Coming Attractions: April

{April 2014 Desktop Calendar via Craftberry Bush} 

Raise your hand if you've ever felt personally victimized by the Gregorian calendar. The month of March came in like a lion, and totally whupped my butt for the ensuing five weeks of end-of-Quarter crying, Finals Week fear-of-God, Spring Break breaking my heart, and yesterday's joyful return to UW's beautiful sunny campus, with the understanding that yet another Quarter's thundercloud of academics would just be lurking over my shoulder. 

I'm not joking, I've been working significantly hard these past few weeks! First there was the Tacoma Weekly Daffodil article, then College Fashion, then there were Finals to take care of, then a College Fashion article again, then a series of articles for the Daffodil Festival's upcoming insert in the Tacoma News Tribune in anticipation for the Parade this Saturday, then an article for the Tacoma Weekly about the Parade as well, and now I've got another College Fashion article due this upcoming Sunday, but I'm going home for Parade this weekend Thursday night, so I can see my Mom before she leaves for Japan for three weeks this Friday, too. 

If I'm not mistaken, I was basically just bitch-slapped by a unit used to measure time. You might have thought my apology post from earlier in March was weak, but guys... I'm limping into April. #saveme

FEBRUARY HIGHLIGHT

{Experiencing the iconic cherry blossoms bloom on the UW campus (before the heinous rush of tourists showed up); Seeing the Veronica Mars movie in theater with my  Dad; Celebrating Spring across Tacoma with Daffodil cupcakes from Celebrity Cake Studios} 

Well, this is awkward. I'm not even capable of doing my usual countdown of my most popular posts, because I only had one for the whole month of March! Egads. At least I can catch up a little bit on my College Fashion posts that y'all might not have seen quite yet... 

March 12th: Neil Gaiman's Stardust. I was kind of loving the attention dedicated to fantasy in some of my most popular CF posts, and decided to stick with it. What resulted is leather skater skirts and unicorn stud earrings, and I'm pretty darn pleased. Fave outfit: "Follow the Star," based on the witches and royals chasing down the fallen star at the same time as Tristran.



March 26th: "Part Two" of Veronica Roth's Divergent. It picks up where my previous article on the subject, from this past August, left off, with creating outfits based on the various factions. Fave outfit: "Candor," featuring sleek shine, transparency, and black and white. Because duh.

these are a few of my favorite links...

1. It seems like my entire sorority is obsessed with Buzzfeed's quizzes...how else am I supposed to know that my spirit animal is Lauren Conrad, that I am most like the iconic Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich in the great pantheon of lunch foods, and that out of all childhood classics, I am Green Eggs and Ham? 

2. This list of "What We've Learned from Young Heroines in Literature" from Popsugar is equal parts nostalgic and empowering! 

3. Retreat by Random House put out a seriously cool infographic that helps you answer the question, "What Do I Feel Like Reading?" 

4. I have a deliriously unnecessary love and affection for stamps, which could only be intensified by the production of a rotating stamp from Kate Spade. 

5. I will always, ALWAYS make time for Team Epic Reads and their weekly Tea Time. (Crumpet hardcore, y'all). So you can imagine my ultimate geekery when I actually got mentioned on air... whether you've seen it or not, fast forward to 19:18 to hear my name! 

quote of the month

Let Me Begin My Three-Part Apology By Saying That I Think You're a Wonderful Human

I have been totally MIA for the past couple of weeks, and, yes, the title of this post is definitely a quote from Zombieland. Both for good reason, and not unrelated, either. Let me explain...

So, during the last few weeks of the quarter, the always lovely University of Washington became a sort of beautiful hell, as the cherry blossoms in the Quad finally came into bloom, and I realized that unless I took some sort of drastic action, I would be receiving a 0.0 in my Informatics class. Shocking and unlike me, I know. That's basically what my parents said to me when I informed them of my scholarly shortcomings. Then, of course, they reminded me that I had to get my butt in gear, or I'd not only majorly screw over my GPA, but I'd also be stricken from social activities and placed on Academic Probation for my sorority if I couldn't muster more than a 2.8 GPA. So, essentially, the culmination of the quarter drew a cumulative "Buck Up, Buttercup" from everyone to whom I complained about it.

Unfortunately, in an effort to catch up in my studies, I was forced to lay some things to the wayside... such as the blog. And reading for fun, in general. 

It was really, really difficult to go from posting every day, to not only not posting at all, but not having any kind of fiction outside of the graphic novels assigned to my Cultural Studies class to grease up the pressure valve to my over-pressurized brain. It was a very difficult and trying time, but thank goodness, as of yesterday at midnight... I'm finally off the hook with Winter Quarter 2014. The First Day of Spring is what I am now considering as my First Day of Freedom, and the First Day I'm Getting Back to My Blog. However, this little sojourn out of the land of books has taught me a couple of things about the way that I read books, and write about them... things I'll probably be discussing more in-depth in the coming week-and-a-half before school starts up again on the 31st.

Other than that, I have emerged victorious from the end of the quarter, having slain the mighty beast called "INFO 101," and I think I'm the better for it. I've certainly learned the extent of some of my procrastinating abilities, I think (I hope). I'm brain-dead and tired and irritated by the fact that the past couple of days have been so damn sunny and that my sister has my Kindle because she wanted to read Divergent before we see the movie this weekend, but I'm victorious, at the very, very, very least. And now, the least the Universe can do, is send me some great reading material.

(Many, many thanks to the lovely followers who kept checking in here day after day, I owe you all something special. Simply inform me of what that something is, and I'll do what I can. ;) ) 

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?