Thursday, 21 July 2016

The Vanishing Chuckles!


Just a quick note to let you know I haven't vanished or anything despite not being online much this week. I had to get more blood tests on Monday and I'm waiting for the results. To add to the fun I had a panic attack on Tuesday followed by vomit on Tuesday night, then bad stomachs yesterday and today. I figure it's probably nerves about everything but it has started my depression off again so blogging, reading, everything took a back seat this week. I'm frustrated and feeling sorry for myself AGAIN. Grr. I felt the urge for retail therapy again but the truth is, I'm finding it hard to find books in my favourite genres online or cheap dvds that I don't already have! I'm thinking there has been too much therapy recently...

My computer hasn't went in for repair yet and to be honest it won't do any of the basic functions it is meant to do. With all our health issues I haven't felt up to going back to the computer shop yet. It has taken ten minutes just to get this message put into bold and I'm getting really annoyed about it. Stupid darn computers...I don't know if I'll get that sorted this week or not. Today, I can't be bothered thinking about it.

So grumpy Chuckles is still here-hopefully I'll be in better spirits in a few days! I'll still be blog visiting and answering comments, just not posting regularly until things settle a bit!
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Saturday, 16 July 2016

Stacking the Shelves #140



Stacking the Shelves is a meme hosted by Tynga’s Reviews

Stacking The Shelves is all about sharing the books you are adding to your shelves, may it be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical store or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course ebooks! Click on the link under the book to find its page on Goodreads or Smashwords. 

Please note that I always leave a message on your STS/SP if you visit me, but if you use DISQUS or a similar third party I will not be able to leave a comment on your page. I don't allow any company access to my social media accounts and I certainly don't allow them to edit and take over my accounts the way DISQUS does. So if you use DISQUS, I can't leave comments on your page so I can't really follow you back, sorry! I'm noticing that some blogs set with Google Plus are trying to force you to open a Google Plus or Facebook account before you can leave a comment. Well, I have no interest in rejoining Google Plus or joining Facebook so if your blog uses this set up, I won't be following it or commenting! And sometimes, I have problems leaving messages on blogs hosted by Wordpress-they try to block me so there might not be a message from me some weeks or you might get a double message sometimes! Blame them, not me!
        
It has been one of those really annoying weeks where I got nothing productive done. It was a week full of health scares, doctor visits, insomnia and feeling pretty miserable. Full details on my Retail Therapy post. So I didn't get any real reading done but I did watch two films last Sunday. I've already reviewed Atill Alice this week and hope to review Doubt tomorrow. I've been glued to the TV as well, watching all the exciting political developments in my country, feeling physically sick at the terrible events in Nice, and watching in disbelief the bungled coup in Turkey last night. It was certainly eventful. Puts all my miseries into perspective.

The one good thing to come out of this week was retail therapy on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday my dad and I raided HMV and bought nine cheap dvds. You can see what we bought on the Retail Therapy post. I also went online hunting for Kindle bargains and I grabbed a TON of urban fantasy and dinosaur books! I think I grabbed about 75 over the last few days and I only paid for about 10 of them! YEA! Some have been available free for a while and I ignored them because they have romance in them but I have decided to give them a chance anyway and it is exciting to find a pile of new authors to try. It'll take me quite a few weeks to get them uploaded onto my STS! This week, I'm featuring books mostly from 2 weeks ago that I didn't have space for on last week's post. 

DOWNLOADS:


 
 
 
 
 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19404049-glimmer-of-hope

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25122608-extinct 

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https://twitter.com/chucklesthescot
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Friday, 15 July 2016

Retail Therapy


This has been a pretty poor week all in all. On Sunday my dad came home after a night out to say my uncle looks pretty ill and he wanted to check on him the next day. Cue worried sleepless night. He was a bit better on Monday but is waiting on results back from tests the previous week.

 Tuesday I get a letter from the doctor wanting to discuss blood tests I had done last week so I spent Tuesday night worrying about every disease under the sun until I saw the doctor on Wednesday. My thyroid test is slightly off, so is my white blood count (slightly too high) and slightly abnormal kidney function test. This set me into panic as I had kidney failure as a kid which nearly killed me. Doctor thinks it might be a small infection but isn't worried so MORE blood tests on Monday which has had me on edge.

 Thursday morning my dad had a recurrence of ongoing ear pain and had a panic attack so we set out to do retail therapy in the afternoon to cheer ourselves up. I grabbed some cheap dvds from HMV...



So have you seen any of these? No spoilers please but I'd be interested in whether or not you enjoyed them! I also grabbed an amazing 60 urban fantasy books from different sites and only paid for about 10 of them-exciting! They will gradually appear on upcoming STS posts!

Also bought yummy ASDA chilli cheese dips, Aldi cakes, smoked salmon canopes from Tesco...lovely!

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Film Review: Still Alice

Alice Howland is a renowned linguistics professor happily married with three grown children. All that begins to change when she strangely starts to forget words and then more. When her doctor diagnoses her with Early-onset Alzheimer's Disease, Alice and her family's lives face a harrowing challenge as this terminal degenerative neurological ailment slowly progresses to an inevitable conclusion they all dread. Along the way, Alice struggles to not only to fight the inner decay, but to make the most of her remaining time to find the love and peace to make simply living worthwhile.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3316960/?ref_=nv_sr_1 
Filmography links and data courtesy of IMDb.

Cast: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth.

My Review: 
I read this book and found it quite upsetting. This is a vile disease that robs people of their mind, their dignity and ability to exist as a person. It is also horrific for family members who have to watch a loved one deteriorate in front of them and be helpless to do anything. So I knew to have the paper hankies ready when I watched this one. The film is powerful, tragic and traumatic to watch. To see this intelligent woman lose everything and deteriorate in such a shocking amount of time was very troubling. 

Julianne Moore was superb and well deserved the Oscar for her performance. I did shed a few tears through the film which shows how good the overall acting was. Alec Baldwin also puts in a very strong performance as the helpless husband and I feel that his character is more sympathetic in the film than he was in the book. Kristen Stewart gets a lot of abuse for her acting but I don't see much wrong with her acting and she takes this part well. I didn't greatly like the character of Anna but that is no reflection on Kate Bosworth as an actress. 

This is not a film I could watch over and over because of the difficult content but I am glad that I did watch it. A very good film that I hope encourages more funding to stop this disease destroying so many lives.  
star rating photo: 35 star rating 3-5-stars.jpg
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Wednesday, 13 July 2016

Book Review: A Tale of Two Preppers by Susan Gregersen


When Jeff and Jeannie discover prepping they don't realize how little time is left. Will the preps they were able to make in the short time they had keep them alive? Will they live long enough to escape the city?

My Review:
I love apocalypse prepper books and usually the MC is a capable, prepared and intelligent person who has a good chance of getting out of the city alive. They have food stockpiles and weapons and a plan. And then we have Jeff and Jeannie who are probably the most clueless characters in the genre that I have ever seen in my life! I think this book is probably a parody of how dependent some people are on certain modern things and conveniences, that they may not capable of looking after themselves in a disaster situation.

Lets start with the disaster that is poor Jeannie. She lives in a flat without can openers, condiments, cooking utensils of every kind and never ever cooks. She buys every meal from places like coffee shops and sandwiches at the deli. She has no idea how to actually make a sandwich and needs to have this explained to her by the deli owner. This was my favourite scene in the entire book, watching the man explain how to choose what to put in the sandwich and how to put it together. I seriously hope this was not based on people the author knew...The choices available of meat and cheese almost blow poor Jeannie's mind! Then she has to find somewhere that sells condiments which really confuses the shop owners! The coffee shop owner is also horrified when Jeannie buys cans of soup to take home and thinks that Jeannie must be having money worries...

Jeff is not sure what precious metals are but thinks he needs to put his money into them as his prepper co-workers have advised. He also starts thinking about guns as his worries grow. But as he is exploring options, he and Jeannie are learning what to do on prepper websites but don't tell each other in case the other thinks they are being stupid. By the time disaster arrives, our heroes have given themselves a better chance of surviving the nuclear blast which follows and try to stay safe in the chaos before getting out of the city...

Actually when you see people in total panic at being without phone and internet for a few hours you start to wonder if this book is an extreme view of people in society or a scary reality. I am reminded of a former friend at my door in tears and sobbing because she couldn't log on to Facebook for whatever reason for a whole hour, wailing that it was a disaster and the WORST THING EVER. I admit that I had little patience for this when she had a seriously ill relative in hospital at the time. My lack of sympathy for her Facebook log on crisis led to her calling me heartless and cruel...I told her to permanently get stuffed!

It was funny but a bit scary to look at them stumbling across ideas of how to survive and learning what to do to increase their chances so I did find it an entertaining read. I actually grew to like the pair as they were nice and decent people who never did anything to hurt others. As they learned more, I was rooting for them. My favourite character however was Marty and I wish there had been more about him.

If there is a follow up or a story about Marty's adventures, I'd certainly read it. 
star rating photo: Three Star Rating 3stars.png
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