Sakura Matsuri 2014

For a bunch of years now, I've gone to the street festival that's part of the National Cherry Blossom Festival. It's changed since I first started going, including fencing the festival off and charging admission (and this year, doubling the price :| ), but it's still something I look forward to. It's at a good interval between Katsucon and Otakon and is around the time of year when I finally want to get out of the house. This year, I threw plans together very haphazardly, and they almost fell through. But we made it work.

I don't have any pictures actually in the street festival, but I made sure to vlog. (The playlist is here.)

We didn't get down to the street festival until sometime after noon;;

We also went to the Natural History Museum, which for me was my third time in three weeks;; I finally got to see the Dinosaur exhibit though, something I don't think I've ever done before! I'm really glad I got to see it before they closed it.

After the museum, Chris and I walked towards the Washington Monument in order to see the cherry blossoms. I hadn't actually seen the cherry blossoms themselves in a few years, so it was nice!

There were actually a few cosplayers having photoshoots underneath the cherry trees! I wonder what all the normal tourists thought...

I also got to see Jennifer, Alec, Carmen, and Deanna from DTP! I knew that Carmen and Deanna had been planning to go, but seeing Jennifer and Alec was a surprise! 

I got to have my taiyaki like I wanted, as well as teriyaki chicken that I bought as lunch for Chris (and he let me try). I also got to try daifuku for the first time, which was interesting! It was different than I was expecting, especially the black sesame one that came with the four-pack I bought. I also bought a stationery set and a plushie of Tuxedo Mask to hopefully bring with me whenever I cosplay Tsukino Usagi. So, despite the problems we had at first, I had a lot of fun! 

Books I've Read -- March

This is going to be short. Blame Divergent.

Divergent by Veronica Roth, finished 3/18. Reviewed in a separate post because I couldn't stop thinking of things to say.

Boundless by Cynthia Hand, finished 3/19. I don't think I really expected to finish the Unearthly series. For me, it didn't stand out. (Which can be good, since that means it wasn't absolutely terrible. I gave each book a 3-star rating, meaning I enjoyed it enough but probably wouldn't re-read it.) I think the series is good in the way that it is about angel-bloods, something I rarely read about. The only bad thing I can say about the entire series is the love V. It exists the entire series. It isn't resolved until the end of Boundless, no matter how many times Clara tries to decide. I honestly think that both Christian and Tucker would be good for Clara, so I don't mind her final choice. And, saying that, I'm starting to realize why the love V exists -- because I didn't care who she ended up with. My only problem was really that she took three books to make up her mind, and that she see-sawed so much about it. Then again, I honestly don't know how I would react in that kind of situation (having two equally nice guys), so it could be a very valid reaction of Clara's. I'm just kind of bitter about the love V trope.

Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub, finished 3/25. For an impulse-pick, I'm really glad I decided to check Still Star-Crossed out. I was slightly surprised that I would choose to read something so directly related to Shakespeare, especially how I hated trying to get through Romeo and Juliet freshman year. But I think Still Star-Crossed did really well, both with the storyline and handling the "box" it was set up in. I mean, if you're writing a continuation of a story as infamous as Romeo and Juliet, there's only so much wiggle room. And, surprisingly, the language didn't drive me crazy! Maybe it was the extra narrative that helped to explain the dialogue more, maybe it was two years' worth of extra Shakespeare knowledge, or maybe it was the fact that it reminded me vaguely of the Stravaganza series that I love so much. The love V trope ends up present by the middle of the book, but it wasn't that annoying. It wasn't so much about Rosaline fretting about who she liked more -- it was more about the guys trying to decide if they wanted to admit their feelings, and all three of them struggled on what implications their relationship might cause in a city where everyone keeps getting killed for stupid reasons.

The Cydonian Pyramid by Pete Hautman, finished 3/27. I'm not sure why I decided to continue reading this series. I wasn't very impressed with The Obsidian Blade. Anyway, it took me longer than I expected to read The Cydonian Pyramid since I would really only read it while waiting for my computer to boot up or when it decided to go unresponsive. It was fairly easy to read, and I liked how it focused a lot on Lahlia's adventure, but it was a little bit confusing as I'd forgotten a lot of Tucker's story between now and the time I read the first book. The science and time travel parts were fairly easy to understand, even for someone like me who isn't very good with either. I'm pretty sure The Cydonian Pyramid falls under the category of 'it was well-written but not my type of book'.

Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard, finished 3/31. I don't actually have much to say about this book. It's very much a fluffy romance book, but it does have some heavier topics, like abusive relationships and semi-existential crises. Well, not exactly, but Bria and Rowan do have the occasional deep / meta conversation. All in all, I really just had a neutral reaction to the book. The sketches that are included are nice, though, and learning about "backpacking culture" was pretty interesting.

Divergent Movie Review

Ever since finishing Allegiant, I've been a little wary of how the first movie would turn out. I was hoping that they'd create a new canon, one that dealt with things better.

On the 22nd, I went with Emily to go see the movie. The first thing that we noticed, even before the movie started, was how many younger girls there were. A lot of them seemed to be in about middle school, or really tiny freshman. My friend found it really surprising considering the weight of a lot of the topics in the book (death, abuse, dystopian society, etc).

I knew that the movie was going to be tweaked from the book, even before I saw it. The clips of the choosing ceremony showed all of the to-be initiates mixed in with their families, whereas I'm pretty sure they sat separately in the book. I mean, little tweaks are to be expected, because the picture in my head will be vastly different from the picture the director wants to create, and trying to condense a 400+ page book into a 2 hr 20 min movie means some sacrifices.

Divergent Review

I'm creating a separate post for Divergent because I have a lot to say, and I don't want to take over half of my "Books I've Read" with just one book. There might be spoilers for the book or series as a whole, though I usually try to avoid those in reviews. Anyway:

Divergent by Veronica Roth, finished 3/18. I first read Divergent a while ago -- either before or right around when Insurgent came out. And the first time, I loved it. To bits. I've been excited for the movie ever since I learned there was going to be one. Unfortunately, then Allegiant happened. I decided to re-read Divergent just to brush up on what happened before I go see the movie, and to hopefully restore some faith in the series. 

... It didn't help. Yes, I think Divergent is still my favorite out of the series, but it wasn't quite as strong as I remembered it. Maybe I'm just getting sick of dystopians and (practically) insta-love romances. Maybe the writing reminds me a little too much of how I feel about my own writing. (Which is to say, not very highly.) Maybe I'm just subconsciously so mad about Allegiant that I refuse to love the series. I don't know. 

One thing I can definitely say is that I feel like Tris and Four seemed weaker the second time around. It could be from knowing what goes on in the other two books. It could be because I've read more books since the first time, ones with stronger characters. It could be because they're flat characters. I can't tell you for certain. And honestly, I'm not sure I could point out any specific character growth over the course of the series. Divergent Tris and Four don't seem much different from Allegiant Tris and Four in my mind.

I can also say that the lack of a love V is a strong plus for the series. I'm so incredibly sick of those. So while Tris and Four sort of suffer from insta-love, at least Tris isn't trying to choose one of two guys. And I think their relationship is more realistic than some I've read. They disagree, they fight, and they apologize. (Or at least as far as I can remember. I do know that they disagree a lot.)

So while I don't think that the characters are strong, I do love the world-building. I think factions could definitely replace Hogwarts houses as a way to quickly identify yourself and others with an ideology. (Which is the point of factions, anyway.) And I think a part of my love for the setting is the fact that I visited Chicago before I ever learned about the books. I could clearly picture the "capture the flag" scene in my head, and at least had a pretty good understanding of places in the rest of the book. I wish the world-building had been clearer towards the beginning of the series, as you really don't learn the basics of their world as a whole until Allegiant.

And I seriously don't think it works well to compare Divergent to the Hunger Games series. Really, all they share is a dystopian society. They work in very different ways. And besides, there's no love V in Divergent. I don't think it's really fair to keep comparing books to the most recent best-seller.

TL;DR I would recommend the book, but I don't think that it quite deserves all of the hype and prestige it's being given by the media.

As for the movie, I would recommend that even more. I think the movie can stand alone without reading the book, and the movie does differ from the book a significant amount, but I think the background knowledge would help. The movie has to cover a whole lot of ground in about an hour and a half, so some things are skipped over or just barely touched. I'm going to make an entire post for a movie review as well, but I'm not going to avoid spoilers for the movie. 

Books I've Read -- Feb

February has felt like a slow month. Maybe it's just because there are fewer days than the other months.

Sapphire Blue by Kerstin Gier, finished 2/3. So apparently I read Ruby Red exactly a year ago, finishing it 2/4/13. I had no idea. I have to say that I liked Sapphire Blue more than I liked the first book, but I still don't think it warrants being anything more than a one-time read. All I can remember from Ruby Red is Gwen completely fawning over Gideon. While that still happens in Sapphire Blue, it at least has some plot, and the feelings seem to be mutual. It's also kind of frustrating that Gwen, and by extension the reader, are given no answers for what's going on or why nobody will tell Gwen anything. The goodreads ratings for both books seem to be pretty high, so I might be in the "eh" minority for this one, but I also don't trust goodreads ratings all that much after I noticed that Itch showed it had no two-star ratings even after I gave it one.

Just One Day by Gayle Forman, finished 2/6. So I've learned that Gayle Forman's books are heartbreaking, but they're also really good. (I rated If I Stay and Where She Went as three stars, but that was mainly because I couldn't handle how sad they made me feel.) Just One Day started out as a fluffy romance, and then things just fell apart. And, of course, there was a point towards the middle where I was wondering why Allyson wasn't doing anything to fix the situation. But then she did. And from that point on, I absolutely loved the book. I noticed Allyson fell into a trend that can be seen in at least a few Sarah Dessen books, among others -- the girl is super book-smart and is always working to be "perfect", which is all due to their mother's insistence, and eventually they snap and rebel against their mother and everything goes downhill. It's not a bad thing, but the fact that I've noticed it a few different times in contemporary YA is making me question if it's a trope or a growing trend.

Cress by Marissa Meyer, finished 2/7. I don't even know where to start with this book. It was amazing -- everything I had hoped for and more. I wish I had more friends into the Lunar Chronicles, because there was so much I wanted to talk about, but I felt kind of dumb rambling on about it to people who have never read the books, and I felt bad about spoiling it for Alexa (though she didn't mind). Anyway, I think Cress might be my favorite, even compared to Cinder. I think my only wish would be to hear more about Scarlet, as there were only a few chapters on her specifically. I think Iko's my favorite character though. Iko's so cute! I really suggest this series if you haven't read it already. I'm kind of sad that the series will be ending next year, but I absolutely can't wait to see what ends up happening in Winter.

Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan, finished 2/10. I was actually pretty disappointed with Invisibility by the time I reached the end. It started out okay, though I did have a few questions -- Stephen's invisibility and Elizabeth's ability to see him were explained by the middle of the book, but the whole "omg the new girl next door can see me when nobody else could before" and the basic insta-love weren't all that great to start out with. The book started out with a basic explanation of Stephen's predicament -- which is understandable as basic info to know going into the book, but it just felt like an info dump. There was no plot to it. It also switched POV every chapter, which took the entire book to really get used to, especially with my habit of reading bits and pieces whenever I can in class. None of the chapters were labeled as to which narrator it was and I often got a page or more into a chapter before realizing I was wrong about who was narrating. And then somewhere in the middle, everything just turned angsty. I ended up mad at the ending of the book because I felt like nothing was resolved. I was holding out just to see if there was going to be a sequel book, but goodreads suggests it's a standalone book. And as a standalone book, it's not good.

The Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher, finished 2/21. I hadn't realized I'd marked this as to-read when I picked it up from the library. I also didn't realize then that it was a little out of my genre range. But I still read it. I'd say it was pretty good! To me, it had almost a "shounen anime" kind of feel to it. I'm not sure if I can really give it a good review, because it isn't what I usually focus on. I still enjoyed it, though, so that should count for something. I think the only problem I really had with The Obsidian Mirror was that everybody was keeping secrets from everyone else and not much was explained, but that might go along with the genres it fits into. I'm not quite sure.

Pirate Cinema by Cory Doctorow, finished 2/28. I honestly didn't think I'd finish it in enough time to stick it in this blog post. This book was long -- not really so much with the pages, but the font was fairly small and there was a lot of text per page. But I managed to finish! Most likely thanks to a few classes in school where we did almost nothing and I had the time to sit there and tackle it. I picked up Pirate Cinema on a whim. Honestly, I don't think the book jacket summary really matched what goes on in the book. (Goodreads does a better job.) It was a little hard for me to read Trent's narrative at times, but that was mainly because he went on talking about a ton of guy stuff, and I'm obviously a girl that has no idea what he's talking about. The computer / technical stuff got a little bit confusing as well because I don't know too much complicated technology like that. The computer stuff was usually explained, at least in how it was important to the plot. But it wasn't too bad. Other than that, I liked all of the characters. They were pretty cool. The ending of the book seemed pretty fast, at least in the amount of pages it took up compared to the rest of the book. I don't think I'll read it again, but it was still pretty good. Honestly, the future that's painted in Pirate Cinema is pretty believable. I think the book wrapped up a little too nicely, but it also seems like a standalone book, so it at least kind of makes sense for that.