Archive for May, 2012
Review of The Altercation of Vira by Natalie Morales of Our Reading World
http://ourreadingworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/review-altercation-of-vira-by-kenechi.html
See all my other book reviews and interviews at The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
This is what the effects of a drought looks like – at least in my mind.
There have been recent cries of distress by the Environment Agency because the UK has supposedly been in a state of drought due to shortage of rainfall over a stretch of many months. I don’t mean to ridicule the situation but it’s hard to picture “fish gasping for air” when we just had the wettest April on record (complete with flood alerts) and following that, a pretty washed out start to May (although the last week of glorious sunshine has been great). I was surprised to find the EA’s website reporting that fish have had to be relocated from rivers and other similar measures have been carried out to protect wildlife. Who knew, eh? Unfortunately when I think of drought, I can’t help picturing landscapes that are devoid of any vegetation or water bodies. Famine and mass starvation come to mind. I know life must go on but I don’t quite see a country in drought being one where flower shows are still allowed to carry on (even though they say they have used water friendly plants this year). Maybe my view-point is a little naive. Letting things get really bad before declaring a state of drought would be seen as irresponsible by the public but I think a lot of people were as confused as I was when told there was a hose pipe ban as the rain drenched everything outside. Continue reading
Caeblogs is One today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can’t believe it has been a whole year since I wrote my first post “Got Green Milk”. It was a really trivial rave inspired by my mild obsession with Ryan Reynold but, oh, how far I’ve come. A lot has happened in the last twelve months – I turned the grand old milestone age of ehem, changed jobs and somehow found time to publish three e-books (ok, they weren’t all written within the year but it’s still a lot). 78 posts and over 8,000 hits later and I’m still sharing random rubbish with the world 🙂
Thanks to everyone who has supported this blog so far. There would be no point writing any of this if it wasn’t for my readers.
Let’s hope the coming year is even more fruitful than the last.
Anyone that has read my previous posts will know that I am not a big fan of cycling. Not in the slightest. In fact, I don’t really even know how to cycle (yeah, yeah, don’t laugh). Anyway, today I was pleased to discover the best form of cycling EVER – it’s such a brilliant idea that I might even try it. What is this brilliant discovery, I hear you say? I received an email from a colleague which I initially thought was a joke but as it turns out, comedy does exist in real life. Apparently the Pump House Gallery in London hosts a Monthly Do and this coming weekend, the event on the agenda is called Come and Play… , a weekend of alternative sports for all.
What’s so special about this event? Amongst other ingeniously pointless activities like Reverse Chess and The Austerity Olympics, there will be a Slow Bike Race. Yes, you read right. According to their webpage “The winner of Slow Bike Race will be the cyclist who takes the longest time to complete the course. Slowly travelling forward without falling off, riders compete to finish last over a course that extends 100m through Battersea Park. The rules on slow bicycle racing will apply: no feet down, no going backwards, Continue reading
Just because it’s May (my favourite month in the year – don’t all great things happen in May?), I’m taking 25% off my two YA fantasy novels, The Other Slipper (a fairytale retelling) and The Altercation of Vira at https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/trixycae.
To claim the discounts on Smashwords, use coupon code MY47Q for The Altercation of Vira and SD49T for The Other Slipper. Offer is valid till 31st of May.
I was interviewed on JeanzBookReadNReview and the feature is up at http://jeanzbookreadnreview.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/author-interview-kenechi-udogu.html
Hope you guys enjoy it!
I’ve finally finished the seven Potter books! It took four months (shame on me) but as most of the books were over seven hundred pages long, I think I did alright in the end. I initially tried to stick to reading them only at bedtime but the last book was too good to confine to my bedside. It probably helped that I was on holiday so I could read it round the clock (much to the annoyance of my companions). But I’m not writing this post to analyse my reading speed. I am also not writing it to say which book I liked best of the lot (Deathly Hallows, if you were wondering) – you can find my individual ratings and reviews on my Goodreads page review. I am also not writing this to harp on about how Harry annoyed me all the way to the end of the series (I think I already mentioned this in my initial post). What I’d like to discuss is what bugged me after I had read the last book.
I had a conversation with my brother about how the theme of The Hunger Games was a disturbing one (kids set loose in an artificial environment to fight to the death) and my argument was that the Harry Potter series was equally disturbing. Although touted as a series for children, I felt that the books quickly went from Middle Grade focus to Young Adult focus as it seemed that Rowling sought to match the age of her initial audience and let the dark theme of the stories evolve with them. If you approach the later books as Middle Grade stories, I imagine you would be equally shocked by the amount of dark thoughts, bouts of depression, death and maiming that was introduced. There was always the idea of death from the first book – Harry’s parents dying, the notion that Harry or Voldermot had to die for the other to live Continue reading
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