Nimavenl - Nicole's Random Ramblings

Being of the Field by Traci Harding My rating: 5 of 5 stars There are some authors whose next book you simply must read no matter what, because you enjoy their work and the way their minds work. Traci Harding is one of those authors. I've been a fan of her writing and her thinking for over a decade now (fourteen-ish years? Seriously? Wow!) and while sometimes a character makes me wonder if maybe they're not too perfect (and good at almost everything to boot!), it is the story that keeps me coming back for more with every book. Traci Harding takes her readers on an amazing adventure that I hope will continue through many more books, stories, characters, countries, worlds and universes. I enjoyed getting to know Taren, Lucian, Zeven and the rest of the crew of AMIE. They were new characters yet felt like old friends - books two and three explained why that was, exactly. I actually squealed and couldn't stop smiling upon realising where these books were taking me. The ideas t...

Vision in Silver by Anne Bishop My rating: 5 of 5 stars I very much enjoyed this book and loved reading more of the adventures of the well-written characters in this series. Meg's development was very interesting to read about; getting to know more of the Others was lots of fun and the way the blood prophets learn to find their place in the world made me both happy and sad. I would love to live in this world and get to know the many Others who inhabit it. The way the Others see the world makes so much more sense than the way the humans live and makes me wish humanity in the real world thought more like the Others in this book. Loving the land and living in harmony with nature and each other makes so much more sense than attempting to destroy, dominate and control both the planet and other beings. I wrote this last month about the same book and thought I'd include it in this review: Brilliant. Awesome. Amazing. Heart-wrenching. Sweet. I love Anne Bishop's work and the intri...

Dracula by Bram Stoker My rating: 4 of 5 stars I tend to enjoy books featuring magic, vampires, were-animals and supernatural creatures. Not because I'm such a big fan of horror and gore, but because I like reading about worlds similar to yet different from our own where people live mostly as we do, however with several huge differences. Dracula did not disappoint - I enjoyed the story and am glad I finally read this classic. Written as a series of diary entries (and letters and a newspaper article) by the main characters, Dracula is a gripping tale and kept me reading right until the very last page. I like the Diary format as it allows one to really see events from a character's point of view; to get into their heads and experience events as they lived them. Even though I knew (in general lines) what would happen in the story, I still wanted to read a very detailed diary entry of how those events would play out, simply to experience the book to its fullest. This book w...

While checking some information online that had been going through my head for most of the morning, I came across a reference to the TV programme "The Big Bang Theory". I'd seen a few episodes of it now and then, however never really got into watching it regularly. I'd been thinking about a friend of a friend of a friend who has a child with hearing problems. I'd never met the child and only ever met his mother twice, however we talked about the hearing problems when we met due to my background in (studying) Early Childhood Education. We talked about possible causes both physical and psychological and she then went on with her life and I with mine. It's a while ago by now, however something I read recently reminded me of this woman and her child. Not knowing much about either the mother or the son and having no idea as to whether the hearing problems were physical or psychological, we only discussed general options. I decided that to satisfy my curiosi...