Goodreads Book Review - Anna and the French Kiss

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Some spoilers ahead.

Oh, this book. I just finished this last night and stayed up all night reading it. And here's the thing: this is a great book. This is a book that takes two very messy, complicated people and allows them to fall in love in a messy, complicated way. But it also worries me a little bit, because here's the thing: Etiennes do not really exist in the real world, and the fact that Stephanie Perkins has created a believable, frustrating, and charming character speaks to her ability. But I worry a little bit about someone young who might read this book. Who might fall for someone who's taken. Who thinks that it might work out well for them. Anna and Etienne certainly confront each other plenty about it, but you know what? Etienne ultimately is a Charming Leader-Onner who treats his girlfriend like crap, and that is dangerous for teenagers to read, because he still gets rewarded for it.

So, this is a great book. A few random thoughts:
- I wish Perkins had fleshed out Mer's character a little more. She felt shallow, and the scene where Anna and Mer talk about their feelings for St. Clair felt just a little false. Like, it rushed to the "please go for it because HE LOVES YOU and never mind me!" revelation a little too quickly.
- Paris is beautiful and is its own character in the novel. Would have liked even more Parisian adventures.
- This book felt VERY comprehensive. Anna's great. A well-rounded heroine who finds herself in a new world. I loved seeing the good and the bad as she settled in.


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*blows away the dust*

Hello! Let's try this one more time, shall we? I'm planning on crossposting various things I review and some tumblr posts here, too. If you're reading, hi. What would you like me to talk about?

Aww, girlfrand. You continue to rock at this blog thing. I hope that in two hundred years some cyber-archaelogist comes across my blog and laughs. Well, she might just shake her head.

Wow, girl. You are pretty good at the whole blogging thing, aren't you? A blog post a year does not a good blogger make.

Oh well! Hello! Yeah. I suck at posts. Sorry about that. To make up for it, let's have some rambles. (It sounds like a fancy drink, doesn't it? 'Rambles.' Or maybe a card game. Either way, it sounds like something you'd find at a casino. Not that I've ever been inside a casino, unless you count the Penny Arcade or Dave and Buster's. No?)

I'm really interested in how academics and social life combine. I think that for the most part the two should intersect and inform one another. Maybe I'm lazy and use this as an excuse for not actually always doing my homework, but I draw connections between classes and apply the things I'm learning more easily if I'm able to connect it to stuff that means a lot to me outside of the classroom. (I'm personally leaning towards the Holly is Lazy camp. Dunno about you.) Okay, so I had a grand scheme for this blog post, and it was going to involve Fan Culture and interpretation theory and that's where this entire ramble about intersecting realms (I sound like a sorcerer now) was going to take this post. Fan Culture, which I took last spring, was pretty transformative for me. It let me bring in things I knew and loved, like fanfiction (don't you laugh. You've read fanfiction) and shipping debates, into an academic setting. That sparked the idea for me, and it's continued into classes this year (although I can't say I'm ever going to be too successful at namedropping theorists. I love me some Barthes, though.) Has anyone else experienced this awesome, mind-blowy feeling of "everything in my life can tie together!" in any of their classes?

Okay. Thank you for letting the English major take the stage for a few moments! I can't get too academic, though. My favorite books to read are still of the girl power young adult fantasy variety, and that's not going to change any time soon! Diana Wynne Jones and Gail Carson Levine forever. :)

P.S. Kicked WoW forever. Sorry, Adéle. You were one fierce warlock and we emerged victorious over some wicked foes together, and you'll always be my favorite evil pixelated avatar, but real life wins.

Yeah. I quit World of Warcraft. Again! How about that?! To be honest, I don't think the game's an entirely worthless exercise or endeavor. I met some pretty amazing people on there, and it is really fun and all that jazz, but it gets scary once you meet the people who prioritize WoW over real life. And those are the only players non-WoWers focus on, which is sad. But from a sociological perspective, WoW's a really interesting look into how groups interact with each other, especially economically.

So. Ahem. That's, um, my defense of World of Warcraft. :) But alas, I no longer frolic through Azeroth, so perhaps this blog needs a new name. And maybe an update or two, huh, Holly? How about that?

Insert clip of me mumbling and making excuses now. The truth is, I am just pretty rotten at blogging. Mostly because I ramble and because I forget. However, if I think back to that Evernote list I made way back in August, one of my goals for the school year was to keep a blog, and to write in it, and feel reflective and all ponderous and such. Is ponderous a word? It really should be if it isn't.

Hmm. Well. My promise to myself! This blog will at least be thought about once a week. :D That's hard with the Swat lifestyle, but this is a nice little jaunt into writing that isn't about Foucault or Freud!

Ahh, cosmetic detective time!

Before I start my actual blog entry, I would like to do a little blog dance and say that I am done with my sophomore year of college as of this morning (when I submitted my last paper, heh)! Hoooraaaay!

Okay. Now for bloggishness. I would like to give a big, big virtual hug to MakeupAlley, which is an amazing/splendiferous/sparkly/incredibly informative site that has captured my heart when it comes to cosmetics. It's a powerhouse for makeup reviews. Search for any product you can think of, and users will have submitted a review for it. And you can, of course, submit reviews of you own! I admit that I didn't use MakeupAlley much in the past because I'd only just, y'know, submit a review or two and then go and scan ingredient lists on cosmetics for scary ingredients and impulsively buy it if it didn't seem too toxic.

But! The best thing about MakeupAlley goes beyond the reviews. They're great. But there's a whole community stemming from MakeupAlley, and whatever cosmetic query you have, you can bet that MakeupAlley will have a thread on one of its many parent boards to help you out.

I think the main reason I'm gushing about MakeupAlley right now is my prancing through the site today. For the past couple of weeks, I have slowly come to the conclusion that my cleanser and shampoo are simply not the ones for me. Heartbreaking! I use Burt's Bees Deep Cleansing cream for a cleanser and Very Volumizing for shampoo, and I have for the past year or so. But my skin's broken out since then, and my hair's frankly a lot oilier than it used to be. (Remember-- this is only for my case; tons of people love these products, which is awesome!) I'm sure there are many factors involved, as always, but the menthol in the cleansing cream irritates my skin, and I think the shampoo causes a lot more buildup than it should (which my hairdresser remarked upon when I went in for a haircut last week). Distraught, I turned to makeupalley for advice, and posted on their boards. I got several helpful responses, some reminding me to cool my jets (which is useful-- must remember that every product, even an organic one, isn't for everyone), and others listing lots of good skincare ranges for sensitive combination skin like mine. (That's the official labelage of my skin. I think everyone secretly has combination skin though, and Julie Gabriel agrees with me. :D)

One user suggested that I check her notepad for advice, which brings me to another great feature-- little mini dissertations on makeup and skincare can be found in tons of users' individual notepads! I must recommend this one: http://www.makeupalley.com/account/vn.asp?u=gingerrama#manual. It encourages consumers not to, y'know, buy into hype! Any kind of hype. I frankly think the most dangerous hype that's out there right now is the organic hype. While I love organic brands and ingredients, too many companies take advantage of said hype and use it to market ingredients that are still loaded with toxic ingredients! Lots of other notepads, depending on the user, talk about specific skincare tips for their skin, but there's tons of information to be gleaned from those, too.

Get thee to makeupalley! They have swaps and sale markers, too... it's such a fantastic resource for anybody who wants to know a little bit more before they buy. I'm learning constantly from it!

Ways to Feel Productive...

..without actually being productive. I have a paper due in two days (actually, one day and 21 hours) that I have not started. This is certainly not the bleakest state I've ever been in. I'm not even stressed about it. But... butbutbut... shooould I be stressed? Why am I not stressing on this paper? Why do I not feel guilty about procrastinating! Alas! There's the rub, lassie and laddie! There's the rub! I feel guilty for not feeling guilty.

This paper will get done (Donne, haha. My paper involves John Donne) eventually. And by eventually, I mean within the next forty-five hours. :)

In the mean time, just to get myself in the zone for typing, here is a lovely little baby blog entry! And here's a virtual pacifier for my guilt.