I have never been one to believe in horoscopes, although I find them interesting. The day to day predictions are most intriguing to me. "Jupiter has taken a turn for the worse, causing Neptune to get angry. Friends in your life will try to steal your money, but be careful. Your lucky number is 3052, and on a scale of 1 to 10, your day will be a 2.4."
I'm not trying to bash on anyone's serious beliefs, but horoscopes just weren't ever something I could really buy into. I remember in middle school I had a friend that seriously believed in the power of horoscopes, and one morning hers said she would hear unexpected good news. She assumed it meant her crush would confess his undying love and they would live together in middle school bliss. I promptly forgot about this horoscope and later that day dropped a note into her locker (which was quite common,) except I left it unnamed, planning on her being like, "Oh, is this from Andy or Cate?" Wrong. She had that horoscope on her mind, and upon realizing the note was from me, she was rather upset. I felt terrible for the remainder of that day, having hurt my best friend by forgetting about her horoscope and, in her mind, making a mockery of it.
Anyways, back to horoscopes. My birthday is March 2nd, so most of my life I've been a Pisces (I'm not sure if I've recently switched to Aries or something.) A quick Google search revealed these personality traits:
Imaginative and sensitive
Compassionate and kind
Selfless and unworldly
Intuitive and sympathetic
On the dark side....Escapist and idealistic
Secretive and vague
Weak-willed and easily led
Wow! Look at all of those things that describe me perfectly! It's almost like looking at a biography! The problem with these words is that, upon seeing them, it's easy to be like, "Oh, I can see how I am that!" However, when I was 8, I found a serious flaw in this logic. My sister, four years older than me, has a very different personality. Where I am an introvert, she's an extrovert. Where I worry, she has confidence. My brother is also completely different. He's funny and outgoing, but very practical and logical. Trisha's birthday is February 27th, and Dustin's is March 1st. We all have the same horoscope. So, those words apparently describe all of our personalities perfectly! Even 8 year old me knew that something wasn't right with that.
However, like fortune cookies, I will still always enjoy reading my daily horoscope and thinking about any slight chance of coincidental "truth" in it.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Fallen by Lauren Kate.
And the sequel, Torment.
As many of you know, my family is really into the show Jeopardy. We watch it together whenever we can. We play even if not all the family members are present, which means that when Dad is working late, I actually have a chance to win. (He's so fast at answering! It's infuriating!)
Anyways, you may have seen in the news that, at the beginning of this week, Watson played Jeopardy. Watson is a computer. Watson is also a total cheater and a jerk, but that's not the point. If you haven't seen the two shows with Watson, I recommend you watch them immediately. You will laugh, you will cry, etc. Well, after the Watson series was Teen Jeopardy. This is also fun to watch because teenagers have easier questions than adult Jeopardy. So I decided to watch Teen Jeopardy. And one category, Teen Novels, had a question about some book by Lauren Kate, saying in it the girl is in love with this being, and the answer was, "What is an angel?"
So, based on that clue I decided to give the book a try. I love reading, have my whole life, and specifically have a soft spot for children and teenager literature. Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Harry Potter are just a few of the series that I love. Some are classics, some are new. Many of the recent teen novels are terrible (take Twilight, for example,) while others are incredible, such as Harry Potter or Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras. I knew going into the read that there was a good chance this book would be terrible; however, I decided to torrent the book online and go for it.
So, I read the first book, Fallen. And then I read the sequel, Torment. And this is my review.
From a storyline point of view, everything except the actual plot aside, the story was lacking.
From a writing point of view, the story was poorly written, and descriptive in all of the wrong ways. Stories shouldn't have to tell you exactly what everything looks like in two sentences; appearances should be revealed carefully within the events.
From a religious point of view, the story is atrocious and butchers everything ever.
Honestly, the first book made me think of Twilight: an unimportant girl who gets caught up in some crazy supernatural love triangle, unable to make up her mind between two guys and being completely oblivious to everything. I also felt like the author took many of the elements of the first book and created meanings for them in the second book that didn't follow, as a way of trying to create a more lasting storyline. The book is also in no way timeless: it is very much set in 2009, with the characters dressing like punk goth kids in 2009. The author also attempts to create intrigue and mystery by announcing unexplained events early in the story, like that the main character, Luce, is sentenced to some sort of prison and we don't know why. However, it's done gracelessly, leaving the reader knowing exactly what the author is trying to do. The love story is supposed to be one of the greatest in time, but there is nothing about either of the love interests that seems lovable. Both are completely unbelievable at every point of the book.
The second book went downhill. It's first flaw is that it is based on Fallen, which already was a storyline on the brink of crumbling. However, it seemed like it wanted to be esque; where the first book made the fallen angels seem like a few people here and there, the second revealed a whole community of Nephilim, part angel people. Luce gets sent to a boarding school of Nephilim where she realizes she is famous, though she never knew it, and wants to be treated normally. How original. She also gets caught up in an entirely new love triangle! Oh joy! The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader asking, "....What?"
The third sequel of the four part series comes out in June. I'll let you know how it is.
As many of you know, my family is really into the show Jeopardy. We watch it together whenever we can. We play even if not all the family members are present, which means that when Dad is working late, I actually have a chance to win. (He's so fast at answering! It's infuriating!)
Anyways, you may have seen in the news that, at the beginning of this week, Watson played Jeopardy. Watson is a computer. Watson is also a total cheater and a jerk, but that's not the point. If you haven't seen the two shows with Watson, I recommend you watch them immediately. You will laugh, you will cry, etc. Well, after the Watson series was Teen Jeopardy. This is also fun to watch because teenagers have easier questions than adult Jeopardy. So I decided to watch Teen Jeopardy. And one category, Teen Novels, had a question about some book by Lauren Kate, saying in it the girl is in love with this being, and the answer was, "What is an angel?"
So, based on that clue I decided to give the book a try. I love reading, have my whole life, and specifically have a soft spot for children and teenager literature. Anne of Green Gables, Chronicles of Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, and Harry Potter are just a few of the series that I love. Some are classics, some are new. Many of the recent teen novels are terrible (take Twilight, for example,) while others are incredible, such as Harry Potter or Pretties, Uglies, Specials, Extras. I knew going into the read that there was a good chance this book would be terrible; however, I decided to torrent the book online and go for it.
So, I read the first book, Fallen. And then I read the sequel, Torment. And this is my review.
From a storyline point of view, everything except the actual plot aside, the story was lacking.
From a writing point of view, the story was poorly written, and descriptive in all of the wrong ways. Stories shouldn't have to tell you exactly what everything looks like in two sentences; appearances should be revealed carefully within the events.
From a religious point of view, the story is atrocious and butchers everything ever.
Honestly, the first book made me think of Twilight: an unimportant girl who gets caught up in some crazy supernatural love triangle, unable to make up her mind between two guys and being completely oblivious to everything. I also felt like the author took many of the elements of the first book and created meanings for them in the second book that didn't follow, as a way of trying to create a more lasting storyline. The book is also in no way timeless: it is very much set in 2009, with the characters dressing like punk goth kids in 2009. The author also attempts to create intrigue and mystery by announcing unexplained events early in the story, like that the main character, Luce, is sentenced to some sort of prison and we don't know why. However, it's done gracelessly, leaving the reader knowing exactly what the author is trying to do. The love story is supposed to be one of the greatest in time, but there is nothing about either of the love interests that seems lovable. Both are completely unbelievable at every point of the book.
The second book went downhill. It's first flaw is that it is based on Fallen, which already was a storyline on the brink of crumbling. However, it seemed like it wanted to be esque; where the first book made the fallen angels seem like a few people here and there, the second revealed a whole community of Nephilim, part angel people. Luce gets sent to a boarding school of Nephilim where she realizes she is famous, though she never knew it, and wants to be treated normally. How original. She also gets caught up in an entirely new love triangle! Oh joy! The book ends abruptly, leaving the reader asking, "....What?"
The third sequel of the four part series comes out in June. I'll let you know how it is.
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