TTT - Books on my Summer TBR

It's time to link up with the Broke and the Bookish again!

I have a massive TBR pile next to my bed at the moment, but about half of them are rereads that I want to try and knock off before the end of the year. Still, summer starts in a week, so here are ten books that I really want to read over the next couple of months.

1. Every Word - Ellie Marney

This one is already sitting on my Kindle and I'm basically sitting on my hands to stop myself from reading it immediately. Because I know if I read it now, I won't be able to survive until March when book 3 comes out. So I'm going to try my utmost to hold out until January before I read this. Even though it might kill me... 

2. Dark Triumph - Robin LaFevers

Another one that's waiting on my Kindle. But I need to finish my library books first before I dive back into the amazing world of assassin nuns! 

3. The Piper's Son - Melina Marchetta

I absolutely ADORED Saving Francesca, and I was shocked when I found out recently that there was a sequel. I must read it immediately. 

4. Afterworlds - Scott Westerfeld

I've heard somewhat mixed things about this book, but the story within a story idea is pretty awesome, and I really need to check it out for myself.

5. Made for You - Melissa Marr

I've been LOVING young adult thrillers of late, and this one sounds pretty fabulous. 

6. Breaking the Rules - Katie McGarry

Two more weeks. TWO MORE WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKS.

7. A Thousand Pieces of You - Claudia Gray

I picked up a copy of this yesterday, and I can't wait to read it. You know, once I'm done with my library books...

8. The Shadow Cabinet - Maureen Johnson

I really enjoyed the first two books in this series, and the ending of the second one was pretty "WHAAAAAAAAT????"-worthy, so I'm pretty excited about reading book 3 early next year.

9. Masquerade - Kylie Fornasier

This one's been floating around my TBR list ever since it came out, and I really need to finally get hold of a copy and read it because it sounds FABULOUS. 

10. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride - Cary Elwes

I've seen a few people complaining about how this is just him telling random stories about things that happened on the set of The Princess Bride, and I'm all "WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU THAT SOUNDS AMAZING AND I NEED IT LIKE I NEED OXYGEN." So yeah. I want to read this book ASAP. 

What's on your list?

K xx

TTT - Books for your beach bag

It's time to link up with the Broke and the Bookish again!

The topic for this week is the top ten books that are in my beach bag this summer. Except there are a couple of small problems with this: 

1. It's the beginning of winter down here in the Southern Hemisphere, so the likelihood of me going to the beach is slim to none.

2. I really don't like the beach so even if it were summer, I probably wouldn't be going.

With those things in mind, I've changed the topic to my top ten books for YOUR beach bags! I've been working on several theories when developing this list:

1. The books one reads at the beach shouldn't be too brain-taxing because, you know, BEACH. You're going to be doing other stuff or getting distracted every ten minutes or accidentally falling asleep, and no one can keep track of all the serious or all the world building when they're at the beach.

2. The books should be fast-paced.

3. The books should not be a thousand pages long because no one wants to lug that around with them. 

SO. With those rules in mind, here are my suggestions.

1. Croak - Gina Damico

Reading a book about a teenaged Grim Reaper might seem a little dark for the beach. But this story is so fun and so entertaining that I can't resist putting it on here. I read it in about two hours, and you have the added bonus of famous people - like former presidents and authors - wandering around in the Afterlife. 

2. We Were Liars - E. Lockhart

You've gotta love a summery story with a big twist ending. The writing is pretty choppy, but I liked it. It's pretty short and a quick read. You'll either guess the ending before it happens, like I did, or be staring at the book in disbelief when the big twist happens, as everyone else I know seems to have done. 

3. My Life Next Door - Huntley Fitzpatrick

Oh my God, this book is adorable. But adorable with a side of SERIOUS REAL LIFE STUFF OMG. The supporting characters are all fabulous, and it's a total summer read.

4. Murder with Peacocks - Donna Andrews

I have an irrational love for this utterly ridiculous murder mystery. The characters are all completely fabulous, and while the mystery side of things may be a little dumb, I just don't really care that much because THE CHARACTERS ARE GREAT. How can you not love Meg, who's tall and decidedly not willowy and stuck spending her summer being maid of honour in three weddings simultaneously and generally dealing with her bonkers family?

5. Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

It may be non-fiction, but it's not the kind of non-fiction that requires a lot of brain power to read. It's a compilation of Bryson's newspaper columns focusing on different aspects of life in America, and because it's newspaper columns each "chapter" is only three to four pages. And then the topic changes to something totally different. Perfect for the beach! 

6. Outlander - Diana Gabaldon

This one is pretty chunky, but it's worth it. It may be a historical romance-y thing with a bunch of squicky moments, but it's such a cool concept and so well researched. And it's way more violent than I would have expected based on the description. Added bonus: it'll prepare you nicely for the miniseries that's airing later in the northern summer!

7. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton

Okay, so this DOES contain quite a lot of science-y stuff, which is a little brain taxing. But if you've seen the movie, you'll know the basic gist of it and you can skim over it if it seems too much like hard work at the beach. 

8. Anywhere - J. Meyers/Jinsey Reese (depending on which edition you have)

This book is so stinking cute. Newly graduated twenty-somethings falling in love while travelling around Europe over the summer? Uh, YES. 

9. Let's Pretend This Never Happened - Jenny Lawson

If you've ever read Jenny's blog, you'll know exactly what to expect. Mostly hilarity with the occasional dose of feels. As an added bonus, the chapters are sort of stand-alones, so if you pick it up and put it down a thousand times, it won't really matter that much. 

10. Mr Darcy's Bite - Mary Lydon Simonsen

Okay, hear me out. This book is pretty terrible. But it's the GOOD kind of terrible. The so-bad-it's-come-back-around-to-good kind of terrible. Basically, Mr Darcy is a werewolf. It's total fan fiction, and the author admits that. But it's the kind of fan fiction that makes you giggle non-stop and that's just plain fun. And what more could you want at the beach than giggle-worthy fun??

Will you be putting any of these in your beach bag this summer? Or are you, like me, trapped in the half of the world that's heading into scarves and gloves and open fires territory?? 

K xx

Going on safari

Okay, not really because I'm kind of poor. But a week or so ago, the parentals and I took Little Miss A to the closest you can get to going on safari without leaving Melbourne - Werribee Open Range Zoo! And because this is me we're talking about, I took my zoom lens along for the ride.

I would say more, but it's a thousand degrees in Melbourne at the moment and my brain has melted. So instead, I present you with some photos from our day at the zoo, because REASONS:

My personal favourite was the serval show, despite the small screaming child puncturing everyone's eardrums in the background, because it was just so stinking adorable:

Although a close second was seeing the brand new baby hippo from the safari bus, because OMG SO CUTE:

Photobombing ostrich

Have you been to an open range zoo and/or on safari? Which of these animals is your favourite?

K xx

20SB Blog Swap: Childhood Summer Vacation

Hey guys! I've got something a bit different for you today. 20SB are doing one of their regular blog swaps, and considering it's the middle of winter here, I figured that it was an EXCELLENT time to write about summer vacations from back in the good old days! 

I was lucky enough to be paired with Teacher Girl, whose blog I've been following for ages! She's got a great story for you guys about her favourite childhood vacation. Meanwhile, I'm over at her blog talking about Roald Dahl audiobooks and how watching the cricket led to child labour. You should check it out! Hell, y'all should check out her blog full stop, because it's great.

Teacher Girl is a 20-something anonymous life style blogger who writes at www.teachergirlblogs.com. There, she deals with everything from being a high school English teacher and freelance photographer, to dating and the uncertainty of life in her 20′s. She is sarcastic, funny, passionate, and kind-hearted. In her free time she loves writing, taking pictures, dancing, eating, sleeping, and traveling. Oh, and she might be a tad obsessed with her cat.

I can remember the last few days of school leading up to summer as a child. We would all complain about how hot the weather had gotten and what our plans were for the vacation. I was always instantly jealous when my friends spoke about their plans to travel and go to places far away. My family was poor, and we pretty much always stayed around home.

The summer I was twelve though, my mom sent me to New York, my birthplace (we left when I was seven), alone. I will always remember this summer for many reasons. It was the first time I felt “grown-up.” I flew on the plane alone, I made plans to stay with various friends’ families for a series of days, and I was completely responsible for myself.

For the first part of that summer I stayed with my mom’s best friend (and my former pre-school teacher) in the heart of the city. It was amazing because she went to work all day and I had her Manhattan apartment to myself. I explored the neighborhood of the Upper East Side and spent a ridiculous amount of time people watching from her window. After a few days, I was off to my friend Samara’s house, a penthouse apartment that took up the entire floor of an amazing building overlooking central park. Her rich mother kept us occupied with bagels and the computer game version of “Where in the World is Carmen San Diego,” which we played on Samara’s bright orange Macintosh desktop computer.

After Samara’s, I spent the last part of my time there with my childhood best friend Mia on Long Island. We went exploring each day, and it was in those wooded areas on the island, on an old abandoned mattress, that I smoked my first cigarette ever. I also watched MTV for the first time (my mother didn’t allow it) and fell in love with Rap and R&B music, “Mo Money, Mo Problems” becoming our summer anthem. Her mother took us to Manhattan, and we explored and went shopping. I purchased my first pair of non-kid size jeans, a size zero pair of light washed Levi’s, and some of my very first CDs. In the summer afternoons we played in her backyard, running through the sprinklers and catching fireflies in mason jars. I had never been happier in my life.

On my finals days in New York, I had one last endeavor planned: I was going to see my real father. I don’t remember how I got in touch with him, but I somehow made plans for him to pick me up from Mia’s house. In the car, I didn’t know what to say to this man that I hadn’t seen in 10 years, and so I made small talk, showing him my report card with straight A’s in the hope that he’d be impressed and proud. I asked him if he knew when my birthday was, convinced he must not have known since I’d never received a card or a gift, but he did know and that hurt more. He took me to his apartment and I met his then girlfriend (now wife and mother of their two kids) and I marveled at his big TV and nice car (we were broke and he never paid his child support because he always claimed poverty in court).

He took me to his brother’s house, my uncle, and I met him and some of my cousins. Then he took me to a movie, “Men in Black,” and we didn’t talk because you don’t talk in movies. It was then I realized that this man didn’t want to talk to me, because who takes their daughter they haven’t seen in 10 years to the movies. When the film was over, he gave me $20 and left me at the mall since Mia was meeting me there. I would only ever see him one more time after that moment and he never bothered to keep in touch.

A few days later I went home, forever changed by those summer experiences. I wore my jeans on the first day of seventh grade, and I felt powerful. I hoped in my heart that I would go back one day to live, perhaps for college, in the city that had changed me in so many ways.

Although it has been fourteen years since that summer and I have never lived in New York again (by the time I went to college it didn’t make sense for a lot of reasons for me to go there), I am still a frequenter of the city. My family and many friends still reside there, and every time I visit I am enchanted. I am home.

Thanks, Teacher Girl! I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did. I'm hoping 20SB does another swap soon, because I can't wait to read all the different stories that have come out of this one.

And for now, I'm off to see if I can find a version of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" online, because I loved the crap out of that game, and had completely forgotten about its existence until now I read TG's post!! 

K xx

ABC of travel

Yesterday, the lovely Deidre of Decoybetty tagged me in this. It's totally awesome and allows me wibble on about travel, even though I'm currently freezing to death in Melbourne. (HEY MELBOURNE - IT'S SUMMER, YOU NUMBSKULL!!! TURN UP THE TEMPERATURE!) Ahem.

A: Age you went on your first overseas trip. I'm pretty sure my first overseas trip was when we moved to Canada when I was four. The longest I've gone since then without going overseas was from October 1998 to September 2002.

B: Best (foreign) beer you've had and where. Yeah, I don't like beer. But there was a moment in Guatemala when it was so hot that my brain melted out of my ears and I decided that the only thing that would cool me down was beer. So I'm going to go with Brahva (not to be confused with Brahma) in Rio Dulce, Guatemala.

C: Cuisine (favourite). Mexican. Hands down. Although I'm also partial to Thai food. NOM NOM NOM.

D: Destinations, favourite, least favourite and why. Favourite? Either London or New York. Because history and museums and nerdiness, oh my! Least favourite? It's a toss up between Salem and Philadelphia. I found both of them disappointing. Or Quito, because I was by myself for five days and was too chicken to venture any distance from the hotel for fear of getting lost and then mugged. Yeah...

E: Event you experienced abroad that made you say 'wow!'. Flying over the Nazca lines in a teeny tiny plane.

F: Favourite mode of transport. I'm quite partial to trains. But mostly I tend to wander around on foot. Because it's free and I'm a cheapskate.

G: Greatest feeling while travelling. Seeing a new place for the first time.

H: Hottest place you've travelled to. Well, technically as I was living in Canberra at the time, it would be Melbourne on Black Saturday. It was around 47 degrees C in Melbourne that day. That's around 117 degrees F. (If you want to experience it, turn your oven on to the lowest setting, and open the door.) Other than that, it would be Guatemala, where it was a millionty degrees with something like 95% humidity. It was pretty unpleasant. Luckily, the amazingness of Tikal made me (partially) forget that it was hot and damp as a fat old man in a sauna. #gross

I: Incredible service you've experienced and where. The good people at Covermore travel insurance. They were AMAZING when Ness got sick in Peru. I've never been so glad to talk to a bogan with an ocker accent in my entire life.

J: Journey that took the longest. I think technically there was a trip home from Canada for Christmas one year when I was a kid that took around 48 hours door to door. But I don't remember any of it. So I'm going to go with flying from Melbourne to Lima. Or, more accurately, Melbourne to Sydney to Auckland to Santiago to Lima. My flight to Sydney left at around 8am and we arrived in Lima at 11.50pm Peru time. Which means it was about 4pm the following day in Melbourne. Fun times!

K: Keepsake from your travels. I seem to have a habit of not really thinking through what I buy overseas. Which is how I ended up buying a blanket in Peru during the first WEEK of a nine week trip. It's really hard to pack a pack around a BLANKET, as it turns out. Guess how many times I've used said blanket? NADA. Not my best purchase ever. What I *do* buy as keepsakes that are a good idea? Bookmarks. Because then every time you open your book, you go "awwwwww, good memories..."

L: Let down sight, where and why. Anything in Salem, Massachusetts. Epic waste of time.

M: Moment where you fell in love with travel. It was either one of the millionty museums I went to as a kid, or watching movies I shouldn't have been allowed to watch because we were on a plane and it was on a giant screen. That's how I saw Pretty Woman when I was four!

N: Nicest hotel you've stayed in. I have no idea what it was called, but when I was a kid, my dad went to a conference in Zurich. And the rest of the family tagged along for the ride. When we got to the hotel, it turned out they'd put us in the penthouse. Which had floor to ceiling glass windows giving us a panoramic view of Zurich. It was pretty awesome.

O: Obsession - what are you obsessed with taking pictures of while travelling? Landscapes. And museum objects. Every time I get home, my mum looks at my pictures and goes "BUT WHERE ARE THE PEOPLE?!?!" Whoops.

P: Passport stamps - how many and from where? In my current passport? 17. From the UK, the US, Peru, Machu Picchu, Ecuador, the Galapagos, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico and Thailand. If you add in two of my three old passports (I couldn't find my very first passport. SAD FACE.), there's a total of 41 stamps, representing 16 different places.

Q: Quirkiest attraction you've visited and where: The big anything. Australia is littered with giant fibreglass crap. Here, for instance, is the big Ned Kelly in Glenrowan.

R: Recommended sight, event or experience: A Broadway show in New York. It's totally worth every penny.

S: Splurge - something you have no problem forking over money for while travelling. Once in a lifetime activities. Whether it's taking a helicopter to the Grand Canyon, flying over the Nazca Lines, riding an elephant, or going to the 20SB Summit to meet up with a bunch of random internet strangers!

T: Touristy thing you've done. Stood with one foot on each side of the equator.

U: Unforgettable travel memory. The Inca Trail. It may nearly have killed me, I may have cried like a little bitch until Ness yelled at me to stop because I was going to make her cry too, and it may have resulted in me almost getting stuck using a squat toilet when my quads cramped up. But it was totally worth it.

V: Visas - how many and for where? Surprisingly few, actually. A student visa for the UK, a residential visa for the UK from when I lived there as a kid, and a visa for France from back when Australia was cranky at France over nuclear testing in the Pacific, and so they made Australians jump through a million hoops to get into France. If I could find my very first passport, there'd probably be a residential visa for Canada in there too.

W: Wine - best glass of wine you've had while travelling and where. Much like beer, I don't drink wine. But I did have some pretty spectacular cocktails at La Boca del Lobo in Quito, Ecuador! (And if you're ever in Quito, you should check it out. It's a seriously awesome restaurant!)

X: eXcellent view and from where. Okay, first of all? Writing 'excellent' like that made me cringey. Secondly, here's a Peruvian volcano, complete with a vicuña in the foreground.

Y: Years spent travelling. 28, more or less. Sure, it may not all have been internationally, and it wasn't CONSTANT travel. But I don't think there's a single year in my life when I haven't boarded a plane/gotten in a car to somewhere or other!

Z: Zealous sports fans and where. We're pretty sports mad in Melbourne. I mean, we have a public holiday for a horse race, for crying out loud! But I'm pretty sure that no one in Melbourne has ever had to barricade themselves into their house in case the soccer hooligans get out of control as a friend had to do when she lived down the road from the stadium. So I'm giving the prize to Leicester, where I did my study abroad.

Tag, you're it! I'm going to tag some of my wonderful bloggy friends because they always seem to have awesome travel stories!
Jorah Day from Terminally Beautiful
Sweeney from Sweeney Says
Vanisha from Vanisha's Life in Australia
Kat from On Oxford Time
Lauren from The Blog You're About to Read

K xx

30 Days of Photography - Day 11

So I spent the first two days of December alternating between "Wheeeeeeee, I don't have to blog today!" and "Wait, what did I *do* before I started NaBloPoMo???" I still don't know the answer to that question.

Anyway. Today's theme was 'something blue'. Obviously, if I had my way, there'd be a photo of me standing outside the TARDIS. Alas...

Instead, I present you with something that might be considered more purple than blue. But it's pretty and it's how you know that it's the start of summer in Melbourne:

The jacaranda trees start blooming. It doesn't last long, but it's one of the things I missed when I lived in Canberra. For some reason, no one has jacarandas up there. SO inconsiderate...

K xx

Challenge recipe 6: Mixed berry and mint sorbet

Given that this week marked the end of summer, I figured I should get this one out of the way before the weather cools down too much. Sorbet's hardly appropriate for cool weather!

Here's the book:

Yes, I own the Biggest Loser cookbook. But to be honest, I've only ever used the exercise parts of the book, not the recipes. Anyway, here's what you'll need:

It's pretty basic stuff. Start with 1.5 cups of water and 1/2 cup caster sugar. Dump them into a saucepan, thusly:

Heat until the sugar is dissolved, then bring to a boil. Once it's boiling, add in 3/4 cup of mixed berries.

Cook until the berries are soft - this should only take a couple of minutes:

Then take 1/2 cup mint leaves:

Turn off the heat, and add the mint leaves to the pan:

Leave the whole thing sitting around until it's completely cool. Then put a strainer over a smallish mixing bowl and dump everything into the strainer. Squish it through with a spoon - basically, you want to get the juice out of the berries without adding the seeds or the mint leaves to the sorbet:

Looks pretty gross, huh? Once you've squished out all the juice, you'll be left with this:

Pour it into a plastic container of some description:

Then stick it in the freezer overnight:

Attack it with a fork to fluff it into sorbet, and serve with a mint leaf on the top:

The verdict? Eh. I mean, it's tasty and all. And I'm sure it's lovely on a stinking hot day. But frankly, I'd rather have the berries with a little dusting of icing sugar. And it's probably healthier that way too.

That said, the mint goes well with the berries (although I think it would go better in a mojito...), and it's simple to make. So while it's something I can see sitting in the freezer until I need the Tupperware container, I might try it again during next summer and see how it goes in really hot weather. Until then, I'm sticking with 'eh'.

K xx

Challenge recipe 3: Chocolate mousse

Given the forecast hot weather (which has presented itself in fine form - it's been 38 degrees two days running now, and we're heading for "a cooler 34 degrees" tomorrow, according to the news), I felt that a cold dessert was in order to go along with the stupidly healthy salad that I posted yesterday. I had two cold desserts on my list - this, and berry and mint sorbet. But the sorbet is from the Biggest Loser cookbook, and that was just far too much healthiness for one meal! So I went with this calorie-laden naughtiness instead.

Let's start with the book, as usual:

And here's what you'll need:

Pretty simple stuff, huh? Start by breaking off a row of the chocolate (you need 200g of dark chocolate, btw), and putting it in the fridge to use for chocolate shavings later. Break up the rest of the chocolate, and put it in a bowl:

Then add half the cream - just over half a cup:

Place the bowl (oh yeah - you need to make sure it's heat proof!) over a saucepan of boiling water...

...and stir until all the chocolate has melted:

Try not to eat the whole lot with a spoon. It'll actually taste better once you've turned it into mousse. Surprising, I know! Leave it to cool for at least five minutes.

Meanwhile, separate three eggs:

Eeeeeeeeeuw... Kinda grody, no? When the chocolate mixture has cooled, add the egg yolks one at a time, and stir them in. And apparently I neglected to take a photo of this part. But frankly, I think you can handle mixing egg yolks into chocolate!

Meanwhile, put the three egg whites into a large bowl, and attack them with your handy dandy beater:

When they've formed soft peaks, add in two tablespoons of castor sugar, one teaspoon at a time.

Mix in between additions of sugar until dissolved. By the end of it, you've effectively got meringue:

But don't chuck it in the oven and make a pavlova. Instead, dump it into the chocolate mixture in two chunks:

Fold it through until it's smooth. Don't stir it - that'll knock all the air out of the egg white, and you'll just end up with some kind of weird-arse chocolate soup... And that would be bad...

Pour it into ramekins. The recipe claims that it makes four 2/3 cup servings. But I divided it between six containers, and that much was tons as far as I'm concerned!

Cover the ramekins in Glad Wrap, and put them in the fridge for at least three hours, ideally longer. When you're ready to serve the mousse, pour the rest of the cream into a small bowl and beat the crap out of it. But not too much, or you'll end up with butter. And that would be bad...

Place a dollop of cream on top of the mousse, then grab that remaining bit of chocolate and go at it with a vegetable peeler. Et voila - chocolate mousse!

The verdict? Okay, this is the FREAKING BOMB. It's light and fluffy, and deliciously rich. It's got a slight note of bitterness from the dark chocolate, and apparently you can add orange zest or a dash of liqueur to the recipe for some extra tang. It's insanely bad for you (if you make four servings as per the recipe, each serving contains over 600 calories...), but GodDAMN, it's worth every single hour of torture at the gym it'll take to work it off.

And best of all? It's a cinch to make, and is bound to impress. Give it a go - and if you try the orange zest/liqueur approach, let me know how it turns out!

Enjoy!! (No, seriously. This one is actually worth trying at home...)

K xx