A Penny For Your Thoughts: AP English

I just took my last AP English test and for some reason, I had this strange desire to make a blog post about what AP English has taught me. I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately as my high school career is coming to a close and I thought about writing some "letters" to things that helped shaped me in these last couple of years. As strange as this sounds, with the AP Lit and Comp test passing, I decided to kick things off with this topic. 

Dear AP Language and Composition,

I was terrified when I first signed up to take your class despite my plan to take the class since 9th grade. I heard so many scary things about the test on Moby Dick on the first day of school that everyone fails and the crushing mountain of essays that I would have to write. Surprisingly, the class wasn't that bad and actually taught me a lot about language and writing styles that I never even considered noticing. To be honest, I still can't decipher the format of a periodical and subnotes but I learned a lot about syntax, diction, and all those other fancy writing terms. The thing that I want to thank you the most is opening my eyes even more to the beauty of language. I learned to appreciate analyzing the deeper meaning behind words and finding out how the author uses language to convey his/her message.

Dear AP Literature and Composition,

Words cannot express how much you have impacted me. While I don't miss the many in class essays and reading quizzes, you have taught me more than any English class has ever taught me. I'm crediting this all to my amazing teacher who has a passion for literature that rivals the sun. I've been able to see classical literature as more than just old words printed on books with yellowing pages. I've been able to appreciate the beauty of the author's words and how he/she crafts words to reveal a deeper meaning. I've read so many amazing books from Beloved, As I Lay Dying, Metamorphosis, Les Miserables, to Crime and Punishment which has to be my favorite book that I've read in all of high school. I can't promise that I'll dive in all the classics on my TBR but I'm definitely going to try. 

Movie Discussion: Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea is a 2014 Irish animated fantasy film. Directed and produced by Tomm Moore, it is the second feature-length film by Cartoon Saloon. Song of the Sea follows the story of a 10 year old Irish boy (David Rawle) who discovers that his mute sister, whom he blames for the death of his mother, is a selkie who has to free faerie creatures from the Celtic goddess Macha. 
(From Wikipedia)

Hello everyone! Welcome to my second ever Movie Discussion post! I actually planned on writing this post ages ago but I never got around to doing so and in the midst of APs and my procrastination skills, I decided that my brain was going to explode if I studied anymore so I should write a blog post and this one came to mind.

Song of the Sea is an absolutely beautiful animated fantasy film that follows Ben who lives in a lighthouse tower with his father and mute sister Saoirse. His mother Bronach disappeared the night his sister was born and she has never spoken a word. Side note, I finally know how to pronouce Saoirse and it's such a beautiful name!  When Saoirse follows some fairy lights one night, she discovers a white seal skin and discovers that she has the power to transform into a seal. She is also the last selkie child and has the power to free all faerie creatures from the Celtic goddess Macha who has been stealing their emotions and turning them into stone. 

I wish I could spill more about the plot line but I don't want to give anything away. Check out the trailer below if you want a glimpse of just how beautiful this movie is.

On the topic of beautiful, I'm going to photo spam you with some gorgeous scenes from the movie that honestly make my heart so happy because they're so pretty.

By the way, I love this guy. His character is absolutely hilarious!

From what I remember, this is from the beginning of the film when Ben's mother Bronach was telling him the story.

JUST LOOK AT THIS GORGEOUS SCENE!!

In addition to its breathtaking artwork and touching story, the music is also pretty phenomenal. There's actually a video on YouTube of the entire soundtrack and I highly recommend you check it out especially if you're looking for something calming. I also found a song appropriately titled Song of the Sea which is sung by Nolween Leroy and I decided to make a little lyric video because it's honestly such a beautiful lullaby.

So that pretty much concludes my little rant about Song of the Sea! Let me know if you've watched this movie and what your thoughts were. The producers of this film also produced The Secret of Kells which I also watched so I'm thinking about doing a post on that later on as well!

Penny For Your Thoughts: Clearing Out Your TBR

Hello everyone! I'm currently in class right now but my teacher is out because she underwent surgery over winter break and she's in recovery. For the past week I've been reading during class, but today I thought I'm post a little discussion.

Lately, I've been going through my Goodreads to-read shelf and realizing that a lot of the books on that shelf are ones that I don't remember even adding. Being incompetent with technology, I didn't realize that I could mass delete books and thought I could only delete books individually. Of course I was too lazy to actually go through with that since that shelf had around 400 books.  

Then today I clicked on this magical link called Batch Edit and all of a sudden, I could delete books in bulk. It was actually really entertaining to go through all 400 something of those books and delete ones that just didn't interest me at all. While getting rid of my online TBR is one thing, the massive amount of books I own that I still need to read is still overwhelming. 

I consider myself to be pretty good at limiting my spending when it comes to buying books. I actually buy more e-books than physical ones because I have a gigantic stack of gift cards for Barnes and Noble and my mentality is that I can get so many more e-books than physical ones with that money. (Don't ask.) I can't even begin to count how many e-books I have and I'm actually afraid to even try. My physical bookshelf is also constantly growing. I have a weak spot for cheap books as I'm sure everyone does and my library sales are the best thing in the world.

The majority of my books are in fact from second hand places and I have this weird habit of buying a book I really want to read and then leaving it to collect dust on my shelf. 

Well...I've come to realize that once the book is in my possession, I fall into this stage where I am content that I own the book and then I push it off. Since I already own the book, it can't possibly go anywhere so I can just let it sit there on my shelves while I go read books that I've borrowed from the library.

So the whole point of this post was to rant about my TBR which I think everyone has done as some point. My Goodreads TBR shelf is now at 226 but my physical TBR shelf is still overflowing and growing by the minute. Still, the couple of minutes after I deleted all those books from my to-read shelf did leave me feeling a sense of victory even though it was short lived.

Let me know your thoughts on this topic! Reading back, there are still things I want to say but I'm so scatterbrained that I'll save it for another post. Thanks for reading~

Foreverly Obsessed,

12 Days of Christmas (Day 4): Penny for Your Thoughts - Productivity

Hello everyone! Welcome to Day 4 of 12 (10) Days of Christmas! Before I get started, I have a general PSA. So last year I included reviews as part of my daily posting, but this year I decided to do things differently and focus more on posting "extra" things. I tend to forget to do blogging memes and they're always so fun so I thought I'd dedicate the daily blogging schedule to that. Also, school is crazy because everyone is trying to test before break so it's easier for me to get a post up. With that being said, I'm hoping to put up reviews as a bonus post and continue my regular 1-2 reviews per week schedule. Alright, with that aside, let's get into the topic:

PRODUCTIVITY 

This is what everyone strives for but we always seem to fall short. So I'm got the idea to write a small post on this after I came across a blog called tipsywriter which has a bunch of amazing posts that are short and sweet but really make you think. She did a post where she discussed a time when she told her Twitter followers to answer the prompt:

I feel most productive _____________

That question made me stop and really think because I can't think of a perfect situation where I'd be 100% productive. I tend to get distracted by the internet whether it's watching YouTube videos, scrolling through Tumblr, looking at books on Goodreads, or just staring at my fish swim around in tank. 

It also brings to mind the infamous senioritis - the dreaded disease high school seniors get when they don't want to do anything because they're already in college. Most of my friends are already "suffering" from it and the common idea is:

I haven't exactly been "infected" yet but I can feel the symptoms slowly creeping up on me. Anyway, getting back to the original topic: productivity.

I feel more productive when I have a history test coming up. I honestly feel like I get so distracted if nothing is at stake and to be honest, history tests stress me out the most. The subject is fun but the memorization and everything drives me to madness with worry. It's kind of sad that that is the only thing that comes to mind...I need to some getting distracted...

Anyway, let me know your ending to this sentence! Anyone else a senior? 

Foreverly Obsessed,

Day 4 of

Day 3 (Thursday Tracks - Think of You)

Penny Thoughts: Summarizing Books

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've done a discussion post and recently this topic has been on my mind so I thought I'd talk about it. As you can tell from the title, I'm talking about summarizing books.

In the past, I've always started my reviews with a short summary where I basically paraphrase what the Goodreads summary says but with my own words and insights. For some reason, I always get stuck on writing the summaries which is kind of strange since I read the book. 8 out of 10 times, I will have some notes on the book but I don't summarize the book in those notes so I end up staring at a blank review screen for a while.

Summaries are difficult to write because I'm trying not to spoil the book while keeping everything interesting to draw people in. Also, like I mentioned before, I post the Goodreads summary above anyway so it becomes a struggle to reword everything without the final product being too similar to the printed synopsis.

Surprisingly, there have been times where I have opened review posts with the intention to write out my thoughts and post it, but because I blank out at the summary I close the post without editing. I have no idea why summarizing is so difficult, but I've realized that I tend to skip it when describing a book. I've done a couple of monthly wrap ups on the channel and every time I have to remind myself to actually talk about the book, but it's a constant struggle.

On the positive side, summarizing books helps me to be able to recall the general idea of the story especially when I'm recommending it to a friend. I just need to figure out a more eloquent way to describe things other than using "so" "like" "you know."

So my question for you guys: Should I continue to include summaries in my reviews?

I'm going to try a couple reviews without to see how it feels and if reviewing becomes a easier task. There might be a couple books where I include a review because it comes easy to me, but I'm going to give it a go. Let me know what you think in the comments below!

Foreverly Obsessed,

Penny For Your Thoughts: Books to Movies

Hello everyone! Remember these? The last time I did one was literally ages ago, but I've been spending a lot more time reading discussion posts lately compared to reviews and thought it'd be fun and interesting to start writing a bit more discussion-y posts. I will admit, these are pretty hard for me since my thoughts are often to jumbled up I can't put them into words. But, I'll giving this a shot.

So today's topic comes from a recent podcast episode that Claudia and I did (LISTEN HERE) where we talked about books to movie adaptations. I also stumbled across this article on Book Riot who by the way have some awesome things so be sure to check them out! 

The article talks about not caring whether movie adaptations stick true to the books. With the recent explosion of books to movie adaptations in the film industry, I think it's a pretty important and relevant topic to discuss. Let's start off with a general list (off the top of my head) of movies I've watched with book inspirations:

• The Lord of the Rings/Hobbit
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• Harry Potter 
• Twilight
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• Guardians of the Ga'Hoole
• If I Stay
• Divergent
• City of Bones
• Safe Haven
• The Longest Ride
• Ella Enchanted
• Aquamarine
• The Lovely Bones
• The Bridge to Terabithia 
• The Book Thief
• Coraline

There are probably a whole bunch more but those are the first that came to mind. Now the ones that I've read the books as well as watched the movies, I bolded. Actually, looking back on the list - I did pretty good in terms of reading books before watching the movies...Either way, let's pick three movies and discuss.

Meaning Behind My Name

Hey everyone!! Welcome to my first Penny For Your Thoughts post!! This series was inspired by Kayla from Bookish Owl and her series called Coffee Conversations. Basically this is a series where I rant and talk about anything from bookish things to the color of the sky to something personal. So I thought I'd start with something a little random but that's where I got the name Rivalie from.

So if you search the name Rivalie on the internet chances are, I'm one of the few people who pop up. I found the name Rivalie when I was searching through a baby naming website because I was looking for a weird and unique name for a character in a story that I was working on. I don't remember exactly what I was searching for, but somehow I stumbled across that name.

The original spelling on the website for Rivalie is actually Rivalee but I thought the two e's looked a bit weird so I substituted it with an i. Rivalie means "to bind" and surprisingly enough, it's actually a variant of the name Rebecca. To make that even more cool, my parents had told me since I was little that they were going to name me Rebecca or Sabrina before going with the name I have today. I always complained about my name because it was long and kind of like a boy's name that someone made into a girl's. So I thought it'd be really cool to take a name that potentially could have been mine and make it into a sort of "online" identity for myself.

My parents are Asian and therefore extremely cautious of the internet world. They prefer that I not post any identifiable images of myself or reveal my actual name online. Obviously, there's Facebook, but even for that, I'm using a variant name.

I've been using Rivalie ever since I created my first email account when I was in third grade and I proudly called the email: bunnies4eva (please don't send an email to that account)

After creating Rivalie I've definitely went around using different alias names for myself. I used nicknames that sounded somewhat like my name as well as names that made no sense at all. Here's a list of a couple: Ausrine, Jody, Joy, Jessalyn, and more commonly Viktoria.

I'm a little weird in the fact that I've actually wanted to get rid of the Rivalie and start with a new name but I've just grown so attached to that name that I can't stop using it. After starting my blog, my "identity" as Rivalie has definitely solidified more on the interwebs and now it's actually kind of cool because there's really no other Rivalie out there.

I know that using a "fake name" can be a bit discerning to some people cause you don't know who is really behind the screen and I do think that sometime in the future, I'll put my real name and a picture out there because it's impossible to hide behind a computer screen and alias forever. But for now, I hope you guys are okay with Rivalie and hopefully it's grown to have a connection with this blog which essentially is like an online extension of myself.

So...My name's Rivalie. I'm a 16 year old girl living in the United States of America. I'm addicted to bunnies, music, food, books,stationary, tea, and chocolate. I'm ABT (American Born Taiwanese) and a crazy BBC Merlin fanatic since 2009. Yup, that's me.

Hopefully you guys enjoyed this type of posts, I'm hoping to do more in the future. If you have any suggestions for topics, please let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading :)

Foreverly Obsessed,