Au Revoir Vivien

A simple bracelet that I made for my friend, Vivien who is migrating to Australia very soon. Bracelet is made of Moonstones, Balinese silver beads and Hematites. Will definitely miss her.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling

Awesome Book - A Prisoner of Birth

Anyone who knows me knows this: when buying a gift for me, he/she could never go wrong with bookshop gift cards. That way, I can indulge my love for books and be very thankful to the giver at the same time :)

Anyway, my very kind boss bestowed me with a Border's gift card for Christmas and needless to say, I made a beeline for the nearest Borders store at the first opportunity.

Picked up four books (listed in reading order):

The Appeal (John Grisham)
The First Patient (Michael Palmer)
A Prisoner of Birth (Jeffrey Archer)
Hold Tight (Harlan Coben)

Just finished reading A Prisoner of Birth. The verdict? Probably the best book that I've read in a long time! In brief, this book is about a man convicted for a crime (murder) he did not commit and the thrilling path he embarked on for revenge.

"If Danny Cartwright had proposed to Beth Wilson the day before, or the day after, he would not have been arrested and charged with the murder of his best friend. And when the four prosecution witnesses are a barrister, a popular actor, an aristocrat and the youngest partner in an established firm's history, who is going to believe his side of the story?

Danny is sentenced to 22 years and sent to Belmarsh prison, the highest security jail in the land, from where no inmate has ever escaped. But Spencer Craig, Lawrence Davenport, Gerald Payne and Toby Mortimer all underestimate Danny's determination to seek revenge and Beth's relentless quest to win justice, which forces all four protagonists to fight for their lives."

You can read the excerpt here, http://www.jeffreyarcher.co.uk/excerpt-pob/1-18.pdf.

The Appeal and The First Patient were both excellent by the way, but A Prisoner of Birth got me hooked from the very first page. I was under a spell that compelled me to turn the pages.

Anyway, that was Archer, and now, Coben. If the rest of Hold Tight are as gripping as the first few pages when I began this morning, you can count on me holding on tight until the very last page.

For now... I'm impatiently waiting for Archer's next book, Paths of Glory. Would it be as good, if not better?

Great Song

I'm Back!

Yup, I'm back! It's been a little over two months since I last wrote here and a crazy two months they were!

What happened over the two months in a nutshell: I got married, one of my sisters declared war with her husband and I just took possession of my new home. So yeah, the two months were hectic.

Anyway, I'm back and popping in to say "Hi" to those who have been checking in and out of "I Don't Blog" and dropping me (or pestering me with) questions, "How come you don't update your blog?" and "You've gone MIA, is it?"

Will (try to) write again soon. Until then, Happy New Year!

Ciao!