Whew! I could not have picked a crazier week to attempt a readathon – I’ve had to squeeze reading into the nooks and crannies of my schedule, but I’ve still managed to find a bit of time each day, which is important to me. I even managed to read on my lunch break twice, which I’m sure made me look anti-social but luckily I could not care less about coming across as the weird book-reading girl. Literally everyone who works at Microsoft is a nerd in some way. I’m in good company.

I’ve also shifted up my TBR a little bit. I’ve read way too many amazing reviews of An Ember in the Ashes in the past week or so to ignore it any longer, so it’s earned a spot in the stack of books I am trying to finish for this readathon. In fact, it’s almost replaced everything else, since it’s so long.

My goal is to read The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (TGWCFIASOHOM, if you will) first and then to power through An Ember in the Ashes this weekend. If I can do all of that, I will be 100% satisfied with myself. If I can’t, well… that’s okay too.

I haven’t actually read anything yet today, but I didn’t get home from work until almost 8pm and then I decided to go running because I had pent-up ‘i just sat through a five hour meeting’ energy. I needed to relax a bit by writing this blog post (because working relaxes me, yes, I’m strange) and then I’ll start reading.

Current progress overall:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Done! (323 pages)
The 100 by Kass Morgan: Done! (323 pages – weird, they’re the exact same length)
Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins: Put on hold.
The Utterly Unintersting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant: Listened to 2 hours of the audio book
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland: Just started.

Why are all of my book titles so long? These are abnormally long.

I decided to participate in my own challenge, even though I obviously can’t win. Today I had the honor of hosting the Bout of Books challenge, and I have a fantastic time reading all the book haikus people sent in over the course of the day. It was a lot of fun, and now I want to do it too. I literally just finished reading Attachments by Rainbow Rowell and I’m a big goopy mess on account of how great it was – but there is no time for book hangovers in a readathon. So I am affording myself enough time to write this blog update before diving into Rebel Belle before bed.

My haiku about Attachments by Rainbow Rowell:

Beth and Jennifer
write extremely long emails.
So, when do they work?

I’m a little bummed it took me 3 days to finish this book, but I can’t even really be annoyed because I loved it so much. If I don’t read all five of the books on my TBR, well, life goes on. I’ll replace them with a few graphic novels on Sunday so I still hit the number. Yolo!

Here’s my day 3 update:

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Done! (323 pages)
The 100 by Kass Morgan: Listened to 6 hours out of 7
Rebel Belle by Rachel Hawkins: Just started.

Hope everyone else is doing well with their readathons – please feel free to leave me a comment and let me know how you’re doing, or send in more book haikus! Go nuts! I love them.

Today’s blog post is going to be a little bit different, because today… I am hosting a challenge for Bout of Books 13! To find out more about this read-a-thon, check out their website and consider joining in! Because – good news! If you catch this blog post in the next 2 hours – there’s still time to sign up! But if it’s already Wednesday where you live… you’re probably too late. I’m sorry! 🙁

This challenge is only for participants, so if you’re feeling left out, you should consider doing it next time!

For those of you specifically here for the challenge, here it is: Write a haiku about whatever book you’re reading right now.

Here’s one I’ve written about Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, as an example/a bit of inspiration:

Boy Wizard. Harry.
His school is cooler than yours.
But no internet.

Feel free to tweet your haikus as well, to share them with the world!

And of course, it wouldn’t be a proper challenge without a prize, would it? The winner of this challenge may choose a book up to $15 from Book Depository and I will get it for you! 

If you’re participating in the read-a-thon, good luck! And if not… what are you doing?! Grab a book anyway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I don’t know if I’ll be writing blog posts about every single day of this readathon, but I will be updating here and there, especially if the challenge for the day makes sense to write a blog post!

I think today, the first day, is my busiest day of the readathon. Not the best way to hit the ground running, but I will manage. I had to work today (9-5) and have a writing workshop that begins in 45 minutes. I’m writing this from the cafe where we meet, before anyone else has gotten here. In the small breaks I’ve had today, this is what I’ve managed to accomplish:

The 100 by Kass Morgan: Listened to 1 hour out of 7
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell: Read 57 pages

I plan to go home and read a bit more of Attachments tonight, but I also have a video to edit, so I’m not sure how much more I’ll get done. I’m still feeling confident about the rest of the week, though!

Today’s challenge is by Writing My Own Fairytale – Bookish Survey.

1. How do you organize your shelves? There is very little rhyme or reason to my shelves right now. I have two – a big one and a smaller one. The smaller one has mostly my favorite books, organized mostly by author and whatever seems aesthetically pleasing. The bottom shelf of this one is entirely Harry Potter and its companion novels. The large shelf goes (from top to bottom) 2 shelves of books I haven’t read yet, arranged mostly by size and by hardback vs. paperback, then a single shelf of books I plan to read soon, then the next one down is comics and graphic novels, then the bottom is childhood books and older books in a state of disarray.
2. What is one of your favorite books that’s not in one of your favorite genres? Hmmm. Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. I don’t read much horror but I really loved that book.
3. What is the last 5 star book you read? I believe it was Forgive Me Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick. That or Saga Vol. 4.
4. What book are you most excited to read during the read-a-thon? I am dying to read Vicious by V.E. Schwab. I’m purposefully reading it last, to use as motivation.
5. What book do you recommend the most? Recently? Probably either Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs or Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I’m a pusher.

That’s it for today! How are your readathons going? Remember you can still participate in Bout of Books 13 if you sign up by Tuesday night (at midnight, I think).

I am participating in not one but TWO readathons this week, and I wanted to let you know what they are in case you want to join in!

The first one is called Bout of Books, which runs from Monday the 11th to Sunday the 17th. This one has pretty loose rules; you basically set your own goal and then can participate in the challenges along the way if you so choose. I’m actually hosting Wednesday’s challenge here on my blog, so make sure to stop back and see what it is!

Then on Friday the 15th – Sunday the 17th (it overlaps, which is actually kind of nice – double motivation!) I’ll also be participating in #CrushYourTBR, which is also a pretty casual TBR meant to encourage people to get through the books on their shelves at a quicker rate than normal. It’s great.

I’ve got a pretty over-ambitious TBR for the week, but I plan to start bringing a book to work and reading on my lunch break, which will help. I might not get through all of these, but by george I’m going to try.

I’ll likely be tweeting about the readathon experience over the course of the week, so make sure you’re following me on Twitter if you want to see my updates. It should be a lot of fun, and I’m dying to start. There are some books in that stack I’ve been meaning to read for months, so it should be great.

Let me know if you’re participating, and what you’re hoping to accomplish. Happy reading!

I participated in Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon yesterday, April 25th. I cheated a little, starting Friday night, but I had the evening to myself so I wanted to get reading early. Technically I was supposed to start at 5am my time, but I started around 7pm the night before because I knew I’d be sleeping through many of the pivotal reading hours.

Basically I just made my personal 24 hours of reading a little more convenient to keeping a regular sleeping schedule.

My goal for the readathon, as I stated in a previous blog post, included a stack of a two books I was halfway through and a couple graphic novels I’d been meaning to read. As I got closer to the actual event, I revised my goal to include one more short novel and to read at least 500 pages over the course of the day.

Here’s how I did:

Since You’ve Been Gone by Morgan Matson: I read the 275 pages I had left. 5 hours.
Saga Vol. 3 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples: I read all 144 pages. 1 hour.
Sex Criminals Vol. 2 by Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky: I read all 128 pages. 1 hour.
Doll Bones by Holly Black: I read 133 pages, making it about halfway. 2.5 hours.

Total pages read: 680 pages
Total books completed: 3 books
Total hours read: 9.5 hours

I didn’t do quite as well as I was hoping, but I had a fantastic time and I knocked a few books off my TBR, which really was the ultimate goal. I still haven’t finished Sorcerer’s Stone and now I’m always halfway through Doll Bones as well, but.. I’ll finish those soon. I’m looking forward to getting really serious about my TBR after this, because I have to start whittling it down. I have to.

I believe the next readathon I’ll be doing is Bout of Books, and I am very much looking forward to it. I might also host a readathon this summer for my book club, if anyone is interested. Happy reading!

I’ve been craving a readathon lately, and luckily – there’s one this Saturday! If you haven’t heard of Dewey’s 24 Hour Readathon, I highly encourage you to go check it out. It’s fun and relatively low commitment, since it’s only 24 hours. Here’s my TBR:

I realize this is incredibly ambitious for a 24 hour period, but I am about halfway through both Since You’ve Been Gone and Sorcerer’s Stone already. I hope to finish each of those books, and get through two graphic novels I’ve been sitting on for awhile. It’ll be tough, but I’m gonna try!

Are you taking part in the readathon? If so, what books are you hoping to read? Leave a comment, let me know, and join me on twitter this Saturday! I’ll be tweeting about my progress when my nose isn’t in these books. So excited!

I’m not sure when I got it in my head that a Little Twin Stars cosplay was a thing I had to do, but once it was there it stuck. I was a huge Sanrio fan as a kid (who are we kidding, I still am) and this adorable pair of siblings was always my favorite of the characters. I can’t tell you how much stationary I had in middle school with the Little Twin Stars on it.

There are a lot of different variations of these two, but we used this basic image as inspiration.

SakuraCon 2015 fell the weekend directly after Emerald City Comic Con, so we didn’t really have time to put together anything too complicated. We weren’t going to cosplay at all, but then I remembered this idea. I asked Eia if she’d be down to power through putting this together, and luckily she was totally on board. We figured all we’d need to do was find matching white dresses, find the right color and length wigs, find matching shoes and make our respective props.

In the end it was actually a little bit more than a “quick costume” but we still managed to pull it together in a little over a week.

How we did it: Starting from the top down, the wigs we both got lucky enough to find on Amazon Prime. Thank goodness, as we definitely wouldn’t have had time to order from China or anything like that. Both the star wand and star backpack were made by using standard pillow-making method with yellow fabric and batting. I glued mine on a wooden dowel, Eia added straps to her with thick pink ribbon. We got uber mega lucky with the white dresses, as we found these simple, perfect ones that somehow looked great on both our body types at Forever 21. Eia made her pink waist bow with the same ribbon she used for the backpack straps. We both found tights and/or leggings on our own (I believe mine were from Target and hers were from Goodwill) and the white sneakers were from Payless Shoe Source.

Surprisingly, not too many people knew what we were dressed as right away, but those who did were instantly delighted. Maybe they were too obscure of Sanrio characters. Maybe people just weren’t thinking that far back into their childhoods. Whatever it was, I really didn’t mind being in a relatively obscure costume, because everyone always got it as soon as we explained it, and it can be sort of fun to see people scratching their heads as you walk by. Especially after being Rapunzel last weekend (one of many, many Rapunzels) it was exciting to be a less immediately obvious character.

It was a nice little test at how quickly we can put together costumes we’re still proud of. Even though we spent way less time and money on these costumes than previous ones we’ve made, they weren’t any less fun to wear. The photoshoot wasn’t any less good, the pictures are a lot of fun, and we were super comfortable all day.

I think that’s a good lesson to learn early in cosplay honestly — that sometimes it’s really not the amount of money and time spent on a costume that makes it great. You don’t have to break the bank and make yourself crazy every time you go to a con. I will definitely be mixing easier costumes like these into my lineup in the future, for my own mental sanity and because at the end of the day, people are going to enjoy your costumes regardless of how hard they were to make.

As long as you put your heart into everything you do, it’ll usually turn out great. *thumbs up*

After realizing I never made videos mentioning I would be at Emerald City Comic Con and SakuraCon this year, I decided something needed to be done. Here’s a video outlining every other event I currently plan to be at in 2015 – though if new events pop up, you’ll want to make sure you’re following me on other social media!

Are you going to any of these events? Do you know of any other cool conventions I might not have heard about? Leave me a comment!

Okay. I’ve had 5 Fandom Friday bookmarked for months and months, and even though it’s totally right up my alley — I just haven’t done it yet. So! That ends today! Today, I am delving into this blog link-up thingy! Woo!

So this week, the topic is “5 Times I Totally Fangirled”. I am a fangirl of many, many things, but there are very few things/people that make me stammer and squee and lose my composure. Usually I can keep it together, but there have been those few moments in my life where cool-as-a-cucumber Kristina might have freaked out a little. Here are the ones I can think of:

1. Meeting “Topanga” from Boy Meets World aka Danielle Fishel at VidCon. When I got word that Danielle Fishel was just chillin’ at the con, I dropped everything and ran. Seriously. If you weren’t born in the late 80’s ish, it’s probably hard to understand just how important Boy Meets World was to our generation. It was everything. It was life. Fridays meant new episodes of Boy Meets World, and I swear to god Mom if you try to make plans for me that conflict with TGIF I will scream. It was a good time to be alive. Anyway, I started by taking some creeper selfies with Danielle Fishel in the background, but then managed to get this gem, pictured below.

2. Meeting “Shirley” from Community aka Yvette at MyDamnChannel. I was asked to be on weird little show for My Damn Channel that involved being interviewed by a mildly inappropriate cat puppet, and lo and behold… so was Yvette Nicole Brown. Nevermind the extremely bizzare parameters of the situation; I got to sit in a green room and make small talk with Shirley from Community. And it was great.

3. Meeting “Andrew and Tara” aka Tom Lenk and Amber Benson at LeakyCon. I’m just going to put it out there – after following Tom Lenk on Instagram for a few years, I can astutely deduce that he’s a weird dude. But he’s a weird dude in Buffy as well, where he’s also my favorite character. So meeting him was pretty awesome, and meeting Amber Benson was just a nice bonus.

4. Almost but not quite meeting R.L. Stine at New York Comic Con. I have no picture, because it didn’t happen. I’m still hoping to get to shake R.L. Stine’s hand someday, but that day is yet to arrive. I heard he was at New York Comic Con and I LOST MY SHIT. I realized I missed his panel, ran to his signing line, saw it was A MILE LONG and cried my way through the rest of the convention. Someday, Mr. Stine. Someday.

5. Meeting Ken Jennings at a PAX after party. Most people laugh at me when I tell them meeting Ken Jennings was a highlight of my life, but let’s get real here – this guy is awesome. My dad and I were already avid Jeopardy fans, but we were ALL ABOUT THAT IT when Ken Jennings went on his 74 game streak. I think I watched every single episode during that time. I don’t even know why; I was just fascinated by watching history being made. He’s also hilarious on social media, and a nice dude in person.

There are so many people I’d love to add to this list, but I guess I have my whole life to do that! Really I just need to meet J K Rowling. I don’t know how, or when, but it needs to happen.

Woo! If you’re interested in 5 Fandom Fridays, the official home for it is here. I hope you enjoyed this post and I am looking forward to doing more.