Hi, I'm Angela, a girl with a blog on five different psyches:
girl,
geek,
reader,
writer,
gamer
Choose your poison ♥
One day to go! I did this vlog on Saturday, where I only had a bit over 41,000 words. This morning I hit 48k, but while this story is better than my 2007 NaNo win, I don’t know if I’ll go back and work on it. Maybe I will, later on. But I think I’ve kind of had it with the novel for now, and will be very very happy for December to arrive.
(Hopefully blogging will commence regularly again.)
Brb.
Week 3 was horrible. And boring. So, really short video log.
There is roughly two to three weeks left before the world (of Warcraft) is rent asunder by the great Cataclysm, resulting in changes that we can only imagine (well, some are actually living it in beta servers, but never mind).
I’m torn between feeling panic (that I am not ready) and impatience (why can’t it happen now?!). I’ve been carefully tempering my WoW playing time to allow for my other hobbies and activities to play catch-up, so I’ve never been able to get much headway with my bucket list; at the same time, raiding in-guild is erratic as most people are just waiting for Cataclysm to hit.
There’s also a certain degree of worry, though. I pre-ordered the Collector’s Edition (as I wanted Li’l Deathchin, who is adorable), and Amazon is telling me that arrival estimate is December 10-14. That means it’s possible my friends will have been playing a week (!!) before I even get it installed! D:
*starts plotting*
So right now, I have two 80s. I’m planning to divide my time somewhat evenly between them, so that they both get to 85 at roughly the same time. And then in the midst of getting all geared up for raiding, I’m going to be unoriginal and roll a Worgen druid. Honestly, the little thing is sadly confused. Am I a human? Wolf? Bear? Cat? Turkeyowlchicken? (I would add “tree” to the list, but no more. Sob.)
But for now, at the very least, I need to get as much justice points as I can before the raiding grind happens, for starter blues when I hit 85. Bye bye epics. It was good while it lasted.
Come join me in a blogging exercise: Three for Thursday! A list of three things, plus things that didn’t make the cut: books that you feel you should have read when you were younger. Leave a comment here with the URL to your entry, or answer in the comments!
Sometimes, when I finally act on recommendations or give into trying out a new book or series, I put down the book after reading it and tell myself, what a waste that I haven’t discovered it earlier! I love young adult (YA) literature because they can be as light or as deep as you want them to be: everything is up to one’s interpretation.
The reading of YA, or children’s lit, when you’re older significantly changes one’s experience of it. Back when I read Narnia, it was the most wondrous place, a land I wanted to get away to. Subsequent readings now that I’m older doesn’t lessen its beauty, but the nuances are different: I read the same lines differently, with more years on me. You can’t remove a certain “jadedness” to reading about a magical land once you’re older.
This Three for Thursday list contains five “old” books that I felt I really should have discovered earlier when I was younger, because not only were they fabulous reads, but they have been around for much longer (older than me!).
1. Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Earthsea CycleLeGuin’s first book in the Earthsea cycle, A Wizard of Earthsea, was first published in 1968. Earthsea–a sprawling archipelago–is the home and setting of the wizard Ged, who the cycle follows from his childhood. It is followed by The Tombs of Atuan (1971), The Farthest Shore (1972), and Tehanu (1990). Various short stories followed and are sprinkled all over the timeline, some in collections.
Coming-of-age books usually had profound impact on me when I was in that age range, and LeGuin’s Earthsea is beautifully crafted, both from a world building point of view and down to the characters in her story. They are flawed in many ways: prideful, selfish, afraid–but it is exactly this that makes this a wonderful coming-of-age, epic-fantasy adventure.
2. Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising SequenceA five-book series published in 1973, this contemporary fantasy focuses on the battle between good and evil based on Arthurian legend, and prominently features children: the majority of the battle (and the preparation for it) is seen from the perspective of Simon, Jane, and Barney Drew, as well as Will Stanton.
The interweaving of Arthurian legend and myth into modern life (or modern in the time it was written) was seamless, and how the children’s perceptions and their own personalities color the events and how these unfold is well done. It is not so much a coming-of-age story, but you do see the children grow within the span of the books, gaining a wider worldview, and trying to overcome the odds–trying, failing, but trying again and eventually succeeding.
(Note: the movie “adaptation” The Seeker is a dismal waste of time. The books are so much better. So. Much. Better.)
3. Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to TerabithiaPublished in 1977, it tells the story of two lonely children who find friendship in each other and proceed to build a make-believe kingdom, Terabithia. The friendship especially transforms Jess from being depressed and introverted.
To be honest, when I picked up the book, I had no idea what the story was. I had been meaning to read it for some time, and the movie that came out only furthered my resolve to read the book. All I knew was what it showed in the cover: two friends, and a make-believe land. What came out, though, was a profoundly poignant story that I almost felt pretty much steamrolled me into speechlessness.
I was actually on the fence about whether this would have been a better read when I was younger: I don’t know for sure if the poignancy would not have been as strong as when I actually read it, or if it would have been lost in the make-believe world. I eventually decided that yes, this would have been a great read when I was younger: if it had affected me as much when I was older, it would definitely have also affected me deeply while younger.
There were a couple series/books that I thought should have been on the list, but for various reasons I decided not to add. A notable book (or series) would be the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan: a classic, surely, but I am somewhat skeptical of my attention span when I was younger. Although I did finish and enjoy The Lord of the Rings immensely, the Wheel of Time feels like quite in a different place when it comes to descriptive prose, that by then, I might just have reached the limit of my patience.
What would your three books be?
Since the start of NaNoWriMo, I’ve been building the habit of writing for thirty minutes in the morning. I’d wake up, and sit in front of the computer and either type away, or hem and haw and be annoyed at not being able to write. I stick with it, though, to “train” myself to “expect” that I will write for thirty minutes when I wake up.
The nice thing about writing in the morning is that my inner editor is still half-asleep too. So I just pound out crappy words and typographical errors and I don’t really care: I’m just writing and getting the story (or whatever it is I’m writing) out. Editing can come later.
The result? More words. (Cough.)
It’s not without its challenges, though. Sometimes, I wake up late and I just need to rush! Sometimes, I wake up to a text message and get distracted and everything else just goes down the drain. And even more often: sometimes, I just really need to pee.
There are a couple of things that help with the habit-forming, though:
This is something I’ll definitely continue to do moving forward, and maybe improve on it by actually giving myself a word count target for this morning writing, even outside the bounds of NaNoWriMo.
Quoth page settings and designers and developers, “lorem ipsum dolor sit amet!” There are a lot of available services to help you with your fake Latin needs. From those who swear by it to those who spurn it in favor of REAL text, there is a generator for everybody.
I know, I know, all those apps were for OSX! Fine. Here is one for you Windows people: Lorem Ipsum Generator. Happy?
Of course, there are a lot of extensions available for Firefox, and there is one for Chrome.
NaNoWriMo week two: started out horribly, but it worked out in the end. Still have quite a bit to go!
I decided I’d post the NaNoWriMo weekly recap video up on Mondays instead of Wednesdays, because a half week from when I made the video is too long and loses its “timeliness” factor.
A couple of weeks back, I finally bought a game for my new Playstation 3: DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue. Yes, you read the name right ;) My dad and I were trying out various demos and the DeathSpank cover/icon stood out for us on the screen because it was bright yellow.
And yes, I played the second game before playing the first.
Basically, DeathSpank is a hack-and-slash game like Diablo 2, only very tongue-in-cheek, funny, and colorful (something hardcore Diablo fans hate). It’s enjoyable: a mindless, satisfying hacking mixed with–gasp!–fights where you need to take a step back and strategize. Loot is ever-present and ever-changing, money is relatively easy to come by (just keep hitting the barrels!) dialogues with NPCs are usually funny, and fully-voiced, to boot.
Both games seem to stand well on their own, but after finishing the second game, I wanted more DeathSpank–so I bought the first game, too. I missed the bazookas and grenades in the second game, but I had an unlimited and ever-upgrading crossbow (and special bolts if I needed them) versus the pistol of the first game (succeeding gun upgrades were always limited-quantity: if I used them as my primary range weapon, I’d run out of bullets shooting barrels).
There are only three things that I found relatively annoying while playing the game:
All that said, there’s a lot of mindless hacking, blood is aplenty, and humor abounds. DeathSpank is a very entertaining and engrossing game, and well worth its price (US$14.99, S$20.90).
Janet Fitch’s White Oleander is one of my favorite books: my copy is old, with yellowed pages and wrinkles on the spine. The plastic I’ve wrapped it in is wrinkled too, slightly warped from the heat.
The prose is just beautiful. These are the full paragraphs from a random page.
“Rabbit,” he said, pointing down at the dust.
I could barely make out the blurred markings, two larger prints followed by a smaller one and then another. He smiled, his teeth slightly pushed back, vaguely rabbit-like himself. He was a boy who should have been in front of a TV or in a library, but he could read the pale dust the way another kid would read a comic book, the way my mother read cards. I wished he could read my fortune in the dust.
“You see a lot,” I said.
He smiled. He was a boy who wanted to be seen. He told me his name was Davey, he was Starr’s real son. There was a daughter too, Carolee. The other two, Owen and Peter, were foster like me. But even her natural children had been in foster care, when Starr was in rehab.
How many children had this happened to? How many children were like me, floating like plankton in the wide ocean? I thought how tenuous the links were between mother and children, between friends, family, things you think are eternal. Everything could be lost, more easily than anyone could imagine.
We walked on. Davey pulled at a bush with bright yellow flowers. “Deerweed. Pea family.” The breeze came up the canyon, making the trees flicker green and gray. “Paloverde’s got the green bark. The other’s ironwood.”
The quiet, the solidness of the mountain, the while butterflies. Green scent of laurel sumac, which Davey informed me the local Indians had used to sweeten the air in their wickiups. Clumps of giant ryegrass, still green, but already crackling like fire. Two hawks circled the seamless blue sky, screaming.
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