Hello My Scripturients!
I have not done a reading wrap up in literally forever! I haven't been able to read a ton for the last two months but I did get through 6 books. Though sadly this means I did not catch up and complete my Goodreads reading goal. But going into the last two months I kind of already knew that. One December 20th I still had eleven books to get through. Which I knew wasn't going to happen. But that is okay because I still read a lot this year. I am going to have a video going up that is going to have my favorite books of 2017. As well as my most anticipated releases of 2018 so make sure you are sure you are subscribed to my Youtube channel to get updates whenever I upload.
So lets get to the books.

Evelina
Fanny Burney
2 Stars
The novel opens with a distressed letter from Lady Howard to her longtime acquaintance, the Reverend Arthur Villars, in which she reports that Mme. Duval, the grandmother of Villars' ward, Evelina Anville, intends to visit England to renew her acquaintance with her granddaughter Evelina. 18 years earlier, Mme. Duval had broken off her relationship with her daughter Caroline, Evelina's mother, and has never acknowledged Evelina. Reverend Villars fears Mme. Duval's influence could lead Evelina to an untimely, shameful death similar to that of her mother Caroline. To keep Evelina from Mme. Duval, the Reverend lets her visit Howard Grove, Lady Howard's home, on an extended holiday. While she is there, the family learns that Lady Howard's son-in-law, naval officer Captain Mirvan, is returning to England after a 7-year absence. Desperate to join the Mirvans on their trip to London, Evelina entreats her guardian to let her attend them, promising that the visit will last only a few weeks. The Reverend reluctantly consents.
In London, Evelina's beauty and ambiguous social status attract unwanted attention and unkind speculation. Ignorant of the conventions and behaviors of 18th-century London society, she makes a series of humiliating (but humorous) faux pas that further expose her to societal ridicule. She soon earns the attentions of 2 gentlemen: Lord Orville, a handsome and extremely eligible peer and pattern-card of modest, becoming behavior; and Sir Clement Willoughby, a baronet with duplicitous intentions. Evelina's untimely reunion with her grandmother and the Branghtons, her long-unknown extended family, along with the embarrassment their boorish, social-climbing antics cause, soon convince her that Lord Orville is completely out-of-reach.
The Mirvans finally return to the country, taking Evelina and Mme. Duval with them. Spurred by Evelina's greedy cousins, Mme. Duval concocts a plan to sue Sir John Belmont, Evelina's father, and force him to recognize his daughter's claim in court. The Reverend is furious. Lady Howard intervenes and manages to elicit a compromise that sees her write to Sir John, but he responds unfavorably.
Mme. Duval is furious and threatens to rush Evelina back to Paris to pursue the lawsuit. A second compromise sees Evelina return to London with her grandmother, where she is forced to spend time with her ill-bred Branghton cousins and their rowdy friends, but she is distracted by Mr. Macartney, a melancholy and direly-poor Scottish poet. At one point, she misinterprets his acquisition of pistols as a suicide attempt and bids him to look to his salvation; later she learns he had been premeditating armed robbery to change his financial status while tracing his own obscure parentage, as well as recovering from his mother's sudden death and the discovery that his beloved is actually his sister. Evelina charitably gives him her purse. Otherwise, her time with the Branghtons is uniformly mortifying: during her visit to Marylebone pleasure garden, for instance, she's attacked by a drunken sailor and rescued by prostitutes--and in this humiliating company she meets Lord Orville again! Sure that he can never respect her now, she is stunned when he seeks her out in London's unfashionable section and seems interested in renewing their acquaintance. When an insulting letter supposedly from Lord Orville devastates her and makes her believe she misperceived him, she returns home to Berry Hill and falls ill.
Slowly recuperating from her illness, Evelina agrees to accompany her neighbor, a sarcastic widow named Mrs. Selwyn, to the resort town of Clifton Heights, where she unwillingly attracts the attention of womanizer Lord Merton, on the eve of his marriage to Lord Orville's sister, Lady Louisa Larpent. ​

Rainbow Six 
Tom Clancy
4 Stars
​At its heart is ex-Navy SEAL John Clark, now the newly named head of Rainbow, an international task force dedicated to combating terrorism. In a trial by fire, Clark is confronted with a violent chain of seemingly separate international incidents. But there is no way to predict the real threat: a group of terrorists like none the world has ever encountered, a band of men and women so extreme that their success could literally mean the end of life on earth as we know it ...

The Emperor's Revenge
Clive Cussler
4 stars
​Juan Cabrillo and the crew of the Oregon face their toughest challenge yet when a violent bank heist during the Monaco Grand Prix decimates the Corporation’s accounts. To get the money back, Juan joins forces with an old friend from his days in the CIA so they can track down a rogue hacker and a ruthless former Ukrainian naval officer. It is only after the hunt begins that the enormity of the plan comes into focus: the bank theft is just the first step in a plot that will result in the deaths of millions and bring the world’s economies to a standstill. The catalyst for the scheme? A stunning document stolen during Napoleon’s disastrous invasion of Russia. But two hundred years later, it may be the thing that brings Europe to its knees.
​

Dracula 
Bram Stoker
5 Stars
​Jonathan Harker is travelling to Castle Dracula to see the Transylvanian noble, Count Dracula. He is begged by locals not to go there, because on the eve of St George's Day, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will come full sway. But business must be done, so Jonathan makes his way to the Castle - and then his nightmare begins. His beloved wife Mina and other lost souls have fallen under the Count's horrifying spell. Dracula must be destroyed . . .

The Princess Diarist
Carrie Fisher
5 Stars
The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s intimate, hilarious and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time, the first Star Warsmovie. 

When Carrie Fisher recently discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Today, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a (sort-of) regular teenager. 

With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. And today, as she reprises her most iconic role for the latest Star Wars trilogy, Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience.

​All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr
3 Stars
Amazon | Barnes and Nobel | Book Depository | 
From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times).

My Thoughts:
This book as many people said had a unique point of view telling the story of two children growing up in world war II. We see the story of a blind girl in France and a boy in German who goes to a Nazis school to train boys to be soldiers. Marie Laure, and her father flee Paris after the German occupation to live with her granduncle who is a little crazy (he has PTSD). While Werner the German boy goes to a German school for sceince where is also trained for war. He is brilliant at math and works with the Germans to take out people that have illegal radios by triangulating their location.  Eventually the two timelines collide when Werner is sent to the same town that Marie Laure is staying in.
​This book is complimented time and time again for it's rich descriptions. I do agree that it had some wonderful descriptions. Doerr's descriptions were very vivid and kept your grounded. But I found it difficult to keep engaged. This was my second attempt at reading this book this year, so at times I was bored because I knew what was going to happen. But at others there just wasn't  enough going on. It is ironic that I should feel this way because Doerr chopped up the narrative and inserted it back into the text out of order, so you are always wondering how did the characters get to this point? But for me that wasn't enough to grip me. 
Overall I found the accuracy to be correct for aspects of history. Overall did enjoy reading it but it was not my favorite book by far. This book may have been to literary for me at this time, but I did want to get through it, which is why I picked it up again. Which says something about it. If you are a fan of at times dense literary reading, or historical fiction I think that you would enjoy this book. Many other people have really enjoyed this book. So, maybe you will too.
Katelyn 
​Find me on the interwebs
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladykate100/novels/wip-1233502
Twitter @Scripturienting
IG: @Scripturient101
Facebook: The Scripturient 101
Youtube: The Scripturient 101
www.thescripturient101.weebly.com
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53086148-katelyn-costello

Hello Bookworms,
I come to you in a weird moment of freedom and relief. 
If you follow me in other areas of social media, you will have seen that my thesis is done. It is done. I finished my requirements for college.
I have an overwhelming sense of relief, fear, all mixed up with a feeling of loss, and the fact that it is done feels almost anticlimactic. I knew there wouldn't anything like sunshine and rainbows. But for something that I have been working on since May, that has gone through several drastic changes, I don't know.  I just wanted more I guess. It could be coupled with the fact that this was the last thing I had to submit to complete my degree. There is so much pressure put on this one 30 page file. Without it, I will not graduate. And with it? I don't know. I don't plan on continuing part of the project, doesn't interest me anymore and I know it is not my best work. 
But as one of my friends said, the fact that I kept going with it even though I did hate it, is a feat in itself. 
I am proud of what I put out, don't get me wrong. I did a lot of work to make the story what it was. I started my thesis with a 70-page draft. I scrapped that within two weeks of coming back to campus, changed the point of view, format, and the tense that I was writing it in. I wrote something that I have never even tried to write before. An epistolary novel. Did I do it perfectly? No. I didn't research it thoroughly because I scrapped everything I had done over the summer. But I created a cohesive piece that several people say they love and want more of.
 I have put so much work into these 30 pages.
 I keep saying that. But I don't know what else to say. I am going to do a more in-depth reaction maybe next week but right now... I just feel sort of out of it. I don't really know how to think about it besides relief that it is done. So I guess that is all for today? I am sorry I am so out of it, I almost feel like I don't know how to function now that everything is completed. It is weird. 
I will just have to blog ore to get into another structured habit. 
Until next time
Katelyn
​Find me on the interwebs
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladykate100/novels/wip-1233502
Twitter @Scripturienting
IG: @Scripturient101
Facebook: The Scripturient 101
Youtube: The Scripturient 101
www.thescripturient101.weebly.com
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53086148-katelyn-costello

Hello my scripturients,
November sure has been a roller coaster ride hasn't it? As you can see by today's image I am a Nanowrimo winner again this year. This marks the 5th year that I have won Nanowrimo, yay for five years. I do want to say that I feel slightly torn over my win this year. If you don't know, I used NaNo as a way to get back into my novel and do a first rewrite of my novel draft.  Not every word or every sentence was new. Some of the sentences stayed the same while others change complacently. But that is the nature of a rewrite, not every word is going to change. And that is something I have had to keep telling myself. Part of the reason I have felt so bad about it, is that I know that I would not have been able to get though a new draft this month. But for me this month rewriting The Frituals was my escape from work and school and everything else that has been getting me down. It has really been good for my own mental sanity and productivity to escape into my world. This week I have been working on planning out the last few chapters and then branching out into outlining the next book in the series.
As a present to myself for winning NaNo I have spent the last few days working on formatting my novel in order to print out a proof copy from Createspace to annotate. I will be filming my unboxing of it FOR SURE. I am very very excited about these next steps and to actually hold my book in my hands. I have some thoughts about the next steps for it but that might be a more in depth video/ blog post for next week when I get my thoughts together. I have a lot of thoughts I need to correlate together before I can explain them in detail.  But I hope to share my plans for future projects soon as I am sure I will need all your help.
My final thesis workshop is tomorrow. Tomorrow is the last day to receive edits. So this weekend I will be hiding and editing. I am also hoping I can set up my office space at home... a bit at least. 
So my thesis will be done and submitted by Wednesday at noon,  but do to my schedule it has to be done a bit earlier.  I have one other paper so I need to hide and write, sorry if I am not nearly as accessible as normal. Finishing this semester feels bittersweet. I am really excited to be done, but am also feeling lately like I am not prepared enough but I know I am. It is a struggle.
HOWEVER since next week I submit my final papers I will be free. I am working on getting a day job but in the mean time I am going to be throwing myself into this. I am going to be posting whenever I can but at least Wednesday and Fridays. So I will be shifting my reviews to friday's and they may not be every week but there will be more books so be sure to follow me on twitter to know whenever I am going to be posting. 
I think that is all of the thoughts that I have together for now. Send me a message on instagram or twitter and be sure to subscribe to my youtube channel to hear my ramblings out loud!
Katelyn
​Find me on the interwebs
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladykate100/novels/wip-1233502
Twitter @Scripturienting
IG: @Scripturient101
Facebook: The Scripturient 101
Youtube: The Scripturient 101
www.thescripturient101.weebly.com
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53086148-katelyn-costello

Hello My Scripturients,
A year ago today I decided to peruse a goal that I had been wanting to do for quite a while. As you may have guessed at this point I absolutely love books. They have been vessels for my happiness for such a long time that I wanted to shout my love from the roof tops. 
Writing and filming these reviews and writing updates has defiantly been a learning curve for me. I haven't had the most eloquent reviews to start with but I am working on it. And will continue to work on it in the next few months. Down below I am going to be talk about updates to my posting schedule ect.
Now a year later I have a little bubble of friends. I have had interactions with best selling authors traditional and indie, small booktubers, and readers and writes alike.  We share our love for books across many platforms.  This community that I have become a part of is so kind and so encouraging. Everyone is so inspiring and I find it incredibly encouraging to hear, and see how people are doing in their own writing projects. 
This has helped me a lot this year. Particularly this semester when I have been felling down on myself. You all keep me in check and don't even realize it. Just by clicking on the link to get to this blog post you are holding me accountable for the things that I say I am going to do. This little bit of structure helps to keep me on track and keep me feeling happy and healthy.

So officially, next Wednesday December 13th my Senior Thesis is due at noon and after that I will have finished my degree. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH Okay got that out of my system haha.  That has pretty much been my internal monologue since mid- November. 
So if you have finished your degree Katelyn what does that mean for your blog?
I am glad you asked. It means I will have a lot more time for you all! I am working on a day job, and I will be working a show, but I plan on spending a lot of time writing for this blog, reading for reviews, filming videos and, writing my books. (Wednesday is going to be all about this with a NaNoWriMo update and book plotting session)  And of course you will get to hear all about all of those things. Why else have this place I can shoot nonsense into the void from?
You may know that I have a youtube channel where I also post reviews and updates on my reading and writing projects. I think that both platforms are invaluable as a reader/ writer working to improve my reading and writing skills now that I am going to be out of school. As such I am going to use them as a pair. I am going to try to have a video for each review, a blog post for each wrap up, ect. I have been sticking to a Monday, Wednesday schedule over there so I am going to go for that here. So Writing Wednesday, and Fiction Fridays are back, being joined by Monday Musings. A series of blog posts on things in the publishing world that have intrigued me or really any random thing I wanna talk to you about.

I am thinking of starting a monthly newsletter. What do you think? Let me know on one of my socials what you think and what sort of things you like from other newsletters.
So I got caught up in work and now am writing this blog post at 1 am. I can't tell if it even makes sense. I am sure I am missing things. If so check out my twitter for any updates after posting.

Katelyn ​
Find me on the interwebs
https://nanowrimo.org/participants/ladykate100/novels/wip-1233502
Twitter @Scripturienting
IG: @Scripturient101
Facebook: The Scripturient 101
Youtube: The Scripturient 101
www.thescripturient101.weebly.com
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/53086148-katelyn-costello