Photo by elen aivali on Unsplash

CONFESSION TIME! The main reason that I am not big in participating book events is because I am extremely uncomfortable mingling with crowds of strangers. On the few book events that I have attended and recapped here on the blog, my sister was always with me. (Sissy, I love you. You are my rock.) I cannot always drag her to events tho. Thus one time, I braved going to a panel ALONE and WHAT HORROR! I was a BIG panicky mess inside. I was calming myself, taking deep breaths and half-wishing that I become invisible the entire time. The Gryffindor in me managed to ask questions to the panel and to quickly say hi to some book bloggers but the ordeal exhausted me so much to the point that on the way home tears are leaking incessantly down my face for no apparent reason. I am not certain if that was just my chronic shyness or if I am suffering from a case of social anxiety disorder (Full disclosure: I am not diagnosed). One thing I’m sure of is I don’t intend for a public meltdown to happen anytime soon. SO HELLO HERMIT LIFE!

Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian
by Andy Weir

Synopsis:
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.

Now, he’s sure he’ll be the first person to die there.

After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive — and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.

Chances are, though, he won’t have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old “human error” are much more likely to kill him first.

Review: The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco

The Girl from the Well
by Rin Chupeco

Synopsis:

You may think me biased, being murdered myself. But my state of being has nothing to do with the curiosity toward my own species, if we can be called such. We do not go gentle, as your poet encourages, into that good night. 

A dead girl walks the streets.

She hunts murderers. Child killers, much like the man who threw her body down a well three hundred years ago.

And when a strange boy bearing stranger tattoos moves into the neighborhood so, she discovers, does something else. And soon both will be drawn into the world of eerie doll rituals and dark Shinto exorcisms that will take them from American suburbia to the remote valleys and shrines of Aomori, Japan.