This part of the 30-Day Book Challenge is originally entitled "A Book You Hated" but I refuse to hate a book knowing that despite the disappointment in the outcome of the story, I am pretty sure the author has gone thru hell and back and that he/she has put his/her best effort in writing so there's that. It is not easy to come up with a fictional idea that could actually work and I can only imagine the hardships of an author in the process of getting the book published by a decent publication and the likes.

It's hard to pinpoint a book that I may not have liked or maybe there are just too many of them that I cannot actually choose one? But for the sake of this challenge (that I have been on for quite sometime in the blog), I have to say that my least liked book or series (in recent memory, that is) is K.A. Tucker's Ten Tiny Breaths series.

The first book of the series is actually tolerable (one enjoys fluff to a certain extent, you see) until it came to a point where the story went mad with plotholes and twists that has made me cringe and go like "What the actual heck am I reading?" and just continued for the sake of reading / finishing it so I can cross it off my Goodreads currently-reading shelf. Not being too critical but you know how YA (young-adult genre) books tend to be predictable especially when you have been reading a lot of its kind in a while making it somehow boring ("It's all the same!" vibe) at some point, hence, the problem. Also, the cultural differences and preferences, as subjective as that may be. It is better to not go into details and here's the part where I will tell you to check it out for you to find out. Maybe you will get to appreciate it or even like it, who knows. There are some highlights, to be fair, that I actually liked but it is just not my cup of tea, so sorry for that.

And if you are to judge the book by a quotation / line, here are some:

“Do you think it matters if they're tiny or deep? he asked. Well, if they're not tiny breaths and they're not deep breaths, then they're just ... breaths. Then you're just breathing for the sake of ... breathing... Seize them. Feel them. Love them ...” 

“Life has a funny way of creating it's own tests. It throws curve balls that make you do and think and feel things that are in direct conflict with what you had planned and don't allow you to operate in terms of black and white.”

“I believe some people are inherently evil.

I believe guilt is a powerful motivator.

I believe redemption is something you can strive for but never fully achieve.

I believe second chances exist only in dreams, never in reality.

I believe you don't have years, or months, or weeks to impact a person's life.

You have seconds.

Seconds to win them over...and seconds to lose them.”

However, consider yourself warned (of love cliches, sex and all).

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For Day 12 (up next) it will be A Book You Love and Hate at the Same Time. Pretty interesting, eh? I hope I'd get to update sooner! (and blog more often. Happy 2016!)

April x

Instead of the usual Happiness Project which has also been a success for the past three years, i thought of doing something different (kind of) for this year and so I will be summing up the year through photos. There's this best nine thing-y that is on Instagram wherein they are tallying the total number of likes acquired and the nine most liked photos throughout the year and I thought, why not use them? Let's take a look back to the year that it has been.

1. A photo with The Script's frontman, Danny O'Donoghue. A DREAM COME TRUE. The Script is one of my most favourite bands and what a perfect gift to start off my birthday weekend to have a photo taken and actually meet two of the three lads after their concert at the Mall of Asia Arena last April 17 (the day before my birthday).

2. Fantastic Beast and Where To Find Them book. This is just to show how excited I am for the film adaptation of this gem by the Jo Rowling that will be out next year. Truth be told, despite having ended a couple of years back, I never really left Hogwarts (Harry Potter). The Potter nerd in me is so alive.

It is such a great thing when your favourite band dudes communicate with each other be it on a gathering or on social media. What is even greater is when they get to have that chance to go on a tour together which is currently the case of One OK Rock and metal band We Came As Romans. 

Pulp Live World is apparently not joking when they said that this year’s Bazooka Rocks (BRF) will be more of an intimate experience for the fans. There may have been plenty of unexpected changes and mishaps with the date being pushed back from August to November and the underwhelming lineup (to some) but it has proven to be still such a hit. Here’s what went down at Bazooka Rocks 4: Royal Rumble, the Philippines’ first ever indoor music festival (or what I have experienced, at least.) 

Have you ever been so bored that you Google-d your own name out of curiosity? Well, I have. And the result is rather surprising.

The long wait is over and finally, Made In The A.M., the last album (at least for a while) of One Direction is out and as per usual the carrot is back to make a sort of review of each of the tracks. Releasing 8 out of the 13 songs on the standard edition prior to the November 13th release date, I may or may not have an initial view of the whole thing and it's been mostly good so far. So here we go. Same disclaimer as the good ol' April reviews applies (the following are just my preferences and opinion that you may or may not totally agree with and that's quite fine). And this is rather long as expected so consider yourself warned.

It could easily have been Harry Potter: a home far from reality but is also as real as it can be, if that makes any sense. But if there is one book that I have recently read that has not just reminded me but really brought me back "home", I'd say it is Emily  P. Freeman's Graceful (For Young Women): Trying to Let Go of Your Try-Hard Life. The title in itself is a dead giveaway, innit?