The Book Con (New York, New York)
A couple of months ago, I found out that there was going to be a Book Convention at the Javits Center at the end of May and I couldn't have been more excited. The previous October I had had the opportunity to go to the New York Comic Con, also at the Javits Center, and while it was fun, I thought it was going to be more like the San Diego Comic Con (geared more towards film and television) and less about, well, comics. In any case, books have always been a passion of mine and I thought this would be a great chance to celebrate that.
It wasn't.
I'll give it to the organizers that this has been the first Book Con ever in existence. However, that still doesn't excuse the disorganized chaos that was Book Con. First off, there were way, way to many people. For some reason Book Con was crammed in the same space as the Book Expo so you had thousands of people, trying to get to the same places. I could barely see the exhibition tables and when it was time to try and get some author signatures there was literally a non moving herd of people blocking all exits. I heard the Fire Marshall was called at one point. I'm not surprised; because the space was so small there was no place to line people up. Also, while workers said they would not take anyone more than five minutes ahead of time, if you did that the author line became sold out by the time you came back. So, people wait around an hour or a half hour prior to the time of their favorite authors' autograph time. In a giant cluster. Needless to say, I did not get any autographs that day and we decided to move on to the panels. That was another mess. Again, there was not enough space to hold people, and it was hard to find rooms or where to stand, and even though there were signs saying not to line up more than an hour before panels, people did anyway. A lot of people had to be turned away, and if I didn't wait on line 2 hours before the
Fault in Our Stars panel I wouldn't have seen anything that day.
I'll give it another go next year. Hopefully, the organizers will figure it out.
The Fault in Our Stars
I really enjoyed the novel by John Green and I was looking forward to the film version. I had been promised by the author that they had
gotten in right and that it would be a faithful adaption to the novel. And I suppose it was, the characters felt the same, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, did excellent jobs, but there still felt like something was missing. Whether is was the rushed ending, or the feeling on the big screen that Gus was just
too good of a guy I did not walk away from the film feeling anything other than that it was ok. Still, I did not appreciate the smirks of my fellow movie theatre co-workers mocking the, I'll admit it, mostly teenage girls coming out of the film crying. I love it when audiences get passionate about what they are seeing, going to the movies to me is
an event, something to get into and discuss. Furthermore, it bothers me that so-called "Chick Flicks" always get a bad rap, and are almost always never taken seriously, even when they make millions of revenue.
The 100
I started watching this show on a whim, seeing as I love almost all things YA, and this looked like an awesome
Falling Skies meets
Lost sorta of premise. Like the thousands of dystopian novels and television shows copycats before it (
Star-Crossed and
Tomorrow People premiered on the same network in the same year), I was not assuming much from it. Instead,
The 100 has turned into an action packed thriller, filled with rich characters that one can never know what to expect from. I'm glad that next season the CW has decided to keep the season shorter (it only had 13 episodes in its first season) so the show keeps its fast paced story telling. I'm looking forward to seeing how the show continues from its epically great season finale. I'm amazed by the changes that the CW has made to its line up (I'll discuss the greatness that is
Reign in another post) and am excited to see where it goes.
