Frogs are awesome.

I love frogs. They're so cute. I found this one hiding in a pile of building supplies. It was very dry out, hadn't rained in days, so I poured some water on the little guy and he seemed a lot happier.

A free book! Yippee!!

Heartless by Anne Elizabeth Stengl is free on Amazon for this week! I'm excited! I've been wishing I could read it for months. :D It's been ages since I got to read something new. Since I got it free, I'll definitely write a review for it, too. :)

Wood sorrel

I've been taking a bunch of pictures lately, and these are my favorites. :)

Lilies of the valley

Bluet

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Were Totally Deceiving

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish.

1. The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien. When I was 14, everyone I knew was talking about it, and I had no idea what it was so I (foolishly) asked my father about it. (This was before Wikipedia.) Confused by the title, he (I only found this out much later) thought I was talking about the Lord of the Flies (HORRORS) and told me he'd read it in school and that it was the worst book ever written.  I believed him, at first, but what other people were saying did not match up. At all. And then the movie came on TV. I was hooked. So, so, so unbearably, marvelously hooked. The Lord of the Rings became my favorite book ever, in triumph over its misunderstood title. Peter Jackson's movies may have flaws (of which poor Faramir is the most wronged victim), but because they're what brought me to the books, they are pure epic win as far as I'm concerned.

2. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling. The back cover of my paperback copy says Harry blows up Aunt Petunia. WRONG. It's Aunt Marge. Gur.

3. The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. I picked up this book a couple times and thought it was childish, and Taran was irritating. It took a third time for me to finally read far enough in to see that it actually gets pretty good later (once Eilonwy and Fflewddur show up). I love Fflewddur, and I can totally sympathize with him over the constantly bursting strings on his harp. If I had one like his, the strings would probably bust a lot too. . . It's just so easy to make a story I'm telling someone more interesting, that sometimes I don't even realize I'm adding to it until it's too late. :P

4. The Door Within, by Wayne Thomas Batson. I thought this book would be an allegory or something so I shied away from reading it. But, it isn't an allegory, and is actually pretty amazing.

5. The Clockwork Three, by Matthew Kirby. The back cover makes this book sound a bit boring, but the cover art is pretty enough that I decided to check it out anyway. It turned out to be pretty interesting and well-thought-out -- a great steampunk story. (I know, that doesn't tell much, but it's been awhile since I read it and I can't get my copy back.)

6. The Guernsey Literary And Potato-Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. The back cover and the decidedly peculiar acquaintance who gave me this book led me to believe it would be a really interesting story about World War II. It was boring. I couldn't get into it at all. So I skipped through to see if it got better, and encountered a graphic depiction of someone killing a cat. Anyone who knows me, knows this is the last straw. I slammed it shut.

7. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Everyone was raving about this book one way or another. They all seemed to love it or hate it. I expected it to at least be interesting. After 200 pages struggling not to fall asleep, occasionally enlivened by some irritating negative comment or exasperating misinformation about my favorite place ever, I started flipping through, looking for the funny parts. IMO, Twilight would have been much better if it didn't take itself so seriously. There's so much potential for comedy in the idea that it's no wonder everyone makes fun of it.

8. Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones. The back cover doesn't describe this story well at all! It describes Wizard Howl as "lecherous". I mean, what?

9. Monster Blood Tattoo Trilogy, by D. M. Cornish. (Why is this on every single list I write? Write about different books already, you say? Nope. These are just Too. Insanely. Awesome.) It was the title that confused me here. They were always on the shelf in the library, beckoning, but the name sounded alarmingly creepy, so I ignored them. In light of that, switching the name used for the U.S. versions was a fairly good idea, even though the new name ("The Foundling's Tale") isn't as interesting.

10. Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Did anyone else picture CDs when they first heard of it? :P