revenge on her and her lover.

That's as far as I have reached in the book, but I am really enjoying it. It is easy to read and even though, I have only read 5 chapters, the action has begun from the beginning. The book really keeps me wanting to read and know what's going to happen next. The emotions are conveyed really well and the old times are described throughly, which makes it easier for the reader to imagine being there and to guess what life was like at those times.

The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime

I am still currently reading the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime, and i have to say that I really enjoy how the story flows throughout the book, and also how no matter the situation, and no matter the consequence the boy still does not know how to lie or how to try to get out of a situation. The boy still acts like he did during the first incident when he discovered the dog dead on the road with a pitchfork in it, and he still replies the same way when anyone asks him any questions. All in all I am really enjoying the book and I hope all of you get a chance to read this very mysterious and humorous book as well.

Emily Brönte: What influenced her poems?

Over the past months, I have been reading various poems by Emily Brönte. my favourite one so far was probably "The night is darkening round me", which I analysed here on blogger. This is why I decided to look into the life of Emily to truly understand what is behind her poems.

Brönte was born during the First World War in a small English village called Haworth, in West Yorkshire. Her mother tragically died of cancer when Brönte was two years old, leaving her five daughters and one son. With most children being sent Cowan Bridge School, two of Brönte's sisters also became writers. Her two other sisters finished school early because they were very sick, later passing away.

This very likely affected her writing. In her poem, there are often characters with no parents, no other or they were abandoned. She was vey interested in nature, which is also reflected in her writing: birds, plants and other forms of nature often appear in many of her poems.

Like many writers at her time, Brönte wrote poems about being in jail, as well as dying. Along with her sisters, she wrote small books of poems and even wrote a book called "Withering Heights". In poems, she often described am imaginary world she called "Gondal", which she defined as a world of"royalty, intrigue, abandonment, war, murder and assassination.

During victorian times, people tended to die at a much younger age. Diseases were spread at a much faster rate and people would mostly live inn unhygienic conditions. Brönte herself believed in Christianity. Like today, many Christians would embrace death. The only difference is that Christianity would be much more important to the daily life of an Englishman than today. In conclusion, Emily Brönte's poems were mainly influenced by death. her siblings, her personal interests and Victorian culture.

Atonement, Ian McEwan

This time, I chose to read a book written by an author that I was familiar with. The name of the book is Atonement, by Ian McEwan.

Firstly, we start off with the Tallis family, they are an upper class family. The main character of the story is Briony Tallis, who is the youngest out of the three daughters. They are expecting a visit from their cousins, Jackson, Pierrot and Lola who are staying with them because of their parent's divorce.
The story really starts when Briony sees what her sister Cecelia, and her childhood friend, Robby Turner, are doing together.
Briony processes these events as something very usual because she is an imaginative 13-year old that does not understand these things yet. She then decides that Robbie is a lunatic which results in the twins running away. When the family goes out to look for them, Briony finds here sister Lola that has just been sexually abused and is convinced that is guilty. She tells the police and he is put in prison but his mother and Cecilia are on his side and protest for him not to go to prison.
The next part of the story is 5 years ahead of time, when Robbie is released from prison and has to join the British Expeditionary Force fighting in France against the Nazis. He gets wounded and is only kept going because of Cecilia's letters.
Briony then realises that it wasn't Robbie that sexually abused her sister Lola and feels very guilty about it so she decides not to go and study in Cambridge but to become a training nurse. Her other sister Lola and Paul get married and Briony suspects that it was him that raped Lola, however she does nothing to stop the marriage.
One day, she decides to go and visit her sister, Cecilia and sees Robbie in the apartment and she was surprised that he is still alive. She tried to ask for forgiveness but they both refuse. Robbie and Cecilia give Briony a list of things that she can do to help clear Robbie's name and she agreed to do them.

At the end, we figure out that Briony is actually the author of the book and she was able to write the parts of the war because of the letters and a pen-pal correspondence with a corporal that was Robbie's friend. She was 77 years old at this point in the book. The final twist is that she mad sup the part about her going to see Robbie and Cecilia in London and that they both died in the war. She says that she just wanted to let their love last into the final pages of the book and that would be her fins atonement to them.

Briony is the main character and the story is told through her eyes. She is the one that makes all the plot twists in the book. The story starts off when she is only 13 years old and when we first meet her, we perceive her as a very imaginative and creative young girl as she has already managed to write her first play.
She first starts to lose her innocence when she misunderstands the situation between her older sister and Robbie. She obviously did not seem to understand adult behaviour and took it for something bad and vile.

I really enjoyed this book because I had no idea what was going to happen at the end of the book, it was a complete turn. The war and her not seeing Robbie and Cecilia again was something that we would not have expected from when we read the first chapter.
I also really liked how we found out at the end that Briony herself was the author of the book because then we reflect back on everything that happened in the book and it all makes sense. Throughout the book, we would have never guessed that Briony was the author because we had no clues.

Ian McEwan more or less wrote Atonement in a similar style to Black Dogs. The sentences and language that he uses are similar in both books. I really like his book and stories because they always have an amazing plot twist at the end. I would like to read more of his books to see what other kind of stories he writes.