LIE DETECTOR-ING MYSELF

Courtesy of Becca. She is so hilarious: y’all need to go follow her immediately. Like, you will thank me, then ignore this blog in favor of her humor.

I, Sarah, am basically following her lead, so here I go!

(Faith: Featuring me and more GIFs than your Christmas GIFts! Actually, no. I hope you had tons of gifts. Even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, gifts are nice. 🙂 )

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Sarah 6.0: State your full name, please

Sarah 7.0:  – – – – –     – – – – – – –   – – – –   – – – –   – –  – – – – –  

Sarah 6.0: … Why is it all blacked out?

Sarah 7.0: Because it’s my real name. My full, legal name. All 27 letters.

Sarah 6.0: Why … 27 letters?

Sarah 7.0: I like to blame my Arab parents. We have a thing for long names with lots of a’s.

Sarah 6.0: Then why is your first name blacked out? Surely nothing bad can come out of putting 5 letters on a website. Besides, it’s like written 50 times in this page alone.

Sarah 7.0: That’s that thing… It’s not my real name.

Sarah 6.0:

So you’ve been lying to us the whole time. Wow, SARAH , thanks for the trust.

(F: She’s the opposite of me. Alright, to all Sarah’s peeps: you can now all come over to my sideee… you can have FAITH that I’m a truth-teller. Faithfulness is (literally) my first name. [And actually, my middle name is another adjective. BEAT THAT, WORD NERDS! Uh, I mean, isn’t that kinda cool? If you feel like caring?] Important side note: I’m probably naming my children Joy and possibly Hope. I named my beta fish Happy once… then I found him curled up in the corner of his tank one day. He wasn’t so happy anymore.)

F: Now, here’s a Christmas GIFt. 😉

HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW IF SHE REALLY LOVED THE BOOKS SHE LIKED? MY 7.0 version is a lie! What if she’s a figment of Faith’s imagination? #blogception (F: Right. Because I talk to myself. IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK.)

Sarah 7.0:

#sorrynotsorry

(Bonus: any one who can guess my real name (it’s an anagram, btw) will not get a prize, but a shout out and an interview with SARAH trails of into maniacal laughter)
Ahem, let us move on.

Sarah 6.0: Why have you been so inactive in the blogosphere as of late?

Sarah 7.0: … But I’ve been active. Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout?

Sarah 6.0: I’m not talking about posting, dummy. (I swear, I get dumber with every reincarnation). I’m asking you why you are so… not verbose. I mean, look at Faith. She comments paragraphs wherever she goes, and manages to spread rainbow vomit and unicorn farts no matter how tired she is. Paul and Yarravy agree with me, right?

Sarah 7.0:

I’M SORRY I’M SHY, OKAY? I mean, it’s hard to think up of comments. I mean, do you want to know how Faith and I became friends? DO YOU? (F: It was… terrifying to say the least. Also, on the outside I think we make for a kinda unlikely pair.)

Sarah 6.0: Uh, no. But if you could answer my original question, that would be great.

Sarah 7.0: I WAS SO WEIRD BACK IN YEAR 9 THAT I NUMBERED ALL MY NEW FRIENDS. Wives 1-69. That’s right. WIVES. We still laugh about it now. (F: AHHHH THE BEANS HAVE FINALLY BEEN SPILLED! I actually get nightmares about it now. I think I was around no.18?? #stillscarredtothisday)

Sarah 6.0:… What was the point of that tangent? (F: Wait, what point? There’s many points in a graph for a tangent function… )

If you are lost looking at the image, don’t worry, I was too. And I still am. I DID SO HORRIBLY ON THESE I’m getting stressed looking at this. Math is not my strong suit. (I was more of an “ace of spades” than an “ace of hearts”. I didn’t heart math. I aimlessly stabbed at it with my rusty metal spade. You can tell that I really aced math.) Pun count: 1348 Way too many puns on puns.

Sarah 7.0: TO SHOW YOU HOW AWKWARD AND SOCIALLY INEPT AND COMPLETELY UN-VERBOSE I  AM. MOVING ON.

Sarah 6.0: …What are your pet peeves? The tl:dr version please. (F: THE IRONY. I had to Google what tldr was… no comment. ACTUALLY here’s my comment: EVERYTHING I SAY is probably marked tldr by someone out there. XD )

Sarah 7.0: Well. I hate Mexicans, burritos, tacos, books, Faith

Sarah 6.0: –

WAIT WHAT?!?

Sarah 7.0: Hm? Was it something I said?

Sarah 6.0: Wha- How- Why- HOW DO YOU HATE BURRITOS? And what did them Mexicans do to you? Sarah, I swear, if you have been reincarnated as some racist Donald Trump supporter, I will end my life (and yours) with my BARE HANDS! I mean, you can’t just go and say that on a blog? What would your mother think? Honestly, I’m so disa-

Sarah 7.0: I WAS JOKING! (F: Dude. Girl. Sarah. Whatever your name even is. You don’t joke about that stuff. YOU DON’T JOKE ABOUT HATING BOOKS. Off limitos. Oh yeah, and there’s me. Don’t hate me.)

Sarah 6.0:

Sarah 7.0: Jeez, I was just trying to keep you guys on your toes…

Sarah 6.0: -_- *sighs* Just answer the question already.

Sarah 7.0: I hate bent book covers, winter coats, weather above 25 degrees (CELSIUS XD ), School, and Faith. I wasn’t joking about that 😉 aaaaaaaaaand racial profiling.

Sarah 6.0: Wait, why do you hate racial profiling? (F: Buuuuuuuut you don’t mention why you hate Faith. Right. Or left because I’m left handed. Just curious, who’s left handed out there?? * raises left hand *)

Sarah 7.0: Before I wore my head scarf, people would take turns guessing where I’m from. Like I’d get every country on that map (oddly enough, except where I’m actually from). UK, Australia, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, Chile, Morocco, Spain, India… you name it, somebodies guessed it (excluding Japan, and China – I have been asked if I’m half Korean). People would look at my hair and ask me if I was half- insert ethnicity here. It was pretty annoying after the first time. Though, now I only deal with TSA/Airport security checks every single time I fly internationally. #arabgirlproblems

Sarah 6.0:.. So where are you from?

Sarah 7.0: Egypt. You know, just in case I haven’t mentioned it a billion times already.

Sarah 6.0: Ohhhh, so can you speak Egyptian? (F: HAH. I can. Pyramids, sphinxes, desert, murderous heat – am I an honorary Egyptian yet???)

Sarah 7.0:

This is for you, Faith. Though yes, I now deem you an honorary Egyptian. 😀

Do you mean Arabic?

Sarah 6.0: Wait, so Egyptian isn’t a thing?

Sarah 7.0: No, and no one but Egyptologists can read ancient hieroglyphs. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed. I can, however, read to you in a nice french accent and talk to you in Egyptian slang…

Sarah 6.0: Hold your shade, girl… no one sasses me.

Sarah 7.0:

Sarah 7.0 locking Sarah 6.0 out.

Sarah 6.0:

Breaking back in.

Sarah 7.0: Can we just continue with the questions before this post deteriorates even more? (F: Too late.)

Sarah 6.0: What are your favourite things?

Sarah 7.0: … Can you be more specific? Favourite books? Movies? Shows? Colours? Foods? Murder Methods? (F: Short and easy answer to regain our friendship = Faith)

Sarah 6.0: … Do you have any siblings?

Sarah 7.0: Yes. Them-Three-Who-Shalt-Not-Be-Named. (F: Name suggestions for hidden identities: Thing 1, 2, and 3? Is that mean? It’s definitely not median or mode, though. I think it’s kinda cute and hilarious. DR. SEUSS YA KNOW??)

Sarah 6.0: Why must they not be named?

Sarah 7.0: Do you want to read lines of blacked out names? Cuz we all got five names. And they already stalk the blog enough as it is. I don’t need to give them more fodder. (F: Huh, they read our blog? Shoot. WHY?! They’re going to be reading some misconceived ideas about me… I’M NOT ABSOLUTELY CRAZY AND I DON’T SHOUT ALL THE TIME! Though I just did.)

Sarah 6.0: I see you have a … very loving relationship.

Sarah 7.0:

We are.

Savages. We are so cruel to each other it’s actually pretty funny.

Sarah 6.0:

Sarah 7.0: Do you want to hear about the time we wrecked-

Sarah 6.0: – OKAY. It’s Sarah’s bed time, so GOOD DAY AND NIGHT FOLKS! We sure hoped you enjoyed this utterly random post: be sure to check out Becca’s original post.

Sarah 7.0: MMMH HMM MHMM HHMH MMMMM

Sarah 6.0:

Sarah 6.0: We’d like to nominate you, dear reader, to interrogate yourself and enjoy the madness!

 

The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers Award!

Thank you to Calliope from Calliope the Book Goddess for this lovely nomination! (Here’s to another wayyyyy overdue award post!) Once again, we actually answered these questions an embarrassingly long time ago, so we hope you enjoy as you join us on this laid back award post. Ahem, I mean, our mini time travel back to… the ice ages! 😉 (That’s how long ago it was.)

White Pine Wednesday: The Story of Owen

Hello fellow bookies! Let’s take a moment to think about the fact that EXAMS ARE OVERRRRRR (good vibes to everyone who still hasn’t finished, though 😛 ). Exams are the reason that this is being published on a Friday.

Only 19 weeks of school left …

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So I read The Story of Owen yesterday. Right after my math exams. And oh boy, if I hated the cover when I first saw it, I LOATHE the cover now.

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What I originally thought:

I’m sorry, but what a bad cover. When I look at this, I don’t want to read it. It’ll probably remain in the pile until I absolutely cannot find anything else to read. But the story itself sounds interesting…

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What I now think:

The cover of this book should be burned. It scares readers away from this hilarious, smart and very Canadian book. This book has been the best book I’ve read so far. It made me laugh, fascinated me with its world building, and had a great overall message.

It was basically set in an alternate universe, where everything happened… but there were dragons. A direct result of consumerism (and a ‘manifestation’ of global warming), they are attracted to oil and gas (as well as things that use gas). As you can imagine, they are fatal, dangerous… and E.K. Johnston outdid herself with the backstory. In retrospect, it makes sense while you’re reading it, but it’s really hard to explain.

The dragon’s were always there… and in the olden days, every village had it’s own dragon slayer. But now only the big corporations (who pay very well) are able to hire them. So when a dragon slayer family moves back to Trondheim, the town rejoices.

Strangely enough, the narrator, Siobhan McQuaid (and really, more of the main character) doesn’t hero worship Owen, and their ‘relationship’ is really platonic and amusing. It was also very refreshing, and a great distraction from the angst filled books so common in YA.

The book is rather short, but densely packed, so you don’t really notice how much information you are absorbing until you are done. That being said, the plot sort of suffers from the condensation (it felt sort of slapdash, really) but it does manage to come through in the end.

I found it extremely funny, with great social and political commentary. There are beautifully funny lines that made this worth the read, as well as a very Canadian sense of humor. A mixture of self deprecating sarcasm and wise-cracks? What ever it is, I feel so much more Canadian reading this book.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable romp, and a very unlike fantasy. There are no overwhelming villains or quests, but rather, the typical (but at the same time atypical) lives of 2 teenagers. I loved the crowning touches ~ an addition of a Youtube channel (she’s a bard, get it?) as well as many others that gave it a little extra spice. Even though it was obviously set in a rural town, it was still relatable (I’m a city slicker 😛 ). It has strong social, political and environmental messages ~ it wasn’t afraid to go into subjects that ‘bore’ teens. It’s funny, creative and one of my favourite books this month!

Honestly,  it has dragons, and sword fighting, and great characters. Just go read it already!

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars!

 

 

 

Which Wednesday: Books about School Shootings

Hey guys! Sarah here 😀

Me and Faith are going to be introducing a bi-monthly (or tri-monthly, depending on how long the month is) feature.

Drumroll please….

Which Wednesdays!

We’ll be comparing 2 books of a similar topic or genre, and in the end, giving you guys our opinion on which was better. Every Which Wednesday will have a theme, and to kick it off, this week is about school shootings. Morbid. I know.

Carry On Fangirling: A Duo Book Review (Meme Edition)

Challenge of the day: Count how many times we lose coherence in this post.

Duo Book Review of Carry On and Fangirl (But mostly Carry On)

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Fangirl

445 pages

Published : September 10th 2013 by St. Martin’s Press

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Carry On

522 pages

Published : October 6th 2015 by St. Martin’s Griffin

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Summaries (Taken from Goodreads):

FANGIRL:

A coming-of-age tale of fan fiction, family and first love. (S: YOU SEE THIS LINE? I’m instantly in loooooove F: Ugh, Sarah stop.)

Cath is a Simon Snow fan.

Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan… (F: Wow okay, me too. After Carry On.)

But for Cath, being a fan is her life—and she’s really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it’s what got them through their mother leaving.

Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fan fiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premiere. (S: Some obvious parallels to the Harry Potter fandom…)

Cath’s sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can’t let go. She doesn’t want to.

Now that they’re going to college, Wren has told Cath she doesn’t want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She’s got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend, a fiction-writing professor who thinks fan fiction is the end of the civilized world, a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words… And she can’t stop worrying about her dad, who’s loving and fragile and has never really been alone.

For Cath, the question is: Can she do this?

Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? Writing her own stories?

And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?

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CARRY ON:

Simon Snow is the worst chosen one who’s ever been chosen. (S: After reading the book, I second that)(F: Frankly, having power is different than wielding it.)

That’s what his roommate, Baz, says. And Baz might be evil and a vampire and a complete git, but he’s probably right. (S: Warning, there is a whole section of this review dedicated to Baz)

Half the time, Simon can’t even make his wand work, and the other half, he sets something on fire. His mentor’s avoiding him, his girlfriend broke up with him, and there’s a magic-eating monster running around wearing Simon’s face. Baz would be having a field day with all this, if he were here—it’s their last year at the Watford School of Magicks, and Simon’s infuriating nemesis didn’t even bother to show up.

Carry On is a ghost story, a love story, a mystery and a melodrama. It has just as much kissing and talking as you’d expect from a Rainbow Rowell story—but far, far more monsters.
(S: Summary cont’d — Carry On starts off as a totally Harry Potter ripoff, reads like the last book in the series, but by the end transforms into something totally different. And that’s not counting the top notch snogging – did we mention that romance?)

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ACTUAL REVIEW PART

(All the memes are at the end)

Sarah: Originally, we were going to write individual reviews for both books, but after reading Carry On and (re)reading Fangirl, we’ve decided to mash these two complementary books.

Faith: Cath. Levi. Simon. Baz. After reading Carry On, you realize all the more how it plays a role in Fangirl. Reviewing them together just sort of made sense.

Before Carry On (BCO): Fangirl is great but who IS this Simon Snow? Is it basically just another name in the place of Harry Potter to avoid copyright infringement? (S: So true. I was rolling my eyes so hard)… Sorry but could I just skip these random Simon Snow parts?

I mean who cares…

Dashing Through the Snow (on a late, 2 girl sleigh)

 Hey guys! We know this is sorta late (but we couldn’t help it 😀 )

Name a book you would like to see under your Christmas tree.

F: Probably the Lorien Legacies series… 🙂

S: Um, well I don’t actually celebrate Christmas, but under my Eid Palm tree I’d like the complete Lunar Chronicles 😀

Isn’t this so cute?

WORD ON THE STREET – 2015

Word on the Street is a yearly festival held in Toronto and other cities in Ontario. Books, publishers, authors and readers all get to meet and participate in book related things. We went for the first time, to see the sights and sounds in our awesome city.

The weather was pretty great and it was by the harbor so it was nice. Quite a decent number of people went actually and it was a fantastical experience and I loved the atmosphere so I’d probably go again!

#thesix “Runnin’ through The 6 with my woes/You know how that should go.”

We met up and then wandered around for an hour or so, looking at all the books we wanted to read and everything we couldn’t afford. 😀 We managed to score some sweet pins though:

We also got our first “arc”, which we photographed on Lake Ontario:

Colouring books are coming back in style! And isn’t Lake Ontario so beautiful? #firstarc #wemadeit #goals #wearetotallyjk

We basically wandered around until the events we were interested in started.

The first thing we went to was a spoken word showcase by BAM! Toronto Youth Poetry Slam team. It was pretty awesome. There were so many cool spoken word recitals ~ and a lot of them dealt with sensitive topics. The performers were really brave because you could tell, they weren’t reciting any story, they were retelling their story.

There was a poem that wished the best of luck and understanding to its listeners, a poem that really questioned whether Martin Luther King Jr would have been happy to see the world now, if he was ‘OK’ with being killed, a poem that detailed the struggle of living life without being able to break the cycle and stop dreaming, and a poem that manifested because the loses of cancer, alcoholism and much more,

They were all really touching, and we learned new things (did you know that during a poetry recitation, you never clap during the recitation, but you can snap and stomp your feet? It was a refreshing way of getting involved. Check them out because they are totally blew us away: if you are feeling generous, go to their Indiegogo and donate!

We later went to see Eve Silver (author of the Rush Trilogy), Erin Bow (The Scorpion Rules) and Kate Blair (Transferral). They were discussing the politics of their parallel worlds (hello, session title), and it was moderated by Evan Monday, an author that Sarah looooves (when she realized who the vaguely familiar dude was she had a mini freak out). Faith was freaking out over Eve Silver so in the end it was all ok.

Ok as in no major embarrassment. Phew!

It was really interesting seeing the authors talk about all the similar thought processes as well as the different ideas that went into all of their books. Their books were a refreshing take on the ‘dystopian’ or ‘future technology’ genre in YA books. We can’t wait until Transferral comes out (October 24th, by the way).

F: It was just so cool for me because I’ve never been to any type of author meetup so to me, it felt partially surreal because I think I just imagine authors writing books with some sort of alien sorcery concocting mystical stories in their offices. It just doesn’t seem real to me that they can possibly be normal AND write good, you know?

We met a few of our other friends (totally by coincidence) and our tbr list grew by a ginormous amount. We keep doing this to ourselves, and it isn’t healthy (But the only other option is book withdrawal 😀 )

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Faith also took a bunch of great pictures, so here they are 😀

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We also found an awesome store that was reppin’ Toronto:

These are totally TO-centric, and we loved looking through the tent Spacing set up. We are so going to get a library passport and visit every library in our city 😀

~Sarah & Faith

Book Review: Fang Girls by Helen Keeble

342 pages

Published: 2012 by HarperTeens

Genres: Contemporary, YA, Humor, Parodies/Satire, Vampires

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Hello guys! I may or may not be a vampire, reappearing from the depths of my coffin (aka my desk), to bring you a fang-tastic review. Chemistry and Functions may or may not have changed me… but it’s okay because I’m back.

This book came up as a Goodreads recommendation – I was browsing shelves musing about how much I want to read and how little time I have, and this came up. I decided to burden myself even more by adding this book to my TBR list… I couldn’t help but prioritize it because look at this summary:

Summary (From the back of the book): Sure, the idea of vampires is sexy, but who actually dreams of spending eternity as a pasty, bloodthirsty fifteen-year-old? Not me.

Unfortunately, the somewhat psychotic vampire who turned me into a bloodsucker didn’t bother to ask first. Now I’m dealing with parents who want me to vamp them, a younger brother who’s convinced I’m a zombie, and a seriously ripped vampire hunter who either wants to stake me or make out with me. Not sure which. Oh and PS, none of my favorite fanfic prepared me to deal with vampire politics- which are looking pretty tricky based on the undead elder trying to hunt me down.

What’s a vampire-obsessed fangirl turned real-life fanggirl supposed to do?

Book Review: Unaccompanied Minor

UNACCOMPANIED MINOR

By Hollis Gillespie

256 pages

Publishing Info: On November 18th, 2013 by Merit Press

Genre: YA contemporary, Action, Mystery, Humour, Crime

Book Summary (from Goodreads): Fourteen-year-old April Mae Manning spent her life on airplanes with her flight attendant parents. When her father dies in a crash, April’s mom marries a pilot who turns out to be an abusive jerk, and gets Mom confined to a psychiatric hospital. So April takes off, literally, living on airplanes, using her mother’s flight benefits, relying on the flight crews who know she’s been shuttling between divorcing parents for a year. Then, there’s a hijacking and April flees to the cargo hold with her friend, who is also unaccompanied minor , and they fight to thwart the hijackers, faking a fire, making weapons from things they find in luggage. At last, locked in the cockpit with a wounded police officer, the boy, and his service dog, April tries to remember everything her parents said to do in a crisis above the clouds. But she knows it won’t be enough.

“We see things differently.”

April (and her parent’s co-parenting counselor) pg 11

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The Creative Blogger Award!

Thanks to Giselle @ Hardwork Boulevard for nominating us; we really appreciate it! 🙂 Go and check out her great blog if you haven’t yet! Once again, we’ve actually been nominated about a month ago but as you may know, Sarah was on vacay so we are now back with the responses!

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Rules:

• Thank the person who nominated you and include a link to their blog.
• Share 5 facts about yourself.
• Nominate some bloggers in return and notify them about their nomination.
• Keep the rules in your post to make it easy for everyone to know what to do.

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5 FACTS ABOUT US

1. Faith and Sarah actually only met 2 years ago, but hit it off almost instantly.

F: Not without me being creeped out a bit first about Sarah… So not friends at first sight?

S: SORRY. I didn’t mean to be socially awkward ~ my first time making new friends.

F: Wow, talk about only having fictional characters as friends.

S: OR the same classmates for the past 5 years

F: Anyways we were basically pretty good friends pretty quick.

2. We both are junior editors for our school newspaper this year! Even though we aren’t perfect (psh perfect… name me one actually perfect human being S: MARISSA MEYER) writers, we’re going improve a lot more from this experience! WOOT!