We must take our tablets or else...

This one makes me sit at my desk and squeak with laughter!

Things my mother taught me about dieting

• If you eat while standing it doesn't count (like those three pieces of chocolate you quickly swiped out of the cupboard as you walked through the kitchen).
• If you eat out of a mug it doesn't count (a few spoonfuls of last night's chocolate pudding fit nicely into the bottom of a mug).
• If you cut smaller pieces then you get to eat more pieces (this applies particularly to cakes).
• If you eat it before it's baked it doesn't count (like the five cookies' worth of batter you pinched while you were spooning the mixture onto the baking tray).

Thanks, Mum! Did I leave anything out? 

Book Review: White Cat, by Holly Black

First line: I wake up barefoot, standing on cold slate tiles. Looking dizzily down.

Cassel lives in a world where magic is real and everyone knows about it. A person who works magic can change your luck, your emotions, your memories, your very form, just by the brush of their skin against your own. It's powerful. It's dangerous. Perhaps that's why they call is curse work.

Cassel grows up in a family where everyone is a worker - everyone, that is, except for him. He's the outsider, the one who doesn't belong, the normal guy. Normal, if you ignore the fact that he killed his best friend, Lila, when they were fourteen. At his private boarding school he has worked hard to maintain the image of "normal guy", but his facade begins to unravel after he wakes up on the roof of a school building and realises he's started sleepwalking again.

Removed from school and forced to clean up the old family house, Cassel starts to notice that some things don't sound quite right anymore. His brothers are keeping things from him. People are forgetting things. Why can't he remember what really happened to Lila? And what does the white cat - who keeps appearing in both his dreams and real life - have to do with all of this?

Cassel has one card to play in this game of lies and magic: he may not be a worker like the rest of his family, but he's learned the art of the con - and he's willing to con anyone in order to learn the truth.

I LOVED "White Cat". It was so different from anything else I've read lately, so refreshingly unique. Holly has created her fictional world perfectly: All the details come together and match up and make sense and you can believe, while you're reading it, that that's the way the world really is.

And that's how all fantasy writing should be.

Visit the Curse Workers website to find out more.

Uses for the Vuvuzela

This has been floating around my house since the end of the soccer world cup so I figured I'd save an electronic copy before the real one gets lost or thrown away.

I'm not sure which is my favourite. Possibly Lady Gaga or President Zuma...

People who don't read...

... are just weird.

How is that even possible?

I think I would go insane.

Picture from EGGNOG - Brain Candy for Readers

Cassandra Clare MEGA Giveaway

Click here to find out how to enter and WIN signed copies of Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments and Clockwork Angel as well as jewellery inspired by the books.

Clary and Jace's Song

I first heard this song around about the time I was reading the Mortal Instruments and whenever I hear it I still think of Clary and Jace and how badly they wanted to be together even though they (and everyone else) thought it was wrong...

"I Can't Stay Away"

(The Veronicas)

I'm conflicted
I inhale now I'm addicted
To this place
To you babe
I can't stay away
Can't stay away
We get up, we go down
Then we go one more round
It's wrong, they say
I can't stay a- I can't stay away
No I can't stay a- I can't stay away

 

I wish I could
Leave and never return
Baby, I know I should
But for you I'd burn

(only the chorus and bridge are shown)

Harry Potter vs The Mortal Instruments

If your house was burning down and you had to choose between saving your Harry Potter collection or your Mortal Instruments collection, which would escape the flames?

Hmm… this is a tough one. The Mortal Instruments is my current favourite, but I’ve been a dedicated Harry Potter fan for so long – with its delightfully magical world, its beautifully crafted story and its very real characters – that I couldn’t bear to let those books turn to ashes either.

I think it would come down to practicalities. If I wasn’t able to grab seven books in a hurry then I’d have to go for the three Mortal Instruments and leave Harry to burn. But, come on, seven books is not a lot, so I’d probably go for those and leave the Mortal Instruments behind (because, let’s face it, it’s far cheaper to replace three books than it is to replace seven).

Wait, ten books isn’t actually a lot to carry either. Maybe I wouldn’t have to choose!

(Although, would I really be able to carry ten books and my laptop and all my photos…? Oh, and my DVD collection! Blast, this horrible fire…)