The End of an Era

Hello there! If you are here looking for a new post from me, you aren't going to find one. I've decided it's time for me to leave this blog, for a few reasons.

1) I've had this blog for a long time, and it's kind of starting to feel cluttered to me.

2)I've hit a period of great change in my life and I think that deserves a new blog.

3)It's a pain in the butt logging out of my email every time I want to publish a new blog post because blogger and gmail decided they had to be integrated.

If you'd still like to keep up with me, my new blog can be found here.

It's been real!

Lisa

Things I'm Afraid Of

Alternately titled "What Distance Does"

113 miles.
2 and a half hours.
One girl.
Gone.
Visits occasionally.
Not enough.
One year.
Summer break.
Needs less.
Needed less.
"We should hang out."
We won't.
Visits school.
New Students.
Visits work.
New employees.
Visits friends.
New friends.
Slowly.
Maybe.
Inevitable.
Maybe.
Tragic?
Yeah.

The Tangled Web We Weave

So I promise I have a point to this blog post and I swear I'm going to get there, because for a little bit here this might sound like a girly rant. Hang in there with me. It'll be worth it.

As a girl, I have had crushes on guys since at least middle school. And I've noticed in recent years that my crushes tend to end pretty badly. Not because something happens between me and those people, but because something happens within myself that makes everything rather unpleasant.

The first thing I've noticed is that I have a very active imagination. And in that, I can start to turn the person I have a crush on into someone they're not. When I do that, I begin having a crush on my idea of that person, and not the person himself. And that's obviously an issue, because then the person is not what I want and I've sort of made them an idol. And we all know that's no good.

The other thing that I'm just recently figuring out is this; along with having a very active imagination, when I have a crush I begin to have hopes and expectations of closeness with the person on whom I place my affection that are absolutely ridiculous. Because obviously, person-I-have-a-crush-on, you know, has absolutely no idea that I like them (or at least that's how I try to keep it. For whatever reason.) This in turn has two by-products. Firstly, I feel like I start to get weird and desperate and I sort of hate myself when I do that. Secondly, when those expectations are inevitably unfulfilled, because they always are, I get disappointed and start to think that said person doesn't even like me as a person and I become very insecure. And that's a very unhealthy thing. Because it's then that my self-worth becomes wrapped up in someone who is not myself nor God and that isn't where I should be placing my worth as a human being.

Now this is where I get to the part where I actually make a point. It's really important for me to tell other girls these things that I have dealt with because to be honest it just really sucks.

So to other girls out there:
Your worth is not based upon how other people see you, even (especially) the person you like.
Don't think a guy doesn't like you because they don't change the way they act towards you when you start liking them.
Don't spend your time analyzing how they act towards you; I guarantee they aren't thinking it out as hard as you are.


And just in case I haven't said it clearly enough yet

You are not worthless because a certain guy doesn't like you. You do not become more worthwhile if they do. You are worth more than diamonds because God says you are and He created you and He loves you and He will never. Stop. Loving. You.


Stay fabulous,
Lisa

Lisa Reviews: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

"Cath is a Simon Snow fan. Okay, the whole world is a Simon Snow fan... but for Cath, being a fan is her life - and she's really good at it. She and her twin sister, Wren, ensconced themselves in the Simon Snow series when they were just kids; it's what got them through their mother leaving.
Reading. Rereading. Hanging out in Simon Snow forums, writing Simon Snow fanfiction, dressing up like the characters for every movie premier.
Cath's sister has mostly grown away from fandom, but Cath can't let go. She doesn't want to.
Now that they're in college, Wren has told Cath she doesn't want to be roommates. Cath is on her own, completely outside of her comfort zone. She's got a surly roommate with a charming, always-around boyfriend; a fiction-writing professor who thinks fanfiction is the end of the civilized world; a handsome classmate who only wants to talk about words... and she can't stop worrying about her dad, who's loving and fragile and has never really been alone.
For Cath, the question is: Can she do this? Can she make it without Wren holding her hand? Is she ready to start living her own life? And does she even want to move on if it means leaving Simon Snow behind?"

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Actually, more than that. I was ecstatically surprised, if that's a thing. It's been a long time since I've read a book that was so good I couldn't put it down, and I honestly was not expecting this to be one of them. My hopes for this book were slim and none, but I decided to give it a try anyway; mostly because it seemed like everywhere I turned, there it was.

I think the title is what threw me off, because I honestly had no idea what the book was about before I read it. But the fact that it was called "Fangirl" gave me the impression that it was going to try too hard. The world of a fangirl is unjustifiably elitist and slightly hipster-ish and any book that inserts itself into this realm is going to make me nervous because odds are it's going to be cringey and awful.

My hopes were low.

Grand Canyon low

Bottom-of-the-ocean low

Dead Sea low

You get the picture. Needless to say, I was shocked when I blasted through one hundred pages in about an hour.

This story can best be described as a "coming-of-age story" as much as I hate the term (How do you come of age? Of what age are you coming? Do you just magically become an adult when you come of age?). And, aside from what the blurb on the inside flap leads you to believe, it's a story about relationships.

Cath Avery is a little bit like me. She sits in her room and writes a lot and drinks tea and owns a lot of sweaters. Unlike me, she writes a very successful fanfiction about the popular Simon Snow series (reminiscent of Harry Potter) that gets tens of thousands of hits every day. She used to write it with her twin sister, until they went to college and all Wren seemed to do was go to parties and get wasted with her roommate Courtney. And unlike what I was afraid of, she has a personality that is more than just her sweaters and nerdy-ness. She has trust issues because of her mom leaving when she was in third grade. She is fiercely protective of her father, who is never actually diagnosed in the book but is a little bit crazy and often buries himself in his work so much that he forgets to do normal things like sleep and do laundry. She is very mature, always making food for her dad and her sister and making sure they are taken care of.

Almost every other character in the book surprised me. Reagan, Cath's weird roommate, isn't exactly as she originally seems. She's big and scary and Cath thinks she hates her. And she never does get completely pleasant, but she and Cath become friends. They take care of each other even though they are so different. Reagan is still scary but she has a personality and isn't just big-scary-character who serves no purpose. Nick, a guy in Cath's fiction-writing class, surprises you in ways I won't say because that would totally spoil it. Professor Piper is someone you would expect to turn into a mother figure, but her relationship with Cath turns out to be different and nuanced. Levi is... well.. Levi is actually exactly how he seems when Cath meets him. And that's wonderful.

Also, this book is a romance. And a well written one. I was just about dancing for joy when I realized Cath getting the guy wasn't the end goal of the book. The relationship started about halfway through, and it started rocky. The relationship had its weirdness and awkwardness and I just wanted to praise the heavens for sending Rainbow Rowell to earth to demonstrate that romantic relationships take work and can still be good and lovely.(AND NO LOVE TRIANGLE!!!!!)

From a writing standpoint, this book had me happily sighing the entire time I read it. And sometimes saying "uck" because I wished I had thought of that sentence/phrase first. It is beautifully worded and completely believable. That was my favorite thing about the book. It was believeable. I could really believe that it was from the perspective of a scared college freshman. Which also resonated with me, as someone who is starting college this fall. But seriously, let's talk about the writing.

“Just … isn’t giving up allowed sometimes? Isn’t it okay to say, ‘This really hurts, so I’m going to stop trying’?”
“It sets a dangerous precedent.”
“For avoiding pain?”
“For avoiding life.”

Lastly, (well not lastly, but the last thing I'm going to talk about because this review is already too long) a thing I loved about this book was how honest it was about writing. In the beginning of the second half of the book, Cath talks to Professor Piper about a project she had trouble on.

"'When I'm writing my own stuff, it's like swimming upstream. Or... falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.'
'Yes' the professor said, reaching out and grasping the air in front of Cath, like she was catching a fly. 'That's how it's supposed to feel.'"

This book acknowledges the thing that no one ever seems to talk about; that writing is hard. It isn't all fun and games no matter how much you love it. You're going to get stuck and drop plot points and make character mistakes and get writers block and want to cry. And that's okay! That's what second drafts are for. And third and fourth and fifth. And it's never going to be perfect, and you have to accept that too, and accepting that is hard. Especially if you're a perfectionist, which I think most writers are.

Overall, I'd give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars. It was an easy read, a brilliant narrative, and a fantastic romance (Like. FANTASTIC.) There were a couple of weak spots, like how sometimes the Simon Snow excerpts got a little long and how she sort of dropped the ball on the exploration of letting things go. But it was beautifully written and explored all relationships, not just romantic ones.

So, I now have to get over my very large book hangover before I can move on.
Darn you Rowell and your gorgeous writing skills.

Lisa



(ppssstttt. This is my 100th post! Woah!)