Happy (kinda-late) Halloween!

Hello again! Sorry I wasn't able to post anything on Halloween day, but I was busy the whole weekend. I meant to post this video beforehand, but you can see it now. Happy (late) Halloween! Enjoy!

Top 25 Must-Read Book Series

Here are my top 25 favorite book series to read ever. I have posted the first book in the series with the link to a website with a synopsis (typically the author's official website) embedded in it with each listing out of the 20. I LOVE LOVE LOVE these books and really hope that the people who see this and then go out and read them later will enjoy them, too.

1. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
2. The Books of Beginning Book 1: The Emerald Atlas by John Stephens
3. The Finishing School Series Book 1: Etiquette and Espionage by Gail Carriger
4. Warriors by Erin Hunter
5. Ruby Red: The Ruby Red Trilogy by Kerstin Gier
6. The Ever Afters Book 1: Of Giants and Ice by Shelby Bach
7. A Wrinkle in Time: the Time Quintet Book 1 by Madeline L'Engle
8. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
9. The Harry Potter Series Book 1: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling
10. Tales of the Frog Princess Book 1: The Frog Princess by E.D. Baker
11. The Kane Chronicles Book 1: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan
12. Inkheart: Inkworld Trilogy Book 1 by Cornelia Funke
13. Artemis Fowl: The Artemis Fowl Series Book 1 by Eion Colfer
14. The School for Good and Evil Trilogy Book 1: The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani
15. The 13th Reality Book 1: The Journal of Curious Letters by James Dashner
16. City of Ember: The Ember Series Book 1 by Jeanne DuPrau
17. Kingdom Keepers Book 1: Disney After Dark by Ridley Pearson
18. The Unwanteds Series Book 1: The Unwanteds by Lisa McMann
19. The Magic Thief by Sarah Phineas
20. The Secret Series Book 1: The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch
21. The Selection Series Book 1: The Selection by Kiera Cass
22. Incarnate: The Incarnate Novels by Jodi Meadows
23. Young Wizards Book 1: So You Want to be a Wizard by Diane Duane
24. Five Kingdoms Book 1: Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull
25. Fablehaven: the Fablehaven Series by Brandon Mull

The Last Ride

I've found a really interesting short story told from the point of view of a New York City taxi driver. It's about an old woman that he gives a ride to. While he is driving her around, she takes him all over downtown, showing him things like her old house and a dance studio she liked to go to. This story really made me wonder about the life I would like to lead, and how the smallest acts of compassion can affect other people's lives. The story is called The Last Ride, and you can find it on the webpage Stories to Make You Think.

I arrived at the address and honked the horn. After waiting a few minutes, I honked again. Since this was going to be my last ride of my shift, I thought about just driving away, but instead I put the car in park and walked up to the door and knocked.

"Just a minute!" answered a frail, elderly voice. I could hear something being dragged across the floor. After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 90s stood before me. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie. By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets. There were no clocks on the walls, no knickknacks or utensils on the counters. In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.

"Would you carry my bag out to the car?" she said. I took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman. She took my arm and we walked slowly toward the curb. She kept thanking me for my kindness. "It's nothing", I told her. "I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother to be treated." "Oh, you're such a good boy," she said.

When we got in the cab, she gave me an address and then asked, "Could you drive through downtown?" Downtown was a long drive, I thought to myself. "It's not the shortest way." I answered quickly. "Oh, I don't mind," she said. "I'm in no hurry. I'm on my way to a hospice." I looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. "I don't have any family left", she continued in a soft voice. "The doctor says I don't have very long." I quietly reached over and shut off the meter."What route would you like me to take?" I asked. 
For the next two hours, we drove through the city. She showed me the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator. We drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had me pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a girl. Sometimes she'd ask me to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.

As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, "I'm tired. Let's go now." We drove in silence to the address she had given me. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home, with a driveway that passed under a portico. Two orderlies came out to the cab as soon as we pulled up. They were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.

I opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair. "How much do I owe you?" She asked, reaching into her purse. "Nothing", I said in reply. "You have to make a living", she protested. "There are other passengers", I responded. Almost without thinking, I bent and gave her a hug. She held onto me tightly. "You gave an old woman a little moment of joy", she said. "Thank you." I squeezed her hand, and then walked into the dim morning light.

Behind me, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life. I didn't pick up any more passengers that shift. I drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day, I could hardly talk. What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift? What if I had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away? On a quick review, I don't think that I have done anything more important in my life. We're conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments. But great moments often catch us unaware - beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.

Winterling

* * * * */ Five Stars

Genre: Action, Adventure, Fiction, Fantasy, (some light) Humor, Suspense, Mystery, Danger

In this enchanting book by Sarah Prineas, you meet Fer, a teenage girl who lives with her grandmother. Fer tries to live a normal life, but getting too close to town, riding the bus away from the edge of the wood where she lives, twists her stomach into knots. She always feels more at home wandering outside in the forest than she does inside with her peers. When she meets Rook, everything changes. Rook is a puck, a human with the natural ability to shape shift using small mementos called 'shiftier-bones', and he came through a Way, a portal to another place filled with magic, after being run out of his home by the Mor. Following him back through, Fer meets the Mor, the leader of the kingdom that they stand in, the Summerlands. As Fer begins to embrace this strange new land, she will uncover many dark secrets about the land itself, the mysterious Mor, and even her own late parents. Will she be able to save the Summerlands and stop the wicked Mor, or will she suffer the fate her mother did if she fails?
I really loved the way Prineas crafts her novels in general, and I have already written about another series of hers, The Magic Thief, but this book series was truly outstanding by my standards. Rich and detailed while still being shorter than 400 pages per book in this series, Winterling is a modern take on the old views of magic and of leadership that will someday become a classic. I recommend it to anyone looking for an old-fashioned adventure with some new twists and turns.  

Twinmaker

* * * */ Four Stars

Genre: Action, Adventure, Futuristic, Fiction, Intellect, Danger, Mystery, Suspense, Humor, Romance (but very little)

Welcome to the future! Everything has changed from the 21st century Earth that we know; fabbers create endless supplies of food, people all over the globe communicate via 'the air', and almost everyone teleports around the world using the d-mat system. Clair is a normal girl living with her parents. She goes to a good school and has an amazing best friend called Libby. Everything changes in a heartbeat, however, when her friend Libby trys Improvement (using a special code when you teleport to change any physical imperfection). Libby is now being brainwashed. Her code is changing. And her body will soon be dying. Clair looks for answers with the help of an Abstainer, a person who doesn't use d-mat or fabbers to live, who goes to her school named Jesse. After choosing to collaborate with her, instantly things go wrong. His dad gets killed, the house blows up, and viscous dupes will stop at nothing to make sure that she and Jesse don't share what they know with the world. Now Clair and her new friends are on a race to save Libby and stop the dupes before time runs out in a crazy sprint across the globe. Can they escape the technology that hunts them in a world filled with d-mat?
I really enjoyed the imagination and technological elements in this novel that mesh together to create a groundbreaking piece. I think that Sean Williams went above and beyond to ensure that this book and its characters would seem as real and as thrilling as possible. I recommend this book to anyone with a love of sci-fi and who wants a taste of adventure in what they read.

Restart!

Just to let you know, if you haven't already seen it, my last fanfiction was a bust. I mean, really, it was more just me saying what happen to the many characters in The Heros of Olympus series than a constructed, in-depth story continuation. Anyways, I've decided to try again with Leo and Calypso, since there is a huge margin for a story there from Calypso's point of view, especially since she spent eons on Ogygia waiting for him. What did she even do all that time, abandoned and alone? Anyways, here we go:


   Calypso was getting tired of Leo. He had only been there 5 days, and already she hated his presence. Yesterday he walked in the entrance of her cave, and she threw a pot at his head. She couldn't help but feel a twinge of satisfaction at seeing him run away. He was bent on trying to escape, although she had already explained to him that it wouldn't ever work. The island's magic was probably closed for good anyways.
   And then she had to give him food. Calypso was sick of making food deliveries. She didn't think he could die here, and although that change would probably be welcome, he was still a person, and she didn't want to see him suffer. Lately she had just left it out away from her home and he would collect it later, but still, it was bothersome. He was bothersome.
  And let's not forget his clothes. The past 2 days he had burned through his clothes, and she didn't expect those habits to change anytime soon. She would have to weave him new ones each day. It wasn't exactly hard, but it was annoying. Why couldn't he have been another, more likable, more handsome hero?
   As she went to bed that night, she sighed. Her luck was completely rotten.

   Calypso woke up to the sound of the birds outside and to her fountain. She got up, got dressed, and went out to her garden to tend to the plants. Then Calypso saw the fountain. One satyr statue on the fountain was tilted sideways and the water was spewing over the fountain at random moments. She tried everything she knew how to do to fix it, but still couldn't manage to twist it and get the water pressure on again. Reluctantly, after 3 hours of work, she knew that she couldn't do it alone. She never had tried to fix anything like this, and she had no experience that could help her with this specifically. She had to ask Leo for help. She shuddered, but walked down to his makeshift camp and brought him up to fix the fountain.
   Leo solved the problem in under 5 minutes. he called it an 'easy fix'. Go figure. She thanked him, half surprised he wasn't rubbing it back in her face, but he seemed genuine about the whole situation. Odd.
   As she fell asleep, the last thoughts she had about him were ' . . . maybe he isn't so bad after all'.

   Over the next couple days, Leo had made a small forge and was working on a new project. Calypso had come down once to check on him, but the first thing she noticed was that all of the birds and other animals (which she had relied on for company during her long periods of loneliness) were running and flying away from that side of the island due to Leo's hammering and smoke. She voiced her complaints, but he just mockingly replied, "Oh, no, not the birds!" He still believed that there would be a way off her island, and continued working on. Angrily, she told him that she had brought down more food for him, since he hadn't eaten in 2 days. He looked surprised that she had noticed at all, as she had stopped picking up and carrying the food to their meeting spot (and had started sending her invisible servants to do it instead) and generally tried to ignore him unless she wanted to ask him a favor. He promised to hammer quieter, to which she said "Huh" in a dull, unimpressed voice. Just because he did her some favors lately did not make him any less annoying and imposing, and it certainly didn't make her like him any more. Calypso was determined not to like him at all.
   However, she was sick of making him new clothes each day, and so she decided to make him ones that were fireproof. she would have made them plain white, but then decided to look into the past and create them based on clothes he had already worn. If she was already weaving them with magic anyways, what difference did it make? It would be a surprise, and a thank you gift for the fact that he fixed the fountain and did a handful of other small fixes.
   When she went to drop the clothes off, she came up behind Leo and started talking. He dropped his wires and jumped. After a few seconds of staring at her mindlessly with wide eyes, he shook his head and took the clothes, then sarcastically said something about her really warming up to him. Calypso blushed deeply and angrily stated that she only had an interest in not making him new clothes all the time and explained that it was a thanks for all the other things he had fixed for her. He laughed when she started naming them off, but then his excuses began coming out slightly slower, and he looked just a little bit flustered. "You're really warming up to me," she repeated, though not to be mean. Right then, she was really having fun. As he showed her the Archimedes sphere he had been working so hard on, then promptly lit his shirt on fire, she tried not to laugh. It didn't work as he had hoped, but then Calypso suggested singing to clear his mind so he could think straighter. She sang a few lines, then stopped and opened her eyes. Leo was staring at her so hard it was slightly unnerving, as if she was the only thing there. She shifted slightly and changed the subject. "Any luck?" she asked. His eyes tore away from her with a struggle and he went back to the sphere, which he made work with ease this time.
   Scenes played out from the outside world. The last one was of a beautiful Roman roughly his age, flying across the ocean on a severely wounded and tired Pegasus. They were flying into a huge storm. Leo screamed, "No, not now. Show me what happens!" Calypso couldn't help but feel a tiny twinge of jealousy as she asked him if the girl they just saw was his girlfriend. He stared at her as if she was crazy, and then proclaimed that he didn't have one but still needed to see more. Gaea appeared and tried to strike up a deal with her. In exchange for Leo, she could have any number of things, including Percy Jackson, who would be hers to "punish or love" as she so chose. But if her evil grandmother wanted Leo, that meant that he was vital to his team aboard his ship, and could tip the balance of the war. No. Gaea couldn't have him. Calypso wouldn't be swayed by the evil lineage of her family again like she was in the first titan war just because they were family. Leo was her friend, and she would have to help him get back to his ship to save the world.

   In the nest week, Calypso had completed all the tasks Leo had given her to help out with, such as gathering supplies, weaving rope, and making rigging and sails and had started pitching in with some of his. They were going to make a boat that he could ride out of Ogygia on. The unofficial rules that said he couldn't eat with her seemed to be abolished, and they were eating dinner that night when he started talking about the machine shop that he would open, and how he could hire her. He added on, "We could even provide entertainment. You could sing and I could, like, randomly burst into flames." Calypso laughed, and inside, her heart did a little flip. He remarked on how funny he was, and she tried to kill her smile. "You are not funny," she replied. She was trying, actually making an effort not to like Leo, who she had despised when he first arrived. He would leave anyways. She wouldn't fall for him like she had every other hero and have her heart broken. And yet . . . the ideas he shared with her, however, about him coming back for her, and them starting up a shop were really sweet. Her heart just wasn't entirely with the program.
   She asked when he was going to be able to leave, sure that Leo would be just as antsy to get off her island as he was when he arrived, but he answered 'about another week' with a completely calm voice, as if staying a little longer wouldn't bother him anymore. She wondered why that had changed now.
   Leo, as dinner was ending, surprised her again by bringing up how he wanted to fix his metal dragon and then come back to rescue her. She explained once more how it wouldn't work and how she couldn't leave, but he sounded so sure of his plan it was hard to believe what she was telling herself anymore. He went back to his plans for the boat when a small raft appeared on the beach.
   Calypso hurriedly crammed Leo's supplies onto the boat and told him to hurry, since she didn't know how long it would stay for. The raft only appeared for those she fell in love with though, which meant . . . another hero would break her heart again. Leo, seconds later, shared that thought, although he voiced it aloud. She replied by telling him not to push his luck, and not to make her any empty promises about coming back. no man found Ogygia twice.
   When Leo began to argue with her, she kissed him, and then shoved him onto the raft. His voice was unusually high. As the magical raft floated away, tears streamed down her face. She wiped her face furiously as she stormed up the beach, retreating to her cave.

   Calypso, within the next month, had packed everything she would need to take to the outside world in 2 light suitcases. She always kept them on the beach, so if, by some miracle, someone came back for her, she would be ready.
   Years and years and years past on Ogygia, and still nothing. She stopped going to that part of the beach. Calypso told herself that nobody would come. Her slim hopes were dashed.
   One day, she woke up exceptionally early. She felt strange, and somehow wanted to go down to that stretch of beach again. She called her invisible servants to go with her in case she needed them. Something would happen today; she could feel it. Calypso waited until sunset on the beach when she saw a shining glint of metal in the sky, followed by loud whoops of joy. She smiled slowly.


 
 . . . And that's the end. Sorry it was so long, but I tried hard not to make it overly sappy and stuff yet still fit it in with Leo's account of what happened in The House Of Hades. Hope you enjoyed this!

Just to let you know . . .

I have just updated the Creative Corner by adding a Google Search Bar to my blog. This will allow anyone on the blog to search for their favorite posts and such. I am still deciding whether or not to keep it indefinitely, but for now, it's going to be here as a tool at your disposal. Just search the words in the box, and every post related to those words will appear. Thanks!