ALLEGIANT!?

Veronica Roth has released the title of the third book of the Divergent series. So far, we've had Divergent and Insurgent, so I assumed that the last book would be titled Convergent.

But, no. The last book's title is... (Drumroll.) Allegiant.

Wait. What?

Allegiant? As in... Loyal? Faithful? Pledged to something? Huh... This will be interesting. What is Tris allegiant to? The Dauntless? Or something else? What's outside the fence? Who's outside the fence? What will happen now that they know how their world started?

For those of you who have read the series, you know what a horrible cliffhanger we were left on at the end of Insurgent. Ms. Roth, you have many a fan angry at you. (Shakes fist.) I mean, come on! You don't just end with a scene like that! What about Tris's grandmother? (Great-grandmother? Great-great grandmother? Ancestor?) What about Tobias? What about everything? So many questions, Veronica. So. Many. Questions.

Speaking of questions, what will the motto for this book be? We've had "One choice can transform you" and "One choice can destroy you". What's next?

I am insanely excited for the thrid book coming out, and the movie. (Gasp) The movie! Have you guys seen the news? Tris and Tobias have both been cast, and a picture from the knife-throwing scene has been released. If you haven't seen it yet, go check it out! There are links on Veronica's blog.

Veronica Roth's Blog

So many questions, so little answers... Such is the life of a fan.

Until next time!

Bookshelf Conundrum

My bookshelf is too small.

See, I organize my bookshelf by a system: magazines go on the bottom shelf. Scrapbooks go on the top shelf, in a basket. On the second-to-top shelf go my absolute favorite books- the best books I own. On the third-to-top shelf are the books that I also really like, but they aren't favorites. On the fourth-to-top (or second-to-last) shelf are the books I own that are just okay. This shelf is the most full.

There are some exceptions to the rule. For instance, my Hunger Games trilogy is on the "also really good" shelf, even though it's an absolute favorite, because I ran out of room on the "favorites" shelf. That's just one example. But, generally speaking, that's how it's set up, from top to bottom- favorites, really good ones, okay ones.

And, well, recently I've been getting books for my birthday, Christmas, random gifts, for myself, etc, etc. So, my bookshelf has gotten a bit over-full. I don't really want to double-stack them (aka, put a row of books behind another row) except on the "just okay" shelf, because I don't want to hide any of them. Because of that, right now it looks a little like this...

These are the "favorites" (top) and "also really good" (bottom) shelves. As you can see, they're rather... stacked. And there are more books that I want to get still! A lot more! And some more I'm reading right now that aren't on the bookshelf!

...

I NEED A BIGGER BOOKSHELF. 

That is all.

NaNoWriMo Madness!

November is almost upon us! (Celebrates.) All together now: "Winter is coming." No? Just me? Huh.

Anyway, November is almost here, and you know what that means! NaNoWriMo! (National Novel Writing Month.)

I'm SUPER DUPER CAJUPER excited! (And yes, I did just make up a word.) Now, if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, then 1) shame on you, and 2) what are you doing on this blog? Go look it up!

NaNoWriMo, for me, is one month of complete madness and frantic typing. I often bribe myself with little treats in order to get through my word count for the day. Such as leftover Halloween candy.

 Last year my WCG (word count goal) was 30,000, being 1,000 words per day. That's about two typed pages. This year, my WCG is 40,000, making it about 1,334 words a day. That'll be interesting, considering each day I have enough homework to keep me working until dinner. But, NaNoWriMo is all about that: finding time to write no matter what, with no excuses. It's the month to block out your calendar. As shown here.

I've spent the day filling out character forms and going through knots in my fuzzy, planned-out plot. And cleaning off my desk. 

Of course, this is probably futile, because last year my desk filled up with empty pens, pieces of scratch paper, lip balm tubes, half-full tea cups, candy wrappers, staples, sticky notes, the odd headache pill and pretty much everything else you could name. Such is NaNoWriMo. 

Hope you guys have a fantastic Halloween, and an even better national novel writing month! Remember, reach your word count goal no matter what! Even if you must turn into a writing zombie! 

Good luck!

Oh, and as a random thought, I'm totally obsessed with this song right now. It's just so pretty and epic. And it's from The Hunger Games, so of COURSE I love it.  (Credit goes to the Taliesin Orchestra.)

 

Books on my To-Read List

It's been SO LONG since I blogged!
Basically here's my life right now: go to school, come home, do homework, listen to music, tell myself that I really should work on my story, put off working on my story, mess around on the internet, eat dinner, spend time with my family and go to bed. So, I haven't really written that much lately... I've been too distracted by the internet... (cough). Yeah.

But! I DO have a list of books I want to read soon. Here it is.
-The Maze Runner by James Dashner
-The Beautiful Creatures series by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl (have you seen the trailer for the movie?! It looks awesome!)
-The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (Also because of the new movie coming out. Looks sweet. And it's got Emma Watson in it, so what's not to love?)
-The Twilight series. Wait, wait, I have an explanation! I want to read it because there are so many people who say it's bad, AND so many people who say it's good. I want to be able to form my own opinion. Plus, I hear the last movie is coming out soon, and I want to be able to watch all the prior movies after I read the books. (Never judge a book by its movie).

Hmm. Looks like I read a lot of books because of their movie counterparts/trailers. Well, I guess that's a good a method as any!

Here's the trailer for The Perks of Being a Wallflower

"Be! Aggressive! Passive! Aggressive!" That made me laugh so hard.

And here's the trailer for Beautiful Creatures

Aaaand here's the latest trailer for Breaking Dawn part 2.

Even if you don't like Twilight, you've gotta admit, that looks EPIC. Eh? Eh? Am I right?

What can I say? I'm a sucker for trailers. 

Just Some Random Stuff

I've been on a sketching kick lately. Not that I'm any good at it. Still, a few drawings have been added to my  Wall of Random Stuff (which includes ticket stubs, postcards, pictures, drawings, a giant feather, a wooden butterfly, sticky notes, poems and whatnot).

For the past few weeks, I've been working on my new novel. I'm fairly excited- every time I finish a book I learn a little bit more about style and plot and characters, so, naturally, this new one is the best so far. I really hope to get it published (once I'm done writing and editing, that is).

There's this TV show (or, I assume it's on TV... I just get it off Netflix) called Destination Truth. It's pretty awesome. A group of people, led by Josh Gates, go out to all corners of the Earth, searching for mysterious creatures that have been reported. They occasionally look for ghosts, too.
BUT! It isn't like most shows like that where they're like, "I heard a noise! It's the ___! Evidence!" They usually rule out the "monsters" by looking at the facts they have. Like, they'll say, "Okay, people here think they've been seeing a werewolf. They're probably seeing a wild dog, and letting their imaginations run away with them."
So, when they actually find a piece of evidence that they can't rule out as something else, I am more inclined to agree with them.

Also- I am somewhat obsessed with Katniss and Peeta as a couple. Don't ask why- I don't know. I finally convinced my mom to read Mockingjay and ever since then I've been completely obsessed. I just noticed it the other day when I realized that I had been scrolling through miles of Katniss and Peeta fan art on Deviantart.com. Yeah...

See, I told you this post would be random. 

So Many Books, So Little Time

SO. I finished reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth. The Divergent series is now my favorite series. It's like the next step up from The Hunger Games. Don't get me wrong- I love The Hunger Games. I love that series with an obsession bordering on insanity. Kinda like the How to Train Your Dragon movie. (Random thought: if Hiccup existed in real life, I'd totally date him.)

Anyway, this book left me speechless. Veronica Roth obviously has a huge amount of talent. Huge. And I'm guessing she's had a lot of practice, too. Her books, or at least the ones I've read, are perfectly crafted. Every single event in the story- every single paragraph, sentence and word- is effortlessly flawless. And by flawless I don't just mean in the way of grammar and spelling. I mean that her writing has soul. Don't worry if you're a little confused by that sentence.
I'll try to explain a little better. Every single one of the characters seem like someone you could meet at Starbucks or pass by on your way to school. They never say anything corny, or anything that you roll your eyes at. You know what I'm talking about. When you're reading a book and a character says something like, "We have to go back! It's our duty to save our friend!" I don't know about you, but when I read something like that, I just have to roll my eyes. I don't think I would ever say that in real life. It's just so... cheesy.
The settings in both Insurgent and Divergent felt real, even though we don't have like them in real life. (I hope. I mean, Amity seems okay, but holy cow... The Erudite headquarters would scare me to death...) The author knows just how much description to add with the dialogue, action and thoughts.
The vocabulary fits both the story and the target audience.
The plot is fast enough that it never gets boring- there is not a single page where nothing is going on- but not so fast that you can't keep up.

All in all, this book blew me away. I cannot wait for the third book (Rumored to be titled Convergent, since we've had Divergent and Insurgent so far). The level of excellence established in the first two books will be hard to beat in the third, but I'm confident that Veronica Roth will find a way to blow our socks off once again.

EVERYONE IN THE WORLD NEEDS TO READ THIS SERIES. 

Seriously. It's that good. Yes, better than The Hunger Games. I would even say it's better than Harry Potter- or maybe HP and Divergent are of equal rank. That's the first time I have ever said that. A million thumbs up to Insurgent!

I'll add in my book review video once I have it uploaded. 


Also, here's a book review of Insurgent by CassJayTuck, a youtuber I'm subscribed to. She does really good book reviews. Definitely go check out her channel. 

The Finished Book Dance

You can thank Ally Carter for this post. As an avid reader of her blog, I just found out that she finished Heist Society Three, Perfect Scoundrels (I cannot wait for that book!). So, here's a link to her blog so you can see  what Ally (Ms. Carter?) said.

http://allycarter.com/blog/

And here is the video:

And now, whenever I finish a book (I don't know if that means just finishing writing it or finishing the editing process- maybe both) I'm going to the The Finished Book Dance. And everyone will think I'm crazy- er... crazy-er.