Book Review: The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis

ISBN: 0064471063
Published: 1994 (originally published 1954)
Publisher: HarperCollins
Read from June 30th to July 25th, 2012
Synopsis from Goodreads:

Shasta is a young boy living in Calormene with a cruel man who claims to be his father. One night he overhears his "father" offering to sell him as a slave, so Shasta makes a break and sets out for the North. He meets Bree, a talking horse who becomes his companion. On their way they encounter Aravis, a high-born girl escaping an arranged marriage, and her talking horse. Despite their differences the children and horses learn to work together to reach the freedom they long for. In the meantime, they uncover a Calormene plot to conquer Narnia.

Review:

I had a really hard time getting into this book.  It wasn't until about half-way through that I got really into it and just wanted to keep reading.  I'm not entirely sure why that is.  I think it's because of Aravis.  It was about when she showed up that I began liking the book more.  I also started to like Shasta's character more after Aravis appeared.  I don't know if that's because of his interaction with Aravis or for other reasons though.  I was reading this book in the car while driving to Florida, and my cousin Danielle said she'd tried reading the Chronicles of Narnia before and stopped at some point during this book because she got bored with it, so apparently I'm not the only one who didn't enjoy the beginning much.

I did come to love Shasta and Aravis though.  I know they appear in later books, and I can't wait to see them again.  I really enjoyed Hwin and Bree as well.  Athough Bree sometimes got on my nerves, I enjoyed his character development over the course of the book.

I also really liked Aslan in this book.  *SPOILERS* I knew all along that he was the cat that sat with Shasta at the tombs and the lion that hurt Aravis. I honestly didn't pick up on him being the first two lions they saw until he told Shasta later though.  Aslan in this book reminded me a lot of the footprints in the sand story.  When Aslan was walking up the mountain with Shasta and talking to him I kept thinking about that.

If you begin reading this book and aren't very interested in the beginning, then I recommend sticking with it at least until Aravis and Hwin enter the story.  It may actually be my favorite Chronicles of Narnia book now out of the three I've read, and I really enjoyed Shasta, Aravis, and Aslan's characterizations.

The Wedding and Not Posting Recently

I've been really slacking as far as blogging and filming videos goes.  I keep meaning to post both here and on Youtube, but we've just been too busy for it.  We started home today and will be home some time Tuesday. Then I'll be able to post more often.

We went to Florida for my cousin Brooke Adele's wedding, and it was a really neat wedding.  (It was country-themed.)  And I'm really happy for her, even though it's a bit of a shock that my younger cousin is now married.  I never really got a chance to talk to her new husband, but from what I know and saw he seems like a really nice guy.  I'm sure he'll be a great new addition to the family.

I'm going to keep this short.  I could talk about Florida more, but all the days kind of blend together, and I don't know what to say.  I probably won't post tomorrow, but I'll try to post Tuesday night after we get home.

Savannah, GA

I'm currently in a car in Georgia. We're on our way to Florida and my aunt and uncle's house. It's our third day in the car, and luckily our last.

I'm updating on my phone even though I'm using overage minutes now. This shouldn't use up too many. I've also forgotten how annoying this Blogger app is to type on.

We visited the Juliette Low Birthplace here in Savannah earlier, which was really neat. I was a Girl Scout for years, so it was cool to be in a place with so many Girl Scouts again.

We're leaving Tybee Island now, which was also a cool (although hot) place to visit. My sister Regina, cousin Danielle, and I got some friendship bracelets there.

I'm going to keep this short since this app is annoying, and maybe that'll help keep the data I use up lower. I'd been meaning to post for days, but was just too tired in the hotels. I thought I should take the time to update while in the car. Hopefully I'll update more frequently in Florida.

A Healing Mouth and Leaving for Florida

My mouth is definitely getting a lot better, which I am incredibly thankful for.  It hurt pretty badly when I woke up this morning, but sometime during mass this morning the medicine finally started working.  Then, I went up to communion, and my mouth started hurting again.  It only got worse when I ate lunch after church. Since then though, it's started feeling a lot better.  Right now it just feels a pretty stiff, but not all that sore, and that's saying a lot considering the medicine's pretty much wore off, and I I have to take another pill in about ten minutes.

The swelling is also down a lot.  It's actually not incredibly noticeable that my face is swollen when you look at me anymore.  I'm so glad it went down significantly before church this morning.  Hopefully it'll be even less swollen tomorrow, since that's when we're leaving for Florida.  Speaking of which...

Now I'm going to get into what I basically said on my Tumblr earlier this morning.  I'm leaving for Florida in the morning with my grandma, sister Regina, and cousin Danielle.  I plan on posting here while we're gone, but we'll see how it goes.  I'm sure the hotels we stop at on the way down will have wifi, and I'll always have my iPhone with me.  I hate the Blogger app, but I'll use it if I need to.  We're staying at my aunt and uncle's house in Florida, and I have no idea if they have wifi or not.  We'll see.  Even if they don't, I can still blog from my phone, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal.  The only problem I would really have is I wouldn't be able to upload or edit and Youtube videos while I'm there then.  I don't know how often I'll be posting while there, but I would expect at least a couple of posts.

Wisdom Teeth Pain and Larry Fangirling

I kept hearing that the third day after getting your wisdom teeth out was the worst as far as swelling and pain went.  So far I'm not finding that to be true.  Yesterday (my second day) my face reached it's peak as far as swelling goes, and when I woke up this morning, it was the same.  It's gone down as the day's gone on though, and it's noticeably less swollen (although that's not saying much since it was quite swollen before).  As far as pain goes, I'm also feeling much better than yesterday.  I'm still in some pain (particularly when the medicine begins to wear off), but it's no where near what I was going through yesterday.  The medicine is also still making me very sleepy, and just like the past couple of days, I tend to zone out quite a bit.  Writing posts like this is a bit hard because I either zone out or type something wrong with out realizing.  I'm still able to function somewhat close to normal, but the pain killers do make things a bit harder.  Hopefully I won't have to take them much longer.

I've also been getting these weird hot flashes the past couple of days, and I have no idea why.  It's a little strange and incredibly annoying.

I haven't done much today, although I have limited my time on Tumblr.  (I spent almost every minute of the past two days on Tumblr.)  It's hard to stay away now though because of all of the exciting Larry stuff that's happening!  I know that made no sense to anyone who's not a One Direction fan.  Basically, Larry is the name for the relationship between Harry and Louis, two members of the band.  They're best friends, but lately they haven't been acting like their normal selves.  It's a bit hard to explain without going into too much detail, and most people probably don't care anyway, so I'll just end the explanation there.  But today the two of them have decided to start acting just like they used to, so that means lots of fangirling is going on over on Tumblr.  They're just so adorable!  I'll try not to fangirl too much on here though.  That's basically what my Tumblr is for.

Anyway, I'm off to fangirl over One Direction and Larry some more!

Make New Friends, But Keep the Old. One is Silver, the Other is Gold

Since I'm going four hours away to college, I often wonder what my relationships with my current friends will be like after a while.  I'm honestly not too worried about staying close to my friends.  Two of my best friends already live in other places, and I don't get to see them often.  Plus, I have a small group of friends that it will be easy to stay in touch with.

One of my best friends, Katrina, lives hours away, and I only get to see her when she comes back to visit family.  We've been best friends since kindergarten.  For years we were horrible about keeping in contact, but whenever she came back here it was as if we'd never been separated.  Now, we actually keep in contact while we're apart, and it's still as if we've never been separated when she comes back.  I assume that will stay the same when I'm off at college.

My best friend Summer only lives half an hour away, but I've actually seen Katrina more recently than I've seen Summer.  This is for a number of reasons.  We were supposed to see each other recently, but those plans fell through.  We're still trying to come up with a way to see each other before college because both of us are going several hours away from home, and it's in opposite directions of each other.  Still, we talk almost every day, and she's still one of my closest friends.

My two closest friends that actually live where I do are Jordan and Haley.  I have a few other friends, but they're the only ones I talk to regularly.  They're going to a college less than an hour from our hometown while I go four hours away.  I'm pretty confident that we'll stay in contact with each other.  Summer and Katrina are great friends, but we have very few things in common.  Our friendships are basically based around the fact that we've known each other so long.  (I don't think that makes our friendship any less or more special, it's just a fact.)  On the other hand, Haley, Jordan, and I have a lot of shared interests that I'm sure will provide us excuses to talk to each other all the time through out the school year.  (And Haley and I have the One Direction concert next year to look forward to!)  I expect it'll be a lot like how my friendships with Summer and Katrina are now.

I look forward to making new friends in college, but I also plan on staying great friends with my old ones.  I've had some best friends in the past that I've grown apart from (the fact that Katrina and Summer are still there through all that makes me beyond grateful), and it was so hard on me to lose them as friends.  I don't plan on that happening again.  Even if I don't talk to them every day or even all that often, I plan on keeping in touch with them to at least some degree for a very long time.

And kudos to anyone who got the reference the title is making.  It's the first verse of a Girl Scout song that we used to sing at every meeting.

Day Before My Wisdom Teeth Are Removed

I get my wisdom teeth out tomorrow, and I've just spent about half an hour watching videos on Youtube of people after they got theirs removed, which definitely wasn't the greatest idea. I watched on video where a girl thought she was a unicorn.  I really hope that I don't wind up being that crazy.  I plan on filming a video about it, but I think I'm going to try and film later in the day when the medicine has hopefully worn off a bit (if I'm not in a lot of pain).  I may take my camera to have it right after, but if I do act crazy, I'm not sure I want to have it on the Internet.  We'll see.

Aside from the possible craziness though, the whole thing just makes me nervous.  I'm absolutely terrified of needles and blood.  My wisdom teeth haven't come up yet, so they're actually going to have to cut my gums open to take them out.  I'm terrified.  The idea of having stitches in my mouth scares me too.  I just am not at all looking forward to it.

In brighter news, I also get my new glasses tomorrow!  We're stopping by the eye doctor's before we go to the dentist.  At least that's one small thing to look forward.  Adjusting to new glasses and getting my wisdom teeth out the same day should be interesting.

Taking Books and DVDs to College

I have a month until I'll be moving into a dorm room, so I'm having to start thinking about what exactly I'll be taking with me.  As much as I'd like to take all of my books and movies, that's obviously not going to happen (especially books).  I'm debating buying all of the Harry Potter ebooks because taking all seven of my hardbacks to college wouldn't exactly be ideal.  I feel as if I need to take at least one of them with me though because they're my ultimate comfort book.  I know I'm going to be getting home sick, and I definitely need at least one Harry Potter book to open up and read when I'm feeling down.  I feel like it will probably be Sorcerer's Stone and/or Deathly Hallows that I take.  The same goes for the movies.  I'll need at least one of them to watch as well for whenever I'm feeling down, but I'm not so sure about which one or two I'll take.  I may even take all of those.

I'd also like to take The Hunger Games with me, and since they're smaller, I may actually take all of them with me.  Since the movie comes out on DVD the day after I move in to the dorm, I'll probably be buying it up in Indianapolis, so I'll have it with me.

Other than that I'm having a hard time deciding if I should bring other books that I've already read.  I have quite a few books I haven't read yet, so I want to take those along so I can read them.  I know if I start deciding between the other books, I'll want to take them all, but more to just have them.  I would almost certainly not be re-reading them any.  I just like having them there for comfort, although that might sound weird, so I'm not sure what I'll decide there.

Deciding on DVDs is a bit easier.  I want to take Beauty and the Beast and The Princess and the Frog, since those are the only Disney movies we own on DVD that are mine as opposed to the whole families'.  I may take at least one of the Twilight movies (probably Breaking Dawn Part 1) and one or both of my versions of Rent.  I plan on taking a couple of seasons of Little House on the Prairie and at least one season of Avatar.  I'd take all three seasons of Avatar, but my second and third seasons are in multiple volumes and that makes them harder to take all of them.  I also want to take at least one season of Friends, but I don't know if I can get one away from my sister.  The irony here is that most of them are mine, but my sister refuses to accept that and won't let me take even one with me to college.  Who knows what we'll work out there.

It'll be interesting to see what I end up bringing with me.

Videos, Comic Con, and Twitter

I haven't done a whole lot today other than read.  I've even managed to avoid Tumblr today.  Most of the day was spent reading fanfiction.  I did film two videos that will be up later though.  One of them is twenty minutes long, so I'm really hoping I can edit that down a lot.  The video is in the process of being uploaded to Youtube so that I can edit it on there, and it will no doubt take hours to upload because there's so much of it.  I'm determined to have both videos up tonight though, even if it means staying up really late to get them edited.  Hopefully, it won't take too long.

I had fun following along with what was happening at the Korra panel at Comic Con earlier.  There was some awesome stuff that we learned.  I can't wait for Book 2!  I won't say anymore because I tweeted about basically everything earlier today.  I may or may not make a whole blog post or video about it later though.  We'll see.

I also went through all of the people I was following on Twitter and unfollowed more than three hundred of them a while ago.  Most of the accounts I unfollowed were celebrities, role-play accounts, or companies.  I was following way too many, so I was trying to make it so that I could keep up with my timeline better.  I'm still following more than five hundred people though, so my timeline still moves pretty quickly, especially since many of the people I unfollowed hardly tweeted anyway.

I'm going to go read some more fanfiction while those videos upload.  Hopefully I'll have at least one of them up in the next couple of hours.  We'll see how long it takes.

Making Friends

Yesterday I found out who my roommate is going to be in the fall.  I still haven't contacted her.  It just makes me so nervous.  If I don't hear from her in the next couple of days, I'll send her an email, but I'm really hoping that she'll email me first.  It just makes me so nervous to think about emailing her.  We'll have to live together for a year, and I'm so awkward when I meet people for the first time.  I can only hope that things will go well.

It's going to be a bit hard for me to start from scratch making friends in college.  It took me a long time to make the select few close friends I had in high school.  I can only hope I'm better at making friends before my senior year in college.  I know I need to have courage and actually introduce myself to people.  In my head it seems so simple, but when I actually attempt to do it, I'm instantly filled with panic.  I'll try my best though, and hopefully everything goes well.

A Break From the 1D Drama

I slept in much later than normal today, but I think it was well deserved after my church's summer social yesterday.  I'm getting ready to edit a video I filmed yesterday after the social, so I won't talk about it much here, but it definitely wore me out.

I've just been having a lazy day (shocker) reading Harry Potter fanfiction.  I decided to take a break from Tumblr today and just set up a queue for the day.  I love One Direction, but all of the drama in the One Direction fandom really started getting to me yesterday.  There are always countless arguments going on, and I need a day away from that.  I'm not completely detached since I'm still seeing a ton of One Direction tweets on Twitter, but most of the One Direction Twitter accounts I follow stay away from a large portion of the drama.  I'm sure I'll be back on Tumblr tomorrow, but it's nice to take a break today.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, I'm getting ready to edit a video from yesterday, and then I think I'm going to go read some more Harry Potter fanfiction.  It's amazing how much you can get read when you're not glancing at Tumblr every five seconds.

Movies I'd Like to See

There are so many movies that have come out recently that I want to see but haven't.  This isn't a new problem by any means.  There are tons of movies that are out on DVD now, and I have yet to see even though I really want to.  For some reason I don't tend to watch that many movies even though there are always a lot that I want to see.  I hardly ever go to the movie theater.  (I think the last time I went to the movie theater was in March when I went to see The Hunger Games honestly.  Unless you count the drive-in, which I guess you can.)

Here are the movies that are out now that I really want to see:

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  This movie wouldn't normally interest me at all, but I want to see it for one reason: part of it takes place in the county I'm from.  Just from the the trailer you know that Lincoln's mom is killed by vampires in the movie instead of milk sickness (which was her actual cause of death).  Well, Lincoln's mom actually died here.  I've been to her grave (and the place they lived) a couple of times.  I seriously only want to see the movie because I find it interesting that it's extremely loosely based around something that is supposed to have happened right where I live.  That may be a somewhat stupid reason to go see the movie, but I want to anyway.  (Although maybe seeing a movie that talks about vampires being where I live isn't such a good idea...)

Brave.  I've heard a lot of mixed reviews for this movie.  For the most part people seem to like it, but they say it's not as great as they would expect a Pixar movie to be.  Either way I really want to see it.  I mean, it's Pixar.  Who wouldn't want to see it?  (Although, Up is still on my list of movies I want to see but haven't yet.  I usually feel like the only person in the world who hasn't watched it yet.)

Snow White and the Huntsman.  I haven't seen Mirror, Mirror yet either, but I really want to see both movies.  Snow White was never one of my favorite Disney movies, but I'd really like to see what both of these adaptations are like.  There extremely different from each other, which makes it even more interesting.

The Amazing Spiderman.  I'm not a comic book person.  In fact, the Spiderman movies are just about the only superhero movies I've ever watched.  I've only seen bits and pieces of others except for X-Men: First Class (which I only watched all the way through because my friend Ji wanted to).  I really want to see the Spiderman reboot though, since I actually enjoyed the Spiderman movies before it.

There are other movies in theaters right now that I'm kind of interested in seeing (especially Ted), but those are the ones that I want to see the most at the moment.  Knowing me I'll probably get around to watching them years from now...

Tumblr's Taken Over My Life

I haven't blogged (except for a book review that was really a video) in over a week.  There's just been absolutely nothing happening here.  The only thing remotely interesting that's happened this past week was going over to my grandma's along with my brother and some of my cousins on Thursday, but I spent almost the entire time I was at my grandma's on my computer while my brother and cousins played video games and watched TV.

Every other day has also been spent on the computer except at home.  Today was the first day in a while that I didn't spend almost the whole day on Tumblr.  Instead I watched Little House on the Prairie, Naruto, and How I Met Your Mother for a large part of the day.

Tomorrow's my church's summer social, and I have to work the stuffed animal booth for a few hours, so I'll definitely have to get out the house for at least a little while.  I actually look forward to the summer social because they sell lemon shake-ups and elephant ears.  That's just about the only thing that interests me there anymore.  Although they are bringing the dunking booth back this year (We hadn't had one in a while), so that should be interesting.  I think my sister's even getting in it for a while.

It's supposed to storm tomorrow though.  Hopefully it won't ruin the summer social.  Most of the booths are under a roof-type thing, but if it storms hard enough that really won't matter.  It may cool things down though, which would be good.

Book Review: Perdition by Ley Mesina

Published: March 8th, 2012

Read from June 21st to 29th, 2012

Synopsis from Goodreads:

In the second installment of the Goddess of Night series, Lily ventures out into the Underworld determined to find Nyx and finally get the answers she’s been looking for.
Xander, Drew, and Roxy head out on a mission to rescue Roxy’s parents from the secret facility hidden below Devlond University.
The time has come. Secrets will finally be revealed and the world they once knew will change…

Review:

My review of Reborn is here.