thoughts on mourning, and how the internet has it wrong.

A couple weeks ago it was revealed to the public via a new episode that Brian, the dog from Family Guy, had died.
A couple days ago it was revealed to the public that Paul Walker, an actor in the Fast and Furious films, had died.
I have never watched either of those multimedia masterpieces, and I'm not really too depressed about either death -- they really don't affect my life in any way -- and I found it funny that people were mad that a talking dog was dead (oh what a shame) and that an actor from a movie about race cars died in a car crash (it's hilarious, honest), and so I'm not really one to talk. In a way, though, I guess that makes me totally unbiased in the department, right? Right. Obviously.
Anyway, I happen to be very involved in the world of social media, and so I found out about both these deaths almost as soon as they happened, both through Facebook and the wild and wonderful tumblr. It was interesting to me, of course, that people would mourn the death of two such similar yet incredibly different personages, in such a similar way.

One of my "friends" uploaded this to Facebook the other day (yes, I have my language set to English (Pirate) and I know I suck at editing), and I very much find it to be true. He was mostly saying that a dog from Family Guy really has no importance in the real world so stop freaking out. I am guilty of freaking out over the death of a fictional character on Facebook, but it's really kind of different. You see, I didn't mourn the death of either of these, and unless a real-life person was an actor from Harry Potter, I'm not mourning on the internet. Sorry.
I think I may have successfully proved my cold-heartedness (oops), but this really is true. There have been other people that have died, and we don't mourn them. My grandpa died this summer but did the internet care? No. And anyone who really has lost someone knows that the entire internet freaking out over the fact that they're dead really doesn't help anything. It's kind of a sweet thought, but you really don't care. If they could bring the person back, then that's cool. I could bring in so many other references to books and stuff now, but I think you get the gist. It kind of doesn't matter.

That's all for today. Please just be considerate, and really think about what you should be mourning. Yes, it's sad when people die in shootings. Yes, it's sad when planes crash into skyscrapers and kill millions of people and it's dubbed a terrorist attack, but there are other things out there that are just as sad, or even more. There are other people dying themselves over the fact that somebody died of disease or peacefully in their sleep, and there are cyclists being hit by cars. Does the internet freak out over them? Not usually. So, please. Give them some thought this holiday season. That'd be cool.

The House of Hades Review... WITH SPOILERS

So, I finished The House of Hades last night, the fourth installment of Rick Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series. I have to say, it was my favorite book by him, and probably his best book (okay, definitely his best book). This is high praise, seeing as he's not quite done with writing yet. 

The main reason this book was so good was because there was so much character development! Percy and Annabeth developed together, Frank became worthy of himself, we finally figured Jason out, Hazel and Piper finally figured themselves out, and Leo and Nico... Well, I'm getting to that next. 

This is where the spoilers kick in, so don't read on if you haven't read the book, please. 

The halfway point of the book may just be one of the best scenes in YA literature. It's Nico's scene, and it lets us discover him, and Jason as well. This is the Cupid scene, the scene in which everything about Nico finally clicks into place: he has (or had, if you believe Nico, which I most certainly do not) a crush on Percy. Every single thing Nico has ever done or said - especially around Percy - finally makes sense. It all takes on a new meaning, and you understand him so much more. I loved this scene too because it shows us something we needed to see: even in books written for middle schoolers, gay people are okay. Rick took a character we all knew and sort of loved, and gave him new depth, in the form of a controversial topic in the world today, and I'm so proud of him for it. He may lose some fans. He was totally reading our fan fiction. But it was the best thing I have ever read. 

The second scene that just made the book for me was Leo's time with Calypso. I'll admit that I used to kind of ship them, but then I decided they'd never meet and that they probably wouldn't like each other anyway. But ohhh man… I was soooo wrong. Leo and Calypso is my new OTP, and it is the most beautiful thing of all - they hated each other at first, and it seemed like a major setback, then a tragic love story. I think we all know what the oath to keep with a final breath is now: "I'm coming back for you, Calypso," he said to the night wind. "I swear it on the River Styx." 

I don't care what the rest of you think, but Leo NEEDS to get back to Ogygia. 

books = drugs

This photo puts it simply. 

I am of the strongest opinion that there is nothing better than a good book. 

I am of the strongest opinion that everyone likes to read.

I am of the strongest opinion that the photo pictured is the most accurate representation of everything.

I am of the strongest opinion that I came up with that idea first.

Books are a magical, beautiful thing, but they are addictive.

Very.

And they have the most awful side effects, too. 

I am also fairly certain that withdrawal is deadly.

So... watch out.

Health class is wrong. They think they know the most dangerous drug. They think they know what drugs you can die from. But they're wrong.

They forgot about books.

Now don't get me wrong; there are a million-and-one positives to reading, too. Books are a gateway to a new world, a way to help you get better grades and new friends. They can help you, help you, help you and they only take you higher. But once you get to the stage where you don't just read books, you devour them, you don't just love a book, you fangirl over it, you don't just talk about a book, you smother Tumblr with it. 

“So many books, so little time.” ― Frank Zappa

Books. 

They are addictive.

They are empowering.

They are everything.

Legend by Marie Lu

I find myself in this position all too often: I find a book that has received great reviews, and when I am finally able to read it, I sit down and engulf it all in a minimal amount of sittings. When I'm done, I have to try very hard to pull myself out of that cocoon I have been enveloped in for the last hour or so. It tends to be a difficult thing to do, and sometimes I feel as if I'll wander around aimlessly for days. Luckily, I usually have another book waiting for it's chance on the floor beside my bed, and the tiresome cycle starts itself again.
As you may have guessed by now, I recently (as in 10 minutes ago) pulled myself out of bed with two new names on my mind: Day and June. Day, the ruthless criminal who "failed" his Trial. June, the faithful agent of the Republic, the one person to have ever gotten a perfect score on her test. I can guarantee you now that their story will be ricocheting around in my head for the rest of the day, maybe longer. This book is going to stick in my mind for days to come, and may I just say, I ship Jay. Or Dune. Or however the fandom has decided to spell it.
Anyway, I love the book, and the characters, and the plot. It was intensely fascinating to me, constantly finding me on the edge of my seat. (Not literally of course. I was on a bed.) I love it when you discover secrets about a somewhat okay government that make it all seem so backwards. I guess the rest of the world does too, because distopian novels have seemingly overthrown undead romances in the fictional scheme lately. (Although the recent release-- and popularity-- of the film Warm Bodies leads me to believe otherwise.) In book series like Divergent and Matched, the government seems fine-- at first. Not to give away any major spoilers, but in Reached when you find out about the plague... delicious. I guess that's how it is in Legend, too, with the secrets about the plague spilling out through certain genius characters' "mad searching skills" and supreme amounts of logic (two things I myself have, by the way). The whole thing drips of girl genius and daring escapades, two things I LOVE. If a book has those, it's a good one. It might not be a favorite one, and they aren't the only qualities I would enjoy, but it's a good one.
Overall, Legend is definitely a new personal favorite, and I will be reserving Prodigy ASAP, mark my words.

The Rule of the Odds

Who here reads? I know I do. I write, too: check out my other blog here. When someone reads, they typically plot in their heads what they want to happen and who their favorites are and what they ship, and so they get these dramatic FEELS. But thats not really what I'm talking about right now. But in reading, favorites are always evident... so let's talk about favorite books.
But more specifically, I want to talk about favorites within a series. For instance, my favorite Harry Potter book was Order of the Phoenix... and my favorite Percy Jackson book? Oh my! It's The Last Olympian! Why is this so amazing? They are both the fifth book in their series. And in all honesty, I don't think that is a coincidence.
So now we get to the title of this post: The Rule of the Odds. The Rule of the Odds states that the best books in a series are always the odd-numbered ones. Don't agree? Well, listen to this logic before you go out and whine about me.
Okay. The first book is always phenomenal, right? Right. Maybe it's actually a pretty suckish book compared to the rest, but it has to be good enough to get you to read the next one. Then comes the second book, which might be a little better written, but was mostly just written for the sake of having a sequel, and it's never quite as great. So, if at all possible for the author, a third book is written. Now, this third book is a little more well rounded than the others. By now, the author really does want to write these, and he or she has gotten to know the characters a lot better, and everything is just a little more right, and sometimes the author feels a little more free to do something stupid and crazy and it gives the book more depth. But sometimes that stupid and crazy thing really, really SUCKS. A case can be made with Mark of Athena, the third installment in Rick Riordan's latest project, the Heroes of Olympus series.  Now, I don't wanna give out any spoilers, but... it has a TERRIBLE cliffhanger. Or, Rickhanger as some fans have renamed it. That was one stupid and crazy thing that didn't turn out right, and so Rick (I mean the author) has to write a fourth book (right, Uncle Rick?) So, a fourth book is written. Now, this book feeds the same purpose as book two, except by now the characters are a lot more developed... and a lot more things have gone wrong, i.e. the stupid Rickhanger in MoA that tore apart the hearts of millions of fans all over the world. Thus, the fourth book is either phenomenally better than the second, or tremendously worse. But then we get to the fifth book, and by now the author has already written four extremely successful books (or successful enough to want to write and publish another), so he or she has learned what works and what doesn't, and unless they want to be extremely amazing like J.K. Rowling or Lemony Snicket (or are writing a trilogy in which case they are done, bye, later skater dude, or tried to write a trilogy and just couldn't stop so they wrote a fourth too in the case of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series), this is their last book with this set of characters and back stories and this world (unless they take the Warriors route and write a bunch of sequel series, which is a concept no one except maybe Rick Riordan has seemed to be able to grasp). So, of course they want to make this great and end with a big bang. Whatever the case, the fifth is gonna be amazing. It's inevitable.
I'm going to stop now with my in-depth explanations, but you get the idea. This pattern repeats itself through out the whole series. Of course, series with a plethora of stories, such as the Nancy Drew mysteries or Magic Treehouse (maybe even A Series of Unfortunate Events if you want a more grown-up example) don't exactly follow this pattern, but the idea could still be there, especially if only one author is working on it (case in point: The 39 Clues).
Now I've explained this to you to the best of my ability. And maybe you still don't agree, maybe the second Harry Potter book was your favorite, and maybe you absolutely despised the fifth Leven Thumps book. Not my problem. But you have to agree that the logic is all there, and that even though The Rule of the Odds maybe isn't a die-fast rule, the concept of it is almost always there. Just some food for thought.
I still have other book patterns and unspoken rules I've noticed through the years (such as book color), and I bet you do too. So here's my question: What do you think?

December Has Begun

Well, December's finally here (and has been for a week) and I'm still not ready for Christmas! Even though I'm freezing my fingers off, it doesn't seem like winter, and so I don't feel like we should put our decorations up! Okay, maybe putting them up will put me in a little more of a Christmasy mood, but until then I'll be stuck with trying to listen to Christmas songs that make me feel all tired and drowsy. Now, don't get me wrong-- I love Christmas music, but some of the CD's we have are just... bleh.

I learned the other day that our High School's musical this year will be Footloose, which is awesome! I've been thinking A LOT about try outs now, which is hard because I'm not entirely sure what I have to do to get ready, so I'm kind of lost. I have, however, listened to about a hundred show tunes, and have decided that my favorite to sing is Matchmaker from Fiddler on the roof. What are yours?

I'll leave you all with a nice little present... my latest YouTube video, a lyrics vid of Strangely Beautiful by Shealeigh!

Thursday Evenings

My silly daddy says I need to do something "productive" because I've spent all afternoon on the computer and watching TV. So i figured, a good old blogpost could do... Oh, and by the way... how do you delete a blog? (not this one, mind you!!!)

News news news... I'm super digging the Matched Trilogy right now! After reading the first book, I was like "Oh, crud. This is gonna be just like The Hunger Games. Are you kidding me???" But then I went and read Crossed, and I was like "YES!!! It's NOT just like The Hunger Games!!" Not to hate on The Hunger Games, of course, but I didn't like them as much as the rest of the world seemed to, you know? So I wasn't excited for another love triangle where the new guy totally took over and he wasn't my favorite... But even though Cassia seems so dedicated... Well, I shouldn't be going and giving away spoilers, now should I? Read them, guys!!! Can't wait for Reached!! Anyway.

Anybody read Mark of Athena?? Good stuff... Luke Lyman still has my book, even though he's been done for over a week (silly silly 12-year-old!), but, hey, I can live without it :) . So, how'd you guys like it? I think I read it too fast to fully catch the impact of that cliffhanger. I didn't really understand quite what had happened until the third re-read of that last bit (not the whole book, Luke wanted it too much!), and then after I closed it and everything, I realized "Hey. Wait a sec. WHAT?!?!?!?!?!" and then the shock set in. But you have to read it to find out!

Okay, guys. Favorite songs? Music thoughts in general? Here's some fun... Both Taylor Swift and Carly Rae Jepsen both have new CDs coming out soon!! Yay!! RED by Taylor Swift, featuring the songs "Red," "Begin Again," "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," and "I Knew You Were Trouble." Kiss by Carly Rae Jepsen, featuring "Good Time," "This Kiss," and my all-time fave (except not really)... "Call Me Maybe!" Good stuff guys... Right now I'm really liking the song "Mean Girls" by Rachel Crow. It's pretty good! I heard it for the first time today... I also heard "Crazy 4 U" by R5... That's good too. I like "I'd Lie" by Taylor Swift and "Sail" by Awolnation, and "Take A Walk" by Passion Pit... And then there's my (REAL) all-time fave... "Strangely Beautiful" by Shealeigh! I hope you all had a great Thursday evening... and a good day today, too!