Read with Me - Tales of a Wannabe Author, Cosplayer, and Blogger

Cover Clothes #3: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by alexandramathews featuring a quilted jacket Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I got a Cover Clothes post for y'all! Since I've been reading so much Harry Potter fanfiction lately that I thought it would be a good idea to make a post about it. Everything featured is $50 or less, and I tried to stay true to the cover. I had to add the red boots for the fabulous witch in the red robes. The glasses are for Harry. The owl represents Hedwig. The rest of the items I felt when along with the winter-ish theme and color scheme. That's it for this post! Comment down below on some covers you would like to see for Cover Clothes. Subscribe to the blog by adding your email to the subscribe box down below or off to the right. Add me to your circles by clicking the Google+ button off to the right. Follow me on twitter @ KK_Donna_Blog  for ridiculousness about my life and up to date information about the blog. Las

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and the season of giving is upon us. A few of you may have a bookworm on your list of gift recipients for Christmas, and you don't want to give them the same old Books-a-Million gift card that they seem to get every year. If that's the case, I've got a list of gift ideas that are unique and are sure to make your bookworm's Christmas the merriest it could possibly be. Now, let's get onto the list! First things first. We have to start a list of possible gifts for book-lovers with a book. My suggestion is Snow Like Ashes by Sara Raasch. Along with being on my "To Read" list, this book won the New Kid on the Shelf award by Epic Reads. Basically, it was voted to be the best debut novel of the year. Chances are your giftee hasn't got their hands on this book yet, but if they have that one, here's a link to all of the winners this year. You can get this book on Amazon for about $13, and you can find it at this link .

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm here to review  Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them  by Newt Scamander (but really J. K. Rowling).It is (supposedly) a textbook used in Hogwarts as one of their standard texts for teaching Care of Magical Creatures. This book is a copy of Harry Potter's own copy, and it is complete with written notes made by Harry, Ron, and Hermione. It includes a preface by Albus Dumbledore, an introduction into Magizoology, and an A - Z list of magical beasts including detailed description. But enough about that, let's get onto the review!  I found this book surprisingly entertaining. It's supposed to be a textbook, and so I was expecting it to be a little stale, if I'm being honest. But it wasn't. It was clever and funny, and I thought it was a really fun read. It's a small book, so this review is going to be a little small, but I will get down to the gist of it. If you're a fan of of The Harry Potter Series and you enjoy s

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm here to review The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 the movie! If you're a fan of YA book to movie adaptations and haven't been living under a rock this past week, you'll know that this movie came out this past week making $55 million it's opening day. Not too shabby for another “Part 1” finale of YA movie franchise. But enough about that, let's get to the review! First things first. There will be spoilers in this review, but they will be clearly marked for those who haven't seen the movie yet. You'll be able to skip over any spoilers or spoil yourself to death depending on your judgment. So, what's going on in this movie? Well, you should probably watch the first two movies (you can find them on Amazon and Catching Fire on Netflix). But the Cliff Notes version is this: Katniss has escaped the games and is now living with her family underground in District 13. President Coin asks Katniss to be the

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm excited to share some news with you today. As you may have read in a previous post, there is a contest going on that's all about Twilight. The Storytellers: New Voices of the Twilight Saga contest is rebooting the Twilight Saga on Facebook, and they apparently they need our help. Firstly, it is not based off of the original four books. Instead, they are taking characters' stories from  The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide . I have read this book, and I have to say that I'm really excited for a chance to see some of these characters on screen. There also seem to be different levels of the contest: one where everyone can participate and some that are meant for very specific people. The first level is for everyone. They want fans to vote on the different characters that will be featured in the videos. Then things get a little complicated. They what female artists (screenwriters, directors, actors and such) that are

There are so many things going on right now, my lovelies, and I would love to say that any of it had to do with reading. A little did, but for the most part, I've had a hard couple of weeks. I've been getting all of my graduation forms together so that I may graduate on time.   It's getting closer and closer to the end of the semester which means I'm about to hit due dates for research papers and finals. Each bring along their own set of worries, but both together is enough to send me into a state of panic. Part of me doesn't want to write what else is wrong because it would feel like setting something into stone, and I don't want it to be true. But it is, so I will. On the other hand, it may help me feel better talking about it with other people. I lost someone very close to me two weeks ago. He was my great uncle, but really, he was a second grandfather to me. You may remember me mentioning him in How to be a Heroine when I was discussing archery

Hello, everyone! I'm back with another Book Review! October has come and gone, and I figured what better way to keep the spooky spirit alive than reading a spooky book. Lately, I've been really into Fox's TV show Sleepy Hollow, and lucky for me, there's a tie-in book. It's called Sleepy Hollow: Children of the Revolution by Keith R. A. DeCandido. The book follows the show faithfully, but it does not retell an episode. This is a new adventure never before seen on TV. It does take elements from the show, specifically from episode two of season one. In this book, a coven of witches try to bring back their leader Serilda of Abaddon who caused some mayhem in the previously mentioned episode. But let's see how this book stands without the television show. The book follows the two witnesses, Abby Mills, a police officer, and Icabod Crane, a soldier from the Revolutionary War,  as they try to prevent the apocalypse and defeat the four horsemen in the little town

Hello, everyone! I'm back, and I'm here to show you how I made my quiver. I was planning to use this technique for when I do my Katniss cosplay, but I haven't found the perfect fabric yet. Hopefully this tutorial will help you make your own quiver. I will say that I use this quiver in my everyday use, and it's really easy to do. I will also say that this is not an idea that I came up on my own. I did a little research and found this site . I pretty much followed everything step by step up until she added the extra fabric to the top part of her quiver. I opted out of that part of the tutorial. I'll go step by step and show what I did to achieve my own quiver. Here's a list of things that I used and what they cost:      2 yards of faux leather fabric - $7      One spool of all purpose thread - $5      One cardboard box - Free      Packing tape - $5      Box cutter - $4 As you can see, it was pretty inexpensive. I owned most of the materials, and I pla

Hello, everyone! I’m back with a Re-Read Book Review! Not only is this the first of this series for the blog, but it is an extra special post. I’ve just got through rereading  Twilight  by Stephenie Meyer in honor of the new reboot series that is going to be popping up on Facebook. Because of this, I’m going to be talking about the book as well as what I think about this reboot idea.  But enough about that, let’s get onto the review! Rereading this book has been very interesting. It’s the first time that I’ve done it while I’ve been in college, and I’ll admit that it felt like going back in time for me. I was brought back to high school and obsessing over these characters. It also felt a little weird too. For a while now,  Twilight  has been the butt of many a joke, and part of me felt like I had to sneak around to read my book. To be fair, I got over that quite quickly. I did like reading Bella and Edward’s relationship again.  I know that people are quick to say how creep

Hello, everyone! I'm back and I'm ready to tell you have I'm sort of becoming a writer. Today I'm going to focus on some of the things I've learned about narrative and how some recent peer review went. But enough about that. Let's get to the good stuff! Narration is pretty much how you tell your story. There are many different ways to get your point across. You can have many different points of view. Depending on what you decide on can change how readers view the story. We did an interesting exercise in class. We got to envision a particular scene in a story we wanted to tell that at least had three different characters. Each character had the chance to be the focal point when we tested each point of view. We started with first person, then third person, second person, and ended with one of the characters explaining the scene to someone who wasn't there. I was quite surprised with my findings. I tend to write my stories in first person because

Hello, everyone! I'm back with another merchandise review! I know, I know. I have been doing a lot of product reviews lately and not a lot of reading, and I have a good reason for it. One, I'm in college and they tend to tell me what to read for the majority of my time. "Well, why haven't you done a Book Review: School Edition?" you may ask. So far we've just been reading short stories, and I usually just do novels for those reviews. Two, fanfiction. That's all I'm going to say about it. Seriously. Anyway, today I'm reviewing something that I got while I was overseas. It's the the Hermione Wand Pen (and also bookmark, technically) that I got at Hamleys. It is part of the Noble Collection, which is also amazing and displayed at Hamleys. They seriously could have taken all of my money. But I'm not here to talk about that. Let's get to the review! I'm really enjoying this pen, which is an odd thing to say, but I had originally though

Cover Clothes #3: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll by alexandramathews featuring heart sunglasses       Hello, everyone! I'm back with another Cover Clothes. Today's is a special post because today is my best friend's birthday! So this post is dedicated to her! As you can see, today's Cover Clothes is Alice in Wonderland  by Lewis Carroll. I have Alice's blue dress and strappy shoes. I had to give props to the Cheshire Cat, so I added the watch. Lastly, we have red heart shaped sunglasses as a little nod to the Queen of Hearts. That's it for this post! Comment down below on other books you want to see on Cover Clothes. Subscribe to the blog by adding your email to the Subscribe Box down below or off to the right. Follow me on twitter for up to date information about the blog or ridiculousness about my life @ KK_Donna_Blog . Add me to your circles by clicking the Google+ button off to the right. Lastly, follow the tumblr dedicated to this b

Hello, everyone! I'm back to tell you how I'm learning how to be a writer. Just as a disclaimer, this is just some things that I've been learning in my fiction writing workshop. This is just some stuff that helps me. It may not help you, but then again, it might. So with that in mind, let get to what I learned about this week.  This  workshop we talked about paragraphs. I didn't realize that there were different styles of paragraphs. I just wrote and spaced out the paragraphs whenever it felt right to me, which I guess is a style all of it's own.  But let's break down paragraphs. For stores, paragraphs are the way for readers to rest or pace their reading. Francine Prose calls them flashes of lightening, which I thought made them so much more dramatic than anything I thought they were. Some writers purposefully don't use paragraphs so that the chaotic mind of the character comes through the writing style as well as the words used.  One thing we were c

Banned Books Reading List by alexandramathews on Polyvore Hello, everyone! I'm back with the first Reading List! In honor of Banned Book Week, I've come up with a list of books that have been banned in some way or fashion that have changed my life after reading them. I have read each of these books, and they made me changed the way that I look at books and at life. The first set of books is the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling. This series is one of the first literary memories that I have. I had read other books before, but I had never obsessed over a series until Harry Potter. My mother actually got them for my brother in hopes that he would read more. She got them on cassette tapes so that my brother didn't have an excuse not to "read" them. He didn't need one because I ended up taking them, spending hours in front of an old boom box listening to a British guy imitating Hermione's voice. I became obsessed with coming home and rewindin