Okay, well, this is not a review of anything, but I just gotta say this:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAWEED BRAIN!!! WE LOVE YOU PERCY!!!!
That is all.
Okay, well, this is not a review of anything, but I just gotta say this:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAWEED BRAIN!!! WE LOVE YOU PERCY!!!!
That is all.
Aloha, reader! Here it is, the review you’ve all been waiting for…Harry Potter and the Cursed Child!
Three things you should know about me going into this:
1. I’m a sucker for plays.
2. I am a completely huge sucker for time travel.
And 3. I am the world’s biggest sucker for Harry Potter.
But biased? Me? Whaaaaa? I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Anyway.
So I’d been waiting for this book since I read about it…a year ago? Two years? It seems way longer than that, but as we all know, I have absolutely no sense of time whatsoever. So.
Either way, I’d been waiting a very long time. And, because I’m, well, me, during all that time, my hopes for this book were gradually skyrocketing (I think I just made up an oxymoron!).
So, when it finally came out (on Harry’s birthday), I pretty much fell on my face trying to snatch it. Yes, I am still bruised, thank you for your concern.
Anyway! I finished the book by August 2nd and it’s August 15th now, and I‘m still not going to do it justice here. But here goes nothing.
This. This book. It is beautiful. I can’t even.
1. The characters. They are so perfectly done that honestly I can’t see present day them done any other way. Their futures are just so perfectly suited to them.
2. The time travel. Fabulously done. Absolutely brilliant. I adored the way that the ‘change-one-small-thing-and-you’re-going-to-screw-up-the-whole-future’ message was handled, and honestly, my favorite parts of the whole thing were the glimpses into the alternate futures. Without spoiling anything, between “for Voldemort and valor” and Panju, I was losing my mind. Amazing.
3. Delphi. ‘Nuff said.
4. My favorite is, “I want another baby. Or a holiday.”
5. Draco Malfoy. God, I love him. And I loved that he was able to be a decent human being without losing his snark. Well done.
6. Every single scene that Dumbledore’s portrait was in legit made me cry. Why, Dumbledore, must you always do this to me?
7. Even the stage directions were touching.
8. No Luna. What is this madness?
9. How on earth is McGonagall still alive and able to fight? Wasn’t she, like, 60 in the originals?
10. Read it.
11. Seriously, go read it.
12. Are you listening to me?!?
Overall, amazing and perfect. Go read it. The best tackling of time-travel I’ve seen since Emma and Hook in Once Upon a Time. And better than that. Read. It. Now.
Rating: 4.97 time-traveling, mind-officially-blown stars
Hola, reader! Today’s post is a double review – Princesd Academy by Shannon Hale and its sequel, Palace of Stone. I read them once when I was a small child, and then last week this happened in my head:
Decent-Human-Being Me: Hey, you know what we should do today?
Sarcastic-and-Generally-Rude Me: *boredly filing nails because hey, cliches are fun* What?
DHBM: We should reread some old books!
SAGRM: Isn’t that what we do every day?
DHBM: Yea, but specifically those Shannon Hale ones.
SAGRM: Why should we do that?
DHBM: Because reasons.
…and through that overwhelmingly powerful logic, it was decided.
Anyway. Princess Academy is actually a pretty good duo, despite its ridiculous-sounding name. I felt connected to only a few of the characters – namely Miri and Katar – but with them I thought I had a great insight into their minds.
Things I liked:
What I didn’t like:
This is a very quotable duo, with great gems like these:
“An idea is like a fire under ice. You can try to put out the fire, but the melting has already begun.”
“A kingdom at war with itself will not long stand. Let us wash the blood from our hands and start anew.”
“A rock lasts forever, but people don’t, and that’s what makes them more precious.”
“Gerti’s voice was soft, but her words flowed like the music of her lute.”
Tl;dr: This is a decent duo with a strong female lead. There’s a shift from children’s book to children’s/YA from book one to book two, and it’s not without its flaws, but a good read.
Overall rating : 3.73 stars
Greetings, reader! So to kick off my newly remodeled book blog, I’ll be reviewing Heartless by Marissa Meyer.
Now you may be saying, if you know of the book, Wait! That doesn’t come out till November! How are you doing this??
Well, you’d be correct. The book doesn’t come out until November. HOWEVER, the preview has just been released as an eBook, and I’ve gotten it! So that’s what I’m reviewing ☺
The basic premise of Heartless is that it’s a prequel to Alice in Wonderland/Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, telling the story of the young Queen of Hearts. *pauses in writing and squeals* It even SOUNDS incredible!!
Anyway, Heartless seems to be a well-written novel with a brilliant premise. Marissa Meyer is, as I know from the Lunar Chronicles, an amazingly talented writer with a true gift for making the fairy tales you thought you knew, her own. I can tell from reading these first few chapters that Cath (the Queen of Hearts) is a clever and likable character, and there’s a nice dose of Marissa’s trademark sly humor thrown in. And if you need convincing, check out these great quotes:
“Margaret had the great hardship of being unbearably unattractive. Not the homely-caterpillar-waiting-to-turn-into-a-beautiful-butterfly sort of unattractive, but the sort of unattractive that gave those around her a sense of hopelessness.”
“And the moral of that is ‘Once a goldfish, forever a goldfish.'”
“It’s just sort of snout-like is all. He probably has an excellent sense of smell. I wonder whether he couldn’t track down truffles with a nose like that.”
And of course, cleverly slipped in jokes and references like “hotheaded candles,” “rocking-horseflies,” and a cuckoo clock with a dozing cuckoo inside. Plus, you can enjoy names like Idonia and Whealagig Pinkerton!
Rating : 4.98 so-crazy-excited stars!!
Hi reader!
Okay, so I have an announcement (pronouncement?) to make. As of today, I am once again completely revamping this blog – and making it a book blog! So I’ll hopefully be posting a lot more often ☺
Stay tuned for the first book review, coming soon!
Good afternoon, reader! It’s definitely been a long time. Today, I shall discuss what is basically my favorite thing in the universe, and that is:
(Isn’t that so pretty? I love it!)
Anyhoo. So first, I will provide a little info about who I think are the best singers/bands ever! Then, I will make a list of songs that aren’t by any of those bands/singers, but that I love. Ready? Okay! *realizes that that sounded like a cheer* Oh well. *waves pom-poms that have magically appeared out of thin air because hey, it’s the Internet and I can do what I want*
ANYWAY. First up, because I am physically incapable of saving the best for last:
2. Christina Perri
3. The Script
4. The Goo Goo Dolls
And now, the songs I love that aren’t by these people!
***DISCLAIMER: This is but a tiny sampling of the songs I’m addicted to! If I wrote them all, well, it would take an eternity.***
I encourage you, reader, to listen to these GREAT songs….and comment on this post with your own favorites, because I’d love to hear from you!
Until next time!
Hey, reader! My sincere apologies for the delay between posts. I’d give some big noble reason, but….I don’t have one :p
Anyway, it is time for the third and final installment of my trilogy of book-series-devoted fangirling blog posts. And fittingly, this one is a trilogy–possibly the most well-known trilogy ever. Trust me, ask anyone and they’ll have heard of it. I’m speaking (typing?), of course, about the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.
This series consists of three books:
…which in turn have been made into four movies:
First, The Hunger Games is mainly spent following the 74th Annual Hunger Games, so I shall provide a list of the tributes that competed in that Games. They will be listed by order of district, and within that category, girl then boy. Here goes:
District One:
District Two:
District Three:
District Four:
District Five:
District Six:
District Seven:
District Eight:
District Nine:
District Ten:
District Eleven:
District Twelve:
My favorite? At the risk of being totally cliché, Rue. And Thresh. And possibly Foxface.
Then, in Catching Fire, we have the 75th Annual Hunger Games…also known as the third Quarter Quell. Our tributes in this one (in the same order):
District One:
District Two:
District Three:
District Four:
District Five:
District Six:
District Seven:
District Eight:
District Nine:
District Ten:
District Eleven:
District Twelve:
Now, Mockingjay. There was no technical Hunger Games in this book, although Finnick and Katniss do refer to their trip through the streets of the Capitol as “the 76th Annual Hunger Games” (and personally, I kind of agree!). So instead of a list of tributes, I’ll just mark down some notable deaths (because this book was like the goshdarned Deathly Hallows!!):
My thoughts on the whole trilogy:
AND. For your enjoyment, you can now see how well YOU would do in the Hunger Games, theoretically. Click here or here to play the Hunger Games simulation and see how long YOU would last!
Finally, our song! Here:
This is Mr. Brightside by The Killers!
(I ADORE this song!)
Salutations, reader! What’s going on?
I’ve made a decision. You know how last week, I dedicated my post entirely to the Percy Jackson books? Well, I’ve decided to make that into a trilogy: I’ll do two more posts (today’s and the next one) about two of my other favorite book series. Today, I’m going to address what is arguably one of the best series of all time, and what is definitely the most well-known: Harry Potter.
The Harry Potter series by Joanne Kathleen Rowling (pen name J. K. Rowling) is comprised of seven wonderful book, which are:
In addition to those, an eighth book, called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is to be released on Harry’s birthday this year! For all of you non-Harry-Potter-geeks, that’s July 31, 2016. Huzzah! Huzzah!
The three main characters are Harry Potter (obviously), Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley. I am challenging myself to make an A-Z list of characters from the series!
Ack! Does anyone know any that start with U?!? Please comment and let me know!
Now, for this post, I have pulled out my World of Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit game, and I invite YOU to play along with me! I shall post some trivia questions, ranging from simple to very specific, and then I will link to a page with the answers. Here are the questions(randomly picked):
And for extra credit…
Click here for the answers!
Alrighty then! I suppose that I will just end with a song. Here it is:
This is 7 Years by Lukas Graham!
See ya, reader!
Good afternoon, my lovely reader, and welcome back to Maddie’s Missives! I hope you’ve been well since I saw you last. First things first: the Easter Candy Countdown! Last weekend, I estimated that my delicious candies would last for fifteen days. It’s been eight days, and so far, I’m still going strong! That is, there’s still some left, anyway. I’ve eaten all of the crème eggs, though 😦
ANYWAY. Before I get into today’s topic, there’s a quick list I’d like to post. And that is:
MY MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2016! (That have yet to be published)
Alrighty then! Now that I’ve done that, it’s time to move on to our topic for today. That topic is: The Percy Jackson series (is “series” the plural of “series”? because there are two) by Rick Riordan!
NOTICE: IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THESE BOOKS AND YOU DO NOT WANT SPOILERS, DO NOT READ THIS POST. I’M SERIOUS. IT CONTAINS MANY, MANY SPOILERS.
Okay, well, I warned you. If the books get spoiled for you, it’s not my fault. I told you not to read this.
Anyhoo. Hello, reader who I hope is still reading. Let’s discuss.
There are two series that I’m going to talk about here: the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and its follow-up, the Heroes of Olympus series. Let’s go over the characters, shall we?
Percy Jackson (both series)
Annabeth Chase (both series)
Grover Underwood (mainly Percy Jackson and the Olympians)
Jason Grace (Heroes of Olympus)
Piper McLean (Heroes of Olympus)
Leo Valdez (Heroes of Olympus)
Hazel Levesque (Heroes of Olympus)
Frank Zhang (Heroes of Olympus)
Nico di Angelo (both series)
Well, that’s all of the lead characters, but some honorable mentions include:
Personally? My favorite character is Leo. Who’s yours? Please, comment and let me know!!
In case you were wondering, these are the thirteen major gods/goddesses:
I don’t think we need a book review today, since this post basically WAS a book review…a review of ten books, actually, all lumped together. So, I’ll just end with a song.
This is Viva La Vida by Coldplay, performed by Jessica Crosbie!
Hi, reader! Welcome back to my blog. I’d like to make a quick note: All of my posts’ titles are, in addition to alluding to that post’s topic, song titles! So-o-o, if you think you know the artist of the song that’s being used as the title, leave a comment and I’ll tell you if you’re right! (And yes, even my first post’s title was a song 🙂 )
Anyway. Happy Easter, reader! That’s today’s topic, actually–Easter!
Easter is a holiday that is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. Common Easter traditions include:
In honor of the egg hunt tradition, I have found a (admittedly, very simple) virtual egg hunt! Click here to play it.
You can also design an Easter egg by clicking here.
My favorite part of Easter is-besides the family fun-the chocolate! I predict that my candy will be gone in 15 days. Let the countdown begin!!
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Now, our book review. Today’s book: The Young Elites by Marie Lu!
The Young Elites is just….wow. It’s incomparable to anything I’ve read before, and it’s insane. The main character, Adelina Amouteru, is nothing like ANYONE that I have EVER read about before, and she absolutely blew my mind. She’s dark, sarcastic, and intelligent. She’s really rather terrifying, and she definitely can stand up for herself.
This story is incredible. I was hooked from the very first chapter. I had never read anything told from such a twisted perspective before, and it was such an awesome experience! I honestly found myself trapped between feeling sorry for Adelina and feeling sorry for the people around her. The story pulls you in right from the beginning and doesn’t let go, and you’ll be left gasping at the end. A gripping, dark, and wonderful read!
The only thing I wasn’t totally sold on was Adelina’s relationship with Enzo. Their interactions always seemed a little bit forced to me.
This is book one of three in the Young Elites trilogy.
Book Two: The Rose Society. (Five mind-officially-blown stars!!!)
Book Three: The Midnight Star. (To be released October 11, 2016!!)
Rating: 4.46 I-LOVE-ANTIHEROES stars!
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And now, our song, which is one of my new favorites.