Shannon > Recent Status Updates

I realize I haven't updated at all on this yet, but there hasn't really been anything to quote or mention since things are still in setup mode. I've been busy too (E3 week! Woot! I went to the Sony Press Conference last night and it was awesome! /fangirling)

Important note: I love Mae. It's always a good sign that I like Mead's female main characters because they're what drive the story. Justin ... we'll see.

I'm awful when it comes to reviewing (and even reading) NetGalley arcs. To this date I think I've sent in maybe 2 or 3? Awful, awful reviewer, I am. For some reason I just got auto-approved for Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd (and I'm ashamed to say I have no idea what they've published.) But yay, first auto-approval! I think this is really hard to get when you don't have a blog so I feel pretty cool! :D /shameless bragging

This shipped today so I'll have it in my grubby little hands tomorrow. I've been struggling with wanting to read adult novels for a while now and I think this will break me out of my slump. I'm super excited to read this even though the reviews are so up and down. I'm a fangirl, I'll admit it, and I give her way more slack than most people do because I love her characters to death. Seriously can't wait to start this!

Wtf, bird?

I like the style but I have no idea what the story is yet.

In case anyone was curious as to where I've been for the last week ... just got back from Alaska! The weather was awesome and I got to pan for gold and see glaciers and hold future Iditarod puppies!

But omg, now I have so many emails to get through ...

Not perfect like the first book, but still pretty adorable and fun. Batty is still my favorite character, with Hound following on her heels.

"Everyone is still asleep, Rosalind," she said. "And Hound and I want someone to talk to, so is it ok if we visit Ben?" Drowsily shoving Hound away, Rosalind checked her clock. It was before seven. "I don't think so, honey. Wait until later." "But I already looked in their kitchen window and Iantha invited me in, but I said I had to ask first. So now I asked. Good-bye." Lol. Batty is so cute.

"I have to begin years ago, with your mother. Do you older girls remember how stubborn she was? Skye, you inherited more than blond hair and blue eyes from her. Sometimes when you narrow your eyes and tip your chin a certain way, I–I miss her so terribly." Awww :'(

Jane closed the book and put it back on her bookshelf. She hated finishing one of her favorite books, because she knew she'd have to wait at least a few months before she could read it again. It was a rule she'd imposed on herself after reading The Various twice in one week–a disaster, like eating three large slices of chocolate cake at one sitting.

Even to her jaded eyes, her half of the room looked dreadful. She found herself closer to her desk, where the book she'd been reading The Exiles in Love, just happened to be lying open. I won't look at it until I've straightened up, she told herself, but somehow, she looked at it anyway, and soon she was sinking to her bed, lost in the story, which all too quickly came to an end. Ha, that happens to me too.

They all looked at Batty, who had finished the ginger cookies and was now digging crumbs out of her pocket and feeding them to Hound. "I say Daddy should date the lady next door, and then I could play with her baby." Something tells me Batty is going to be right all along.

That day she headed to what she called her Enchanted Rock. Though she was ten, all certainty of magic had not yet been squashed out of her, and she believed that if there was any at all in Massachusetts, it would be stored in that rock. Her sisters could know none of this–Rosalind was too old for magic adventures, Batty too young, and Skye had given up on magic the day she discovered long division.

Despite the best efforts by the best doctors, within a week hope ran out altogether. Elizabeth Penderwick had enough time to say good-bye to her husband and girls one unbearable evening, but only just enough. She died before dawn the next morning, with baby Batty nestled, calm and quiet, in her arms. T_T

Oh. Oh no. I don't know if I can handle this beginning. I forgot there were sad parts to the children's story :'(

Reading with Zahara! I have no doubt this won't be a fun read. Loved the first book and I'm excited to see what adventures the kids will get into next!

Seriously makes me want to get back into Jdramas all over again. I didn't realize how much I missed watching the silly dramas and the dramatic ones and the ones that made cry.

If you need any suggestions? Hana Yori Dango. Hana Yori Dango. Hana Yori Dango.

(I had a thing for Matsumoto Jun and Oguri Shun for a while ... pretty much watched anything they were in ... and they're both in that one! Watch it!)

"I was trying to push you away, messing with you in the courtyard. I almost couldn't go through with it. You'll think I'm such an asshole, but when I saw you—god. I couldn't get you out of my head. And then you climbed that tree and shouted my name. You weren't afraid of me. You didn't back down. You made me alive again, Katie. If I have to burn for that, then I'll light the damn match myself."

Swoon.

There's a saying in Japan, and it has to do with cherry-blossom viewing—hana yori dango. Dumplings over flowers. It basically means that someone should value needs over wants, substance over appearance. As in, make sure you have food and shelter before you burn money on something extravagant.

Aha! I knew this author had to have watched some Jdramas. This totally confirms it. Hana Yori Dango FTW!

I really am going to start blocking authors who don't read my profile. Before, yes, I allowed them to call my bluff and I just ignored their friend requests instead of outright blocking them, but now I've had enough. I am not a friend collector. I do not want you to spam me or ask me to review your book. And I KNOW you won't interact like a normal member, those are NOT your intentions. I've had enough, seriously.

I've seen everyone writing reviews for this over the last few days, but I stopped reading this on the last day of February and can't seem to make myself come back to it. I think it's because I just want Zeke to get eaten and go away already. I saw Amy compare Jackal to Damon Salvatore, and damn if that's not a spot-on comparison. Give me more of that.

Sookie Stackhouse ALERT!

"You might want to avoid her Facebook page or discussions about it for now. Apparently some readers who've gotten advanced copies are posting massive spoilers for how it ends and who Sookie ends up with."

I've been reading that series for 12 years now, if someone ruined the ending for me I'd ...

"Get away from the window, Yorick!"
"But who the hell is shooting at us, Mom? Terrorists?"
"Worse ... Republicans."

"Goddamn it, Ampersand! Stop it!"
"What the hell is an Ampersand?"
"You know, it's that curly symbol for "and." Like in Turner & Hooch or Tango & Cash."
"I know what an ampersand is, asshead! Why are you talking to one?"
"Because he's throwing his own shit at me!"

"Listen to me, Count. Please! It's--it's a story. It's just a story, man. It's not worth dying for!"
"Just a story? Tell that to the Greeks who fought at Troy, Tommy."
"Wh-what?"
"Tell the women burned as witches. The Rosenbergs. Sacco and Vanzetti. Tell the martyrs of all the religions and the millions who fell in all the wars since time began. Stories are the only thing worth dying for!"

You know, if I was a pervert this place would be a hotspot. My friend requests are full of cute girls! ^_^

(I swear I'm not a pervert ... well, not a COMPLETE pervert ...)

As researchers would discover in the 1970s, its creators misinterpreted the work of a German graduate student that was published in 1901; his experiments showed only that we might taste a little more sweetness on the tip of the tongue. In truth, the entire mouth goes crazy for sugar, including the upper reaches known as the palate.

We were taught LIES.

Forget what we learned in school from that old diagram the tongue map, the one that says our five main tastes are detected by five distinct parts of the tongue. That the back has a big zone for blasts of bitter, the sides grab the sour and the salty, and the tip of the tongue has that one single spot for sweet. The tongue map is wrong.

Some of the largest companies are now using brain scans to study how we react neurologically to certain foods, especially to sugar. They've discovered that the brain lights up for sugar the same way it does for cocaine [...] The world's biggest ice cream maker parlayed its brain research into a brilliant marketing campaign that sells the eating of ice cream as a "scientifically proven" way to make ourselves happy.

When consumers tried to improve their health by shifting to skim milk, Congress set up a scheme for the powerful dairy industry through which it has quietly turned all that unwanted, surplus fat into huge sales of cheese—cheese that is slipped into our food as an alluring but unnecessary extra ingredient. The toll, thirty years later: The average American now consumes as much as 33 pounds of cheese a year.