Book Review: Insurgent

ISBN 9780007536740

Insurgent - Veronica Roth

It took me two sittings to read Veronica Roth's second installment of the Divergent series and I must say that I was both impressed and unimpressed by the book. After the excitement and adventure you take with Tris and Four/Tobias in the first novel, I was expecting something with more personal hurtles involved instead of everything being done as if for a chess game. The portrayal of Tris' frustration with Four was delivered perfectly, throughout my readings I was getting quite frustrated myself by his stupid reactions to certain situations. The emotions Tris was feeling was however poorly done in my opinion, the scenes felt rushed and any indepth information was skipped over. Whilst becoming enthralled in the build up of the storyline the importance of the main characters became quite transparent which is something I'm not a fan of when I read a series - I'm there to read about this characters journey and decisions and what they do about certain situations, not everyone elses. In the significance Insurgent plays in the series I would say it is both significant if you wish to know why certain characters have changed and died off, and insignificant as you could (if you wanted) skip this novel and piece together the events whilst reading the third installment. I am glad however to have read it as it means I can move onto the third and final installment Allegiant, with an indepth background of the characters and the storyline. Hopefully the ending to the series wont be a giant cliffhanger...

The Problem I Have

I'm the type of person who wants to learn new things and master them in a respectively short time frame, or spend a large amount of time doing so. I also want to learn new things at the same time and perfect those. Even if I wasn't going for mastery or perfection, I still feel the need to become confident and good at doing it. This has led me to become time inefficient.

I want to be an academic. With high grades, a broad spectrum of knowledge, and smarter than my old self by a long shot. At the same time, I want to be a gamer. To be able to immerse myself in a game and be good at it and enjoy myself. I also want to be fit, which requires regular exercise. I wish to be creative with drawing and sewing and be able to do marvellous things with this skill.

I wish to do all these things, but to do these things all at once. In my own perfect little world, I would have time to study for hours, play games with friends for an unreasonable amount of time, be able to go to a dance class or do some yoga at night time with some running or swimming in the morning. To be able to take some time out after dinner to shower and bathe and be a girl with the face masks and moisturisers and all that stuff. Also to spend time in the kitchen making food without worrying how early or late it has to be ready. 

In my perfect little world, an entire day would probably be about 36 hours long if not more.

Something I need to figure out is balance. For now I have not managed to find that. The things I need to do like work, study, remain somewhat healthy, I have been lacking on. The things that are (really) unnecessary like playing games, reading for leisure when I have other things that I need to read, they become my priorities.

New tasks for the next 6 weeks;

• Get my studying up to date and done
• Fit some exercise in somewhere, anywhere, as long as it exists at least twice a week.
• Reduce gaming time to night times with an introduced self curfew (lame)
• Try to have some fun that doesn't involve technology.

Not too sure how I'll go but we'll definitely find out by the end of August (come on will-power, be strong).

Note #12

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

♡ Becoming more Healthy ♡

I'm unhealthy. I'll admit it. I don't try to be overly healthy, it seems too hard to me. Having to put a whole lot of money and time into making food that's good for you. Especially the money side. Fresh fruit is expensive and doesn't keep. And then there's the exercise. I struggle with exercise. Running is such a bore and so strenuous that I cannot bring myself to do it. I've contemplated joining netball teams, horse riding lesson, dance lessons, yoga classes, pilates classes, rock climbing groups on weekends. I think of all these things that would be so much fun so participate in, and then realise, each one of these things requires me to pay a lump sum of money that I don't really have any room for in any kind of budget I can draw up.

So both eating healthy, and exercise, in my mind has been ruled out as too expensive. 

I've thought long and hard about what I want to do to get in better shape and eat better without spending a huge amount of money that I don't necessarily have. 

I've decided to start off with a yoga mat. My next task, as soon as I have money to spare, will be to purchase a yoga mat. Not to go out and take yoga lessons or anything, or to do yoga only at home. I've found muscle exercises and stretches I want to do. Little things that would require very little movement compared to running, and yet use my entire body. I am excited to start this. As soon as I have my yoga mat so I don't destroy my hands and knees and joints on the wooden floors (and I tried using a blanket or something similar, it slips). 

As for eating healthy, I'm still a little stumped on that one. I like the idea of going out and getting a whole bundle of fruit and having fruit for lunch, maybe some toast or something for breakfast if I'm hungry. Dinners I don't  have much control over as it's cooking for an entire family and everyones tastes are completely different (and in our household, you cook for everyone only, not yourself as thats considered wasteful and rude). But like I said before, fruit can be quite expensive. Maybe I'll have a look into frozen fruit bags and smoothies. As for other lunch ideas, I hate cooking. Anything that requires a stove or oven I hate doing. Using a stove means using a pot or pan which means more dishes and the chance of burning yourself. Using the oven just seems cheap and over the top and unhealthy. I'm not saying it is, that's just how I feel about it. 

We'll have to see what happens in the next month or so. I'm hoping that once I've drawn up a budget that includes fresh fruit, things will get along quite smoothly.

♡ Rearranging My Bedroom ♡

Last week I decided to move all the furniture in my room around. No real reason. Just felt like changing things up! Once I finished moving things around and tidying up, I realised I was missing something and my bedroom didn't quite look finished. So I headed on down to Kmart and picked up three 4 Cube storage pieces for $19 each (bargain considering I was thinking about getting them from ikea for $59ea.) in white, as well as some little, what I think would be called "accents", for the cubes! 

I started off with the basic 3 cubes of course which costed me $57AUD in total which is brilliant. As I had moved my shorter bookcase into my closet, I didn't have anywhere to put my jewellery stand or candles so ontop of the cubes became the perfect spot for those. I already had the jewellery stand and most the candles, but I found a Vanilla & Fig candle in Kmart for $6 and it smells amazing. I've been trying to find a nice vanilla scent for a while, I wasn't too sure about the fig but once I had smelt the candle there was no going back. I also got the fake plant from Kmart for about $5. I have a lot of fake plants in my room as I think that every room needs to have some kind of greenery either in it or visible from the window and being on the second story I don't really get a huge window view of any plants. I also got two plastic containers for $2 each and the white ceramic glass for $7. Previously I was storing my makeup in a giant pile on my drawers so I figured this was a cleaner, more organised way to store everything. The ceramic owl was only $7 which isn't too bad. It's quite large and doesn't really have much purpose other than decorative so I was happy enough to pay the $7. As there are now 12 cubes for me to fill and I don't have any idea what each of them will contain, I figured it'd be nice to have one or two with something decorative in them. LASTLY, I got the owl doorstop. This one was $3 on clearance. For months now I've been hammering my Mum to install a door stopper on the skirting board behind my door (as I'm terrified of using a drill) and I saw this whilst I was browsing around and thought it would suit my room perfectly and now my door can remain open without slamming shut. 

For now I have quite a few empty cubes. I do plan to fill a few with some more little bits and pieces. One cube in particular I am working on with a collection of things which I will reveal eventually (probably as a haul of sorts or monthly favourites).

Note #11

A room without books is like a body without a soul

- Cicero

Note #10

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think,
than what to think - rather to improve our minds,
so as to enable us to think for ourselves,
than to load the memory with thoughts of other men.

- Bill Beattie

The way our education system is set up, I have thought about this before. You go through primary or elementary school being taught how to think a certain way. When it comes to thinking for yourself, in your own unique way, you don't know how. The few classes where you are supposed to be able to be free and think the way you wish, such as art classes, dance, drama, we are all told what to do and how to do it. When we stray from these in any way, we are told we are doing it wrong and that we aren't creative enough. As much as our education systems may set us up for universities or colleges or jobs, they don't set us up to think for ourselves. This is how our history will repeat itself. With everyone thinking the same way as our predecessors.

Crash Bandicoot - PlayStation 1!

This is a game very near to my heart. One of the first games I ever played as a child. My older brother Blake used to set up our playstation and we'd all take turns doing the levels and trying to get as far as we could before our lives ran out. Released almost 20 years ago (1996), Crash Bandicoot is still one of my most favourite games of all time. 

Loading up the game you enter into the home screen where you are given the options to play, load game, enter a password, or go into options. I know that in our house we lost memory cards all the time and for a long while we couldn't save our games (which if you used a PlayStation 1 you know that when you enter the load game screen, you can see all saves from all games. Kind of cool). The password option is something a little different from what we would normally define it as today. Whilst playing the levels you can collect these cards of Tawna's head. Collect all three and you go to a little side level where you navigate your way across tnt's, metal, and wooden boxes. A few containing extra lives. Once you've completed the side level, you get a password code consisting of the triangle, x, circle, and square. There is a mega password you can use to unlock all the levels and gems and keys. But using this is a little less challenging.

The purpose of the game is to get Crash Bandicoot safely through 3 islands containing 32 levels in total to rescue his, what I assume to be girlfriend, Tawna from the evil Dr. Neo Cortex. On each island you will have to get passed his henchmen, or bosses. As you progress you will find each boss gets harder and harder and become more frequent. I wont spoil the ending of the game for you (you can youtube that yourselves) but I found it to be a huge relief, and then annoying as the credits took forever. 

I would recommend this game to everyone and anyone. It's a big nostalgia trip for a lot of people. The music and levels. Bosses. Not to mention this is the flagship game for the franchise. Getting your hands on a cd copy isn't easy but you can purchase the games on the PlayStation Network for around $4.99AUD.

For those who disagree and say it's actually Coco Bandicoot in the first game, it isn't. Tawna is the girlfriend of Crash Bandicoot and after releasing the first game, she was removed for being represented as a basic sexual stereotype. Coco Bandicoot was then introduced as Crash Bandicoots little sister, also genetically engineered by Dr. Neo Cortex and Dr. Nitrus Brio (who is an annoy boss to beat)

Note #9

Most people would rather be certain they're miserable,
than to risk being happy.

- Robert Anthony

Note #8

I believe in ordinary acts of bravery,
in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another

- Veronica Roth, Divergent.

I have spent the past two days rereading Divergent to prepare myself for the next novel (yes, I am one of those people) and I came across this one last night in my late night reading frenzy. I think it's just one of those things that doesn't need to be said, but at the same time, for those people who have gone a little astray and aren't always thinking of how they affect others it's something they need to be reminded of. That standing up for another person is considered brave, and that's something not everyone can do easily.

Note #7

You're not a bad person.

You're a very good person, who bad things have happened to.

Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters.

We've all got both light and dark inside us.

What matters is the part we choose to act on.

That's who we really are.

- Sirius Black, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This is by far one of my most favourite book quotes from the entire Harry Potter franchise. I saw a photo of the scene the other day and immediately thought I must put that on here for everyone to see. I just love how it applies to everything and its the truth (apart from Death Eaters, we don't have those). I think if everyone realised that we as individuals could all act upon the good inside, the communities we're involved in (whether it's online, work, school etc.) would be a much more pleasant and productive place. 

♡ Finding Clarity ♡

I've never been a person to find clarity and peace in other objects. Sure, when my room is messy I feel like my mind is overrun and cluttered. Cleaning it makes me feel like I'm capable of thinking clearly and originally. But for clarity or peace, I've never been able to find a place to go to gain it. I've always had to sit and wait, frustrated, mad, waiting for this rare thing to happen. But for the first time last week, I found it. 

I was on the way home at 8am on Monday, the train line to get from Perth to my house runs alongside the river. I was staring out the window absent mindedly, trying to avoid the awkward stares with strangers, when I found myself feeling peaceful, in awe, and clear minded from staring at the river. With everything untouched for that day, clean crisp winter air, smog covering the far side of the river before the bend. Everything was...ready. It was perfect.

Whenever people talked to me about finding peace of mind or clarity, I've always looked at them as these weird hippies who are living in a fantasy world. The idea of it just seemed unnecessary and unimportant to people with busy lives and things to do. Now after experiencing a moment of clarity, I kind of get it.
Since finding this little piece of paradise for my mind I've decided I'm going to head back there when the weather gets a bit warmer :)