What's Up Wednesday (10) / RSW (9)

What's Up Wednesday is a weekly meme geared toward readers and writers, so we can check in with each other. To join, just check out Jaime Morrow or Erin Funk's blogs for the link widget and sign up!


WHAT I'M READING

I finished The Dream Thieves and it was GLORIOUS. I need the next book asap! I think this is the biggest flaw to reading anything early; it makes the wait THAT much longer! On the bright side, I still have tons of amazing books to read and many more coming out in September!

I've picked up Charm & Strange again, which isn't to say it wasn't good. I was reading it on Kindle and then the Sister borrowed the Kindle to read something else. That's why I had to stop, but it's nice to be back in. The voice is great, really engaging.

I'm also reading Control, which is another ARC. It doesn't come out until December, but I've been dying to read it because I adore Miss Lydia Kang. Our fellow #twtpoem poet Miss April Tucholke had an ARC and was kind enough to lend it to me. So yaaaay for blog friends & books! (Also, am dying to read April's book, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea as well. It's out Thursday & I have ordered it as a birthday gift to myself since my birthday's this Friday.)


WHAT I'M WRITING

I started connecting my fragments together, so yay! More importantly, I think I figured out how to get my plot going on "Luck." Still haven't quite figured out where the beginning should be, but I was trying to add some more tangible stakes and I think I've found the thing for that. Now, back to the hard part. I'm just one of those people who need to get the beginning right for the rest of it to follow. *SIGH*


WHAT INSPIRES ME RIGHT NOW

The absolutely gorgeous writing in Maggie Stiefvater's DREAM THIEVES. Her turns of phrase are so evocative and brilliant, and again, she is a master of mood.

Also, inspired by the exhibit on the Japanese Internment in the U.S. during WWII inside the Japanese American National Museum in LA.

WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN UP TO

I've been resting up! Unlike my past weekends, I pretty much stayed home this weekend. I saw Percy Jackson & the Sea of Monsters, which was much closer to the books and therefore MUCH BETTER. I thought the first one was awful in one sense but also very entertaining thanks to some of the humor AND a lot of the acting (I love Logan Lehrman's Percy). So yes, this one was better, though the pacing still needs work. They also really need to stop messing with the plot so much. :P

We also went to Little Tokyo to shop, but we stumbled upon the Nisei Week celebrations. It was festive, fun, and filled with delicious food. So I ate a lot too.

Watermelon lemonade, pulled pork chips, house-made chips, bacon-wrapped corndog,
chai popcorn, corn on the cob with cheese and spicy garlic aioli

(Photo/ the Sister)

AND here's some brief SDCC stuff - swag! All the things we picked up/ bought!

Cute stuff we bought - except the Mr. Toast postcard & the Pancreas pin.

The miscellaneous stuff we picked up: Peanuts postcard; World's End pre-screening card; True Blood bracelets; RED 2 sunglasses; Black Sails bandanas; Adventuretime pins; an ebook novella voucher postcard for Breaking Bad; and a set of cards for The Awesomes.

The Sister bought the SDCC exclusive Snoopy iPhone case.


The stuff we picked up at the BBC Booth: Little Doctor Who figures, including the SDCC exclusive tuxedo Ten, and a SHERLOCK T-Shirt.

The swag we got from the 20th Century FOX Hall H panel: viral marketing materials for Trask Industries and their Sentinels for the upcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past movie (hat, propaganda posers); T-Shirts for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and The Wolverine.

This is all my book-related swag! From the Summit T-Shirt Bar, I made this Dauntless shirt. You could choose to have any of the faction symbols on your shirt, and on the back, it says DIVERGENT and the movie's release date. Also from Summit is that Divergent pin. From the Penguin booth, I got those Legend temporary tattoos, and from the Hachette Books booth, I got an ARC of Curtsies & Conspiracies by giving them the right password.

Also book-related AND movie-related was the Ender's Game swag. There was a lot and it's pretty awesome. From the Summit booth, there was the T-Shirt Bar again - so you can get the symbol of any of the Ender's Game armies on a shirt that says Ender's Game & the movie release date on the back. (We got Dragon Army, the best.) Also from the Summit Booth was that giant bag and the army symbol pins and stickers.

We picked up more stuff later at the Ender's Game Experience. Other than our green screen photo in the Battle Room, we also got to make International Fleet recruit ID cards/badges (you can see them under the wildcat sticker and the T-shirt), and we got those dog tags.

At the HANNIBAL panel, we got our first piece of panel swag. We turned in our tickets at the Fulfillment Room for this print of a sketch done by Hannibal Lecter. It's a sketch that appears in both the show and in the movies. I've not shown the actual picture because it's kind of graphic (a man impaled by lots of sharp, pointy things).

And lastly, we got these free YODA dog and cat ears for our furry friends at home. Loki has yet to be subjected to the ears yet. (The cat ears I picked up for a friend.)

Thanks for sticking around week after week, guys. I love hearing from you all, and I can't believe the summer is slowly but surely coming to a close. Ah, why?!

Anyway, I have to go figure out what I'm going to do for my birthday this weekend. True to my introvert nature, I think it'll involve reading and sleeping, hah.


Q4U: What have you been up to?


For more SDCC goodness, here are my previous related posts:

1) What's Up Wednesday (7) / RSW (6)
2) SDCC Recap No. 1
3) What's Up Wednesday (8) / Our Comic Con Fashion
4) SDCC Recap No. 2
5) SDCC Recap No. 3