The Five: 2013 Edition

Five Things I Accomplished This Year
1. Graduated from Duke with a double major in Biology and English
2. Got into medical school
3. Started my first full-time job
4. Wrote a senior thesis while overloading on coursework
5. Completed my first short story since 2010 

Five Things I Crossed Off My Bucket List
1. Watched Phantom of the Opera on Broadway
2. Got a second set of earlobe piercings
3. Saw Vermeer's Girl With the Pearl Earring in person
4. Went to a Steve Aoki concert (and sort of finally understood why people are into EDM)
5. Explored NYC on my own

Five Things I Learned to Do This Year
1. Iron a shirt
2. Cook a salmon filet
3. Unclog a shower drain
4. Write a scientific research paper
5. Play poker (except I've forgotten all the hand rankings)

Five Lessons I Learned This Year
1. Don't take your relationships with people for granted.
2. Refrigerate rice ASAP unless you want food poisoning from Bacillus cereus.
3. Trust your gut--it's probably right.
4. Leaving Facebook for a month will do wonders for your actual personal relationships.
5. Happiness is a state of mind under your control. 

Five Songs from 2013 Stuck on Replay
1. "Sacrilege" | Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. "Do I Wanna Know?" | Arctic Monkeys
3. "Young and Beautiful" | Lana del Rey
4. "DOOM DADA" | T.O.P
5. "Black" | G-Dragon ft. Sky Ferreira 

Five Songs I Found and Fell in Love With This Year
(aka "Don't ask me why I never heard of these songs until now")
1. "Unravel" | Bjork
2. "Lullaby" | Low
3. "Loveeeeeee Song" | Rihanna ft. Future
4. "Twice" | Little Dragon
5. "Blue" | R.E.M. 
Honorable Mention: Beta State's cover of "Unravel" is phenomenal.

Five Favorite Books I Read This Year
1. Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor
2. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales | ed. Kate Bernheimer
3. The Bloody Chamber | Angela Carter
4. Jellicoe Road | Melina Marchetta
5. Burial Rites | Hannah Kent
Honorable Mention: Quoted a line from John Green's The Fault of Our Stars in my medical school personal statement. The eulogy scene slayed me.

Happy Birthday Aurora

Sweater Weather

These hearts adore
Everyone the other beats hardest for
Inside this place is warm
Outside it starts to pour

 -- "Sweater Weather" by The Neighbourhood

Dear Samuel,

Outside, the snow has just begun to fall. The lampposts in the courtyard stand at attention with their heads sloped downwards, soldiers in mourning whose tears have turned white under the light. There is a melancholy beauty ripe only in winter, a chill breath that permeates even amidst the warm champagne glow of celebration.

It has been a quiet Christmas eve. I burned the roof of my mouth on hot soup last night, and my swollen palate has been tingling ever since. I have lost my appetite for the past week, and I wonder what they will say when I return home. Is it a formality, to always say that someone has changed after a prolonged absence? The last time I returned for the holidays, Mrs. Weston professed her unbridled joy in seeing what a lady I had turned out to be. However genuine the intent may be, such excessively effusive compliments unfailingly lead me to wonder just what a horrid little creature I must have been! But with all candidness, how much can a person truly change in five years?

As I write about dear old Weston, it has occurred to me that I have heard so little about you over the years. I confess, I have gathered a meager collection over time--little pieces of you sifted from the hearsay of our neighbors. On a lonely night like this one, I sometimes find myself toying with the fragments, arranging and rearranging a puzzle to form a fractured image of you that I may never complete. 

Do you remember, Samuel? When we were children, your mother would read us fairy tales from that old book, the one with illustrated pages that smelled of smoke and nutmeg. Your favorite was the one about the Brave Little Tailor, but my favorite of them all was the one about the Snow Queen. If you were Kai, I said to you then, I would be Gerda--outwitting the sorceress, escaping from the band of robbers, riding on a reindeer--all in order to save you. But the boy I knew then grew up to be a man--one who scoffed at the idea of needing to be rescued.

Perhaps you knew the truth--that I have been Kai all along, with a heart splintered by ice and eyes blinded by frost. There are warmer days when those old wounds fade into the reverie of lost time, but on these cold winter nights I feel the sting sharper than ever. Imprisoned in this fortress of ice, I have spent this last eternity arranging and rearranging the pieces in hopes of finally freeing myself from you. There is neither love nor hate in the hollow of my chest--the two words imply an inflamed passion of which my soul can no longer fuel--but rather a numbness that stings with a thousand needles at the slightest touch. For the longest time, I prayed to the gods that we would never meet again, for I knew too well that the mere sight of you would doom me once more.

But on this December night, as the clock strikes twelve, I wonder if seeing you may finally put the unfinished puzzle to rest and sever me from the fantasies conjured to fill the blank spaces of your uncompleted image. Because we both know that the blemished reality is far less enticing than the pristine fantasy we have crafted within our own minds. I imagine Mrs. Weston may marvel at how tall and strong you have grown, but you and I have both changed in our prolonged absence. We are children no more.

Yours,           

Veronica

Progress Report No. 5 (and Other Goodies)

Okay, three things:

1) Music
Dunno why it took me so long to rediscover them again, but holy kleenex batman---Arctic Monkeys has been on replay this whole weekend, particularly their AM album. Ultimate favorite is still "Do I Wanna Know?" The lyrics are ingenious, in my opinion, and captures so much of the whole lust-charged unrequited yearning deal. Already shared some of my favorite lines in the last post, but this one's a zinger:

Maybe I'm too busy being yours to fall for somebody new.

The music video for "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" made me laugh a bit--I like that song as well as "Knee Socks." Also perused through some of their older songs, and there are some shattering lines in "505":

What did you expect,
I probably still adore you with your hands around my neck,
Or I did last time I checked

But I crumble completely when you cry,
It seems like once again you've had to greet me with goodbye

Basically, I am completely envious/in awe/CHRIST-WHY-IS-HE-SO-TALENTED about Alex Turner's lyricism, and it doesn't hurt that, considering Sophelia's established proclivity for deep voices and good hair, this wordsmith is also in possession of a baritone voice and an eye-catching hairstyle that I've already discussed at length before. I have a suspicion I'd find him a lot less cool in real life (based on watching a couple of his interviews), but at least in the virtual world of my computer screen, Alex Turner is awesome.

2) Reading (and Watching Movies)
Just finished reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson last week. It's my first time reading any of her works, and I do admire her writing style a lot. The story itself, however, left me with mixed, though predominantly positive, feelings. On one hand, I thought the plot device of rewinding time again and again until "you get it right" was quite interesting, especially when you see the side characters in Ursula's life play different roles in the parallel storylines. On the other hand, there were some storylines that confused the beejeezus out of me or left me feeling like I just wanted to jump ahead until Ursula died so that things would rewind again. Not perfect in my eyes, but good nevertheless.

Which is kinda how I felt about Frozen, to be quite honest. I was planning to write a separate post about the three movies I've seen the past three weeks (Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Frozen, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug), but never got around to it and don't really feel like it at this point. Some things about Frozen though (SPOILERS AHEAD):

1.  WHYYYYY, OH WHYYYY did Disney only give Jonathan Groff one song in the entire movie? And not even a full song at that. Don't get me wrong, I love the reindeer song--I believe I said something quite similar not too long ago (along the lines of: "I like animals. They don't come up to you one day and tell you they don't love you anymore.") But that reindeer song was less than a minute long. What a tease.
2. Along those lines, that movie should have had more songs in the second half. The songs in the first half were great, but then what happened? This is where they should have gotten Jonathan Groff to sing another song--Kristoff had that great emotional moment near the end, or I would have been perfectly happy with another sappy romantic duet in the vein of Tangled's "I See the Light."
3. At the beginning, Kristoff witnessed the trolls erase Anna's memory of Elsa's frost magic. Why did he never mention any of this to her? Sure, maybe he was a little kid then and it was so long ago, but considering that was the moment he was adopted by the trolls, I think he'd remember how he ended up there in the first place.
4. Hans, I don't like you because I don't understand you. Yeah, you were totally skeezy in that "Love is an Open Door" song, but I didn't quite brand you as a villain because your actions didn't add up. If you were really just going to kill the princesses anyways so you could take the throne, why did you bother going off to look for Anna when you could have just sat in the castle and taken over from there? AND WHY DO YOU GET A DUET WHEN KRISTOFF DOESN'T?
5. Am I the only one who thought Hans would end up marrying one of the princesses? Since he was totally marketed as a prince rather than a villain in Disney's promo material. 

All in all, I liked the songs and thought Disney crafted an intriguing sisterly spin on one of my favorite fairy tales of all time. But I gotta deduct points, because those plot holes and the egregious lack of Jonathan Groff drove me mental.


3)   Writing
Was completely antisocial and sedentary this weekend--to the point that I started getting a headache, which rarely ever happens--but managed to churn out around 4.5k words. Not completely happy with most of it, but whatever. I just need to keep plowing ahead and I'll let my perfectionist side run free later. Funny thing I've realized--I was totally like Charlotte back in high school, feeling sorry about myself for so many things, but when I try to write in her voice nowadays I'm like, GIRL STOP THE PITY PARTY AND LET'S MOVE IT. Which is why it's kind of fun writing in Laurel-who-has-been-reincarnated-as-Ruqayya-long-story-I'll-explain-later, who tells it like it is and doesn't put up with her shit.

Do I Wanna Know?

'Cause there's this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow and I play it on repeat
Until I fall asleep

Been wondering if your heart's still open and if so I wanna know what time it shuts

Do you want me crawling back to you?

-- "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys

-----------------

Oh man. I still remember when the Arctic Monkeys came out with their first album. That was back when I would listen to the alternative rock radio station on the stereo while I did my homework during freshman year of high school. Seems like their latest album has become a major hit recently. I heard this song on Songza's "Today's Biggest Hits" playlist and was immediately hooked on the guitar riff. Then I happened to find this video, and holy hell. Seeing Alex Turner in this video was kinda like stumbling upon photos of an old friend or flame that you haven't set eyes on in years and realizing that they've Neville-Longbottomed (see: Matthew Lewis).

I read a blog post somewhere online, where someone stated that they were not a fan of his greaser hairstyle.  I beg to differ. I've always liked this type of retro hairstyle, and it lends a certain swagger that was absent during his mop-top phase. I don't know whether or not it works when Alex Turner is just walking around or grocery shopping like a civilian, but onstage, he rocks the quiff. 

I'll grant that not everyone can pull it off. I've tried mentally imposing this hairstyle on the guys I know, and good god do they look terribly pretentious in my head. But when you're the lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter for an indie rock band, you can carry that loaded edge of masculine sensuality without seeming overbearingly smarmy. 

Incinerated Innocence

Must-read article here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/other-side-story?fullpage=1

I wonder how often these illicit teacher-student relationships occur. Considering the number of times this sort of scandal has arisen in my own high school, perhaps it is more common than frequently reported in mass media. When I was in eighth grade, a chemistry teacher from my neighborhood high school was arrested for sexual misconduct with a minor. In my freshman year of high school, a yearbook teacher got in trouble for charges related to child pornography. Three years after I graduated, an assistant principal was arrested for unlawful sexual contact with a minor--a girl who happened to be from my brother's year.

Or perhaps I just grew up in a strange environment, where it seems underneath the haze of upper-middle-class malaise bubbled a darkness that I didn't comprehend at the time. I've always wondered if I experienced a "normal" teenage experience. Was it normal that by my freshman year of high school, I had known three people--all within two years of my age, people that I had interacted personally with in varying degrees--who died? There are people who experienced more traumatic losses at a young age than mine. But there are also luckier people who do not encounter these reminders of mortality until later in their lives.

A piano teacher I admired--who passed away few years ago from a heart attack, he was only in his forties--once asked my teacher if I had experienced a traumatic event as a child. He told her that I connected with sorrowful songs far better than anything else. He was the one who recommended that I learn to play Rachmaninoff's Elegie. My mother and my teacher assured him that I had a fairly tranquil upbringing. But as I thought about this incident over time, I began to wonder if I had subconsciously internalized the jolting awareness of my own mortality as a child. Though she and I were two years apart and not the closest of friends, I think that regardless, learning as a sixth grader that your friend was shot and killed by her own father in a murder-suicide will leave some kind of impact on you.

Going back to the teacher-student relationship addressed in the article, I have always been appalled by how much these sort of affairs are romanticized and fantasized in certain subcultures of fiction. I can't count how many times I've encountered this trope in shoujo manga. As much as I reviled the patronizing condescension I faced when I was a teenager, in retrospect I feel that those years were akin to how I feel under the influence of alcohol. You think you're in total control, but in reality you fumble around and make many questionable decisions. Can a 14-year-old and a 23-year-old actually be in love? Perhaps. But I would hazard to say that most 14-year-old girls are not on the same page mentally or emotionally as 23-year-old men.

But the devil's advocate may ask if my opinion would change if she had been seventeen at the time instead. Just because you legally become an adult at age eighteen doesn't mean you mentally become one, nor does it mean that nobody under the age of eighteen has the ability to make mature rational decisions. Looking back, as an eighteen-year-old I was definitely not mature enough to handle a sexual relationship--and considering the fact that the "teenage hormones" people speak of seemed to have bypassed me completely during high school, everything worked out for the best. But I have friends who were curious at a younger age and who were "ready" by the time they took the plunge. Are things more "okay" if a "ready"16-year-old satiates their curiosity with an immature 17-year-old, versus if they were with, say, a mature 19-year-old who treats them with care?

A college friend and I discovered recently that through a couple of degrees of separation, we both knew of a couple separated by an eight-year age difference. The girl is a high school senior; the boy is a medical student three years older than me, which puts him in his mid-twenties. Supposedly, their parents approve of the relationship. Perhaps we can say they are in love. But is this situation tolerable at least partly because he does not hold a direct authority position over her? Or is it because she's almost, if not already, an adult under the eyes of the law? How on earth can you qualify when someone is "too young to know better"?

december nightmare

the black widow spider could not be pried from my tongue. the red hourglass gleamed from the mirror's reflection, the mark of bloodied time skulking in a cavernous mouth. they prodded with metal instruments until finally half of the body was excised, while the other half remained stubbornly affixed--a blackened lump with thin protruding legs, shuddering as if they were crawling upon my tongue. i felt the venom swell in my tongue, lips, my throat as i sank to the floor, listening to the air whistle through my narrowing windpipe as i watched you delivered a wordless speech at the front of the classroom. you showed no notice of the dying animal before you, just stood there with your glazed eyes staring straight at nothing at all as your mouth emitted empty puffs of carbon dioxide. breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, bre

Progress Report No. 4

I suppose a progress report is overdue, so here we go:

Like I predicted, my November was too hectic for me to actually make a meaningful attempt towards NaNoWriMo's 50k target. In reality, I probably only wrote ~9k overall. As the year approaches the end, I've started having minor panic attacks right before I drift to sleep that I will never finish writing this damn thing. I know it's a pressure I've put on myself -- that if I don't finish a draft by the end of this gap year, I will have to defer this project for an even longer period of time once my future career plans start kicking in. I've been contemplating setting up stricter writing schedules the way I used to do with my study schedules as a college undergrad--waking up earlier, sacrificing sleep, etc.

The problem with that, though, is that I don't necessarily write better under pressure. I wrote a completely new scene last weekend, and it turned out to be probably my favorite piece of writing that I've produced in the past month. However, the rest of the stuff I've produced has left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, I think my writing has improved since high school in the sense that I've become much more precise with my language and more restrained when it comes to purple-y prose. But on the other hand, I feel as if I've lost the ethereal and poetic quality I held so much pride in before. It's still there somewhere, but I haven't figured out quite how to coax it back out. Optimistically, I might have made a breakthrough yesterday afternoon--a key piece of music came up on my iPod as I was writing a particular scene, and though it was only two sentences, those two sentences were reminiscent of my old vignette style--in the best way.

Anyways, I have a lot of work to do. =_____=

In other news, lots of good deals on YA books via Amazon today. I went a book shopping spree and bought the kindle edition of Days of Blood and Starlight ($3) and hardcover copies of The Fault in Our Stars ($6) and the boxed set of Legend, Prodigy, and Champion ($20). I wasn't madly in love with Legend, but twenty dollars for three hardcover books was too good to resist. In any case, I'm excited to read the rest of the trilogy. Eleanor and Park is also on sale for both the hardcover and Kindle editions, but I think I'm going to pass on that book. I've already wrote my thoughts about that book here. I really wish I had someone to discuss that book with, because I feel like I'm the only person in the world who wasn't head over heels for that book!!

Meanwhile, I've been spreading my time between two books. Finally got my hands on a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which I've been reading in small bits during my lunch breaks at work. The book hasn't quite gripped me, so it's been a slow but steady process. I also read the first part of Nights at the Circus in one sitting over the weekend, and I remain in awe of Angela Carter's power. Considering how much trouble I had with the frame narrative in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, I was surprised by how invested I became in the story-within-a-story in Nights at the Circus.

I feel like I should start having a Currently Reading and Currently Listening section on the side of this blog... 

Blood in the Water

 

"The essence of human blood is closest to water. 

Therefore, people instinctively look for love in the sea."

Book Report: Why We Broke Up

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler

Even if you don't recognize the name of the author, you've probably heard of The Series of Unfortunate Events, which he wrote under the nom de plume of Lemony Snicket, what a decade ago? Time flies, eyyy.

Whenever I see a book on the Kindle Daily Deals that remotely interests me, I tend to browse through a couple reviews on Goodreads just to get a sense of whether or not I'm willing to spend two or three dollars on the e-book. I'd heard of Why We Broke Up before--it created some stir in the industry when it first came out and eventually received a Printz Honor. Some of the complaints I read in the reviews were that the heroine was not very relatable or kind of annoying, or that the writing style was hard to adjust to. I was somewhat concerned about that first factor--it can definitely make or break how much I enjoy a book (experimental writing style is something I'm more open to)--but in the end, I decided I was curious enough about this book to give it a go.

The premise of the book is straightforward. Min (short for Minerva) is a movie aficionado; Ed is the star basketball player at their high school. The book is essentially a Dear John letter from Min to Ed in which she returns all her mementos of him, recalling key moments from their whirlwind relationship through each object. 

I'll start off by saying that there were some negative things that I ended up agreeing with. Min's narrative voice often raves on and on about some of her favorite fictional movies. I would instantly skip over those--they bored me, and I think I would have perked up more if they'd been about actual movies that I'd heard of or seen before. Min was someone that felt quite real to me (especially impressive, given that a man is writing in the voice of a teenage girl), but I could imagine that this wasn't a girl I would have befriended in high school.

Yet despite this, the end of her story gutted me. And I think it gutted a lot of other readers out there, because most people can relate to getting their heart broken, especially by first loves. You hate someone with all your heart--maybe they cheated on you, maybe they rejected you, or maybe they just never truly looked your way. Falling for this person left you defenseless and vulnerable. You hate how pathetic you have become. And yet in despite of it all, you still senselessly and maddeningly cannot let go.

Everyone knows how the story ends--it's in the title of the book, after all. But knowing what's coming doesn't make the journey less suspenseful. Yes, Ed does something very Grade A asshole-y that prompts the end of their relationship. This was a minor issue I also had with the book -- perhaps it's because I was never super close to guy friends in high school, but I was dumbfounded that Ed thought he could get away with something so inanely jerkish and stupid. Maybe I'm giving high school boys too much credit. I guess I had been expecting a different reason for "Why We Broke Up" and what Ed did to Min didn't quite cut it for me. But regardless, Min's anger and pain registers quite sharply. What I do have to applaud Daniel Handler for is that despite Ed's flaws, I could understand why Min loved him in the first place. Maybe if they had met years down the road when they were less immature, it might have worked between them.

I don't think I would recommend this book to everybody--stylistically, it's not everyone's cup of tea. But I was thoroughly impressed by a number of things Daniel Handler managed to accomplish with this book. Aside from some negative points, I ended up liking Why We Broke Up, even though it left me feeling melancholy for the rest of the day.

Doom Da Da

These past two months have basically been TOP-mas. The Commitment was released, which led to a whole bunch of photo shoots and magazine interviews that I devoured like mad. And now, we have the Badass One's first solo single since "Turn It Up" back in 2010.

Everyone has ever been on my now-deactivated Facebook account likely has seen the barrage of TOP-related links and photos that certain friends of mine have constantly posted on my timeline, hence presenting the image that I am a crazy TOP stan. Though I am fiercely loyal to the Badass One, I must also make clear that I am not one of those fans who blindly loves everything that their beloved artist churns out. I've made fun of the Badass One's wardrobe choices and hairstyles in past blog posts (see: Idol Worship). And though I was fond of songs like "Blue" and "Bad Boy" during the ALIVE era, I was underwhelmed by the Badass One's performance during that period overall. Granted, he was shooting a movie during the weekdays and touring all over the world on weekends (meanwhile, I got tired from traveling merely states away for interviews last month), so it's understandable that he must have been exhausted. But that doesn't mean I have to like his performances during that time, which felt almost detached and bored to me. In fact, I found myself going back to a lot of the group's older songs, where he was younger, cockier, and just more emotional.

Meanwhile, my affection for YG has declined somewhat over time. I was largely unimpressed by CL's solo and 2NE1's two singles over the summer. G-Dragon has always been a mixed bag for me, and so far the only song on COUP D'ETAT that I've liked enough to listen regularly is "Black." Taeyang came out with "Ringa Linga" not too long ago, and though I loved the dance choreography, I was fairly unmoved by the song. For better or worse, GD's fingerprints were all over that track, and frankly the electro-dance style seen in songs like "Fantastic Baby" is generally not my cup of tea.

So when the news began to leak that not only was the Badass One planning to release a new solo, but also that he would have total control over the artistic direction (with the warning that some might love it, but some might hate it), I felt conflicted. On one hand, the idea that he would be putting out something artistically polarizing made me hopeful that there wouldn't be another GD-styled song. On the other hand, TOP's musical sensibilities had become such a mystery to me that I honestly had no clue what he could possibly be scheming. The fact that the song was titled Doom Da Da just made me even more puzzled. Dadaism-inspired music? What on earth was gonna happen?

I wish I'd done a live blog of my reaction to listening to "Doom Da Da" last night, because I can't remember the last time I reacted so viscerally to a song.

The first time around, my reaction throughout the whole song could be summed up in three letters. It wasn't even a matter of like or dislike. At that point, I couldn't even process what I had heard, because my ears had never encountered anything like it. It was like the lovechild of a Bollywood soundtrack and American hip-hop with an explosion of rapidfire rapping at the end. It was, quite literally: W. T. F.

And here's the thing--after that first listen, I didn't think I liked it. I was like, Whoa there. Too far out for me. But then I listened to it a second time after I saw the English translation of the lyrics. Then, I was like, Hey the DOOM DA DA is actually kind of catchy. Then before you knew it, I found myself playing the track on repeat.

There isn't much I want to say specifically about the MV, which was very much reminiscent of "Turn It Up" and was a delightfully weird and artistic counterpart to the song. I feel like I would grasp the imagery better if I understood the lyrics as a native speaker. Rather than dissect the video, I'm going talk about why I've grown rather fond of this track concept overall.

As a solo, this is very much a song characteristic of the Badass One. It's weird in a restrained way that distinguishes it from some of GD's crazier tracks. I am not a K-pop guru by any means at all, but I can't imagine any other idol out there who would release a song of this flavor. To me, this was a complete breath of fresh air. It actually reminded me of two other artists whose off-kilter musical styles wowed me in high school--OLIVIA and Bjork. By the same token, I grew to love this song because for the first time in a long while, I saw a glimpse of what drew me to His Royal Badassness in the first place. The heavy hip-hop bass line, that wicked third verse where he raps with a ferocity reminiscent of his emotional live performances of "Act Like Nothing's Wrong."

In sum: Welcome back, O Badass One.

White Suburban

‘Cause the first won’t happen twice
Won’t happen twice
It won’t happen twice

-- "White Suburban" by Skylar Grey

Woot

Got my first medical school acceptance yesterday :]

Progress Report No. 3

It's been a while since my last progress report. My progress slowed down a lot this past month, mainly due to all the traveling for interviews in October. Things have settled down a bit, so I've been trying to get back into the writing. After bumbling around, I've decided that I am definitely not a pantser, but an ultra-plotter who needs to outline everything before I feel comfortable about writing. So I've gone back to the drawing board and literally mapped out scene by scene on post-it notes. I thought I'd challenge myself with NaNoWriMo for the first time in my life this year, but it's already the fifth day and I'm still outlining. We'll see what happens. In the meantime, I just finished reading Phantom Variations -- a literary criticism book on all the incarnations and retellings of the Phantom of the Opera in literature, film, and theater. It gave me a great deal of insight on the themes I'm trying to layer throughout the story.

Rory's storyline is completely mapped scene-by-scene. Sometimes when I write vignettes or short stories, there's a moment when all the pieces seem to click together into something beautifully coherent. I got the same feeling when I finished Rory's part this weekend, so I think it's crystal for the time being. Charlotte's storyline is still being patched up, given that I've encountered a bunch of holes I have yet to figure out how to cover. I'm hoping that will be finished up by the end of this week, so I have no more excuses to actually start churning out the darned thing.

In other news about my life -- something very K-drama-esque occurred during my trip to New York two weekends ago, and I was originally planning to write a funny post about it, but I've lost interest in the idea. I did see Phantom on Broadway in the orchestra section that weekend, which was AWESOME. TOP-mas was yesterday (heh heh), and I am psyched about his new solo album coming out this month. Other dramatic things are still happening around me, but I really just want to filter all of it out, live an ascetic life in my little apartment, and focus on my pet project. In regards to my previous rant, the issue is still not resolved, but at this point I've adopted a "kill-them-with-kindness" mentality, and if they're still throwing a hissy fit, I'm honestly all out of fucks to give.

Toodleloo.

Emogry

A storm blew through my life last week. It uprooted the emotional stability I had always prided myself for and triggered sweeping mood swings for days. In fact, even now I still find myself oscillating between wounded hurt and snarling rage.

A relationship of mine has been irreversibly changed. I was accused of being cold and uncaring, and the person in question threatened to sever ties. I was completely blindsided, having believed that what we had was something indestructible--only to discover that this person had been unhappy ever since we first met.

Nowadays, anger dominates my daily mood.

I am angry that this person had bottled their grievances against me for over a year without ever confronting me directly, instead designing little "tests" to see if I would pass until an accumulation of "failures" convinced them that I was a lost cause.

I am angry that this person, after finally telling me how they truly felt, refused to take any step towards making amends and repairing damages, saying that they didn't want to set themselves up for disappointment and get hurt again.

I am angry that this person, after all this time, expected me to be somebody that I fundamentally am not.

I am angry whenever I recall all the poisonous, harmful barbs that they threw in my direction during that fateful conversation, likely because I didn't react in the way they expected me to--because once again, the reaction they wanted from me was fundamentally at odds with who I am.

And yet, when I wake up each morning, the immediate emotion that strikes me is not anger. It is sadness. Because the truth is, I cared deeply for this person the entire time. And I am hurt that they never saw this, instead letting their doubts fester for over a year. I cried, because after all this time, someone who I thought was close to me really never understood me at all. I cried, because I realize now that we have never seen each other eye-to-eye, and I have my doubts that we ever will.

I have seen my fair share of romantic relationships, despite never becoming entangled in one of my own. Back then, I never quite understood exactly why couples would seem to prematurely call it quits. Countless times, I saw salvageable situations that were left abandoned by one or both parties. Though this isn't the story of a break-up, I now understand. I have been sick and drained of this emotional turmoil; now and then, I find myself thinking about how much easier it would be to just give up and let it all go.

In Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Akiva discovers that he can draw out the source of magic from the pain of his old wound. When I first read it, I saw a metaphor for writing. For me, the ink begins to flow when I am able to draw from my own pain. It is how the story of the water horse first arose, and it is how this blog was first born. The one thing that keeps me pushing forward is knowing that I can turn my pain into art. 

Black

 

The color of my heart is black. It was burnt to black, just like that 

If you ask me what happiness is 

When this life is done, maybe when this love is gone 

If you ask me what happiness is 

You'll smile out under the sun, but I'm always on the run

-- "Black" by G-Dragon ft. Sky Ferreira

My ex-roommate was a huge fan of G-Dragon, but I've never jumped on that bandwagon. I suppose it's a combination of several factors. For one, the androgynous image has never particularly appealed to me. My biases have always been towards the more masculine, particularly with voices. I still don't really like G-Dragon's voice--it's too whiny for my tastes. Moreover, we've already established that I may be drawn to "bad" images, but deep down, I like the nice guys. The Badass One, with his shyness and good manners, fits this to a tee. Conversely, I've spent the last few years watching G-Dragon getting in all sorts of trouble, from his lame excuses about "accidentally" smoking weed to posting a black-face photo on the Internet.

I'll give him credit for being a prolific producer and composer. Obviously, there was a reason why I started listening to Big Bang in the first place. But I have to admit that I think most of my favorites are from their older albums. I tried giving G-Dragon's new album "Coup d'Etat" a try, since I've been hankering for some new music recently. The title track ("Coup d'Etat") didn't worm its way into me--partly because I got irrationally irritated by the way he pronounced his French. "Crooked" had a rock n roll feel, and yet I still didn't like it. I think I listened to "Michi-GO" once and never bothered with it again. Don't bother asking me to explain why I didn't like these songs--music is such a intuitive thing that I don't think I can really dissect why I end up liking or disliking a song. I was totally unmoved by G-Dragon's comeback singles, but I was totally hooked on Seungri's "Gotta Talk to U" from first listen. Unlike everyone else in the world, it seemed.

Then, about a week ago, I saw a video of his live performance of "R.O.D" with CL (whose "Baddest Female" single, in my opinion, was devastatingly disappointing), and I thought, Hey! I like this song way better than the other songs he released as singles. So I decided to look up the other songs and found myself sticking to "Black." I particularly like Sky Ferreira's version--something about her voice just strikes an emotional chord for me more than Jennie Kim's. I just kind of wish this song had a deeper male voice instead... oh you know, just a certain someone...

You called, Sophelia?

Pop Culture Primer: Songstress

Warning: I'm about to get rambly as I sort out my thoughts, so please disregard the forthcoming word vomit that is about to occur.

As most of you probably already know, one of my many useless talents is my incredible ability to retain information on celebrity pop culture. I have yet to meet someone who surpasses my recall ability in this department. I would also say that I maintain a healthy attitude towards the allure of celebrity--that is, I am perfectly aware that the people we see in our magazines and televisions are public "brands" and by no means "real" people. A new blog I found recently (http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/) has some very interesting posts on celebrity culture with an academic spin--take a look if you're interested in this sort of thing. As a starter, there was an interesting one about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs and how a musician's reputation is affected differently than say an actor's.

The analogy I've often used in regards to EP is that I've let it simmer on the back-burner for the last six years, occasionally tossing in a juicy idea or two and letting it stew for a while. Since I've brought it to the forefront of my life these days, I've had to do a lot more mental grinding regarding how I plan to approach things. In particular, one aspect I've been thinking about lately is the idea of celebrity, boiled down to the premise that Rory is placed on this pedestal of stardom within the social sphere of Eden.

The inspiration behind Rory came from many female singers I admired in my teenage years. Her eccentric fashion and physical attributes were markedly inspired by Olivia Lufkin, who in turn has been greatly influenced (and introduced me to) by the legendary Bjork. Her fierceness and forthright personality was inspired by Garbage's Shirley Manson, who never seems to be afraid to say exactly what she means--a quality I desperately wish I had when I was in high school. Her wild charisma and stage presence were inspired by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

These were the women I looked up to as a teenager: unique, confident, powerful. And, I've come to realize something else: none of these women truly relied on their sex appeal to sell records. One quote from Shirley Manson struck me in particular:

"I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious."

Something else that Shirley Manson commented on caught my attention. In an interview, she talks about how the female pop singers these days seem declawed and defanged, compared to the female singers that came out in the 90's. I was still in elementary school in the nineties and paid little attention to pop music at the time, but her words got me thinking about the most prominent female pop stars today: Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift. How I feel about the public personae of these ladies could take up an entire post on its own, but for the purposes of what I'm trying to do here, I'm going to focus on one person in particular.

 
There's something about Rihanna. Ever since she went all good-girl-gone-bad and chopped her hair for "Umbrella," I haven't been able to look away. It's a strange phenomenon, because I am her polar opposite in so many ways. I have always stubbornly refused to smoke, be it cigarettes or weed. I rather prudish with my personal life and would never be as forthcoming as Rihanna has been about her sexuality. As Hachi once put it, I am the sheep in wolf's clothing--I may look intimidating, but I'm as goody-goody as it gets. Yet despite all this, I've managed to retain a weird fondness for Rihanna. She's cultivated this aura of unapologetic impenetrability that's sharp and wicked in a similar vein to what drew me to Shirley Manson. Yeah, I was dismayed when she reunited with Chris Brown, but I wasn't angry--nor did I lament on her "stupidity" or whatnot. Because what I saw was a young woman just three years older than me, whose brain told her to leave but her heart told her to stay. I can think of all sorts of girls around me who've fallen into this trap--but their choices weren't magnified and dissected in the gossip coliseum. I'll grant that there are things I don't necessarily look positively upon--like her tendency to show up late to her own shows. But hey--I don't know her, and it's none of my business (unless I'm paying a ticket for her show, perhaps).

Anyways. I've been thinking long and hard about how I'm gonna depict Rory's fall. It's kind of awful, in that I feel like I'm purposely throwing one of my children into the path of an incoming vehicle. But I'd already decided a long time ago that Charlotte and Rory's stories take on opposite trajectories. The idea that has been gaining the most traction recently is built on the idea that we have a tendency of building up celebrities and then tearing them down. Some people manage to maintain a veneer of impenetrability--think Shirley or Rihanna. Others become crushed by the weight of stardom--and in this case, exuding that permanent mask of confidence becomes more than Rory can handle. 

Dandelion

Cinderella boy

You've lost your shoe 

Cinderella boy 

Your coach awaits 

A sun makes shadows 

All over your face 

As you sit 

Naked and blue 

Into me 

-- “Blue” by R.E.M. featuring Patti Smith

Lunar incantations dissolve into the concrete sidewalk. His fragile words bloom in the cold air, vaporous dandelions carried off into the December night. The winged seeds tangle into her long dark hair, seeking fertile ground to penetrate its roots through her scalp. The truth is, the weeds have already burrowed into her core, strangling everything else that once vied for her attention. He has consumed her, a brain parasite altering her behavior and accelerating her demise. There is no conscious thought in her head as she leans into him, brushing her lips against the dewy frost of his cheek. The electricity is immediate. She jolts, a heated flush prickling her skin, and meets his gaze with a stillborn breath. They are two storm-battered ships, drawn towards each other by the promise of refuge, a beacon of rosy light in the tumultuous darkness. She closes her eyes as the negative space disappears. With a fiery crackle, they melt into one.

Progress Report No. 2 / Book Report: Eleanor & Park

Update on my personal life: to my pleasant surprise, I have received interview invites for three medical schools in October. I now need to figure out a manageable balance between preparing for these interviews and maintaining a habit of writing.

In regards to my writing progress, I decided to try a completely different approach since my last update. I decided to try a more extreme version of outlining that involves summarizing each storyline from beginning to end. I've only been working on Charlotte's so far, but it's had some surprising results so far. I've completely nailed down her backstory with Storm (who has since been renamed... for reasons that I'm actually very excited about), and now I'm figuring out the details of each of the three interviews she conducts with Her Highness. Occasionally, I still run into some mental roadblocks, but I've since developed a way of countering it--by picking up a book and reading. Which leads me to my newest book report:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Like many of the other books I've been reading recently, Eleanor & Park is one that I'd been hearing lots of rave reviews about. I was intrigued for a number of reasons: 1) Gayle Forman wrote a blurb that mentions "punk rock" and "true love" -- two elements that are totally up my alley; 2) serious high school contemporaries are also my thing; 3) Park is half-Asian. When's the last time I ever read about a male protagonist who had any trace of Asian heritage in him? (Answer: NEVER)

Well, I read this book really fast. I'm a notorious speed-reader, but this was much faster than normal. I have a confession to make: I skimmed the middle. I found myself wanting to skip ahead to the end. I even considered putting the book down at about 40 percent in, which is a rarity for someone like me who usually plows through in one sitting. Here are some talking points about the story, which might help elucidate why I reacted towards this book in such a way:

1. The Romance
FYA rated the swoon scale for this book a perfect ten. If we were talking about only the first third of the book, then I would agree--the scenes on the bus when Eleanor and Park start developing feelings for each other were adorable and really captured, in my opinion, how intense your five senses become when you're a teenager with a crush. I think Rowell managed to write the hottest chaste-hand-holding scene in all of English literature.

But for someone like me who prefers her love stories with a slow torturous burn, the build-up for Eleanor and Park's relationship moved too fast. After they got together, which happened less than halfway into the book, I grew disinterested in all the "I-love-yous" and "I-miss-yous" and the typical teenaged sweet-talk. After that, I couldn't tell where the story was going to go--and hence, I started losing interest. Perhaps I'm more plot-driven than I imagined myself to be, but I skimmed ahead partly because I began wondering, "So... now that they're together, what's next?" The family storylines of Eleanor and Park were intriguing, so I thought maybe Rowell would chase after those tails... but in the end, there really wasn't any true closure for Park's issues with his father nor Eleanor's problems with her dysfunctional family. 

And the ending. Oh, the ending. Maybe I'll come to a different, more enlightened conclusion after I think about it a little longer, but at the moment I can't understand why the story had to end the way it did. Specifically, why Eleanor couldn't be bothered to stay in touch with the guy who freaking drove her across state lines to help her get away from an abusive stepfather. I know she's more emotionally timid than Park, but that still doesn't explain to me how she could go from being so in love with the first boy that ever really looked at her to completely ignoring his letters and never calling. This is the type of behavior I see in shoujo manga all the time, and it drives me nuts. I can understand cutting off ties as a self-defense mechanism, but since the book barely describes any of the aftermath, I can't tell what Eleanor gained from this behavior at all.

2. Race Issues
I do have to applaud Rowell for creating two leads that are almost exotic species in YA literature. I have rarely ever come across a heroine like Eleanor who hails from an extremely poor family, and I was also duly impressed that Rowell was brave enough to write about a character with a complicated ethnic background. These facets are what made Eleanor and Park interesting people that I wanted to know more about.

However, given that I am fairly well-versed in the cultural and social issues of Asian-American identity, I think Rowell did manage to touch on important points but, overall, didn't execute Park's racial identity quite as well as I would have liked. I appreciated the part where Park points out to Eleanor that Asian men suffer negative stereotypes, and that the only Asian-American celebrity with a positive connotation is Bruce Lee. However--and maybe this is just me--I couldn't help but wonder about the fact that Park was associated so strongly to his Asian-ness throughout the book. I could understand the characters around him forgetting that he's also half Irish-American, but I couldn't quite understand how Park never brought this up at all. The book seemed to imply that Park inherited more of his mother's Asian features than his father's, but I think it would have been insightful to catch a glimpse of how Park feels about his blended looks. Because let's face it--Park is not just Asian. He is of mixed ethnicity.

Moreover, culture is different from race. There was a lot of talk about race in this book, but I hardly got any sense of culture. This hones in on one of my major issues with this book--Park's mother. Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan are painted as this wonderful true-love couple, and while those two were probably my favorite characters in the book, I felt the picture was painted too perfectly. Mrs. Sheridan had to leave behind her entire family in Korea in order to marry in the United States--specifically, in OMAHA, NEBRASKA. I've never been to Omaha, but having heard stories about my parents' graduate school years in Illinois, I can assume that there were few, if any, Asian supermarkets in the area back in the 1980s when this story takes place. I have no gripes about Park's parents still being passionately in love with each other, but I do take issue with the fact that the story glosses over how difficult it must have been for a Korean woman to immigrate to a place with hardly a trace of her native culture and homeland. And even if she had managed to replant certain elements of Korean culture into her new home, Park never mentions any Korean elements in their home, other than a line about his mother cooking liver for dinner. Again, I'm not expecting to hear about Korean traditions maintained in the Sheridan household, but in the complete absence of any mention, I would have liked at least a line or two addressing why his mother became so Americanized.

Overall: This book had a lot going for it. People have been crying out for more diversity in YA literature for years now, and I was really happy to see that this book has been receiving so much acclaim. However, I can't deny that I was disappointed in its execution--particularly with the racial/cultural issues with Park and his family.

I can't remember if I mentioned this on an earlier blog post, but one of the major changes I made with EP is an emphasized focus on the racial and cultural background of the characters. Culture was something I became very interested in during college, and it's spilled over into a lot of my work since. Aurora, Rhys, and Patrick all now have very specific ethnic backgrounds. Rhys, in particular, has changed a lot from the way I wrote him back when I was a bumbling high school student. Reading Eleanor & Park helped me gain a better sense of how I need to tackle these cultural issues adequately.

Progress Report No. 1

Over the weekend, I forced myself to sit down and write essentially two days straight. It was incredibly tiring--mentally but also physically, in that my shoulders remained stiff even on Monday. I cleaned up much of the Prelude opening but started running into trouble with the second half--the last scene between Rory and Rhys before her death.

The general advice I've seen from literary agents and editors is to cut out prologues completely. I suppose the Prelude counts as a prologue, but thus far I've been reluctant to kill off this darling. I am especially fond of the opening scene in Ecstasia. I would be more willing to part with the last playground scene, but then I run into the problem of how to set up certain events in the future. Moreover, I kept a bunch of the poetic imagery I wrote in the past but was having a much harder time reworking the dialogue--especially since it's a scene that occurs after all the crazy stuff blows up, and I still hadn't really thought about how Rory would feel about Rhys after all the crap she goes through. Would they have reconciled and tried to recover a strain of friendship? Would the brokenness have been irreparable, so much that their conversations would turn chilly and cold?

Anyways, so when I realized I'd run into a hindrance I didn't know quite how to tackle yet, I decided to skip and presumably return to the beginning later, once I had a better sense of the overall final product. I started working on the Overture and essentially deleted everything from the original draft I'd written six years ago, minus the Madame Butterfly scene. (Damn, it's been a long time!) I wasn't doing too bad--managed to write about six pages (roughly 2,500 words). But then I took a break Sunday evening, and when I went back to reread it objectively on Monday, my angry perfectionist kicked in and made me miserable.

I've read enough essays and advice to know that the first rule of first drafts is to not be afraid of shitting all over the page... but sigh, it really does eat up at your confidence. I read somewhere that when Joss Whedon writes screenplays, he writes all of his favorite scenes first. Maybe I should just do that instead.

Indulge Me One Moment

I know I've been ranting and raving about the books I've been reading for like the past ten blog posts, but since I have no one to share my post-awesome-book-syndrome, indulge me for one second.

I had put off checking out Days of Blood and Starlight for weeks now, even though I'd been dying to get my hands on that book ever since I finished reading its predecessor (Daughter of Smoke and Bone)--mainly as a motivation for me to get my ass moving on my secondary applications. Well, I finally made the trek all the way to the East library for the sole purpose of borrowing this book, and this evening, I essentially inhaled this book without even leaving my chair.

Honestly, I can't remember the last time I've loved a book series this much. You know, when you finish reading and you just want to go back and savor the whole thing again. It's as if Laini Taylor took all of my favorite ingredients and mixed everything together to create a beautiful sugar-spun confection that I can't help but devour in one sitting.

I don't know if the second book in this trilogy is better than the first. I think I might actually give the first book a slight edge. But Days of Blood and Starlight is still a very good "middle book," given how the second book of a trilogy usually winds up getting the short end of the stick. I think the writing was a little more awe-inspiring for me in the first book than in this one. But there were definitely some punches I was not expecting, and the craziness that happened at the end really made me stop and go, WHOA.

The last book is going to be released next April. Birthday present for myself, woot woot.

Also, I'm still thinking about print vs. digital books. I read DoSaB and DoBaS from physical copies that I had borrowed from the university library, but I wonder if I would have felt as attached if I read them on my Kindle or phone. Actually, for my own purposes, let's make a list of what I've been reading this summer:

Sophelia's 2013 Summer Reading List (in no particular order)

1. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta (e-book)
2. Howl's Moving Castle by Dianne Wynne Jones (e-book)
3. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas (e-book)
4. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (print)
5. Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor (print)
6. Adaptation by Malinda Lo (print)
7. Bitter Melon by Cara Chow (print)
8. There Once Lived a Girl Who Seduced Her Sister's Husband, and He Hanged Himself: Love Stories by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, translated by April Summers (print)
9. The After Girls by Leah Konen (e-book)
10. Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys (print)
11. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (print)
12. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins (print)
13. Sticks and Stones by Emily Bazelon (print)
14. You Remind Me of You by Eireann Corrigan (print)
15. Nobody But Us by Kristin Halbrook (print)

I think there are a couple more that I missed, but fifteen is a clean number. So we have four e-books and eleven print books. It's an unbalanced sample, but I do have to say that I still loved Jellicoe Road, even though I was reading it on my Kindle. I guess I generally prefer reading print if I can, but I've grown fond of Amazon's Kindle Daily Deals. 

Book Report: Crown of Midnight

EP Update: currently working on the Prelude, revised the opening scene last night

I'm starting to feel like my blog is becoming more and more of a book/TV/movie review machine. Not that I'm necessarily writing reviews for other people to read. I can count on one hand the people I know who are likely even following this blog. I guess for me, this is more about keeping track of what materials I've been perusing through and analyzing what I like and don't like about these stories.

Before you dive into this post, I recommend reading this article on Paper versus Pixel regarding how we choose to read: http://nautil.us/issue/4/the-unlikely/paper-versus-pixel

And now, without further ado:

Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

Last summer, I wrote a post about the relationship I have with the Throne of Glass series. S. J. Maas was a Fictionpress legend back during my middle school/early high school years when I stayed up all night reading these stories. I didn't actually read the original "Queen of Glass", but the fact that a FP legend was breaking into publishing was significant for me. If S. J. Maas could do it, then maybe it would be possible for the rest of us to make that dream a reality.

I eagerly bought Throne of Glass on its release day last year. Though my book report seems actually pretty positive when I read it in retrospect, truthfully I felt kind of disappointed. I couldn't shake off the lingering thought that so many elements of the story reminded me of other fantasy stories that had managed to pull it off more effectively. I think the biggest issue was, I had hyped it up so much in my head that in the end, neither the characters or plot truly made me think WOW HOW DID SHE THINK OF THAT.

Well, I wasn't ready to give up on Celaena just yet. So I continued to follow the release of the second book, Crown of Midnight, but with less intensity than before. I noticed that Crown of Midnight was garnering a lot of good reviews, including a starred review from Kirkus. The general consensus was that this book was much better than its predecessor. Intrigued by this, I purchased the e-book yesterday and finished it in one evening.

The reviews do not lie: this book was much better than the first. From the very first chapter, Celaena was a lot more dynamic and active, which I had sorely hoped for in the first book. There was much more at stake in the storyline this time around, which kept me on my toes.

But what's baffling me right now is... as much as I wanted to love it, I still felt ambivalent about the book.

//SPOILERS AHEAD//

Alright, I'm gonna sort out my thoughts, so feel free to disregard everything I write below.

I've been thinking about this since I finished the book last night, and I've come to the conclusion that I still don't have a good grasp in Celaena's motivations. In the first novella, she frees slaves on moral principle, which triggers a series of misfortunes that land her in a labor camp. Yet throughout most of the first book, she flaunts her status as the kingdom's greatest assassin and seems to have no qualms about her murderous past. Then, she becomes generally reluctant to murder through most of the second book--but why? Did I miss something important? And about the slave thing--how can you be against slavery but have no problem with killing? Is the issue about freedom to choose how you live? I can't figure it out.

The love triangle took an interesting turn in this book. To my surprise, I started liking Dorian more than Chaol in this book. Seems like I just have to root for whoever doesn't get the girl. Chaol's storyline is a lot more intense this time around. He finally gets the girl, but I was very puzzled by my immediate reaction, which was along the lines of: Eh? Why do we have this development so soon? I'd suspected after reading the first book that Celaena and Chaol were probably endgame/OTP, but given that this Throne of Glass series is supposed to be six books long, I had assumed S.J. Maas would spend more time heating things up with a slow burn. Well, this throws a wrench into my predictions.

Chaol betrays Celaena in a way that I think is very in character with his personality--so kudos to S. J. Maas for crafting this part well. But that's the writerly side of me speaking. The readerly side of me was expecting to be all devastated and NOOOOO, but this didn't happen. Instead, I couldn't help but draw comparisons between Chaol and Akiva from Daughter of Smoke and Bone, who both make a decision that winds up leaving one of their lover's closest friends/family dead. Akiva's betrayal punched me in the gut far more than Chaol's. Akiva actively killed Brimstone, Karou's father figure, whereas Chaol became indirectly responsible for Nehemia's death by not sharing crucial information. I know it's not fair to compare these two books, but I can't help that I just finished both recently.

I guess this is the crux of what I'm trying to say: Laini Taylor took a greater risk with Akiva than S. J. Maas did with Chaol. For me, it paid off. How on earth are is Karou going to forgive Akiva for what he's done? Hell, how are the readers ever going to forgive Akiva? From a writer's perspective, to a certain degree you want your readers to fall for the love interest as well. If he's too perfect, than people will accuse him of being Edward Cullen, but adding imperfections also runs the risk of creating a character people don't like or care about. To tell you the truth, I didn't like Akiva that much. But his betrayal left with so many questions that I was dying to know what was going to happen in the next book. With Chaol.. I actually liked him. But I didn't feel my gut flip inside-out when Nehemia died and Celaena went berserk on Chaol. (Actually, I was ambivalent about Nehemia as well, so maybe that's part of the problem.)

Despite all this, I do wonder where S. J. Maas is taking this story and how she's planning to develop it over the next four books. Part of the fun of being a reader who also likes creating her own stories is that I often try to predict what will happen. I've been thinking about Chaol and Celaena's parting, and I came to the conclusion that if I had been the one molding this story, I probably would have taken a Basara route and forced the two onto extreme, irreconcilable, opposite sides before they ever slept together. Tear them apart by having Chaol choose his loyalty to the king (whom he owes a lot to) over his love for her. She becomes the princess of the rebellion; he becomes the king's second-in-command and is ordered to crush her. Have them meet on the battlefield and see what happens... mwahaha. (This is assuming they're endgame, which they could very well not be... who knows at this point?)

Anyways... in summary, I just felt very apathetic the whole time I was reading this book, and I can't figure out why. Was it the book's problem? But with so many stellar reviews, maybe the problem was just me and my personal tastes. Or was I just in a strange mood yesterday? Does it make a difference that I read a physical hardcover copy of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, whereas I was reading Crown of Midnight on my phone via Amazon Kindle app? Does reading from a digital format make you feel less engaged with the story?

I wish I had someone I could discuss all this with, but just like I have no music friends, I don't have book friends either. :[

Finallly Finished

And now my real work begins.

---------------
 upcoming -- my thoughts on the sequel to Throne of Glass: Crown of Midnight

Epics and Quests: An ATLA Reflection

Good news: I turned in my penultimate secondary application last Monday.
Bad news: I've been procrastinating majorly in writing this last one.

My productivity has hit a slump. I suspect it's because I'm facing the monstrous "final boss"--this beast has four essays with unlimited word count. I wonder if this is how Link feels before he heads off to Ganon's castle.

I found managed to find a convenient distraction instead--I decided to watch all three seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender for free with my Amazon Prime account. I had heard about the cartoon series for a while. Dante Basco even visited my school this past spring. ATLA just never grasped my attention, I suppose, until I found myself desperately trying to weasel my way out of writing essays.

I'm too lazy to write a synopsis, so here's one I found on IMDb:

When the hostile Fire Nation threatens to enslave the Water, Earth, and Air Nations, a reluctant and irresponsible boy must face his destiny as the Avatar, the Chosen One who can restore the world order. This new animated series centers on twelve-year-old Aang, who must forgo his selfish wandering to learn to master his latent powers over the four elements. Only then can he conquer the Firebenders, the evil nation that threatens the world. 

If I had discovered ATLA as a child, I suspect it would have been high on my list of favorite TV shows. If I finish a book or series and myself lamenting that I can't run over and visit their world again--or if I find myself dying to know WAIT SO WHAT HAPPENS TO THESE AWESOME PEOPLE AFTER THE WAR?--then I know I've found a gem.


I wrote a post about three years ago talking about how I rarely read fantasy these days. I've been thinking about this question more, especially after watching ATLA. I don't think I ever really turned my back on fantasy. I've always had a soft spot for epics, a hero's quest, war stories with multiple sides. Hell, I've been a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda series since forever, even despite the fact that I usually only watched my dad and brother play. Whenever my friends reminisce about the Harry Potter fanfics they used to read in their youth, I am loathe to tell them that the only fanfics I really read were ones dedicated to the Legend of Zelda and Inu-Yasha (yet another quest story, in a different vein).

I think there were a number of reasons why I started to veer away from these childhood obsessions and began devouring contemporary literature instead. At that point in my life, I was about to enter high school. High school in itself is another fascinating thing to me. I became less interested in these imaginary worlds and more invested in human stories--which oftentimes were tales of self-discovery and finding love. These intersected with what I was going through in my own life. This was around the time that I found Sarah Dessen and Francesca Lia Block, plus many "grown-up" novels by authors such as Alice Hoffman, Tracy Chevalier, and Janet Fitch.

And as much as I am sheepish to admit, the truth of the matter is that I still read a lot of manga to this day. I can't even count how many series I have read over the last ten years, and granted, some of them were pretty terrible. But in reading so many stories, I think I innately gained a sense of how stories are crafted and became keenly attuned to the common cliches in these narratives. Earlier, I asked myself which series have been my favorites--the ones that I have actually gone back to reread more than once, whose characters' names I can still remember without having to cheat. Off the top of my head, I came up with a list:

1. Nana by Ai Yazawa
2. Inu-Yasha by Rumiko Takahashi
3. Basara by Tamara Yumi
4. X/1999 by CLAMP
5. Skip Beat by Nakamura Yoshiki

Three out of five of these are what I would consider "epics." Inu-Yasha, Basara, and X/1999 all involve a battle of sorts between "good" and "evil", though the degrees by which the lines between good and evil are drawn vary enormously. Point being, even if my reading tastes changed over time, what I'm drawn to has remained consistent.

Anyways, enough of my musing. Back to what I thought about ATLA:

Characterization
In my opinion, this was the best part about the series, hands-down. Each character in the team had his/her own strengths, but just as importantly, his/her weaknesses as well. There is so much I can say about each character, because my understanding of each person became increasingly sharper with each episode. This is like the whole "show, don't tell" advice that people always say about writing. I could easily say, Katara is very motherly and sometimes overbearing, or, Zuko is very emotionally complex. But the best thing about watching this as a TV series is that in this medium, the creators are forced to show rather than tell. We see Katara nagging the other team members about the "moral" actions they should be doing. We see Zuko making bad decisions everywhere he goes, but we can see that his actions are a by-product of the good and evil warring within him.

Plot
Maybe I've become desensitized by violence (a horrifying thought), but I felt very strange about watching this story without the horrific violence of war. When a rebellion happens, the rebels are simply taken prisoner. Nobody is tortured or killed in order to "teach a lesson." The main character Aang says at one point that he's never killed anyone. My immediate reaction was, Huh. Well, maybe you didn't kill anyone directly, but you made tanks flip over, you knocked people off from cliffs, you smacked people around with Earth-bending that could have easily damaged their internal organs...

But given that this show is for children, I think the plot was at an appropriate level that wasn't too outrageously intricate. The storyline was a little predictable to me, but there's no great harm in that. The world-building with the four elements was well-done, in my opinion.

Fan Talk
This section is for people who've actually watched the series. I haven't yet found someone I can chat about ATLA fan-to-fan, so I'll just toss around a bunch of thoughts and potential spoilers here.

• Favorite Character. I liked Zuko's character a lot. Always been a fan of the archetypal redemption story arc. But there's one thing about him that constantly bugged me that I'll get into a second. Thus, Sokka takes the cake--he's hilarious and I found myself mirroring him in many ways (especially how he organizes itineraries excessively.) Appa was also a favorite of mine--doesn't everyone want their own flying bison??
• Funniest Moment. I was practically crying from laughter at the infamous "Baby, you're my forever girl" scene when Aang was going delirious from lack of sleep.
• If I could only bend one element, I would pick... Water. To me, it seemed like the most versatile. It could also heal, which I thought was very useful.
• Ships. I realized as I watching the series that there are rabid shipping fandoms out there on the Internet: Kataang, Zutara, Maiko, etc. I was expecting that I would hop onto one of these ships after I finished the series. (I was a HUGE shipper of Miroku/Sango from Inu-Yasha and Arashi/Sorata from X/1999.) But strangely enough, I didn't really get into any of these possible pairings. I was lukewarm about Sokka and Suki (to be honest, I like the story arc about Yue better). Toph and Sokka was a wishful fantasy I couldn't really picture ever happening. I could see Kataang happening in the future, but I was also somewhat unnerved by how motherly Katara's relationship to Aang was, given that Aang grew up without his parents. Zuko, with all his ships, needs a bullet point of his own...
• Zuko/Katara. I feel like Zuko's mother when I say this, but at the series' end, I came to the conclusion that none of these girls are good enough for him. Katara wasn't my favorite, but I liked her--she's loyal and fiercely protective. She had some cute moments with Zuko, especially when people mistook them for being a couple. They also look good together in a way that Aang and Katara do not. However, the series was pretty much set on Kataang, and I became pretty convinced as well that this pair was end-game. In my opinion, Zuko needed someone who could counterbalance his angst. Now, onto the one thing I disliked so much about Zuko...
• Zuko/Mai. I'm not sure why, but I HATED THIS PAIRING. I think the main culprit is that I really really really did not like Mai. One of my biggest pet peeves is when people complain about being bored. Oh, I'm so sorry--should I dance like a monkey to entertain you? Zuko once described her during a fight as being one big BLAH, and I was like YEAH I TOTALLY AGREE--SO WHY ARE YOU DATING HER? Mai talked with the drawl of a jaded teenager and just seemed like someone I would not particularly want to hang around. Also, after I went online and realized how people had been interpreting the whole "fruit tart" business, I seriously wanted to barf. I honestly don't see how this pair would survive in the long run, because his angst and her gloom would just drag each other down.

 In conclusion, I wasn't a fan of the romance in ATLA. Which doesn't matter, because I found myself liking the characters individually for how they contributed to the storyline. Think what you will of "children's cartoons", but I think this series is definitely a good one. I've heard mixed things about the follow-up series, Legend of Korra, so we'll see if I decide to check that one out. 

The Pick-Up

"You know how people buy drinks for girls in bars? Why can’t people do that in book stores? Like if I’m looking at a novel in Barnes and Noble and some person walks up to me and strikes up a conversation and offers to buy the book for me there is a lot better chance of that working out in their favor."

--Found on someone's Tumblr

sacrifice to the muse

i read a free verse memoir recently
"you remind me of you" by eireann corrigan

i've been wondering something recently

why i don't write vignettes anymore.

if you peruse through everything i wrote in the first incarnation of this blog
"Heart & Crossbones"
nearly everything was cryptic and lyrical

the memoir i read, it reminded me not of you,
but of me
if i extracted all of those pretty words
could i also publish a 123-page memoir?

there have been spurts of creative power here and there in recent years
but they've all been induced by emotional turmoil
that came and went like a seasonal storm
but nothing like what you triggered
because your power over me could move the tides

a part of me fears
that those words
have now run dry

almost as if i need to lay out my heart at the altar,
to keep my muse satisfied.

Test Anxiety

I just rediscovered a piece I wrote for one of my English classes last semester. It made me laugh out loud, so I'm thinking of posting it here. The prompt was to recount a vivid dream.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


As if anxiety were analogous to standing in a photography darkroom, my dreams develop sharper in periods of distress. I constantly dream during the year—but my recollection of dreams becomes more crisp and vivid when I am faced with crushing pressure in my daylight reality. As such, there are two dreams of this nature that I can recall with intense detail, but first—a staging of our scene:

Sophomore Year, Fall 2010

The first year of my college career at Duke was marked with interminable hair loss due to stress and general unhappiness with the state of my academic affairs. “Below Average” would be the title of this sorry chapter, if I ever choose to write about the time when I placed all of my self-worth on my exam results.

Things were starting to look up in my sophomore year. I had taken a difficult class over the summer and done relatively well. I felt as if I were finally acclimating to Duke and had stopped wondering how I would have fared differently if I had attended a California state university instead. My father had originally wanted me to attend UC Berkeley—it had been his dream school and, with in-state tuition, seemed to him to be a much more cost-effective deal. I refused to stay in California, and so we butt heads for weeks until my mother finally persuaded him to relent. Yet the cost of private school tuition loomed over my head all through the first year, the blade of the guillotine threatening to off my head if I failed to make good use of my parents’ money. I was finally awarded some financial aid in my sophomore year, and so my father’s complaints began to diminish. The academic pressure, however, never completely went away.

In the fall of 2010, I entered Finals Week sitting on the fence between two letter grades for nearly all of my classes. By day, I lived the life of a hermit—confined to my room and going for days without seeing the light of the sun. In contrast, my nights were much more turbulent and theatrical. By night, I lived out my worst nightmares.

The Dead Dog 

Besides the obligatory answer of seeing family and friends, there are two things I look forward to the most when I return home for the holidays: stuffing my face with food and playing with my dog Matisse.

I returned home after final exams, picked up from the airport by my mother. I entered the house through the garage door, and instead of being greeted at the door by a hyperactive white Maltese, I found instead a scrappy black-and-white puppy barely taller than a soda can. Who is this dog? And where the heck is Matisse? Before I could ask, my mother directed me into the kitchen where the scent of home-cooked Chinese braised pork was already making my mouth water.

After my family and I ate dinner in the kitchen, my father insisted on watching one of the DVDs from his expansive collection in the downstairs closet—a tradition in the household, where we do our best to indulge in my father’s obsessive collections. Past childhood memories include driving to every Hallmark within a fifteen-mile radius the day after Christmas for the sake of my father’s Beanie Baby collection, or eating McDonald’s for a week straight for the sake of my father’s Happy Meal toy collection. But my father’s compulsive collecting habits is a story for a different day.

We sat in the living room watching some action film I can’t quite remember the name of. I was too distracted by the unfamiliar puppy, which tumbled around under the coffee table a few times before crawling out to take a nap in its carrier by the kitchen entrance.

 “So… where is Matisse?” I finally asked, keeping my tone as natural as if I were asking about the weather.

My father and brother were too engrossed in the film to answer, so it was my mother who spoke.

“Oh, Matisse?” she replied nonchalantly. “He died a few weeks ago. But isn’t Picasso such a cutie?”

When I awoke moments later, tears were streaming down my face and I was about ready to clock someone.

The Skeletal Family

For some reason, my parents could not pick me up from the airport. Instead, I took a taxi that dropped me off in front of the peach-colored two-story house I have called home for the last sixteen years of my life.

When I walked through the front door and caught sight of my family, I did a double-take. My mother, father, brother—all of them were utterly emaciated, with sunken jaws and vacant eyes. They looked like skeletons with skin stretched taut over the bones. I froze at the door, afraid to touch them.

 “Wh-what happened to you guys?” I managed to sputter out.

“Oh, what are you talking about?” my mother said cheerily, her bony jaw sliding up and down like a nutcracker’s. “Why don’t you come inside—there’s lunch on the stove already!”

“No, I mean—what’s wrong with you guys? You all look like skeletons…”

“What are you talking about?” my teenaged brother said, indignant. “We’ve always been this skinny. Come on—let’s go eat lunch.”

I couldn’t stomach the thought of eating in the company of these people, not when I could already see the lines of their bones jutting from beneath their tan, papery skin. I excused myself quickly, saying I would check the mail outside, and bolted from the house. When I approached the white mailbox at the front corner of the driveway, I saw my next-door neighbor standing on the adjacent lawn and waved.

“Hello, Sophelia! Back from school already?” he asked. To my relief, my neighbor looked just as I remembered—middle-aged, combed hair, sweater vest, and slightly overweight.

“Yeah, I’m back for winter break.” I decided to give my neighbor a try. “This might be a strange question, but do you know what happened to my family?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” he said merrily. “Your family has been starving themselves to pay for your college tuition. Isn’t that sweet?”

When I awoke moments later, I was about ready to scream.

Unravel, Redux

I found this cover of Unravel yesterday, and I was listening to it while I was reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Normally I haven't fancied the Bjork covers I've listened to--the only exception I can think of off the top of my head is Further Seems Forever's cover of "Pagan Poetry." But I've actually gotten pretty fond of this one. It captures the flavor of the original pretty well.

I've already posted the lyrics to this song before. I don't know if "Unravel" is my favorite song, but it definitely has my favorite lyrics. I'll post it again, because somehow it really connected with me as I was reading the story of Akiva and Madrigal today.

while you are away
my heart comes undone
slowly unravels
in a ball of yarn
the devil collects it
with a grin
our love
in a ball of yarn

he'll never return it

so when you come back
we'll have to make new love 

 

Triple Report: Out of the Easy, Seigi no Mikata, Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Guys guys guys... I'M ALMOST DONE WITH MY SECONDARIES YAYYYYYY. It's exciting and yet daunting... because once I submit that last application, I can't run away anymore. I already swore to myself that once I finished my "obligations," this year I would devote myself to finally chasing my airy dreams and work my ass off to write--with no more excuses.

In the meantime, I am having major TEABS (for the uninitiated, The End of an Awesome Book Syndrome) because I literally just finished reading Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone ten minutes ago. I'll gush about this book in a moment, but in the meantime, here we go with another series of reports brought to you by yours truly:

//edit// I suddenly remembered that there were at least three books I read in June that I never got around to reviewing: Adaptation by Malinda Lo, Bitter Melon by Cara Chow, and Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. It's been too long, so I probably won't review them, but in case anyone wants my advice: give Adaptation a shot and see if it's your cup of tea; Bitter Melon is interesting if you're interested in seeing culturally-tinged mother-daughter tension; Lola and the Boy Next Door is utterly fluffy and did not settle well with me, mainly because I did not root for anybody in the book.

-------------------------

1. Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys

Before I get into this book, you're probably all wondering how I suddenly found myself with both the time and access to read all these books. As it turned out, during one of my lunch breaks at work, I decided to trek all the way to the Duke library on the other side of campus, on a whim. I made the startling discovery that the library I had spent so many wretched hours in as an undergraduate actually stocked "popular" fiction. I HAD NO IDEA! They even have a few young adult books! That first day, I borrowed three books: two non-fiction ones (Sticks and Stones by Emily Bazelon, A History of Opera by Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker--both with the intent of serving "research" purposes for my writing), and a fiction one that I had read a review for on FYA. 

The book takes place in the 1950s in New Orleans. Our heroine Josie is the teenaged daughter of a prostitute. The other prostitutes who live in the brothel where she grew up all are sweet and awesome, but her mother is godawful. Before Josie was even ten years old, she was mixing alcoholic drinks for her mother. Josie, who dreams of getting the hell out of New Orleans, now works at a bookstore, and one day a stranger to town enters the bookstore and has a fun conversation with Josie. But barely a day later, the stranger winds up dead and Josie becomes tangled up in an investigation that ends up testing her allegiances with many of the people around her. Oh, and there's a minor love triangle to boot.

I haven't read Ruta Sepetys' first book, which I've heard many good things about. I have major respect for historical fiction writers who do their research. I'm no expert in 1950s New Orleans, but the rich historical details came to life for me. Though I was kind of iffy about the storyline of Josie applying to Smith College. Was that how people applied to college back then? Again, I'm no expert so I have no clue.

Overall, however, this book didn't quite stick with me. For some reason, I never really warmed up to Josie. There are some characters I read in books, where I'll eventually reach a point and think, Wow, I totally get this character. This wasn't the case with Josie. She's had a tough childhood, and it's hardened her on the outside, but I don't feel like I ever got a good grasp of what was going on underneath. Though I really liked some of the major side characters, such as the brothel madame who basically raised Josie, I was rather ambivalent about the love interests--they came across as rather flat.

Actually, that's kind of how I felt about the plot. It felt flat. The mystery of who killed the stranger set the plot into action, but at a certain point, I already had a sense of who the culprit was and I didn't really care about the murder mystery anymore. And I suppose this isn't necessary for every book out there, but I wanted to see more character growth from Josie. I ended the book feeling like nothing had really been resolved, and sure--the last thing we see is Josie riding off with new dreams, but I didn't feel like her trajectory as a character had moved all that much from before. Maybe I'll try Sepetys' first book sometime, but this book just didn't do it for me.


2. Seigi no Mikata

Well guys, this is the first drama that I've watched since high school. I only picked up this drama for two reasons: 1) I started reading the manga a few weeks ago and was majorly bummed that the scanlations have not been updated for quite some time, and I impatiently wanted to know what was going to happen; 2) I have low patience for TV serials, but Japanese dramas I can tolerate, simply because they're short (usually around 10 episodes).

Youko, a high school girl, sees her older sister Makiko as a demon. Makiko, whom everyone reveres for her smarts and beauty, torments her sister regularly and is not afraid to chew out others or resort to mean tactics when things don't go her way. Ironically, all of her "evil acts" usually ends up having a positive outcome in some way, which has earned her the reputation of "Ally of Justice" in the community. When Makiko sets her sights on a handsome, elite co-worker, she wrangles poor Youko into all sorts of shenanigans aimed at making him fall in love with Makiko.

As cruel as she is, I was drawn to the manga in the first place solely because Makiko is so interesting. Some of her actions are just downright mean--such as telling Youko's first boyfriend who was waiting for her outside that Youko was busy pooping. (Though, the boy did end up dumping her, and not long after the boy was expelled for impregnating another girl he had been cheating with. So I guess it all worked out anyway.) But some are reminiscent of those moments when you've desperately wished you could get your sweet revenge on someone--for instance, letting her antagonistic co-worker walk around the office with a half-zipped skirt exposing her underwear. Sometimes I hated Makiko's guts, but I couldn't take my eyes off of her.

There are a lot of hilarious moments in this series that had me laughing out loud. There are also some cute moments, specifically with Youko and the popular guy at her school, Riku. However, I was really really dissatisfied by how their storyline ended-- near the end, I desperately wanted to smack Youko and be like, FORGET ABOUT YOUR SISTER AND GO LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE! I felt like there was this whole build-up between Youko and Riku, and then it just completely deflated at the end.

Overall though, I liked this drama and didn't feel like wasted hours of my precious time (unlike some dramas I indulged in during my youth). The side characters, particularly the family members, were really well done. One that particularly sticks in my mind is Youko and Makiko's mother. If you were like me and thought she was a ditzy airhead at the beginning, THINK AGAIN. If you can get over wanting to smack Makiko for her insane bullying and Youko for not growing a spine, this series is only ten episodes long and may very well be worth your time.


3. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

Much like John Green's The Fault in Our Stars, I've heard about this book for ages. Except I didn't have any strong desire to read it, because for some reason, I had the misconceived notion planted in my head that this book was about fairies and paranormal princes. I have no idea where I got this idea--probably read a summary for a different book and mistakenly associated it with this book. Nothing against fairies, and I can still change my mind if I stumble across the right book, but I'm just not a big fan of those type of stories.

But no, this book is about something even better. As soon as I read the first few words, I knew this was going to be good:

Seeing these words, I immediately had a flashback to CLAMP's Wish, a series I read in high school. Part of Wish centered on the love story of an angel and a demon who cast aside their immortality and eloped to Earth. Who gives a crap about Romeo and Juliet, THIS was a bonafide forbidden romance. I'm not a huge fan of paranormal romances--never bothered with reading some of those popular books like Shiver or Hush, Hush or that whole slew of vampire novels--but, maybe it's due to my fond memories of Wish, my interest is piqued when I hear that a book has angels and demons involved.

The story doesn't return to this brief foreshadowing until later though. Instead, the book opens by introducing us to Karou, a girl with aquamarine hair and a number of unusual tattoos, who is pissed off by her cheating ex-boyfriend's attempts to win her back. It's all normal and relateably funny, but slowly and deftly, Laini Taylor eases us into the understanding that there is something unearthly going on with Karou. As it turns out, Karou has no knowledge of her past, other than the fact that she has been raised since infancy by four chimera, one of which is a wishmongerer named Brimstone who mysteriously collects teeth. There are a lot of things Karou doesn't know, but all of the secrets begin to unfold when Karou encounters an angel named Akiva.

From the very beginning, I could start to see why this book had gotten so popular. Laini Taylor's writing is some of the best I've seen in a young adult book. It's lush and full of details, and there are glittering lines all throughout the book. This definitely contributed to how well Taylor did the world-building in this book. Part of the reason I tend to be somewhat wary of urban fantasy and dystopian books is that when the world-building is ineffectively done, I get lost in info-dumps explaining how the book's world is organized. I was soundly impressed by how well Taylor wove the world-building into the plot, so that we could follow Karou through her storyline without major pauses to gape at the weird intricacies of the supernatural business happening covertly in Prague, where Karou lives.

In contrast to what I was saying about Josie in Out of the Easy, I "got" Karou. I rooted for her all the way through, and I was also a huge fan of her best friend, Zazuna, who has some of the funniest scenes in the book. I was a little lukewarm about the development of Akiva. I loved his backstory--specifically, how he's connected to Karou in an unusual way--but in the present setting, I thought his interactions with Karou transitioned far too abruptly. I don't want to give anything away, but let's just say that I wanted to see more of a developmental arc in terms of his connection with specifically Karou as her lovely blue-haired strong-willed self.

Going into this book, I already knew this was the first in the series--fortunately for me, the second book already came out last year. If the Duke library happens to have a copy, you can bet your bottom I'm going to get my hands on it. I don't know if this book is everyone's cup of tea, but if your tastes are similar to mine, in that:

1. You love a good tragic romance (cough angelandemon cough).
2. You like a tough heroine with some spunk.
3. You like your fantasy in controlled doses, but executed so well and richly that it punches you in the gut.
4. You have an absurd fondness for masquerade ball scenes--there is a GOOD one in this book
5. You like stories of longing and pining  :]

Then, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU WAITING FOR? GO READ THIS BOOK NOW!!