End of Year Survey: 2017

LORDY THIS IS GOING TO BE LONG SO I'M SKIPPING AN INTRODUCTION. As always, link to Jamie's original post here, and yay team! We survived 2017! *collapses in exhaustion*

HOW I GOT MY AGENT (!!!): A Tale of Hogwarts Houses, Micro Dreams, and Anxiety

The weird thing about wanting to be an author (besides the fact that it's a totally masochistic thing to want to do) is that the larger dream is comprised of micro dreams. Things like seeing your book in a store, seeing it shelved face out, having a signing in a bookstore, having a signing at a con, being on a panel, getting your ARCs in the mail, seeing your name printed on a reak cover and holding that cover in your hands.

For me, even before I let my imagination run wild enough to imagine those pie-in-the-sky goals, I had the ultimate dream of writing a How I Got My Agent blog post. (Oh, and putting “rep'd by @AwesomeAgent” in my Twitter bio.) I don't know why this specific goal always seemed so wonderful to me--probably because I've read and loved dozens of them and always found them deeply inspiring. I’ve daydreamed about this post for ages, ever since I decided I really, REALLY wanted to do this masochistic writing thing, back around 2011 when I was young and pure of spirit and unblemished by the harsh realities of the world.



But long before I actively started educating myself on how publishing works (and took a detour through blogginglandia that I so don't regret), I was a writer. (Not a GOOD one, that took like twenty years, but certainly a prolific one.) I definitely was that kid who knew from way early on that making stories was the thing I wanted to do, because I did it all the time. I have twelve-year-old word documents excavated from ancient rickety computers and preserved in the museum of my google drive to prove it.

So now, naturally, after 12 years in Azkaban waiting to write this post of posts, I don’t have a flippity flopping clue what to say. Other than SOB SCREAM OH MY GAAAHD and other eloquent things that prove that writing the word stuffs is tooootally what I should be doing. BUT ANYWAY. This will be a long one, because it’s been a heck of a month, and I will have to waste a lot of words to find the right ones.

Monthly Recap: September 2017

It's been a cool minute since I last did one of these, but September was FULL OF THE THINGS, so let's relive it, shall we?

The Books of 2017: Part One of Many

SO, HEY, i've read a heck of a ton of books this year (I mean, not as much as the ROBOTS who have read nearly 300 books but they are not human so we do not worry about them) and I haven't reviewed, like, any of them. Let's blaze through the books I've read, shall we? And I'll tell you which ones you must toss your entire life aside AT ONCE to read, and you will listen, because that is where we're at in this relationship. OKAY THEN.

Get ready for some quick impressions of a whole bunch of books I read in 2017, some quick opinions, and some general incoherence! Also, this will not be in order, because why be logical about anything?

#PitchWars, All the Words, and HELLO

HELLO BLOG. YOU LOOK SO PRETTY. A little dusty and creaky in the joints and I--stop looking at me like that--I know I've neglected you, but that shall all be rectified. Look, I brought presents!

I got into on Twitter why I've been mostly absent from the interwebs this year (go HERE if you want to read a v personal thread full of OPTIMISM and POORLY TIMED JOKES) but needless to say, I have very much missed the book blogging community and yammering on about books--and about myself. (We are the solipsistic millenial generation, embrace it and keep talking about yourself because you are FASCINATING and there is seriously no sarcasm here, I for one am fully interested in exactly what you had for breakfast). Because, speaking of myself, very exciting things are going on in Gillianland!

Happy Birthday, Harry: Thoughts and Feelings and Glasses Raised

“…there will be books written about Harry—every child in our world will know his name!”

--Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Ch. 1

Let the record show that in the book, Hagrid spelled everthing correctly

(Fun story: I own thirteen copies of this book, and all the covers in this post are from the editions I own. Yes, I have a problem, and by problem I mean not a problem at all)

Happy birthday, Harry, my eternal bae (as the kids say, aka the people who, unlike me, weren't alive when the Muggle world was first blessed by the arrival of one Harry James Potter). I reread this whole book today in your honor. It's about my eleventy billionth reread, but it's been years since I treated myself to a full Potter readthrough.



All my life, the Wizarding World has been my refuge. I used to sink into the whimsy and bustle and peril of Hogwarts regularly as a kid and as a teen for comfort, for entertainment, for nostalgia, to hunt for clues (because, of course, I am an ancient member of the original generation, and I remember what it was like to WAIT between BOOKS for ANSWERS because <i>we didn't knowww</i> and there was no Tumblr to spoil us). Every excursion into a Harry Potter book is a treat, and every time I submerge I discover more bits and bobs about the world. Every time I hang out with them, the characters carve themselves in my soul a little more deeply. Trite as it is (and this is already a disgusting amount of sentiment, someone cough up some slugs to kill the mood), reading a Harry Potter book is just pure magic.

Anne with an E Review: More like Anne with an Egads

Like a lot of bookish little nerdgirls with vivid imaginations and access to a library, I grew up totally in love with my fictional kindred spirit, Anne Shirley. I read all of the books throughout elementary school and middle school, wherein I learned several very important things, like 1) life is better with lots of scope for the imagination 2) tomorrow's another day with no mistakes in it yet 3) puff sleeves are of grave importance 3) Gilbert Blythe is the perfect book boyfriend.

When the Movie is (GASP) Better Than the Book

This smorgasbord of unpopular opinions is inpired by Christina's excellent post from yesteryear, even though it commits the high blasphemy of thinking Ella Enchanted the movie is better than the book (for the record, I flipping love that movie, but ohmygodno). I know it's basically high bookish blasphemy to EVER think the movie is better than the book. I mean, they cut that one subplot and that ruined the tension and took away from their relationship! They totally cut that one scene that makes the WHOLE SERIES! They gave Movie!Ginny the personality of a paper sandwich! They made Harry and Voldemort grapplehug while they fell off a tower WHAT WERE THEY THINKING I MEAN REALLY--

Whoops. Tangent. We're here to talk about the movies that are BETTER than the books, not the movies that are sort of great on their own but will never ever capture the true DEPTH AND BRILLIANCE of the Wizarding World and Ginevra Weasley, boss heroine, and what Albus Dumbledore was actually--

No. Okay. FOCUS.