Books I've Read -- Feb.

Welcome to a new blog series I started! (Wow that sounds bad;; ) Anyway I have a hard time keeping track of the books I read since there are so many, so trying to write reviews is an attempt to make that better. And to get my thoughts out. I tried to write the reviews that I'd like to check before reading the books, because I also don't want things to be spoiled for me before I get to the end. That being said, I tried to keep things spoiler-free but if you would rather be on the safe side, stick to the TL;DR's. Anyway, enjoy!

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia, finished 2/4. So I had conflicting feelings about the book at first. I saw the trailer while on vacation, learned the movie was coming out soon, and checked it out from my school library. Most of my friends that had already read it gave it good reviews (except for one, but she's an oddball anyway.) I was pre-warned about the romance, which really isn't my sort of thing. Anyway! I felt like the book took a long time to get really interesting -- the first half is pretty much the boy being "omg I love the new girl" and everyone else is like "no you don't get it that's a really bad idea you're gonna get everyone killed" and he's still like "but I love you!" -- Every time someone asked what Beautiful Creatures was about, I said that. No lie. But after the middle things did pick up and the ending was actually pretty interesting, even though it was kind of a ... "nice" ending? My one friend tried to ruin the book for me while I was about to finish it. I kind of threw a fit at lunch, because she was like "did he die yet?" and I got really mad because I jumped to conclusions until she pointed out the cover says someone dies and she didn't reveal anything.
--> TL;DR it was ok. Kinda long, but the ending was good. Let's see how the movie turns out.

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier, finished 2/4. Ruby Red was in a halfway position between "ok" and "good". I liked it, but it didn't really compare. The characters got on my nerves sometimes and a lot of things weren't explained very well or not fully, especially some of the character's relationships or even the chronograph. The hazy background might be on account of it being part of a trilogy, but more explanation about the Guardians or even Lucy and Paul would've really been nice. And Gideon seemed like he couldn't make up his mind about a few things. I'm not sure whether I'm going to read Sapphire Blue or Emerald Green, either from the "meh" review from a friend or the chance of finding it at the library. If I can find it, sure, but I'm not all that excited to read it anyway.
--> TL;DR I think the pretty cover and the time travel made my expectations too high.

The Obsidian Blade by Pete Hautman, finished 2/6. I saw this book in my school library, and when I saw it at the public library I automatically checked it out. The plot I imagined after reading the cover flap was a lot different than what it actually was, and I was kind of disappointed by that. It reminded me a lot of Interworld, and that book I really only checked out because I found money tucked under the flap. (Since I took it, I felt obligated to at least read the book in return.) The plot of Obsidian Blade ended up getting kind of confusing and once Tucker walked through the portals there was a lot of stuff being introduced and not enough explanation for me.
--> TL;DR I keep trying to convince myself I like sci-fi when I really don't.

If I Stay by Gayle Forman, finished 2/7. I'm not even sure if I entirely thought out what the book was going to be about before I decided to read it. Usually I try to stay away from sad books. When I really started reading the book and thought about it I was afraid that it was going to be really depressing, but I was surprised. It really wasn't. A lot of the book was just her reminiscing. When I got to about the last 15 pages I was panicking because I still didn't have a feel for what she would decide to do in the end, if she would rather be with her immediate family or her boyfriend and her extended family, but I'm happy with how it turned out. It was a small book too and it didn't take me all that long to read.
--> TL;DR I didn't expect to like If I Stay but I did.

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, finished 2/11. Same thing as If I Stay; I'm not sure I thought this out all the way. I'm pretty sure the deciding factor was the sparkly cover. It was kind of hard to read the book, because I never had to deal with the feelings Lia had but know people that have with similar problems. During a lot of the book I wanted to say "why aren't you making things better for yourself?" but on the other hand I knew that it wasn't easy to do that. Lia seeing Cassie really bugged me because I didn't know if it was a hallucination from her anorexia, as a reaction to her death, or if it was somehow real in some sense. But I finished the book, so it's obviously not that bad.
--> TL;DR Wintergirls frustrated me but it was still an ok book.

Legend by Marie Lu, finished 2/12. I held back on reading it for a while because for some reason I assumed it was a book in the same league as Twilight in terms of size. So I was really surprised when it wasn't. At first the book was just ok, but then once June and Day met it got really interesting for me. I finished in a day. (Ha. Pun.) There were enough plot twists that it was interesting, but I feel like a few things were almost cliche, like Metias in general. A lot of times I was wondering what the Colonies is like, because the Republic is obviously a country wholly involved in war but the Colonies seem like they aren't. So I'm hoping to learn more about the Colonies in the next books.
--> TL;DR I liked it. Good balance of plot and action in my opinion.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer, finished 2/12. THIS BOOK. HOLY COW. I've been waiting for it since reading Cinder back in May, and it didn't disappoint. At all. I bought it 2/2 because who doesn't jump at the chance to buy things early? But I paced myself reading it because I waited to so long and I didn't want to rush through it just to have to wait until Cress next year. So many plot twists, too! And to be honest I didn't see much of the "Little Red Riding Hood" theme until one point where Scarlet, her grandmere, and Wolf were in the same room. At that point I realized how much the book paralleled the story, but at the same time it was an entirely different entity. Scarlet's grandfather and Wolf's background made me go "WHOA" and stop reading for a few moments to just process it. And I never expected to have a sliver of sympathy for Queen Levana, too, even after what she did to Earth. Totally looking forward to Cress now!
--> TL; DR I LOVED IT. TO BITS. BEST $17 EVER SPENT.

Wrapped by Jennifer Bradbury, finished 2/12. I don't think that date's correct, but I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, Wrapped was better than I expected when I started. I really liked the fact that Agnes knew so many languages, and even though her determination was kind of irritating because of the decisions she made it's still respectable. She could have taken the easy path and left the whole mystery in other people's hands, or even decide not to tangle herself in the first place, but she didn't and stuck to it even when things got kind of difficult. She didn't even seem to consider giving up. And that's really respectable when the odds were against her in a couple different ways. Her potential fiancee was surprising too, with his courting and then SURPRISE he's not at all who anybody thinks he is. And I liked that she still had feelings for Caedmon even though I feel like someone else in her position would've been like "ew peasant" or something along that line. Because, really, who would willingly give up money and position (aka marrying Showalter) to spend time with a museum boy?
--> TL: DR It was fluffy but not too overly romantic, and the plot was ok too. It's apparently not historically accurate, though.

Demonglass by Rachel Hawkins, finished 2/19. I decided to read this book because I couldn't find any others in the school library that I wanted to read. I didn't even like Hex Hall all that much. And to be honest I don't remember much of the book, since I read 99% of it the week before Katsucon.
--> TL; DR I have no clue why I keep picking books out of this genre, they all bug me with their "supernatural forbidden romance" stuff. Not cool.

Masque of the Red Death by Bethany Griffin, finished 2/20. I'm starting to notice a trend with books that in retrospect look nothing like books I'd usually pick off the library shelves... Anyway! Masque of the Red Death was kind of depressing, though I really should expect nothing less considering it deals with plague. And I really like how Araby didn't fall into the stereotypical love triangle at first, even though it was possible. She didn't just fall head over heels for both boys, but instead was more cautious and actually seemed to think things out about her love?
--> TL; DR It's good as long as you're fine with depressing-ish stuff. And steampunk.

Every Day by David Levithan, finished 2/21. There's not really much I have to say about Every Day. It was good, but to me it was also pretty simple. It's the same stuff happening in slightly different circumstances, if that makes sense. A wakes up in a different place every day and tries his best to meet up with Rhiannon. Sometimes it works, and sometimes A screws things up for the person he's currently in the body of. So that kind of annoyed me, how he broke his own rule in order to put his own needs ahead.
--> TL; DR It's good if you're in the "love at first sight" and "love conquers anything" boats.

Hallowed by Cynthia Hand, finished 2/24. I thought Unearthly was pretty good. The beginning of Hallowed  drove me crazy, though. I didn't like how Clara was blatantly disobeying everything. Her reasoning was to be with Tucker, but to me it seemed like she was doing it just to spite everything. Once there were a couple plot twists, though, I lost my "Clara you're dumb" mentality. It gets kind of sad. Boundless sounds kind of cool too but I don't know when the library will have it.
--> TL; DR If you can stick through at least the first 50 or so pages, I promise it gets better.

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier, finished 2/25. So when I showed my friends Team Human, their response was pretty much "eww Twilight-esque crap." But Team Human really isn't. It's funny. It may not be the best book, but it was amusing to read. And it didn't take too long, either.
--> TL; DR It pokes fun at Twilight (at least I think it's supposed to) and I like it that way.

For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund, finished 2/28. I kind of have conflicting feelings about FDStS. (I'm lazy at typing, ok?) And since I finished this book about two weeks ago I don't remember all of what makes me feel that way. I think it was just the characters in general. Elliott and Kai's relationship bugged me because they refused to communicate. The background of the Reduction isn't explained much, either, which I think would have been nice to know other than "we screwed up with genetic modification".
--> TL; DR It's ok but it's not like "oh wow". Just kind of something to read.

(Also this post was scheduled to post 3/1 but it didn't?? And I'm sorry about that.)

Obligatory Katsucon post -- video

This should probably have some sort of formal introduction but I can't think of anything right now;; Anyway, I'm just gonna throw in links to my vlogs from the convention and update this post as they're uploaded to YouTube sometime within the next few weeks.

Teaser video! (Funny, Blogger wouldn't let me choose it through my own videos but once I searched for it, it came right up...)

Katsucon 2013 pt 1: CON TIME

Katsucon 2013 pt 2: Mt Dew Jitters

Katsucon 2013 pt 3: Saturday

Katsucon 2013 pt 4: whut

Katsucon 2013 pt 5: "But Manga!"

Katsuon 2013 pt 6: The End

Thanks for watching my videos! 

Obligatory Katsucon Post -- text

I'm going to break this up into a few different pieces: text, videos, and photos. Because otherwise I think the post would be way too long and unmanageable. This way, if you only want to look at one aspect, you don't have to sift through the other bits.

Let me start this off by saying how much I love Katsucon. Katsu 17 was my first convention, and each year I've gone it's been better. I've practically been looking forward to this year's convention since last year, since I knew it was a definite even if Otakon fell through. I've had a running countdown since probably about September, when katsucon.org still said "200+ days until Katsucon 19". It ran simultaneously with my AUSA countdown. Every time I hear Lights by Ellie Goulding, I can't help but think about all of the awesome videography by acksonl or MLZstudios, which has gotten through post-con depression and boosted my motivation to work on cosplay.

This was the first time I've been to Katsucon all weekend. I think that was what helped make it my favorite. We didn't get to the Gaylord on Friday until sometime in the afternoon, but we stayed until at least 10pm. Saturday we got there earlier and therefore didn't stay as long, and Sunday we left by 3.

I really only cosplayed on Saturday. Friday I wore my fem!Green Oak to school, but the wig was giving me grief and I took it off to replace it with a Gumi wig I bought. Saturday I was trainer!Jack Frost and it was really fun because it was the first time I was asked for pictures, and I was in a little bit of the Pokemon photoshoot. Sunday I wore my Gumi wig along with my yellow Matryoshka hoodie.

I ran into a few people I knew, including my friend Kaylee from tumblr and a girl that sits next to me in Spanish class. I got to meet a lot of my sempais,  including: uberwren, minomotu, dejavudea, the-guardian-of-fun, and missmurrka. It turned me into a bundle of nerves and jitters, but it was totally worth it! Also considering all the ROTG artwork I was able to buy at the con. I spent $400, and a good majority of it went to the Artist Alley. I don't know how much I spent on each specific AA thing, but from the dealer's: $35 Gumi wig, $15 Lapras plushie, $20 grab bag, $16 for two manga, $15 Rilakkuma plushie, and $54 kigurumi.

The only downside to the weekend was the little run-in we had with BBYO, which is in no way as bad as other people had it. Saturday my friend and I took up chairs near the bathrooms at the end of one of their hallways, because we were waiting for my family to come back and park in the garage. The security guards didn't bother us even though we were sitting right in front of them. However, once we exited and tried to come back in they made us turn around and go through the main entrance -- which was a little annoying, considering I was wearing my Jack cosplay and my feet were freezing. We had walked through that hallway when arriving there in the morning and nobody gave us any hassle. They also wouldn't let us through it to the garage that evening, and on the gazebo level they forced us to walk through the crowded Katsu side of the open area even though there was nobody in front of the ballroom on their side and nobody was guarding it on the other side of the gazebo. We ended up getting disoriented on our way out. Other than that, though, I didn't have any problem with the other convention that ran the same time as Katsucon did.

I haven't had any con depression yet, but I think that's because I'm so happy with how Katsucon turned out to be. I have absolutely no regrets. The closest thing I've had to con depression was hating having to go back to school this morning.

Long story short, I had a super awesome time at Katsucon 19! I'll work on the other two posts as soon as I get around to processing the pictures and video I took.

2.18 update

Katsucon ended yesterday, and I've gotta say it was my favorite convention so far. It was my first time going all weekend (the last two times were only for Saturday) and it was tons of fun! I got to meet a lot of my sempais from tumblr and buy a lot of artwork from the Artist Alley. Today I'm processing through the pictures and video that I took over the weekend, so hopefully I can make a "post-Katsu review" within the next few days.

2.3 -- Books I'm Reading

I decided to post here about the books I'm reading as well, along with cosplays and vlog stuff. I kind of have a hard time keeping track of everything that I read;; I'll probably make a monthly post with the books I've read and reviews, but I wanted to make a post with the books I'm currently reading and what I think.

Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi: I chose the book because of the interesting premise. To be honest, I don't think I noticed the "possible romance" aspect when I checked it out -- I've only read up to the point where Nailer meets the girl, so I don't really know if they really do fall in love or whatever. But I'm having a hard time reading it and I'm not entirely sure why. The writing is really good, but I think it might be the depressing reality of the world and how it could theoretically happen in the future. So if I didn't have a problem with getting upset over reading depressing stuff, I'd probably think the book was great.

Scarlet by Marissa Meyer: I was really lucky in finding a copy at B&N on Saturday, considering the publication date is Feb 5. (I'm not really sure what happened there, but who can pass up a chance like that?) I've been waiting for it since I read Cinder back in May. And I've gotta say, it hasn't disappointed at all. Following Meyer's twitter is really a treat, too! It made the wait up to getting the book agonizing but fun at the same time.

Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier: I'm not very far into this book, either. I really liked the premise of Ruby Red too, because I really like the concept of time travel. It's good so far, but I have a small issue with how Gwen deals with a problem. (It apparently should go away, based off the goodreads page.) Hopefully it'll be a really good book.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia: I finally decided to check the book out after seeing the trailer for the movie on tv one night. Many of my friends have read it already, with mostly positive reviews. It's a pretty thick book, though, and I only read it in school so it's taken me a lot longer to read than other books. It's an ok book so far. Up until the middle it bothered me because of Ethan's blind stupidity. Past the middle more characters got involved in what was happening so it both picked up and relied less solely on Ethan's decisions.

And those are the books I currently have bookmarks in! Usually I try to limit myself to one school and one public library book, but I started another public book and bought Scarlet, so I got carried away;; Here's my goodreads page if you want to see it. There are links to my read, currently-reading, and to-read shelves on the page.

On another note, I'm hoping to catch up on vlog companions and make another cosplay post. And maybe one on Katsucon if I find enough to write on.