Addi's Current Favs

Unwind
This. Freaking. Book. 

And the sequel, UnWholly. 

The next one doesn't come out until October. :(

But here's why I love it: 

It's deep. It's so incredibly deep. It deals with life and death and souls and God and love and I can't freaking get over it. This is one of those books that will haunt you. 

Almost all of the characters have at least one chapter from their perspective. Even the bad guys. So you see everyone's motives and thought process and vulnerabilities, which makes it about 50x more intense. Within the first three pages of the second book, I was already cheering for a new character. I think this might be my new favorite book. 

It is terrifying. In a really powerful way. 

I'm trying to put these feelings into words. 

It makes me want to scream, and cry, and smack some sense into certain characters, and kiss other ones, and I love it, I love it... 

*breathes deeply*

Here's the scariest part. 

The books are divided into parts. At the beginning of each part, the author quotes articles or parts from books. 

And most of them aren't made up. He legitimately cites real articles from the past few years that relate to the story and what's happening. Not only relate, but sometimes are about. 

Honestly, there few things scarier than finding out halfway through the book that it's not as fictional as you thought. He did his research. 

Here's basically what it comes down too: There was a war over abortion, and not only that, but schools shut down (not sure why). Teens weren't in school, and didn't have jobs, and almost toppled the government completely. 

Until someone came up with unwinding. It was a compromise for the ProLife and ProChoice people, and took care of the crazy teenagers. Kids between 13 and 18 could be unwound. Everyone in America knows about organ donors and transplants and stuff. Unwinding is a bigger scale version of that. I think they said 99.4% of the Unwind has to remain alive. 

The Unwinds - either problem kids, or tithes, or wards, or whatever - are taken to Harvest Camps, where their body is cut apart so other people can use the body parts. Hearts, lungs, arms, legs, even eyes. 

And they're alive. It's the most creepy thing I've heard of. Including the Hunger Games.
It's worse than the Hunger Games, first of all because they have little to no chance of winning/escaping, secondly because a lot more kids are affected by it instead of 24 teens a year. And because it's not a drawing. There's no odds.

Nope, the parents or guardians have to sign a paper that says they give permission for their kid to be unwound. It's sick. 

Here's why I liked it better than the Hunger Games (and y'all should know I love the Hunger Games. They're epic.)

Unwind is deeper, more profound, and deals with more issues. Not just humanity and love, but God, death, respect, betrayal, hate, revenge, lost innocence, regret, neglect, fear, hope, leadership...

In the first book, a bunch of kids ask each other at what point a person has a soul. 

If you ask me, that's the whole point of the books. 

That turned into a serious rant. >_> Oops.

Lord of the Rings

Holly and I watched the Two Towers a couple days ago and we're hoping to watch Return of the King tonight. :D

Holly said Gollum was cute. >_> And she fell asleep during the Battle of Helm's Deep. Crazy child.
I love Lord of the Rings. :D If I ever met the Doctor, and I got a ride in the TARDIS, I would go back in time and meet C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. That'd be the most epic thing ever.
I love it. I love the story, I love the characters, I love the songs/poems that are in the books.
I can not wait until the Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug comes out (yes, I watched the trailer. Like fifty times.)

Mumford and Sons
Current favorite music. I like White Blank Page best.

WOWZER.

Okay, I have a lot I need to write about. First, I'll try to sum up June, and then this past week.

JUNE:
~PE. That was actually pretty fun. I met some freshmen that are pretty fun, including my "Timothy", the girl I'm supposed to help learn the ropes of Trinity. So that was fun. And we went bowling and played mini golf and went swimming.

~Tulsa. All the cousins on my dad's side of the family went to our grandparent's house up there.  I came a day late because of aforesaid PE, and met them at the lake. We went swimming in the lake, and fishing (well, I didn't fish).  The next day we went to a nursing home and gave cards to people, which was nice. This is going to sound so mean and shallow, but that place kinda creeps me out... it smells weird, and old people are creepy until you start talking to them and stuff. Mac seemed to agree with me on that. Once we actually started talking to them they were really sweet.
We slept outside in a tent most of the time, and when Kaylen woke me up one morning, she was like "Oh, watch out for the spider behind you." I look around and there is a freaking huge spider like a foot from my face. Luckily I was still too tired to scream. The next night we slept inside, and I was reading when a spider crawled across my pillow. Like, right next to my face. It was small though. I killed it.

~Grandma Camp. Let's see. We went swimming like every day, and ate SO MUCH ice cream. We rode our bikes to DQ one day, which hurt more than it probably should have. My bum was sore for the next two days at least. We watched a lot of movies. We blew bubbles, which was super entertaining. We got glow sticks and we had this brilliant idea to cut one open and pour the glow-y stuff into the bubble solution.

That failed. We caught fireflies, put Mentos into Diet Coke, did blind makeovers (that was really fun). We watched probably 15 episodes of Say Yes to the Dress. We tried to do the melted crayon art that I'm sure you've seen pictures of... EPIC fail. We made cake balls that were hideously ugly, but they tasted good. We played Messy Twister with shaving cream that we colored with food coloring. Our hands and legs were pink and purple for a couple days... It was fun though. :D I think that sums up most of Grandma camp. We danced and sang and listened to music a lot too. 

LAST WEEK:

CYT camp!!! :D AND MADELYN WAS HERE!!!! (Madelyn's one of my friends from India. Although she's originally from here.) :DD And we spent the whole week together and it was great!! It hardly makes up for the past year of not seeing it each other, but it was awesome nonetheless. So we spent the week dancing and singing and hanging out. 'Twas awesome. :)
At the showcase, Abby, Lexi, and Josh showed up and surprised us. :D
That's the short version. :P

I. Am. So. Freaking. Tired.

Gaaaaah.
CYT camp this week, and I LOVE it, it's great, but that plus going straight to the library, I'm EXHAUSTED. This camp is dance emphasis, so I'm kicking and spinning and trying to memorize it all in a week and MY BRAIN HURTS.
OH OH OH. (lol I'm backwards Santa. Bahaha.)
Madelyn, one of my bffs from India, is here and taking the camp with me and it's really cool to have her here.
Seriously, my brain is in pain. I want to turn on my Imagine Dragons and LotR Pandora stations and curl up in a ball.
Like, forever.
So I'm going to bed.