December 2014 Birchbox

Back to the Birchbox archive posts! I swear I'll be caught up eventually, I'm only six months behind now! This box is going to be a hard one because I remember so little about it, everything was pretty "meh." Ah well.

A photo posted by Elizabeth (@onegirlsreviews) on Dec 13, 2014 at 10:15am PST

English Laundry Eau de Parfum Signature for Her: Like I said, I remember very little about this box except that I gave this perfume away. It was very flowery and just not at all my style. I tried it twice, I wanted to like it because the reviews were so good but it just didn't work for me. Too strong, too something.

Manna Kadar Lip Locked: I picked this as my sample choice that month, and got it in Lucky, which is described as a "nude petal-pink." It's not a bad lip gloss, the packaging is tiny so it's actually a bit hard to really open up and use but that's okay. I think in general it's just an okay product, I've found lip products I've liked so much more (like from Laqa & Co or Cynthia Rowley) so honestly it's at the bottom of my lip products bag and I never reach for it, but I'm not going to get rid of it either if that makes sense.

SeaRX Microdermabrasion Face and Body Scrub: I basically remember a sum total of nothing about this product. I don't remember it hurting my skin, which is good, but it didn't make a huge impression either since I didn't favorite it and I forgot it existed.

Davines Replumping Superactive: I honestly don't understand this whole thing with wanting your hair to be "plump" and all that. I spend half my time trying to get my hair to stop being insane and sticking up weirdly, so I'm not sure what this product was supposed to do for me. I did use it, and used it up, but I like other spray in products better.

Davines Replumping Shampoo and Conditioner: Again, I remember little about this. It smelled fine, it worked fine I guess, but I'm not looking to make my hair poofier or plumper so it wasn't really my style.

Mirenesse iCurl Secret Weapon 24 Hour Mascara: I specifically did the lip gloss as my sample choice that month even though I have too many lip products because I really didn't want more mascara, I don't wear it often enough and it just dries out and clumps up before I can use it up. But then I got this in my box anyway, which is fine if a little disappointing. I ended up giving it away unopened because I'd rather somebody actually use it than for it to go bad in my makeup box.

So December was a slightly lackluster box overall, nothing really bad or anything, but nothing memorable either.

The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury

I actually picked up this classic novel because I was reading a review of The Whispers, a new TV show inspired by a short story in this collection and they made the story out to seem pretty good. The library had a copy in stock, so I walked over and grabbed it. Now, I'm not entirely new to Bradbury, but for somebody who loves sci-fi and fantasy, I've actually not read an excessive amount of his written work. I've seen tons of adaptations of it, but the source material? Not as much. I have to say, I'm not sure The Illustrated Man was the right place for me to start. The bookend story of the Illustrated Man himself was fascinating, I got right into the book because it was so compelling at even just the few pages that it took up. But it's really just a bookend, sadly, there's not much more to it than a few pages.

Some of the stories were quite good, most of them more than a little depressing to be honest. Not a lot of happy endings, but then I'm not sure Bradbury really did all that many purely happy endings. I'm not saying this as a bad thing, just maybe that colored my view because I wasn't in the mood for realistic endings.

Obviously some of the stories are better than others, but none stuck out to me as particularly bad. Quite a few of them are quite dated though, and the entire book very obviously exists in it's own time and place, and a time and place that doesn't exist anymore. The Cold War is very evident, as are the racial tensions of that era. Sometimes Bradbury's take on the hot topics seems almost simplistic, but you have to remember when he was writing them. In "The Other Foot," Mars has been colonized with black people who escaped Earth to escape racism and persecution. Then, decades later, a rocket from Earth approaches with their first white visitor. There's a lot about this story that just doesn't work in today's climate and with today's problems, and actually the play on "reverse racism" coming from a modern author would be kind of insulting and possibly offensive. But The Illustrated Man was published in 1951, before the Civil Rights movement was national news, and from that perspective thinking of a white writer telling this story becomes an entirely different experience.

There's a lot of stuff that doesn't hold up to the science we know today, and the vision of space travel is pretty quaint. In "The Long Rain" a group of astronauts crash land on the wrong spot on Venus, and go mad from the constant pouring rain on the planet. They briefly mention the native aliens, who live in the oceans and almost never come on land. Actually, humanoid aliens populate most of the planets in this book, and it's kind of nice to think back on a time when we believed that must be true. As a bonus, I read "The Long Rain" right before I went camping during a storm that lasted about 12 hours, the timing was not lost on me as I started getting fed up with the sound of the rain on the tent and mumbling about just wanting to be dry again.

Another thing Bradbury does well is not shying away from making children terrifying, like in The Veldt and in Zero Hour, the story that The Whispers was inspired by. Zero Hour is a lot more cynical than the show seems to be, possibly because of the length. You expand a few pages into a series and I guess you have to add more sinister plotting and conspiracies or something. Zero Hour is almost phenomenally compact. Most of the stories are, they tell what they need to tell and move on. "Kaleidoscope" is especially well done, it tells the story of that moment in time, but in a full way that makes it feel like part of a larger whole. You get a sense of past, present, and future, even though you're experiencing only maybe ten minutes in a life. And the story starts and ends almost in the middle of moments, it's just very well structured.

All in all, The Illustrated Man is a good book, but it has all the highs and lows of classic science fiction. If you like reading classic books and can put yourself in the context that they were written and published in, you'll probably enjoy it. But if you have trouble with that suspension of disbelief, then when the advanced Martian society decides to finally conquer Earth, you'll probably not really be taken in.

November 2014 Birchbox

More old Birchbox reviews! This box was a mixed bag, some really great things and a few I took a while to give up on, but no big misses either. Well, maybe one.

A photo posted by Elizabeth (@onegirlsreviews) on Nov 23, 2014 at 8:20am PST

Bain de Terre Argan Oil & Passion Flower Color Therapy Styling Oil: I think I've since changed my profile to take off that I color treat my hair, because I do dye my hair once a year or so, but I also don't really have good luck with something like 90% of the hair products designed to make your color last longer. My color might last longer but my hair looks awful.

That said, this styling oil actually worked quite well for what it is, but my hair just doesn't need extra oil on it. It did make it smoother, but I don't need it to look more slicked at the same time, that's not my style. And I don't use any heat styling tools or curl or iron or do anything like that. So really it's not a product I ever was going to use much. But since I did kind of like it, I'm sure if you were looking for something like this it'd be a good choice.

Ellovi Lip Butter: Man, I tried so hard to like this, I really did. I got the tinted lip butter, and the color was great, I really liked it. But there were two major problems - first for some reason there were a ton of bubbles or crystals or something that made it rough and flaky to apply which is NOT what you want in a lip product. Second, there was a smell (which also probably made it seem like a bad taste) that I never got used to. I tried valiantly for a few days before I gave up. Definitely not on my to buy list.

Juice Beauty Green Apple Peel Sensitive: This was my sample choice, because I was super excited to try it. I have super sensitive skin and problems with some mystery ingredient that's in a lot of face products. So I had high hopes for an all-natural sensitive skin peel that maybe it would finally help me solve my exfoliation conundrum. Alas, it was not to be. Whatever ingredient it is that sets off my skin, it's in here. Or it's just still too harsh for me. I turned lobster red and my face stung, so I gave up and gave away the rest because I couldn't risk it. Also, I wasn't a fan of the texture or smell.

Not Soap, Radio Body Wash: The titles of these products are half of what makes it so great, I got "When life gives you one too many lemons (and you've misplaced your happy place)." I loved it, it was a fabulous scent, not too strong, and I really liked the body wash too. it also can be used in the bathtub, and it doesn't make a ton of foamy bubbles, but instead just gives you a good scent and some bubbling but not too much. It was exactly right, I'm buying more as soon as I use up the bath tablets I have.

TOCCA Crema da Mano-Hand Cream: I really love this hand cream, I actually am kind of hoarding it and won't use it until I've used up my lesser samples so I can enjoy it just that much longer. The scent is lovely and lasts a good bit of time, and the lotion itself is very moisturizing and lovely. I'm a big fan.

Justin's Chocolate Almond Butter Squeeze Packs: I have been wanting to try almond butter, so I was pretty happy to see this sample. Though it was kind of hilarious that it arrived in November so mine was frozen solid, I couldn't eat it until it thawed out. I eventually spread it on some toast, and I really liked it. If it wasn't so expensive I would have started buying it regularly, though probably I would get it through REI so I'd get my dividend from it.

So overall, I think it was a good box. I loved the body wash, lotion, and almond butter. The other products weren't a great success but that's a really personal thing for most of them, the peel and the hair oil weren't bad products. The lip butter, I don't know, maybe I got a bad one.

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