annundriel | Entries tagged with books

Finished reading Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games today. I've ordered the second from the library, but I'm number 11 in the queue, so who knows how long that will take.

I really, really enjoyed it. The people who told me I should read it, friends and patrons alike, weren't kidding.

I wonder if the twins have read them. I wonder if I could get them to...

(I'm sure I had something intelligent and/or insightful to say, but I'm blanking. Too tired to think.)

Current Mood: tired

Finally finished reading Generation Kill. It only took me so long because I kept getting distracted by other books.

It was very good and I enjoyed it a lot. Definitely interesting to see what they didn't include in the mini-series.

( The epilogue and afterword made me a bit depressed, though. )

And now I'm giving Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games a go.

Current Mood: satisfied

I finished 2010 with a re-read of Harry Potter & the Sorecerer's Stone. I'd like to re-read the entire series this year. I guess my goal is to have that done before the final movie comes out.

Meanwhile, I'm starting the year with a book called The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson. I picked it up because John Green mentioned it on the vlog he shares with his brother Hank (here) because he's friends with Maureen and because the book had been challenged in two states. It wasn't banned in those high schools, simply shelved as "restricted." Apparently for containing a positive lesbian romance. It also contains at least one character questioning her sexuality. Is she gay? Is she bi? She loves her girlfriend, but she also has these...feelings for guys.

It's very readable and I'm enjoying it. Though I would sort of like to kick the one character in the face (the questioning one, not for questioning but for not wanting to be honest about it).

I find it kind of funny that I'm enjoying John Green's recommendation more than his own books. Don't get me wrong, they're good and I've enjoyed the two that I read - and I love watching his vlogs - but they never quite leave me the way I want them to leave me: wowed, super satisfied, full of yeah, that was good. Like, say, Steve Kluger's Almost Like Being in Love, which had me flailing forever. Or John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things, which still breaks my heart.

I also picked Generation Kill back up. And Mom bought me One Bullet Away (aka Nate's book) last time we went to a bookstore. I picked up The Hunger Games last time I was working at the library. As well as another book.

I HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS TO READ.

That's the one bad thing about working at a library; you always see at least five other things you want to pick up every time you're in.

Current Mood: productive

I am having a not so happy day.

So, how about 5 THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY RIGHT NOW.

01. Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday, which I already recced over here.

Here is a moment from when Gratuity, the protagonist, first meets J.Lo:

"Then...then...I will have onto shoot with my gun!"

I jumped back, palms up. In all the excitement, I hadn't thought of that. My eyes darted to where his hips would be, if he had any. I frowned.

"You don't even have a gun!"

"Yes! YES!" he shouted, nodding furiously, as though I'd somehow proven his point. "NO GUN! So I will have to...have to..."

His whole body trembled.

"...SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS FROM MY EYEBALLS!"

I fell into a row of shelves. That one was new to me.

"Shoot forth the lasers?"

"SHOOT FORTH THE LASERS!"

"You can do that?"

The Boov hesitated. His eyes quivered. After a few seconds he replied, "Yes."

I squinted. "Well, if you shoot your eye lasers, then I'll have no choice but to...EXPLODE YOUR HEAD!"

"You humans can not to ex--"

"We can! We can too! We just don't much. It's considered rude."

The Boov thought about this for a moment.

"Then...we are needing a...truce. You are not to exploding heads, and I will to not do my DEVASTATING EYE LASERS."

"Okay," I agreed. "Truce."

- p. 22-23

02. Misha Fucking Collins:

Click. It gets bigger. ;)

( This picture still does things to me: )

( Oh, and how about that one really distracting gif, too: )

03. DiNozzo/McGee, and NCIS' recent episode "Guilty Pleasures", which, I swear to God, had to have been the showrunners saying, "Here, Michael Weatherly, run with your 'DiNozzo and McGee are in lurve' idea."

OMG. That first scene? I almost literally flailed myself off the bed. Guys, just sleep together already. You'll be happier after, I promise.

I LOVE THEM SO MUCH I CAN'T STAND IT.

04. My ringtone, since I got my iPhone last summer, is the beginning of the Bad Horse Chorus from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog. (Up until "...it's high-ho Silver! Signed Bad Horse...")

05.

trademybike sent me CDs of the band Elbow. I've only listened to one so far, but I really like them. I love it when people send me tunes.

Current Mood: okay

I was going to wait to do an "OMG READ THIS" post until after I finished omg-reading it myself, and I probably still will, but I'm going to do this now anyway.

I am halfway through Adam Rex's The True Meaning of Smekday and I am fairly certain it is my absolute favorite thing I have read so far this year. Screw fairly certain. Hands down this is my favorite thing I have read so far this year. It's hilarious and touching and insightful and I love it.

The book is a Young Reader's Choice Award nominee and I'd been hearing about it for a while. The last time I was at the library, I finally picked it up and checked it out. So glad I did. It's literally had me laughing out loud. My mom wanted to know what was up.

It's the story of an eleven and a half year old girl named Gratuity who, after an alien race known as the Boov invade Earth, takes her cat Pig and decides to drive to Florida because the Boov have set it aside as a "preserve" for US citizens to live. On the way she runs into a Boov who calls himself J.Lo because "for humansgirl to correctly be pronouncing my name, you would need two heads." It turns out J.Lo's got some secrets of his own. Then another alien race shows up.

And that's about where I'm at.

J.Lo is hilarious. J.Lo and Gratuity together are gold. I love them so much and am going to be sorry when this is over.

If Dean were an eleven and a half year old girl and Castiel were an alien, this would totally be them.

Current Mood: tired

01. The other day

sdrohc_ratiug were texting each other what it would be like if Eric Kripke did Buffy and Joss Whedon did Supernatural. Then there were crossovers. It was entertaining.

annundriel: If SPN were done by Whedon, Dean and Cas would make out.

sdrohc_ratiug: Haha it's true. But he would also break everyone's heart and EVERYONE WOULD DIE.

It's a win-lose situation.

02. Just want to send a big thank you to

wynna_pendragon for the v-gift! I've been in a bit of a rut lately and it totally made my day. <3

03. Writing briefs is not my favorite thing to do ever.

04. Finished reading Joe Hill's short story collection 20th Century Ghosts. Really enjoyed it. Got it from the library and may have to buy my own copy. I'm still trying to figure out all of the implications of "My Father's Mask." (A story which you should not read in the middle of the night because you may be woken up an hour later by the dog barking and the sound of doors opening and closing and start thinking about how in-the-middle-of-nowhere you are and people in masks and so-on.)

05. There is no 5.

Current Mood: working
Current Music: My Boy Builds Coffins - Florence + The Machine

( Million Dollar Smile )

Because certain things on Ugly Betty vaguely remind me of this, I'm going to take the opportunity to recommend Steve Kluger's Almost Like Being in Love.

It's about Travis and Craig, who fall in love their senior year of high school. The spend the following summer together before attending their respective colleges. They keep in touch for a while, but then begin to drift apart. Twenty years later they're both living pretty great lives. And then Travis realizes he's still in love with Craig and has to do something about it.

The story switches POV and is told in narrative as well as letters and e-mails and collected bits of writing. I kind of adore Travis and Craig and the book over all. It's a quick read, not too heavy. It makes me happy.

I'll leave you with a bit from Travis' narrative:

I don't know why I did it. It wasn't even premeditated. Kerry Fusaro was singing "Almost Like Being in Love" and all I had to do was wait for a cue from Craig and push a flat onto the stage. Period. We've done it a hundred thousand times before. But one of the baby-blue spots picked that moment to spill over into the wings and light him up--all 5-foot-8 of him, holding his clipboard and wearing his white T-shirt and winking at me with the one-dimple smile that nobody but yours truly ever gets, with the little crinkles around the corners of his eyes. DEFCON 3! DEFCON 3! The next thing I knew, I was wrapping my foot around the brace so that the damned flat wouldn't move, just before I heard myself whispering (in a terrific impersonation of panic), "Craig, it's stuck!" What's the matter with me?! Naturally I got the one-dimple thing again while he moved behind my marks and slid his arms around my chest to help me push. With his chin in my neck. And his nose in my ear. As he began humming "Almost Like Being in Love" right along with Kerry. It would have served me right if I'd had a cerebral aneurysm on the spot. Instead, I forgot all about my foot--until we shoved the flat onto the stage. I think we broke my ankle.

This is bullshit. I have finals to worry about.
- p. 19

Current Mood: peaceful

I HAVE GENERATION KILL DVDS. THEY ARE MINE, ALL MINE.

I LOVE IT AND EVERYONE INVOLVED.

I'm impressed with the DVD packaging. Nicely done, HBO.

Also started the book.

Meanwhile,

olivelavonne and I marathoned Southland season one today. It was awesome.

This post brought to you by shows filled with competent badasses that I love.

Current Mood: good

Two episodes left and let's just say I am digging this series so hard and mostly leave it at that.

I feel a little strange saying I want to fangirl fictional versions of real people, but I do. All of them, basically, with a few (obvious, I think) exceptions.

Last night when I was telling Mom all of the people I enjoy the most and feel invested in, I realized the list kept going on. "Oh, there's Brad and Nate and Ray. Oh! Walt! And Garza. Doc Bryan. Poke. Rudy. That one guy that's now on that one show..."

I may have to get the book from the library now.

Meanwhile, (back at the ranch) I am half-way through the first Sookie Stackhouse book, Dead Until Dark. I have to say, I like Sookie a lot better in the book. So far anyway. I feel that way about a couple of characters, actually. I think part of it may have to do with not having to hear them speak.

It amuses me that Vampire Bill listens to Kenny G.

Current Mood: blah

01. Since I am working on the follow-up to But Soon Again, I thought it might be appropriate to give that series (haha I have a series!) a tag of its own. So Busted through But Soon Again can now all be found under: apocalypse what apocalypse.

02. The copy of The Shining that I'm reading is my mom's. I just realized she would have been reading it at roughly the same age I am now, give or take a year. I think that's neat!

03. I am sick. On the one hand, UGH. On the other hand, it got me out of working in Mattawa today. You lose some, you win some?

04. Getting my hair cut next week. Don't know if after I should dye it more red or more dark. Last time I went more red, so maybe it's time to go the opposite way...

05. I like fives. In those moments of slightly more OCD-ness, five is my go-to number. Like when I lock up the library and have to check the door. I count to five as I make sure the knob doesn't turn. Several times. I wonder if I count to five five times? I can never just do it once.

Current Mood: sick

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your LJ along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.
6. Tag five people

The Shining, Stephen King.

He slouched out, a small boy in pajama bottoms with feet and a large flannel top with a football on the front and NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS written on the back.

Jack's typewriter stopped, and she heard Danny's hearty smack. "Night, Daddy."

"Goodnight, doc."

I tag:

ginnith,

marynyu,

mclachlan,

olivelavonne, and

sdrohc_ratiug.

Current Mood: crappy
Current Music: Alejandro - Lady Gaga

Dear Frank Churchill,

I forgot that you are ~~kind of~~ a gigantic DOUCHEBAG.

~~Die in a fire,~~
Sincerely,
Me

PS. Badly done, Emma! Badly done indeed!

Current Mood: full

Hey, I know! Let's pretend today didn't happen!

Except for the part where I got the feature finished. That part we can keep.

Oh, and the part where I finished a book (The Ersatz Elevator) and started another one (Mister Monday). I am apparently on a Young Adult kick at the moment. Those are good times.

But the parts where I had to chase down puppies (in the cold while my hair was soaked) and got crap all over my shoes? And am now a little hoarse? Yeah, do not need them.

I will stop being so down in the mouth tomorrow.

Current Mood: drained

Don't you just love it when you're reading something and you randomly come to a passage that illustrates something you've felt or believed or argued previously?

The other day I started reading Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, which was written in 1405. I picked it up at the graduation dinner for English majors. My Chaucer professor thought I'd enjoy it. She wasn't wrong. I know we talked about the author in Masculinity in the Middle Ages, but I can't remember now if we actually read anything by her.

When I took Texts in Context, one of the works we studied was Paradise Lost. I wrote my final paper on it and part of whatever argument I was making, either in the paper itself or with the professor himself, was that the whole "woman is the downfall of man" thing is essentially a load of crap. In Christianity, Christ is God's greatest gift to man. But Christ would never have walked the earth had Eve not taken a bite from that fruit. And what does anything good mean to us if we've never experienced bad?

Anyway. The Book of the City of Ladies has to do with the author becoming depressed because so many male scholars and poets write about women being vessels of evil and vice. That they carry those things within them as well as originate them. She becomes depressed, because that is not how she sees herself or her fellow women, and begins to doubt herself. Until she is visited by Ladies Reason, Rectitude, and Justice who tell her they will help her build a City of Ladies. Essentially. I was reading it last night and ran across this from Reason:

"...thanks to a woman, man reigns with God. And if anyone would say that man was banished because of Lady Eve, I tell you that he gained more through Mary than he lost through Eve when humanity was conjoined to the Godhead, which would never have taken place if Eve's misdeed had not occurred. Thus man and woman should be glad for this sin, through which such an honor has come about. For as low as human nature fell through this creature woman, was human nature lifted higher by the same creature."
- p. 24

I may have gone a bit flaily-hands over it. I mean, it brings in Mary as sort of the...flip-side of Eve, but it also says, "Thus man and woman should be glad for this sin, through which such an honor has come about." And that, right there, is exactly the thing I was trying to argue. There it is, written 605 years ago.

I think that's neat.

Current Mood: nerdy

The other day I was looking for title-inspiration for "whatever we lose" and my eyes happened to fall on my copy of Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, which I read a couple of years ago in Modernism in Art and Literature. It contains a quote that spoke to me so clearly at the time I was amazed:

She could see it so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself--struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: "But this is what I see; this is what I see," and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her.
- p. 22-23

I get a lot of things out of that passage, and I understand it through my own various experiences involving fear of creative failure, that horrible moment between having an idea and pulling out a blank page to make that idea something more than just a thought, an image in your head. Fear of creative rejection, dismissal.

To borrow a quote from one of my other favorite things, The History Boys, that moment in reading for me was one of these:

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something--a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things--which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

I think I've gained a lot more confidence since then. I'm not afraid to start things much anymore for fear they won't live up to the vision in my head. Though I'm sure

ginnith would have interesting things to say on my various writing related neuroses and how the have/haven't changed. She's been there through it all, the lucky lady.

Speaking of writing, back to editing I go.

Current Mood: working

I am trying very hard not to give in to the urge to write a fic that would involve this as the summary:

In which Dean Winchester is not Catherine Morland, but falls for a man in a ~~nice~~ ~~great~~ coat anyway.

It amuses me immensely. I think Dean would probably shoot me in the face for making him Catherine Morland.

Meanwhile, thank you for the "first time" suggestions in my last post! I've even started a couple.

Current Mood: amused

It's probably wrong to feel gleeful when the other PE teacher tells you the kids will probably run the next day. But, oh, it's nice being on the other side of the equation for a change! Also, some of those kids...Grr. ::shakes fist::

You know you're in trouble when the other teacher tells you, "Fifth period you've got about, oh, five of the worst human beings on the planet."

It wasn't that they're disruptive or disrespectful, they've simply turned Doing Nothing into an art form.

Was Health today, but will be PE the rest of the week as there WERE NO LESSON PLANS. I was supposed to call the teacher, but she never got back to me.

I did get a good start on my port article. Yea, multitasking! I still have the fire district meeting to go to tonight.

( Oh, that reminds me of something that annoys me work-wise. Especially in regards to subbing at the school. )

So I am mostly using this mood (originally "mischievous") because it is seriously one of my favorite Castiel moments/looks in SPN. I NEED AN ICON.

But now I'm going to go find a heater and/or blanket and curl up with Guards! Guards! until I have to leave again.

Current Mood: little bit evil maybe

I have learned a great deal from novels. Some of it is even true.
- Dean Koontz, Brother Odd (p. 33)

I love these Odd Thomas books.

Today there was pho and coffee, ficcing and excellent company, hanging out in a weirdly Seattle-like bistro/market. And now I am comfortable and warm and someone bought me Little Dorrit on DVD. Life is good.

Current Mood: good

Dear Self,

Do not read other people's porn while you are trying to write your own. It will only make you have doubts. And you don't need any more of those.

Trust me,
Me

Usually it's not really a problem, but since this fic is trying to kill me, it kind of is.

It's kind of funny, though, but the amount of SPN fic I was reading tapered off greatly once I started writing it. I guess since I spend a lot of my free time writing it, I want to spend other parts of my free time reading something else? It sometimes makes me feel like a bad fan.

I do read it! If something catches my eye. Lately even my other fic reading has gone down. It's because my interests got snagged elsewhere. They're still snagged elsewhere.

And I got back into a nice book reading groove. In the last couple of days I finished Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Robin McKinley's Spindle's End, both of which I enjoyed.

Fun Home was yet another great example of why comics/graphic novels are such a great medium. An aunt of mine still doesn't think Sandman is legitimate literature and I know that annoys my cousin. Personally, I could geek out all day over the use of text and picture. Bechdel uses both wonderfully.

Spindle's End was recommended to me as a retelling of Sleeping Beauty in which the princess is an actual heroine and not a snoring lump in a bed. Sleeping Beauty is pretty much my least favorite fairy tale. I don't understand what it teaches young girls and generally find it pretty useless because the princess fulfills a curse and gets molested in her sleep. I find it questionable. But Spindle's End fixed that for me, explored roles and identity, destiny and expectations. It wasn't perfect, but I was very happy with it.

Current Mood: productive

After working the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, when the kids get out of school early, I thought for sure the week before Christmas was going to be Hell on Earth at the library. But! It's not! Maybe it's just the attitude with which I've gone into it. I've basically been practicing aggressive librarying.

In a friendly way. Patrons like me. I'm "the nice one." ;)

Hopefully tomorrow will be more of the same.

Meanwhile, I think I've gotten back on track with that follow up to Backed Against a Wall. I was having difficulties, but after talking it over with

ginnith and

sdrohc_ratiug I think I've gotten those particular issues hammered out. Who knows what the rest of it will bring. ::crosses fingers::

Also, I think Castiel might live in A Series of Unfortunate Events and that's why he's got the long face and doom and gloom pronouncements despite Dean's efforts to otherwise loosen him up or lighten the mood.

He is the Lemony Snicket to the Winchesters' Baudelaires.

Oh, and now I've got him as Marvin the Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Sigh. Clearly I need help.

Current Mood: tired

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Evil Wrapped in a Fangirl Disguise

The Rambling Confessions of a Fickle Fangirl

The Hunger Games

Generation Kill

So Many Books, So Little Time

5 Happy-Making Things

Book Rec!

Five Things

Ugly Betty

Made of Win

Generation Kill & True Blood

Five Random Things

Book Meme

Wow

Ugh

The Book of the City of Ladies

Creative Fear

"...the innumerable capes of his great coat looked becomingly important!"

Mine Is an Evil Laugh

Novels

Note to Self (Among Other Things)

Better Than Expected

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February 2013

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