Coming Attractions: March

{Apropriately Spring-y Desktop Wallpaper courtesy of the wonderful Oana Befort} 

Like January, it seems that February was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it kind of month. Honestly, I can't even remember what I managed to do with most of it, without the benefit of going over my planner and calendar's many scribbled-in schedules and endless amounts of to-do lists in the hopes of spurring on a memory. Even then, the things that I can remember - getting a new English professor after our previous one left halfway through the quarter, writing an article for the Tacoma Weekly, applying for a position as a Recruitment Counselor for Formal Fall Recruitment 2014 - seem like yesterday's news by now. What I'm really focused on, is the future! 

March is going to be a big, big, big month for me. It's ending the quarter on a strong note and kicking ass at Finals, moving into a new room in the house with two of my best friends for the rest of the school year, loving Seattle in the springtime, seeing my Dad in a new show, letting it loose on Spring Break, watching the Cheerleader experience some of the most exciting times of being a Daffodil Princess, more writing, more hard work, and more fun times to be had by all! March is going to be, for me, the month of opportunity. 

FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHTS

{Seeing The Cheerleader starting to take on her Daffodil duties (and getting a little nostalgic for my own reign); celebrating Valentine's Day; going on a weekend trip to Disneyland with the bestie!}

• My most popular post this month: Magical Reads: Reading Recs Inspired by Disneyland (even though it was only posted two days ago!) 
• My College Fashion posts this month: Howl's Moving Castle (Part Two) and Fangirl. 
• My favorite book I read this month: Cinder
• Your favorite review I wrote this month: Something Strange and Deadly

these are a few of my favorite links...

1. In celebration of the upcoming release of Divergent this month, how 'bout a throwback to Team Epic Reads' Faction Tea Party with Veronica Roth? 
2. And speaking of Team Epic Reads, have you seen their Epic Chart of YA Retellings yet? 162 different books set up in a map of the mythologies and fairy tales they originated from... I know I've got a lot to add to my TBR list! 
3. My fam knows how much I love scented candles... so how am I supposed to say know to Fandlemonium's "Candles for Geeks"? Especially the Harry Potter ones... 
4. My English 307 class has really made me reevaluate the status of graphic novels in contemporary literature, and now all I want is more! Good thing Buzzfeed made this list of 60 Comics Everyone Should Read. 
5. Looking for some organization inspiration with Spring Cleaning in the air... maybe the promise of some new, super sweet stamped pencils can serve as a reward? 

quote of the month

College Fashion Link Up: Fangirl

Sometimes, book recommendations can come from some pretty unexpected places. I've had reading recs come from random people I meet in bookstores, and dug up from random reviews online, and even in the random grocery stores checkout line, I've found new books to read. Which makes it seem super weird that one of the most unexpected places from which I might get a book lent to me, ended up being my fourteen-year-old sister.

Yep, that's right: someone closer to the ideal age for readers of Young Adult than I, and someone who predicted the inevitable publishing power of the incomparable Rainbow Rowell before I, was the one to first lend me any of the newly popular author's books, and that someone was my baby Ballerina. She's only really gotten into books within the past six months or so, and I couldn't be happier for her newest source of happiness. Now, I've got someone to fangirl with me, and read Fangirl with me. So, in honor of this most welcome of developments in my family life, I decided to make the novel the topic of my most recent post on College Fashion's "Looks from Books" column.

And I'm so happy The Ballerina recommended this novel to me. From it's all-too-relatable college setting, to it's quirky, adorable heroine, to it's bordering-on-Sarah-Dessen-sweet hero, I couldn't put this book down, and honestly, it made me want to go back to writing more of my own fiction. While those dreams may have to wait until we're out of the mire that is midterms in the last quarter of Winter Quarter, I can still enjoy this great contemporary YA read right now. Here's my favorite look from the article, based off of the character of Cath: 

Go read the article HERE for more fun looks!!! 

Top Ten Tuesday: Reasons I Love Being a Blogger/Reader

"Top Ten Tuesday" is a weekly countdown meme, hosted by the Broke and the Bookish! 

Thank god this week isn't another Books that Inspire Feelings kind of deal, because I'm all done with options for swooning and crying. Let's dwell on something a little happier this week... like being grateful, and happy. Let's talk about why I love what I do, and why I've done it all my life, and why I've been blogging about it now for three-and-a-half years... let's talk about why I love reading books. 

why i love reading

It gave me a way to escape. 

It always gives me something to do. 

It helps me figure out the world around me. 

It makes me a better person. 

It helps me understand people better. 

why i love blogging

It gave me a voice I didn't know I had. 

It gave me something for myself, as well as share with others.  

It helped me develop as a writer. 

It gives me something to aspire to. 

It made me realize there's always going to be something for me to do. 

What's your Top Ten? 

Review: Something Strange and Deadly

 I'm one of those people who believes that you can stake a lot of a person's character, simply based on the people they ally themselves with. Not like in a political leanings kind of way - though I guess that's pretty reliable, too - but in a "what's your best friend like?" kind of way. Maybe it's the sorority girl in me, just because that's my favorite Recruitment question to ask, but it tells you a lot about what people value most, in human form. For instance, my best friend is super girly, incredibly sarcastic, hilarious, much more socially attuned to what is "cool" than I am, emotionally invested in the same things as me, and enjoys pulling me out of my comfort zone. (And she's getting an obligatory mention today, because it's her 22nd birthday!!!)

So, Susan Dennard, the author of the Something Strange and Deadly series, is best friends with my personal spirit animal S. J. Maas.

How am I just supposed to ignore something like that? As soon as I saw that the novel was stocked on the shelves of my local library, I had to dive right in... and I can definitely tell you that my "friends-as-litmus-tests-of-awesome" theory is as strong as ever.

Something Strange and Deadly follows Eleanor Fitt, a high ranking member of Philadelphia's Old Money, hiding a couple of terrible not-so-secret secrets... her family is actually poor, her mother has never been all that stable since her father's death, and, worst of all, her brother has disappeared! Only Eleanor knows the truth about that last part... after a terrifying encounter with the walking dead, she knows that her brother has been held hostage by the necromancer causing the rising of the Dead in Laurel Hill cemetery. Thankfully, the intrepid Spirit Hunters are holed up at the Centennial Exhibition nearby, and she thinks they can help. If only she could get the smile of that handsome inventor, Daniel, out of her head...

Dude! Zombies. 1874. Centenniel Exhibition. A super-cool, kick-butt-and-take-names heroine. A dreamy-but-stubborn love interest, and a dreamy-but-tortured love interest, and an overall love triangle that doesn't make me want to gouge my eyes out. This book seriously has it all.

I mean, I'm not going to say that some of it wasn't predictable. There were points that, as soon as they were introduced, that I knew where they were going. But I think that was mainly because I was thinking of the most awesome and perfect possible outcomes for each of the plot points that I thought were obvious, and they ended up happening. So, it was predictably awesome, I guess. 

I really enjoyed getting to know Eleanor, because she came off as very relatable - incredible accomplishment, being that I don't live in the 19th century or wear a corset, but feel like I "get" Eleanor - and I thought she exhibited a couple of characteristics of heroics that we don't necessarily get to see all that much in YA heroines. She was curious, and maybe got into a few scrapes that way, but was never hopelessly reckless. She was naive to some of the ways of the world, but definitely exhibited common sense, and was never an idiot. She had integrity, but never put off anyone with some kind of misplaced nobility. She was a smart, sensible, but still fun and open-hearted, person, and I wish there were more of her in YA.

And, to be honest, the setting did a lot for me, too. I feel like the whole East Coast Money thing has always had a stake in YA, but antiquated East Coast Money, in a not-so-Anna-Godbersen way? That's unique. And it was never historical in a wardrobe-explicit way - which is how I feel a lot of other wannabe historical fictions operate - but it detailed what was going on in a lot of different ways... technology was touched on, and so was architecture, world cultures, the development of America... it was all-inclusive, and I loved that Dennard tried really hard to form such a specifically historically accurate world, while also letting her imagination run wild in other places... with the Running Hungry Dead, most specifically.

But dude, seriously. Zombies. And that's something I loved, too: anyone who's seen good zombie media, from Zombieland to The Walking Dead, knows there are rules to these kinds of things, and Dennard's got zombies done right. (Go for the knees.)

Overall, Something Strange and Deadly was a great example of how to do YA, historical fiction, world-building, and zombie fiction, right, and it provided both an amazing heroine and a love triangle that didn't suck. Even the fact that it was a little predictable kept it grounded in awesome. Go read it now! 

Stacking the Shelves: My Why-I-Probably-Worry-Most-Librarians Haul

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly Saturday book meme from Tynga's Reviews, all about sharing the books you've added to your shelves over the course of the week.

Well, after the rather stunning amount of sanity preserved over yet another single-yet-no-less-awesome Valentine's Day, you'd think I'd be a little bit tuckered out, but no. I am charging into the coming three day weekend guns drawn, and ready to do some serious butt-kicking. I've got work to do, and seeing as though it's now Week Six of the quarter, a limited amount of time to do it! Still, that's not going to stop me from getting my reading done, too, and I think that my book haul for this week definitely proves that. 

FOR REVIEW

The Ballad of a Small Player: A Novel by Lawrence Osborne
Short, but definitely not simple, novel provided by Hogarth, about a mentally-debilitating poker addict, set to debut in April.

FROM THE LIBRARY 

(My younger sister, The Ballerina, was with me at the time, and actually felt the need to apologize to the young, cute librarian working the front desk that I was "stealing all his books." He felt the need to respond, "I'm sure she's only borrowing them." 

Also, I should probably add, I've already finished four of these... and two of them were yesterday. I had a very successful Valentine's Day, in the least likely sense of association with the holiday.) 

Bewitching by Alex Flinn
Alex Flinn is the queen of modern-day fairy tale adaptations, and I loved Beastly, so this companion, involving the return of Kendra, the witch who cursed Kyle Kingsbury in the first place, to meddle in the life of another teenager, looks like a fun one.

Wentworth Hall by Abby Grahame
Supposedly the Anna-Godberson-esque answer for young adult fiction to the success of Downton Abbey. Alright, you've piqued my interest.

Joyland by Stephen King
My man, Stephen King. I so look forward to scaring the daylights out of myself with this. (And yes, I'm a jealous brat, because while I had been staring at this book on the shelf for some time, the reason I actually picked it up was because my Dad started staring, too!)

Fire with Fire (Burn for Burn #2) by Jenny Han
An eagerly anticipated sequel to a novel I read over the summer. 

Something Strange and Deadly by Susan Dennard
There's definitely something to be said by judging people by those they associate with, and this lady is bestest besties with S. J. Maas, who I basically think in the most brilliant mind in the YA game today, so, there's that.

Scarlet by A.C. Gaughen
Heard a LOT of good things, and you know, who could ever say no to that cover? #ClosetCoverSlutProblems

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Once again, heard a lot of good things, but this one's got Nazis, and apparently, from what I've been told about it, I'm going to be doing a lot of crying.

The Thinking Woman's Guide to Real Magic by Emily Croy Barker
Magic. Alternate universes. Dashing gentlemen. Fights for survival. Comparisons to Lev Grossman's The Magicians and Deborah Harkness' Discovery of Witches. And, you know... pretty cover. (Damn it.)

Geektastic: Stories from the Nerd Herd by Holly Black and Cecil Castellucci 

I saw the named Holly Black peering at me from the shelves, so I followed it. That hasn't ever really steered me wrong before.

SO, what's your haul for this week? 

College Fashion Post Link Up: Howl's Moving Castle (Part Two!)

Well, I don't know how the hell that happened, but apparently the ranks of College Fashion readers conceal a lot more closet fantasy and anime nerds than I could ever have hoped possible, because my previous CF post, detailing some retro, girly fashion inspired by the fantasy masterpiece Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones ended up accumulating 28 comments, making it my most popular article to date on the site. Like, what?

Once I got over the shock, I began to see that there were a couple of things about the post that may have heralded in such arduous fans, such as wooing the dual nerd-camps of both fantasy lovers and anime kids, creating looks that fit both the feel of the book and the style of the movie, and throwing in some tidbits for super-fans to glom on to, that made the article so beloved. Honestly, in a time of not quite so many commenters as I would hope for on my usual articles, I appreciated the support. Therefore, I decided to use this completely unbidden response to my utmost advantage, answering the cries of more than one commenter for a sequel with a shrug, and deftly-wielded outfit-building ability.

Now, here we are, with a second part - my first ever! - to placate, nay, enthrall the fangirl masses, and I sure as heck hope I don't disappoint. Here's one of my favorite outfits from the post, styled around the Castle itself, just to give you a taste of what you're in for...

GO CHECK OUT THE ARTICLE RIGHT NOW! 

Waiting on Wednesday: The Fever

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly feature created by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that gives bloggers the opportunity to highlight upcoming releases about which they are extremely excited. 

While last week's Waiting on Wednesday wasn't a title I had to wait all that long for, today's is a bit farther in advance... June 17th, to be precise. But when you've got a title brewing on the horizon that features a rapidly spreading contagion, and a town full of secrets, well, how am I supposed to wait? Here's The Fever: A Novel, by Megan Abbott, set to debut on June 17th. 



A seemingly idyllic small town's peaceful veneer is shattered, after a young girl collapses in an unexplained seizure during class. Inspired by the real story of 12 New York teenage girls at La Roy High School suddenly stricken with tics, outbursts, and strange convulsions, eventually classified as a mass psychogenic illness, The Fever follows the Nash family, whose closely-kept secrets have been cracked open by the drama, and whose daughter, Deenie, is left reeling after her best friend is the first to fall victim to the strange psychological disorder.
As the terrifying mystery illness spreads through the girls at their high school, sparking rumors of contagion, outbreak, and distrust, and causing rifts between members of the suburban community such violence has now infiltrated, more and more are diagnosed, and the question of what is striking these seemingly happy, normal girls, and who - or what - is to blame, still remains unanswered. 

Why I'm Excited?

Holy Source of Inspiration, Batman! I didn't know what much to make of the official blurb listed on the Goodreads page, but in following it back to the author's own website, I am mightily intrigued. If I can scream through this upcoming release with the same kind of suspense I found in those news articles from the 2013 La Roy outbreak, I will be one happy reader. 

What novels are you waiting on this Wednesday?