Sword Art Online: Progressive vol. 1

So, during my long wait for whoever else is reading the Attack on Titan series to finally return it, I started looking among the other mangas. And look what I found! I absolutely love the anime series with all my little heart (ask me about a cross over fanfic I wrote) and was so excited to see this on the shelf.

So, this is kind of a retelling of the story we love. Except it goes back to the beginning and gives Asuna's side of the story. In this first one we have just a taste at why she started to play the game, when she first met Kitito, and even a couple of mildly inappropriate drawings of her taste in undergarments. But hey, the story is rated Teen for a reason.

I love that we get the chance to see Asuna more. In the show she takes a little while to show up and a little longer to be someone awesome. This is her half of things. I hope. Only one book in isn't going to give me much. But I am excited for the series anyway.

As with other graphic novels I will let you know more about what I think when I reach a pivotal point in the story, or when I finish. Until then, let me know what you thought about SAO! Or the manga. Or if you have any recommendations for new manga/anime inspired by this title!

You're Never Weird On The Internet (almost)

June: Books written by celebrities.

When did I first become aware of Felicia Day? I don't even know. I remember seeing her on Eureka and recognizing her immediately, so I had to have seen Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog by then. I don't know if I saw the episodes of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer before or after I knew her name. But I know for a fact when I saw her on Supernatural I fangirl squealed and did a jumping dance in the middle of the living room because Felicia Day was so cool and on my new favorite show! I didn't get to watch her show The Guild when it first aired but I have since made up for that by watching it multiple times and mentioning it to all my friends. So basically it's like I've always been aware of Felicia Day, even though she has only been an actress since 2001. Maybe it's like Joss Whedon said in his intro: "She's something more than a self-made woman - I sometimes think she's not a human woman, that she willed herself into existence, before willing the world to make a place for this new, unfathomable creation." Felicia Day willed herself into my life, and it has been glorious ever since.

In her memoir Felicia tells the incredible tale of how she grew up home-schooled, managed to start college at age 16, and obtained two Real Degrees while never getting her GED. Than she moved to LA with the feeling that she was just meant to be an actress. And it seemed that anything she wanted to do, she put her mind to, and rocked it.
Only, it didn't keep happening that way.
While most of the world sees Felicia Day as this incredibly bubbly, happy, bright person who is not only beautiful but is also a gamer, which is just awesome, people don't suspect the underlying anxious, over-worked, neurotic that hides behind the games she played until she had pushed most of the world out.

And this is why I love Felicia Day. On top of the fact that I always love her bigger characters, I started to catch glimpses of the real Day sometime after she stared in Eureka and what I saw fascinated me. I'm not a major gamer, but I love to sit and loose myself in some Zelda when I can. I spent most of my teen years behind a computer screen in RPG chatrooms because I could be better than who I was IRL. I am addicted to stories because they are the easiest way for me to loose myself (and reading is something that people will encourage). And with all the convention panels I was getting to watch on YouTube, I started to see someone that I could relate to. And she was awesome!

Reading this book I got a closer look at Felicia Day than I ever had before. She opens her soul for the readers and welcomes them in to follow her journey through not only her childhood and move to LA, but the tough years including the two she spent literally addicted to WoW and then later when depression and anxiety got a hold of her so bad that her health took a turn for the worse. Day does not sugarcoat how hard things got for her, and I love that, because people that go through the same need to see that other have it just as bad. And her making her way out of it and doing something incredible, gives the rest of us real hope.

When I saw that Felicia Day wrote a memoir I got so excited, because she is awesome and I love to read about peoples' lives, how they got to where they are, and what they take from that experience. I got so much more in this book. I got to see hope that even though I am incredibly anxious and what people think of my work terrifies me, I can still put it out there, because I made a think #LookIt.

I really encourage everyone to read this one. It's full of laughter and sweet stories and awkward moments. And then it's full of truth and honesty. For the gamers, the women, the socially awkward creative people. Everyone feeling like maybe their passion is just too weird. Everyone that overthinks things to the point of insomnia. Here is a book written by a woman that gets it. And says that it is ok to be like that, you can make something of it, you just got to try. So give the book a read, and tell me what you think about it!

The Eye of Minds

Feb. - Books published in the last five years.

So, I got this book at one of the Texas Teen Book Festivals, autographed of course, and it has been patiently been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to get a chance to pick it up. When I had last talked to my son about what I should read next he told me to wait until we could read this one together. So, at the beginning of February we picked this one up and started reading it in intervals.

Jareth ended up making it 2/3 of the way through it before he moved on because it is sometime hard for him to keep interested when a book is broken up so much. We hadn't been reading it every day as we should have. When I finally asked if he was done, I did continue to tell him what was going on as I read it. He was still very interested in the story.

I was a little worried that working so slowly through it would have a negative effect on my interest in the story, but when I actually sat down and read it, I slipped right back into the story and moved quickly through it. Dashner is a great author that does a wonderful job of holding the reader's attention.

The story is one that follows a gamer named Michael, a teenager that lays down in his virtual reality bed and slips into the VR world to play games with his friends. After he sees a girl rip her own Core out (the link that separates your VR mind from your real body so that when you die in the game, you don't actually die in the real world) he is contacted by the VNS, a government organization in charge of monitoring the Virtual World. An Agent Weber asks that Michael and his two best friends make their way through the system to find Kaine, a man who is slowly hijacking people for experimentation and sometimes killing them. Michael and his hacking skills are needed. But the closer Michael and his friends get to Kaine the more crazy the world becomes until Michael is having real trouble figuring out just what exactly is going on.

Not only is Dashner such a great writer, capturing the voices of these teenage gamers wonderfully to make the reader laugh, but his plotting ability is astonishing. I am still kind of reeling from the major plot twist at the end of the book. When I explained it to my husband he was shocked. Jareth literally screamed "What!?" It was just mind-blowing.

This book was a great one. Especially for me and Jareth who loved the show Sword Art Online where the gamers were stuck in the program until one of them could beat the game. The Eye of Minds is a great story because with VR slowly easing further into everyone's lives, the events of this story could actually one day take place! It makes it a great story for young adults. I look forward to picking up the next one and seeing how Michael's story progresses.

::EDIT:: I am marking the scheduled publish date on this for Feb. 29th so it will be listed on the Feb bracket, even though I didn't finish the book until March 1st.