Willow Liveblogs Voltron: Legendary Defender

Okay, so I will freely admit that I only thought of liveblogging this halfway through the first episode. Still. I've heard people talk about how good this show is, so I decided to try it out. Forty minutes in, and HELLO NEW FANDOM.

Here we go, and be careful: Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

• Purple aliens! Cool.
• There's a moon of Pluto called Kerberos. I'm guessing Kerberos is the Roman form of Cerberus, Hades's 3-headed dog? Fun fact: Cerberus, literally translated, means something like "Spot". That's right. Hades, lord of the Underworld, named his dog Spot. Nerd.
• Hunk no don't vomit-- too late.
• Pidge is so smol. So. Smol. 
• Pidge is also, apparently, really smart. Nice.
• So this is the Shiro I've heard so much about. Hmm.
• There's an immediate Lance/Keith rivalry. Interesting.
• Giant blue robot lion aww yeah.
• Giant blue robot lion vs. evil purple aliens aww yeah.
• It's a pretty wormhole!
• Princess of an ancient civilization, and she's not white. Nice.
• Shiro is such a Dad Friend oh my gosh.
• C o r a n ' s  m u s t a c h e.
• Aww, Pidge. Smol insecure genius child. I want to hug you.
• Hunk. Chill. It'll be okay. 
• "Go. Be great." my little HEART just melted.
• With a name like Zarkon, there's no way he can be anything but evil. 
• Coran, not helping.
• Pidge. Oh, Pidge. I love you.
• The whole "Allura-in-a-computer-garden" thing is giving me River Song feelings.
• Why is forming Voltron the only way to stop Zarkon? 
• Armor. Sweet!
• *snaps fingers* That's it! That's who Lance reminds me of! Sokka!
• Yesyesyes. Keith is Zuko. Lance is Sokka. Even the color schemes match.
• Shiro, honey, you okay?
• Oh. Oh. Pidge, poor baby.
• "What the quiznak?"
• Helpful mice are helpful.
• Nice going, Keith.
• So. Apparently I have a thing for one-armed butt-kickers. Anakin, Bucky, and now Shiro.
• BLACK LION IS ACTIVE. SWEET.
• Oh, quiznak. This looks bad.
• Oh, yes. 

In conclusion: AWESOME. Go watch this right now.

Pros:

• Good characters
• Humor
• Character development
• Nice animation

Cons:

• Literally only one woman
• Minor plot holes

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch the next episode.

Happy watching,

Willow

Too? Many Books: June Book Haul (and I suppose July too)

In the end of school, I read more words than I said in actual human non-paper conversation. I'm pretty sure. But now it's summer and time for freedom and working towards more human interaction. I'm pretty sure, anyway.

In an attempt not to make this a dump of books titles, I'm going to try to include a bit of a blurb about each (read) book in addition to the usual information. So now, it's just a completely overdone, crazily long post! *canned applause*

(I've been delving into more... teen... literature recently. These are marked with T's [in the case of them having been read].)

Nota bene: I took too long on this post... so it's been shunted sideways into July. With more books, so hopefully that's okay?

Read

• Incarceron by Catherine Fisher (Incarceron Duology #1). Incarceron's inhabitants know it's a prison. The Realm, its queen, and the warden who looks over Incarceron think it's a paradise. The Realm is consigned to follow Protocol, a series of rules forcing the Realm to adhere to the practices and appearances of an era their technology has long outpaced. The book follows the warden's daughter, trapped in a marriage arrangement when her teachers know she could do so much more, as well as Finn, a prisoner at the bottom of the dangerous social hierarchy of the prison. Their worlds collide when both find mysterious devices, keys to the prison.

• Sapphique by Catherine Fisher (Incarceron Duology #2). Sequel to Incarceron, Sapphique is named after the "one who got away", the legendary man who escaped the prison. In the midst of near war, characters both inside and outside the prison struggle to find a solution to the problems that've been developing both in Incarceron and the Realm. (terseness due to attempt to avoid spoilers)

• The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #2). (T) This sequel to The Raven Boys features everyone's favorite character in the Raven squad, Ronan. If he's not your favorite from the first book (and I don't blame you), you'll love him after this one. (again, terse)

• (I was going to blurb these, but I realized I read/reread THE ENTIRE SERIES SO HERE'S THE BLURB FOR THAT.) (T) Maggie Stiefvater's epic of the Raven squad (seriously squad goals), featuring demons, psychic's daughters, prophecies, the best and most complex/potentially problematic/still endearing characters you will ever find, thus putting all writers to shame, Welsh mythology, private school boys, trashy chic, double romances, mild and thus forgivable love triangles, ravens, sleep patterns, and names like Blue and Gansey. I switch my favorite book series a lot (The Lunar Chronicles, Harry Potter, Artemis Fowl) but this is definitely up there with them. Read. Please.

• City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster. This. Book. Has. Some. Of. The. Best. Worldbuilding. I've. Seen. *fangirls* In an empire devastated by loss of its magic, families are limited to only two children. And no family wants girls. So the City of a Thousand Dolls is created, a home away from castes for abandoned and orphan girls of the empire. They're trained as accomplished wives, musicians, bodyguards, dancers, courtesans, and scholars, and fetch prices from those wishing to hire, apprentice, or wed them. But for a girl whose position in the city is dubious, the intrigue and murder in the air are dangerously close.

• Hamilton: The Revolution by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter. (T) The full libretto (written lyrics) of the musical Hamilton: An American Musical. Photographs and footnotes that will make any musical fangirl, history fangirl, or book fangirl love it. 

• The Glass Swallow by Julia Golding (Dragonfly and The Glass Swallow #2). In the realm set up in the prequel of this duology, a girl glassmaker, secretly the genius behind the most prestigious designs, must fight for her life and her way home as she travels to a kingdom rife with chaos and class systems to fulfill her talents as a glassmaker. You'll love the worldbuilding, the realistic diplomacy and politics, and the characters' dramatic irony.

• Inheritance by Lisa Forrest. An interestingly set Australian novel featuring a girl who joins the circus... only to be thrown headfirst into a world of danger, escape, and magical powers stemming from ancient origins from a group called the Cirkulatti, reaching back to ancient Egypt, Macedonia, and Rome.

• The Madman's Daughter by Megan Shepherd. (T) A dark and legitimately scary classics retelling of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. I actually wouldn't recommend this. Dark, scary, thought-provoking, terrifying. Good if you're into that; I'm not. However, it is cool that it's classic sci-fi but with noticeably more girls!

• The Siren by Kiera Cass. Chicklit, but great! From the author of the Selection series (one of my guilty pleasures? Maybe? Depends on definition of guilty pleasure) comes the story that she says spurred her on to be a writer, which you should read just for that. Need more? Multicultural mermaids, destruction of stereotypes, quirky romance, interesting mythology twist.

• Thor: The Goddess of Thunder by Jason Aaron. This comic book is an amazing and interestingly new twist on Thor... she's a girl! Enough said, isn't it? Get over your culture shock, it's a great book in itself (even if you, like me, aren't quite into the medium.)

• Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (The Illuminae Files #1). (T) I can't summarize this well enough, so I'll just quote and link to the coauthor's Goodreads comment here, which is beautiful and should win some kind of Pulitzer: "ILLUMINAE is the classic tale of Girl Meets Boy. Girl Loses Boy. And Parents. And Planet. And Ends Up on a Crippled Spaceship. With a Mad Computer. And a Deadly Virus Outbreak. In the Middle of an Interstellar War. It's without a doubt the coolest book I've ever written. I'm pretty sure you've never read a book like it." (Click the link for gifs that make the comment so much better, too). And read this book! It's all he said and more.

To be read

• Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Soundless by Richelle Mead
• The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
• Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers (His Fair Assassin #2)
• Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers (His Fair Assassin #3)
• Stars Above by Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles #4.5 [indicating a series add-on after book 4])
• For Darkness Shows the Stars by Diana Peterfreund
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Thanks for enduring through this streamy-of-consciousness post. Read some of these, though!
Happy reading!
~Citali

Thriftbooks.com: A Book(store) Review

Maybe you haven't guessed this yet, but I! Love! Libraries! So I'm usually not the one who, when a book gets recommended to me, says, "I'll go buy that!" Instead, I go, "I'll go put that on hold!" The last time I bought a book (before this) was the Iliad from a local bookstore. I had gotten it from the library, but let's be honest, I am definitely not going to finish the Iliad before I have to return it. Plus, it's a good book to own. At said bookstore, the Iliad was pretty expensive (though it pretty much always will be $20+ from any store.) And, well, this was a book I wanted to own. I'm still getting through it, but I think it was worth owning. I'll come back to it, someday, I'm sure. Many times.

While browsing the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" (Thank you, Willow and Obi-Wan Kenobi) of online, though, I came across a reference for the website thriftbooks.com. It does what it sounds like: sells books. Used ones. Cheaply. It's cited a lot as a good place to buy textbooks, which makes a lot of sense. The new books on here are pretty much the bookstore price, that is more than Amazon or other cheap e-retailers. But used books are almost crazily inexpensive.

And the first thing I saw was the Odyssey! Let me emphasize this: for Three. Fifty. Nine. I'm sorry, but that is one-seventh of the price if you bought it new. Almost nowhere, internet or otherwise, will someone let you have a copy of the Odyssey for that amount. Boom. I see why this site has such a good name.

After some browsing and some dithering, I end up with three purchases: The Odyssey, Artemis Fowl, and Fangirl. Which is a lot! More than $25. I'm excited to get these. The Thriftbooks website is, I think, well designed, considering how crazy their inventory must be. They've got a wishlist for saving books they don't have copies of at the time/yet, and their emailing is impeccable, with coupon codes and notifications. I have summer reading this summer, and I need to annotate my books, so I might be returning here again. While their blog is a teense threadbare, there is an extremely interesting video about their process.

Beyond the crazily inexpensive books, they do have lots of deals going on. There's a "Thrift Deal" for certain (a lot of different) books in acceptable condition, with 3 for $10. If you buy $10 worth of books, you get free 4-14 day shipping. And there are emailed coupon codes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My books were coming from three different places yet arrived all in a span of three days. The shipping estimate is 4-14 days; these books came in 9-10, so the estimate was correct.

The first arrivals were a new copy of Fangirl and the Acceptable-rated copy of the Odyssey. Thriftbooks reps their recycled packaging a lot: this is what it looks like. New books come in cardboard  boxes; used books come in branded pouches. They shipped well and I can't say too much went wrong. However, just remember that when buying used books to check ratings!

The acceptable Odyssey looks like this: highlighting, penciled annotations. That fits the Thriftbooks quality rating, so it's my fault for not checking up with that. It's readable, of course, just definitely different from a new book. I might buy a new copy later if erasing the annotations doesn't work, just because this is a classic I very well may reread and not an airplane novel paperback. 

No substantive comments on the Fangirl copy, mostly because a new book is a new book. No defects, I suppose. Thriftbooks new books don't come from the same warehouses, but from a different supplier. 

The next day arrived the Very Good-rated copy of Artemis Fowl. A Very Good book looks pretty much new inside. The spine is a little battered, but since I'm a reader who cracks new books intentionally before reading, this meant this copy was as good as new to me. Someone pickier might be bothered, but not me.

Verdict? I'll be shopping here for textbooks/English books in the future: books that will have a price advantage between new (Amazon, Barnes & Noble) and used. I like the quality of the Very Good rated books, so I'll shop for those specifically. Shipping's free for media mail, so to take advantage of that I'd be not ordering anything too urgent. Rating? 4.5/5.

Happy reading!
~Citali