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Suggs recommended Back to Black by Amy Winehouse in Music (curated)

 
Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
Back to Black by Amy Winehouse
2006 | Rock
8.8 (8 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"For obvious reasons, since her passing, I’ve been playing it a bit, and it’s a fucking great album. I think it was Tony Bennett who said she had the voice in which he could recognise the echoes of the truly great singers. Again, she had that spontaneity: she could do five different versions of the same song and they’d all be equally good. And that’s the sign of a real soul singer. I did meet her a few times, I used to see her around Camden, and my daughters used to know her a bit, being Camden girls, and it was sad seeing her demise. She was this healthy, vibrant girl and bit by bit you saw that change. Really tragic, and especially when you hear how great that album was. It’s funny, even in our heyday, people in Camden would leave us alone a bit. There wasn’t that tabloid hunger in those days, and there wasn’t a lot of music in the papers. Also, we weren’t in the girly market. Girls didn’t like Madness, so there was no point in writing about us! So we avoided all that. But now of course there’s the internet, and all these fucking virals or whatever they are, and everyone’s got a camera on their phone, and if Amy wanted to go and hang out at the pub, she just couldn’t. And at the very end, all she wanted to do was come back to Camden. Hopefully in time people will remember her as a brilliant singer, and forget all the other nonsense."

Source
  
AF
A Faerie's Revenge
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
ARC provided by the author.
Original Rating: 4.5 out of 5
This review and more can be found at <a href="http://www.bookwyrmingthoughts.com/2015/11/arc-review-a-faeries-revenge-by-rachel-morgan.html">Bookwyrming Thoughts</a>
All formatting is lost.

The fifth book in Rachel Morgan's Creepy Hollow series just further proves books four and beyond (however long this one will last) are so much better than the first three books. After the daytime drama-like ending Morgan leaves us back in A Faerie's Secret, we're brought straight back to Creepy Hollow to find Calla Larkenwood in a pretty miserable and "I don't give a care but I'm going to act like I do" state.

My mother watches too much Days of Our Lives (and Dateline). Lupe and I say it just makes her more overprotective because she thinks it's based off of real events. (Dateline is. Days of Our Lives probably is, but it's most likely exaggerated.)

However, by the end of the book, I find I like Calla as a character far more than I ever liked Violet. Calla is like Violet in a lot of ways (have I mentioned this when I reviewed the fourth book?) – she's ambitious and kicks faerie butt, but I feel she's more well-rounded than Violet (not that Violet wasn't well-rounded). Calla's afraid of a little thing like claustrophobia, while Violet is completely fearless. To be honest, I don't think I even remember Violet ever being afraid of anything (aside from losing her loved ones), and here's Calla, squeaking over narrow spaces. More things, bad things, happen to Calla, and I absolutely love it.

I know. You must be worried about me now. You'll have to line up behind my mom and Lupe and a few other people who know me very well, which turns out to be very few.

I also find that I miss Oryn so much from the first three books because he just goes straight to the point (and he made things entertaining).
<blockquote>“The awkward moment in which I discover that both my wife and my sister have made out with the same guy.”</blockquote>
Of course, by books four and five, most of the characters from the first three are pretty much just starting their future with sparkling baby faeries (I imagine them to be much more adorable). Meanwhile, Calla is still getting treated poorly by her trainer (who is really just playing favoritism possibly due to jealousy) and getting flashbacks/nightmares in the midst of dreams from Gaius trying to tell her something.

And murder. Lovely, lovely murder where Calla gets framed and accused for it. It's also by this point where Calla is confronted with the question, as Oryn so fabulously points out, "Why did you really want to join the guild? The guild, or the representation?" (See? He gets straight to the point.)

But in a nutshell, A Faerie's Revenge is really just revenge of the past – something that happened ten years ago and that person wants everyone to pay. How that person will do it (and how Calla is connected) is currently unknown, but it's official: you'll definitely want to read the first three books or you'll be spoiled and possibly lost.
<blockquote>“Maybe there’s no such thing as good guys and bad guys after all. Not when the good guys fail to see what’s wrong, and the bad guys are the ones who end up helping you.”</blockquote>
  
Mermaids Singing
Mermaids Singing
Dilly Court | 2018 | History & Politics, Romance
7
7.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
See below...
Contains spoilers, click to show
Okay so I finished this book a few nights back but it's taken me until now to be able to write my review down.
I really enjoyed it, couldn't put it down and it has good plot lines that make you NEED to know whats next. You really start to root for most characters and loathe the others. Theres plenty of twists that are completely unexpected, which in some cases you can see a twist coming a mile off so thats a plus.
The reason I put that this contains spoilers is because of how I felt at the end, resulting in my rating only being a 7.
The ending is frustrating!!! I know some writers write their books in sequences (Rosie Goodwin: Days of the week, Annie Murray: Birmingham, Narrowboat Girl etc) so when i reached the ending (AT 1AM BECAUSE I COULDN'T PUT IT DOWN) I assumed it had a sequel. IT DOESNT. So many questions, so many plot lines left unfulfilled. For example, Bella was in love with her step son Edward but he is now married and his father dead. The new Lady Mableton wants to adopt Bellas daughter after discovering she cannot have children and wants an heir to the mableton estate, she will stop at nothing to get this child. Kitty tries her hardest to get hold of Bella after she ran off to be with a man she was sold to when she was younger whom she thought was awful (dont even get me started) you never find out if Bella gets contacted!! Her daughter is left with her mother who says she will not let Lady Mableton have her granddaughter under no circumstances. THATS THE END OF THE BLUMMIN BOOK?!! How do they stop this woman from getting the child? Does bella and her beau come back and save the day? Does Edward put a stop to it? Also will Bellas mother (who was known to not be a very nice woman) give the child over at a price, since it would be of character?
DILLY COURT - PLEASE WRITE A SEQUEL AAARGHHH.
  
Fitbit Charge 3
Fitbit Charge 3
GPS & Navigation > Sports & Handheld GPS, Wearable Technology > Smart Watches
9
7.3 (9 Ratings)
Tech Rating
Overall performance for the money (0 more)
Still having to pay for premium content after forking out for fitness tracker (0 more)
Fitbit changed my life(style)
First of all thanks to @smashbomb for the great giveaway of a Fitbit Inspire HR

The heading in this review might seem dramatic but it is no exaggeration.

I had a fitbit charge 3 before I won this giveaway. So I am going to repost this review on the charge 3 as well as here. As it is a review on both and I will compare them against each other. I will also post this review for the Fitbit app as both fitness trackers are used in conjunction with the app. I will score them all separately on what they offer.

I was never one to over worry about my appearance so I paid little attention to my weight and in fact have been slightly overweight most of my life. My change started a week or two before I decided to buy a Fitbit. My wife who is one to care about her appearance had recently successfully implemented her own diet and exercise plan using a Fitbit Charge 3 and the Fitbit app to monitor her calorie intake and her daily exercise.

She had recently put on a bit of weight and this had affected her confidence so she decided to change. As I have Lupus an autoimmune disease. I am classed as clinically vulnerable to Covid so we were shielding for 19 weeks. I was advised to go in a little earlier than the rest of the UK nation being locked down. Towards the end of lockdown we started to go for walks on our daily exercise. This was the beginning of the change.

One day I caught site of my reflection in the microwave of all places. It was a side profile of my stomach and my waist and I realised I had let my weight gain go too far.

So I decided to use our daily walks to try and push myself first by slowly increasing the distance walked then to trying to improve the pace and choosing different routes which would push me a bit more. For instance with steep inclines.

I noticed some benefits almost straight away. Being quite goal driven. I set myself a goal of weight loss of 1lb a week. I started using the Fitbit app to monitor my calorie intake alongside my daily exercise.

It has worked wonders. I was 15st 8lb (clinically obese) when I started. I am now 13st 10lb(still overweight) and counting. I walk at least 2 miles, 5 out of 7 days. Most weeks I walk 6 days and some weeks I walk every day.

My wife and I have also allowed ourselves cheat days. This is so we don't feel deprived so that if we really fancy a treat we can say we will have that on Friday or Saturday and it works. Although we have cheat days we always monitor our calorie intake. This is so we can see over a week or month we still have a healthy deficit.

Having the fitness tracker alongside the app has inspired my wife and I to make additional changes. We have implemented new habits due to the tips popping up on the app now and again. I used to drink tea all day. I have changed this to no added sugar dilute juice and now drink my daily recommended amount of water every day.

Another tip that popped up is to eat a high protein breakfast early in the day this gets your metabolism going early and stages of cravings for carbs and sweet things. Of the options recommended my wife and started making overnight fruit and oat jars. This has also worked. I eat much more salad and a lot less carbs and sugar.

The next habit I am going to try and implement is to not eat at least 2 hours before going to bed.

Overall these are great buys. I love the step counter/goal, distance counter/goal, the exercise tracker, the water intake monitor and the calorie intake/outgoing monitor.

It's not often that you can say a purchase actually has a positive effect on your lifestyle.

One gripe about all the products is you have to pay extra for premium content once you have forked out for the trackers.

The scores I have given are: Inspire HR 7
                                               Fitbit app 9
                                               Charge 3 9

After raving about them you might wonder why not 10's all round. I knocked 1 off the charge 3 and the app for the fact that there is additional content that doesn't come with the purchase of the tech.

The additional knock of a further 2 points is because the HR doesn't offer an altimeter and it doesn't have the advertised battery life of 5 days. It lasts just under that amount of time.

So either one of these would be a good investment for a fitness tracker on a budget. Personally I would fork out the extra £30 for the Charge 3. The altimeter and the extra battery is worth the little bit extra.
  
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Erika (17789 KP) rated ESPN in Apps

Apr 18, 2021  
ESPN
ESPN
Entertainment, Sports
2
2.0 (1 Ratings)
App Rating
I have ESPN+ because of the bundle I purchased from Disney+ that included ESPN and Hulu. Initially, I thought I would not watch ESPN+ at all, but it's the service I watch the most due to it having a plethora of European Football games on every weekend.
The app is a POS. It is so absolutely terrible. It's slow, it's counter-intuitive, and overall, just a boondoggled mess. There need to be more options such as filtering out the sports you don't want to watch, i.e. MLB, and any US college sports. Seriously, I watch the Masters over those boring af sports. There also needs to be an option to set alerts when there are games you want to watch, because I missed the live Hibernian game this morning because they buried it at the end of the list behind college basketball games that wouldn't be on for another 5 hours.
Another annoyance concerning this app is organization. It knows I have an ESPN+ subscription, and not the actual channels. Why show me games that I want to watch, only for them to be blocked because I don't buy the channels??? Don't tempt me with FIFA World Cup Qualifiers that I want to watch, then I find out they're not available??
The good thing is that they seem to be attempting to improve it, but it's still unbearable some days.
  
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Kristy H (1252 KP) Apr 23, 2021

Terrible app! Totally agree!!