I’m always quite wary about posting sponsored content on my blog. My stance on it though is: if it fits with something that I find relevant for this blog, I’m happy to write about it. In this case it’s a campaign for the British Red Cross and it came at exactly the right moment.

A crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

Two weeks ago when visiting my sister’s place, my dad fell down from the top of the staircase. The stairwell was narrow, steep and high and my dad pretty much bounced backwards head first down the stairs. Earlier this year I had done first aid training, but at that moment I blanked out and couldn’t remember what to do, besides calling an ambulance which my sister’s boyfriend was already doing. I kept going over all the things I had learnt, but it’s stressful when it’s family. After the ambulance arrived, it took my dad to the hospital, and we spent the rest of the day there waiting for test results to come back. Everything turned out fine, except for some small broken bones in my dad’s hand.

Everything turned out fine, but a crisis can happen anywhere, and to anyone.

The British Red Cross help more than a million people in the UK every year. They support them in emergencies, provide care in the home, teach life-saving first aid skills, and do a ton of other services. I’m glad I did the first aid training course; even though I wasn’t that helpful this time around with my dad, who knows when what I learnt might come in handy.

If you want to learn more about the British Red Cross or more about their first aid courses, check out their website.

Disclaimer: this article is sponsored by the British Red Cross. All thoughts and opinions are my own though.

Yay, it’s proper TV season again! All my lovely shows are back from hiatus, plus we’ve gotten a couple of new interesting shows. In total there are actually over 20 new shows, but only a handful of them seem worthwhile or promising. I’ll review those once I’ve watched more episodes; I always find you need to give a new show a 3-6 episodes to find its feet.

Today though I’ll review the new seasons of 4 of my current favourite shows: Once Upon A Time, Castle, How I Met Your Mother and Grey’s Anatomy. Obviously: beware of spoilers for previous seasons. I’ll list under the titles which episodes of this season I’ve seen so far (and might potentially spoil).

Once Upon A Time

S2E01 Broken, S2E02 We Are Both, S2E03 Lady of the Lake

It took a while for me to get into the first season of Once Upon A Time, but it ended up being one of my favourite shows last year. I’ve been waiting patiently all summer to see how the writers would deal with the Storybrooke characters getting their memories back and how they’d deal with Regina and Rumpelstiltskin. I was a bit disappointed what that is concerned by the season opening; it all felt a bit too easy. I did love the twist in that first episode though where the “flashback” scenes turn out not to be flashbacks at all. Plus it’s interesting having Emma and Snow in the fairy tale world, trying to get back home and dealing with being mother and daughter.

I think my only problem so far with this season is that there are now quite a lot of characters and they all have to share screen time. For instance, we haven’t seen Mr Gold and Belle since the first episode, and Regina was barely in the third episode. Besides that I don’t like the new characters Mulan and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty). I’m hoping they’ll become a bit more interesting once we get some more dedicated fairytale flashbacks about them. Fairy tale/Disney characters I wish they’d add: Ariel (although not sure how they’ll do mermaids in our world) and Simba (just to see how in the hell they’ll pull that off).

Castle

S5E01 After The Storm, S2E02 Cloudy With A Chance of Murder, S2E03 Secret’s Safe With Me, S2E04 Murder, He Wrote

Caskett! We finally get to see Castle and Beckett as a couple, and so far it’s been awesome. They’re great together and the chemistry between them has only gotten better. I was scared to see how the show would deal with it (so many other shows that relied on the “will they, won’t they” angle have failed miserably), but the writers have done a great job. The murder-of-the-week plots are predictable as ever, but who cares, it’s still a lot of fun.

How I Met Your Mother

S8E01 Farhampton, S8E02 The Pre-Nup, S8E03 Nannies, S8E04 Who Wants To Be A Godparent?

I can’t believe I’ve been watching How I Met Your Mother for 8 years now… It makes me feel old. To make me myself feel even older, consider this: How I Met Your Mother started after Friends finished, which had 10 seasons…

How I Met Your Mother is always a bit hit and miss for me; some episodes I love and laugh so much, others are just boring and not funny at all. I really enjoyed the first two episodes of this season, and am still so curious to see who the mother turns out to be. I know it’s a bit of a gimmick, but I’m still enjoying it. The latest two episodes though I didn’t like. I’m not sure if that’s cause they’re focusing on Marshall’s and Lily’s now baby-filled life (which I couldn’t care less about) or if it’s just bad writing.

I’m also curious to see if this will be the final season and we’ll finally find out who the mother is. The writers previously have said that this will be the season where we find out the mother’s identity and that if they get renewed they’ll do something interesting for the season after that. One idea I quite liked was a season full of flashbacks from the mother’s perspective.

Ooh, I can’t wait to read these books! Legend came out earlier this year, and after reading some great reviews, it went straight on to my WANT list. Sadly I started a self-applied book buying ban: I’m only allowed to buy books from ongoing series I already own, until I’ve read 50 books from my over a 100 ToBeRead pile. But getting review copies from lovely PRs doesn’t count, right? I’m not breaking the rules: I didn’t buy the books!

Anyways, I’m really excited to get these books. Prodigy is also my first ever ARC (Advanced Reader Copy). It will be coming out in January and it’s awesome that I’ll be able to read it early!

Here’s the blurb for Legend:

What was once the western United States is now home to the Republic, a nation perpetually at war with its neighbors. Born into an elite family in one of the Republic’s wealthiest districts, fifteen-year-old June is a prodigy being groomed for success in the Republic’s highest military circles. Born into the slums, fifteen-year-old Day is the country’s most wanted criminal. But his motives may not be as malicious as they seem.

From very different worlds, June and Day have no reason to cross paths – until the day June’s brother, Metias, is murdered and Day becomes the prime suspect. Caught in the ultimate game of cat and mouse, Day is in a race for his family’s survival, while June seeks to avenge Metias’s death. But in a shocking turn of events, the two uncover the truth of what has really brought them together, and the sinister lengths their country will go to keep its secrets.

I know dystopian teenage dramas is our current wizard/vampire/whatever-else-has-been-a-teenage-fandom, but I like the sound of Legend. Plus what the description doesn’t mention is that it’s also a loose reimagination of Les Miserables… And how can you resist an opening like this:

Have you read Legend already? Excited for Prodigy?

Legend is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.89 and on Amazon.com for $11.98. Prodigy is out on January 29th and can be preordered on Amazon.co.uk for £6.29 and Amazon.com for $12.23.

Closet (available at Dorothy Perkins) often does dresses that suit me; cool prints, flattering style and just so pretty! I’ve got my eye currently on two of their print dresses and I’m very tempted to get them.

The first is a mustard geometric print dress (£52 on the Dorothy Perkins site). It’s such a cool colour combination plus the print is awesome!

The second is a black and white dogtooth print (£48 on Dorothy Perkins). I really like the contrast print on the bottom, it really makes the dress more interesting.

This isn’t fair! Why do Threadless keep on making awesome tees that I have to own?! The Nightmare Before Christmas is one my favourite movies; I try to rewatch every year near Halloween. Threadless recently held a design challenge to create a tee based on the movie, and the chosen designs are so awesome.

My favourite is The Starry Nightmare one (although the t-shirt photo is nicer than the normal image. Sidenote: why is girl in the photo wearing polka dot leggings?? No. Wrong. Go back to start.). I’d love to have a print of this on my wall; can you imagine this one alongside a print Van Gogh’s Exploding TARDIS? Which tee is your favourite?

The Starry Nightmare

The Nightmare

Jack & Friends

PeekaBoogie

Oogie Boogie

And Sit Together, Now and Forever

Making Christmas

Jack Skellington’s Christmas Plan

Perpetual procrastinators, turn away now! Atari and Internet Explorer have worked together to create reimagined versions of old Atari games, all playable from within the browser. This sounds like fun…

Last Wednesday I got invited to the Atari Arcade event in Shoreditch, to come and experience the new reimagined games. They had set up 4 of the games (Breakout, Pong, Asteroids and Centipede) on tablets, touch screen TVs and a Surface table. In total they’ve got 8 games released so far on the Atari Arcade site: Pong, Breakout, Missile Command, Lunar Lander, Combat, Centipede, Asteroids and Yars’ Revenge.

It was great playing the games, but so much trickier than I remembered! Although that could also have to do with them being touch controlled; using a controller or joystick or anything with buttons is much more what I’m used to for these games. They had one proper arcade machine setup with Centipede, and later on in the evening had a short competition to win a tablet. I’m proud to say I became second (no prizes alas for 2nd place)!

Besides those Atari games though, IE also revealed they had worked together with the Contre Jour creators to bring that game to IE. I hadn’t actually heard of the game before, but the game looks gorgeous and is the type of game I could easily get addicted to! If you like Cut The Rope and those type of games, Contre Jour is a game for you!

What do you think of the Atari Arcade games? What’s your favourite game?

Yep, I’ve jumped on the Instagrom bandwagon. I never really “got” it before, but since getting an iPhone it just makes it so much easier to share and prettify your photos. Here are a couple of cool shots I took the past 2 weeks:

I’ve been struggling lately with my movie reviews. I haven’t written a proper long review since June. Which I think is mainly cause I’m watching more now, wanting to write up each and every movie and then failing to do so for all of them. So I’m going to do things a bit differently from now on: I’ll do short combined 2 or 3 movie reviews. They’ll be shorter, but hopefully at least I’ll now find the time to write about them. Later this week I’ll do one last big mini review post, with all the movies I’ve seen since June. Let’s see if this works…

This week’s movies are Looper and Ruby Sparks. They’re both still currently in cinemas, so catch them if you can!

Looper

I love a good time travel story. In Looper, time travel is invented in 2074, but only criminals use it to send people they want disappeared back into the past, where they get killed and disposed of by “loopers”. Loopers get payed a lot, but eventually have to “close the loop”: kill their future selves. When Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) recognizes his future self (Bruce Willis) as his victim, he hesitates and lets him escape.

Looper is one of those sci-fi movies that I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to watch over and over again. It’s got a great story, awesome cast and pretty cinematography visuals. I was expecting it to be a little bit more twisty, even though I’m already struggling with getting the timelines straight in my head. It makes sense… I think… more twistiness would have only complicated it more.

I loved the visual style of Looper. In the first half of the movie, they show a gritty, yet stylish picture of the future. I quite liked that a lot of the future felt grounded in reality; time travel aside, the world of Looper seems plausible. I also like how subtle the use of prosthetics was to make Joseph Gordon-Levitt look like Bruce Willis; it’s only when they were sitting opposite each other that I noticed it.

I’m very tempted to see Looper again in the cinema, especially cause the director (Rian Johnson) has released a theatrical commentary track that you can download on Soundcloud. Have you seen Looper yet? What did you think of it?

Ruby Sparks

Ruby Sparks is not your typical movie. It’s also not easy to pinpoint which genre it is. It’s part romantic comedy, part drama, with a pinch of fantasy. If I had to compare it to something, think Stranger Than Fiction meets 500 Days of Summer.

Calvin is a 20-something writer who wrote his first and only successful novel as a teen. For years people have wanted to see his second book, but Calvin has been struggling with writer’s block. Finally he breaks through it by creating a character he can’t stop writing about: Ruby Sparks. One week later Ruby appears in his house; breathing, walking, talking and claiming to be his girlfriend…

I loved Ruby Sparks. It’s a unique combination of romance and weirdness. Calvin creates this girl who should be perfect for him, but then notices all these little flaws and realizes he has the power to change her. Ruby is his creation. It takes the concept of being able to change something about the person you’re dating to a whole other level. What would you do if you had that type of power?

I also liked how it didn’t try to explain how and why everything was happening. I think it would have felt cheesy very quickly if they did, and it didn’t feel as if the movie needed it. I like how it all remained unexplainable and yet acceptable.

Both Looper and Ruby Sparks are currently in cinemas. Will you go see them? Have you seen them yet? Let me know below in the comments what you thought of them!

Nathan Fillion is such an adorable huge geek:

It’s weird how sometimes a book series grows on you. I initially only started the October Daye series cause I had read Feed (also Seanan McGuire but written as Mira Grant) and wasn’t that impressed by the first book. It was fun and okay, but nothing that screamed out at me “MUST READ NEXT BOOK”. I had already bought the 2nd and 3rd books second-hand though, so I thought why not go on with it and see what I think. By the end of the third one, I was at the “ooh, I wonder what happens next” stage. Now with the 6th one I’m totally at “AWESOME. MUST READ NEXT BOOK. WTF. I HAVE TO WAIT A YEAR?!?”.

So Ashes of Honor is the 6th book in the October Daye series. If you haven’t read any of them, it’s an urban fantasy series about the half fae, half human private detective October “Toby” Daye. Toby is an awesome, kick-ass heroine, who only gets more awesomer as the series progresses. If you like urban fantasy, I can highly recommend this series (and as usual you should start at the beginning of the series with Rosemary and Rue… you also shouldn’t read further cause I’ll spoil some stuff from previous books).

In this latest installment Toby has to find the changeling daughter of fellow knight Etienne, a daughter he didn’t even know existed before she went missing. To make things worse the missing changeling also has the power to rip apart the world of Faerie, if Toby can’t find her in time. On top of that, trouble is brewing in the Court of Cats and Tybalt may need Toby’s help…

I thoroughly enjoyed Ashes of Honor. It’s yet again a Daye book that has Toby track down a missing kid, which she does with the supernatural help of the Luidaeg, but it still feels fresh somehow. The usual Toby supporting characters are all there: Quentin, Tybalt, May, the Luidaeg, Walther, Raj, Sylvester and Luna, plus we get to revisit some of characters from Tamed Lightning. Despite so many characters though the book doesn’t feel overcrowded; everyone is there for a reason.

It’s been a year since Connor died and Toby is still recovering from it. I’m glad though that McGuire has skipped forward a year, giving Toby enough time to deal with her loss, but not making the readers have to go through every single bit of it. At the start of the book Toby is still very much grieving and pushing people away, but throughout the book she slowly opens up again and let people in.

I love Tybalt and in this book he really gets to shine. I’ve always preferred him over Connor (honestly I was quite glad to see him go in the previous book) and Toby and him are great together. I quite like how McGuire is handling their relationship and so want to read more about them.

Duchess Riordan has been hinted as a potential villain in previous books and I’m glad we finally get introduced to her. I’m hoping we’ll see more of her, even though I’m not sure how that can be arranged after her fate at the end of this book. Who am I kidding? It’s Faery. Of course that will be possible. Plus she’s not the only character who I think we’ll see again.

I can’t believe I’ll have to wait almost a full year till the next comes out. McGuire has said she DAW have purchased 10 October Daye books in total from her, so there will still be at least 4 more books. The next Chimes at Midnight will be out next September. In the mean time, we can look forward to her next Incryptid book, Midnight Blue-Light Special, which will be released in March 2013.

Ashes of Honor by Seanan McGuire is available on Amazon.co.uk for £4.95 and on Amazon.com for $7.99.