August Music & First Day of School

I meant to draft this post yesterday and had no downtime to do it, so this is going up a little later than I normally schedule posts. On the bright side, I can make this into an update post, too!

I compiled a playlist of all the music that really stood out to me for this month, mainly from listening to the Pop Before It Breaks station on Google Play. I started listening to it this summer and it really has shown me some awesome songs a few weeks before they start playing on the radio. It's my go-to station now \(۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶/

Google Play has also been great for having minimal ads even though I have a free account. Pandora and Spotify seem to have a lot more ads recently and it's really distracting, but I already pay for Amazon Prime and I don't think it's worth it to pay for multiple music streaming programs.

The last two songs on the playlist I actually discovered today! My college has a student radio station, and they were playing it over the PA system in the hallway I was waiting in. The station doesn't have a page where they say what's currently on (which is unfortunate), but I tracked down both songs without much hassle. 

So yeah, in related news, I started my second year of college today! It's a strange concept. I feel like I should still be a junior in high school. I had two classes today and I even managed to make a friend! I'm really not that social so this is amazing for me. I also managed to walk past my car in the parking lot after my second class. I'm totally a competent adult.

This semester I'm taking two Monday / Wednesday classes (one of which is partially online as well) and one Tuesday evening class. It's only a total of 10 credits, but I decided to cut the fourth class I'd initially added because I wasn't excited about it at all and I wasn't sure it was worth it. I'm considering changing my major back to Gen Ed because the courses for the Geography major aren't offered frequently enough to let me get my AA by the end of this year, unless I somehow luck out next semester ... But I have to apply for graduation this semester if I want to be done by the spring, so I feel kind of stuck. I'm gonna try to meet with a counselor soon and see what needs to happen. 

This summer was such a great experience all the way through and I'm so lucky and grateful for all the experiences I had and all the time I got to spend with friends. I'm a little sad to be back in school, but I know I need some routine in my life again, and I'm looking forward to sweatshirt weather and pumpkin season (ʃƪ˘⌣˘) I've already had a pumpkin pie blizzard from DQ and a harvest spice coffee from Sheetz this weekend. (The coffee was a mistake. I got maybe three hours of sleep last night. Sure did taste good, though.) 

Here's to hoping for a good fall semester! 

Otakon 2016

I was planning to make this post in the week after Otakon, and then I decided against it to post more book reviews, and then I ran out of motivation to write the rest of them and put this back on the schedule. So here we are!

This was my 4th Otakon; I started going after my freshman year of high school. This year was special because it was the last year at the Baltimore Convention Center before moving to DC, and the first day of the con coincided with my 19th birthday! This was also my first time staying in a hotel for a convention after spending my first 12ish cons commuting from home.

The Forgotten Ones by Laura Howard

TL;DR New Adult with faeries

added to TBR on Aug 2, 2016 (didn't record number OTL)

finished 8/17/16

I got this book for free thanks to Bookbub. I don't think it was on my TBR before that, so I just took a chance on it.

I marathoned this book the same afternoon I finished Wings, which, at less than 200 pages, wasn't an impossible feat. It was fairly easy to get through. Half the problem with that was that I wasn't stopping to dwell on anything that was going on.

I didn't realize it was a New Adult when I downloaded it, so once I realized Allison was old enough to legally drink, I lost some of the (small) interest I'd had. I haven't found a taste for NA yet but I decided to continue reading since I wanted to see how it would handle the concept of faeries. I didn't expect to find this premise in a NA book.

It was underwhelming. The plot like it felt a while to get going, and then even when the ball was rolling, I didn't really care much about what was going on. I didn't care enough about any of the characters to really care what they were going through, and even without that, the plot felt contrived. The involvement of the faeries was lackluster compared to what I was hoping and it didn't quite fit the book or add to the stakes like it should have.

I mainly didn't like Allison because she was a pushover and didn't really change. Her cousin easily talked her into things she "didn't want to do" and continually let her do it instead of digging in her heels or pitching a fit. The guy Allison liked wasn't characterized all that consistently, and he was weak as a love interest. Allison's family felt shallow and I'm frustrated that her mother's mental illness wasn't "real", but something caused by magic and easily fixable. That's not a healthy narrative -- mental illness can be terrible, but it's not something that goes away just like that. We shouldn't pretend that mental illness is easily fixable and that the person will go back to the way they used to be.

(I think maybe it would've been slightly better if there weren't a way to reverse what had happened to Allison's mother, but even at that, it's still unhealthy to frame mental illness as a kind of curse.)

The resolution of the book wasn't very interesting -- I was never worried about the outcome -- and when the cliffhanger was introduced in the last sentence, I was like "ha, sucks for them" and left it at that. I have no interest in what might come in the next book.

TL;DR I was really indifferent to the book as a whole, but it wasn't quite a waste of time since it was small and free.

Wings by Aprilynne Pike

TL;DR fairies are actually just sentient plants

first read unknown, second read finished Jul 8, 2012

third read finished 8/17/16

I think I first read Wings around the same time I first read Need, so I associate them with each other. I've been looking to re-read Wings for a couple years now, but my library branch only had the subsequent three books and never the first. I got lucky enough that we had an ebook copy that I could download without any wait.

(I'm currently #1, 10, 58, and 60 on four other books I've put holds on. It's so frustrating. I've been at #1 for three days on ACOTAR.)

I'm going to admit that I've got some good nostalgia-goggles with this, too. I remembered more details about Wings than I did Need, but I was kind of unsuccessful in trying to read this whole series before I started using Goodreads, so there wasn't as much to get mixed up in my mind. (The books aren't labeled with their order, so I kept checking the wrong one out and then getting confused by the timeline jumps.)

It's a decent read. The premise has always been interesting to me -- even if now I understand just how scientifically implausible it is. The plot and characters were interesting enough, and now that I have Goodreads at my disposal, I want to see whether the worldbuilding is ever explored with any more depth.

My biggest complaint is the love triangle. I didn't think Tamani was that compelling of a character (honestly, he was kind of a jerk) but I'm pretty sure he plays a big part in the rest of the series. David was such a nice kid and I'm really afraid that he's going to get pushed to the sidelines or otherwise ditched because he's human.

(Also, I wish we got more interactions with Chelsea. I liked what interactions we got but there could've been more, y'know?)

The book in general felt a little childish to me at times, and I don't know if it's because of the premise, or from being published circa 2009, or my own memories reading it for the first time. I can't pinpoint if it was specifically from the characters or the narration. (I'm not sure I agree with the third-person POV, but I'm also more partial to first-person across the board, so I'll admit this might be a problem on my end.)

I also don't remember how the ending of Wings really ties into the subsequent books, so I don't know how I feel about the ending. The ending itself felt pretty open-ended and un-resolving. I'm pretty sure what's-his-face comes back, but I don't remember to what extent.

On a fairly unrelated note, the Kindle version was super easy to get through. I marathoned my way through the book in about a day. It's so much easier to read ebooks on my HTC than my old iPod Touch, and this way I can get more books without having to leave the house! (I'm so antisocial, good lord.)

TL;DR the premise makes it worth the read in my opinion, but I'll admit that it's not perfect, and there's not much worldbuilding depth in the first book compared to what I remember from the sequels.

Defy by Sara B. Larson

TL;DR typical "warrior girl in disguise" tropes

TBR #748, added Jan 22 2014

finished 8/08/16

I've had this book since late 2014. My friend gave me a copy her sister was getting rid of, and I let it sit in my room for a year and a half. I finally got around to finishing it because I returned all of my library books. 

I initially was pretty indifferent towards Defy, but now I'm leaning more towards contempt. (Especially now that I found reviews on Goodreads that articulate better than I do. Read some of the top one-star reviews.) I think it might've been more enjoyable if I'd read it closer to when it was published and the tropes weren't as old. The experience was okay enough but it wasn't compelling, and I spent a lot of the time going "really? This is as good as we're getting?" 

The biggest issue I have with Defy is that Alex thinks she's keeping her secret so well, and then it turns out that she didn't and never got wind of it for three years. If it was apparently that easy to figure out, then why didn't she get busted beforehand?? There were also a couple plot-twist secrets regarding other people that weren't surprising. They were just kind of "... oh. All right. Moving on." (Also, how the hell did Alex survive living with a dozen guys and not let on for three years about her shark week? Periods are a pain in the ass still. There's no way she survived well in their medieval (??) world even if she weren't passing for a guy.) 

There's also the oh-so-dreaded love triangle, and honestly, I didn't like either of the guys. Neither of them were all that interesting and I don't think they would've been all that good for her. I think the story could've been stronger without the romance; there was such a good setup for familial / platonic love and it kind of got ditched. The romance also overtook any of the real danger that they were supposed to be in during the second half of the book and I got tired of it real fast. 

The worldbuilding was also lackluster, and for all the horrors of their kingdom, how did all the other guys in the guard turn out so nice? I can't really imagine why only the king and his right-hand guy would be absolute jerks and not have that pass on to anyone else. Their kingdom obviously doesn't value women for anything more than their bodies. Why are the rest of the guys so nice to Alex once they know? (I have arguments about the breeding house, but other people on Goodreads have already articulated that so much better, so I will defer to them.)

All the events in general felt too convenient for the plot. Nothing really felt like coincidence, and Alex was not the brightest or most sympathetic heroine. I never really felt like I was rooting for her -- I got the feeling she would get her way no matter what the odds looked like. That doesn't make for a very interesting book. 

All that said, it wasn't terrible to get through. I don't feel like I regret the time I spent reading, but I doubt I'm ever going to re-read it again, and I don't have much curiosity about the events after the end of the first book. The description for the second book is really uninteresting and sounds no different from the first. 

TL;DR I think I should bump my star rating down after writing this review lol. It's a decent read if you want a book for the sake of reading, but I don't think it was fulfilling like it could've been. 

Reviews I liked on Goodreads: Khanh (the Grinch), Summer, Gillian, Sandra, and Ash Wednesday. And some others, but I think you get the point.