I did some online shopping. . . again

 Hello everyone!  I might have an online shopping problem. I bet my mailman hates me because I always seem to have something on the way. But, I do have some more Korean makeup and manga/manhwa for you guys to check out!

Starting with the makeup, I needed some more new BB cream before school started and something to help make my skin look better and get rid of my giant pores and excess oil.

1. Missha Perfect Cover BB Cream in No. 21

2. Holika Holika Aqua Petit Jelly BB Cream in No. 1

3.Innisfree No-Sebum Mineral Pact

4. Etude House Goodbye Pore Ever Primer Stick

I've been in a reading slump and the only thing I seem to focus on is manga and manhwa. This is the beginning of my collection and I wanted to get some series that I know that I will like and reread over and over again. 

1. Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun Vol. 1-2

2. Ouran High School Host Club by Bisco Hatori Vol. 1-3

3. Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa Vol. 1

And for the samples! I love samples. ;)

1. Etude House Nymph Aura Volumer x2

2. Innisfree Perfect 9 Repair Serum

3. Innisfree Eco Natural BB Cream

4. Innisfree Eco Science Wrinkle Spot Essence

5. Etude House White Moistfull Essence

6. Etude House Strawberry Milk Talk

1. Skin Food Platinum Grape Cell Essence

2. Skin Food Shea Butter Creamy Body Wash

3. Skin Food Black Sugar Perfect First Serum

4. Skin Food Peach Sake Pore Serum

5. Too Cool For School Rules of Aqua Mineral Water Gel Toner

I hoped you guys liked this post! I saved up some money to binge a little bit. Now I have to save for when my sister comes back to town. It's just nice to have some extra cash to spend because I never really know where I'm going to end up when I hangout with family. Plus, we might go to the Mall of America since we live close to it. It has a two story Forever21! I desperately need some new clothes, too. So hopefully there will be another haul soon.

If there's anything you would like me to review, let me know! I know that the BB creams that I got are some HG products for some people. Also, let me know if you've read anything I bought because I would love to hear your thoughts. Ouran is a favorite between my friends and I so I'm definitely looking forward to getting the rest of the series. Do you have any suggestions?

See you next time! XD

Book Talk: New Shelves!

Usually instead of spring cleaning, I blast my music and rearrange my bookshelves. Before I had it by genre, now it's ordered by spine color. Overall, it looks fantastic. The bad side, a little harder to find a book, but not by much. My bookshelves are in three different parts because I don't have a full bookshelf. When I moved into my current town home, my uncle built my little brother, sister, and I, a desk and two shelves to go on top. The shelves weren't attached or anything so they just sat on top. Eventually, my book collection had grown so much that they gave their little shelves to me. Two of them are like nightstands which I keep my older sister's old stereo on and my DVD's on and the other is on my desk. 

Here's an overview of the shelf on my desk. Now you know when I said it's a shelf instead of a bookcase.  

Purple and Blue

Green and Yellows

Can you see the frog? My little sister went a little crazy with color coding all my belongings and shoving them in between my books. So if there's something random wedged in the cracks, it was her.

Yellows continued

 This is one the the shelves that act as the nightstand. I also realized that I have a bunch of yellow books because most of them are books about Ancient Egypt. I'm a bit of a history nut. Nonfiction books can get pretty expensive but my family knows were all the cool used book stores are. Gotta love cheap books!

Oranges and Reds

 Oops! A little straggler makeup brush sneaked into the picture.

Red Continued and Pinks

 I love my little pirate duck.

Blacks

I did have a white section, but I forgot to take a picture of that. Sorry! :( Anyway, I had to put all my books on their side because I was running out of room. I had to get a little creative there. But now I don't have any scary looking stacks on the ground that people can step over.

If you have a full bookshelf, you should definitely try this because it will look even better than mine because you can make a whole rainbow. Mine are spread about the room so it doesn't look as nice. That's okay, I still love them.

What do you think of rainbow bookshelves? How should I arrange them next year?

Book Review: Beauty by Robin Mckinley

Title: Beauty
Author: Robin McKinley
Published by: HarperCollins Publishers
325 pages


Beauty thinks her nickname doesn't fit her at all. She's short, gangling, and awkward. Her father is a merchant, but when his ships come up missing, he is lost of most of his revenue. Fleeting to a cheaper lifestyle, Beauty, her father and two older sisters move to a rural village away from the city. There Beauty's father has an encounter with a horrible beast and tells him he must give up his own life, or send one of his daughters to go and live with him in his castle.

Recently, I've been wanting to revisit the fairy tales I grew up with. One of my most beloved stories is Beauty and the Beast. To tell you the truth, I've already read this book. Second time going through, and I wasn't as amazed as I was last time.

Having read more fantasy books than when I first read this, I feel like I'm more educated in what makes up a good fantasy story. What bugs me in this book is the mention of Greek philosophers,  poets, mythology. Usually, fantasy books avoid anything that has to do with our world because the book is in a different one. I wasn't sure if this book took place on Earth, or some made up land that is filled with magic and curses. There was no way I would have noticed that last time.

What I do like about this book is that it tells more about the back story behind Beauty and her family. It's not rushed to get to the good part where the Beast and romance comes in. It's a slow process which makes it more believable. Though I did find it slow in some points. I kind of wanted it to pick up the pace a little bit so it would keep my attention.

I have always admired Robin McKinley's writing. It's very elegant and paints a really nice picture without taking away from the plot. I hate it when there's so much description that you forget what's going on. That's no problem with this book.

I absolutely adore the ending of this book. It's probably what propelled me to reread this book. When I finished, a smile was plastered on my face for hours. It was just so adorable!

What's your favorite fairy tale?

Book Review: Seraphina

Title: Seraphina
Author: Rachel Hartman
451 pages
Published by: Random House Books for Young Readers
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Humans and dragons have been on edge with each other for a long time. Dragons are made out to be heartless, nasty creatures with no remorse  Humans are thought to be worthless pests. When the humans lose their Prince Rufus, who is mysteriously decapitated, sets the humans on their toes. Seraphina, a musician in the palace, gets wrapped up with her country's affairs, which includes the Captain of the Guard, Prince Kiggs.

First of all, I love a good fantasy book with a bad ass heroine. The fact that this book also revolved around dragon told me that I had to read it. Now that I've read it, I'm doing a review on it.

The writing in this book is probably the most confusing I have ever read in a Young adult novel. Honestly, the language was so far out there that it was a little hard to comprehend at times. Either that, or I stayed up too late reading and my mind got a little jumbled.

For this book, I'm not so sure what to make of the plot. It's not random, I'll tell you that. There's nothing that pops out of nowhere so the author can have something to write about. Slowly, suspense is built up until the very end.

The end is something that I have problems with. It came so sudden that I actually sat there thinking, that's it?  I felt like the author realized that this book was going to be really long and wanted to cut off the story as fast as possible. To fans of this book, the extra pages wouldn't have mattered.

Over all, this book got 4 out of 5 stars. I recommend it for band nerds who like dragons, or anyone who likes dragons.

Book Talk: Buzz Words and Deal Breakers

I've seen this going around on the youtube end of book reviewing, and I felt like this was a good introduction to do for new reviewers like myself. Basically, you just list some key words that make you either snatch up a book and clutch it to your chest in fear someone else will take it, or make you drop in like a hot coal.

Buzz Words

1. Ancient Egypt- I've been in love with Ancient Egypt since the second grade. It was the only thing I found interesting at the time. I read every book in my elementary school's library and then moved onto the public library. I still haven't grown out of it.

2. Mermaids- You might have guessed this if you saw my Nails of the Day #3- Mermaids! post. I explained there that instead of pretending I was a princess, I wanted to be a mermaid. My family and I would migrate somewhere warm and near the beach if we could.

3. Pirates- They're dirty, swear a lot, fight a lot, steal a lot, they talk funny, and they get a crap ton of gold. What's not to like?!

4. Jane Austen- I love her writing, her stories, her personal story. I love everything about her.

5. Bad Ass Heroines- Who doesn't like to read about a chick that can kick some butt?

6. Fairy Tale Retelling- Disney movies were my entire life growing up and I still have a strong attachment to them. Anything that has a similar plot line and feel to it, I will read it.

7. Cafes/coffee shops- I just find that books with a coffee shop as the main setting are really fun to read about.

Deal Breakers

1. Insta-love- I don't like it when characters automatically think they're in love. It's not realistic in real life, and it just seems cheesy in books.

2. Sex Scenes- I don't need to know what you do in bed. Honestly, I'm scared to for an image for this.

3. Snobby girl cliques- When I read, I want to get away from high school, I don't want to read about school drama when I spend the whole day dealing with it already.

4. Vampires- There was a phase where all I read was about vampires, but now I just think it's juvenile and the plots are always so similar and predictable. "He's so mysterious" and "He could kill me, but I love him". It gets old really fast.

6. This is probably the biggest deal breaker for me, Aliens. They terrify me. I used to have nightmares about them creeping in my window when I was a little. With their slotted nostrils and big black eyes, ugh. Gives me chills just thinking about it.

That's all that I can think of. Really, I like to give everything a chance when it comes to reading. Limiting myself to just one genre just seems silly to me when there are so many other books that I might fall in love with.

What are some of your buzz words and deal breakers?

Book Review: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Well, if you'e haven't read or heard of Looking for Alaska by John Green yet, it's about Miles Halter who leaves him hometown to go to Culver Creek Boarding School. There he meets the group of friends, the Colonel, Takumi, and Alaska. Miles gets pulled into their world of pranks, drinking, and drama, changing him completely.

At first, or the "before" part, I saw nothing special with this book. Just another awkward boy falling in love with a girl that he couldn't have. Strangely enough, I was never bored, which is really rare with my small attention span. It kept at a constant pace that kept me going. But nothing really grabbed me to give me the reaction everyone was raving about. That totally changed when I got to the "after" part.

The writing in this book was really beautiful, but also witty and funny at the same time. I enjoyed reading Miles', or Pudge's, inner thoughts because they were full of snarly remarks and hilarious one-liners.

Oh. My. God. You guys, these characters. They all have perfectly depicted personalities. You got a feeling of who they were right away and you saw how they changed along the way. All of them were so unique and I haven't read anything like them. I liked the twist on the classic "nerd" group. All of these people are extremely smart, but you don't associate someone with a perfect GPA with smuggling in booze and sneaking into the woods to smoke. My favorite would have to be Takumi, even though he was only a minor character. I needed more Takumi!

The only bad thing about this book was probably the sudden change between the "before" and "after" parts. I mean, I get that it's supposed to be sudden, judging by what happens, but I felt like it was so jammed packed with emotion that it was a little smothering. Also, the ending left me asking "Well, what now?". It just left a little unfinished.

I hate to say anything bad about this, but there it is. Overall, this is definitely going on my favorite shelf. Warning, don't read this book with make up on. My own copy now has smudged eyeliner stains all over the edges of the pages. Keep a box of tissues at your side through the second half, and good luck.

How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?

Book Talk: My Jane Austen Experience

My Jane Austen experience began a couple years ago when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I had just finished watching the movie Lost in Austen where a modern day women finds herself between the pages of Pride and Prejudice. Her presence causes the whole plot line to become twisted and jumbled. This movie made me curious to how the story really went. And if the girl in the movie read it when she was thirteen, why couldn't I? After searching on amazon for a few minutes, I got my copy of Pride and Prejudice. It was agonizing going to the mailbox and seeing no yellow envelope sitting there waiting for me. When it finally came, I instantly dropped everything and began reading.

I was really confused at first. The writing was complicated and I wasn't used to it. Over time, the language became understandable. I actually comprehended what was going on. Eventually, I couldn't get enough. After devouring Pride and Prejudice, I moved onto Sense and Sensibility, and so on. I recognized the wording and how things Austen's style. Soon enough, it became easy to me as I stormed through all of Jane Austen's work.

Being really young, I didn't know everything. That's understandable, right? So if you're willing to undertake the challenge of reading Austen, here's some helpful tools that might help you through it.



First of all, I went through a year-long phase that I would only read modern day adaptions of Jane Austen books. My favorite one's were. . . 

Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg. Don't let the cover fool you. It's not a girly and pretty-in-pink as it looks. In this book, there's a girls' private school called Longbourn Academy and Lizzie Bennet is a scholarship student who shares a room with her best friend, Jane. They meet Charles Bingley and Will Darcy in the neighboring boys' school. I love this book and it's actually sad how many times I've read it. It's also great for piano players and romantics.

The next book sort of mixes time travel with Jane Austen. It's Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler. Jane Mansfield, who lives in the early nineteenth century, has switched bodies with Courtney Stone, a modern day woman. I liked this book a lot better than the first one, Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict. You do not need to read the first book to read this one, they are two totally different stories.




This book should be your right hand man when you read anything Austen. Even if you can read Austen with ease, it's really fun to read through and even better if you've read all the books. It's The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World by Margaret C. Sullivan. I read this after I read Austen and I was surprised how funny it was. It has categories like How to Become an Accomplished Lady, and How to Ride Sidesaddle. It's anything that you need to know about the Regency period. I remember reading the How to Dress page and it said that Jane probably went commando. That made me burst out laughing and I got some weird looks. Just the thought of a literary idol that didn't wear underwear made me giggle.

If you are a fan of Austen, here's some really fun books that I thoroughly enjoyed. Lost in Austen by Emma Campbell Webster, (not the same things as the movie) where you can make your own Austen adventure and you keep track of points that ultimately choose whether you have a good or bad ending.







Anything by Amanda Grange is fantastic, she has many different books that are the journals of the Austen heroes in their perspective.





If you want to test your Austen knowledge, then you should check out So You Think You Know Jane Austen? by John Sutherland and Deirdre Le Faye. I tried to answer some of the questions, and they're tricky. Pay attention to the details, that's all I have to say.

Have any of you read Jane Austen? If so, when did you start?

Book Talk: Ereaders vs. Physical Books

There's so much controversy in the book world between which format is better, Ereaders or Physical books? I admit, I was strongly against Ereaders when they first came out. I thought they took the experience of reading away. That changed when I actually got one.

I had a feeling my dad was going to get me one for Christmas, which he did. But he didn't give me a nook or a kindle, I got one of those knock offs. Still, it was an Ereader I was grateful to have. It was great. I spent many hours playing with it and tried to figure out all the settings. It was fantastic until I couldn't turn it on again.  I tried to google how to fix it but nothing worked, I charged it countless times over the span of about six months. No one in my family got it to work either.

Then this year, my grandma got me current nook for my sweet sixteen. Once I actually read a few books from it, I realized that the book won't change just because the words are on a screen instead of printed on paper. It's still the same story, characters, lessons being told.

What I absolutely love about my nook is that it has internet on it. You are able to get apps like goodreads so I can check on what a book is about, track my progress, and see what my friends are reading. Some of my apps are for school too. My English class uses Evernote religiously. Since I started this blog, I can start posts on my nook, save them, and then all I have to do is add pictures on my computer and they're ready to post. But there are time waiters like twitter, youtube, google. It's hard to do homework when all that is at your finger tips.

Physical books will always hold a place in my heart. They won't die, don't need to charged, and can be lent and given freely. On a nook only certain books are able to be lent out and you get them for a limited amount of time. Same thing goes for ebooks from the library.

I love the look of a well stocked bookshelf. I know my own room has precariously high stacks of well-loved paperbacks on the floor. Books are one of things that you can just collect to no end and not look crazy. If you have hundreds of unicorns in you living room, I'm sure you'd get some weird looks.

Places like public libraries need time to keep up with the new technology in reading. My library does have ebooks, but the selection is scarce. I'm much more
likely to get a wider selection of physical books, and might I add faster than if I wait for many people finish the one ebook.

Then again, a book can't glow in the dark. Those clip on book lights are a pain, and you have to spend like $15 to replace them. If you share a room like I do, then you would know the constant argument about whether or not to keep a lamp on.

There, I said all the pros and cone of both Ereaders and physical books. I can probably think of more, but this post is getting really long. I feel like I'm writing an unstructured essay.

Book Talk: Top 12 of 2012

I know I'm a month late in making this, but this blog was only made this week. All over booktubing community (youtube book reviewers), there are videos of the top 12 books they read in 2012. I'm adapting that concept and putting it in blog form. So here we go. These are in no particular order, it's was too hard to choose.

 I decided to put these two together because they are part of the same series, but they are two whole different stories. They have separate characters, plot lines, worlds, and time periods. They are Bitterblue and Fire by Kristin Cashore. I anticipated these books since I read Graceling by the same author. The librarian at my library suggested it to me and I thought I wasn't into any of the fantasy-type books. Back then, I was all about vampires and werewolves. I admit, they are dreadfully boring in the beginning and it makes it hard to get through. The endings blew me away with all the plot twists. They are the kind of books that you have to pay attention to but you won't get it until the end. I loved how Kristin Cashore left the reader in the dark until a confrontation between characters. There was no inner dialogue that whispered in your ear who had done it.

 Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins surprised me. I thought it would be girly and cheesy, but I was in a big France kick when I picked it up. So when Lola and the Boy Next Door came out, I put it on hold at the library right away. It was different than Anna but I loved how both stories intertwined. Lola and Cricket are were interesting characters to get to know and watch them develop. They both have really strong personalities. I thought including a gay couple as parents was very daring on Perkins' part. It was refreshing, like she was comfortable with her writing and didn't care about any controversy. I realized that it was my first young adult book that actually had homosexual parents. It made the book stand out from others.

I had seen the Studio Ghibli film Howl's Moving Castle twice before I found out it was a book by Diana Wynne Jones. My dad decided to get me a copy on a day that I wasn't feeling too well and I read it within two days. The movie stays true to the book. It's a perfect book when you crave some spell-casting witches and eccentric characters. Howl is like no other character I had ever encountered in any book I've read. He's mysterious, snarly, a baby, a complainer, and caring all at the same time. Calcifer, the fire demon, is a joy to read about because of his constant muttering. If you loved the movie, you'll love the book.

Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Does this even need an explanation? It was the book of the year because the movie with Emma Watson came out. Charlie is one of those characters that you will never forget. If you haven't read it yet, you're missing out

A Tale of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin was my first high-fantasy experience. I was introduced to Le Guin while watching The Jane Austen Bookclub. They say her works are fantasy classics. The thing is, this book challenged me. I would find myself wanting to skim a few sentences to get to the good part like I do with any book, but I would miss vital information. Le Guin doesn't do anything half-ass.

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot was one of those books that I didn't want to admit I read and liked. I mean, look at the title and the pretty pink cover with a giant sparkly tiara. I grew up watching The Princess Diaries movies on repeat, so I had to read it. Five or six books later, I still need to finish the series. It's definitely not the movie and I'm having trouble figuring out which one I like better.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See probably kicked off my obsession with Eastern contemporary books. The relationship between the main characters was so complex and complicated but beautiful at the same time. They shared everything with each other, the good and a lot of the bad. I loved seeing the girls grow and watching them lean on each other on the way. This is a great book if you want emotionally strong women in harsh times.






I read these books around Christmas time to get me into a jolly mood. Well, it certainly worked. Both are really cute, fun reads that tie together. Great for those days that you are snowed in.


-Let it Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle
-Dash and Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Con and David Levithan

 Oh goodness, these are the books that are packed to to the brim with emotion. I warned you, these are the tearjerkers. They made my eyes puffy and my nose runny. I am the world's ugliest crier so I try not to do it when I can. While reading these two, it just couldn't be contained. Any book that causes that emotion gets a good rating in my book.

-A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks
-Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Library Day #1

Since I'm staying home from school today because I had monster headaches (and I'm not the one to get head aches), I have time to look through book websites and put some books on hold at the library for when I can actually go there to pick them up.

I'm going to get the next five books in the Hana Yori Dango/Boys Over Flowers manga by Yoko Kamio. I did watch the drama with Kim Hyung Joon and Lee Min Ho and just about died it was so good, of course I'm exaggerating  but come on! So good! I'm currently on volume 20 but since they are really fast, I'm also going to get volume 21, 22, 23, and 24. About six volumes are scattered around my room because I have yet to return them. It's not the drama and there are more things added. Which is fine with me, the more Boys Over Flowers I get the happier I am. The art isn't all that appealing to me, but don't let that steer you away from them. They say with manga, it's either the art or the plot that's good, but never both. I don't know if that's true so don't hold that against me. The covers look so cheesy!

I do have some books already check out and one of them is Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin. A mother disappears in the subway in Seoul, Korea and this book explains how this effects four different family members. Following my trend in Eastern contemporary, this book automatically caught my attention.

To go with The Joy Luck Club, which was my first review here, I got another one of Amy Tan's books called Saving Fish from Drowning. A group of American artists go on journey through China and venture away from tour guide and encounter curses among other things. After seeing the title, I couldn't pass it up. I'm really interested in how it ties into the story.

The next few books are on hold on my nook using the 3M Cloud Library app. The first one is a book that I'm very excited about, it's Seraphina by Rachel Hartman. All I've heard about it is that there's a female protagonist and it has awesome dragons and those are two things I love in a book so I was sold right away. I also saw that it could be available in only a week! That's a very short time by 3M Cloud Library standards and for such a popular book.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs has been on my to-read list for ages. There is a lot of hype around this book but I actually don't know what it's about. I've found that going into book blindly is a whole lot more fun than if you've heard every detail from a friend. I do know that it's dark and it's a home for peculiar children. Maybe like those creepy kids in horror movies with their mangled hair in their face. We'll find out. That will be available is 15 days.

The last book I'm checking out on my nook is The Selection by Kiera Cass. I'm pretty sure this book is about a group of girls that are taking princess lessons and there's a competition between them. This also has a lot of hype. There is one problem with this book, it won't be available until a whopping 293 days! I'll probably just buy it at a second hand store by them.