21 by 21

I turned 20 on Sunday. 20, wow.

Maybe a wow seems a bit of an exaggerated reaction to a birthday that isn't particularly special, but to me 20 was the first birthday that really seemed like a wow. I felt weird about not being a teen anymore! Thankfully, my preceding bummed out feeling was cured by a lovely birthday weekend spent at home with friends and family. And I know that I'm still young, and to feel old is a bit silly. But still, wow. Enough of my premature aging worries- right now I've got to enjoy being 20!! Plus, this post really wasn't supposed to be about my birthday haha....

If you've followed this blog for any time at all, you'll know that I'm a fan of reading. I always want to read more, and to be motivated to do so. So this year I decided to, once again, find a reading challenge for myself. Preferably one that is manageable and isn't too restricting.

I got the idea for it from a friend who turned 20 mid 2016 and decided to follow some lists she found online: 21 things to do before you're 21, and 21 books to read before you're 21. I thought the book thing would make for an interesting challenge.

So I started googling lists, and found plenty. I had read some of the books on each, so I originally planned to invent my own lists, using books suggested on each list. But then I realised that I already have SO many books that I want to read, and that to follow this challenge would mean putting off reading those for a whole year!

So, instead, my challenge is simply to complete 21 books between my 20th and 21st birthdays. Only books that I read for pleasure will count (unfortunately, since I have 9 plays to read for one module this semester!) and I will just review them as normal here on my blog, but I'll make a wee note in each review of how far through my challenge I am.

If you have suggestions of books I should read, please feel free to leave them in the comments! I'm sure I'll manage to find 21, but I always love to get recommendations. This will be a significant challenge for me because, although I think it sounds very doable, I only read 8 books for pleasure last year! Anyway, here we go, I suppose only time will tell...

Film Review: 'A Monster Calls'

I had a friend staying with me over New Year and, while there's not a whole lot to do in my wee town at the best of times, there's even less when it's pouring with rain and a bank holiday. So we decided to take a trip to the cinema.

My friend was keen to see 'A Monster Calls', having seen the trailer, and I was also up for that choice as I had seen the lead actor, Scottish teen Lewis MacDougall, being interviewed on TV a few days prior, and thought it sounded like it should be good.

Brief Summary: Conor's mum is sick (I think with cancer), he is being bullied at school, his father has moved far away, and his relationship with his grandmother is tense. All looks fairly hopeless. Until he 'befriends' a tree, a special tree who tells him stories, and guides him through the emotional turmoil of terminal illness, growing up and dealing with loneliness.

It's worth noting that I was absolutely full of the cold on the day we went to see this, and hadn't had much sleep. So there's a high chance that I was over-tired and therefore unable to fully enjoy and take in the film.

There were several elements which I really liked about the film. Firstly, the CGI was incredible. I don't really know much about animation, but the tree was phenomenal! In fact, I liked the setting in general... despite being (in my opinion slightly oddly) set in a place that was both very isolated and difficult to pin-point in terms of time, I felt as though the surroundings were realistic and effectively understated.

The emotional intensity of the storyline was another plus point. It certainly made you come out pondering the inevitability of our mortality and the relationships we have and cherish.

I believe the film was based on a book, written by a woman who was herself dying of a terminal illness, and I must say that the concept of a young person dealing with the horror of slowly watching a parent leave them was brilliantly portrayed. I could really feel Conor's sense of hopelessness, his frustration, his desire to hold on, and particularly the battle he felt between that desire and the guilt over just wanting the prolonged pain to end.

However, I'm afraid my overall opinions were much harsher coming out of the film, and so I think it's important that I touch on some of those too, because your immediate reaction to a film may caption its true value.

I was disappointed. Sorry, but I was. Firstly, I wasn't particularly impressed with the quality of acting, and I think this was in part the fault of the script. I didn't truly believe a lot of the words the actors said, and I think too many clichés was one of the key things responsible for that.

The lead was ok, actually pretty good considering his debut film appearance was shot mostly in front of a green screen, which I bet is pretty difficult! I immediately recognised the actress playing the mother, Felicity Jones. I think I'm remembering her from 'Chalet Girl', but a quick search shows me that she's in a lot at the moment. She was quite good, brought down by A LOT of cliché lines, but I liked her performance. It was actually Sigourney Weaver's portrayal of the grandmother that most disappointed me- I just didn't find her all that believable and a bit stiff.

I also found it difficult to connect emotionally to the characters, because I didn't feel as though the script really allowed for us to understand the situation at hand (with the ill mother and absent father) until quite late on in the film. For a while I thought the mother may have depression, or be a drug addict. I suppose that was possibly just me being slow, but I didn't find it awfully clear initially.

This flaw also applies to the rest of the storyline. It sounds strange, but I just found it all a bit random. The stories that the tree was 'telling' Conor were almost like bits of tales I've hear before, full of morals but apparently quite irrelevant to the storyline of the film. Even at the end I didn't really see the connection between all the pieces, like the stories and the mystery behind tree's 'appearances' were kind of just there to fill time. The significance of the tree itself, for example, isn't even revealed until right near the end when the mother suddenly makes a heartfelt speech about how its 'their' tree and will help cure her. And I never really figure out how the tree really features in Conor's life at the same time each day... obviously there isn't really a walking, talking, oak tree in his school cafeteria, but he also isn't dreaming because he isn't asleep. I suppose my insistent need to return to reality is what makes me question that haha. Actually, a lot of the timing itself is quite inaccurate. A shot of a clock will show a time which makes absolutely no sense in the chronology of the action.

While many parts of the film were very good, it was all a bit, well, bitty. As though parts had been taken from several films and bunched together, without a strong enough storyline to hold them all together.

It's possible that I'm just not really equipped to deal with slow moving, low-action films. But yeah, I was a bit bored.

Ok, so enough of the slating. My previously mentioned positive points still stand, and I wouldn't discourage a watch, but I also won't be highly recommending, and probably won't bother re-watching in the future. My expectation was a little bit high perhaps, and I came out feeling disappointed.

Reflection and Recycling Resolutions- Take 2

Happy New Year!! Finally got round to returning to my blog following a wee break (which was much needed after Blogmas!). I'm sorry I never really wrapped up Blogmas with a Christmas Day post as I had planned too, but I was just enjoying time with my family, then a wee holiday to London, then a wonderful Hogmanay at home, and then I was ill for a week! Now, I'm back in my uni house and getting myself prepped for the next semester, so I thought it was definitely time to do my resolutions post.... preferably before January 2017 disappears!

So, I have had the same resolutions for the last 2 years, and so I thought I'd take a leaf out of last-year-me's book, and just use this post to update them a wee bit for 2017! Let's have a look at which ones I actually did something about, and which failed spectacularly!


1) Improve my health (particularly weight and therefore body image) by healthy consideration of both diet and regular exercise. As you may remember, I wrote a post in April 2016 following a comment I overheard someone make about my appearance. It was called 'Can harsh be good, or just rude?' and you can read it here. I suppose I'll never be a spectacularly sporty person, but certainly towards the end of 2016 I was feeling much better myself, because I joined the uni swim club and also started going jogging. Now to just keep it up and control the snacking!

2) Take my appearance a little more seriously- if I feel good about how I look, it could do my mental health a world of good. I will never be one of those girls who can be bothered spending hours on appearance, but 2016 saw me finally do something about my skin, buy lots of comfy clothes I like, even take a risk on a dress I'd never normally wear! And I kept up the haircuts haha! It can be really easy for me to just not care sometimes, but I feel so much better about myself when I do.

3) Write more. Yeah the diary didn't last long in 2016 .... I wasn't going to bother even trying this year, but then I was bought one for Christmas so decided to start once more and see hbow it goes! Thanks to Blogmas and a few rushes of inspiration, my blog is now about to begin it's 4th year, crazy! As for the fiction, very little this year bar a few poems, but I have stuff in the works so I plan to make a bit more time for that this year. It's the starting that's difficult. And the ideas haha!

4) Read more. So you may have noticed that in 2016 I decided to number my book reviews to try and motivate me to read more. I only recorded the books I read for pleasure, but it came to an embarrassingly low total of 8!!! If you add this to the (approx.) 10 books I read for my uni courses in 2016, it looks a lot better. As I've mentioned before, reading for pleasure can be tough when at uni, but I vow that even if it takes me a month per book, I'm going to keep up reading this year. Actually, it can't take me a month per book because I'm setting myself a new reading challenge which I'll write a post about soon. This will not include the 9 plays I've got to read this semester for uni!!

5) Be a nicer daughter/sister. Unfortunately, I slipped up around Christmas, which I always seem to find a hard time to get along with people. I think it's the pressure! I also had a bit of a rough patch with my sister earlier in the year which lasted quite a while, and plenty rough patches with my Mum, as usual. So, I suppose 2016 wasn't great on this one, but so far 2017 seems to be going ok, and I'd like to keep it that way! I'm trying, I really am. I love my family very much.

6) A 'romantic' experience of some kind. ugh, can we just move on? 2016 was the year of downloading and promptly deleting Tinder, and wondering why I seem fixed on the road to be being an old maid....

7) Work hard on my studies. Second semester of first year saw me work hard and be kind of disappointed in my grades. I still more than passed, but French kind of took over my life. First semester of second year saw me step it up, but also in my extra-curricular life, hence the continued pattern of last minute essay writing! Therefore, it is now, at the beginning of 2017 that I have (once again) decided to crack down on my academic dedication. Yeah, so everyone says that at the beginning of a new semester, but I know I'm a hard working student who loves to learn and there's no reason why I shouldn't up my grades a little in time for honours years... scary!

So there we have it, a wee update on how my resolutions went in 2016, and my plans to further them in 2017. I've always expected a lot of myself, but you know what? I'm one of those cheesy people who really does view the start of a new year as a brilliant opportunity to make those little changes. Catch you all this time next year for the same  resolutions?! Let me know yours in the comments.