Love Stories (February Book Wrap-Up)

Good news, guys! As of right now I'm 90% on track with my TBR Takedown! I'm doing what I set out to do, and it feels awesome to watch that number go down. But we'll get to that in a moment. First...

Writing
I am ashamed to report that I did not do any actual work on Follow the Raven this month; instead I spent most of my time trying to figure out how to start the story. Now I have a better idea, so I'm going to reset my 5,000 words goal in March and try again.

My story over on Wattpad has been doing well! I'm super excited about this new direction I'm taking, and I feel like my readers are on board, too. The last couple of chapters I've posted have been mostly creative liberty-based world building. It's been fun to try and take elements from Mobius Prime and incorporate them into Boom Mobius in believable ways. Hopefully it will all make sense and help add more depth to the world. My current stats are 332 reads, 42 votes, and four comments.

Reading
As I said earlier, my TBR Takedown is going really well - I'm only one book behind, and the reason for that is simple. Back in January I said that I was going to allow myself one library book for every five TBR books I read, that way I didn't go too crazy during this process. And that's what I did! (The library thing. Not the crazy thing.) You may remember at the end of my January wrap-up that I mentioned I was about to go on my annual "blind date with a book." This was my third year doing so, and the book I got is first on this list:

• Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven
• The Cage by Megan Shepherd
• Both of Me by Jonathan Friesen

You may already be able to tell from the list, but my general goal was to get as many of the romance books from my TBR finished this month because, you know. February. Valentine's and all that stuff.

Now...I don't seem to have a good history with blind dates with a book, with the possible exception of After Alice from last year. When I unwrapped this year's book and saw that it was Eleanor and Park, I laughed out loud for a couple of reasons. First being that I had actually started it when I was in high school and then put it back because I didn't like it. Second because I know how insanely popular the book is. I've read two different books by Rainbow Rowell and loved them both, so, with this stupidly optimistic mindset, I entered into the world of Eleanor and Park...and hated it. The two things that bugged me the most were that 1) it had SO much language in it that I felt like I needed to go to church every day for a week solid just to erase the memory of it all and 2) Park said "I love you" WAY too soon, and kept saying it, assuming that Eleanor loved him back even though she made it obvious that she didn't. That's one of those things that really bugs me about YA Romance - one of the things that keeps me from reading it, really. Characters that say "I love you" at all usually just make me roll my eyes, but when they say it either super, super early on or just after they've declared the person they're saying it to as their enemy or BOTH? Just...no. I gave this book one star. The first Rainbow Rowell book I did not like at all.

Wuthering Heights is one of those classic, Austen-era romances that I had never read before despite hearing about it all the time growing up. It was definitely different from an Austen novel, but in a good way. It was dark and dangerous and so messed up, but it made the story really intriguing. There were so many events that, had they gone a different way, would have led to a completely different ending, and it made me wonder "what if" in a really good way by the time I was finished with it. I believe now the only famous Austen-era romance I've not read is Jane Eyre. But I'll get there one day.

After the horror that was Eleanor and Park, Holding Up the Universe was a fantastic breath of fresh air that I honestly debated giving five starts. (I settled with four.) I had planned to read it over the course of six days. I finished it in three. It was so good I couldn't put it down! I connected with the characters in ways I never had before - especially Jack. The story was so beautifully written and the characters were so ALIVE. I feel like it really was more of a coming-of-age than a romance; the romantic bits that were there came after a developing friendship, which I appreciated. I recommend this book to everyone.

I chose The Cage for February because I thought (based on the summary) that it would have more romance in it than it did, but I'm not complaining. It is such a great YA sci-fi; those are hard to find. It made me so angry in all the best ways, but I loved it from beginning to end. This book messed with my perception of what is sane so much; it was told mostly from the perspective of Cora, and as the story went on I began to question whether everyone else was crazy like I thought or whether SHE was. I never knew who to trust, even reading the few chapters that were from the other character's perspectives. *SPOILERS* When Cora finally gave up towards the end...oh, my heart. It hurt me just as much as it did her. And the ending! Oh my word...I have every intention of continuing this series. *END SPOILERS*

In other exciting book-related news, I have officially begun to collect the rest of the Skulduggery Pleasant series! (More info about why buying these books is an exception to the TBR rule here.) I'm so happy about this, oh my goodness. I already own the first book, so it's just a matter of getting my hands on Books 2-9 and pre-ordering Book 10, which is set to release in June. Thankfully Amazon has most of them for a decent price, with even better deals when you venture into the "used" section. The books I've ordered so far are #2-3 (from Barnes and Noble - I have a Membership now, boi!) and #9 (from Amazon - it was THE LAST COPY). Very excited about these purchases! I'll be slowly aquiring the rest of them over the next couple of months. After that all I need to do is finish my TBR and then...Skulduggery Pleasant series readthrough! YES!

That's all I have for this month. See you next time!

Invader Zim

Before I begin, I want to offer my apologies to all of the long-time fans of Invader Zim for never giving this show a proper chance before now. I was absolutely, completely in the wrong, and I'm very sorry. That said...

OH MY GOSH THIS SHOW IS AMAZING!

Let me offer some backstory here. Of course I'd hear about this show called Invader Zim every once in a while as I grew up. Some of my friends watched it, sometimes I'd just see random people sporting the merch for it, you know how it goes. It was there, I was aware of its existence, but I never gave it a second glance. I was confused by the concept of Gir, especially, as sometimes he would look like a dog and sometimes he would look like a robot. Every time I thought I knew who was Zim and who was Gir, I came to find out I was wrong, because up until about this time last year I don't think I ever really saw Zim. (Gir merch is everywhere.)

Enter Tonisha, my previous college roommate and now best friend. This woman loves to use the word "doom." For every occasion, whether it's applicable or not. It was something I noticed about her almost right away as we were first getting to know each other, and at one point I finally commented on it. I don't remember exactly how that conversation went down, but it ended with her singing The Doom Song to me. I asked her what it was from, she said, "Invader Zim," and then proceeded to pull up the video. This was the first time I experienced a more-than-a-glance exposure to the show. I watched it with a mostly "what the heck is this" attitude, not entirely liking it, or the singer. (I had not yet learned to appreciate Gir.) After that moment any time I made mention of her excessive use of the word, she would sing The Doom Song to me. It was kind of funny, but also kind of annoying at times.

(I'll make a quick side note here to say that I judged the entire show off of that 30-second song. Based on what I saw, the show appeared to be just another stupid cartoon, falling in line with such nonsense as SpongeBob or Adventure Time in my mind. It pains me to write this now, after having seen the error of my ways...but this is an important statement for one to understand how radically my mind has been changed since.)

Fast forward to about a year later, October 17, 2016. As I sometimes do in the early, early hours of the morning, I found myself hanging out in the "top ten countdowns" section of YouTube. And this is where everything changed. I was watching a WatchMojo "Top 10 Greatest TV Shows That Were Cancelled," or something along those lines. You guessed it - one of the shows on the list was Invader Zim.

I truly cannot tell you what it was about that particular segment that inspired me to go find the theme song for the show, but it did. I watched it. And I liked it. I took a quick scroll through the dreaded comments section, only to find that most every comment was positive; people stated how much they liked the show as a kid, or how they never watched it as a kid but enjoy it as an adult, or how they appreciate how different and dark it is, or how they wish that it would get the series finale it was denied - maybe even a movie as well.

I did some quick research and discovered that there was a pilot episode. The next thing I knew I was watching it. Looking back on it now that pilot really does not do the rest of the series justice, but it was enough to make me want to watch the official first episode, and my friends...it was all downhill from there. I watched the entire series in less than a week.

OH MY GOSH THIS SHOW IS AMAZING!

This is not your standard kids show, though it apparently was created for and targeted towards children. Why, I have no idea. It's a grotesque series when it wants to be. Zim tears the organs out of his classmates in one episode, rips a kid's eyes out in another. It doesn't shy away from the screams of pain, either. I can count more than a few instances in which I visibly cringed at what was happening on screen. But despite all of this, I could not stop watching episode after episode. It has some of the best lines ever, the character continuity / development is great, and the battle scenes! Oh my gosh I cannot even begin to describe how completely epic some of the battle scenes are. Whether it's Zim vs. Dib or Zim vs. someone else, the way the scenes are put together make them stand out so well and they are SO EPIC! (The fight scenes in "Battle of the Planets" and "Planet Jackers" are two of my favorites ever. SO well done.)

While most of the humans in Invader Zim are incredibly stupid and unobservant, allowing Zim to get away with many of his alien outbursts unnoticed, I really appreciate that Dib more than makes up for their idiocy by being a truly challenging enemy for him. Dib is intelligent, capable, and confident despite everyone being against him all the time. His technological genius and unstoppable determination to see Zim defeated keep the tension high with every minute of every episode, even after one or the other of them has been defeated and the credits roll.

Now, to talk about my favorite character. I get why so many people love Gir. I do. It's like how so people are into the Minions or other animated sidekick characters. They're cute and funny and make people laugh. Nothing wrong with that. But while I do like Gir and think he is unbearably adorable...I love Zim.

No, you don't understand. I LOVE ZIM. He is the most malicious, violent, evil character and I love him to death. I have never cheered for a bad guy so hard in my life. Even Loki has nothing on Zim, and that's saying something! He is so dark and evil and I love it. From the moment he lands on Earth to the very end of the show he hates humans and wants nothing more than to be rid of them all - especially Dib. And his rivalry with Dib isn't just a half-hearted frenemies situation. No. Zim despises Dib and has no trouble showing it, laughing at his pain and straight-up leaving him to die several times with no regret whatsoever. Zim is so incredibly wicked and I love it!

Beyond that aspect, though, there are several other things I've grown to love about Zim over the course of the show. He may not be a great Invader, but he is an excellent soldier. Any time he has to battle someone one-on-one, he knows what he's doing. He assesses the situation, notices his opponent's weaknesses, then aims for the heart. And he wins nearly every time. His skills on Hobo 13 show us he may not be a great Invader, and he certainly isn't a good leader, but as far as his status as a solider, he is one of the best. And on another note, I know this only happened a couple of times in the show, but I loved that when problems were too big for Zim to handle, he did whatever it took to make the problem go away - even going so far as to team up with Dib once or twice. That scene in "Planet Jackers" when he's standing on Dib's porch and has to ring the doorbell - there is no hesitation, no almost pressing it only to draw his hand away a moment later. He takes one look at that thing, takes a breath, and presses it. That's it! No fooling around. He does what needs to be done no matter the consequences. I love him so much for that.

Dib's younger sister Gaz is my least favorite character. But I will say this: even though she has a serious I-don't-care attitude towards everything, the couple of times she actually put effort towards something, she kicked butt! She could TOTALLY take Zim down if she wanted to, and I find that kind of amusing.

I'm making my way through the series a second time and actually listing the episodes like I do for Sonic Boom and TMNT, so I can't yet say which of the aired episodes is my favorite (although Planet Jackers, A Room With a Moose, and the Halloween Spectacular of Spooky Doom are right on up there), however I can say with authority that my favorite episode of Invader Zim EVER is actually one that never aired on TV - Mopiness of Doom. I love, love, love the story of the episode. I think it really brings to light a deeper part of Zim's character that we never usually see. I also appreciate that it's kind of a "discovering yourself" episode for Dib, where he ultimately embraces that he is different and will always be so and goes right back to battling Zim for the fate of planet Earth. I could go on forever about how wonderful Mopiness of Doom is. I love that episode.

So there you have it! After all of these years of brushing it off and never taking a second glance at it, I have finally come to join the ranks and fall in love with Invader Zim. I'm so sorry I never gave this show a proper chance before now. It is truly fantastic.

To Narnia and Back (January Book Wrap-Up)

I have my reasons for why my January wrap-up is a couple of days late, but I won't go into them. Suffice it to say that I was SUPER close to finishing The Chronicles of Narnia by the end of last month, and rather than wait until the end of February to give you my review I decided to just postpone January's wrap-up by a couple of days. So here we are!

Writing
I did not end up writing the 1,000 words I'd set with NaNo's Goal Tracker for Follow the Raven last month. I don't even have an excuse for this; I just didn't do it. However I've set a new goal for February to write 5,000 words of the story, which will probably take up about the first two chapters or so.

In the world of Wattpad, I released my brand-new Sonic fanfiction, "Everything Changes," on January 27. The story has had a great kickoff, with 132 reads, 23 votes, and one comment so far. The story will really begin to get under way this month, obviously. I'm looking forward to what my readers have to say about the new direction I've taken.

Reading
My reading list for January was pretty straightforward. All of the books I read were part of the Narnia series, with the exception of the first one (the promised library book, which I'll get to in a moment).

• The Hating Game by Sally Thorne
• Narnia #3: The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
• Narnia #4: Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• Narnia #5: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• Narnia #6: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
• Narnia #7: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

The story behind why I read The Hating Game is fairly simple. Late summer of last year my bookworm friend Kailey discovered this book (which incidentally happened to be published on her 21st birthday, I later found out) and fell in love with it instantly. She raved and raved about this book and how much she wanted the entire world to read it and so on. Kind of like me with Skulduggery Pleasant. She begged me to drop all other reading priorities in order to read this one book, which she now calls her all-time favorite. So I finally promised her that I would make it one of the books I read in January. As it turned out, it was the first book I read in January. Kailey gave this book five stars. I gave it three. Don't get me wrong; for what it is, this book was great. It certainly had its moments. However, my main issue with The Hating Game was that it was NOT my genre. I am a heavy fantasy / sci-fi / magical realism reader and this book was a romantic comedy that was predictable and cliche. There were definitely parts of it that I enjoyed, but ultimately I knew how it was going to end WAY before I ever reached the final pages, and books like that just kind of fall flat for me. So, as promised, I read The Hating Game. It was okay for what it was. And now I'm going to move on from it.

*Spoilers Ahead*

Now, before I begin my review of The Chronicles of Narnia, I feel it important to note that I read this series in chronological order. That's how the set I was given for Christmas was designed. And actually I'm glad I read it chronologically, because it helps me piece together the events a lot easier and I can better give you my thoughts on the rise and fall of Narnia as a whole.

This series in its entirety is really very good and very well-written. I've never truly been able to appreciate C.S. Lewis as an author until now. I loved that everything in Narnia had a story behind it, down to the iconic lamp-post. I thoroughly enjoyed the stories of every character I read about. I would love to visit Narnia if I could.

What really blew my mind was how much of a parallel the story of Narnia is to the story of our own world, from Adam and Eve to the Rapture and beyond. Of course I was aware that C.S. Lewis was a Christian author and that Aslan was the Narnian equivalent of Jesus, but I had no idea how much so until now. I loved Aslan so much in every book I read; how much more will I certainly love Jesus when I meet Him face to face? Ahhh. I could go on about the awesomeness of this parallel for days. Suffice it to say I found it very well done and I'm now kind of sad the series is over. (But the last line of the last book was one of - if not THE - greatest I've ever read in my life.)

There were a couple of things that did kind of come as a shock to me. First was that Susan eventually went on to become "no longer a friend of Narnia," which essentially means she turned her back on Aslan. I was surprised about that at first, but then again, her character always was the most grounded in the 'real world.' The other thing that came as a shock was that the rest of the friends of Narnia died in England and that's why they were able to live in the new Narnia forever. That was thrown in so casually on the last page of the last book that I was just like, "Wait...what?!" I can't say that I thought it was a fitting ending to their real-world stories, but it is what it is.

These are my favorite books in the series, in order from best to least favorite:

The Silver Chair

The Magician's Nephew

The Last Battle

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

The Horse and His Boy

Prince Caspian

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

All of the books in the series earned a three-star rating from me, with the exception of the last two on the list above, which earned two stars. If I were to rate the entire series overall, I'd give it a 3.5. It really was very well written and I enjoyed the stories very much. I'm actually really glad that getting them for Christmas (and thus putting them on my TBR) became an excuse to finally read them all.

Also, as a possibly irrelevant side-note, my favorite character in the entire seven books was Puddleglum from The Silver Chair. I love him so much I can't even.

And there you have it! (Finally.) Now I'm off to go on my annual blind date with a book. As of this post I still have not unwrapped it yet, so it's still a mystery. Find out what book I ended up with at the end of the month when I do my February wrap-up! See you next time!