Surrender by Rhiannon Paille

Quick Summary, the main character is a girl who feels out of place in the world but when she goes to a festival where she meets a boy at a waterfall who also feels out of place and they immediately fall in love. They go their separate ways and both continue their individual training exercises with their mentors. Kaliel's training is mostly about memorizing flowers and plant names but she'd rather be in the water, talking to the merfolk (which no one else is able to do). She can also talk to trees and animals. His character has more elemental powers, but he has no control over them. Theoretically, if he lets go of the tight hold that he has on him, then they will come naturally to him. Every time he does this though, disaster strikes. They are both sent for more specialized training after going to the Great Oak and learning the parables that will dictate what their purposes in life are to be. Conveniently, they are sent to the same place, figure out who they really are, and must choose to stay together or separate and save the world. 

Well, I got about 3/4 of the way through this book before it expired and I am hooked. I really would love to find out what happens to the hero and heroine. While their relationship is a little over-exaggerated in my point of view, I love this new world that Paille has created. I want to know more about it and I want to know more of the history that it alludes to. If there was a history book available to describe this world, I would snatch it up! The Lands Of Men seem so alluring, I want to know what goes on there and how it is different from the island of Avristar that the characters are living on. The Brotherhood also seems intriguing and I feel like they will come back into the story later, or there will be a reflection back to their being important in the history of the last (1st?) epic battle for land.  Overall, while the love story did annoy me a bit, but that's just because I'm not the sentimental type, I give this book at least 3.5/5 stars. Worth a read, but until I'm able to buy it or borrow it and finish it, I won't be able to tell if it's worth buying or not. 

Free Kindle Download

While I'm on here, Bernard Mendillo would like to offer to get a FREE KINDLE DOWNLOAD of his book FOOTBALL, A MEMOIR”
http://tinyurl.com/KindleFootball-Mendillo

Here's a review of it (although not by myself as I'm in busy college student m

ode the moment!):
FOOTBALL, A MEMOIR is funny, nostalgic, heartwarming and uplifting. It’s about my youth playing touch football in the street—with curbstones and sewer caps for boundaries and my brother telling me to “go deep.” It’s about becoming a Giants fan for life in 1958, after watching the Greatest Game Ever Played on black-and-white TV in my parents’ living room. Today, I revel in the angst of remaining a Giants fan while living in the heart of Patriots land. And then, of course, there is the redemption that was the miracle of Superbowl XLII


So go check it out ya'll! (I'm a Giants fan among a few other teams, so as a fan, I just had to agree to post this.)

Storytime! I have a short story to share with ya'll!

Okay gang, I know I haven't posted an actual review in a while... Maybe I'll post for the couple of books that I've just finished reading for class. I'll work on something for them! In the meantime, remember that last post about the story that I was writing for a class and needed help on? Well here's the finished product!!!

Click to delve into the story via my LiveJournal account.


I hope you all like it, please leave a comment if you read it on here or on LiveJournal. I don't care if they're good or bad comments, but constructive criticism is always nice. Please keep in mind that this writing style is not very high on the Lexile range, it's just meant to be a humorous and slightly fictionalized account of what my April Fool's Day was like this year. I had to change some of it to make the story better or less dramatic, and others to protect names of people involved.

Nevertheless, I hope it provides enjoyment.

I Need YOUR Help!

So I wrote a new story for my Fiction Writing class and I need a few comments and/or ideas.  Help? (hint, start with the title, it needs one - and the ending, is it weird?)

Click Here to be Directed to the Story

Thanks in advance everyone! I'd appreciate any comments! The story actually happened, so it's a little hard to get perspective to make it a good FICTION story.

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum isn't the normal sort of book that I review on here, but I've been hard pressed to find time for books that I didn't have to read for a class lately. This book is a crime novel set in Germany - it's very interesting because within the first chapter, the main character has shot a journalist (who apparently deserved it) and has confessed to her boss and then to the police. We also get the gist that she is wanted for a crime that she seems to be innocent for. Then there is another body, but when asked about his death, an alibi is provided from her, despite her words "Why not him too?". The words puzzle the inspector because her response is a question, not an admission of guilt. While the story is written in a very journalistic way, the story is very interesting, especially for a book that was required for a class. If you don't go out and read the book (Contact me, you can borrow my copy!), then at least watch the movie with English subtitles.
(The villain of the movie looks like the older, darker, and longer haired version of my friend Gabe W! I think it's the pretty eyes...)

No Hate, Just Love

Alright so today is speak out against bullying day and as a little kid who got bullied and as a woman who still lets people push her around occasionally until I get tired of it, I wanted to speak out. Bullying sucks. While it wasn't a huge problem at my school when I was growing up, it still existed. Heck, my parents had so many brothers and sisters that you KNOW they know what bullying is - sibling rivalry is definitely a form. However, that kind doesn't really bother me as much because who doesn't like to one-up their sibling occasionally to prove who's smarter, who's faster, stuff like that.
The kind of bullying that bothers me most is playground bullying - most likely because that's what happened to me. There was a guy who used to push me off the swings every day and taunt me relentlessly. He moved away in fourth grade (he might have gotten taken away?) and things improved a lot as his friend didn't see any reason to bother me now that the other guy wasn't there to start it. Either way, I remember crying about it in 1st or 2nd grade when I got home from school eating a snack while my parents were making supper.
The point is, a lot of kids have it way worse than I did and we should speak up for them. Poor kids, this is the age they need to learn to be confident about themselves! That's where it starts! So who's with me? It's time to make a pledge. Stop the violence!

Along with that, it's V-Week at Wartburg College. V-Week is about stopping the violence against women. V-Week is about vaginas. It's about learning to respect other women's vaginas. It's about acknoledging that rape, abuse, and mutilation does happen, and about finding a way to make it stop.
V-week = Pussies Unite!

This is the 15th year of V-Week and as a cast member of The Vagina Monologues, I urge you to come out and see a performance (they're nation-wide) so that you an learn these women's stories. Several of them are very funny, a few a pretty sad, but all of them are real and deserve your attention, male or female. Here's a link to the Wartburg College site:

http://www.wartburgcircuit.org/Circuit-Features/Past-Features/V-Week.aspx



http://kcneal.blogspot.com/2012/01/speak-out-against-bullying-on-feb-3.html

Click This Link to join the 100 books in 2013 challenge

(the title is the link)