The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Review's up! Go read it!

Additionally, I checked out White Teeth from the library yesterday (or was it Saturday?) and borrowed Field Notes from the Compassionate Life from my grandma yesterday and received instructions from my dad that I am to use part of my birthday present (amazon gift card) to buy a book called Libraries at Night. So all of these things will lead to further awesomeness in the realm of reviewing.

I'm also buying my textbooks today. I won't review most of those (unless they're just that awesome), but one of them is Frankenstein, so we'll see what happens with this. I'm pretty pumped. I love getting books.

And coffee makers. I totally got a baby Keurig for my birthday as a joint present from parents/grandparents and if I was the type to descend into girls acronyms this post would be filled with omglolwtf-type writing. Keurigs a) make the best coffee, b) make it one cup at a time and c) are absolutely gorgeous pieces of tech. I made my excited face when I got it. It's not as excited as Bubby's excited face, which we were witness to when he realized he got an Indiana Jones Lego set. I can't wait to see what happens when Jonah gives him the Force Unleashed Wii game he got... :)

August is birthday month. My uncle's is the 7th, mine is the 14th, my cousin's is the 15th, my dad's (Braden, not biological) is the 16th, my brother's is the 19th and my grandpa is somewhere else in the middle of all of that. And I think my other cousin might be in here somewhere soon, too, maybe early September? I don't know. That's too many people for me to keep track of -suffice it to say, there are a lot of birthdays going on right now. And it's always fun. :) Lots of cake and ice cream and hyperactivity.

I'm excited to buy me some books today. Look for more reviews soon. Also this week will be my piece on what Literature is!

My hands are covered in ink.

Today as part of my second job at Spectrum Eye (the first bit was finding, pulling and re-filing 2000+ files), I started faxing 929 new doctor announcements. Except first I had to cross off all of the out-of-state doctors. Then all of the in-town doctors. Then all of the doctors with no fax numbers (duh). Then I had to go through and find all of the optometrists and ophthalmologists to make sure I fax to them first (hello yellow hi-liter). I went from 929 to 373 doctors. 97 of those are now hi-lited. My hands are covered in ink from crossing stuff out. I don't just do lines, I do big wavy scrawls. No curlicues, just big waves. That way I know it's really crossed out.
After an hour and 39 minutes I decided I was done for the day.
I haven't sent a single fax yet.

In other news, you guys suck. I got zero votes on what review to post today! My feelings are hurt. On a scale of one to permanent scarring, I'm at about a knee scrape. Screw you guys. :(

So I picked the review of The Great Gatsby. Mostly because I worked really hard on it. It took probably 3 hours total to write, edit, re-write, re-edit, finish, polish, find links, format and publish. So be grateful. And go read it. I'm pretty pleased with it. Of course I could have written more or changed a few things...but I say that about every piece, every time I go back and read it again. I've learned to just let go a little. Once it's out there, it's out there. I'm chill with it. It's a good review, and I like it.

The only rotten part is now I want to watch the movie version except I know it will depress the hell out of me.

Today I'm going to be working on a review of The Perks of Being a Wallflower (thanks again Dirk), and possibly going to the library to pick some stuff up. I got Walden Two (which I'm working on) but the two other books I got I haven't even cracked. That's a bad sign for them...usually if I grab a book and let it stew for a couple of days the suspense drives me nuts and I blast through them. These two are just sitting there, bored and useless. That means they need to go back and I need to find something else.

Right now then I have TPoBaW, W2 and Interview with the Vampire to work on; Alex is going to lend me Parallelities when he gets back from NYC (cue jealous grumbling and bitching) and I'm hoping Jonah will let me borrow a sci-fi book he was telling me about, which is called either Up or Down the Line (my memory is horrible).

Other than that, I still need ideas. I'm going to go through my own books and pick out a few I remember well enough to review without rereading (Assassins of Tamurin which I've read upwards of 6 times is definitely one, maybe A Canticle for Leibowitz... we'll see. Memoirs of a Survivor. Stuff like that), but I still need ideas.

I'm also going to be writing a piece on what literature is for my super secret special project, and I want some outside opinions. What do you think literature is? Write as much as I want. If you give me good ideas, I'll use them and credit you in the blog entry about it and be forever grateful to you. I have some outlined ideas which I'll be keeping to myself so as not to bias your comments (which had better be many), but I would love to hear from you all. All...what, 5 of you who read this? If I'm lucky.

The price of being a bookworm

I have a bad back. I'm 19 (although not for much longer) and I wake up in the mornings and walk around with my hand pressing against the small of my back, rolling my neck to get the kinks out and it sounds like a smattering of gunfire erupts from my spine. Actually, that sounds kind of cool...and it would be, but it usually hurts. It's just not fun. In addition to that, my neck itself is beyond wrecked. A normal person's neck curves like this: ) Mine curves like this (
Know why? Because I spend all of my time with my head bent over books. I have actually changed the shape of my own spine by reading a lot. A lot is an understatement. We all know this. My neck's been like that since the seventh grade, when I started studying seriously for the spelling bee. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was spending 40 hours/week studying. I would get up at 5 in the morning and stay up late. That's 40 hours every week with my head bent over books.

I have a bad back.
It's totally worth it, though. I wouldn't change a thing. Okay, maybe if I could I'd go back into my eighth grade self standing in front of that microphone, staring at Dr. Bailly (my BFF) and scream that I know how to spell theodicy. But I can't. I loved the spelling bee, though. It's a good experience, even if I did wreck my back over it.

Today I woke up and my back is cackling to itself. I sat up to the sound of fireworks, only they were coming from me instead of the fields behind my neighborhood. It feels like someone picked me up and threw me into a brick wall several times while I was sleeping. Not fun. Fortunately, coffee fixes everything. I have already had one cup, and I'm planning on having many more throughout the course of the day. If I can't fix the way my spine is, I'll at least replace pain with caffeine jitters. WOO.

I'm going to work soon...I think it's going to be a backroom day for me, just re-filing things. It's nice. I can have my iPod and rock out, and people very rarely walk in on that. Generally.

In other news, I finally finished reading The Things That Matter last night. It took me a ridiculously long time to get through it, but I'm glad I read it. I'll be working on a review of that today, and avoiding being in the house with my little brother and his friend. I don't like kids, and Bubby + a friend = lots of unnecessary noise. I'm going to GTFO and find a seat in a coffeeshop where nobody will bother me. It'll be awesome.

Finally, I have questions for you, dear readers:
What do you want to see reviewed? What are your favorite books? What books do you hate?

If you could pick any book for me to write about, what would it be?

The Things That Matter

After finishing Rebecca, I realized with an unpleasant jolt that I had nothing left from the library to read. So of course I had to go yesterday and get some things. I got Everything Is Illuminated, a bio of Audrey Hepburn, Brave New World, The Things that Matter and a book called The Accidental. The ones I've not read look interesting and the one I have I know is good; I just want to review it.

There was a terrific thunderstorm this morning. I haven't heard it rain so hard since Findlay flooded a couple of years ago. The thunder was fantastic, too. It sounded like the world was tearing open. I loved it.

Right now I'm reading The Things That Matter. It's an analysis of 7 great works of literature and how they relate to seven different stages of life. So far it's been really good; I've read the first section, which deals with Frankenstein. It dragged on a little towards the end of its 40-some pages; I got the feeling that the author ran out of things to say and so repeated them a lot. However, it did get his point across. Lots of biographical information on Mary Shelley and a perspective on Frankenstein and the creature (not the monster, as I usually see it called, which I thought was interesting in itself) I haven't really seen before.

So far so good.

I also got the movie La Vie En Rose, which is about Edith Piaf. La Vie En Rose is one of my favorite songs. Audrey Hepburn sings it in Sabrina, and Edith Piaf is famous for it; it's a beautiful song. The actress who plays Piaf in the movie, Marion Cotillard, also plays Billie Frechette in the movie Public Enemies, which I saw a week ago...it's a good movie, by the by. Worth seeing, despite its length. It's one of the most beautifully shot movies I think I've ever seen. There's one scene in particular, in a bar, where the only thing in the frame are the heads of the characters talking at one side of the screen, the edge of the bar extending away from them, and darkness. It's unspeakably gorgeous.

Now that the storm is over, it's sunny and humid and sticky...I know my mom isn't going to turn on the AC, which sucks since (for once in Findlay) there is no wind. But it's a pretty day. Everything is crackly and wet.

I like Saturdays.

The learning curve

I learn a lot of interesting things from comments on my reviews -most of them about myself.
For example, "ur r a low life wanna be" was one I received today. I was unaware that I are anything of the sort. :P I also apparently lack imagination, have never been in love, don't know what love is, can't judge other people's taste in books because they like it, so I should keep my opinion to myself (I clearly need some lessons in logic) and I've never written anything in my life and have no idea how hard it is to be a writer.

Seeing as I've written, to date, 3 completed novels and 1 unfinished novel, that one flies out the window pretty quickly. (A side note -if you go looking for these comments, some of them have been deleted as they were accompanied by threats of physical violence. As much as I'd like to engage in a good match of fisticuffs with anyone who wants to go at it, I won't have threats on my page. It's not ladylike). I'd also say that, having written 3 1/2 novels -as well as countless short stories/essays and, oh hey, reviews!, I've got a pretty good sized imagination.

As for keeping my opinion to myself...let me think about that one. No.
It's my job to be opinionated. And I happen to be able to back up my opinions, unlike some people, whose only defense for the series is that...they like it, so I should shut up. Yeah. Not gonna happen.

With regards to having been in love, if they can be in love with Edward Cullen, I can be in love with Mr. Darcy. And Mr. Rochester. And Dr. Juvenal Urbino.
What? I like me some literary men, so sue me. ;)

Also, and this is a new one. I am a crazy psycho. I really can't argue with that, except in the context of my article. Sorry I happen to be right, teenagers on the internet who can neither spell properly nor form a coherent argument so as to prove that I am in fact a crazy psycho/wrong!

In addition, as I learned on another review, I am a goddess. Talk about an ego boost!

Then come the facts that really don't make a damn bit of sense, like the ones I got claiming the author/actress/all around badass of a woman Colette was actually a man. Seriously, what? Are...are you out in your backyard watching for UFOs, too? How many times have you seen Elvis? Or gotten Jesus on your toast? Colette was not a man, sorry to burst your bubble. I looked into it. There's zero evidence anywhere (but if you -any of you- can come up with it, I'd be pretty interested, actually. Especially since she, you know, had a child and numerous sexual partners of both genders and was wildly popular and performed nearly nude onstage multiple times. You'd think someone would have noticed).

The things you learn on the internet can hardly be described. Most of them, however, just prove that people are really, really, really stupid.

Rebecca

Last night I started reading Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, and I'm already hooked. There will be a review up this week or next, depending on when I finish it. Yay books! Seriously, if you haven't read Rebecca go check it out from a library or just buy a copy and read it along with me. It's totally worth it. I'm 23 pages in and I'm telling you it's good.

I had other things to write about, but none of them are really relevant.
I do have another review up, though! Dead Until Dark, the first of the Sookie Stackhouse Novels. Check it out. Leave me nasty comments, etc. The usual. You know how we do.

Short blog post is short! But you will survive. I have reading to do, anyway.

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.

Eileen Favorite is...not my favorite. Forgive me.

I always feel vaguely dirty when I make puns, as though I have somehow sinned against the collective intelligence of all of the people who read this blog (however many of you there are, know that I adore you for coming back!). Puns are just distasteful in some way, and a good deal of the time. Rarely do I come across a pun that makes me go "Ahhh, I see. That was clever." Puns are about as subtle as a pie in the face, and as enjoyable.

Onto the point. I just wrote my second most vitriolic review! Second only to my rage against the Twilight machine is my review of Eileen Favorite's book The Heroines. Basically, it's no good and I'm sorry I bought it. If anyone would like to purchase it from me, let me know, har har. Seriously, go read the review. I guarantee you won't want to read it after that, or I haven't done my job, or you're just being perverse.

In other news, I was mentioned by name in a question on Yahoo! Answers yesterday. I am apparently well known there for my dislike of Twilight and my irritating habit of jumping on 99% of the Twilight questions, saying "mean" things about the books and posting a link to my review. I'm not sure what's worse: that I'm known for that, or that I found out about it because it was a Twilight related question and I was answering it so I could say mean things about Twilight and post a link to my review.......... You decide.

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.

Gigi

Has anybody else seen the movie Gigi? I have -I'll be honest, it's not my favorite. Leslie Caron (who I loved in the movie Lili, which has an oddly similar title) came off as more irritating than spunky, and it bothered me. She was a great actress, but this musical just doesn't do it for me. Regardless, I have always wanted to read the book Gigi.

Sadly, but not shockingly, my library does not have a copy of it. What they did have was "Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette" -a biography of the woman who wrote Gigi. And wow. Just...wow. The woman was fascinating and bizarre and brilliant. It's a long book (500 pages) and I had it finished in about 2 days. I could not put it down from the moment I picked it up.

You know how a lot of artists are temperamental and weird and get in trouble all the time?
That's Colette. She lived in the late 19th and early 20th century, acted onstage, had lesbian and bisexual relationships, got married and divorced, wrote scandalous books -and didn't care what anyone thought of her. She knew what was up. And she just lived the way she wanted to. Fascinating, grumpy woman.

So of course I wrote a review of the book, which you should go read (the review or the book? Both).

Real vampires

I've done it again, me and my reviewing. This time, it's a (mostly) positive look at the Sookie Stackhouse Novels by Charlaine Harris. True Blood (one of my favorite shows) is based on them, and I'm only a little embarrassed to say that the show is the only reason I picked up the books. I am very pleased, however, to say that I was pleasantly surprised by them. They're not great, I'll be honest, but they don't really try to be. They try to be violent, steamy, interesting fun -and they are. That's all they are, and that's all they need to be. Hell, if that's all Twilight pretended to be, I might be able to like them.


Okay, that was an exaggeration.

Twilight can't even pretend to be as good as these books, because Twilight is too busy primping its hair and pretending to be a saga. It's a series. A series. Look up the definition of a saga before you sling the word around like so much mud.

The Sookie Stackhouse Novels aren't written for high-brow readers of literature. They're written for the everyday girl (or guy) looking for a little bit of lighthearted fun, and they deliver. There are plenty of flaws in the books (I get a pang every time I think of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" written as "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner"), but despite those flaws, at least there's a story. There's an interesting, complex story with interesting, complex characters. Sookie's shallow moments are human moments, not Mary Sue moments, and the characters continue to get more interesting as the series progresses.

So, while I would read these over Twilight in a heartbeat -less than a heartbeat -I still wouldn't call them good literature. But damned if I don't enjoy them.

Welcome to the Reading Corner

This is a place to come to read and talk about books, literature, grammar -pretty much anything involving books and language. I am a passionate reader and writer, so expect this to be updated pretty regularly. I'm also very opinionated, but I welcome discussion/argument/debate, as long as it stays within reason.

For my first topic, I'm going to just refer you to a review I wrote. I'll connect you to a lot of reviews, author websites, etc. as I write, but this particular entry is just to get you started on my writing style and a few of my opinions.

Check it out: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-13594-Cleveland-Literature-Examiner~y2009m6d10-Twilight-isnt-worth-a-second-read

Also, be sure to check out the comment section. Some of them are funny, some of them are interesting and some of them are just plain sad!