What’s Making Me Happy {26}
1. Sleepy Hollow
FOX’s new show that’s loosely based on the short story by Washington Irving looks promising! I really enjoyed the pilot, which has enough camp to make me laugh and a very attractive man playing Ichabod Crane. They also use a lot of B-roll from the area surrounding Sleepy Hollow (which I live, like, 20 minutes down the road from) and that also makes me happy.
ADDITIONALLY, John Noble is joining the cast. You can’t be mad about that.
2. This Cover of Wrecking Ball.
3. The Game of Thrones Instagram.
I mean. HELLO.
4. College football!
My dear alma mater, the University of Arkansas is playing Rutgers this weekend! I live nearish Rutgers! so I’m going! Yay football!
I hope everyone has had a great week and is doing EXACTLY what they want to be doing this weekend.
Review: The Social Code
Title: The Social Code
Author: Sadie Hayes
Publisher: St. Martin’s (Griffin)
Release Date: September 3, 2013
Format: eGalley
Eighteen-year-old twins Adam and Amelia Dory learned the hard way to rely only on each other, growing up in a small town where they understood the meaning of coming from nothing. But everything changes when both are offered scholarships to Stanford University – and catapulted into the dazzling world of Silicon Valley, where anyone with a good enough idea can skyrocket to fame and fortune in the blink of an eye…
Amelia is almost as pretty as she is smart – almost. A shy girl and genius, she is happiest alone in the computer lab, but her brother has other plans for her talents: A new company that will be the next Silicon Valley hit, and will thrust Amelia into the spotlight whether she likes it or not. Where Amelia’s the brains, Adam’s the ambition – he sees the privileged lifestyle of the Silicon Valley kids and wants a piece of what they have. He especially wants a piece of Lisa Bristol, the stunning daughter of one of the Valley’s biggest tycoons.
As Adam and Amelia begin to hatch their new company, they find themselves going from nothing to the verge of everything seemingly overnight. But no amount of prestige can prepare them for the envy, backstabbing and cool calculation of their new powerful peers.—via Goodreads
Coding! Nerdery! Business stuff!
The Social Code, at its core, is a business thriller, much in the vain of The Social Network meets The Lying Game. The reader is thrown into the world of Silicon Valley tech start-ups and the venture captialists that fund them, and all the ethical/moral dilemmas that go along with it.
The book revolves around three families: The Dorys, twins who were in the foster system with a shady background, but who attend Stanford. Amelia is pretty much brilliant at coding and her brother has a lot of business ambition; Then there are the Bristols, T.J. and Lisa, the children of a well-respected venture capitalist. T.J. is a typical fraternity boy who thinks his networking and family name will get him anything he wants, and Lisa, the beautiful, desirable, rich girl with secrets of her own; Finally, there’s Patti & Shandi (I can’t for the life of me remember their last names…sorry!), the daughters of yet another venture capitalist. Patty is Amelia Dory’s party-girl roommate who is much smarter than she seems, and Shandi is Patty’s perfect big sister. The three families become inextricably inter-twined in both personal and business affairs (if you get my drift) and things become more than a little complicated.
Overall, The Social Code is a fun, fast-paced story that delves into the worlds of the rich and privileged in Silicon Valley, those who are desperate for that world, and those who understand how toxic that lifestyle can be. Some of the twists and plot devices in the book are a little predictable, but it still proves to be a read that draws you in. It does end on a three-pronged cliffhanger, with each family’s position and livelihood left hanging in the balance, and though I feel like I can predict where the story is going to go, I’ll definitely pick up the next book to find out if I’m right.
Adventures in Fantasy Football {3}
I cannot with this.
Click to embiggen.
Like, seriously cannot.
My KICKER tied for second most points earned.
THE KICKER.
And my bench? They had so many more points that the players I had starting. (Starting? Playing? Active? I don’t know what it’s called in fantasy. But you know what I mean.)
I am a ball of anger.
I’m also 9/10 in my league.
THE ANGER.
And basically all of my players are now hurt.
Joy.
Review: The Dream Thieves
Title: The Dream Thieves
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Format: eGalley
Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after…—via Goodreads
Last year I read The Raven Boys, the first book in this series by Maggie Stiefvater, and loved it so much that I didn’t know how to review it.
Which is a pretty serious thing for me, the girl with words for everything.
But I’m going to try with this one and give you a brief rundown of the story.
Basically, there’s an all-boys boarding school in a small North Carolina town that has a mystical ley line running through it. The boys that attend the school are called Raven Boys by the locals and one of these boys is Richard Gansey III, a guy who is charismatic and charming and perfect in the effortless way those who come from money always are, is on the epic quest to find Glendower, a lost Welsch king who, as legend has it, will grant you a wish if you find him. Gansey has been working with a professor for years and has pinpointed Glendower’s location to the town the school is in. So, he enlists some friends to help him in his search for Glendower. This includes Ronan, who, it turns out, can bring things from his dreams (or nightmares) into reality, Adam, the down-and-out local kid who attends the boarding school and works two jobs to pay tuition, Noah, who is (slight spoiler for Book One, highlight to read it) a ghost, and then Blue, a local girl who comes from a family of clairvoyants and has been told her entire life that the boy she loves will die if she kisses him.
I know. That’s a lot to take in and it sounds like it’s all over the place.
But, y’all. These books are amazing. They’re a magical realism version of A Separate Peace. And the writing is just perfection. There were times where I’d be reading along and would find myself with chills from just the way that Stiefvater constructs sentences. (You know you’re a word nerd when…)
These books tell the story of an epic quest mixed with class relations, teenage angst, elements of fantasy, and at some points, horror. It’s a gorgeous, high concept story that transports you but also stays grounded, always remembering that the roots of the story are in small town North Carolina. Where The Raven Boys is an introduction to a world you desperately want to live in and a group of people you want to hang out with, The Dream Thieves is an achingly beautiful, cacophonous nightmare filled with night horrors and frustration.
But that doesn’t mean reading it is frustrating. Stiefvater’s prose sing and often juxtapose that sense of grounded reality with magical elements in a way that I’ve not seen before. And I’m so excited to find out where the rest of the story is going.
Overall, you need these books in your life. You will love them and want to re-read them and look at them on your shelf when you’re not reading them and then remember how great they are and reread them some more.
And if for some reason you don’t like these books, well, then there’s no hope for you.
But you will love them and make them a staple in your library. Because these books are incredible.
Adventures in Fantasy Football {2}
Well folks, Week 1 of football has come and gone.
I have learned much.
But before we get into that, let’s start from where we left off last time: naming my team.
I had joked early on that if I got Andrew Luck I’d name my team Luck Be A Lady.
And now I have Andrew Luck on my team (he’s on the bench because…Aaron Rodgers. Though Luck is doing QUITE WELL, so yay him!), so even though the name is fun and kind of apropos in my particular case since I’m the only lady in the league, I felt a little lukewarm about the name.
This is probably also because I Googled “Luck Be A Lady fantasy football” and there are eleventy-billion people with the same name.
I’d rather be original.
Then my friend Scott tweeted me and suggested the team name Grand Larsony, a play on my last name. I like it MUCHO. But. It doesn’t really relate to football, unless you really want to look into it and think I mean that I’ll steal the league or something (Obvs this will happen. Ha.), but, let’s be honest, most people won’t think about my team name that much. So I’ll need to find another use for Grand Larsony because it’s just too good not to use.
So, what I ended up with as a team name is . . . Can I Get an Amendola.
I know. I’m fired. Whatever.
So! I have a team, a team name, a ridiculous logo. I’m ready to go.
As fate would have it my first match-up was against The Boyfriend.
Who has Peyton Manning.
Yeahhhhhh.
This is how things turned out for me.
Click to embiggen this image!
Yep.
And here’s the deal: it’s not like my team sucked it up. They did respectably well. Peyton Manning just decided to be a beast.
Anyway.
Now it’s Week 2 and my team’s name sake has a strained groin (insert your own joke here) and the WR on my bench are not the greatest and now I have to figure out something to do about that.
*sigh*
Bethany Larson 