Books I've read for the challenge since September 17.

27. Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse (underwhelming, a bit juvenile)
28. Black Box (interesting but short)
29. Right Behind You (another great one by Gail Giles)
30. The Hunger Games (so-so)
31. Fancy White Trash (funny and complicated :3)
32. Catching Fire (epicc.)

Okay, so about The Hunger Games. I picked it up last week because my book club it starting off the schoolyear with it. Plus, I'd kind of been wanting to read it after seeing all the hush-hush buzz about the sequel. So I did. I liked the idea of the story, and the quirky twists here and there, but all it all I thought it was just okay. A bit of a pity-fest actually, but it did encourage me to pick up the sequel, just to see what'd happen next (I couldn't imagine anything exciting could follow the action-packed first book, but of course I was wrong.) Catching Fire was, somehow, thirteen times better than the first book. Maybe it's just because I like a story more rooted in relationship and plot twists than action/adventure/people-being-ripped-apart-by-dogs. Not going to pull a spoiler here (plus, the plot is too much for me to type out anyway), but Catching Fire was, while less in-your-face violent, somehow darker than The Hunger Games. Maybe because you actually started to connect with the characters before their lives were ripped to pieces. Especially Katniss. I didn't like her in the first book at all (the word WAMBULANCE kept coming to mind while reading, haha), but she (and Peeta) actually grow personalities in the sequel! They somehow finally master sarcasm and get in people's faces more, which I appreciated bigtime. So. All in all, I'm typing all this stuff because I've already started counting down the days until the third book comes out (I'm talking a HUGE ASS CLIFFHANGER at the end of Catching Fire).

I can't wait. I want it. Like nowww...

Did I mention they're making a MOVIE (well, of course they are.) More details on that as they come.

Books I've read since April 18. I kind of need to catch up!

17. Tithe (meh.)
18. Valiant (better.)
19. Ironside (ooh, nice ending)
20. The Sea of Monsters (ooh, the odyssey...again.)
21. The Titan’s Curse (loved Thalia the badass)
22. The Battle of the Labyrinth (dragged on and on and on, but still good)
23. The Last Olympian (most epic thing ever)
24. What I Was (ooh, twist near the end)
25. The Missing Girl (awh, nice little story. sort of.)
26. Such a Pretty Girl (creepy...)

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Ooh, so happy the new trailer is out! I was worried I'd have to wait til maybe Christmas to see it, so yay. I'm also so happy with how Alex Daddario turned out. Still brunette, but she looked really good in the one clip alongside Logan Lerman (or maybe Logan just makes everyone look a little bit better). Logan Lerman's hair alone could act in this movie. Something about it is amazing. I keep rewatching the trailer just to look at it. Pierce Brosnan impressed me as Chiron, but I was a little confused by the flash of Rosario Dawson we got. Not sure if they're adding more of a part for Demeter. We'll just have to see, I suppose.

So I'm back in school. I'm a junior (yay). Classes this year aren't as bad as I though they'd be, you know? Not too tough, pretty manageable. Uh, I'll be back with more new from the fangirl front when I get some. Gotta do my Physics homework, so nighty-night.

The good news in question is, of course, that Cassie Clare is writing a fourth Mortal Instruments book! I can't explain how awesome this is. Apparently, it's going to be from Simon's point of view, about adjusting to vampire life. Also, we'll see some of the old characters again! Yay! Right now it's slated to be called City of Fallen Angels, which I like a lot.

Highlight of my week. Definitely.

In other, less awesome news, there's only two more weeks of summer left. I don't want to go back to school. I don't don't don't don't don't. How can I enjoy being a junior when I've got such a tough courseload (not that I should be complaining, seeing as Aleeya's going for the full IB Diploma and I'm only going for certificates, heh).

Uh, not much else. I now own the whole Mortal Instruments series (recently bought the first two in paperback, and I have all the audiobooks on my iPod just cause, haha.) I also got my copy of Paper Towns back from Diana.

I've been catching up on True Blood this week. Almost up to date. Godric is kind of awesome.

I'll try and post one last time before school starts, if I get anymore awesome fandom news (cause that's what I'm all about, y'know?)

Okay, so I finally finished the Percy Jackson book series. Definitely one of my new favorites. I got my awesome happy ending, plus Rick Riordan is writing another Half-blood series, coming out in late 2010. That guy is made of win.

So now that I'm done with the books, I'm obsessing over the movie. It's coming out in Feb 2010 (which is a ridiculously long time, sniff) and filming is done (I think). I'm trying to think of how I should write this out. Maybe I'll just make a list.

Let's start with this, though. The first film still from the Lightning Thief movie. It's supposed to be Percy, Grover, and Annabeth.

• Logan Lerman (It's Logan, enough said. He is all things awesome.)
• Pierce Brosnan (At first glance, I thought No, too famous. But he looks more and more like Chiron every day.)
• Sean Bean (Was awesome sauce in LOTR, so he seems like he'll make a pretty badass Zeus. Even though I don't really like Zeus's character in the series (kind of a douchebag...))
• Serinda Swan (Never seen her in anything, but she's playing Aphrodite, so no depth required.)
• Kevin McKidd (The ginger doc from Grey's Anatomy. Put him in boat shoes and I think Long John Silver's. So pretty much perfect for Poseidon.)
• Jake Abel (Next to Percy, the best casting choice. He, like Luke, can act good and very very evil. Matches the picture in my head perfectly.)

DON'T LIKE:

• Alex Daddario (So I think everyone has the same opinion on her casting. The least Annabeth actress there ever was. Of course, I can't write her off until I see her act in something. My big issue isn't her not-blondeness, it's her stature. She doesn't have that delicate youth to her at all. She's kind of stocky, chunky, and husky looking. Of course, I've only seen the one photo of her [above], so I could be wrong.)

The rest of the casting choices are pretty much whatever to me. No opinion either way. Though I was happy to see Rosario Dawson on the list. She's pretty great IMO. Also Chris Columbus seems like a good director for this kind of film. My only issue was in the teaser trailer. Olympus looked a helluva lot like Hogwarts in the Sorcerer's Stone. Hopefully, that will change.

I started reading The Lightning Thief a few months ago, one day when I saw it at Barnes & Noble. It seemed kind of interesting, but I was turned off by how it was a labeled "kids" book. So I put it down. Then, when I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with one of my friends, I saw the trailer for the Lightning Thief movie. I'd heard they were making one, but I'd kind of forgot about it. The teaser was about 45 seconds long, but it was v epic. Not because off whatever was going on in the story, but because Logan Lerman was on screen.

Secret: I've loved Logan Lerman since I saw him in the Butterfly Effect a million years ago.

So I went home and read the whole thing two days ago. One of the awesomest kids books ever. Full of quotage (which, if you don't already know, is my favorite thing. I could live of nothing but quotes if I really had to). Rick Riordan is King of Awesome.

So once I finished the first book, I started the second (The Sea of Monsters). So good. I admit, I feel about five years younger for reading them, but there's some legit quality in them. Not just dumb jokes and obnoxious one-liners. Like a kids book that translates well for normal people.

Anyway.

I kind of want a Camp Half-Blood T-shirt.

Then life would be perfect.

I completely forgot about this until just now. In response to my other post on the subject, I read Tithe back in May, and then I read Valiant and Ironside. I was surprised that I liked them, but they weren't amazing or anything. Just good.

Tithe was probably my least favorite, but I kept reading just to get it done. It wasn't boring, but it dragged a little and I wondered Why do I even care what happens to these people? I liked Corny's character, though and was excited to see him again in Book 3.

Valiant was the best of the three, I think. Very exciting with great characters. The storyline made more sense (more of the whole A to B plot, rather than A to C to Z stuff). I actually cared what happened to Sketchy Dave and Val and all of those guys. I didn't really see the appeal with Ravus, though. I really didn't. He was kind of annoying and weird to me, but maybe I just can't appreciate the whole faerie genre type thing as well as other people.

Ironside was better than Tithe, at least. I thought the whole "Find a faerie who can tell an untruth" thing was interesting. Very impressed with how Kaye solved that one. I don't really remember much of what happened (read it too long ago), but Corny got kind of badass, which is always good.

Anyway, in summation (haha) if Holly Black wrote another book, I'd probably read it, but I'd wait for it to come to the library first. I'm not exactly jumping out of my skin to read another book that makes me wonder why I'm reading it at all.

3/5 stars for the whole series. Not bad, but not good either.

Wow, I haven't written anything here since May. Me = lazy. But I have an excuse. The Great Crash of 2009, as I like to call it. First week of June, lost everything on my laptop and had to buy a new one, so I've been kind of starting from scratch since then. So, what have I been working on lately?

1. A story, work-in-progress, about a girl and the new boy at school whose girlfriend just happens to be dead.
2. Mortal Instruments OneShots on FFn.:
    a. Alec Lightwood Strikes A Match
    b. Jace Wayland Buys A New Shirt
3. A Torchwood Children of Earth fanvideo:
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Speaking of Children of Earth. It was amazing and yet extremely disturbing. Best series yet and the worst series yet. Good things: some funny montages, brilliant acting, excellent storyline. Bad things: Ianto's death, the 456 being seriously deranged, the British gov't being seriously deranged, Jack Harkness being seriously deranged (sacrificing Alice's son like that? Terrible!), horrible storyline, acting maybe to convincing/realistic. RTD has ruined my life. So have the BBC. Jack/Ianto were the best ship ever. The only thing getting my through is reading the hilarious Twitter trends about it.

Sigh.

Oh, limericks, fun. Haven't done one of these since third grade, so I'm reasonably rusty:

There once was a boy from the city
Hooked up with a girl who was pretty
He was soon shocked to see
that his new STD
would soon be passed on to his kitty

Wow. I was (re)reading Peeps (Scott Westerfeld) today. So I just had to. Poor Cal. Never saw it coming.

So by now I'm all finished reading Catcher, and it ended just as amazingly as it started. I guess I'll just rant a lot like I did with City of Glass.

So Holden, what can I say? So great. A lot of people say they identified with him, and I definitely agree. I think everybody can see a little bit of themselves in Holden, and if they can't they must be pretty shallow.

Phoebe - loved her. She reminded me of a young Margo Roth Spiegelman (Paper Towns, John Green). I feel like she'll be pretty spunky forever. Nothing like Jane, definitely nothing like Sally.

Speaking of Jane, interesting how she never actually presents herself in the story. It was kind of nice, because all of the info on her came straight from Holden. You know that whole unreliable narrator thing? I feel like the whole time I wanted a second opinion on her, but I never got one. Oh wells. No big.

The whole Mr. Antolini thing was interesting. 1) because of the "you're heading for a fall" (something like that) thing, which I thought was kind of eerie, and 2) the hair-petting. Something about the whole thing and how Holden was so "here we go again" about it made me laugh so hard. I suppose it was supposed to be traumatizing for him, but nah.

There was a bit of a jump between the end and Holden being at the institution in CA, but it didn't bother me too much. I was kind of happy that we was going back to school the next year, because I wanted him to be happy. It was weird, but I did.

Overall an amazing book. Definitely a favorite, five stars out of five, and the standard by which I will hold all of my future friends.

Did you like Catcher in the Rye? Because if you didn't, GTFO.

Yep, it'll be just like that.

If you hadn' t already guessed, my English class is reading  Catcher in the Rye. Def one of my new favorite books. It's nice to know there were awesome people even back in the 1940's.

I don't have much to say about the book now, because I'm only maybe halfway through and therefore cannot fully appreciate the printed epic win that is this book, but I'll be back in maybe a week to give you a rundown.

Holden Caufield is bad ass.

He kind of strikes me as halfway between J.D. from Heathers (best 80's film ever), Miles Halter from Looking For Alaska (John Green), and Edward from Angstgoddess003's Twilight fanfiction Wide Awake (which is epic. Go read it. www.fanfiction.net/s/4627414/1/Wide_Awake)

Made of win.

Be back soon.

I really am weak. I've been holding out on getting one since early March - when I first heard of Twitter - because Twitter is stupid and just another excuse for famous to talk about themselves and force everybody to listen.

But I have one now.

It's kind of my mission to tweet about the dumbest, most insignificant things, if only just to show everybody what they're spending all their time doing. So follow me. It'll be fun.

twitter.com/alicecullengirl

Fun...

I had a teeny bit of free time today, so I uploaded a song I wrote a few days ago onto YouTube:



The lyrics:
Not a lot
Could break you out of your shell
I took my time
and time again when you pushed me down
Your eyes don't hide
Your innocence
Your lies don't hide
Your good intents
If we weren't blood I would be
I would be
Well it doesn't matter anyway

Because that's the case
Acting like we rather look away
But they see the signs
and glances we share anyway
We can't hide
the permanence
of what we never knew was wrong
If we weren't blood I would be
I would be
Well it doesn't matter anyway

Cause we knew too much
We were always too far to touch
And maybe that's why we don't mind dying
For the ones we trust
And when we awake
Why is it we still feel same way
Surely were not repeating thoughts
Not meant to be displayed

I'd take your hand
but I don't wanna feel your scars
Don't wanna admit
this predicament is only ours
I hold you back
you run away
Talk back
when there's nothing to say
If we weren't blood I would be
I would be
Well it doesn't matter anyway

--

I miss reading the Mortal Instruments series. I'm going to start the whole thing again. When I get the time. Clary and Jace for life <3

My friend Aleeya has wanted me to read Tithe (Holly Black) since maybe eighth grade (over two years ago). I didn't because I was turned off by the fantasy angle and the faerie angle. But after I read the Mortal Instruments, a lot of people said Holly and Cassie Clare were kind of alike, and that's always a good thing.

I read a bunch of non-spoilery online reviews, and half the people who read it loved it. The other half thought it was glorified crap. Which is odd, because that's a mighty split reaction.

My library doesn't have it, so I'll have to look for it somewhere, but is it worth it? I don't know. When I read it (which I will, duh) I'll tell.

I hope it's good. The end of the Mortal Instruments series has left a whole in my heart which can only be filled by an equally amazing fandom to get lost in.

In other news, I saw a City of Glass avatar online that made me laugh tons:

Maragnor? WTF?

Since Jan 1, here's my list so far, with a word or two beside it.

1. Speak (ok)
2. Wicked (predictable)
3. Bogus to Bubbly (informative)
4. Catalyst (slightly boring)
5. Paper Towns (amazing)
6. Diary of a Chav (rhyming slang-filled)
7. The Lightning Thief (meh)
8. How To Talk To Girls (doesn't really count)
9. Skinned (blah)
10. The Wave (creepy)
11. Pledged (also creepy)
12. Stealing Heaven (nice)
13. The Adoration of Jenna Fox (thought inspiring)
14. City of Bones (wow)
15. City of Ashes (exciting)
16. City of Glass (OMFG can die happy now)

I'm not sure if I'm behind or not. And after City of Glass, I'm wondering if anything else I read will be anywhere near as good.

Spoilers, honeys.

I read City of Glass in about six hours. It was

*speechless*

awesome.

No Isabelle/Alec action, which was disappointing (muahahahaha!), but still awesome.

Sebastian/Jonathan whoever was a fronting daddy-hogging jealous bitch. Goddd.

Clary grew a spine. Yay!

Max bit it. I was more sad that Sebastian was such a bitch than that Maxie died. Seemed like all the other characters felt the same way. Really. It's like, Jace: Max is dead - let's move on.

Ok.

Oh Jace. Poor kid. Couldn't hold down a last name for more than a few pages. Love him x99 though. He's fantastic. And happy again! Yay!

Valentine was pretty bitchy too. Stabbing his kid in the heart. Not really necessary? Could have just pushed him out of the way, but nooo...

Maybe the Clave should give up on having Inquisitors. They kind of suck at it.

Luuuuke and Jocccelyn! So happy they got together at the end. But Jocelyn was kind of disappointing. Despite all the great stuff she did in the past, she seemed pretty spineless in the present. Didn't really do much.

Shrug.

Alec and Magnus! Adoooorable. Alec in a sparkly black headband = cuuuute. Too bad his brother's dead and all that.

Am I even still making sense?

Oh well. The Sebastian/Jace rivalry was honestly pretty sexy despite the fact that it wasn't supposed to be. (hehe).

And honestly, I kind of liked EmoSarcastic!Jace over Happy!Jace.

Aline was the most annoying character ever written. Maybe she was supposed to be that way, but it was seriously like SHUT UP. You're ridiculous.

So sad this series is over. My heart bleeds. Oh Jace.

/rant.