Florence + the Machine

We now return you to your regularly scheduled blogging.

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of seeing Flawless + the Machine live, and I think I can say that it was the best concert I’ve ever been to. I mean, I’ve only really been to five or so concerts, BUT it is still the best and will probably continue being one of the best. And that is in spite of the fact that the venue and crowd were so-so (more on that in a bit).

First, a little background is necessary. One day I was on Facebook, just Facebooking it up, when I noticed an update by the Florence page about new U.S. tour dates. NEW U.S. TOUR DATES? After frantically clicking links and trying to give away all my money I realized that the tickets weren’t on sale yet. They would go on sale in a couple days, at noon. Okay cool I can do this.

I keep reminding myself that tickets are going on sale and I need to be at a computer before noon. Finally the day comes, and I almost forget about the tickets. Almost. Luckily, I remembered before noon and was ready and waiting for the tickets to go on sale. Cue refreshing. The clock struck twelve and I immediately tried to purchase two tickets, but, as expected, the website was taking forever to load because of the massive amounts of people trying to buy my Florence + the Machine tickets (yes, mine). I became a little panicked at the idea that I wouldn’t get tickets, but I kept my wits about me and opened multiple tabs, hoping one of them would load and let me reserve tickets.

As Chrome’s little spinning loady thingy (excuse my technical jargon) kept spinning in all the tabs, I became a little more panicked, until finally one of the pages loaded, then another and another. I proceeded with one of them, ordered the tickets and, tada, I officially had tickets to see Florence + the Machine!

I’m not going to lie, I built this concert up so much in my head. I was ridiculously excited for it. I was late to the Florence party, not because of any reservations, but because it usually takes me a while to check out artists. When I did start listening to her, though, I was blown away. As any fellow Florence fan knows, she’s incredibly talented and really, just great. So, of course, I was expecting this concert to be amazing. And honestly, it didn’t disappoint.

As I briefly mentioned, the venue and the crowd weren’t ideal. The stage was about four feet tall, which is not nearly tall enough for a standing room crowd, in case you’re wondering. If you weren’t right at the stage or taller than six feet, you were craning your head, trying to get a better view of the stage. My friend and I managed to find an okay spot in the crowd, though, and had a pretty good view for the majority of the show. And then there was the crowd. Okay, maybe this is just me (it’s actually not just me), but when you’re at a concert, in a crowd, you shouldn’t really be concerned about personal space and you can’t really save spots. Evidently there were a lot of people who did not get this memo, because I had three people tell me they were saving a spot for their friend (hint: I don’t care, because this is a concert and it is ALREADY STARTING), and several people around me thought that they should have some elbow room. In a packed crowd. At a concert. Ummmmmm, how about no?

However, I wasn’t about to let people’s lack of familiarity with concert rules and misplaced entitlements bring me down. No way. Especially not when I was less than a hundred feet from the stage, less than a hundred feet from Florence fucking Welch.
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Read ALL the Books!

I’ve been kind of interested in e-readers for some time, but I shrugged them off for the longest time. I thought it would be cool to have one, but I didn’t think it would be worth the investment, which is rather large for my college-student budget.

So of course I decided to buy a Kindle last week as an early birthday present to myself (“Mom I’m buying a Kindle, can I be reimbursed and it’ll be a birthday present?”). For whatever reason, I rethought my stance on e-readers over the past few weeks as I stared longingly at the Kindles, Kobos, and Nooks on display at work. I knew I didn’t want a tablet; I just wanted something with which I could read books. With prices on e-readers being so low, I found it hard to convince myself that it wouldn’t be worth it.

Another big selling point was the convenience. I like to read, but I often want to read something particular or something different from what I have. This normally involves going to a book store, going to the library, or ordering the book online. I could just buy new books, but they’re kind of expensive, and I’m kind of cheap. There’s the library, which is nice, but I’m also kind of lazy.

Enter my new Kindle Touch. This pretty much solves all of my reading dilemmas, AND I can still borrow from the library with it. Everyone wins! Except the bookstore, I guess.

Thus far I’ve only bought one book—Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close—but I want to have LOTS of books to read. Reading more is something I always want to do, but usually don’t because of inconvenience (see paragraph three). I’m hoping that the awesome convenience of having an e-reader will help me read more.

However, the amount of books out there is kind of overwhelming, so, although I’m going to read all the books, I was wondering which books I should read first. That’s where you all come in. What are some books you consider must reads and would recommend I add to my immediate reading queue?