Selena (Life of a Random) > Recent Status Updates

I came in with high expectations and for the most part A Deadly Education is meeting them! A dark and deadly school ✔️ magic ✔️ grumpy x partially cloudy day ✔️

I've totally been sucked into this book by a school in a void that tries to take its students out every chance it gets and the students that live in its walls.

Full disclosure: I did watch a few episodes of the anime before I started reading the manga. And the basic plot is the same of course, but the presentation is so different that it's not boring seeing it happen again. It's like watching stop motion, so it's more intense from scene to scene.

The extra detail put into the characters and little cut scenes is very cool too.

I have been soooo bad about reading books and then getting distracted halfway through and never coming back. and I hate it! But I'm going to try to do better this year.

I finally finished this! Yippee

It's kind of sad that this is taking me multiple borrows from the library to finish this lol.

But some first some realizations:
- I am not a huge fan of present tense novels
- verbose descriptions have their place and their place is not every other page

Also tho:
- I did like this book quite a lot when I first started, the vibes were nice, and it was kinda cute
- and I do love how much it talks about food

Not gonna lie. This is pretty cute, and the banter definitely helps.

Pride & Prejudice vibes + add a little ✨spice✨

I'm loving how the plot of this book works backwards (usually I don't but it works). We start out with a romantic, breathtaking encounter and then we time skip to a marriage in ruins, a couple disillusioned with each other, 5 years down the road.

It's an anti-romantic romantic book. And I love it.

I picked this up at my local Goodwill for only 3.27!!!!

I vaguely remembered hearing about and maybe reading some anonymous letters from this Tumblr blog from 2015 (called Dear My Blank).

There's something about reading others peoples' troubles and joys and feeling not better, but more human.

As always, Kleon's words hit home on every page. There's something about the raw, unrefined art and clear, honest words that is so digestible and never fails to teach me something.

I also really love the way that he manages to connect tidbits of wisdom from the randomest sources that you would never imagine could be used for a creative audience.

This book sounds like it could be really informative about segregation by law, but I'm not good at maintaining an attention span for non-fic so i rly rly hope I can push through. ^^

looove the art style on this one.

I'm doing it!

Sadly, I'm still not really getting into this 😬

There's way too much explanation and jokes that aren't really funny (of course imo). I feel like dialogue is forced and the character reactions seem a little Too Much.

I really wish this was hitting different for me!

Any NA recs, bookies? I'm trying to spread my wings here as far as book genres go, and I don't really know how to get into the genre.

Preferences:
- not a lot of sex/sex being the main thing
- no teacher/student vibes

That's all I can think of now. I really just want the range of YA but for an older audience.

I'm slowly making my way through this book...I'm not sure if it's because I'm not necessarily in the mood for contemporary right now or because there's way to much describing-of-events-and-emotions right now as opposed to showing.

I'm using that method I mentioned before though with randomly bookmarking ahead and reading to the end of the chapter of that spot. I think it's helping!

This dude just told the main character to say "Gray, with respect, go fuck off," if she needs space & that's the relationship dynamic I aspire towards.

Saw this advice for getting over reader's block on tik tok where you just put a bookmark at a random spot ahead of where you are in the book, and you have to read to the end of the chapter that the bookmark falls in.

I think this might be perfect for me as someone who loves mile markers to work towards & always gets things done faster in small chunks

"If you want a happy ending that depends, of course, on where you stop your story." - Orson Welles

My favorite quote in the last few chapters that were on not being ashamed of being an artist and also making money and keeping momentum to achieve success

favorite thing - learn to take feedback but filter feedback too. this is ultimately your space.

(typical selena put off reading & now has to wait 3 weeks to finish the last 30% of this fricking book)

favorite things from this reading session:
- "you're only as good as your record collection" -- DJ Spooky
- no self-editing
- become a better storyteller

I'm loving this book so far. Kleon gets his point across so clearly but also in such a fun, personal way.

My favorite quote so far - "You can't find your voice if you don't use it."

This honestly has been such an interesting read, as it has a Church vs. Heathen angle that i haven't read before. It's weird to me how much more like a propagandist regime (am I using that right?) Christianity appears in this pov.

Like, I personally, see it like that. But it becomes Obvious when viewed from the oppressed side. If the names weren't there, who would you root for? type-of-deal

I'm finally getting to this!!!!

It's been so so good so far, and I'm falling in love with the characters and Holly Black's beautiful words all over again.

I'm really enjoying this book! It's doing an amazing job of tackling the changing and metamorphosis of your teen/young adult years. I love all the book references on femininity and diversity that are included. I'm so happy also that the mc's family supports her through her experience with her teacher.

This is the only kind of book I used to read when I was like 12-14, so I'm hoping this will be a nice change of pace