Ring

Ring by Koji Suzuki is a trip through the disturbing. It is not true horror like I had thought, and I think the movie was a bit different from the book (at least from what I remember from my teen years). I was never really scared, per say, but the book was just that level of... unnerving to be more terrifying than most. It was a little like the beginning of Salem's Lot by Stephen King. Creepy, but not scary.

The characters are good, but my favorite has to be Sadako, a character you never actually meet. I want to learn more about what her deal is, and I'm going to spending a bit of time to find the next book in the series, Spiral.


Final Grade: A

Z is for Zero

April is closing in less than 10 hours (for me), and that marks the end of a lot of things.

Script Frenzy ends at midnight tonight, and I'm proud to say that I pounded out 141 pages at the time of I'm writing this, and I hope to have another 9 pages written before the end.

Another end in writing comes tonight as well. I created a spreadsheet at the beginning of the year to track how much I've written, and the first trimester of the year ends tonight. At the start of this month, I had a goal of writing 20,000 words for this month and 92,750 for the trimester, and I've managed to write over 30,000 and 98,000 for each respectively.

The semester ends tomorrow. I know, it's cheating, but still... I just need to wait for my grades to start trickling in. I hopefully haven't done too badly this semester, but you never know.

I'm looking forward to continuing to write this blog, and I think I'll start doing another A-Z challenge in the next couple of months or something. If anything, I'm going to be doing another book review shortly, so keep an eye out for that.

Y is for Yooper

I've already written about my hometown, but this post is dedicated to the whole of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. It's a fairly big place, but there aren't that many major towns in the U.P. I sometimes think that the Lower Peninsula completely forgets that we exist sometimes. Nothing like going to a bowling tournament in Michigan and having people ask "Where's that?" when you say you're from the U.P.

Yeah. I've had that happen to me before.

For any trolls that might be reading this, I have to say: Good luck, you poor bastards.
For any Yoopers, best of luck with the hunting season.


Image from http://dayoopers.com/whatwher.html

X is for Xenoplanets

υ  Andromedae d and its potential moons

Xenoplanet is a bit of an odd term. It's the same as "extrasolar planet" and "exoplanet". All of these terms refer to planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun. They come in all shapes and sizes, from gas giants larger than Jupiter to rocky planets about the size of Earth.

The dream of astronomers and astrobiologists in particular is to find a planet in a star's habitable zone with atmospheric properties very similar to Earth's. This planet could potentially harbor some form of life.

Of course, this "planet" could actually be a moon, if the primary planet orbits the sun at a close enough distance.


Image from Wikipedia - υ Andromedae d.

W is for Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is the process of creating a fictional world. Tolkien's Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis's Narnia are examples of worldbuilding.

I've been working on a world called Materia for about the past decade or so. I think it started either in middle school or high school. It started off actually as a setting for a story I was writing about a couple of friends of mine, but then... It grew. A lot.

Materia has grown from just two countries on the same landmass to several continents. I've added races and taken away others. Countries have been created and destroyed at my whim, though I think I've started to settle on how I want the world to be arranged. One thing that hasn't changed much is its fantasy aspect, but I'm trying to keep some of the fantasy concepts more scientific.

I'm working on the details of my little planet, and each story is starting to be consistent with the major details, like the magic system and the politics of my countries. My current story, Wor(l)ds of Solitude, is also contributing to this process. I'm working on the religions on Materia as well as building more history into my world.

Hopefully, I'll finish most of the worldbuilding process eventually, and maybe I'll do another A-Z challenge next month to work on topics for Materia. That actually sounds like a good idea.

V is for Victory

So we're approaching the end of the month, and for me, it's the end of the semester. Finals start tomorrow with Calculus II leading the pack. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best, but I'll admit that I'm not the most confident about it. I finished up my astrobiology group project paper at about 2 this afternoon, so all that's left in that class is the final on Monday. Theory of Urban Design has a final on Tuesday and so does Earth and Space Science. I shouldn't do too badly on those. There's no final for Marine Ecology and Conservation (thank god), and I'm done with the lab for Earth and Space Science.

I sort of enjoyed doing this challenge. I thought that it would be more difficult, though now we're hitting the harder letters of the alphabet. It'll be interesting to do X on Friday.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

I finished the book Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, and I have to say that I was quite impressed. There were some things that could have been elaborated on, but all in all, the book was good.

Miss Peregrine's opens with an old man telling stories to his grandson. The majority of the book takes place later in the grandson's life after his grandfather is murdered by... something. He finds the home where his grandfather grew up, and there he finds far more than he bargained for.

The idea behind the story was good, if a little outdated with the whole "mutant people living in hiding" thing, but there are some interesting twists to the story. I'm curious to see what he has in store for the next book in the series, and I'm hoping that he reads some of the reviews on Goodreads and polishes up some of the problems.

Final grade: B+

Image from Goodreads.