New website! Huzzah! Raise your glasses with me! And a blog...a blog...right. Can someone be a natural blogger? I mean, it doesn't happen in nature. You don't see gazelles on the plains blogging about the hardships of life on the savannah...hipster gazelles. That's a Disney movie waiting to happen.

Well, whether or not someone can be a natural or born blogger, I'm not one of them...unless nattering on about nothing counts. Is that all blogging is? The way people talk about it makes it sound so much more focused than that. Whatever. It's a thing I'm doing.

Speaking of new websites, it's Time to Opine (this might become a regular segment)!

Time to Opine: 1&1, website building platform and domain service provider - DO NOT USE THEM! I repeat, do not use 1&1. Why I dislike them will take for more time and space than I am willing to give them on this blog, but drop me a line and I will be happy to regale you with tales of the terrible. On the other hand, Squarespace! No, they don't pay me to say this, but they could. I have loved them!!! So great, so clean, so easy. They have gobs of FAQs. Guess how many I read? Like, four. Not because I'm super smart and know so much about web design. No, I'm kind of an idiot that doesn't like to read instructions. I like to charge forward and just start mucking about. And I'm really pleased with the result! Again, that's not as much a testament to my awesomeness (though I am pretty awesome at times) so much as a testament to how intuitive Squarespace has made their site. Well done, Squarespace! Round of applause!

Onto books! What I'm reading right now seems like a good segment for an author.

Book Nook: Yes, I like the stupid rhymes. My blog, my dumb names. So I'm reading The Lunar Chronicles at the moment. I've seen these books everywhere, all over social media, Amazon kept suggesting them to me. The hipster in me resisted because everyone else seemed to be reading it, despite the fact that I ended up picking it up and looking it over every time I was in a bookshop. I finally bought the first one, Cinder, while spending some birthday money, but it was still a couple of months before I read it. I ended up reading it on the plane to San Diego. Now, it'll help you to know that I really dislike flying. I find it to be an incredibly stressful experience, and I have a powerful fear of crashing and dying. I got so into Cinder during the flight, once we landed I avoided getting my stuff together as long as possible (before becoming an impediment to others) just so I could keep reading. And I was barely nervous during the flight. That, my friends, is the magic of reading! Of course, I finished Cinder during the flight back and was then stuck for the next few hours without access to the next one. I ended up reading Seraphina in between, but I'll talk about that in the next entry. I'm just now getting into Cress, the third book in the series because I blew through the second one, Scarlet.

The series is so good! I say I'm not generally a sci-fi fan, but I love Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who, so that may not be accurate. The characters are all really well developed and distinctly written. This can be especially difficult when you have a large cast of characters, as is the case in these books. Meyer does such a great job setting scenes, and the story ranges all over the world, which is so exciting. So far I've been in Asia, France, the Moon, and in between. I have a particular penchant for fairytales as well, so anyone that is a folklore and fairytales junkie like me will super appreciate all the nods to the original stories that inspired the various characters. Oh, and the dialogue is great too! Really funny and realistic, which can also be difficult, especially if you're trying to convey a lot of information in a conversation or just complicated/convoluted plot stuff. I love it so much.

My biggest regret is currently not having brought Cress with me to read as I wait for my car to be finished here at the shop. Below is a link to preview of Cinder in case you're interested in seeing for yourself what that's all about. Enjoy!