A Little Detour

Hey, everyone!

I know. It's been two months and I'm a terrible person. From now on, I'm not going to make any promises. It's just not gonna work, let's be honest here.

So, anyway, I went to The Ian Potter Centre gallery thing for my art class today and it was so much fun. I found so many interesting stuff and fortunately I snapped some of them. So I'm going to show you a little of those now.

This is the first thing I saw when I came in. It's quite fascinating and kind of reminds me of home. I miss home.

Cool Glasses and Funky Overalls

HIIIII!! I broke my promise. Again. It's no surprise, really. I'm just THAT bad at keeping up with my posts. Once again, I am so, very sorry for this "once in a few months posts" routine going on in this blog. I will probably keep saying that in the next few years. Maybe forever. I don't know. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I was in my hometown a month ago, and I looked into our old album drawer. You know, nostalgia and stuff. After I dig in a little bit deeper, I found some photo of baby and toddler me. I love to look at my friend's photos when they were little, so I thought, why not share some of mine too? Here goes!

Changes

Heya! I'm back! Told you I will catch up on my blog posts.

So, as you may already see, I changed my template. I just want a more simple and cleaner look for this blog.  I chose white as the base color and very dark grey for the text so that you can see the pop of color in the posts or sidebar more clearly. As you can see, there are still a lot of clutters from the older theme. Sorry for that. I'm still figuring out how to work with the HTML. There is a little bit of an error going on in the settings, so it will probably take a while before I am completely satisfied with the way my blog looks. I also still need to arrange the placement of everything, so don't freak out if you see anything moving from its former place or something. I promise I will work on it soon. I already told Google about my problem. Hopefully they will help me figure out what's going on.

Also, I'm going on a vacation with my family next week, so you won't see me in the next week or so. It's been a long time since I met my family. I miss them so much. Gonna have a lot of fun with them. Gotta be exciting seeing them again after half a year.

Life's been a little bit easier without school stress and everything related to it, so, yeah, I guess it's nice. I also have to keep up my reading because my goal for this year is 40, but I really want to at least reach 50. I mean, forty's good enough, but I read that much last year and I want to read more this year.

So, yeah. That is all I have to say. I apologize if the current situation of my blog hurts your eyes. It will be better, I promise. Bye!

5 Series I Really Want To Start

It's June. What?! It means that I haven't post anything in three months! THREE FREAKIN' MONTHS! WHAT?!

(Okay, enough with the exclamation marks. Let's get on with the actual post.)

Hey, guys. Long time no see! How is it going? 2013 treating you great so far? Mine's fine, not that horrible (yet). I can't believe we're almost halfway through the year. And this is only my third post of 2013. I'm a terrible person, I know. I'm so sorry. The "post regularly" resolution is not going well, I see. School's been taking up my time. What more can you expect? I'm done with school now, though, so I guess there should be more post coming up in the next few months. *crossing fingers*

My Favorite Youtuber + A little update

Hi, hi, hi! It's been more than a month since the last time. Where does time go? I didn't even post anything last month. Why? I don't know either.

Just a little update of what I've been doing recently. I only finished three books last month. That is not really good compared to January. (I read 9 books!) I also have quite a bit of exams last month, so I don't have much spare time. I have mid-semester exam this month, so might not be able to post that much, too. I am currently reading The Throne of Fire by Rick Riordan. It is the sequel of The Red Pyramid, which I liked. A lot.

Okay, now let's talk about my favorite youtuber. I think every single time I open my laptop, there is no time that I do not open YouTube. It is basically my social life. Well, other than Tumblr. Whenever I check my subscription, there gotta be some people that I wait for the most. And when they appear, I jump around before clicking on it. So, here are some of my favorite youtuber. Oh, I'll also feature my favorite video of them. Enjoy!

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: A Review

Title: Cinder
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends
Series: The Lunar Chronicles #1
Release Date: January 3, 2012
Pages: 390 (Paperback)
Source: Purchased
Rating: ★★★★½

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . 

Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

This book is such an awesome sauce. It is now officially on the top three of my favorite books of all time.OH MY GOSH IT'S SO GOOD!

Anyways, this is a retelling of Cinderella, hence the title, except that she is a cyborg. It's weird, I know, but it works. She has these cool stuff in her system which tells her informations about the things she sees and she could tell if someone is lying and many other awesomeness. The story is set in New Beijing which is like Beijing but new, because it's in the future. She has two step sisters, Pearl and Peony. She also has this little android friend named Iko which has a little bit of a malfunction in its system. Cinder and Iko have a booth in a market where she fixes things because she is the best mechanic in town.

So, in this society there is a plague. It kills people in practically just a matter of days. Then one day, her sister, Peony, got the plague. Cinder was blamed by her step mother and other step sister for Peony's illness because she was with her when she got it. So her step mother shooed her away from their apartment and let the government "have" her. Turns out, Cinder was not so ordinary after all. (I mean, despite the fact that she is a cyborg.)

I love Meyer's writing style. It just flows really nicely and I almost literally could not put it down. It sucked me in almost immediately. There's just so much happening in just 390 pages. It was an insane adventure. The plot is really interesting, I mean, Earth people associating with people from the moon? How awesome is that? You also got this really cool world where everything is futuristic, but also oriental. Does that make sense? That's the way I picture it in my head.

The characters are really great. Our main character, Cinder, is really easy to relate to. She's a really great main character. She's really determined to find the cure to the plague. To cure her sister. Then she met Prince Kai, who is basically every girl's dream. He came to her booth one day and asked her to fix his "very important" android. One day accidentally they meet again and Cinder developed a crush on him. The romance gradually developing because they're not like "You're the one for me. Let's make out." kind of thing. I mean they're friends and their friendship is valuable to each other. That's a nice thing.

Then we have the step mother who just hates Cinder. Cinder is like a pain in the ass for her. But really, her income comes from Cinder's mechanic ability so she can't really get rid of her. I just don't like her, but at the same time, I sympathize her. I understand why she did the things she did. But I don't see that much of character development on the other step sister.

We also have the moon people, or as they call it, The Lunars. Most of them are very hateable (is that even a word?). They are described to be really beautiful, but their beauty comes from the "Glamour". So basically, you see them the way they want you to see them. They have this ability to control minds, like making you think what they want you to think, stuff like that. They have a queen called Levana, and she just wants to rule the world, basically. I hate her. I really do.

The reason I didn't give this book five stars is that it's really predictable. Every plot twist, I could get them correctly. But the thing is, even though I could predict what's going to happen, I kept on reading. Because I want to see how it happened. And I got it right. And I still like it.

I highly recommend this book. It's really great. I cannot wait to get my hands on the second one which will come out in February. I'm so excited! And also you could read the prequel to this book called Glitches for free. JUST CLICK HERE. It's set around six or seven years before Cinder, so if you want to check it out, go ahead and do that.

I think that's it for this review. I'm still learning how to not make it so jumpy and weird. I hope you have a nice day! Rizka, out.