It’s Monday and I’m going to a screening of Psych the Movie!

Current mood:

Imagine how I’m going to feel after I actually see the movie next Monday. I love them so much 😭. And I’m so glad I moved to LA because I can go to events like this.

I also had a super good day today because, after having a slight meltdown, I spoke to some colleagues about how I’m not feeling my 1A class (the way I’ve designed it), and they totally gave me some ideas for how to make it work better for me next semester (and hopefully for my students, too).

Also, I was dreading grading my students’ annotated bibliographies, but so far, they have been a lot better than I was expecting! I thought maybe their topic was boring because it feels very much like what I’m interested in (even though they got to pick their own actual research question), but! I can tell they’re actually interested in the topics because the writing is so much better and engaged. So that’s nice.

And I finished two books!

Warcross by Marie Lu

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

2.5 stars, rounding up

I liked Emika, and I love the premise of this book. I did not, however, buy the romance and I had no idea what was going on in the game most of the time.

I did like the bit about asking for help (my favorite thing about most new middle grade and YA is the insistence that characters not carry burdens by themselves), but I didn’t get a real sense of why Emika would trust the people she did.

Basically, this needed more character development (aside from Emika and Hammie–who is a total badass) and WAY more team building. More training montages, please! More time spent with the group! I also had logistical questions about how Emika kept [highlight to read spoiler] managing to sneak away to see Hideo [/end spoiler] without her teammates noticing. It made no sense!

The ending was fine, though I called about half of it, and I am intrigued to see where it goes. I would just like more time spent on the characters and less on *waves hand vaguely.*

View all my reviews

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 stars

I listened to this one, and I was super into it. The narration is pretty good, but I think it would have been SO MUCH BETTER as a Full Cast Audio. So that 1/2 a star knockdown is for the narrator.

Tight plotting and totally intense. While I didn’t guess the murderer, I also wasn’t surprised (though I was surprised for the reasoning behind it–geez, sociopath much?). The big reveal here is as much HOW as much as who and why. Good stuff.

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And A Month of Faves is happening next month! Hooray!

And I might be doing some reading challenges next year (but I’ll talk about that in another post)!

As for right now, I’m reading John Green’s latest, Turtles All the Way Down.

I like it so far!

And my friend texted me after finishing Tayari Jones’s Silver Sparrow, which gave her a lot of feelings!

So much has happened today and is happening! I need to go to bed!

Exclamation point!

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