Top Ten Tuesdays: Words/Topics That Instantly Make Me Buy/Pick Up A Book

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

Just the mention of these words has me picking up a book, lol.

Top Six Words/Topics That Instantly Make Me Buy/Pick Up A Book:

1. Pirates
I love pirates! There's just something so! appealing about them! I love their arrogance at sea and their swordsmanship; I'm just so fascinated by their dangerous life in general, lol. I haven't read many books about pirates, but the ones that I did were really and interesting. There's one pirate series that I keep hearing great things about but have yet to get around to reading them since there are many books already out in the series, and they're all thick books. But I hope I'll get around to reading the Bloody Jack series this summer. :D

2. Dragons
Dragons are my favorite mythological creatures. They're so freaking awesome! They're just so awesomely powerful and majestic and asdfjkl; I can't even explain how much I love dragons. If I could own one or be friends with one, that would make my life. I think I first really liked dragons after I started reading Anne McAffrey's Dragons of Pern series when I was in middle school. Loved them ever since. :L There's a new series out that has dragons in them that I'm excited to read called Seraphina. Hopefully I'll get around to reading it this summer.

3. Cross-dressing
There's just something so hilarious about all of the situations that comes from cross-dressing that I almost immediately want to read a book or manga that has it in its summery. And I love it when the main characters realize just how difficult it is to be the opposite gender. That flash of realization really gets to me. Unfortunately for me, I haven't found many books that involves cross-dressing besides Babe In Boyland by Jody Gehrman (which I absolutely love!). However, I know that there are quite a bunch of cross-dressing manga out there that I can't wait to read. :L

4. Music/Bands
Even though I haven't been listening to music as much lately, I still love it so much, and books about music is just another extension of my love for music. I just love reading about how absorbed people become when they're making music whether its by themselves or in a band. That feeling that tells them that they're playing perfectly, that rush of adrenaline of performing, the high from creating something so beautiful together...that sense of unity between people doing something that they love together; those are what makes these books so incredible and makes me immediately want to read them.

5. Fantasy battles/war
I love getting caught up in a middle of a battle/war, especially of the fantastical nature. It's just so much more exciting reading about a fight to the death using magic or creatures as weapons instead of just guns and nuclear war. And because the battles use such out of the ordinary creatures and weapons, there are so many ways to turn a battle or war around, which just makes it even more exciting to read. 

6. Assassins

There are not enough books about assassins around! After getting to know Valek from Maria V. Snyder's Study trilogy, I was immediately interested in assassins since they're so badass. XD I've only heard of two other assassin books: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Maas and Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers. I immediately bought both books because they involved assassins and had an awesome summery. Now I just have to read them and see if they're as awesome as they seem. 

GRACELING's Film Rights Have Been Sold! :D

Reliance Entertainment bought the franchise rights to the Graceling Realm trilogy and is partnering up with Kintop Pictures on making the film!

If you've been on my blog for a while, you know how much I loved GRACELING. I love Katsa and Po so freaking much, lol. FIRE wasn't that great in my opinion, but I liked it enough. And I feel like such a bad fan of the trilogy because I still haven't read BITTERBLUE yet even though it's been out for almost a whole year already, but that's mainly because I want to reread the first two books again before reading the last book in the trilogy. But time constraints and all that jazz has left me with little to no time for reading outside of classes. :\

But yeah, I'm looking forward to the movie, whichever one they release first since FIRE is the prequel to GRACELING even though it was written after GRACELING was published. I can't wait to see how they'll show everything from the books, especially everyone's graces. :D

I just hope that it doesn't turn out terrible, lol. GRACELING is one of my favorite books I'm talking about here. :P

Cool Stuff: Solargraphy

A while ago, my art teacher told us about solargraphy, this cool way of pinhole photography where you leave your pinhole camera outside for months on end, which will capture the movements of the Sun. It's really awesome! You leave the camera outside for so long that the film develops itself. No need for a dark room or chemicals. Neat, huh? :L

Take a look for yourself!

I love the last days of classes!

Today was our last day of class, and we had a senior farewell picnic party for my major at one of my professor's houses today. It was a blast!

She lives in a really nice, rich, neighborhood that surrounds Lake Tobesofkee, and it was super pretty. Everyone owned a boat and had their own docks and sheds for them, and the weather was just awesome. I could have stayed outside for hours. Heck, if I lived in a place like that, I would spend every day outside, lol.

And her husband took all of us on a boat ride around the neighborhood! It was really fun, and dude... Dude, I want to retire in a cush neighborhood like that. All those nice houses/mansions, those beautiful lawns and backyards, those boats... Super nice. XD

The company was really nice, too. Everyone was super hilarious, especially Valencia, lol. I just can't believe that almost everyone there was graduating. Forrest and I were the only freshmen there; I'm pretty sure that we're the only freshmen TCO majors, lol. But yeah, judging from all of the people who were able to come to the party, this seems to be the biggest graduating class of TCO students. I don't even know how many people will be around next year since they all seem to be graduating, lol.

But yeah, I had fun. I just hope next year will be just as awesome.

Also, earlier today, we got to show our sweded movies that we've been working on for the past few weeks in my Beginning Digital Imaging class, and boy were they hilarious! Josh, who did the majority of the editing for our movie, uploaded it on YouTube and linked it to us to show us the final product. Lol, it was hilarious to film and hilarious to watch. It was just too bad that we didn't have time to do a blooper reel, but I guess it's okay since the video went way over our budgeted five minutes, lol.

Watch it! You'll have a great laugh, lol.

That's all for now! I'm gonna go watch Elementary! They finally showed a new episode the other day! :D And, according to Wikipedia, they're finally going back to showing them weekly! :DDD

Later~

pointy.star

Last Day of Lab

So today was our last day of lab for Astronomy. :(

It was really fun. Since it was our last lab, Dr. Marone let us have it easy since we didn't have to do anymore lab reports. We had a bonfire and made s'mores and hot dogs and looked at Jupiter and Saturn in Pandora, which is this big telescope that he had brought out. And it was so pretty outside, clear and so bright with the Full Moon out.

I really enjoyed hanging out with the class. It just sucked that we all finally got to know each other tonight--our last lab together--than we did all year. I mean, I got to know my lab group pretty well because we set up our telescope, carpooled, and did our lab reports together, and I'm pretty sure that all of the other lab groups also got to know each other pretty well because of that too. But because each lab group usually hung out with each other, the class as a whole didn't really talk to each other much individually.

That's why tonight was really nice. We talked a lot, laughed a lot, and bonded over a bonfire together... It was really fun. But man, that bonfire was really nice. I hadn't thought that it would get so cold, especially since it's been so sunny recently, but it got pretty chilly as the Sun went down, so the bonfire was really nice, lol.

And I think that I put too much on my plate for next year. -__-" I somehow became the president of STC (I just wanted to be secretary but Shelle also nominated me for president), the vice president of Animercer (all of the guys wanted me to be the president but I was like, I don't want that much responsibility when I can't even make it to the meetings half of the time), the secretary for SWE (there were only three girls who attended the meeting who weren't graduating that could run for office and I did not want a high officer position in there when I hardly do anything in that club as it is; plus I'm not really an engineer so I didn't think I qualified, lol) and agreed to make the Astronomy club's website once it starts up again.

I just hope that I can handle all of these responsibilities. o__o I mean, I barely did anything in the clubs that I was in this year, which were all of those clubs besides Astronomy, so I hope that I'll be able to be more active now that I'm in official positions, lol.

But yeah, I really liked Astronomy. Like most classes, I came into it not knowing what I was getting into, and even though the quizzes and tests were pretty hard, and the lessons themselves were kind of boring, I really did like the class. The labs were definitely the highlights of the week, but Dr. Marone was also really nice and funny.

I'm definitely glad that I took this class, even though it was for one of my required classes, lol. I wonder if Astronomy in high school would have been half as interesting as college... I should ask Jeffy; he took it in high school and I think that he said that he liked it.

Anyway, I've got to go! Tomorrow's going to be busy! We're going to show our films for our Art class tomorrow, which is going to be hilarious, then I have Astronomy--my last class of the semester!--which I'm immediately going to the End of the Year Blowout afterwards since they're giving away free tank tops to the first 400 people there, and it starts during Astronomy, so I want to get there as quick as possible, and then I'm going to this party for my major at one of my professor's place since she lives next to a lake.

So yeah, busy day!

Mini Review: Saving June, Sold, & Nineteen, Twenty-One

Title: Saving June
Author: Hannah Harrington
Pages: 322
Publication: November 22, 2011
Publisher: Harlequin
Summary taken from goodreads: 

When her older sister commits suicide and her divorcing parents decide to divide the ashes, Harper Scott takes her sister's urn to the one place June always wanted to go: California. On the road with her best friend, plus an intriguing guy with a mysterious connection to June, Harper discovers truths about her sister, herself and life.

4.5 STARS - I REALLY LIKED IT

MY REVIEW: 

I don't even know how to describe how much I loved this book. The characters were amazing; they were all broken and realistic and trying to deal with their own problems. The writing was phenomenal--raw and surprisingly witty. And the plot was somewhat predictable, but it didn't detract from the story because the characters and writing was completely engaging. 

I definitely recommend this book. 

Title: Sold
Author: Patricia McCormick
Pages: 263
Publication: September 1, 2006
Publisher: Hyperion
Summary taken from goodreads: 

Lakshmi is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her family in a small hut on a mountain in Nepal. Though she is desperately poor, her life is full of simple pleasures, like playing hopscotch with her best friend from school, and having her mother brush her hair by the light of an oil lamp. But when the harsh Himalayan monsoons wash away all that remains of the family’s crops, Lakshmi’s stepfather says she must leave home and take a job to support her family.

He introduces her to a glamorous stranger who tells her she will find her a job as a maid in the city. Glad to be able to help, Lakshmi journeys to India and arrives at “Happiness House” full of hope. But she soon learns the unthinkable truth: she has been sold into prostitution. 

An old woman named Mumtaz rules the brothel with cruelty and cunning. She tells Lakshmi that she is trapped there until she can pay off her family’s debt—then cheats Lakshmi of her meager earnings so that she can never leave. 

Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare from which she cannot escape. Still, she lives by her mother’s words— Simply to endure is to triumph—and gradually, she forms friendships with the other girls that enable her to survive in this terrifying new world. Then the day comes when she must make a decision—will she risk everything for a chance to reclaim her life? 

Written in spare and evocative vignettes, this powerful novel renders a world that is as unimaginable as it is real, and a girl who not only survives but triumphs.

4 STARS - I REALLY LIKED IT

MY REVIEW:

The writing style makes it a quick read, but it takes a while to get through it since you're always stopping to savor and absorb the words. 

And the story is an incredible account of how sex slavery is so widespread and difficult to stop, with subtle insights at how patriarchal society is in Nepal and India and how difficult it is for women there. 

Lakshmi is my hero. 

Title: Nineteen, Twenty-One
Author: Han Yu
Pages: 581
Publication: 2010
Publisher: Naver
Summary taken from MangaUpdates:

Yun-lee is a girl who is carrying a huge emotional scar in her heart. Due to an accident, she lost 2 precious years of her life, the time period between 19 and 21 years old. Her life is empty. She is miserable, but still attending a preparatory school in an attempt to catch up with all the time she has lost. Suddenly, one day on her way to feed some stray cats, she comes across a young man who seems to have what she has lost... the period between 19 and 21 years old.

3 STARS - I LIKED IT 

MY REVIEW:

It's a cute story with pretty art. More of a slice-of-life type of manhwa with a slow pace, so don't expect anything rash and crazy. 

I just--

I don't even know anymore, lol.

I'm just so tired. 

But.

I have responsibilities.

I still need to proofread our CDR and PowerPoint.

:\

PTP (Productive, Tired, Poor)

I had two and a half group meetings, worked out, and ate out twice today. I have never felt so productive, tired, and poor on a Saturday before. OTL

Not to mention, I still have some more work to do for my other group. I told my group mate that I would email her my part and start working on the PowerPoint and send it to her tonight...And it's almost midnight.

le sigh

I should go do my work before it gets even later.

Oh! I forgot to mention that I started working out on Sunday of this week with my friend Raymond. We've worked out on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and today. Basically all of the days where I didn't have a 9:30 class, lol. 

Like, all year, I've been saying that I will go work out at the gym eventually, and Raymond told me that we would go work out since he's already worked out at the gym whenever he's not busy, so I've been waking up early, working out with him almost every day.

It's not bad. We go on the elliptical for half an hour, do sit-ups, the stair-stepper or try some other machine, and then cool down shooting hoops. My metabolism has definitely gone up because I've been getting hungry really quickly lately, but man! I really need to work on my stamina! And I need to invest in more work out clothes, lol.

But yeah...I really need to start working on that CDR...

Cover Lover 31

ASDFJKL; SO MUCH TO DO!

SO LITTLE TIME!

WHY DO I HAVE SO MANY GROUP PROJECTS?!

WHY DO WE NEED ANOTHER TEST WHEN FINALS ARE COMING UP??? DDD:

Elementary gets a second season! :D

Last year, I wrote a post on a couple of TV shows/series that I was watching or had just finished watching. Elementary is one of the shows that I am still keeping up with because I really like the characters and the overall adaptions of Sherlock Holmes. The crimes are interesting, but it's all of the characters and their dynamics and relationships and growth that really keep me hooked.

And I just found out that CBS has renewed Elementary for a second season! :D

You guys, I'm already excited for it, and the first season isn't even over yet. There's still five more episodes! Apparently Elementary was "the season’s most-watched new program," probably on CBS, but whatevs! It's getting the recognition it deserves!

But yeah, I'm happy. That means that I have another year of Elementary to look forward to. :3

Top Ten Tuesdays: Books I Feel As Though Everyone Has Read But Me

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by the Broke and Bookish.

This week's topic is a rewind where I get to pick a past topic that I missed or want to revisit. Since I always say that I want to read or am meaning to read this or that book when people mention them, I felt like this was a good topic to do! There are so many popular books out there with great concepts and great reviews, and I always feel like I'm the only one who hasn't read them yet, lol.

So here are a couple of them:

• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Looking for Alaska by John Green
• Divergent by Veronica Roth
• The Girl of Fire and Thorns by Rae Carson
• Hourglass by Myra McEntire
• The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
• Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
• The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
• Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

I've been meaning to read all of these books. However, even though I don't think that Romeo and Juliet would be believable, I have yet to read it even though all of my friends have read it in school. I always moved when my grade had to read it the following year, lol.

Bearstock 2013!

Even though it started off pretty down, Bearstock was fun!

I met up with Meethu and Jackie around 2:30 and was given bad news from Meethu. She was having some family problems. It's so weird though. Every time Meethu goes out to have fun, something bad always has to happen during or the night before she goes out so she ends up worrying about it while she's out.

But yeah. She was on the phone with someone for a while until Luke showed up, and then we lost sight of them. Luckily, Shanice showed up with her friend by then, so we ended up walking around looking at all of the food stalls and t-shirts and merch on sale. I should have bought the Bearstock shirts then since they ran out of smalls by the time I bought them later on, but I figured that they would still have smalls when we went by again. :\ Oh well, hopefully the shirts will shrink when they're washed.

But yeah, Shanice and I also ended up getting a tank top from one of the earlier performers called Electric Sons. We liked their music enough--what little we heard of it anyway--and the shirts came with a free CD of the band, so that was pretty cool. 

Even though we ate a little bit earlier at the stalls, we were still hungry, so I took them to Francars to eat wings. We ended up staying there for quite a while catching up on college life. So crazy. Then we went back to buy the shirts before going to Shanice's car so that she could park at my apartment since it was closer. 

So we walked for quite a while (I never knew that we had a dog park so nearby, lol), and after consulting a GPS for another route back to my place since one of the main roads were blocked for a bike race that was also happening at the same time, we finally made it to my apartment, where I showed Jackie around the house since she was going to move in with me next semester while Shanice took out her contacts in the bathroom. 

Then we went back to the concert. By then, it was already near six, and there was already a crowd in front of the stage since the headliners were soon to perform. Luckily for us, a lot of people left the right stage to watch the next band perform on the left stage, so my friends and I got really good spots in the front of the middle part of the crowd in front of the right stage, where The Ready Set and Switchfoot were going to perform next to my classmate Shawn to watch The Ready Set when they performed first.

To be honest, out of all of the headliners, I was really only looking forward to The Ready Set. I've always liked Switchfoot, but they haven't released anything in a long time, and I had never even heard of Travis Porter until they announced him as a headliner. So yeah, big The Ready Set fan since senior year of high school, lol.

And he was really good live! He was full of energy and adorable and really into it! Shawn told me that he had interviewed them earlier, and I was so jealous; he showed me a pic that he took of his sis and her friend with him, and we were all shocked by how short he was, lol. But I'm pretty sure that just made him even more adorable, lol.

It was really weird, but they finished their set twenty minutes early. And they didn't perform "Operator", which made me a little sad, lol. But yeah, so there was a lot of waiting around as people left to go to the next stage to watch Travis Porter perform. In between all of that time, one of Shanice's friend, Taylor, and I decided to leave our spot to go meet The Ready Set and get an autograph. The crowd had thinned out since they were all going to the other stage, so we thought we had a decent chance of getting back to our spots, lol.

So we did! And he was totally cute and awesome in person! XD

Then we rushed back to our spot where our friends were as the crowd on our stage started growing again, lol. 

And through all of this, I totally forgot to bring my camera, so I ended up using my phone instead. Only, it didn't have much storage space left, so I couldn't record anything. :\

So we stood in our spots for an hour, waiting for Travis Porter to finally perform. Even though The Ready Set Left early, Travis Porter was still late in performing. I really didn't know any of their songs--or even the fact that there were three rappers performing... 

But yeah, in between all of that waiting, Shawn and I were totally nerding out figuring out what phase the moon was in, where Orion was, and pointing out Jupiter. Lol, know that we learned about them in Astronomy, we can't ever forget. :P

So Travis Porter finally finished, and then Switchfoot came on! I didn't recognize half of their songs, but I was definitely glad that they played their hit songs, because even though I hadn't heard them in years, I was still able to sing along, lol.

But yeah, the lead singer is friggin awesome. He crowd surfed near the beginning, and he went over the gap between the stage and crowd and sang in the crowd for a while. He said that he wanted to be in the crowd because he was a Maconite since he was here all day, lol.

And he hung by one of the poles supporting the stage while he sang too.

And he got really close to the crowds on the left and right wings. It just figures that a band would do that the one year where I'm not on either wings, lol.

Also, my mascot got to dance onstage with the band towards the end! Lol, it was pretty cool. We started chanting his name once the song was over. 

But yeah, all in all, a really good show. Better than I was expecting, lol. Although I wished Switchfoot had more upbeat songs. Like, we were jumping a whole bunch for The Ready Set, but Switchfoot was a lot more waving arms or clapping hands.