BOOK REVIEW - I Heart New York, Lindsey Kelk

I got this as a free ebook and firstly didn’t think I’d get into it as I’d be reading it on my iPhone, I was happily very wrong about this!

I’ve had a thing about New York for quite a while so I’ve been wanting to read this book for ages. It did nothing to dispel my eagerness to jet off there myself and in fact caused me to google flight prices...even though I blatantly won’t be able to afford to go until I’m about 40.

I adored the descriptions of the city and it absolutely matched up to my expectations and preconceived ideas. I really liked Lindsey’s style and look forward reading the rest of the series, particularly the I Heart Paris book as Paris is another one of my absolute favourite cities, and I have actually been lucky enough to go there. It'll be interesting to see what I recognise!

I really enjoyed the relationships that developed and was surprised to see where they went; I was actually expecting them to turn out quite differently! Lindsey writes with great humour right from the start, there are many moments that made me giggle out loud and some emotional moments without being too completely soppy! It’s possibly not one I’d read again and again but it did have a satisfying ending and I did really enjoy! I read it in two nights and could barely put it down. I would recommend it to all chick lit fans and anyone else who has a secret love affair with NY like me!

BOOK REVIEW - The Lover, Marguerite Duras

Right so you’d have thought that a book called ‘The Lover’ would be presumed to contain an abundance of romance but surprisingly I barely found this at all. It was quite a bleak book with just one strong (although one sided) relationship throughout. There was also a lot about her family situation which was admittedly sad although somehow I found myself feeling hardly any empathy at all despite it actually being an autobiographical novel.

It was in English, translated from French which I think may have hindered my reading process somewhat, as translations are not always as they should be. I shall eventually go on to read the French version as part of my course so it will be very interesting to see how they compare. I do wonder whether it was due to me having to read the book for uni that caused me to not enjoy it somehow, subconsciously? Or yes, perhaps it just really wasn’t my thing.

It was not really what I expected of the book as most other French romantic novels I have read are full of passionate fiery love and relationships. It was a quick but not particularly passionate or gripping read for me.

I feel a bit guilty not liking another one of these famous, crucial French novels, but there you go, perhaps it’ll grow on me with further study....or perhaps not.

Wow, so the last night of Hair was utterly amazing! A great atmosphere and not too many tears!!! I feel we really sent them off with a bang!

Below is the video of the dance party! Unfortunately we didn't make it up on stage but ended up in the aisle on our left which actually worked out really well because we could see everything that was going on! It was amazing! I feel so privileged that I was able to experience something as great as this!

We went to Tap Dogs the next day for their closing show even though we'd never been before and wow am I glad we did!!! Utterly amazing!!! I didn't think it was possible for anyone to have that much rhythm, balance and stamina! Pure tap for 1hr 20 mins, but not any old tap, MASCULINE tap. Yum. Honestly, girly crushes aside, it was incredible! The choreography was insane and I never thought I'd see a show and be utterly captured despite NO talking and NO singing. However, I AM very glad I wasn't sat on the front rows! They got utterly soaked. Pratically had buckets of water thrown over them! It was part of the dancing, not just the cast being mean but blimey! Didn't see that coming. I was wearing a nice dress as well, phew! Didn't get to meet the gorgeous Adam Garcia at the stage door unfortunately but we did have a lovely dinner at Leon on the Strand, (I LOVE THAT PLACE) and then grabbed a Yu-Foria (Yu-Foria and Snog are now my new obsession! Frozen yogurty goodness!!!! Healthy and barely any calories!) from Covent Garden and sat watching some live music for a while before we headed back to mine!

Monday we had a chilled out London day. We popped by the Gielgud to see if they'd taken the Hair posters down. I decided to be very cheeky and ask what they did with the posters. We had a lovely chat with the Front of House guy at the theatre who told us they all go to archive and he'd actually tried everything short of crying to get his hands on one!!! He said he was incredibly sad to see them go and it was so brilliant to chat to him! We had such a gossip! It made Milly and I feel so much better somehow! We then came out the theatre doors to see Jonathan Groff walking past us...without thinking we casually stalked him up the road for a while. He was on the phone so we didn't try anything silly! Haha! We stopped following him as we passed Snog and stopped off for another Frozen yogurt! Told you! Obsessed!!! I had one every day for three days! We reminsced about Hair, saw them taking the costumes and the carpets away and then eventually toddled home and went our separate ways! Amazing weekend though!

Peaceeee and love guys.

So, guess what. I've been to Hair again. That's 7 times now. Yes I'm well aware I have a problem. It's closing this time tomorrow though, so frankly I don't think 7 times was enough. I'm kidding. Kind of. If you've seen it, you'll probably understand the addiction, if not I understand that you won't. I wish you had seen it all those of you out there that haven't because it really is amazing, brilliant, fantastic and all those other kinds of words. Although really I don't think there are enough to describe just how much love it deserves and gives out. Peace and love people, peace and love.

Anyway, what I really came on here to talk about are books. Lovely papery books. Incidentally I nearly got buried under a pile of them earlier, but I won't hold it against them. It's my fault for having too many and not enough shelves. So any! I entered some book challenges, as previously mentioned. I've read 6 out of 8 romance novels so far and have yet to blog about any of them. I fail. So anyway, IT STARTS NOW. So if you're not interested in books, I'd avoid the next few posts, but if you have read the books or have any questions, please do comment! I'd love to get some discussion going!

Over and out,

with peace and love of course. x

TWO IN ONE WEEK. BLIMEY.

These are some of the photos from Spain. They're a mixture of mine and Soph's photos seeing as my camera decides to have sporadic fits and violently vibrates. No idea why .

We stayed at Finca Las Encinas in Las Juncares in Andalucia, and I can quite honestly say it was the best holiday I've ever been on! I am so so so lucky I won it! I still can't quite believe it! I won it from Philadelphia Soft Cheese!!! I'd never entered a comp like that before, but I thought oh I might get a cookbook, why not! AND THEN WON A GREAT BIG WHOPPING HOLIDAY. Hahah, so anyway! It just goes to show you've got to be in it to win it!

I would recommend the holiday to anyone! We learn to cook so much and such an amazing time. I've never had anyone try to make a stay so pleasurable as at Finca Las Encinas!

The Finca: http://finca-las-encinas.com/index.html

The Cooking course: http://www.golearnto.com/course/overview/1716/Mid+Week+Or+Weekend+Spanish+Cookery+Holiday

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Well hello there. I'm so bad at this! I've done so much this summer and just can't keep up blogging!

I'm currently in Shropshire with my parents. It's my 19th birthday on Sunday and about 40 guests arrive in the village on Monday of which we are hosting one! We're so unprepared, we've done nothing! We've hosted a couple of times though and it's normally a doddle. Luckily this time my best friend Soph can drive and has offered to help me keep her entertained for a couple of days!

The Sunday the French guests leaves, I will jetting (actually getting a train) off to Aberystwyth to stay with the afore mentioned Sophie's Nan (and Sophie too of course). It'll be my first little taste of the seaside this holiday! I can't wait! I absolutely love Wales. I grew up just over the English border so have always visited quite frequently! I love staying with Soph's Nan too as I haven't had a grandparent since I was 4 and only ever knew one, so it's really nice to have a taste of it. Soph's Nan is great and will probably be reading this....we call her Nana Facebook due to her facebooking and computer skills!

I've been to Hair a couple more times since I last posted I think. I love it too much. I have an addiction. It closes on the 4th of September though so I shall have to cope without it all too soon enough. It's just such a spirit lift everytime you see it. The highly attractive and awesome cast don't hurt either! How about some pictures?

Soph and I on our way to dinner with Caroline and Stace the other Hair attendees! That reminds me, we met so many lovely people in the queue that day! The girl next to me actually turned out to be one of my friend's sisters! There were 2 hilarious American guys who had flown from NYC to see this cast because they missed them at home & a crazy OAP from South Africa who was brilliant! I dropped my bacon sarnie on the floor and caused the intial ice breaking hilarity and it stemmed from there! The hours of queuing flew by and we were all chatting and laughing and planning to sit together by the time it came to booking our tickets! Which made the whole show that much more hilarious! We took up basically the front two rows and probably bemused the cast slightly by all being completely hysterical by the time it came to the show! It was so great! You meet the greatest people queuing for theatre tickets and Hair is probably the best for it, during the show too and dancing on stage too you get a really great community feeling that can be quite rare for some people in London!

Anyway, more photos, less philosophising.

Soph, Stace, Caro & Me outside at the interval, taken by one of the hilariously lovely gay american guys! (Yes, I make silly faces in photos, I don't even realise I'm doing it!)

Some on stage captures:

Caro's caption: "That's her normal face"

Frankly, I think I look like i'm going into battle!

No idea that photo was being taken. Caro's caption: "Concentration". IT'S HARD CLAPPING IN TIME OK.

STAGE DOOR

With the lovely Steel Burkhardt who plays Berger. I'm looking a bit crazed due to the police van that just whizzed past and unfortunately caused all four of us to squeal in Steel's face. Embarrassing. Oh well, he was lovely and not bad looking. *ahem*

With the irrepressibly lovely Andrew Kober!

and last but not least, with the brilliant Gavin Creel. Such an inspiration! Check out the charity he works with: http://www.broadwayimpact.com/

(PS check out my tan!)

There are also some very funny pictures of us outside the theatre, but no one needs to see them? What? Just one? Oh, alright then.

Hmmm, I need to upload all the Spain photos etc as well don't I? I think that needs a blog post to itself really!

I've also got loads of other random things to post about!

So I've just been searching through some pictures on flickr today and I thought I'd share them with you! I went to see Hair tonight and it's made me come over all peaceful and loving, not that I'm not anyway, but on with the pictures. Hopefully they'll make you smile and maybe think a little!

These are photos that cannot be posted but if you can click on the links you can see them! Some of them are amazing.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lutman123/3888299410/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/starpoke/4521136120/in/pool-onemillionpeacesigns

http://www.flickr.com/photos/starpoke/4521136120/in/pool-onemillionpeacesigns

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11925301@N03/4709693861/in/pool-575360@N25/

Typically British Challenge!

Ok! So I'm doing another one! I've got until the 31st of December to do it, so I'm going for the full 8!

Click on the picture to find out more!

2010 Summer Romance Challenge

So I have now entered into the realm of book challenges! I've never done one before, or infact heard of them before today! But there you go! I'm always up for a challenge!

To read about it click on the picture!

I shall be reading 8 romance novels before the 30th of September! It'd normally be easy for me, but I've strayed away from that genre a little bit recently! So let's see what happens!

Toulouse

So, I haven't got into this blogging business like I thought I would but I'm going to soldier on with it! I've had a lovely holiday so far and frankly the weather is far too nice outside to sit inside wittering away on here!

So the next leg of my hols began in Toulouse, it all went swimmingly...apart from the fact that the French air traffic control decided to strike just as we were about to leave and we ending up the first flight that didn't make it back to England. This was the first time I'd been abroad with only my friends, and frankly we panicked! It was so stressful! It was about midnight in France and the weather was horrible and we were all plagued by visions of us having to sleep on the street because we wouldn't be able to find a hotel by ourselves and already started thinking about getting the TGV to Paris to get the Eurostar home. Thankfully, it didn't come to that! Easyjet were amazing, got us on a flight the next day and room in a verrrry swanky hotel with breakfast and lunch all sorted for us! Shame we only got about 4 hours in the hotel and had to get up at 5 but it was all fun times anyway! It was all good really and a good chance to figure out what to do by ourselves without actually getting stuck anywhere to awful or anything! One thing that did ruin it however was, while we were all in the very stressed stage and Claire and I managed to get separated from Adele and Katy on the way to the booking desk. Claire and I decided to get in the queue and wait for them and luckily Adele and Katy found us after not too long, and slipping into the queue with us. The guy behind us decided to be an idiot and said something like " I think you'll find that's the back of the queue" (we were all about ready to cry at this point and did not want to end up on different flights or having to get taxis or hotels by ourselves) thankfully Claire saved us by saying we were travelling together and did he really want to split up four girls in a foreign country. I hope his wife who was stood next to him and didn't say anything was ashamed. What a fool. Thankfully the rest of the people on the flight thought so too and were all lovely and equally pissed off as us as the idiot continued to push his way to the front of the queue for everything. *headdesk*

ANYWAY. It didn't ruin our brilliant holiday! We had some great times and many hugely funny moments! I got photo-bombed on the first day, had many funny encounters with random French people and other tourists and to top it all off, Claire fell on her arse in the middle of the Capitol (Sorry Claire, it was funny though). Toulouse is a brilliant city. On the first night we arrived it seemed awfully quiet, which we eventually realised was down to the fact that it was raining and the Toulousan's (NOT Toulousians!) just don't do rain! Luckily it didn't rain again until the day we were meant to leave and was actually scorching the rest of the time! We did practically EVERY touristy thing available and visited every single market in the city! So many good breakfasts were had from the markets, I'm still craving the sweet goodness of a chocolatine or similar. It's just not the same in England. I keep popping to the French quarter of South Ken just to feel a bit French again!

Here are some photos! We took a heck of a lot!

Created with flickr slideshow.

Small yet great beginnings!

I'm going to Toulouse tomorrow! A lot of fun has already been had though!

One of the most amusing was going to see the filming of Graham Norton with Sophie, Milly & Claire....I can be spotted here: ...

We did some wandering around the Southbank, it was BOILING hot! Felt brilliantly summery, today not so much, it's been stormy all day! The rain was pelting down so hard earlier I decided to just stay home and slog on with the packing for Toulouse

By the London eye!

I love the elephants so much! > http://elephantparadelondon.org/

After the filming of the Graham Norton show, with Stephen Fry's hands! (Gosh my hair went crazy...)

The show was aired last night! Have a looky on iPlayer and see if you can spot me! I was pretty obvious right at the beginning...

I tell a lie actually, it wasn't my telly debut. I've been on Song of Praise three times. Don't ask.

Then on Saturday, Mum and I headed over to the Summer of Love festival at Carnaby St to see Hair performing. We were captured from behind! Haha!

The cast were fab as usual, and I particularly liked the part where Gavin took his shirt off. *ahem* ANYWAY.

On Sunday, I moved out of my uni halls room, sad to leave it as it was in Borough which in my opinion is possibly the best place in London to live! Was not sad to leave the bathroom behind though...

After lugging all my stuff out of the room and back home (you would not BELIEVE the amount of stuff I had manage to acquire!) I headed over to The Taste of Spain Festival on Regent's St with some uni friends! It was pretty good, a bit trade fair like, and we seemed to miss out on most of the free stuff. The Paella ran out just as we got to the front of the queue...I was honestly gutted.

Pretending we were in Spain...

Moi, with Rafael Nadal's shirt. Good times.

I don't know if I mentioned the Lyric Lounge I went to, but it was fab, and great to see all these guys again! and relive some Spring Awakening memories!

My dress was rather short....

Anyway, that's about it for now, I need to finish sorting my stuff out for Toulouse tomorrow! My uni stuff is ALL OVER MY ROOM. I can barely navigate it! Stress! Where did it all come from?! Pffttt, anyway! See you on the other side of Toulouse! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Some of the summery things I've actually already done...revision procrastination really.

So, really, it's sort of been Summer for a while now, although it doesn't officially start for me until Wednesday afternoon so I thought perhaps, as procrastination from my revision I'd do a little summary of what I've been up to so far!

There's been multiple trips to Hair (yes, I'm addicted, sssh), picnics in the park, and other various randomness, so I shall just give you the highlights, and if you want to see the rest, take a trip to my Flickr > http://www.flickr.com/photos/xcarlie_x/sets/72157624049691379/

I went to see Hair with my Mum, but can't remember whether this came before or after Shropshire! haha!

With my Mum, in the interval



With Gavin Creel at the Stage door!

In Soph's garden the morning after a movie night!

Soph has a beautiful garden

Back in London, on May the first some of my friends and I decided to queue for Hair day tickets!

We met Louie Spence walking down the street outside Pineapple Studios! Oh yes!

It was my second time seeing the show and it was incredible, and it was so great to see it with a group of friends and being able to dance on stage with them all at the end. That's Gavin Creel in the background!

With Tom, Stacie & Caro. The encore went on for absolutely ages!

Mid-dance

Caro and I with Steel Burkhardt who was on as Berger, and absolutely great and lovely!

Some stage door pics (in the pouring rain!):

With Tom and Steel, picture taken by Gavin Creel!



With Gavin



With Alison Case

Yep, Hair again! Third time! This time with Milly!

Looking very pale next to Will Swenson at the Stage Door. I had played his "Mom" that night...if you don't know what that means...see the show!

The next day, Milly and I toddled of to Covent Garden from some brunch and funsies. We had Macarons for the first time from the food market that was there. They were mango, lemon, raspberry, chocolate, caramel, green tea, pistachio, lavender and vanilla flavoured!

We then walked back past the Gielgud and spotted a bit of a photo opportunity!

There have been many revision picnics in the park as well! This is Hyde Park

Swan and Cygnets in St James' Park

I'll stop now!! I'm getting all mixed up with my pics! There'll be more writing next, I promise!