January 2011
35 posts
People
I find people to be thoroughly exhausting.
Friends I haven’t seen in a while, especially those returning from study abroad trips, keep asking me what’s been going on in my life. What’s new with me? What’s the gossip? Any drama?
My existence, with just me and my day-to-day activities in it, is calm and quiet and drama-free. And yet, there is constantly something...
Anonymous asked: What's your favorite novel and why?
Anonymous asked: How many people have you met in your life that have stayed with you? *metaphorically speaking
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Anonymous asked: What's the one thing that, above all else, defines who you are when the going gets tough?
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Oh Tumblr...
How is it that you routinely reduce me to “blithering idiot” status?
All I want to do is be able to post comments on things! :(
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IMPORTANT NEWS BULLETIN
I have finally completed David Tennant’s Dr. Who tenure and am poised to start Season 5. Against all odds, I am NOT dying of sorrow. Victory!
Saturday Nights
Just stayed up until 1:00AM watching old Nickelodeon reruns with my mom. I love being home!
There wasn’t much on, and after they pulled out octopus as the secret ingredient on Iron Chef America our vegetarian sensibilities intervened and we ended up watching a few episodes of The Nanny to pass the time.
That show…Fran is so ridiculous/annoying, and yet I always find myself rooting...
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I am a self-spoiler in the worst way
SO.
When I found out that the Tenth Doctor dies/regenerates at the end of Season 4 of Doctor Who, the logical thing to do would’ve been to watch the series in a logical progression in order to find out what happens.
Yeah, no. My first stop, idiot that I am, was YouTube. And now I know exactly what happens and it’s KILLING ME.
Oh, but the masochism doesn’t end there!...
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Clearly...
Clearly I need a friend who appreciates beautiful bookshelves and well-designed kitchens as much as I do. My mom and I are very much on the same wavelength about most things, but not in this regard.
For example, I see something like this:
And I’m like:
And then I show her the computer screen, hoping she’ll geek out as much as I am, and she’s all:
FAIL.
Book 19: House of Many Ways
Okay, so the copy of this book that I read didn’t come with this particular cover art, but I saw it on Google and thought it was too cool to pass up. So here it is!
Anyhow, I know I said I would go through all three books in the Wizard’s Castle series, and I meant to… but I really wanted about Howl and Sophie, and the second book in the series (Castle in the Air) only has...
tumblrbot asked: WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
Book 18: Howl's Moving Castle
Finals just ended, and as a reward for a full week’s worth of focused studying I picked up Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones from the college library for a fun bit of reading. I read it years ago in high school after watching (and loving) the Hiyao Miyazaki film adaptation and wasn’t terribly thrilled by the novel, but I was feeling optimistic after my final exams and...
Book 17: Memoirs of a Geisha
When a novel is adapted into a film, I almost invariably find the written version more appealing. It might just be one of those elitist things that comes with the territory of being a longtime book-lover; you somehow always come to believe that your imagination is more accurate and on-point than the other guy’s. However, through pretty much no fault of its own, Memoirs of a Geisha as a...
Book 16: The Pillars of the Earth
After a good two months of slow, painstaking reading, I have finally finished reading Ken Follett’s novel,The Pillars of the Earth. The time it took me to finish the book reflects in no way upon the book itself, but upon the fact that I hadn’t had much time to read until recently. Pillars of the Earth is almost 1000-pages long and spans over fifty years of medieval history. If...
Book 15: Her Fearful Symmetry
Cool fact: my aunt is Audrey Niffenegger’s physician. I guess that doesn’t count as having a real celebrity connection, but it’s within six degrees of separation so it’s good enough for me. My aunt was cool enough to take my copy of her first novel,The Time Traveler’s Wife, back with her to Chicago after her last visit to be signed, and she recently sent me a...
Book 14: Ella Enchanted
One of my best friends here at school insists that the Anne Hathaway movie based on this novel is “legitimately awesome”, but it’s still one I refuse to see. Maybe I’m being closed-minded, but I thought that the point of adapting a book to screen was to improve upon the material, not destroy it. The trailer for the film alone told me it was going to be a heinous...
Book 13: The Lovely Bones
So I thought I posted this months ago, but it turns out that it’s been sitting in my “drafts” folder since November. Oops. ———————- Seeing as this book has been made into a soon-to-be-released film, I figure should review it.The Lovely Bones is Alice Sebold’s second novel, with the first being Lucky—Sebold’s memoir about...
Book 12: Lucky
I’m just going to cut to the chase with this one, because I’m in class and ought to be paying attention. I was pretty disappointed by Lucky. I’m not sure if there’s a way that this book could have been written better. It tackles really ugly subject material. I felt sick to my stomach while I was reading Lucky, and while that’s probably the appropriate response to such...
Book 11: The Realm of the Gods
This will be the end of my Tamora Pierce kick, or it will be for now. The Realm Of The Gods is the satisfying finish to Tamora Pierce’s IMMORTALS series, and the conclusion to Daine’s story. Daine and Numair are facing what is certainly their doom when they are pulled into The Divine Realms by none other than Daine’s parents, whose are both lesser gods. Though it is a very...
Book 10: Emperor Mage
This is easily the most intense of Immortals Series novels. In Emperor Mage, the friction between Tortall and Carthak passive-aggressively comes to a head. Tortall sends a delegation of some of its most important, most powerful personalities to Carthak to negotiate a peace with the southern empire and its government. Included in the delegation are the King’s Champion, the king’s...
Book 9: Wolf-Speaker
As you can probably guess, this is the second book in Tamora Pierce’sImmortals series. As the sequel to Wild Magic, Wolf-Speaker follows Daine’s adventures in Tortall with her teacher, Numair Salmalin. In this novel, Daine receives a summons from the Long Lake wolf pack—wolves who once served as her surrogate family following the murder of her mother and...
Book 8: Wild Magic
This is a ridiculously long post (I have a long history with this book, so be prepared for storytime if you decide to read the whole dratted thing). If you’re just here for the review, scroll until you see the big bold letters.
Anyway. I picked this book up for the first time when I was in sixth grade, not knowing that it would be responsible for shaping my reading habits for the next...
Book 7: Austenland
I’m not sure if I’ve made this adequately clear in the past, but I am not a huge fan of Jane Austen’s. While her stuff is, yes, entertaining to a degree, I can’t help but feel like every story is the same and every character is just a reconstituted Mr. Darcy or Ms. Bennett. And, yeah, her characters sometimes have rather witty, snarkastic (sarcastic + snarky; I think...
Book 6: Covering--The Hidden Assault On Our Civil...
Since I’m part of the housing staff at my college, I’m supposed to read the summer reading book that the college assigns to incoming freshmen so that I can discuss the book with the freshies when they get on campus.
I picked the book up before school let out, and started reading it during the train ride to the beach on my last day in Southern California. While the material was...
Book 5: La Cucina
I feel bad for hating on this novel, since it is technically the sort of book I should like. It’s about Italy, it contains stellar recipes, it’s got a neat front cover (sold!). But, if I had a five-star rating scale, this book would get a whopping two. I found La Cucina by Lily Prior lacking significantly in the uniqueness and stylistic grace that makes other books of its kind so...
Book 4: The Nonesuch
No matter what people say about judging books by their covers and all of that, I will be the first to admit that books with attractive covers are the first to catch my eye and, more often than not, the ones I end up buying. I like bright colors and creative color schemes and evocative imagery; those are the principle characteristics of the covers of best-sellers like The Time...
Book 3: The Homecoming
The Homecoming sat on my bookshelf at college for six months collecting dust along with the other 15+ books I foolishly took with me to school thinking I would actually have time to read. I felt bad for not reading many (any) of them, but I felt extra-contrite about not reading this one for two reasons: 1) Because my dad gave me this book, and 2) Because the author is a good family friend of...
Book 2: Q&A
Q&A by Vikas Swarup is the novel that served as the inspiration for Slumdog Millionaire, and after being thoroughly impressed by the film I decided that I had to read the book for myself.
I generally find myself unimpressed by the book-to-movie conversion; one or the other almost always disappoints, depending on which medium I was exposed to first. However I found the novel just as...
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Book 1: Towing Jehovah
Allow me to first put it out there that James Morrow is a freaking genius. I mean, really. A genius.
Now that you know that, allow me to explain the premise of this phenomenal novel: God—that is, the bearded white male of the Bible—has died, and His body has fallen into the Atlantic Ocean. Supertanker captain Anthony Van Horne is called in by none other than the agents of the...
Howdy, Tumblr
Happy New Year, and hello! A friend’s been urging me to try out Tumblr, and after getting really really REALLY upset at the settings on my Blogger account, my Blogger and I have broken up and gone our separate ways. So I’ve decided to give this place a go. I’ll have to move my stuff from Blogger to here, so here come a year and a half worth of posts.
Alright, Tumblr!...