2015 Blog Reflection

Now that I've been posting consistently for a year, it's time to look at how it went!

I've had this blog for a while, but before 2015 I updated it pretty sporadically and didn't promote the posts at all. This year I wanted to challenge myself and see if I could get this blog actually on its feet.

Have I made it obvious yet that I don't know what I'm doing

I'd like to think this year went well! I never set any specific goals, so I guess it's pretty easy to declare this year a success ...

I decided on posting every three days, since that was a consistent number I could reach without stressing myself out too much or seeming too inactive. There were a few times that I struggled to get posts up on time, but there were also times where I had over a month's worth of posts scheduled and had to rearrange them to fit a newer post in.

I definitely could have done better promoting my posts. I starting posting links to my twitter account, but it was usually only for non-book reviews. I also started pinning my posts on Pinterest, but I don't think I have enough of an audience there to make a difference.

I also claimed my blog on Bloglovin this year. Bloglovin has been good for tweeting out links automatically, but I've noticed that some of them don't post until hours after the post went live. I don't know why that is.

My stats went up a lot compared to last year. I'm really glad, but my analytics graph is still kind of a mess. There have been at least two or three times that my blog has gotten crawled. I started using Google Analytics on top of what Blogger provides, which has been helpful in getting more info, but it also hasn't been perfect. Bloglovin also sends me weekly stat reports, but I currently don't have anything to show for it :c I consistently get "0 saves, 0 new followers, 0 current followers" emails. It's a little disheartening, but I know that the links I tweet out get clicked at least occasionally, which helps.

I'm going to keep going strong with this blog and I'm excited for what next year will bring. This time I'm even going to make goals!

2016 goals:

1. promote posts better! This year I'm going to look into other websites and programs that will let me schedule tweets and pins so I don't have to worry about them. I also have to do some research into when and where I should be sharing links.

2. grow a small audience! My sidebar on my blog says I only have one follower currently, but I know I have family that checks my blog, so it's not all that accurate. It would be nice to get rid of the fear that I'm just shouting into the void.

3. comment on other people's blogs! I've seen this advice a lot on "newbie blogger advice" posts, but it hasn't been the easiest for me to do. I've managed to comment a few times, but more often than not my social anxiety kicks in and convinces me to not post what I've typed out. It sucks. There are so many bloggers that I wish I could talk to.

4. find a balance of post types! I started writing individual book reviews in 2015 instead of compiling them by month, which has helped me with consistency, but I can't always find a good balance with them. I've done some pre-planning for next year so I'll have a lot of non-review posts, but whether I'll actually use any of them or not is still to be seen.

And a bonus stretch goal: earn money through AdSense. I added it to my blog this year to see what would happen, but I currently don't have enough of an audience to earn anything. I know the chances of me earning anything substantial are slim to none but it doesn't hurt to try, right?

Hopefully 2016 will be good to everyone! 

Casanova To-Do: Jan 2016

I figured blogging about it would make me more accountable. I don't know. That hasn't worked with my TBRs before, but it won't hurt, right?

"I designed my school's literary magazine," I tell myself as I make images like this.

I'm going to try and keep this list simple because otherwise I would just balk at it.

No, screw it, I'm not gonna lie. I'm balking at this list anyway because I am a lazy teenager and I don't like the thought of work. Even though this is something I'm making myself do for fun.

I don't understand how I function as a human being sometimes.

Anyway!

1. Fill in missing scenes

When I wrote Casanova during NaNo, I let myself write what I wanted to without making it seem "nice". I was struggling enough to hit word count as it was. Forcing myself to write scenes I wasn't excited about wasn't working for me.

This means my draft of Casanova makes sense only to me. Because I skipped a bunch of scenes and wrote out of order. Probably not the best idea, but hey, it was my first draft and nothing said I couldn't.

I should probably make a list of all the scenes I know I need that I didn't write. (Not here. In my sketchbook. But still. It would probably help.)

2. Put everything in chronological order

I have a better sense of the order scenes should go in since NaNo ended, but I still have a lot to work on. And a lot of it is dependent on step #1 and writing the scenes I'm missing. I'm pretty sure I wrote overlapping scenes at least a few days of NaNo and it's going to be an adventure trying to figure out what vignettes to use. A lot of the vignettes also have no context and can go pretty much anywhere, so the question is then where the heck do I put all of them?

I have my work cut out for me.

3. Replace remaining (xx)s

Like I said in my reflection, I used "(xx)" as a catch-all placeholder, which ended up making my life harder. I've only defined one of the values I used (xx) for. I still have a lot of characters to name and situations to explain.

Luckily my cousin has been a godsend and helping me name characters when I tweet at her. I should really enlist her help more. And probably buy her chocolate for all the decision-making she does for me.

4. Determine in-book universe laws

Not only did I skip a bunch of scenes in the first draft, I didn't really bother coming up with how their universe works, either. There are a lot of things regarding how Hell is supposed to work that I was just like ┐(° ヘ° )┌  and left them as plot holes.

This is probably gonna be the hardest part and it's likely not gonna be "done" until at least a few drafts in. I definitely went into NaNo with less planning done than I usually do and I wrote with a very ┐(° ヘ° )┌ attitude the entire month.

So yeah! I'm going to be very surprised if I complete all four. Or knock out more than half of these in general. I'm not setting the bar very high.

Since this post feels really short, I turned to a random page in my print masterdoc and screenshot one of the vignettes:

I have a lot of these kinds of vignettes that I probably won't keep, but they're hands-down my favorite thing to write. I'm almost tempted to see how many of these I can get away with in Casanova.

Ideally, I'll have at least the first two steps done by the time I go back to school on Jan 25th, but I wouldn't bet on it. The more serious deadline is by March. I'll check in again about my progress mid-March (if I don't make in-between posts before that).

Wish me luck!

Casanova Writing Research: Arlington, Texas

So in the off chance you've actually read my other blog posts / my twitter this past month, here's the explanation you've probably been waiting for!

One day I'll pick a standard format for these pictures. Bear with me.

If you have no clue what I'm talking about, I was lucky enough to go on another writing research trip to see where I set Casanova. My mom managed to get us cheap flights out to Dallas and back that fit in the weekend before exam week. I'd been asking to go to Dallas in order to do more in-depth research than Google Maps could give me, so I was amazed when it really did work out in my favor!

Why did I pick Arlington, Texas? Primarily because the songs that really brought Casanova together as a concrete story idea were country songs. Casanova is a collection of a couple different plot bunnies, and the song "American Kids" started to bring them together in my mind. My dad usually listens to country music when he's out in the garage and it was pure chance that I caught the songs I did. (I actually think I heard "American Kids" for the first time when I was heading to my high school for class one morning. That might've actually been with my mom. I don't remember.)

Anyway, "American Kids" gave me a really strong urge to set the story in Texas. The song never really mentions any specific place, but that was what my mind jumped to. My initial research focused around the Dallas area since we'd already been there and I was vaguely familiar with it. (Not as much as I thought, tbh.) I knew that I needed something close to a university because of Carter's backstory, and I think UTA was the first college I really looked at for the story. And settled on it since it worked out really well for what I needed. We also have an Arlington in our area, so the irony of that really cemented the decision for me.

So what did I learn?

First Semester Reflection

My first semester of college is officially over!! I took my last exam on the 17th. I wouldn't say I had the easiest time adjusting to college so far, but it definitely also wasn't as bad as I feared it would be!

Sometimes I think my design skills are getting better, and then I make pictures like this where I wonder if I'm just lying to myself. I can't tell anymore. 

This semester I took 14 credits, but one of them was a 1st year student seminar that only met until mid-October. I also didn't take my classes for my major in the right order ... but that doesn't matter as much. I still survived all my classes!

I haven't gotten back all of my grades at the time I'm writing this. I got As in Physical Geography, Seminar, and Communication, which exempted me from the first two exams! That was a really nice bonus since I was afraid I'd have to cram for the geography final.

I was exempted from my Color Theory final as well because of how the exams were set up. Our professor took the better grade of our midterm and final, and since I got 100% on the midterm, I asked if I could be excused so we could go to Dallas. Luckily my professor said yes!

Communication and Statistics were more of a challenge for me than Geography and Color Theory. I was put into a pilot program for Stat since I came from the local school system, so they put me ahead of where I tested into. I did okay for the most part, but I definitely should have put in more study time ...

Communication was hard for me because we had to do class presentations, which I hate. It was really difficult for me to give speeches to a class I didn't know after having the same classmates all of middle and high school. I actually skipped the first speech we were supposed to do ;; Luckily my professor gave us an "amnesty day" where she let us make up assignments, so I ended up doing it after all.

My favorite class was probably Color Theory. I've never really used painting as an art medium other than for cosplay and the odd art class project. We were given a lot of freedom in terms of what subjects we could paint, as long as it matched the palette we were using, so I was able to paint copies of photos I took. That was a really fun experience and I'm hoping I can continue re-doing my photos and making fake screencaps in the future.

This was my final project for Color Theory. The concept was to make fake pictures that Carter would've taken during the course of Casanova. I initially wanted to do more, but I had two weeks from idea to presentation and not many pictures to reference beforehand. The top left was freehanded and the other three used my pictures from the June vacation as a reference. 

Geography was definitely fun for me, but it was also a challenge because it was a class
focused on the science side of geography. The only other related class I'd taken before was AP Human Geography, which focuses on the cultural aspects. Physical Geography was a class I was supposed to take my third semester, not my first, which I didn't realize until it was too late to do anything about it. But I survived!

To be honest, I had no idea when I decided to go to my college that they even offered an Applied Geography associate's. I already have credit for about a semester's worth of classes thanks to the AP tests, so I got to jump straight into knocking out courses for the major.

I'm really glad I chose to go to a community college. I knew for certain that I wouldn't do well going to college out of state, but I don't think I would've done too well taking classes at UMD, either. I had almost all of my close friends at school with me and I got to hang out with all of them three days a week for lunch. (That was pure serendipity, but we've arranged to all have the same time block for the spring.)

I'm on winter break until Jan 25th. I've signed up for classes for the spring semester, but I haven't paid for them yet ;; We're working on that. Right now I'm signed up for two geography courses (Geog 101 and Political Geography, I think), a meteorology course, and Italian 101. I'm looking forward to it ♥

Casanova Playlist

I'm back safely from my writing research trip out to Dallas! It was a lot of fun and I'm really happy that it worked out well. I learned even more than I was hoping to on the trip ♥

I'm trying a vertical post this time because it's supposed to be more Pinterest-friendly. I figured I should try it out. Let me know if you think it works any better. 

I said I would have a post about the trip up on the 24th, but I decided to share my Casanova playlist as a separate post. I actually had some troubles with this -- my original playlists are through Spotify and Google Music, but I can't share the Spotify one since it's connected to my Facebook and I can't figure out how to share a Google Music playlist ;;

I ended up compiling a YouTube playlist instead. I usually try to avoid music videos with sound effects or non-music time, but I made some compromises in order to minimize the chances of the videos getting taken down and breaking the playlist.

If this embedded playlist doesn't work, here is the YouTube page for it! It should hopefully play through YouTube if it doesn't want to play through my blog.

Please let me know if any of the songs get taken down so I can replace them! As soon as I figure out how to share my Google Music playlist I'll tack that onto this post as well.

Apologies for this post being really short. I'm still worn out from this weekend and I'm writing this post instead of prepping for my last exam.

I should probably at least include a little bit of an explanation about the music, shouldn't I? The first half of the playlist or so is country music (or at least country-sounding music) since that's where a lot of the aesthetic of Casanova came from for me. "American Kids" was the first song that made the story come together. After I went to the Halsey concert with my friend in October, I switched over to more pop / Top 40 music. I ended up picking a much more suburban setting for Casanova than I initially intended, so the playlist reflects both my initial ideas and what ideas I actually used for the story.

I hope you guys like the playlist ♥ Underneath the cut is a list of all the songs in case the links don't work. Keep an eye out for my post about Dallas and Arlington on the 24th!

City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare

TL:DR these teenagers are in very high demand

(finished 12/3/15)

I wasn't a very big fan of the first three books of The Mortal Instruments series -- if I remember correctly, I didn't really like them at all. My friend lent me her copy of City of Fallen Angels even though I decided I was going to stop at the third book. 

Part of the reason I finished City of Fallen Angels so easily is because the other book she lent me was Born at Midnight, and I ended up DNFing it. (I actually have a DNF review collection post coming up eventually! I finally let myself do it!!) 

Because of my low investment in this series, this review is going to be shorter than normal and probably spoiler-y for the first three books. (They've been out for a while, though, and if you haven't read them, I'm a little confused as to why you would be reading a review for book #4 ...) 

Anyway! It felt like not all that much happened over the course of the book. It didn't feel drawn out, but there's only one real conflict to the whole thing. A couple scenes could've been cut out without any detrimental damage. Like those touchy-feely scenes between Jace and Clary. I really wish they would stop that. 

I actually didn't have much of a problem with the romance aspect for once, though I do think it could've been toned down some in order to make the story move even faster. I skipped about a full page (front / back) of Jace and Clary making out because that was all that was happening. It wasn't establishing anything else. 

I don't really like how Jordan and Maia's relationship was portrayed, but I think it definitely could've been handled worse. I'm hoping that it'll still be handled fairly delicately by the characters in subsequent books rather than being swept under the rug without any real conclusion. 

The love V that was introduced was fairly interesting (in the fact that it didn't feel boring, per se) but I think we could've gotten away without that, too. I was glad to see the backlash of said love V, though. That was good. 

I think the characters are all a little too overpowered, but I'm a little too indifferent to really care about it. I don't think the plot should have worked out as nicely as it did in terms of favoring either side. (How is it that both the good guys and the bad guys somehow both get things they want? The two should not be able to exist at the same time. They both should not get things they want out of the same ending!)

That's about all I have. All in all, the book felt like a fairly easy and compelling read. I at least appreciated that part. I've also determined I'm invested in at least Simon and Clary as characters. The rest of them as well, but Simon the most. Poor guy. 

TL;DR I think I liked City of Fallen Angels because the other book I was trying to read at the time was giving me major grief. I'm not gonna go out of my way to find the next book, but I'm open to the idea. 

If you guys have read this series, I'd like to hear what your thoughts are! My experience with this series is only through the friend that lent me this book, so I'd love to hear more opinions about it. 

Casanova: After-NaNo Reflection

Like I mentioned before, here's my after-NaNo reflection focusing on what I learned about Casanova (and my own writing) during the course of NaNo!

First up, I learned that I need a lot more pre-writing with my newer projects. I've been jaded because of how long I've been working on Aperture. I wrote a couple thousand words for Casanova over the summer, but my sense of the story wasn't as nearly as concrete as I needed it to be. I honestly ran out of my original ideas and plot bunnies by the 13th.

(You can actually see this in my masterdoc. The scenes get progressively shorter and less descriptive until they're almost all dialogue. It's interesting to see and reflect on.)

I've also learned that I suck with plot-driven novels. Aperture is character-driven: there's no overarching plot to it other than the characters growing. Casanova is the opposite. It was supposed to be about Toni completing three tasks in order to "earn" Carter's soul back.

So yeah, there's very little action in Casanova so far. I skipped a bunch of scenes I knew I needed eventually because the whole thing was too structured, and I knew I didn't have enough knowledge in order to make it work.

I also relied on placeholders a lot this time, which turned out really helpful. Only six characters have names in Casanova so far. (Six and a half if you count the Casanova's nickname.) For everyone else, I used "(xx)" so I would be able to catch it easily in re-reads.

Now, in hindsight, I should've used more descriptive placeholders, because there are a couple that I can't remember who they're supposed to refer to. I stuck to (xx) because I could ctrl+f the masterdoc at the end and find how many times I used placeholders. The answer is 597 times, by the way. I haven't checked what it is now that I've replaced Cynthia's placeholders with her name.

(It took me 124 pages to decide on her name. Casanova's first draft is only 182 pages. Also, she's named after my friend @jouycemanor, who was my co-designer on our school's lit mag (ღ˘⌣˘ღ) )

Just like with Aperture, my favorite part of writing this month has definitely been all the dialogue scenes. I personally think that the vignettes with dialogue alone are some of the strongest things I write.



I surprised myself by coming up with new details for the story. The biggest (and most helpful) was giving Toni the power to teleport. I'd known teleporting was going to have to play some kind of role, but I wasn't initially expecting to give Toni the ability. It helped me out a lot in terms of word count -- if I got stuck, I decided to stick Toni and Carter in a different city. Usually Las Vegas. They ended up in Las Vegas a lot.

Something I also didn't expect was Toni's deadpan sarcasm. Carter had it from the start, but Toni was supposed to be a lot less sarcastic than he was. And that didn't happen at all. I think it's actually better that way. I have a hard time toning down my sarcasm when I write.

Toni and Carter also started resembling people I know. Toni's was entirely accidental, and I think I'm going to try and remove some of her resemblance. (I base a lot of characters in Aperture off people in real life, and I don't really want to do the same in Casanova.) Carter's was a little more intentional in that I borrowed a few aspects of someone I know in order to design his background, and I didn't realize that said person had also influenced how I perceived Carter's appearance.

I got a copy of my masterdoc printed out at Staples on the 1st. Part of the reason was because I like editing on paper rather than on screen, but a big part of it was also being able to hold up this monstrosity and say, "Look! I wrote all this!!" (My friends can attest to this. I didn't shut up about printing it out for, like, three days.)

By the time this post goes up, this copy will be with us out in Texas! (That was another reason I got it printed.) I'm really looking forward to seeing Arlington, Texas, where I decided to set Casanova. I've already been on a writing research trip, but this one will be a lot different -- I feel much more organized and focused. I have a lot more to do in a shorter amount of time.

I'm hoping to have a blog post about our trip to Arlington up on the 24th, so please look forward to it! ♥ If you guys did NaNo, I'd love to hear about what you learned about your stories over the month!

Winter by Marissa Meyer

TL;DR my favorite series is over and I am dead

(finished 11/15/15)

TBR #17

I've been in love with The Lunar Chronicles since I found Cinder in May of my freshman year. The book was only a few months old at that point, so I've gone through my fair share of waiting for each subsequent book. (I added Winter to my TBR within a few days of joining Goodreads, and it is mindblowing that it was #17 out of a list of 1500!)

I was initially disappointed that Winter's release date was pushed back because of Fairest, but I'm also kind of glad that it happened, to be honest. I loved Fairest and I'm glad that I got to live with the hype for a couple more months. 

There's almost nothing I can talk about without spoiling anything (」ﾟヘﾟ)」

Let's see. I don't think there was anything I was disappointed in. I mean, I had high hopes and expectations for Winter, and Marissa Meyer met all of them! She actually went above and beyond for one of my expectations, but that one is spoiler-y, so I can't say anything about it \( `⌂´ )/

I'm very happy with how Winter wrapped up the series that has meant so much to me these past four years. I teared up when I reached the end of it. (Part of that was because of Marissa Meyer's acknowledgements.) 

Sorry this review is so short （*/ ヘ＼*）I can't think of a way to express how much I loved Winter without spoiling anything OTL I don't want to ruin the book for anybody! 

If you've never read any of the Lunar Chronicles books before, I definitely recommend them! If Cinder is daunting because of its size, at least try out Fairest. The Lunar Chronicles is an amazing, huge fairy-tale sci-fi retelling crossover with wonderful characters. (And it has Sailor Moon influences, which is probably my most favorite part about the whole thing.) 

Looking ahead, I'm really excited for Marissa Meyer's upcoming books! The Lunar Chronicles still has the short-story collection Stars Above. Then comes Heartless and the Gatlon trilogy! I'm really excited to see what Marissa Meyer is going to do in these new worlds. 

TL;DR I am very happy with how my favorite series has ended and I'm looking forward to seeing Marissa Meyer's new stories!

If you've finished Winter, let me know what your thoughts were! I haven't been able to talk to anybody about the ending yet and it's killing me. 

Welcome to Night Vale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink

TL;DR Everything Is In Cecil's Voice And It Is Great // holy aesthetic, Batman

(finished 11/12/15)

I first started listening to the Welcome to Night Vale podcasts when we went to Alaska. I haven't been very good with keeping current with them, mainly because my listening skills are terrible, but I was super excited when I learned that they were making a book. I can handle reading a lot better than I can listening. 

(To try and avoid confusion, Welcome to Night Vale in italics refers to the books, and WTNV in normal text / as an acronym refers to the podcasts.) 

I didn't pay too much attention to the blurb before the book came out, so I went into the book pretty blind. I thought it was pretty fun that way. I mean, I know a lot about Night Vale already, so I saw the book as kind of a text-podcast. 

The book is going to make absolutely no sense if you haven't listened to any of the Night Vale podcasts. Even listening to just one gives you a one-up compared to going in completely unprepared. WTNV has a very Alice in Wonderland feel to it in terms of unreality, and that's definitely reflected in the book. 

(That said, if unreality squicks you out, Welcome to Night Vale most likely isn't your thing. There's a lot of defying the laws of the universe / things making no sense. I can't think of any other CWs off the top of my head, but the podcasts do cover some dark things, so keep that in mind. Welcome to Night Vale is not a fluffy marshmallow-y book.) 

I really enjoyed being able to learn about other characters in Night Vale. The podcasts are narrated by Cecil, so a lot of what's covered in those revolves around what he's experienced or what he's reporting on. I don't know if Jackie and Diane have been mentioned in the podcasts before, but it was really cool to see how they fit into what I already understood of their world. I enjoyed learning about them and seeing them grow.

The book also was able to expand on a lot that hasn't been covered up to the point I'm at in the podcasts. I don't know if the podcasts are going to treat the book as canon / a linear addition to the plot or not, though. I don't know how that would be tackled. I think it would maybe cause continuity problems for listeners who can't get their hands on the book. ┐(° ヘ° )┌

Anyway! The plot was compelling and took directions I wasn't expecting. (That's very normal of WTNV, tbh.) I was really happy to see Jackie and Diane's character developments, and how concepts from the podcasts like The Man in the Tan Jacket were included in. 

The narration is perfect. Like I said in the top TL;DR, I heard everything in Cecil's voice. it was amazing to read such a perfectly captured spoken narrator. There were also sections where Cecil's radio broadcasts were included, and those made me incredibly happy. The narrator of Welcome to Night Vale isn't actually supposed to be Cecil -- it's third person omniscient -- so having something that was definitely his voice was (୨୧ ❛ᴗ❛)✧

I'm not sure what else I can talk about without giving too many spoilers for either medium or managing to sound completely crazy, so I think I'll leave my review at this. I'm going to come back to this review in a month or two and include my sticky notes, since there are some really good lines I want to share. 

If you've never listened to the WTNV podcasts before, I definitely recommend them! It's definitely not for everyone, since it can come off as very unreal / kind of horror story-ish at times, but I've really enjoyed listening to them. Hopefully I can write a review of the podcasts themselves once I catch back up with them! 

If you decide to read the book without listening to the podcast, I would recommend keeping the internet handy or be in the mindset to be completely "???" at times. There's a WTNV wikia page that looks like it would be handy, but I can't promise you that it'll be a good replacement to the podcasts. There are also fan-transcripts of the podcasts if you'd rather read those to catch up (though you're missing out on a lot of context / subtext without everyone's voices and the sounds that go along with the podcasts). 

TL;DR Welcome to Night Vale is an awesome way to adapt WTNV into a text format and I'm really happy that it exists! The two mediums go hand-in-hand, so proceed with caution if you have no idea what the podcasts are like. 

NaNo Reflection

NaNo is officially over again ;o; While I'm sad to let go of the month, I'm very happy with how November went for me, and I'm excited for what December's gonna bring! (And not just Christmas, either. Though that is a big part of it.) 

EDIT 12/6/15: I found another blogger who posted a NaNo reflection! I really like reading about other people's writing, so if that's the same for you guys, check out The Quiet People's post! 

For NaNo this year, I decided to work on a story I had previously only written a few thousand words for. Aperture helped me win the past two years, but this year I wanted to work on a story I would honestly consider publishing traditionally.

(That's a long story, and maybe I'll make a blog post about it in the near future.)

Anyway, I chose Casanova and I stuck with it!

Well, for the most part, anyway. Around the 10th I learned that Miraculous Ladybug, a show I had been waiting for since at least last year, had finally started airing. And as a children's show based around magical kids, I got a lot of good ideas ... for Aperture.

I knew I couldn't quit writing Aperture for an entire month, so I decided back in October that I would let myself write for it but not include it in my NaNo word counts -- I mean, it's definitely not Casanova, so I felt it was cheating to include Aperture. Counting only Casanova meant I actually had to work on Casanova.

My theory didn't quite work like I wanted it to, but it worked nonetheless! Around the middle of the month I slacked off on Casanova, but once I had written Aperture and ML out of my system, I made myself focus.

I used my Computer Science skills to make myself a nifty Excel spreadsheet c: (We used Excel for, like, a week in class. I'm amazed that I managed to rig it up the way I did, making it do math for me and everything.) The blue bars are for Casanova, and the red bars are for Aperture. 

Surprisingly, I only worked on Aperture for 8 days! I was sure I was going to work on it a lot more than that. I think I definitely needed the creative break from Aperture this month. Everything I wrote in November I considered AU / otherwise not canon to the story I've been working on. 

I'm not sure how to really explain the 28th. It was mainly because I was so close to winning that I wouldn't go to bed until I had hit 50,000 words. I wrote 4,155 words the 28th alone. It's not quite as impressive as the 8k I wrote on Nov 30th back in 2013, but hey, it looks cool on the chart. My second most impressive day was the 7th, aka #doubleUpDay. 

This year was the first time I could participate in Double Up Day, and I'm glad I did! I donated under both my name and a friend's so we'd both get donator halos, and I received some cool sponsor goodies B) I'm saving the sticker for something special (my next writing notebook, probably), but I'm hoping to put the bracelet and bookmark to good use. 

In hindsight, I should have done some more pre-writing and planning. The ideas I had for Casanova only lasted me so long, so a lot of my writing for the month was straight-up dialogue or scenes I improvised completely. I owe a lot to Chris for taking me out driving to various places "for writing research", and also letting me try to talk through the plot out loud. 

I skipped three days of writing for Casanova. Two of the days I took off from writing completely because I had no down time, and one of the days I focused on Aperture and didn't push myself to do Casanova at all. My final word count for Casanova was 51,055 and my total for the month including Aperture was 61,213. November was definitely my most productive writing month so far! I looked back at my notes and most months average around 25k. 

My official NaNo chart looks like this!

I'm gonna have a post coming up soon that focuses more on Casanova itself and what I figured out about it over the course of the month. If anybody else did NaNo, I'd love to hear how your November went!

Fave New Music: Oct / Nov

Time for another music post!  \(۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶/ I combined months since I didn't find much music in October, but November has been great for finding new writing music! I'm always super grateful for the playlists Spotify puts together. A good number of these are from indie playlists!

Because this post is really long and video-heavy, I'm putting it under a read-more cut. I'm hoping to have a YouTube playlist up within the next few days that'll streamline this post! I've been meaning to do that for the past couple Fave New Music posts but I never get around to it (;° ロ°)

The formatting of the videos isn't uniform, so I apologize in advance! I just figured out that embedding the videos from the HTML YouTube provides is better than trying to embed them from within Blogger, so I'll keep that in mind for next time!

Waterfell by Amalie Howard

TL;DR Talented but with aquatic aliens

(finished 10/30/15)

TBR #465

I really did not enjoy Waterfell. It was one of those books I only finished so I felt like I could write a comprehensive review about how much it frustrated me. (I really need to stop doing this and just let myself write DNF reviews.)

Although I will be honest, part of the reason I read to the end was to see how the climax and the ending would be handled. There were moments fairly early on that screamed "foreshadowing", and I wanted to see if I was wrong or not.

I was not wrong. None of the supposed plot twists were surprising. At all. I saw the whole thing about Lo and Ehmora coming since Lo was introduced. I was way more on the mark than I was expecting to be, and for it to be ~so surprising and earth-shattering~ is really unbelievable. I have to admit, I didn't really predict the thing regarding Nerissa's mom, but it wasn't surprising. I was just like, "Yep. Sounds about right."

And along the same line, I really did not enjoy any of the characters. Not even Jenna. Nobody had any depth. Everyone was characterized inconsistently and nobody sounded human. Even Jenna. This wasn't even a "these teenagers sound like an adult woman" -- their dialogue sounded kind of stilted / scripted too much and not like anything someone would say naturally.

Nerissa acted like she was the all-powerful heir she supposedly was while still behaving like the spoiled brat she swore she wasn't anymore. She totally blew off all her Aquarathi responsibilities for the longest time and then just ~suddenly and maturely~ decides to step up and take her throne back. And then goes about it in a really stupid way.

I think Nerissa could have potentially been done really well in terms of responsibility vs teenage behavior, but she was polarized a little too much. She went from one end to the other without having a believable transition. (I guess this could be written off by her being an alien, but I don't know. That feels kind of weak.)

Nerissa and Lo acted so bipolar with each other and I honestly cannot understand where their mutual attraction came from. Even with the explanation the story gives by the end of the book, there's no proof of it. It just magically occurs without appearing in the narration. Nerissa and Lo's "romance" was so instantaneous and without any sort of foundation, I think it actually beats out the Soul Seekers series in ridiculousness. Romances can't just come out of nowhere, you know? Instalove isn't actually a thing in real life. Insta-lust maybe, but even then the relationship still has to build up somehow. You can't just immediately jump from enemy-ish behavior to boyfriend-girlfriend behavior within the span of a few pages.

The narration was probably the most frustrating thing. It's written in 1st person present from Nerissa's perspective, but she's unnecessarily flowery and detailed with her descriptions. The two don't work together. I could've excused it if it were in past tense, but giving so much detail in present tense just isn't possible without giving up suspension of disbelief. The amount of detail throws off how time seems to pass from a reader's perspective.

On top of that, there were huge gaps in the narration. The transitions between chapters would skip fairly important goings-on and then just explain them in an info-dump. There were also a bunch of times that Nerissa spent a ridiculous part of the narrative explaining things that are easy to assume as a reader. We're not idiots. We can figure out people's moods based on what they're saying and doing. We don't need that spelled out.

The only reason I managed to trudge through the last half of the book is because of Ariana Grande's "Focus", which coincidentally came out the day I finished it. (I find the title of it very ironic. But hey, it helped.) I was having so much trouble reading more than three paragraphs at a time before finding "Focus" that I was very tempted to DNF.

The Aquarathi were fairly interesting in concept, but they fell flat quickly. I don't understand how they got from Sana to Earth, and it really bothers me that it's never touched on. (Like, can they survive in space? Did they build a spaceship? Did they just magically teleport?) Nerissa's narration also gave differing answers to when they arrived on Earth, and I'm not sure I marked any quotes to back it up, but at one point she implies they've been on Earth for a long time and later implies it's only been a few centuries.

Also, I have no idea what the heck they're supposed to look like. They have legs and a tail? They have underbellies? The "heir" has a crown growing out of their forehead? I get that they're aliens and all, but there's no solid explanation of what they look like or how their biology really works. Not to mention that, but they're extremely overpowered. There's mentions of swimming from the Mariana Trench to San Diego like it's walking down the block, even though that's across the Pacific Ocean. Nerissa's emotions control the weather and she can control the water in other people's bodies, look into their memories, and somehow convinced the Aquarathi to back her up while giving them nothing to trust her with. I mean, she's not as bad as Talented's Talia was, but she's pretty damn close.

TL;DR the main characters were overpowered and wishy-washy, the narration style didn't fit the story, and the plot was too predictable. I don't recommend it.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

TL;DR Harry Potter-ish but aimed towards a fangirl audience (heh)

(finished 10/27/15)

TBR #1193

From my review of Fangirl from back in May 2014: 

Also, it was really cool to have excerpts from the Simon Snow series and Cath's fanfictions. I would probably read the Simon Snow series, to be honest;; 

Let me tell you I just about screamed when I saw Rainbow Rowell's tweet about making Carry On its own book. I really enjoyed Fangirl, so I was really excited to see that I had a chance to get more of a taste of the Simon Snow universe. 

The first thing I have to say is that Carry On is not Cath's fanfiction (which is called Carry On, Simon). I initially assumed it was supposed to be, but the author's note at the end states that it's Rainbow Rowell's own take on the Simon Snow universe instead of in relation to Cath or its author in Fangirl. I find it really interesting, but it probably would've been good to know going into the book. 

(That's actually totally my fault since I went into it assuming it was Cath's fanfiction even though there's no mention of Fangirl in the blurb.) 

Carry On actually does resemble a well-written fanfiction. It's not glaring, but the voice is unique and it really does read like something not written by an adult woman. (Although honestly, I don't know the age / gender of the authors of a lot of fanfics I read, so this could be a wrong assumption.) There was no obvious bleed-through of the author; all the narrators had distinct and well-matched narration styles. It felt a lot like fanfictions for children's series where the author is like "my audience is older so I can pretty much do whatever I want" and includes a lot of content that wouldn't have made it into the original series.  

The chapters have different narrators, but it's fairly biased towards Simon -- which is understandable, since he's the main character. I liked how using narrations from (almost?) all the main characters built up the story in a puzzle-piece kind of way and allowed for exploring stuff not directly related to Simon. The chapters were labeled with their narrators, and even without that it was fairly easy to figure out who the narrator was. (They're not all distinct from each other -- meaning you can't tell who exactly it is from one sentence / paragraph -- but they had different styles that effectively contrasted against the other characters and could narrow it down if you picked it up in the middle of a chapter.) 

The world-building was super cool. There were a lot of things that I hadn't actually considered in terms of magic that played a key part -- I haven't seen anything like their system of magic before. (That doesn't mean it doesn't exist in other books, but I haven't found it.) I really liked that the spells were printed in bold; spells are "words laced with magic" (if I remember correctly) so it was a really cool way to convey that they felt different from normal words without having to prove it in the narration. 

I'm also really happy with the representation of the main characters, both in terms of ethnicity and sexuality. I'm also really happy that Carry On's main romance is LGBT+ but it doesn't seem to be marketed that way. (Meaning that books portraying same-sex romances are usually focused on the romance and the problems that arise. That's not bad, but I like that the romance is normalized / that the fact that it's same-sex doesn't create a huge problem in the plot.) 

The plot wasn't what I was initially expecting, but I was impressed by what ended up happening. To me, it didn't really feel like it followed a plot diagram (the ones that look like stock market line graphs), and that made it feel more realistic. It resembled the randomness of things happening in real life. Of course, the way everything tied together so nicely didn't, but it's a standalone. There's only so much you can do with that and still have a good ending. 

The ending was fairly surprising for me in terms of the futures of all the main characters. I would actually like to see more of all of them in their lives after Carry On, but the ending wraps the story up nicely to the point that trying to create a sequel might be messy. ("You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain" sort of thing -- like how successful series tend to get unnecessarily drawn out just because they make money. I've seen this argument a lot regarding the ending of Gravity Falls, but I think it applies to books just as nicely.) 

Like I did with The Sword of Summer, I'm going to hold off on adding quotes into my review until the book has been out a little bit longer. Most of the stuff I've sticky-noted is a little spoiler-ish. 

TL;DR I loved Carry On as a "real" novel that resembled some of the fanfictions I've really enjoyed and I'm so happy that this book (and Fangirl) exist.

I feel like I'm fairly biased, so if you want another perspective, The Quiet People's review raises a lot of good points. (I really like The Quiet People's blog tbh)

Shadows by Robin McKinley

TL;DR getting rid of witchcraft doesn't go as planned

(finished 10/24/15)

not on TBR

Shadows was one of the very rare books I pick up from the library that isn't on my TBR. I almost didn't read it because it sat at the bottom of my book stack, but I'm glad I decided to after all.

The first thing I really noticed was the voice of Maggie. She sounded unique and effectively used run-on sentences to be interesting rather than appearing like a lack of grammar skills. It could definitely come off as annoying, but I liked it.

The worldbuilding could have been stronger, but I think it's believable considering what we learn about Maggie and the world itself. There's not too much room to develop the magic when it's in first person and Maggie lives in a kind of world that's tried to erase magic. Maybe there could've been a way to integrate more worldbuilding, but I think it functions.

I'm very intrigued by the laws of the universe in Shadows. I would actually love to know more about it. I'm actually a little sad that it's not explored more (since Goodreads tells me Shadows is a standalone). The ending was a little disappointing in that it was super open-ended and left a whole bunch of room for more plot but it's just like "oh. We're done. Use your imagination, I guess."

Maybe it is part of a larger series and I'm just unaware. I don't know. I've never read any of Robin McKinley's books before. Which is also apparently why I'm in the minority on this book -- the negative reviews seemed disappointed because of the bar her other books set.

The dustjacket blurb was pretty useless. Caz didn't have nearly as much of a part in the plot as the blurb made it out to be, and Val, Takahiro, and Jill had a lot more presence than I expected.

I liked all the characters. They weren't too developed, but they felt human within the scope of the story. I also got surprisingly attached to them. Mainly Takahiro. I think also the problem with the human-ness was that the story is supposedly a standalone, so there was a lot of stuff going on that had to be covered, and the plot took more precedence than making the characters feel like they could jump right out of the book.

(I have determined my basis for "human-ness" or realistic-ness of characters is if I can come up with headcanons for them outside of the story. So, for Shadows, I can't, but I still liked the characters nonetheless.)

(I'm also pretty sure I make no sense with saying they don't feel developed but yet I love them anyway. I don't know. Take it at face value?)

The only things I sticky-noted were these two pieces of dialogue and a surprising spoiler that I left off for the sake of preserving said spoiler. Which is also why I redacted some of the second quote. (The first two little paragraph sections below go together.)

"[...] Usually the Mammothmobile is stuck to the side of your house by several months' worth of cobwebs because nobody wants to pay for the gas." [Maggie]

"Nah," said Jill. "Greg takes it out at least once a month and runs over any small annoying children that have piled up in our neighborhood since the last time he took it out. [...]" (pg 252 - 253)

"I didn't have a clue," Jill said, "but Caz figured it out instantly and was like whipping his socks off and I'm all whoa, I'm fine for skinny-dipping but where's the lake, but then [spoiler] and I finally got it." (pg 342) 

(That last quote. I just about died. Jill is my fave.)

Adding onto the blurb uselessness, I had no idea that the plot would take the direction it would. I mean, it's good in that it didn't reveal any important information past the exposition / inciting incident, but I was still vaguely "??" for a good part of the plot. Maybe a lot of that was my inability to guess where the story would go. Which can be a very good thing. It didn't frustrate me at all, which is good. It kept me intrigued.

Like I said earlier, I wasn't too happy with the end, but that was mainly because I felt like I was being cheated out of a lot of good subsequent adventures. I would love to see the continuation. (I just want to see more of the characters, honestly. Despite saying they weren't the most human I still got really attached to them.)

TL;DR I really liked Shadows for its characters and its world but I haven't read any of the other books by the same author so I can't say if it's on par for the author or not.

The White Aura by Felicia Tatum

TL;DR soul mates and plot holes

(finished 10/19/15)

free through Bookbub

I read the first part of The White Aura over a period time since I had it on my iPod and really only touched it while trying to wind down for bed, so I don't feel like I can comment too well on that.

At some point, though, I sat down and marathoned The White Aura so I could be done with it, so I will be talking very heavily about that part. 

My notes mention that I was okay up until about 1/5 in, where it suddenly turned melodramatic and trope-ish. (From what I remember, the second chapter was entirely cliche, but I think I forgave it at that point.) 

The narration was basic. There were a lot of the same sentence structures, what's-her-face and Scott's narrations sounded almost identical, and a terrible balance of what needed to be said vs. what was actually said. The only real difference in the narrations was Scott being overly possessive of a girl that didn't even know him yet and sounding way too much like a bad fanfiction version of Edward. And what's-her-face regaled way too much detail about her morning routine and what she decided to wear and spent a significantly less amount during pretty important plot moments. 

(I have forgotten the female main character's name. I think it's Olivia. I wrote the first half of this review pretty close to finishing the book and I still couldn't remember it. That's not promising.) 

And honestly, what's-her-face and Scott came off as very Twilight-trope. It's been a long time since I've actually read the books, so I know my memory of them has been distorted by time and the media, but Scott was extremely reminiscent of creep-Edward. Especially with the whole thing that he was meeting what's-her-face in her dreams for over a year before they moved past the whole makeout session thing and actually talked. Like, you know, don't you want to actually converse with your "heartmate", and not just stick your tongue down her throat and your hands up her shirt? No? Apparently not.

The plot didn't feel consistent to me. There were also some flaws of reasoning that I don't know if they weren't thought out completely or if they were just swept under the rug for the sake of the plot. Like, this curse is supposed to go into effect when they meet, but haven't they still been meeting each other in dreams this whole time? That in itself should negate the purpose of this entire book. What's-her-face is already doomed. People and their heartmates are supposed to be super-intwined with each other and yet there's no indication whatsoever of Anna's heartmate. Scott's so inflicted by being apart from what's-her-face and yet Anna goes the entire book without even just a passing mention of who she's married to? That doesn't seem right. 

The whole "problem" of the story felt kind of insignificant to me. The reasoning behind the curse was never explained (or if it was, it wasn't strong enough to make me remember it) and the villain made no sense. He was definitely one of those "evil to be a plot device" character. He didn't have any goals of his own other than to apparently kill Scott and what's-her-face. 

Also, at the climax the characters manage to forget the initial problem in its entirety until the last paragraph. It creates an unnecessary cliff hanger and brings the book to a crossroads: either The White Aura was entirely for nothing, or the entire problem is going to be written around and given a plot shield so that both the characters survive. That in itself killed any small desire I had to continue reading. (Considering it's at least a trilogy, I'm 99% sure the problem is just written around.)

Juniper, Scott's sister, and Anna all felt like means to an end, too. They didn't have goals of their own. They only existed to support Scott and what's-her-face. Juniper got the complete "best friend syndrome" treatment: [highlight for spoiler] she got killed for just about no reason other than emotional shock factor and then is brought back to life through ~witchcraft~, which completely negates the negligent effect her death had in the first place. I liked Scott's sister to an extent but she felt very trope-ish and kind of overpowered. 

The biggest positive I can come up with is that there were almost no grammatical errors. That was definitely a plus. There were a few minor problems with "dialogue" tag / action "dialogue" lines, but they were easy enough to forgive. 

TL;DR it had a good idea but I wasn't sold on the characters or the execution at all. If I ever encounter a re-write, I'd probably read it, but I doubt there's going to be one based on the subsequent books being established / most likely published (I don't remember if they were).

In my research into The White Aura, I found Hardly's review on Goodreads, which I feel is much more succinct than I am and covers the part of the book I didn't talk about because I forgot a lot of the details about it. 

Mid-NaNo Update

My posting schedule worked out so I would actually have a post on the 15th. Too bad I forgot to actually write the post at first ...

NaNo so far hasn't been as easy as it's been the past two years. Like I predicted, it's been a little hard for me to switch gears from Aperture to Casanova, but I've been toughing through it.

I participated in Double Up Day for the first time this year, which was awesome. I wasn't able to donate the past two years, so I'm glad that I was able to pitch in to keep the program going strong and helping out other people. It also helped me get significantly ahead on my word count! I've been keeping up the pace since then and as of last night my average word count per day was about 2k.

This is how my word count bar looked like as of this morning. I haven't written anything yet for today (which is why my daily average is under 2k).

In regards to the writing itself ... I've been making do with what I can come up. Most of what I write by this point is only dialogue. It's been a little hard for me to focus on a plot-driven story when I'm so used to writing a character-driven one, especially when a lot of the plot still isn't decided on yet. It's helped in forcing me make temporary decisions in regards to the plot in order to make word count. 

The dialogue scenes have helped me get a better sense of the characters, too. I write down whatever ends up coming to mind as responses, and all of the characters have developed more than I thought they would have by this point. They still sound a lot like the Aperture characters, but that's always something I can go back and fix in subsequent drafts. 

I actually made it until the 10th before I started writing for Aperture again! I haven't been including any of my Aperture writing in my NaNo word counts, and it's only been <2k so far, but letting myself take a little rest from Casanova has been good. And bad. Usually I want to write for Aperture more than I want to for my NaNo, so I have to force myself to focus, but that's also been good in making myself get it done so I can go back to what I want to work on. 

I didn't write at all on the 13th, which was a little disappointing, but I'm not super heartbroken about it. I had a sleepover with my friend and we went to see the play at our old high school. I think the day off helped me write almost 3k on the 14th. 

I'll come back to this post later and update it with a day-by-day chart of my word counts (and include what I got done today), so please check back! ♥ If any of you are participating in NaNo too, I'd love to hear how you're doing!

Edit: I made the chart I was talking about! It actually includes through the 16th. 

The blue bars are Casanova and the red are Aperture. I've fallen into the habit of focusing on Aperture again, and I'm pretty sure I've lose any lead I've built up from skipping both the 13th and 15th (and writing only 81 words on the 16th), so I'm hoping I can recover from this quickly. 

The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan

TL;DR Percy Jackson. But Norse!

(finished 10/19/15)

Blood of Olympus was bittersweet for me, because it was the only book that I'd had to wait for the release for with everyone else. I was afraid it would be the only book that I'd be caught up with the hype for.

And thankfully, I was wrong! I was so excited to see that there would be a Norse series coming up after the Roman one. Waiting for The Sword of Summer was just as tortuous as Blood of Olympus was.

One of the first things that struck me was how the Percy-sass was back -- a little too much, according to some people. And I have to agree; Magnus sounds a lot like Percy. I've only read through all of the Greek and Roman books once, so I can't say if they're identical or not, but I personally didn't mind it. I love narrators like Percy and Magnus.

I know almost nothing about Norse mythology other than what I've picked up secondhand from the Marvel universe (which, even at that, is little to none), so I was honestly kind of lost for a good part of the book. Not, like, lost, but I had no background knowledge to draw off of in relation to the characters and plot. I think The Sword of Summer still did pretty good with informing the clueless side of the audience (read: me), though a few things felt slightly info-dump-ish. They're kind of forgivable, though, since I'm not sure the story could still function without them and be understandable to a middle-grade audience at the same time. (Not that middle graders aren't bright; there are just a lot of things that need to be established for the plot to work fully.)

The plot felt a little too linear to me for some reason. Like, that's the standard formula for the Percy Jackson books, and I don't know if it's just because it had been a year since I had read any of the books  or what. I think it's also mainly because of my unfamiliarity with Norse mythology that a lot of what happened seemed fairly unrelated to me, when in actuality the opposite may be true.

I'm really glad that my theory about Magnus and Annabeth was true. I was very surprised to see Annabeth play a role in The Sword of Summer! It's very minor, but it still was a nice cameo. (More than just a cameo, I guess.) I'm looking forward to seeing how the Norse aspects are going to be integrated back into the Greek and Roman stuff. I'm hoping that all the aspects are going to come together, but I also have a feeling that the Greek and Roman demigods are going to be a fairly minor aspect of the story. (Which is understandable. But I can hope.)

My favorite character so far is Sam. I was actually surprised by the amount of representation The Sword of Summer had. Sam's conflicts between her cultures was handled well in my opinion, and I'm glad to see that there's a main character in a big children's series that is neither white nor Christian. (I don't know if they ever specifically stated her religion, but she wears a headscarf, and I was glad to see that it wasn't handled as a hindrance -- it causes her a little trouble, sure, but it also played a key part in some scenes.)

I feel like The Sword of Summer is going to be along the same lines as The Lightning Thief for me -- while I liked TLT, it took my friend to compel me to continue reading the rest of the series. Of course, I'm looking forward to the next book (Thor's Hammer? I think?), but I wasn't quite blown away by it like I was with some of the other Percy Jackson books. It's a very good start, but it's not quite Mark of Athena.

Said friend also managed to finish The Sword of Summer before me. This was partially because I only read it at school and because I was putting my social / school life before reading most of the time. It wasn't quite compelling enough for me to choose reading over anything else, but I still enjoyed the time I spent reading while waiting for my ride home.

I'm a little conflicted on how I feel about the ending, because there was something that came fairly out of left field for me. Which may have been fairly obvious. I don't know. It wasn't bad; I was just like "wait what??"

I have a bunch of sticky notes in my copy of the book, but they're mainly to mark sass that I particularly appreciated. I'm going to wait a little bit before I type those up and publish them because the book is still fairly new at this point.

TL;DR it's essentially a Percy sound-alike thrown into a Norse mythology situation, which may not be good if you wanted a different narration, but it's awesome nonetheless.

TBR for the Remainder of 2015

Aka "I am banning myself from the library until Jan 1st, 2016 because I need to read these books I actually spent money on"

I have a bad tendency to get more books from the library than I can reasonably read, meaning that I a) renew them to the point where they sit on my floor for two months, and b) completely ignore the books I spent my own (or other people's) money on because they're not exactly going anywhere.

But, you know, I should kind of clear out my non-library TBR so I don't feel so guilty about going to the library in 2016.

Edit 12/2/15: I added the links to my reviews of The Sword of Summer and Carry On!
Edit 3/22/16: I added links to the reviews of books I read between December and March.

I'd like to think that my graphic design skills are improving. Or maybe I'm just burnt-out from NaNo that I think anything not a wall of words looks good. I don't know.

So:

Dark Star by Bethany Frenette (my review)

I started listening to the audiobook of Dark Star on our trip to Alaska, like, three years ago. (I can't believe it's been that long, OTL.) I really loved the narrator's voice, but like my struggles with Welcome to Night Vale, I kept falling asleep. It is just impossible for me to be read to. I can't focus on it.

And by the time I decided I would buy the book for myself, guess what? Barnes and Noble stopped selling it in their physical-building stores. So I finally got around and bought it with a gift card I got for my birthday. And it has since sat.

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (my review)

This one wasn't really a "oh my gosh I have to have it", but I found a paperback copy at an indie bookstore in Alexandria, so my grandmother bought it for me. (As a birthday-ish present? I don't remember. I think I'm supposed to lend it to her when I'm done.)

I've heard really good things about Shadow and Bone, especially from my friend who just read it recently, as well as really good things about Six of Crows.

Welcome to Night Vale by Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink (my review)

I've been listening to Welcome to Night Vale since we went to Alaska. I haven't really kept up with it, so I was a few months behind when I heard the announcement they were going to publish a book.

I've actually started reading this, but I don't know if I'll finish it before this post goes up. The book has exceeded a lot of expectations so far, and considering I had the bar set a little high in the first place, that's awesome.

Winterspell by Claire Legrand (my review)

I've been wanting this for a while now since doing a sci-fi Nutcracker retelling for my Creative Lit class. But, of course, as soon as I decided I wanted to buy it, I could never find copies at B&N. I found a copy when I bought Welcome to Night Vale and was super happy.

Of course, I went to a different B&N within a week and found the paperback copies for $10 cheaper. >:| Oh well. At least the hardcover will be a little harder to destroy.

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

I got my copy from a used book sale, and it's actually a copy designed for an inter-hotel book swap ;; So I'm not sure if there are any edits to the content. It's a fairly thin book.

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry

This I also got from the book sale, but I hadn't heard of it before. I'm looking forward to reading it since I know very little about this series.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I'm 99% sure I read the book back during elementary school. (I read The Magician's Nephew, at least, with the intention of reading the entire series. I forget how far I got.) I saw the movie adaptation they came out with back towards elementary school, but y'know, movie adaptations don't always count.

Defy by Sara B. Larson

I got this from my friend's sister well over a year ago and it's been sitting in my "stack of books acting as a nightstand" ever since.

The Feros by Wesley King

I bought this from the same used book sale as Peter Pan and Peter and the Starcatchers. I really enjoyed (first book???) but I had to go back and re-read it to get back into the world.

Of course, I waited too long after my re-read, so I'm still in the same position I started in.

Kinslayer by Jay Kristoff

My grandmother bought me both Stormdancer and Kinslayer when I managed to find them in B&N quite a while back. It took me forever to get through Stormdancer, probably because I kept it in my messenger bag and only read it in the car or while we were out somewhere. I'm hoping that Kinslayer will be a little better in terms of sitting down and reading it willingly.

Invaded by Melissa Landers

I bought Alienated when I bought Fairest and I lent it to my grandmother after I read it. She went ahead and bought Invaded afterwards, and I'm pretty sure I was supposed to read it first before she did, and tl;dr I haven't touched it since. OTL. I'm a terrible granddaughter.

I beat myself to the punch and read these before the post went up:

The Sword of Summer by Rick Riordan

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Their reviews will come out later this month, and I'll update this post to include the links to them! These links now go to my reviews instead of their Goodreads pages.

Let me know if you've read any of these! I'd love to hear more about these books.