10th July (Sunday) - These days things had been havoc. Working alone to deal two major dressings, people, trying to settle certain invoices, in between trying to clear leaves before the end of this year, running stock takes, and as always, handling difficult patients. I thought of trying something different, talking about books, the only thing that kept me sane from the craziness of the work place. Since it was the festive season, we're severely short staffed to the point there's only one person on each floor, but thank God it wasn't everyday. But I'm so exhausted after those two huge dressings, so instead of nursing, today I'll be talking about books instead.
Recently I've been hunting down the Heather Wells series by Meg Cabot. Originally I only had the second, third and forth books, but not the beginning and ending. What irks me, as a bookaholic and bookworm, is that if I love a book, I always aim to get the whole series, so recently I went to the Big Bad Wolf sale and lo and behold, I found the last book of the series. Yeah! But I'm still missing the first book, which led back to my book hunting, and miracle, a bookshop that I frequented to often managed to get the first book for me, first edition. Now my series (and life) is complete.
I've been a Meg Cabot fan since I first started reading her Princess Diaries series, and since then, I've been picking up her other works, The Mediator series, the Abandon series, the Avalon High series, the Airhead series and many more. Meg Cabot books aren't easy to come by, except for the Princess Diaries series, so it was really hard for me to even get hold any of them. God knows why, maybe they are planning to sell E-books... People often joked that I should sell off my Enid Blyton and Meg Cabot books but no way am I ever selling them. It was really hard to come by them and I loved them. Her heroines are really spunky and sassy despite their flaws, and you can relate to them easily.
J.K. Rowling, ah who wouldn't love Harry Potter? I grew up with them since they first came out and still love them. I got the original covers instead of the ones I see out now in the market, I wonder why they kept changing into weird covers, it's so weird... Again, not for sale, although I could fetch a good value from them. Now they got an eight book coming out end of this month, and you know me, saving up now so that when it comes out, it's off I go.
L.J. Smith, I got all of her series, from Vampire Diaries (NOT the ghostwritten ones) to Dark Visions, to Forbidden Game, to Night World, to the Wildworld and Secret Circle (again, NOT the ghostwritten ones). Now they are also hard to come by, especially for Dark Visions, Forbidden Game and certain Night World titles. It's an absolute pity that her Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle series were taken from her, hence why I refuse to buy the ghostwritten versions. I tried by reading those open copies that you see in bookshops, even finished reading them, and I'm so sad. These are not L.J. Smith writings. I wanted to see the original author writing, not the ghostwritten ones, but due to certain issues, she lost her rights to them. Thank God the other series are all still under her name, so I'll be focusing on them more. Few years back she had released a Vampire Diaries fanfiction and I would love to get my hands on them, except it's in E-Book form and only available in the US of A. Aw...
Anthony Horowitz, I had the Alex Rider series and the Power of Five series, all first editions, sadlky except for Stormbreaker, which is with the first edition movie tie in cover, but nevertheless, again, can fetch a high price on certain sites like Amazon and Ebay. Again, NOT FOR SALE.
Chris Bradford, I started reading his books 4 years ago after reading an interview about him in the Star, and had never regretted it. It's almost as real as you can get, and he actually practices most of those martial arts and skills in real life. For the Young Samurai series, he studied various martial arts like Kendo, Ninjutsu, Karate and many others. For his Bodyguard series, he underwent a real bodyguard training and graduated with flying colours and a qualified license. Man, who would've thought a bodyguard training is tough? If you read my books, I actually input karate in my characters (I'm a Black First Dan), although for Blitz's story, I've been trying Capoeira and certain self defense skills. Couldn't find any good capoeira class over here so I had to resort to reading and Youtube to get the feel. Please do not attempt all of these in real life without proper guidance and instructions or you may get seriously hurt.
So there you have it, most of my favourite authors. And now, back to writing plus drawing.
