Tag: Friday Face-off

Weekend Book Friends #25

Weekend Book Friends #25

Greetings you guys! Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends in America! May it be time of reflecting, giving thanks and stroking your cat. It’s very windy and rather cold here with us (no, we did not move. We are still in SA, the weather is just a bit like a teenager at the moment.) What else is there to do but stay indoors and read a good book? We are currently busy with an ARC for The History Quill Book Club and once again, what a brilliant read. Let’s share this thrilling mystery with our Weekend Book Friends.   For our first stop, we will pay a visit to Gilion over at Rose City Reader to share our Book Beginnings. We’ve also decided to join Carrie over @ Reading is my Super Power for First Line Friday.  Every Friday you can link up and share the first sentence of your current read (or the one you plan to devour over the weekend), as well as your initial thoughts and impressions. The Automobile Association opens with a prologue. We love prologues and going back to them when the book is finished to see how much it really gave away: He made his way through […]

Posted November 26, 2021
19 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #18

Weekend Book Friends #18

Greetings Humans! It’s Friday and my Mommy isn’t working today. Therefore, we have time to do a Weekend Book Friends and spend the rest of the day reading and relaxing. Scrap that. She and Daddy is going to the big town a couple of miles away to go her some new ballet shoes. Crazy lady, I know. The book she’s currently reading is also a bit crazy, but gosh it’s sooooo good! I can’t wait for them to come back this afternoon so that we can finish this one! Don’t you just love the vintage cover?   #1 bestselling author Stephen King returns with a brand-new novel about the secrets we keep buried and the cost of unearthing them. The son of a struggling single mother, Jamie Conklin just wants an ordinary childhood. But Jamie is no ordinary child. Born with an unnatural ability his mom urges him to keep secret, Jamie can see what no one else can see and learn what no one else can learn. But the cost of using this ability is higher than Jamie can imagine – as he discovers when an NYPD detective draws him into the pursuit of a killer who has threatened […]

Posted May 14, 2021
28 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #17

Weekend Book Friends #17

Greetings Humans! We haven’t done a Weekend Book Friends in ages. Missed us much? My Mommy is having a long weekend and we plan on spending it reading. The.Whole.Time. Tomorrow is the Dewey 24 Hour Readathon and we are very excited to take part in it. If you also want to take part, the link is attached to the image below. We are not quite sure what exactly we are going to read yet and I suspect we might just have some fun with the Bingo Board and the Instagram Prompts. It’s suppose to be fun! But before we can start with our Readathon, we first need to finish our current read. I guess we can perhaps let it stand over for tomorrow as we still have around a 100 pages left. In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads […]

Posted April 23, 2021
34 Comments
Friday Fives #4 – 5 Review copies we hope to read soon

Friday Fives #4 – 5 Review copies we hope to read soon

Greetings! My Mommy is officially on holidays and the last time we had time to do a Friday Fives, was the first Friday of the term. It was a hectic term and my Mommy sure needs a bit of a break!  Of course she is going to spend just about the whole holidays reading and sorting out her books. Especially the review copies. We do try to keep review copies at a bare minimum, but some books can be so tempting that you just can’t resist requesting them. And then there’s the author’s and publishers who always ask ever so nicely for a fair and honest review and you really imagine them looking at you like this: I’ve also perfected that look and I know that my Mommy really can’t say no to those begging eyes. So keep on sending those review copies, between you and me, we’ll get her to review it. Just to keep us a bit organized as well, today’s Friday Fives will be  Five review copies we hope to read within the next couple of weeks.  As always, we link up with  Connect Five hosted by the BookDate. Connect Five is really very easy, just pick 5 books […]

Posted March 19, 2021
20 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #16

Weekend Book Friends #16

Greetings Humans! It’s Friday afternoon and time to grab the books. My Mommy hardly read anything over the past two weeks, so I am so glad to have her home this afternoon and just do a bit of reading. My Mommy had Book Club two weeks ago and normally by now, she would have been finished with at least 3 of her picks. But alas, life has not been kind to our reading life and we are now only on our second book for the month. Dreadful, I know. Luckily it’s a fun one and really good. Best part of all, it’s the first in a series. Yea!   Four septuagenarians with a few tricks up their sleeves A female cop with her first big case A brutal murder Welcome to… The Thursday Murder Club In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves The Thursday Murder Club. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club […]

Posted February 19, 2021
33 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #15

Weekend Book Friends #15

Greetings Humans! It’s Friday afternoon and time to grab the books. What are you all reading this weekend? Somewhere last year, my Mommy asked your advice on authors whose names or surnames start with a ‘Q’. We did that dreadful Alphabet challenge. Julia Quinn’s name came up more than once and especially The Bridgerton series. If you spend enough time here with us, you will see that my Mommy isn’t big on romance. Especially not where Dukes and ladies-in-waiting are concerned. Unless it’s Jane Austen of course. Our book choice for today was shelved on the TBR and very much forgotten. That’s until Monday night when she didn’t know what to watch on TV while marking school books and the dice fell on Bridgerton. Within 10 minutes, all schoolwork was left unattended (as what normally happens with schoolwork. So glad I’m not a schoolbook) and I was purring happily on her lap. But we’ve decided that we are first going to read the first book in the series and then we’ll continue the Netflix series. I believe that is the preferred and acceptable practice in the bookish world. Books first.   In the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Regency London, […]

Posted January 22, 2021
38 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #12

Weekend Book Friends #12

It’s Friday and the Fraterfest Read-a-thon only has 24 hours left.  My Mommy and Stinkie didn’t do very well with this one. Or rather, as well as they’ve hoped to. Life is what happens while you have other plans. Like a read-a-thon. Maybe if they planned this a bit better and Stinkie didn’t like roaming the neighborhood so much, they would have fared better. And if Mommy didn’t have such a hectic week at work. At least they had really good intentions and wanted to read a few classic horror books and authors. We will share the intended list on next week’s Top Ten Tuesday. You can’t have a scary book read-a-thon without the following authors on the VIP list: Shirley Jackson ✔ Stephen King ✖ Agatha Christie ❔ Mommy do hope to at least finish one Agatha Christie. What better choice to end the  Fraterfest Read-a-thon than with this classic Christie?   A teenage murder witness is drowned in a tub of apples… At a Hallowe’en party, Joyce—a hostile thirteen-year-old—boasts that she once witnessed a murder. When no-one believes her, she storms off home. But within hours her body is found, still in the house, drowned in an apple-bobbing tub. That […]

Posted October 23, 2020
35 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #11

Weekend Book Friends #11

It’s Friday and the Fraterfest Read-a-thon is about 12 hours in. Are you taking part in this fun event hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer? Neither am I, but my Mommy and my big brother Stinkie is. I’m way to scared of ghosts and other creepy things. Stinkie isn’t scared of anything. If you want to join in the fun, just follow the link above, or have a look at our signup post – Elza Reads are joining the FraterFest Read-a-thon My Mommy thought it clever to just use the first book she plans on reading for the read-a-thon, as the featured book for this week’s Weekend Book Friends.   Jupe, Pete, and Bob’s next case sends them to Skeleton Island, an eerie spot inhabited only by pirates’ bones and a young girl’s ghost. A movie company has chosen the island as the perfect place to make a scary film, but mysterious events are disrupting the crew. They call in the Three Investigators. But just as the boys arrive on the island, so does the ghost! My Mommy took this book from the school’s library and apparently, anything with the name Hitchcock, will be perfect for a read-a-thon of scary books.  Let’s go […]

Posted October 16, 2020
25 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #9

Weekend Book Friends #9

Not only is it Friday, but it’s also holidays! Jippie Yea!!!! Not that I think I’m going to see much of my Mommy today. She is off to school early in the morning and then she’s going for a well-deserved drink with her fellow teachers as soon as the bell chimes for end of day. I’m not complaining at all here. I know when she comes home, she will kick of her shoes and fall on the couch. With a book. And me of course. What will she be reading? I actually have no idea. But if it’s up to me, I think it’s time for something a bit lighter. And she still needs to finish her Alphabet challenge. I’m just going to go ahead and make the decision for her. She might thrown upon my choice, but a bit of romance never hurt anyone. Okay, I liked the cover. Someday in Paris by Olivia Lara   1954. Zara is fifteen the first time she meets Leon. During a power cut in a small French museum, the two spend one short hour in the dark talking about their love for art, Monet, and Paris. Neither knows what the other looks […]

Posted September 18, 2020
22 Comments
Weekend Book Friends #8

Weekend Book Friends #8

Greetings! We’ve been absent from our regular Friday Post for the last couple of weeks. We were being sociable. Can you believe it! The Lock Down restrictions are now on level 2 here in South Africa and our numbers are lower. Here in our little coastal town, just about nothing. We still wear our masks and keep social distancing in public places, but at least we can visit each other. It’s marvelous! Today is cold and rainy, just the perfect day to snuggle up with a book, a cat and some chocolates. And of course to pay a visit all our regular Weekend Book Friends. Let’s see what book companion we will invite with. I’m halfway done with Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and I’m sure somewhere, someone, has already used this book for a weekly feature. It’s just too good not to be show-cased over and over again.   Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Olive Kitteridge offers profound insights into the human condition – its conflicts, its tragedies and joys, and the endurance it requires.At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in […]

Posted September 11, 2020
34 Comments