That New 'Heroes of Olympus' Book

This is awful! There are so many people in the library waiting list for The Blood of Olympus. I am never going to be able to read it... Unless...

If anyone from my Eleanor Roosevelt school who is reading this right now has a copy and they are willing to let me borrow it, I will be eternally thankful to them.

If not, I will have to suffer through 256 more people checking out the library system's copies, reading them, letting them get overdue, and then returning them. Yes, 256. 

Ooh... I could buy it myself! I wanted to do that with The Book Thief, but once I decided on that, every single copy I could have bought vanished. Just vanished. It's not fair.

But until then, all this waiting might kill me. (Not really.)

The problems of today's world are really... strange?

100 Views

Oh my gosh, I got 100 views on this blog.

That means that, in all the history of this blog, it has been looked at 100 times by people who are not me!

That's all.

Good bye.

Books Being Turned Into Movies

If the filmmakers do a bad job of it, I usually tend to explode.

Here are my opinions on a few books that have been turned into movies:

The Lord of the Rings trilogy

These ones were surprisingly good. The people who made them didn't change too much, and I suppose what they did change was OK. I do understand that you simply can not make a series like Lord of the Rings into a series of movies without changing some things. I will give the whole thing a 4 out of 5.

The Hobbit soon-to-be trilogy

An Unexpected Journey was good, aside from the fact that they added a character who wasn't supposed to still be alive at that time. (That would be Azog, the orc dude.) It gets a 3.5.

The Desolation of Smaug was a lot worse. For one, Legolas shouldn't have been there. And then the whole romance thing with that elf lady and the dwarf... Just thinking about it makes me puff up indignantly. It was so ridiculous and un-Tolkien that I wish I could write to whoever thought of making it up. I doubt they'd care, though. They're too preoccupied with all the riches that unsuspecting Hobbit fans have paid to see the movie, only to be disappointed. The Desolation of Smaug gets a 2.

Unfortunately, because of The Desolation of Smaug, I don't have high hopes for whichever Hobbit movie comes next. The fact that I don't know what it's called is bad news. What's really sad is that An Unexpected Journey was actually pretty good.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

I haven't seen any of these yet, so I can't rate them personally, but everyone I've talked to says they're horrible. I tried to be open-minded until my brother looked up what all the characters looked like. I couldn't recognize any of them. That was absolutely terrible! My hopes are completely dashed and now the only reason why I want to see any of these is so that I can laugh at them.

The Hunger Games

Aside from The Princess Bride, this has got to be the best book-into-movie adaption I have ever seen. Yes, they messed up the Mutts and some other stuff, but the other details made up for it. They captured the overall feel I got when I read the book perfectly. That is pretty darn amazing. To get the best out of The Hunger Games, I would advise that someone read the book first, then see the movie. They both build on each other in a really cool way, so you get a lot of details from seeing the movie that you don't get when you only read the book. The Hunger Games actually gets an 4.5.

The Princess Bride

OK, here is the best movie-into-book adaption. Actually, that's not exactly true. The movie is better than the book, in my opinion. That's unheard of! How extraordinary! But it's true. The book was OK, but it couldn't quite beat its own movie. I find that incredibly amusing. The movie gets a 3.5 because I didn't like the romance.

The Harry Potter series

It was all or nothing for Harry Potter. Certain things they did amazingly, like Snape, but other things they completely bombed, like Winky. Winky was very important, but she wasn't in the movie. I scoff at that. The filmmakers also changed a lot of similar stuff, so other things were nothing like how I imagined them to be, which I found sad. Still, I suppose they did the best they could. By the way, I have only seen the movies up to The Order of the Phoenix, so my ratings aren't entirely complete. Overall I'll give this series a 3.5.

Book Review - The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Look. I wrote a book review. I've already posted it on two different blogs, so what the heck? Might as well post it on my own blog too.

Before I do anything else, I have to say this: The Book Thief is now one of my favorite books ever. Yes, it's up there with The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, and Ender's Game. If you know me in real life and you've gotten me to talk to you about books, you'll know that I like those about as much as it is possible to like a book, at least without being creepily obsessed. I loved this book so much that my standards for other books have gone way up. It will be really hard from now on for another book to affect me the way this one did.

An overview: The narrator is Death, and the story follows a young German girl named Liesel as she and her foster family work through the trials of life during World War II. Liesel's stand-in father is far from being a model German citizen, which causes a fair amount of suspicion. That's when a Jewish man shows up at their home seeking refuge. Liesel's family hides him in their basement, and soon every day becomes a little war of their own. Liesel does, as the title would suggest, steal books. That is something that will come in very handy later on. (Ooh, dramatic foreshadowing...)

Now, why I liked the book: It was really beautiful, even when things happened that couldn't have been beautiful if The Book Thief had been written in a different way. The voice of the narrator is a purely unique one, and I have never read something that was written so beautifully without it turning into meaningless prose. I remember things I read in The Book Thief every day, like all the different colors of the sky, and a lot of other small things.

Oh, yes, I have to add a note about the narrator. Yes, the book is written like Death is telling it. No, a book narrated by Death is not going to read how you are probably imagining it will. At least, not when that book is The Book Thief. Death's being the narrator is a big part of why the story technically worked so well. Also, the wording is incredibly creative. Death is constantly placing words where you wouldn't have previously thought they would fit in that innocent-yet-not-innocent way, if that makes any sense. The result is truly lovely.

After all this praise, I must also include this disclaimer: The Book Thief is about World War II, and certain parts of the story are kind of weighty, so I definitely wouldn't advise handing it to your nine-year-old little sister or something. This book is obviously aimed at more mature audiences. This is not what you're looking for if you currently want a lighthearted book. But then again, only reading lighthearted books would be just like only eating ice cream at every meal and nothing else. If you're only ever going to read one serious book, The Book Thief should definitely be the one. (I really hope this disclaimer didn't discourage anyone from reading The Book Thief. It is a truly beautiful book.) 

I haven't read any of Zusak's other books, but if they're as good as The Book Thief, I think I'll just have to go cry someplace from the awesomeness.

NaNoWriMo Survival Tips

This year, I am planning on writing 60,000 words for NaNoWriMo. If you're thinking "Gee, that's a lot of words!" then you are right. That is a lot of words. This year is going to be the year that I finally step up to the plate and write a full-length novel! Last year I wrote a meager, small, minuscule amount of words because I did not have these handy dandy survival tips that I just made up. I did something very bad instead:

I never locked my Inner Editor up.

*Insert dramatic music here.*

No, seriously, that's a big thing in the NaNoWriMo universe. If you don't lock that Inner Editor up, writing will not be fun and the results will eternally look like poop to you. Yes, I just said that. (Certain People *coughGabrielcough* will appreciate it.) So enough with talking about these amazing survival tips! On to the useful stuff:

1: Just write. Don't worry about editing. In fact, don't even re-read what you have written. This is National Novel Writing Month, not National Novel Typing-a-Few-Words-and-then-Frowning-and-Deleting-Them Month. December is the time for going crazy and fixing everything. November is just when you take the story ideas out of the depths of your soul and dump them untidily on the page. Well, OK, you probably don't want to go that far, but I'm sure you get my point.

2: If you celebrate Halloween, use that Halloween candy to your advantage. Don't just eat it all on November 1st and feel guilty later. I have found that using chocolate as a bribe or reward for myself is very effective. Very, very effective indeed.

3: If you like kittens and think seeing adorable pictures of them is a good reward, use Written? Kitten!, which is a website that keeps track of the number of words you have written and shows you an adorable picture of a baby cat every time you complete 100 or 200 or 500 etc. words. I love cats. I love writing. Therefore I love that website.

4: Just read Survival Tip No. 1 again. It's the most important one by far.

5: PROCRASTINATION IS YOUR ENEMY. It nearly killed me last year. Don't do it. Just... don't.

(By the way, I'm exaggerating. I didn't nearly die of procrastination last year. At least, not NaNoWriMo-related procrastination... [Ha... ha ha...])

6: The forums are your friends. They are filled with people that are going through the same things you're going through, so they can give you advice. Plus, they're fun to mess around on when you're supposed to be obeying Survival Tip No. 5.

So, that is my advice for surviving NaNoWriMo. :) Happy Unbirthday! (Unless it really is your birthday, in which case I wish you Happy Unbirthday tomorrow.)

NaNoWriMo YWP

No, I haven't gone completely insane. The title of this post is a real thing. Starting on the first of November, a bunch of eccentric kids (like yours truly) are all going to write novels. That's right, we're going to write novels. If it sounds interesting to you, then keep reading! I'll bet you, whoever you may be, could write a novel if you wanted, too.

An Overview

I should probably tell you more about what NaNoWriMo is. NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is a really neat online program that takes place during the month of November, during which people all over America make time in their daily lives to accomplish the daunting and heroic feat of writing a book. The adult program, which is just NaNoWriMo without the YPW at the end ( YWP = Young Writers' Program) is for adults. The adults have to write 50,000 words. The people under 18 who do the Young Writers' Program can set their own goal, but if they prefer they can do the adult website. I am part of the YWP website. My username is StarWolf. If you're doing NaNoWriMo YWP too, feel free to add me as a writing buddy. If you're not doing NaNoWriMo and you want to try it, I highly encourage you to do so. It is a really cool experience.

Here is the link to the adults' NaNoWriMo program website: National Novel Writing Month

Here is the link to the Young Writers' Program: National Novel Writing Month (Young Writers' Program)