The Pen and Inkpot

As a little book blogger, I appreciate any extra readers I can get, so I have decided to help out other bloggers by giving them a shout out. I'm also helping you out by giving you some good reading material! The five blogs I have listed range from being very well known in the blog world to smaller, undiscovered gems. Bookish Bronte I discovered Bronte on Instagram and I greatly admire her photos. After checking out her blog, I have decided that she covers things that a lot of people would find useful. She has had booming success on instagram over the past year and plans on using that to write YA novels and get them published. Her posts are mostly about gaining followers and creating content on bookstagram and posts about writing and book publishing. www.brontehuskinson.com Black Books Page Cikita is a book blogger like me. She reviews a mixture of English and Indonesian books and writes in both Indonesian and English. I find her reviews very insightful without ...

In all honesty, I wasn't very impressed with this book so I want to give you my real opinion on it. Hostage looks like a really gripping, intense, scary book with a blurb that entices you in. "I don't remember the knife. I remember something cold on my neck, which could have been a knife, or could have been his cold fingers pressing into me ...  And then we were in the car. And then we were gone." I found that there were some flaws in the novel which made it not as intense as it seems. The book begins with a girl named Tully who is at a police station being interviewed about the previous 24 hours when she was taken as a hostage by a kid from her school. The problem here is that I know already that Tully is fine, so whatever happened to her while she was hostage must not have been that bad because she is clearly fine afterwards. Then point of views are changed between Tully ultimately lying to the police, to what actually happened, to what Tully ...

Recently, I've been discovering new music to listen to, so I thought I might share with you some of my favourite tunes. The type of music I like are mostly acoustic songs and duets. I know that some people don't like that sort of music and that's ok, you don't have to listen to the songs I recommend. On the other hand, if you enjoy listening to similar music to me, you might find your new favourite song in this post! Odette Odette is an artist who I like a lot. There are two of her songs which I am really enjoying  and they are both quite unique and interesting. Collide is the first song which has piano, layered voices and a cool clapping pattern underneath the vocals. The second song is Watch Me Read You which is much different to the first song. It is a rap song which I actually like. It is a more alternative style  and still has some acoustic vibes underneath it which I like.  Billie Marten https://www.thefourohfive.com/music/review/billi...

The Raven Boys is a novel that seems to be quite popular. I have read countless raving reviews and seen many Instagram posts about it so I put it on hold at my local library to give it a try for myself. I was not going to believe all of these reviews until I had read it for myself. I ploughed my way through The Raven Boys and this is what I encountered... Every year on St Mark’s Eve, Blue stands in the cold with her clairvoyant mother  as she  takes down the names of the souls who are to die in the coming year. Blue can never see them, while her mother always can, but this year one soul appears on the corpse road and speaks to Blue.   “There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve. Either you’re his true love or you killed him” Blue has always been told that she will cause her true love to die... The boy that Blue sees is a rich boy from the local private school who she would normally stay away from, but something draw...

I have had this book on my "to-read" list for a while and finally got around to reading it. I wasn’t expecting much, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. It is romantic with a kick of action and it is very mysterious. Jeff Giles tells the story of what happens when two worlds collide in a way that is both interesting and gripping. Zoe struggles as her world comes tumbling down. Her father’s body lies at the bottom of a dark cave and the police don’t even care. Her little brother cries every night for his dad who will never come home. Just as things seem to be getting worse, a light shines out of the darkness.  She called him X. He came from the underworld where he never belonged. He lived in a dark cell for his whole life, surrounded by howling murderers. He never deserved that and Zoe knows it. X should never have met Zoe and the lords of the lowlands will be out to get them. Even when two worlds conspire against them, Zoe and X dare to love. “They stand on the e...

I was super excited when I made this knot pillow and it actually worked really well. I began copying a tutorial by HGTV then decided to change the knot a bit to make it how I wanted. I made my knot cushion in a way that meant I had no loose ends, spare ends or loose safety pins and two good sides.  Things you will need are: Two pairs of tights (any size) Thread (the same colour as your tights) Needle Safety pins Stuffing (you need a fair amount for this) Step 1: Cut the legs off both pairs of tights Step 2: Stuff them loosely to the brim Step 3: Safety pin the open end of each tight leg together Step 4: Spread the tights out so that it looks like a plus sign and complete the beginnings of a “good luck” knot (I have included the photos of how to do it here) Make sure you tighten the knot once you are done. Step 5: Turn the knot to the back where the pins are holding it together and sew the ends together. This doe...

A book of love, sadness and hope, Lost and Found is a very emotional story. Although the plot involves no fast paced action or gripping scenes, I did manage to read the whole thing in one afternoon (partially because it was a good book and partially because I had four hours to kill). Lost and Found is a truly adorable novel that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy at the end while providing you with a simple, easy but deep read. Millie Bird is seven years old when she realises that everything around her is dying. She begins to record every dead thing she sees and it isn't until she gets to twenty seven that her dad becomes a dead thing too. Agatha Pantha is eighty two and since her husband died, she has not left her house. She simply stares out her front window, yelling insults at passers-by and expressing her rage in everything she does. One day she sees a young girl across the street, very alone. Karl the Touch Typist is eighty seven when he is admitted to a nursing h...