Books of 2014

This is the list of the books I read in 2014, in order of most enjoyed to least enjoyed. I liked more books than I hated, which is always excellent. I should point out that I actually read a couple of books of Haikyuu!!, but I clumped them into one because I couldn't remember what even happened in which book.
So here's the list!

1. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
2. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
3. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
4. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Saez
5. Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
6. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 
7. Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
8. Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin
9. The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
10. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
11. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon
12. We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
13. Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin
14. Messenger by Lois Lowry
15. The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
16. The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin
17. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins
18. Monsters of Men by Patrick Ness
19. The Encyclopedia of Early Earth by Isabel Greenberg
20. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
21. Haikyuu by Haruichi Furudate
22. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
23. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
24. Just Don’t Fall by Josh Sundquist
25. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
26. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
27. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
28. Let it Snow by John Green, Lauren Myracle, and Maureen Johnson
29. Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
30. Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
31. Hamlet by Shakespeare
32. An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro
33. Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintire
34. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
35. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly 
36. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
37. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 
38. The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
39. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
40. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
41. Nine Horses by Billy Collins
42. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
43. Life after Life by Kate Atkinson
44. Julius Caesar by Shakespeare
45. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
46. The Scorch Trials by James Dashner
47. Out of Nowhere by Maria Padian 
48. I am J by Cris Beam 
49. The Knock at the Door by Margaret Anhert 
50. Beneath the Meth Moon by Jacqueline Woodson

And here's to another year filled with good books!

Best Books of the Year: Ready Player One

Since I haven't been active in the last year or so, I thought I'd share with you a couple books that I read in 2014 that I really really enjoyed. I think this will be a series, focusing on one book at a time because I can go on about my favorite books forever.
The book that I most enjoyed reading is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The story is set twenty years in the future, where everything takes place on an online platform called the Oasis. When I say everything, I really mean everything. Business meetings, vacations, school, it all happens online. One day, the creator of the Oasis, James Halliday, dies. Instead of leaving a will, it is announced that whoever can solve his game within the Oasis and finds the easter egg will inherit everything that Halliday owned. So this is the story of Wade and his group of friends who go on the quest to find the egg.
I actually listened to this audiobook. It's narrated by Will Wheaton, and it is quite possibly one of the best audiobooks that I have ever listened to. Will Wheaton did an excellent job of embodying the voice of Wade. This book had a lot of description in it—it had to, in order to describe what the Oasis was like—and he narrated it in a way that it didn't get boring.
The descriptions in this book was actually one of the reasons that I loved it so much. Since this book was a quest, the characters hopped from planet to planet, and these planets ranged from Earth-like to completely weird yet awesome, and each time, I got a clear sense of what was going on.
Another thing that I loved was all of the background information. There's a lot of 80's references in this book because James Halliday grew up in the 80's, and his quest revolves around his favorite childhood memories. The 80's is relatively recent (only 30 years ago), but this book treats it like history, which I think made it really interesting. There is also a lot of background information on how the Oasis came to be; how Halliday and his business partner Ogden Morrow created it, their falling out, and what happened after his death, when the Oasis starts falling to the big business: IOI.
The characters are also fantastic. Wade is a strong lead, who makes a lot of discoveries about the differences in relationships online and offline. My other favorite was Ogden Morrow, who, though he didn't appear much, kind of reminded me of a more eccentric version of Dumbledore. Both of Wade's closest friends Art3mis and Aech are wonderful and smart, and my favorite, and I loved the fact that even though Wade is competing against them, they are his greatest asset.
As I have previously mentioned, I love this book. Writing about it like this has made me want to go pick it back up. I think this book is also really good for people who aren't that into science fiction. Even though I believe that it technically is science fiction, it also has a lot of fantasy, quest elements in it that people might enjoy.
5/5 stars (obviously).

Dui Bu Qi

I have had a song stuck in my head for the past two weeks.
This song is titled "Dui Bu Qi," and it is sung by an English band called Transition. They sing it in Mandarin. The main lyrics go "dui bu qi, wo de zhong wen bu hao," which means "I'm sorry, my Chinese is not very good."
My Chinese teacher first introduced it to us a couple of weeks ago. There are a couple of phrases in the song that would come in handy in China. Unfortunately, the song is very catchy.
The weekend after my Chinese teacher introduced it to us, I could not get it out of my head. But that is normal for me. I have had songs stuck in my head before (Lorde's song 'Royals' had a particularly long run), and I figured that some other song would come and replace it. But that's not what happened. We sang it again on Monday, and then I noticed some of my classmates who are in other sections of Chinese start to sing it. Now it's gotten to the point that even if it has been out of my head for a day or so, once I enter the Chinese classroom, I immediately think of the song and then the cycle starts all over again.
Anyway, I encourage you to go listen to that song. If anything else, I guarantee you that by the end of it, you will know how to say "I'm sorry, my Chinese is not very good."

Orphan Train

I know that it's been a while, and I decided that I want to get this blogging ball rolling again, so I thought I would start out with a book review.
I've read 48 books so far this year (which is just two away from my goal, yay!), and I've read a lot of fantastic books. I thought though, that I would start out with the book that I most recently finished: Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline.
Orphan Train is a novel set both in 1929, and the modern day. The 1929 narrative follows a young girl named Niamh, who, after both her parents die in a fire in New York, is sent on an orphan train to hopefully be adopted by a nice family. Of course, that doesn't happen. The modern day story line follows Molly, a foster girl who is seventeen and almost out of the system, when she is caught stealing something and is forced to do community service, helping out an old woman clean out her attic.
Overall, I really enjoyed this novel. I picked it up because I didn't really know anything about orphan trains. I thought that they were more of a 19th century thing, but apparently they were around until 1929. The book really reminded me of Out of the Dust, a novel about the dust bowl. Perhaps it was because it was a similar midwest setting and because the character of Billie Jo is similar to that of Niamh.
The thing that kept me reading this novel was Kline's writing style. I loved it. It portrayed complex ideas very simply, and the whole novel made perfect sense.  I could understand the characters and their ways of thinking very clearly. She painted a very understandable picture of the 1930s with everything from clothing style to the socially accepted ideas of the time.
I loved Niamh's story from beginning to end. She was likable from the start to the very end, and you could see her development throughout the novel. Her story is a roller coaster ride from beginning to end, with a sideshow of people with both good and bad intentions.
With that said, was a little skeptical with Molly's timeline. She was a very angsty, bitter, and misunderstood, and I didn't particularly care for the way in which the foster parents were portrayed. They were racist and only in it for the money, and the mother was really mean while the father had a soft spot for Molly, and it all just seemed very cliche. However, I did really enjoy the bits of Native-American history that were tied in with Molly and her history. I really liked the way in which she started to open up to Vivian, the old woman, and I thought it showed how truly important it is to be able to talk about your own history.
I gave this novel 4/5 stars.

Ender's Game: A Movie Review from a Die-Hard Fan of the Book

Warning: If you want to see the movie, don't read this post.

As the title of this blog post has established, I absolutely LOVE the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  I read it in 6th grade and it has been one of my favorite books ever since.
The movie came out last week, and since my friend Jacob had just finished reading the book (after I had been telling him to read it for about four or five years), we decided to go see it. Let me just say that the movie made me really angry.
I understand that movies have to take some liberties in comparison with the book. Obviously, you have to cut some stuff out, and I don't think it's a horrible thing to add a couple of meaningful and necessary scenes. The thing that irritated me most about this movie is the fact that it lost the whole tone and feel of the book.
There was no character development at all. You don't feel Ender's personality. You don't understand his internal conflict about becoming another version of his brother, Peter (Peter only showed up in one scene and that wasn't enough to establish his ferocity and ruthlessness), and thus it's harder to understand what is actually going through his head. When he starts to play the Giant's Drink game, the game takes so much mental capacity and is so psychological that it's hard to establish that in a movie setting. Also, you don't feel Ender's isolation in the movie at all. It seems as if he is a brilliant Launchee that people don't like just because he's Graff's favorite. That's not the case. The script doesn't take time to establish the sheer size of the battle school in order to point out that Ender is isolated. You don't feel Ender's personality at all, which was such a shame. As for the other characters, they didn't get enough time in the movie to establish their personalities. They seemed to happy. Why were they smiling? I'm pretty sure that if I was going through battle school, I wouldn't be smiling. I would be stressed 24/7.
Another major problem that I had with the movie was that it wasn't tactical. There were only two battle room scenes, which really upset me. I think the battle room set was really well done. It looked amazing and it was such a shame that only two battles took place. There was no buildup. There was no drama surrounding the success of the Dragon army. There was no discussion of strategy. These are all MAJOR parts in the book that should have been in the movie. Instead, the battle scenes were too short and made it seem like success was simple. I didn't like that.
Let's talk Mazer Rackham. WHAT WAS WITH HIM  BEING A SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD. It is not okay. Ender is the original Speaker for the Dead. He wrote The Hive Queen and the Hegemon and then started going about the other planets and speaking for other people. Why was Mazer Rackham established as a Speaker for the Dead? That's just not necessary and it didn't even have to do with anything in the plot of the movie.
Also, Ender and Petra. This was a thing that I suspected would happen. Let's not forget that in the book, the characters start at battle school when they are about five and Ender goes to command school when he is 10. They're too young to like each other!!! From the moment Petra came into the movie I was extremely upset. It was just so unnecessary. There was no point to it. It was an unnecessary romantic subplot that shouldn't have happened.
Something that I wish had been in the book was Locke and Demosthenes. I think this part of the book was extremely interesting. When I read it in 6th grade, I think I was a little young to really understand how political it was, but it was so fascinating when I reread it because it shows how smart Valentine and Peter really are. I really think that Ender's siblings needed to play a larger part in the movie not only to bring out Ender's fear of Peter, but to open discussion about the state of the Earth at that time.
Also something that really annoyed me was the fact that everyone called the buggers the "formics," which after looking it up, is apparently the more technical term for buggers. But in the book they called it buggers and everyone in the Enderverse calls them buggers so WHY NOT call them buggers? It's little changes like that that don't add anything to the movie that really bother me.
One thing that I did like were the special effects. I think that the graphics for the Giant's Drink were really well done and the battle room was pretty good as well.
So, I think you've gotten the vibe that I didn't like this movie. I knew that I was going to be disappointed in it and I gave it a chance. But it failed. I'm really disappointed too because I love the book. I love Ender's Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. But the movie lost the whole tone of the books, and I think (at least if I were the author of a book that was being turned into a movie), the tone is something that should be the first thing to be preserved.
I hope I don't sound to angry in this post. I personally don't think you should see this movie. Unless you want to be in a bad mood, then you should immediately rush to the movie theater and watch it.

Dalek Pumpkin

My family and I decided to conform to societal conventions and carve pumpkins last night. Now I'm really not very experienced in this art. I think it's mostly because the opportunity to carve a pumpkin when it is socially acceptable comes only once a year.
Last Friday, Hank Green posted a video on YouTube and at the end, he showed some pictures of awesome nerd pumpkins. One of the pictures was of a pumpkin carved in the shape of a Dalek (Daleks are some of the bad guys in Doctor Who, and I won't spoil why they're bad or what they do because you should watch the show) and I saw that picture and decided that my pumpkin this year was going to be a Dalek. So that's exactly what I did. I think I bent the saw that I used because my pumpkin was so thick.
But this is what it turned out to look like:

I'm particularly proud of it. I didn't really have anything that would emit a light out of its head so I had to use The Doctor's sonic screwdriver, and I don't know what hardcore Doctor Who fans will think of that but who cares?
My dad's pumpkin is also very cool. I think he debated over what to carve for at least half an hour. At one point, he wanted to carve the Firefly logo and the white tree, the elvish that's on the One Ring, and Mike Wazowski. He also seriously considered carving the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. logo, but that show isn't very good so he decided against it. In the end, he decided on the Avengers icon, and it turned out really cool. Needless to say, we're a nerd family.

I don't know if the neighbors will understand, but those who do are truly awesome. Also, anyone who comes to our house in either Doctor Who or Avengers/superhero attire will get extra candy. Just no Reese's, because those are my favorite. 

The Time Machine

I'm going to tell you a story.
Yesterday, I was at the museum, as it seems that I usually am on Saturdays. Though this Saturday was different because the docent headquarters had changed places. It had changed from a bright room covered with stickers on the third floor of the museum, to a room that I could only really describe as a dungeon. The room, it turns out, is in the basement, with pipes running along the ceiling. Also, it turns out that whoever painted the entire basement was an avid fan of the color grey. Grey walls, grey floor, grey handrails, everything is grey and has no personality whatsoever.
So it was lunchtime, and I was eating lunch with some of my friends. One boy was running around with a broomstick that he had found, pretending that it was a combination of a Firebolt, a Nimbus 2000, Cleansweep, and a Comet 360. Apparently this broomstick could choose which type of broomstick it wanted to be, so you could transform it from a Firebolt to a Cleansweep whenever you wanted to (though I personally don't know why anyone would want to use a Cleansweep when you could have a Firebolt). Some other kids were looking around the room to see what cool things that there were (nothing), and we were all commenting on how we should have the people from Extreme Home Makeover come and do an Extreme Office Makeover episode to spruce up the office, when someone noticed a can sitting on top of the wall. This room's wall didn't reach the ceiling, so there was about a foot long gap between the pipes covering the ceiling and the wall, and on top of that wall, sat a tin can.
Nick got on a chair and brought it down for all of us to see, and we discovered, to our great delight, that the can had the words "time machine" and "open in 2013" written on it in sharpie.
Well, naturally, we were all very curious. I think we all were remembering the time machines that we buried in our backyard or in my case the time machines that I wanted to make to bury in my backyard. Since the year is currently 2013, we felt we had a right to open this time machine and find out what was inside.
We didn't have a can opener, nor any means to get one, so the boy with the broomstick offered it up and stabbed the can lid with the stick portion of the broom. Well that turned out not to be a very good idea. We all let out a little gasp of surprise as quite a lot of a goopy, yellowish substance sprayed the floor and the table.
It was apple pie filling.
Who would put apple pie filling in a can and label it "time machine?"Whoever did that was a genius. We were all a bit disappointed, but laughed, as it was kind of funny, and proceeded to clean the place up. At least we weren't sprayed with lots of dead spiders or something.

Otherwise Known as Paradise

I was talking with my dad today at dinner and he asked me what authors I would read no matter what.
I couldn't really think of one off the top of my head, because that's not how my brain works, but he mentioned John Green. I will read whatever John Green writes until the day that I die.

I was at Barnes and Noble the other day, when I saw this table. I think this table sums of paradise pretty well.

So then I went on Goodreads, where I catalogue all of the books that I've read, to help me jog my memory.  I definitely would read Lois Lowry no matter what. I think I've done that, actually. There are times when I go to the library and go to the "L" section to see if there are any of her books that I haven't read. And if I haven't read them, I will borrow them. The same used to be for Margaret Peterson Haddix, who wrote one of my favorite books, Double Identity. After I read that book, I went through a Margaret Peterson Haddix phase where I wouldn't read anything else. There's also Kristen Cashore, who wrote Fire and Graceling, which I read more recently. She's only written three books so far, but when she comes out with a new one, especially if it takes place in the same world, I will read it.

The Triumphant Return!

I guessed you have noticed by now that I haven't been on the internet for quite some time. I have an excellent reason, which is that I had to study for an AP European History test.
So, basically, for the past couple of weeks, my life has been nonexistent, and I have been locking myself in my room, forcefully telling myself that I need to know everything there is to know about the War of Spanish Succession and everything else that ever happened in Europe. It is unfortunate, because all of the things that I do know, like the Black Death and the Great Schism and the Hundred Years War weren't in the Princeton review book, and I don't even think you have to know them for the test.
By far some of my favorite moments of European History include the Time of Troubles and the Defenestration of Prague. Also, there's the gunpowder plot and its stupidity. Apparently all of the gunpowder in the gunpowder plot would have blown up about four blocks when lit, instead of just Parliament.
Anyway, I went through about six weeks of stress, and still kind of feel like an underachiever because I know some people who took three APs, which will be me next year. At least there's a giant curve on the calc test.
So, I'm back! I haven't picked up a book in forever, but I just started reading A Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers, and I need to finish all the other books that I started in March and haven't picked up since.
And maybe, with the summer months approaching,  I'll start posting more than 4 times a month....

If I Had 17 Million Dollars

I was in math class today learning about geometric series. We were working on a problem about winning the lottery, and I think we were supposed to get 17 million dollars a year for 20 years, and we had to figure out the future value of that money. But the problem aside, what would I do if I won 17 million dollars?
I asked my friend Jacob, who was sitting next to me, what he would do, and he said that he would buy a bunch of telescopes and then donate the rest of his money to NASA. He likes space.
So I thought about it for a bit, and I decided that I would travel. I would go to all the places that I want to visit, like Scotland and Wales and Turkey and Greece and Ethiopia and Antarctica and Peru and basically the whole entire world. I'd also probably go to Harry Potter World, or, better yet, just go to the actual Hogwarts and learn magic.
Then, when I come back, I'd go to Scotland and buy a castle and live in the highlands. I just think that Scotland is a beautiful place with all those mountains. So that's where I would live.
In my castle, I'd build my own library (if it didn't already have one) where I would keep all of my books and whenever I'd feel like it, I'd just go and read.
I did go through a couple of minutes in class when I wanted to build myself an underwater castle, but I thought that that might be a little extreme. And anyway, if I had an underwater castle, it would be hard for people to come visit me because they would probably need a SCUBA license to get down there.
So by the time that I've traveled the world, bought myself a castle in the highlands, and built myself my own personal library, I don't think I'd have that much money left. But then, I'd just get 17 million dollars (or 16.04 million dollars in present value assuming 6% interest rate) the next year, so it'd be all good.

Why Russia Started WWI

A couple of weeks ago, my history teacher announced that we were going to have a debate in class, and the topic we were debating was "which country started WWI?" Now, obviously, there's not one single country that did start a world war, but we were supposed to find one country and blame it for everything. We could discuss anything from the 1880's to August 4th, 1914.
My group got stuck trying to defend Germany.
So, as you might imagine, Germany has a lot of dirt on it (which I might discuss another time). So we decided to blame Russia.
But before we got to the research, we started to form alliances with other countries, and by the end of the week or so, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Serbia, Britain, and France were all in an alliance against Russia. At this point, I basically predicted that France and Britain would bail on us and join Russia, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
So we started to do research. We researched Germany through books like Germany's Aims in the First World War by Fritz Fischer and The Guns of August and The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman. Then, I went to my local library and checked out practically every single book about WWI and the events leading up to the war so that nobody else from the other groups could get them.
We were paranoid, a little (sort of like Germany in the late 19th century!) that everyone was going to backstab us, so we had to research everyone.
And now, here is why Russia started the war.
Russia had a lot of motive. It wanted to start a war so that it could acquire the straights. The straights were important to Russia because it was one of the only ways to get out into the ocean that didn't freeze for half of the year.
Also, there's the question of Russia's military. Now we all know that Russia is a gigantic land mass full of tons of people, but it's military in 1914 consisted of 1,284,000 men (according to Fritz Fischer) sitting on the Austro-Hungarian boarder. That seems pretty threatening to me.
Then, there's mobilization. During this time, mobilization of an army meant war. Nobody mobilized if they didn't want war. Russia was the first country to mobilize it's army. It was even warned by the British and French foreign ambassadors Buchanan and Cambon that if the Tsar mobilized, that would push the Germans to declare war. And yet, Russia still did it, and look what happened. Germany invaded Belgium.
Russia started encouraging the Serbian plotters in 1912 and in 1914, the Tsar promised the Serbians arms and ammunition. Since there was a cultural tie between Russia and Serbia, Apis believed that when the assassination of the Archduke would cause war, that Russia would support Serbia.
Then, there's the secret diplomacy with France. People get suspicious with a secret diplomacy, and that's never good.
Of corse there's more than this, and we elaborated more on this stuff. But the debate went well. Russia got kicked out first, and then Serbia, and then France was trying to get us out of the debate, but we stalled them and then the debate ended, so we didn't get kicked out. What I thought was particularly amusing was when someone on the Russian team said something like "mobilization doesn't mean war," and Serbia, Austria-Hungary and Germany all said at the same time "YES IT DOES!!" Eventually, the debate ended up just being a shouting match between the countries. But at least Germany didn't get kicked out.

On a completely different note, by Laughing at Dragons got picked as one of the best personal blogs of 2013 by TYWKIDBI, which is very exciting. YAY!

Shipping

Shipping, it seems, is a very important part of internet culture. So here, I'm going to share some of my favorite ships.

Literature:
Lizzy Bennet and Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice
Neville and Luna from Harry Potter
Tobias and Tris from Divergent
Eowyn and Faramir from Lord of the Rings
Katniss and Peeta from The Hunger Games

Television:
11th Doctor and River Song from Doctor Who
Sherlock and Watson from Sherlock (yes, yes, Moffat, please please make it happen, and while we're talking about making things happen, can season 3 please come out BEFORE 2014??)
Patrick Jane and Theresa Lisbon from The Mentalist
Daisy and Alfred from Downton Abbey

CHARLOTTE!!

I was practicing piano today, when something very strange happened. I got a phone call.
Now, you might not think that that isn't very strange, but that's not the strange part. Though, nobody ever calls me (except my mother), so it was a little out of the ordinary.
No, the weird thing is what happened when I picked up the phone. I said, "hello?" like any normal, sane individual would do (because I'm a normal, sane individual), and the reply was "Charlotte? Charlotte? CHARLOTTE?? CHARLOTTE!!!"
I'm not Charlotte, lady.
So I replied with, "I'm sorry, I think you have the wrong number," and the reply was, "NO, YOU'RE LYING TO ME!"
So then I just hung up. The person then proceeded to call me back, but I didn't answer.
The thing is, I really wanted to answer with some snarky comment, but since I'm bad with coming up with those on the spot (I always think of them when I'm in the shower), I didn't. Though I kind of did want to call this person back and yell some random name back at them, but I didn't want to get into anything sticky.

The Easter Egg Hunt

I went to the Museum yesterday. I hadn't been in a long time because of tournaments and whatnot. So when I walked into the doors yesterday I was totally shocked that there were LOTS of people there. I walked up the stars and heard things like, "I think the eggs are this way," which I thought was weird, until I found out that the Carnegie Museum has an annual Easter egg hunt.
Apparently, these little kids get these clues, and near the thing that they're supposed to find, there are a bunch of eggs and they get to have one.
It was a little while later and I was setting up the Jurassic cart with a fellow teen named Cathy, when all these kids and parents start coming up to us and asking us where the eggs were. I didn't have any eggs with me, but then they started asking us if we had a souropod egg and asking us where the baby apatasourous was, and I thought it was really strange until I found out that that was what the kids were supposed to find.
Then, a couple of minutes later, Linda, the teen who's in charge of us starts bringing this HUGE basket of plastic easter eggs over with a stamp pad. Apparently WE were supposed to be handing out the eggs after we explain the souropod egg and the kids find the baby apatasourous. Inside our eggs, there were those cheap fake tattoos.
Let me just say that it was crazy. In an hour and a half, we got over 300 visitors. I explained what the souropod egg was about a million times, and after a while, my tongue got all messed up and I couldn't speak. I think I let a kid hold the egg and said, "here, you can have it"when I really meant, "here, you can hold it." I think I also started pointing at the egg and saying "this is a dinosaur" a couple of times, which got people confused. But I had never said the same thing over and over again that many times before, and I have to say, it takes endurance.
The egg hunt finished at around one, so we packed up and headed to lunch. There were A LOT of eggs left over, so we got to get some of the goodies that were inside the eggs. Brandon, who's in college and comes in every Saturday to help out, started tattooing himself with those cheap little fake tattoos. On one arm, he put a dinosaur, and on the other, he said we could pick the tattoo for him, so we all picked a butterfly. He put the butterfly on, and then after admiring it for a couple of seconds, goes, "the thing is, I have a date tonight." After laughing for a bit, the us girls of the program insisted that guys with fake butterfly tattoos on their upper forearms are much cooler than those that don't have them.

Book #4: Bitterblue

It's been a while since I wrote a book review entry. I wrote one about King Lear, but I didn't review the book that I finished beforehand: Bitterblue by Kristen Cashore.
This book takes place in the same world that Graceling took place in. It's a magical fantasy land where there are these special people who are called Gracelings. Gracelings are like X-Men; they have supernatural abilities.
Bitterblue was quite longer than Graceling and Fire. I enjoyed getting to know the world better and getting to see the characters again. There was really great imagery, for I could imagine the world really well, and I think that Cashore put a lot of effort into thinking about it, which is really good. I still think that Po, one of the main characters in both Graceling and Bitterblue, is amazing.
However, the problem that I had with Bitterblue is that it had the same theme as Fire had. A daughter trying to find out who she is after the death of her terrible father. Maybe I would have thought it better if I hadn't read Fire, but Fire is the best out of all three books.
The reason that the book was too long, I think, is because of the many plots. There's a lot going on in this book, from Bitterblue's relationship with her friends, from the politics of the world, and figuring out how terrible Bitterblue's father, Leck, really was. Of course, there's a lot more, but I don't think it was really that necessary.
The one thing that really disappointed me was Fire's appearance in the book. I really like Fire's character, but her role in Bitterblue could have been so much bigger, and it wasn't. She appeared in the last couple of pages, only to leave again, with little interaction. And the little interaction there was was mostly politics.
One thing that I really liked was the fact that the characters were discovering Fire's world as well. Fire and Bitterblue take place in the same world, but neither of the worlds know that the other one exists, so it was cool to see how Bitterblue found Fire's world.
4 starts out of 5

Driving!!

After school today, I got into a driver's ed car to have driving lesson with driver's ed Fred. I had never driven before.
I got my permit last Friday. I was going to write a post about how terrible the DMV is, but since everybody knows what an awful place it is, I didn't think I needed to. After I got my permit, I called the driver's ed school that I had taken driver's ed from and asked if I could have some lessons to learn how to drive. Cindy, the other driver's ed teacher, said that I should start out with driver's ed Fred and not with my parents so  I wouldn't learn any bad habits.
I told driver's ed Fred that I hadn't driven before, so he took me up to Highland Park. Highland Park has a one way road that just goes around in a circle around the park. It was actually a really nice place to start out.
I started out going what Fred called "grandma speed," which was about five miles an hour in a twenty five mile an our zone. Thankfully, there weren't that many cars around, so I wasn't causing traffic or anything. The thing is, "grandma speed" actually looks like you're going really fast if you're just looking forward, and then you look to the side and realize you could probably walk faster than you're going right now.
After a few laps around the park, I was starting to get the hang of it, and I was going at around twenty miles an hour. We stopped and talked about the steering wheel and the hand-over-hand technique, and we continued on. Another two laps later, driver's ed Fred asked if I wanted to go out into traffic.
This was a terrifying aspect to me. I was driving pretty well in a two lane, one way street, with minimal traffic, and a few dog walkers. But going out into traffic..... That means there's more people, way more cars, and those drivers who think it's a good idea to tailgate a driver's ed vehicle. But I figured that I would have to go out there sometime, and there was no better time than with an instructor, so, I said yes.
Normal traffic seems like a very crowded place. There are cars everywhere. I don't think the regular drivers who have been driving a while realize how many cars there are. There were those times when I would get that feeling. I would ask myself if I was really driving an actual vehicle or if I was really just sitting at home playing Mario Kart. Though, I have to say, I'm a pro at Mario Kart. When I look back on this in the future, I'll laugh at myself because by then, hopefully, driving will be a piece of cake.
But, I think I'm missing the point I'm trying to make. I DROVE HOME!!!! I drove 5.5 miles (I looked it up on Google maps) without crashing or killing anyone!!! Within an hour and a half, I was driving!!! Actually driving!!! And I went up to 35 miles an hour.

Book #5: King Lear

I know I didn't do a book review for my fourth book. Maybe I'll write about it later. But right now, I'm talking about King Lear.
King Lear is apparently regarded as Shakespeare's greatest tragedy. I don't know what to think about this. It was certainly good, but I don't think it was great, and I'll tell you why.
I liked the premise of the play. A senile King wants to divide his kingdom among his three daughters, and decides who he's going to give his land. He does this by asking his daughters to show him their lover for him by flattering him and one of the daughters refuses, because, you know, that's not what love is. He ends up banishing her and banishing his dearest friend Kent for standing up for her. Over time he starts to realize who really loves and he also looses his mind at the same time.
So I don't have problems with the characters and how they change, though I did think it was gross when Regan and her Cornwall were clawing out Gloucester's eyes. It's the ending that needs work.
Everybody dies.
Now I realize that this is a Shakespeare tragedy, so everyone has to die. But I didn't like the way that they died, and I didn't like the reasons that were given for their deaths. In the fifth act, when everyone's dying, someone comes in to tell Lear that Regan died, and then moments later, Goneril commits suicide, and it's just very fast and I don't like it. Lear dies from a heart attack, which, is probably the most understandable of all of the deaths, because he's old. But then Gloucester dies for the same reason, which is lame. The suicides are just strange because Goneril didn't need to commit suicide. Sure, she just had poisoned her sister, but she also did some very mean things to Lear, so I don't exactly think that she died because she realized she was in the wrong and was too grief-stricken or something. But she just dies. Edgar kills Edmund and that's fine, because Edmund deserved it, but then there's this weird moment when Edmund tries to save Lear and Cordelia. This, like Goneril's suicide, doesn't make any sense, because it's not like he repented or anything. He, like Goneril, is too evil.
And then, after everyone's dead, Albany (Goneril's husband) asks Kent if he would like to rule the kingdom with him, but he declines and says that he's going to commit suicide too so he can be with his master. So the only people left are Albany and Edgar. Two out of 15 people in the story survived. Seems like over kill. Shakespeare really does like to kill people. And I guess I don't mind it as long as he gives a good reason, and in this play, he didn't.

I Knew That Before It Was Popular

I'm not exactly a hipster. But I do know a lot of hipsters. So here I'm going to explain why I think hipsters always say "I knew that before it was popular."
I think it's a sense of possession. We humans like to own things, and I think that if you own something that nobody else owns, it's very special. It's especially obvious when you're young. That doll that your mother made for you was even more special than the one bought from the store. That awesome treehouse that you have in the back yard is the coolest thing ever.
But hipsters own something that is available to the public. They listen to music that everyone can access on iTunes or whatnot, but everyone doesn't, because they don't know about it. So this makes the music special. It's their own very special music.
Then the music becomes popular. This is the most terrible thing that can happen from the perspective of a hipster. Now that the music is popular, it's not as valuable anymore, because people know about it. And then it gets played on the radio (not even the best songs on the album, just a select few, which personally bugs me) and it's lost its magic. Then the hipsters stop listening to it because it's lost its value, and then they have to go find music that nobody knows about and then the cycle starts all over again. And whenever you hear that song from that band that nobody knew about six months ago on the radio, you shake your head because you knew it before it was popular and now surely their music is going to be really bad from now on because fame is going to go to their heads. It's tragic, really.
Oh, and then there are those people who call themselves "fans" of the band even though they only know the one song that's being played on the radio.
Because I am sort of a hipster, I am going to say a few things:
I knew Imagine Dragons before they were popular.
AND FOR GOODNESS SAKES I KNEW OF MONSTERS AND MEN BEFORE THEY WERE POPULAR. I STARTED LISTENING TO THEM LAST MARCH OR APRIL. But I still listen to them even though they're well known now because their music is really good.  Though I still believe that Little Talks is not their best song.

Flipping the Coin

I talked about going to a tournament last weekend in Columbus, Ohio. Well, here's a little story about something that happened there.
It was after one of our games. My team was refereeing the game, and I had to be the down ref. The down ref is the person who stands on one end of the court, looking up at the ref (who is trained and has a license and has hopefully done this many times before) and copying whatever he calls while watching the net and the line under the net to see if anyone crosses it.
So I was the down ref, ready with my whistle and everything. I think I made some of my teammates go deaf because my whistle was really loud. The first two games went really smoothly, other than the fact that one team won one set and the other team won the other, which means that there's a third game to 15 points.
I didn't know this, but apparently for the coin toss for the first serve (because one team serves first for one game, and the other team serves the first ball for the other game) of the third game is overseen by the down ref.
So the captains for the two teams come over, and I have the coin that the ref told me to use. It had a bison on it. Then I had to flip it. Let's just say that my coin tossing experience has been limited. The first time I tried, I totally failed. The coin didn't spin at all, and I was not successful in catching the coin. So it landed on the floor. That's not embarrassing at all. So I had to try again. This time, I got the coin to spin just a little, but then I failed to catch it again, and it started rolling around on the court and I had to go get it. Great.
I got back and the captains were chuckling, and two of my teammates who were sitting at the table behind me were laughing. So I took the coin and flipped it again. I caught it, which was really exciting, but I didn't catch it in one hand so I couldn't do the cool thing where you catch the coin in one hand and slap it on the back of the other hand. But it was good enough.

My mom came back from a trip to Office Depot this afternoon. She said that some guy was trying to pay the cashier with fifty cent coins, and the cashier didn't know where to put them in the cash register, so she bought four of them from him.
She brought them home and my dad saw them and started to teach me how to flip it, because, you know, it obviously wasn't a skill that I possessed. I've been practicing though, and now I can make the "ping" sound that you hear as your nail hits the coin. It goes straight up and spins, and I can catch it in one hand and slap it on the back of the other.
I'm totally prepared for this next coin toss.

Tournament, Finals, and Classes

Okay.
So it's been a while.
Between last Tuesday and today, I have traveled to and back from Columbus, Ohio, taken, like, three tests, written an essay, and taken a final.
Let me elaborate.
This past weekend, I went to a tournament in Columbus, Ohio, where our team lost in the semi-finals of the silver bracket. It was a two day tournament, which means that there are waves. This means that the little kids (12-15 year olds) play from 8 to 11, we play at 11 and end at 2, and then the little kids come back at 2 and play until 5 and we come back and finish up at around 7pm. This is what is supposed to happen. It doesn't necessarily mean it'll happen that way, which it didn't. On Saturday night, we were the last team to leave the gym at 10pm. We had to be at the gym the next morning at 7:30. That kind of sucked, but other than that, the tournament was a lot of fun. There was a lot of laughing, especially because my team is a team full of pranksters.
Our trimester ended today, which, of course, means that teachers have to give us really big assignments. I wrote an essay about King Lear, even though we haven't finished the book yet, and took a quiz today about polynomials (not like we haven't done that a million times before), and of course, I took a chem final. The second trimester is nice because there are no organized finals. We don't have to sit in a classroom for two hours and take a final like we do at the end of the first and third trimesters. But, of course, Dr. Horton had to give us a final which is worth 20% of our trimester grade, and we had 50 minutes to take it. 20% of your grade in 50 minutes! That's crazy. We also have homework that's due on Monday. And, to make it a little worse, Mr. Marx, the other chem teacher who doesn't give second trimester finals, wasn't here today so he cancelled class. Grrrrr.
I also have to start thinking about what classes I'm going to take next year. It's hard to choose because you can only take 3 AP classes. But I think I'm pretty set on AP Language and Composition (English), AP Calculus, and AP Spanish, with normal U.S. history and normal physics. I want to take AP U.S. history, but I can't, which is sad, because I really like AP European History this year. Oh, I get to take physics with freshmen next year because at CAPA, you had to take bio in freshman year, and at WT, you have to take bio in junior year, and physics in freshman year. It's weird to think that I'm going to be a junior next year. Then I have to start looking at colleges and then I'll be a senior and then I'll be applying to colleges and then (hopefully!) I'll get accepted, and then I'll be in COLLEGE!!! AND I'LL BE DRIVING! High school really does go by fast.