NaNo Plans 2016

NaNo starts tomorrow!! I'm so excited and yet totally unprepared at the same time lol. I think that's how it always is, though.

NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50,000 words for a novel during the month of November. This will be my fifth year participating, and hopefully my fourth win! I've found that NaNo works perfectly with my writing process, so I've been looking forward to this since, like, February.

I flip-flopped with my decision for this NaNo a couple times. I was torn between some new ideas I've had and doing a complete overhaul of Casanova, which was my NaNo last year. One of my new ideas seemed like it would be a lot of fun to tackle, but I also knew that based on my track record so far this year, NaNo would be my only hope to get any revisions done for Casanova. I haven't made nearly as much progress this year as I hoped I would.

So Casanova won the decision.

"But isn't that cheating?" you might ask. To purists, sure. It's not a brand-new-sparkly idea. But I'm not breaking any NaNo core rules -- I've never used old writing or writing for outside projects to count towards my word count goal during the challenge.

My ideas for Casanova have changed a lot since last year, where I was essentially just throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if anything was good enough to stick. I've gotten a much better sense of the characters and the plot, and I have a much better understanding of the setting after our trip to Dallas in December. (Which, honestly, I'm still in shock about. If nothing else I felt like I needed to pick Casanova again to honor that lucky break and the jump my parents took on the project.)

This year I'm actually going into NaNo with an outline!! I honestly don't think I've done that before. The past years that I've won have been complete literary abandon, as they say, and in the past three years that I've won I haven't been able to piece together an actual manuscript. I've got a bunch of writing, and a lot of ideas that I've ended up keeping, but nothing that can be read beginning to end.

My hope this year is that I can attack Casanova with a little more purpose this time and get at least one draft of every single scene I know I need to make the story flow from start to finish. I have a feeling I'm going to resort to a lot of bare-bones, uninteresting narration just to make sure I at least state what's happening rather than skip over it completely. I want to have something that I can hand off to someone and not feel like there's a whole bunch of unexplained stuff that I need to mention before they start reading.

My biggest challenge (aside from keeping focused) is going to be managing my time effectively. I've been doing a really poor job of it recently and I know it's going to take a lot of sweet tea and sheer determination to get me through November lol. I also have three final projects that I have to get done during the course of the month ...

Here's to hoping for a successful NaNo!

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas

TL;DR Feyre's life gets a little less hell-ish

TBR #1776, added Aug 21, 2016

library hold placed 8/21, #58 in queue; received 9/28 #5

finished 10/6/16

I went into ACOMAF knowing a few spoilers thanks to Pinterest, but wow even those did not ruin the experience of the book. I liked this one even more than I liked ACOTAR.

ACOMAF is just so solid. Like, it's got a good plot, it's got a relatable and flawed main character, and such an amazing extended cast of characters. And Rhys -- I thought Pinterest was over-exaggerating about him and I was wrong. I don't think he could be any more perfect as a love interest.

A lot of the reason that I liked ACOMAF is that there's so much focus on character interactions and character growth. We learn a lot about Feyre, and Rhys, and all of his inner court, and we get to see Feyre open up and start to heal after what happened in ACOTAR. I think that's the most important part -- that they all help her to heal, and they understand where she's coming from and support her as her own independent person.

(Unlike someone else in the book, cough cough.)

I'm also really loving the world they're in. We get to see so much more of it this time and it's definitely one I want to see so much more of. I'm usually not one for high fantasy or anything close to it but this is just so good. (The geography nerd in me has been appeased. Aside from the fact the maps look so tiny on my Kindle app :c )

There are also some ....... really steamy chapters this time. Even more so than ACOTAR. There were a couple times that I felt like I was reading a smut fanfiction -- the beginning and end of the book are definitely not to be read in public lol. And I think there's a chapter or two in the middle of the book that are a little questionable. I'd definitely classify this series as more New Adult than Young Adult.

Despite being like an eight-year-old and hating even makeout scenes, I can definitely appreciate the ... detail? that's been included in the relationship. It depicts such a healthy and balanced relationship -- which isn't always something we get in YA / NA. And hey, body positivity! They're more mature than YA couples tend to be, which is so refreshing, but yeah this definitely isn't something I'd readily recommend to someone still in high school.

I'm excited to continue on with this series and I'm kicking myself because now I have to wait for the third book to come out. I'm kind of dreading the wait but I'm sure it's gonna be worth it.

TL:DR this completely exceeded my expectations and I'm officially hooked on this series. It's got some R-rated scenes in it, but other than that this series is really high on my recommendations list so far.

New Music Playlist - October 2016

Hi guys! I'm back with another music playlist to break up all the book reviews \(۶•̀ᴗ•́)۶/ I've done so many recently ...

This was a playlist I put together back in September, but it got pushed aside in favor of posting book reviews. So here it is now! I found all of these songs through Google Play's "Pop Before It Breaks" playlist, though some of them might have made their way to the radio by now.

I've embedded the playlist below, but you can also find it on YouTube here. It's seven songs, so it's not too long. It's all I could fit on my little sticky note lol.

I'll have a post about my NaNo plans coming up on the 31st! It starts soon and I'm so excited but I don't think I'll ever feel prepared enough lol. All of my geography classes have final projects that are due in early December, so I'm going to be working on all of those and slaving away on my writing ... it's gonna be a hard month.

Here's to hoping for a good month to come ♥

The Cage by Megan Shepherd

TL;DR teens kidnapped for a zoo run by aliens

TBR #848, added May 8, 2014

library ebook hold placed 9/17, #1 in queue; received 9/25

finished 10/4/16

This really wasn't my thing and I probably should've just DNFed it to save me the hassle.

It definitely has some good points -- I haven't seen a human zoo used as a YA topic before this -- but I didn't enjoy it. I think I could've kept my opinion at "yeah, it's okay" if I'd DNFed it, but by the time it even occurred to me, I was 85% done and to quit then would be a waste of the effort I'd put in to purposefully read The Cage over other ebooks I had.

The biggest problem for me was that the narration and the characters weren't interesting enough for me. The narration felt dull and I didn't like any of the characters. I can understand a degree of contrived-ness since they were specifically chosen for the program, but they felt inconsistent and their actions benefited the plot (which also felt contrived) much more than it ever did their own character growth. The narration also felt impersonal from being third-person, and despite being multi-POV, it focused so much on Cora that any of the other characters' chapters felt thrown in like Four's did in Allegiant. (Not quite as bad, though.)

The plot didn't quite feel like it had a solid direction, and the revelations at the end of the book were boring. I also did spoil myself by glancing at the sequel at Barnes and Noble and double-checking its synopsis on Goodreads. The ending didn't justify all the events that had lead up to it. I have no interest with what's supposed to happen after the end of The Cage, and I didn't even before I looked up spoilers.

TL;DR there wasn't any point where I really enjoyed reading this, and it's definitely not the kind of book I like, so I'm not going to continue with the series. It's definitely not the worst book I've read but I'm struggling to decide if I would recommend this to anyone.

Entwined by Heather Dixon

TL;DR Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling

TBR #195, added Feb 21, 2013

library ebook (no hold) 9/17/16

finished 10/1/16

I had no idea this was on my TBR when I found it in my thorough search of the library's ebooks. Most likely because it was so high up on the list.

Unfortunately, I did have some struggle with trying to finish it. I think part of it is from reading so many fantasy / sci-fi books lately -- I know I'm starting to burn out with my trend. I've also been marathoning through books like they're going out of style, and I've been feeling worn-out from school, so it's definitely not all the book's fault.

The plot did feel somewhat stagnant, or at least not as action-y as I was thinking it'd be (for whatever reason). The stakes didn't feel all that high until the end of the book. The ending was fun and action-y, at least. I enjoyed the final scenes.

Azalea was a nice enough main character but I don't the narration worked for me. I don't remember what exactly it was, but I think most of my problem was the mindset I was in when I read it. It fit the mood and story but wasn't really what I was wanting to read at the time.

(I owe this book an apology tbh. I was not the best reader.)

Azalea's sisters were all interesting and I was able to tell most of them apart, but that did rely a lot on simple characteristics (like Kale chewing on everything). They did have a surprising amount of variety for a set of 12 siblings. I had trouble telling apart the two main guys that weren't Mr. Keeper, the clock guy and the funny one. For some reason I couldn't keep their names straight in my head.

This is a standalone (as far as I can tell), so I definitely recommend this as a contrast to the YA trend of "series galore!! even though we don't need 5 books!!" I'm also trying to think if I've read any other Twelve Dancing Princesses retellings, and off the top of my head, the answer is only Princess of the Midnight Ball by Jessica Day George. (Also, my only other knowledge of the original fairy tale comes from the Barbie movie, which ....... is probably not good to admit. This seems to be a trend of mine, only knowing fairy tales through children's movies.)

I do hope at some point there's another book set in the same universe as Entwined, because it's kind of a shame we didn't get to see much of it outside of the castle. I think there's a lot of promise to the glimpses of history that we got to see and I'd love to go back and revisit it.

TL;DR I wasn't in the right kind of mood to read Entwined when I did, unfortunately, but I'd still recommend it. It's a good standalone fairy-tale retelling that retains a childhood story aspect rather than being "gritty". Hopefully one day I'll be able to give it another go.

As a final note, I recommend checking out the author's website. She's got some super cute art.