The Friday 56 (119) & Book Beginnings: Cold Magic by Kate Elliott

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice where every Friday you pick a book and turn to page 56 or 56%, and select a sentence or a few, as long as it's not a spoiler. For the full rules, visit the the page HERE

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader that asks you to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you're reading.

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

As they approach adulthood, Cat Barahal and her cousin Bee think they understand the society they live in and their place within it. At a select academy they study new airship technologies and the dawning Industrial Revolution, but magical forces still rule. And the cousins are about to discover the full ruthlessness of this rule...

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Beginnings: "The history of the world begins in ice, and it will end in ice."

56: "The stream of words made her frown, but my statement was so unexceptional she could not protest."

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Comments: Honestly, I haven't read any books that I can quote from for The Friday 56 and Book Beginnings. Instead, I decided to share a few quotes from one of my favorite books: Cold Magic by Kate Elliott. Cold Magic is the book that introduced me to Elliott's writing, and since then it has remained one of my favorite fantasy novels. Period. End of discussion. The opening sentence is also quite memorable. 

What are you reading this week?

WIP December #3: Faces

WIP: Faces.

Comments: I’m halfway through this series of posts and have decided to temporarily switch gears and work on some faces, because facial features are one of the things I need to work on. So, here are two pages from my sketchbook.

I’m trying to challenge myself so I don’t fall into the habit of being too comfortable with a limited set of features, because I don’t want all the characters I draw to look the same. It’s something I tend to keep in mind, particularly when I’m going the digital route. With traditional mediums, I'm more conscious of this.

As I finished the first page, I realized I just wasn't done with this yet.  What should have been a quick drawing exercise ended up creeping onto the next page. Once I fell down that rabbit hole, I ended up finding  too many unique faces that I wanted to sketch. I just kept going when I knew I should have moved on to something else, but I was on a roll. And then there's that one lone doodle. It looks so out of place next to the other faces on the page, and more than once, I wanted to add more and more detail to it. It also didn’t help that I was working on the same two pages across multiple days and had to remind myself that it was just doodle.
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Are you working on anything interesting?

Review: The Unnatural World by David Biello

Title: The Unnatural World: The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age
Author: David Biello
Source/Format: Borrowed from the library; Hardcover
More Details: Nonfiction; Science
Publisher/Publication Date: Scribner; November 15, 2016
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Synopsis from Goodreads...

With the historical perspective of The Song of the Dodo and the urgency of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, a brilliant young environmental journalist argues that we must innovate and adapt to save planet Earth...

Civilization is in crisis, facing disasters of our own making on the only planet known to bear life in the vast void of the universe. We have become unwitting gardeners of the Earth, not in control, but setting the conditions under which all of life flourishes—or not. Truly, it’s survival of the innovators. The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas; a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct; a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have. What is the threat? It is us. In a time when a species dies out every ten minutes, when summers are getting hotter, winters colder, and oceans higher, some people still deny mankind’s effect on the Earth. But all of our impacts on the planet have ushered in what qualifies as a new geologic epoch, thanks to global warming, mass extinction, and such technologies as nuclear weapons or plastics. The Unnatural World examines the world we have created and analyzes the glimmers of hope emerging from the efforts of incredible individuals seeking to change our future. Instead of a world without us, this history of the future shows how to become good gardeners, helping people thrive along with an abundance of plants, animals, all the exuberant profusion of life on Earth—a better world with us. The current era of humans need not be the end of the world—it’s just the end of the world as we know it...

I’m pretty much on a nonfiction binge at this point, and I dove into my second nonfiction read, The Unnatural World, right after the Cosmic Web. This book focuses on the environment of the past, present, and hypothetical future. Often times asking the hard “what if” questions about what’s going on with the environment. The Unnatural World was a pretty good book. It presented a multitude of interesting arguments about what people unintentionally but inevitably do to the planet. It also exemplified how carelessness and ignorance about the environment causes damage, some of which cannot be undone (like the extinction of certain types of plant life and species of animals). I did like this book, but, at times, the writing seemed a little unfocused and that made some chapters a little slower than others. However, overall, The Unnatural World was still an interesting read that gave me a lot to think about.

WIP December #2: Houses

WIP: Houses.

  

Comments: At this point, I have committed to drawing a few buildings before moving on to something else. Around the time I started working on this post, I watched Minnie Small’s video on how she draws buildings—she has a lot of good advice, and I highly recommend checking out her channel if you have the time. You can check out the video HERE. I was inspired by it, and decided to just take the plunge and draw buildings without overthinking the process. I had a lot of fun just playing around with pencil. I originally thought that I might try to also work on my lines with Fine Liners—or even colored pencil—but it didn’t work out that way. As I moved from one sketch to the next, I quickly discovered that I liked the look of it as is, which prompted me to leave them in pencil. Also, apparently I'm a fan of houses with panel exteriors. It was something I notice when I was looking for references. I was drawn to houses with interesting architectural details and exteriors—particularly wood and vinyl sidings.

Story time: I used to live in a house that had a combination of red brick and vinyl on the exterior. I remember a couple of occasions when the wind actually damaged and tore down the vinyl. I can't remember how many times that happened, but I'm sure that it was more than twice.
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Music Monday (34): Holiday Music Part 2

Rules:

• Music Monday is a weekly meme hosted by Lauren Stoolfire at Always Me that asks you to share one or two songs that you've recently enjoyed. For the rules, visit the page HERE 

Breana: Continuing with last week’s theme, I have another new favorite holiday song to talk about this week. I listen to a lot of Sia’s music, and just like Lindsey Stirling, she released a holiday album just in time for December: Everyday is Christmas. I like the whole album. So, it was difficult to pick just one song to focus on today. But, my pick this week is Candy Cane Lane. Listen, I like candy cane, which is part of the reason why I like this song. I mean, beside the fact that it’s just a good song. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I definitely recommend doing that now.

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Adri: This week, my pick is This Christmas by Mary Jane Blige.

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What are you listening to this week?