Review Monday

As promised, here is today's review. Richard Feynman!

You're all getting spoiled this week; I posted an extra review last night just for kicks, and later this week I have a special project that's going to result in 4 separate articles! So get excited about that, and get your reading glasses ready! ;) It's going to be a busy week for me. I'm actually going to work in addition to writing, so I actually have to leave the house for something other than the library or coffee...

As far as my experiment yesterday with going outside went....that failed miserably. I stayed inside and got active though. My arms still hurt from Wii Boxing, and I'm okay with that. I'm still white as a lily, but at least I didn't spend all day sitting in front of my screen staring at various pieces of writing. I consider that a step in the right direction. Maybe I'll actually venture outside today, who knows? Stranger things have happened.

Still reading The Things That Matter...it's taking longer than it probably should, mostly because I'm just reading at night right now. Not sure why, I've just been putzing around doing other things during the day. Like playing Wii.

Well, keep an eye out for further reviews 'n' stuff later this week :)

Books and movies and stuff...oh my.

I couldn't think of anything for the third category. I would have said music, but I'm not going to talk about that. Stuff, however, is just broad enough to cover what I want it to.

So, books: I'm currently reading "A Devil's Chaplain" by Richard Dawkins. There will be a review up today or tomorrow (haven't decided yet when to post it), so keep checking back to see if there's a link for it. I'm also read "The Meaning of it All" which is a collection of 3 lectures given by Richard Feynman in 1963. The man was brilliant. He was funny, erudite and still relatable. He was about 80 miles above everyone's head, but you still manage to understand what he wanted you to. And he was so kind about everything. Switching from his book to Dawkins is like going from eating chocolate ice cream to chewing on a jawbreaker. I like Dawkins, don't get me wrong. He's incredibly smart, but he's a jackass. He's pompous, arrogant and nasty. And it's annoying, because he's so convinced he's right -and he often is, too.
That's part of why I like him.
I'm a jackass.

Additionally, some of you may not know this, but in addition to writing for Examiner.com, I also write for Helium.com -the nice thing about that is I can write a lot more loosely on Helium. I have a couple of movie reviews, and some political stuff as well. It's not all books, all the time there. Granted, Examiner is like my best friend where Helium is more of an acquaintance that I'd hang out with once in a while, but there's probably still some fun stuff on there for you to read. I like it, anyway. If you check it out, you'll notice a lot of duplicated articles from Examiner. Some of them were stolen from there and put on Helium, and some of them it's the other way around. Regardless, there's stuff on each of them that isn't on the other, so I think it's worth checking out, but that might just be me.

I'm still watching Now, Voyager...I don't know why, but when I watch a movie by myself, it'll take me two or three days to finish it. I get distracted. I check my blog for comments, I tweet, I check Examiner to see what's going on there. In short, without other people to watch the movie, I'm more interested in my own life. Which is funny, in a way, because I prefer to do most things alone as it is. Either way, N,V is a great movie. I'd definitely advise checking it out. Bette Davis has an unusual sort of beauty, but beautiful she was.

4th of July

I was dragged out of bed at 9 a.m. to go canoeing. Not my first choice of activities. Let's be honest -about the most active I normally get is turning the pages of a book. In Athens, I walk a lot more, because of the hills. And because I don't have anywhere to go that would really necessitate a car (except Wal*Mart, but even that distance is pretty easy to walk). Anyway, you get the idea. I'm a bum. So now my arms and wrists are aching tired, and I feel like something sucked all of the energy out of me. I am not in the best of moods.

Yesterday I hit up the library again. I've discovered that if I decide on a topic, instead of a specific book, I can usually find something. So I got a couple of books by/about Richard Feynman, one by Richard Dawkins (the topic was not men named Richard, just fyi), the book Rebecca and a biography of Colette that I wanted to review (and already have). It was a pretty successful trip, all things considered, although I did finally get busted for using my mom's card instead of my own, which is AWOL. I've been using mom's card since I got home. That is upwards of 12 trips to the library, at least 8 of which involved me actually using the card. This is the first time anyone has noticed it's not her....and the woman who did figure it out isn't someone I know. Creepy.

I'm still reading The Know-It-All, which is the precursor to The Year of Living Biblically, which I adored. Also, A. J. Jacobs and I are now friends on Facebook. He read my review! How small of a world is it? I was so excited I almost passed out. Mom made fun of me. I'm glad it was a positive review... But yeah, expect the KIA review to be delayed a little, since I'm trying to get more diversity of authors in the reviews right now. Admittedly, that sounds shammy when I remember that I'm also writing a review of every single Sookie Stackhouse novel, as well as an overall review (which is linked to above), but those are mostly because I know they'll generate hits. And I can link them to my Twilight review, which has over 100 comments. That amuses me. The comments range from really funny and insightful to really funny and stupid. The threatening ones I delete, despite their amusement value. I just don't think they're appropriate for the page, as much as I'm not intimidated by 13 year old girls threatening me on the internet (or IRL, really. I'm hard to intimidate).

I'm also reading Dawkins' book A Devil's Chaplain which is really interesting so far. It's a collection of essays, and although it's not nearly the polemic that The God Delusion is, I still think Dawkins is a pompous ass. As much as I agree with him (which is to say -most of the time, I think he's mostly right, but I'd still argue with him [and lose, since he's much smarter than I am]), he's a pompous ass and he writes to deliberately piss people off. I can tell, because I do it too. It's fun to get a reaction, even a negative one, from writing. And a topic as controversial as the one on which he normally writes is bound to get some negative responses no matter how gently he words it. He's fun to read, I'll be honest. I like to see how long I can go before something needles me, even if it's something with which I agree. Fun stuff, fun stuff.

There'll be reviews of a bunch of books up this week, and blogs to go with them, same as usual. This weekend I'm trying to get a little bit ahead. I figure if I write a review a day, I'll be in good shape when I go back to school and won't have the leisure to sit on my skinny butt all day and read whatever I want. Of course, I'll also have much more academic writing to put up, which will be fun and high-brow than my usual opinions. Good times.