Day 002: The seductive flicker (Challenge100)

The fire was getting closer, licking away at the fuse, creeping closer to the stores of explosives bottled nearby.

The crowd rallied, they had been waiting for the moment of explosion for months. They had rallied and screamed, and they had organised everything, all we practically did was turn up.

Some members panicked last minute and hadn’t stayed to see it through, giving one excuse or another why they didn’t want to be here.

Of course it was a big thing but that’s what we wanted really, something big… something to remember.

Seconds passed, the damp autumnal air had slowed the fuse; the usual fast flick of light now crawled along the line, seducing the damp concrete as it danced towards the dirt.

The flame disappeared; a breath was all we had to wait until the sound of the drum-splitting explosion escaped through the clinging air. We watched.

Partners grabbed each other’s arms.

Parents held their children close.

A chorus of gasps, orchestrated by the dance of the colours overhead.

Once the colours stopped, the crowd erupted for more.

A bonfire night to remember.

DAY 001: Mr Lego

Hiding behind some of the rust covered machinery, the pain didn’t appear for a minute at least; it was the swell of oozing warmth that drew his attention to the hole which had formed in his stomach. How did he get here?

They came in the middle of the night, all in black, professional and hired.

Answer phone was all he received after glancing at the blood covered images of his Abbey that now filled his phone. It had to be a joke he begged myself.

His house phone rang with clarity.

“You want her alive yes.” The voice was cloaked with the familiar hum of a voice changer; he could almost make out the brand.

“Of course.” Hands shaking but his voice remained calm.

“Bring the drive.” What the hell was he on about? What drive?

“Is she okay?” She was kidnapped by psychotic monsters, of course she wasn’t okay.

Abbey’s voice echoed through the phone. “Mr Lego, McGee.” Her voice muffled against the sound of restraint once more.

“Where?” They rung off the address of some warehouse where they’d both be shortly killed. 

He toyed with the Lego key-ring before realising which key it held. The key to the gun box hidden in the wardrobe, only Abbey new it was there. Now he knew.

He was expected, so of course they didn’t lock anything. Sneaking in through a back window McGee could see everything, everything except Abbey. The glock fit his hand well, only Abbey knew that he had taken a lesson or two on how to use it.

He didn’t want to kill any of them, but he wasn’t about to let them kill Abbey, his Abbey. One at a time they fell, kicking their semi-automatics out of reach before moving on to the next; years of playing spy games were finally making themselves useful. Pausing only to reload. Often. Apparently his aim was better in the game, but still.

So now he stood, with a hole in his stomach staring at the man who took his Abbey; his face rougher than his voice sounded. Nothing about him looked like a hit-man, he wanted to be professional but he knew this was a game for bigger fish and was regretting every move.

“Braver than I thought.” He started, going on about his stupidity, McGee couldn’t focus on a word he said as the moment sank in, Abbey was tied to a chair but the gun pointed at her temple wasn’t. He talked for too long. As he turned his back, McGee fired.

As McGee reached his Abbey, stumbling and bloody; without even untying her, he grabbed her face between his hands and planted his lips on hers. Her shaking stopped, and even with her hands bound behind her, she reached for him. Now she really was his Abbey.

Mr Lego wasn’t even the drive.

Are we addicted to buying books?

As a psychology student I have studied psychological addiction and although addiction can bring images of drug and alcohol abuse, it is important to remember that you can be addicted to just about anything... and something I have found crossing my mind more and more over the last few months is whether we are becoming a community addicted to buying books? Lets have a closer look at addiction and see whether the patterns can be found in some of our book buying habits (as noted from the 'booktube' community and other reading related blogs- no specific people or persons).

 

Firstly many people will be wondering what I mean by addiction? Definitions alter depending where you are from, whether you are looking at medical definitions, psychological definitions or general knowledge definition...

 

 

As you can see from the definition above, there are levels to addiction and some book buying habits can easily fit these; when comparing some book buying habits in the booktube community it is clear that they are enthusiastically devoted to buying books (rooms dedicated to books... buying multiples of the same book... not being able to stop buying books).

Now some members of our growing community buy books when they need to read them, reading the books they own and then buying more; can we classify these as addicts? In comparison to those who buy books when they have hundreds left to read, we cannot; they buy with perceptive 'necessity' and not for the sake of buying books. Those who buy books when they have many left to read can be classified as hoarding, collecting and becoming emotionally attached to objects;  buying books when they have little or no room, financial supplies, because 'its a good buy' or because its an author that you have loved before.

So my question is, are the book buying habits of those we idolise online damaging our ideas  on how many books we should own? This question first crossed my mind when I wanted to post my first book haul and felt really bad and stupid for only having three books to haul; comparing that to the 20+ that those in the booktube community haul on a regular basis made my haul feel un-necessary and pointless.

 

Above is a commonly accepted breakdown of how addiction is kept 'alive' within sufferers, known as the 'cycle of addiction'. Although it is difficult to determine where the cycle begins, 'fantasizing' is often an accepted started point; each stage can be seen across the many participant of  booktube and also the book blogging world.

 

1. Fantasizing: We compare our own book buying to others and wish we had the amount they did (unhealthy comparison).
2. Obsessing: We watch constantly, know what they are buying and how often, where they are buying and as much information as possible.
3. Substance abuse: We snap and begin buying more books that we would originally.
4. Loss of control: Find yourself buying books daily, browsing for constant deals and find this becomes an automatic element of your shopping life (mainly online but less often can be within bookstores).
5. Guilt: This usually happens when the books have arrived and you look back at how much money you have spent on them.
6. Cessation of use: The well-known book buying ban, people placing themselves on harsh controls of no book buying for either a period of time or until they reach a specific goal (usually to read a certain percentage of their tbr).
7. Passage of time: During the book buying ban, attempting to avoid books, usually done buy avoiding the internet or certain websites.
8. Internal frustration: This is often found on a forced book buying ban, where you add books to wishlists and wait for the book buying ban to end.
9. And we return to fanaticising but about the end of the book buying ban...

 So its clear from the stages of addiction that many book buying habits can be seen as addicting, however, we can argue that the industry wants us to be addicted to buying books (money... money... money) and so they release ways to combat the common reasons people put themselves on book buying bans... space. Generally guilt starts to appear when a person realises that they are surrounded by unread books, so a great way to combat this is to place them all inside a small portable device which takes up less space than a single book and can hold more books that the British Library. Ask yourself, do you feel the same when you see your kindle with 300+ books and when you look at your bookshelves and see 100 unread books? No not really do you.

 

From the comparison to the library, it is clear that book buying habits can easily be associated with the demise of the library; people would prefer to buy books online and get them delivered to their house or kindle than order from the library and have to return it after. We are a materialistic society that values possession over knowledge, and that fact is becoming depressing.

 

So, should we stop buying books? Should we all get rid of our kindle-like devices and only read out of the library? No I don't believe that we should, I believe that we should break the cycle of addiction found within the book buying community, that we should invest more into our libraries but at the same time, without buyers the book industry as a whole will collapse.

 

As many betting adverts advice...

 

When it stops being fun... stop!

Running shoes

No one suspected that the bees would leave, well that’s a lie really; the really smart people noticed that they were leaving, but they were the people everyone else ignored because it wasn’t cool to listen to them. I mean since when is a high school jock going to listen to a scientist locked in a chemistry lab surrounded by books, nope they would be out drinking, partying and generally ruining their lives with horrendous one-night stands, that’s exactly what I was like… ‘was’ being the operative word.

I was dumb, you have to admit it from time to time or you just get arrogant, and trust me when I say that an arrogant jock isn’t exactly a pleasant experience for anyone. My dad once told me that I had one of two choices, work hard in class and get into an ivy league college, or be exceptional at football and get a free pass… okay it wasn’t the best advice in the world but let’s face it, I’m crap at math. So football became my life, training, pep rallies and all the cool stuff that comes from being scouted. After each great performance on the field was the after party, after the after party, well that’s when I would have my head in a toilet and coach would scream something along the lines of “Your ruining your god damn life!” or “Get yourself together or I swear you’ll never kick another football!” Excellent motivation right there…

Okay, I admit that when the world started to die I didn’t notice; I mean it was all over the T.V. but since when did I have time to sit and watch something that wasn’t football? Apparently it started with the flowers, crops started to fail and generally nature was screwed; ironic really, vegans were always preaching about one thing or another, saying they were going to save the world… and they were the first to starve. Man, I have a screwed up mind sometimes.

Well you can imagine the uproar when supermarkets couldn’t get stock because… well the stock was dead. People were panic buying left right and centre; even the church… that reminds me… no maybe another time… right now I’m being chased… why can I not focus today?

I had to get out of the high street, I should know better than to gather here anyway; too many hunters, too dangerous and the others needed me. There were a few shops left and then I could take a sharp right and scale the alley to higher ground, they couldn’t scale like I could.

Their footsteps were a few paces behind me, stumbling left and right carelessly as they tried to keep up. The sound of bare feet hitting the floor wasn’t the nicest sound, the rough pavement ate at the feet worse than the hunters do.

That reminds me, I need new shoes; if the gang expect me to run for the last scraps of food they need to provide better gear. Oh maybe now is a good time to mention the problem? Your probably wondering what they hell is chasing me bare-foot through this ghost town. Yeah sounds about good right here, I’ll scale this, and you catch up with what happened to this god-forsaken world.

See people change when they are hungry, a friend becomes an enemy and a loved one becomes your next meal. Everyone was talking about it at school, we all knew that cannibals existed but there were like four across the whole of the United States, right? But somewhere in Texas a farmer killed his wife; apparently he went a bit crazy and ate her because the last of his cattle died. The teachers said he was a one off, but then more people started doing it; people were too weak to fight them off and soon they were hunting each other. Wonderful.

Well, then everyone started getting the idea, but the hunters were changing; they were like wild animals. One came into the school on the last day they let us in; he went from room to room tearing people to pieces. Running came in useful that day, I climbed out of the window as he came crashing through our classroom door; I managed to get four more people out of the room. I only looked at him once that day, the colour of his eyes were weird; like they had leaked into the white.

From the roof of Maccies I recognised all of the eyes staring up at me, swirls of green and blue blurring in with the white; their mouths frothing and snapping at me, wild dogs had a more pleasant appearance. None of them could climb, I had ran into these twats before; they’ve been hunters’ for a while now and each time they got a little slower, their eyes lost a little more white… they lost a little bit of human each day… and we get a little bit closer to being able to kill em.

REVIEW: This book was a little too 'untamed'

Untamed by P.C. and Kristin Cast
'House of Night' book #4
Pages: 338 pages
Star rating: 3 stars

One word summary: Repetitive!

'Life sucks when your friends are pissed at you. Just ask Zoey Redbird – she’s become an expert on suckiness. In one week she has gone from having three boyfriends to having none, and from having a close group of friends who trusted and supported her, to being an outcast. Speaking of friends, the only two Zoey has left are undead and unMarked. And Neferet has declared war on humans, which Zoey knows in her heart is wrong. But will anyone listen to her?  Zoey's adventures at vampyre finishing school take a wild and dangerous turn as loyalties are tested, shocking true intentions come to light, and an ancient evil is awakened in PC and Kristin Cast's spellbinding fourth House of Night novel.'

Now of all the House of Night books this is definitely the worst so far... and that's a shame because the book should have been one of the best! The content of the book and plot turns had the potential to be amazing... if only it had been written a little better.

Firstly there was a tonne of repetition... and I don't just mean the same information (like the same story) over and over again but I mean sometimes the conversations were word for word... starting with 'well I told you this earlier...' and then starting the conversation all over again! I think if this was taken out, and replaced with the information that would have really pushed the story forward then this book would have easily been 5 stars. It would have left room for the stuff that should have been there!

Now there was a lot of insta-love, insta-hate and insta- forgiveness... now I am trying really hard not to spoil things but stuff goes down with Heath! With Erik! With a new guy! There was time and possibilities in this book to really work these out instead of being like... he's my soul mate... no he's my soul... wait he's my soul mate... Zoey shut the hell up and focus on battling evil!

There were a lot more focus on the religious side of things in this instalment... and for once the books don't vilify Christianity (including branches of Christianity) with the introduction of some really kickass nuns!

Now its been two books since we saw the wonderful Nyx personified, so of course there was a personification... and unfortunately it was extremely cliché and could have been done so much better! I mean come on... a woman appearing in a glow of light!

Now we are coming to the end of the review so lets talk about the end of the book... way too rushed! All the big stuff happened in less than three chapters... which should have been built up over the last half of the book. Characters reacted in ways that no normal characters would.

Overall if it wasn't for the fact that half the stuff was missed out and you could tell things were going to happen a mile away, this would be an amazing book! Still a good read and vital for understanding the rest of the series!

 

Don't forget to like, share, Google+ and follow my blog for more posts direct to your screen!

Cryptic musings of a wanna be writer

Holding my breath seemed to sap the life from my muscles, each second getting closer to the burn building in my chest and the sudden gasp that will inevitability follow... but I must hold still... they must think I'm dead... so I hold still; deadly still.

Their smoky essence drifted over me as they searched my body, thinking im a victim of an ever raging war they loot the little money from my pockets and begin to move towards the others; only they weren't holding their breaths anymore.

Their footsteps faded, the muscles in my chest and throat relaxed but the first tears reached my cheek before my lungs were full of air once more. Screams filled my mind but could never reach my lips, they were frozen together knowing they... whatever they are, would hear me... I had to be silent.

My eyes scanned the body-littered alley before my legs would dare to work, memories of my childhood flashing before me as I look into the sparkless eyes of my best friends. My knees cracked as I knelt by Joe's side, his skin was still warm but the blood pooling on his chest was seeping the warmth from him... he was the first person to ever hug me and mean it... first person to love me and mean it... the bottom of my world shattered as the first sobs escaped my lips.

It was hours until they found us...