...because technically there are people here. So technically I'm supposed to be on. Technically I'm supposed to to be introducing myself and getting names and generally being that missionary chick. However, in actuality, I'm blogging and listening to the Lumineers. Funny, all the people in my life, from my family in Virginia to my friends in Texas, are falling in love with this band at the same time. Leads one to believe I'd probably love them too, if I had the time and the internet access to learn more songs than the one they play on the radio. But, for the record, I really, really, really, really like Ho Hey. Because of reasons.
Finally got to read The Fault in Our Stars, couple of friends pitched in and got it for me for my birthday. If you haven't read it yet, all I can say is that you utterly have to. It doesn't get better than John Green, and I'm of the opinion it's his best yet.
Erm, what else is there? Oh! Wreck-It Ralph. Seen it twice since it came out on dvd, and I neither am nor do I live with the one of us who actually paid money to buy it, which probably says something about how much I like this movie. Pixar's best in a while, in my opinion. But, settle an argument for me: was Hero's Duty supposed to be based on Halo? 'Cause I totally think it was supposed to be based on Halo. Definitely.
And, while I can't think of anything outside of that, I have successfully created a media post. O.o
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
My Classics Club List
Official list, subject to change/grow (hey, you never know).
Start Date: 12/21/12 (Yes, intentionally. I'm being ironic.)
End Date: 12/21/17, I guess. We'll see. May introduce some sort of positive/negative reinforcement system on myself.
Okay, so, as I worked, this list went from fifty to fifty-four, which is, I guess, okay. Gives me some wiggle room. This is going to be a useful project, let me clear away some major goals. Hit everything I managed to skip in high school (a lot of Dickens, came into my love for his work a bit late). Work through a few books I've never liked, finish some books I've started (and loved) but never managed to finish. Sample some authors I've never actually sat down and read. Some of it, old favorites and stuff I know I'll love, is on here mostly as an indulgent treat for myself. To those ends, this is a pretty varied list, I'll try to mix it up. There are some books here I'm ashamed to admit I've never read, but one might as well be honest when one can, I guess.
Books (re-reads indicated with an *, partial reads with **):
High School Clearing-up:
1. Oliver Twist**, Charles Dickens
2. Great Expectations**, Charles Dickens
3. A Christmas Carol**, Charles Dickens
6. Walden and Civil Disobedience (mostly slept through those)*, Thoreau
13. Dracula, Bram Stoker
14. Le Morte d'Arthur**, Thomas Mallory
15. The Call of the Wild**, Jack London
"Indulgent Treats"
28. The Complete Sherlock Holmes**, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
29. A Tale of Two Cities*, Charles Dickens
30. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde
34. The Silmarilion, J. R. R. Tolkein
35. Sanditon**, Jane Austen
36. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
37. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
38. The Poems of John Keats, John Keats
39. Lust for Life**, Irving Stone
40. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
41. Three Men on the Bummel, Jerome K. Jerome
Just Because/Possibly a Little Optomistic/Other
42. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
47. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
48. Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
49. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
50. Middlemarch, George Eliot
51. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
52. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
53. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
54. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
Start Date: 12/21/12 (Yes, intentionally. I'm being ironic.)
End Date: 12/21/17, I guess. We'll see. May introduce some sort of positive/negative reinforcement system on myself.
Okay, so, as I worked, this list went from fifty to fifty-four, which is, I guess, okay. Gives me some wiggle room. This is going to be a useful project, let me clear away some major goals. Hit everything I managed to skip in high school (a lot of Dickens, came into my love for his work a bit late). Work through a few books I've never liked, finish some books I've started (and loved) but never managed to finish. Sample some authors I've never actually sat down and read. Some of it, old favorites and stuff I know I'll love, is on here mostly as an indulgent treat for myself. To those ends, this is a pretty varied list, I'll try to mix it up. There are some books here I'm ashamed to admit I've never read, but one might as well be honest when one can, I guess.
Books (re-reads indicated with an *, partial reads with **):
High School Clearing-up:
1. Oliver Twist**, Charles Dickens
2. Great Expectations**, Charles Dickens
3. A Christmas Carol**, Charles Dickens
4. The Grapes of Wrath**, John Steinbeck
5. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain6. Walden and Civil Disobedience (mostly slept through those)*, Thoreau
7. Macbeth, Shakespeare
8. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Things I'd Maybe Ought to Have Read Already
9. Animal Farm, George Orwell
10. 1984, George Orwell
11. Farenheit 451**, Ray Bradbury
12The Lord of the Rings**, J. R. R. Tolkein13. Dracula, Bram Stoker
14. Le Morte d'Arthur**, Thomas Mallory
15. The Call of the Wild**, Jack London
16. Slaughterhouse 5, Kurt Vonnegut
17. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
18. Les Miserables, Victor Hugo
19. Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne
20. Little Women**, Louisa May Alcott
21. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
22. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
23. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
24. Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes
25. Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane
26: The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
27. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
"Indulgent Treats"
28. The Complete Sherlock Holmes**, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
29. A Tale of Two Cities*, Charles Dickens
30. The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde
31. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters AND Seymour: An Introduction, J. D. Salinger
32. Nine Stories, J. D. Salinger
33. Love's Labours Lost, Shakespeare34. The Silmarilion, J. R. R. Tolkein
35. Sanditon**, Jane Austen
36. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
37. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
38. The Poems of John Keats, John Keats
39. Lust for Life**, Irving Stone
40. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
41. Three Men on the Bummel, Jerome K. Jerome
Just Because/Possibly a Little Optomistic/Other
42. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
43. To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
44. A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf
45. Agnes Grey, Anne Bronte
46. Shirley, Charlotte Bronte47. A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
48. Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux
49. The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas
50. Middlemarch, George Eliot
51. The Time Machine, H. G. Wells
52. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
53. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone
54. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
The Classics Club
I've been meaning to do this for a while, never seem to have the time. But I'm leaving in three weeks, and I want to have it done by then.
For anybody who doesn't know, The Classics Club is, well, here's a handy little quote from their blog: "The Classics Club is a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books. There’s no time limit to join and you’re most welcome, as long as you’re willing to sign up to read and write on your blog about 50+ classic books in at most five years. The perk is that, not only will you have read 50+ incredible (or at the very least thought-provoking) works in five years, you’ll get to do it along with all of these people."
So, essentially, five years, fifty books, with reviews posted here, my personal blog. I think I can do that. Five years is a really freaking long time from now, and I have no idea at all where I'll be or what I'll be doing in five years, but I'm game for trying.
I'm mostly doing this to make sure I keep reading. Because the next nine months are going to be really busy for me, and it might be easy to let things like that, things that are so important to me, die away. I want to keep me, and the things I do in in my me time. I want to keep my eyes on the eventual college-bound, "High School English Teacher" goal. This'll be good for that.
Technically speaking, I should do about ten books this year. I might not have that kind of time. I'm gonna shoot for a minimum of three, and if I have to play catch-up when I finally come home (wherever home is by then), so be it. Que sera sera.
I like the idea of signing up to be a part of something bigger than just me (didn't mean for that to sound deep); it'll keep me accountable, to a degree. Make sure I ACTUALLY do this reading thing. That sounds nice. Better than just posting a reading list here all by my onesie and trying to keep up with it. My one hesitation, though, about joining the official Classics Club is that it's a community. Lots of bloggers talking to each other, sharing a love of the classics. This sounds awesome. However, I'm already not sure I'm even going to have time to keep up with my personal blogs, social networking, etc. I don't know how often I'll have access to the internet. Or a computer. It's all a little unpredictable. So, as much fun as featured posts and weekly group round-ups and read-a-thons sound, I really don't think I'll be able to be an active, participating member of this community. I feel really bad about that. But I think I'd rather go for it and try my best rather than not try at all. Hopefully my efforts will be met with understanding. Don't know how it'll go, but worth a shot, right?
Here's hoping! Official entry post/list to follow. :)
For anybody who doesn't know, The Classics Club is, well, here's a handy little quote from their blog: "The Classics Club is a club created to inspire people to read and blog about classic books. There’s no time limit to join and you’re most welcome, as long as you’re willing to sign up to read and write on your blog about 50+ classic books in at most five years. The perk is that, not only will you have read 50+ incredible (or at the very least thought-provoking) works in five years, you’ll get to do it along with all of these people."
So, essentially, five years, fifty books, with reviews posted here, my personal blog. I think I can do that. Five years is a really freaking long time from now, and I have no idea at all where I'll be or what I'll be doing in five years, but I'm game for trying.
I'm mostly doing this to make sure I keep reading. Because the next nine months are going to be really busy for me, and it might be easy to let things like that, things that are so important to me, die away. I want to keep me, and the things I do in in my me time. I want to keep my eyes on the eventual college-bound, "High School English Teacher" goal. This'll be good for that.
Technically speaking, I should do about ten books this year. I might not have that kind of time. I'm gonna shoot for a minimum of three, and if I have to play catch-up when I finally come home (wherever home is by then), so be it. Que sera sera.
I like the idea of signing up to be a part of something bigger than just me (didn't mean for that to sound deep); it'll keep me accountable, to a degree. Make sure I ACTUALLY do this reading thing. That sounds nice. Better than just posting a reading list here all by my onesie and trying to keep up with it. My one hesitation, though, about joining the official Classics Club is that it's a community. Lots of bloggers talking to each other, sharing a love of the classics. This sounds awesome. However, I'm already not sure I'm even going to have time to keep up with my personal blogs, social networking, etc. I don't know how often I'll have access to the internet. Or a computer. It's all a little unpredictable. So, as much fun as featured posts and weekly group round-ups and read-a-thons sound, I really don't think I'll be able to be an active, participating member of this community. I feel really bad about that. But I think I'd rather go for it and try my best rather than not try at all. Hopefully my efforts will be met with understanding. Don't know how it'll go, but worth a shot, right?
Here's hoping! Official entry post/list to follow. :)
Monday, October 15, 2012
Lust for Life
(Post title being a reference to the biographical novel, bearing the same title, of the life of Vincent van Gogh, written by Irving Stone)
I've been thinking about Vincent van Gogh. And about sunflowers. About how he's the reason that I love sunflowers. Because they make me think of the person I'd like to be. I'd like to be the sort of person who would've stood by him. I'd like to think I would've stood by him. Because he was spectacular, even though he was different and difficult and tragic. He deserved to have somebody stand by him, just one person to take his hand when the rest of the world turned their backs on him, to make his life better and brighter when it was dark, to give him hope and strength and quiet the demons in his head. And that's the person I'd like to be. I'd like to love the different and the difficult, and to be able to see the spectacular in the different and the difficult.
I've been thinking of Vincent van Gogh. You know he started out his life wanting to be a missionary? His whole heart wanted to serve God and help people, and he was so willing to give up what he was born for to do it. He wound up in a mining town, trying to preach hope and redemption to people who had literally no way out, and he made himself sick trying to help them, gave them everything he had, down to the shirt on his back, to try and make their lives better. And he just saw too much of pain and hurt to go on believing in a good God. And then these people, the mission board, decided that he wasn't good enough to do what he was doing, and that was enough to make him snap, to turn his back on God. I've wondered why God would let that happen to someone who loved Him and only wanted to serve Him, but then I kind of realized: it took snapping and turning away from God for him to make a selfish decision. Without that, he never would've chosen to do what made him happy for the rest of his life. Cause he didn't paint for anyone else, not a soul ever told him that was he was doing was good, was worth it. He did it because he loved it. And think of what the world gained because of it? Maybe God let him go, pushed him away, to let him do what he was born to do, and to give the world a gift. Maybe what we think of as the selfish decision, can sometimes be the most beautiful thing of all.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Stuff and Things
Hi, all. Rather than having bunches of posts about various things I've watched, seen, read, or listened to, I'm gonna try and clear it all away in one post. Will try to keep it from being too terribly long. Here goes.
~~Harry Potter. Finally watched ALL the movies. Yes, I know, I'm severely behind the times. Not sure what I have to say about them, beyond that I enjoyed every single second of it. And that Snape might be the single most heart-wrenching, provocative character ever. Period. And express my general what-the-heck-ness about that whole Ron-and-Hermione thing. I can't be the only one, can I? Maybe this just shows my ignorance, and maybe I should shut up and read the books before I make judgments (and, really, I'm meaning to. You know, whenever I have a spare MONTH just lying around); but I would've rather seen Harry and Hermione.
~~Doctor Who. As in, is back. Season seven. *explodes*
For the sake of sparing you spoilers in case you haven't seen it, I won't go into particulars (except that, when it comes to Angels Take Manhattan, have a couple hundred boxes of tissues at the ready). Actually, this might have to be a post of its own. Merp. :/
~~Sherlock. In case you didn't know, season two has been added to the Netflix streaming library (so no more waiting around at the bottom of waiting lists for the dvds to be free). Very convenient for any American fans out there who have not already used proxies or piracy to watch it online. Anybody who was patient enough to wait ten months. Person I am describing, if you actually exist, I salute you.
~~Ophelia. Young adult novel by Lisa Klein. Can be found here (Amazon). It's a retelling of the story of Hamlet, from, predictably, Ophelia's point of view. I love some of the grey areas it clears up, for all that it took quite a few drastic liberties; and Ophelia is a much more sympathetic character in this version, which is nice. Plus, it's got an utterly gorgeous ending, visually and story-wise, that was absolutely worth reading the entire novel. Again, spoilers. Read the book.
~~Hugo. As in, finally watched. Picked it up at the library (Oh my. A library system that has dvds. O brave new world!). Gorgeous plot, gorgeous casting, gorgeous score, great cinematography. I'm utterly in love. And it's steampunk! Why wasn't I told that it was steampunk?
~~Jeeves and Wooster. The Granada, Hugh-Laurie-and-Stephen-Fry version. Also a library find. You know how sometimes, you read a book and you've got these pictures of the characters in your head, and then you watch the movie and they just get it completely wrong? Well, this isn't one of those times. Hugh Laurie IS Bertie Wooster (which is kind of crazy when you think of him as House. Could you get a more polar opposite?). And Hugh Laurie, then 31, reminds me decidedly of another tall, skinny, blue-eyed British 30-something. Wildly ironic, because he played this person's dad on another tv series, Fortysomething. Funny how things work out.
~~The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman. Yes, I know, again, behind the times. But I can't not mention it, because I absolutely loved it. You know how sometimes a book becomes a part of the way you think? This one's going to stick with me for a while. Favorite quotes:
“Bod said, 'I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want,' he said, and then he paused and he thought. 'I want everything.”
And:
“He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.”
I feel like that sometimes. I don't want to deal with people, I just want to go e near people and feel like a person.
~~Once Upon a Time. The ABC series. Only mildly entertaining, yet strangely addictive. Curse you, mediocre television, for worming inside my head and not letting me go. Stuck watching season 1 on Netflix because we're not caught up enough to watch season 2 on live tv. *shakes fists*
~~Babel. As in, the new Mumford & Sons cd. I've read mixed reviews on it, seen it accused of being disingenuous, and I'll concede that they've found something that works and stuck to it with their second album, and that the album version of Below My Feet is nowhere near as good as the version that leaked a few months ago; but their music is every bit as good, and the emotions feel every bit as true, in Babel as they did in Sigh No More. The massive sales numbers alone tell you that this band's still got it. But don't let me decide for you, check out my youtube playlist of the cd. For Those Below and Reminder being my favorite songs, with Babel and I Will Wait tied for second.
And, last but not least...
~~Elementary. First off, let me just say...
~~Harry Potter. Finally watched ALL the movies. Yes, I know, I'm severely behind the times. Not sure what I have to say about them, beyond that I enjoyed every single second of it. And that Snape might be the single most heart-wrenching, provocative character ever. Period. And express my general what-the-heck-ness about that whole Ron-and-Hermione thing. I can't be the only one, can I? Maybe this just shows my ignorance, and maybe I should shut up and read the books before I make judgments (and, really, I'm meaning to. You know, whenever I have a spare MONTH just lying around); but I would've rather seen Harry and Hermione.
~~Doctor Who. As in, is back. Season seven. *explodes*
For the sake of sparing you spoilers in case you haven't seen it, I won't go into particulars (except that, when it comes to Angels Take Manhattan, have a couple hundred boxes of tissues at the ready). Actually, this might have to be a post of its own. Merp. :/
~~Sherlock. In case you didn't know, season two has been added to the Netflix streaming library (so no more waiting around at the bottom of waiting lists for the dvds to be free). Very convenient for any American fans out there who have not already used proxies or piracy to watch it online. Anybody who was patient enough to wait ten months. Person I am describing, if you actually exist, I salute you.
~~Ophelia. Young adult novel by Lisa Klein. Can be found here (Amazon). It's a retelling of the story of Hamlet, from, predictably, Ophelia's point of view. I love some of the grey areas it clears up, for all that it took quite a few drastic liberties; and Ophelia is a much more sympathetic character in this version, which is nice. Plus, it's got an utterly gorgeous ending, visually and story-wise, that was absolutely worth reading the entire novel. Again, spoilers. Read the book.
~~Hugo. As in, finally watched. Picked it up at the library (Oh my. A library system that has dvds. O brave new world!). Gorgeous plot, gorgeous casting, gorgeous score, great cinematography. I'm utterly in love. And it's steampunk! Why wasn't I told that it was steampunk?
~~Jeeves and Wooster. The Granada, Hugh-Laurie-and-Stephen-Fry version. Also a library find. You know how sometimes, you read a book and you've got these pictures of the characters in your head, and then you watch the movie and they just get it completely wrong? Well, this isn't one of those times. Hugh Laurie IS Bertie Wooster (which is kind of crazy when you think of him as House. Could you get a more polar opposite?). And Hugh Laurie, then 31, reminds me decidedly of another tall, skinny, blue-eyed British 30-something. Wildly ironic, because he played this person's dad on another tv series, Fortysomething. Funny how things work out.
~~The Graveyard Book. Neil Gaiman. Yes, I know, again, behind the times. But I can't not mention it, because I absolutely loved it. You know how sometimes a book becomes a part of the way you think? This one's going to stick with me for a while. Favorite quotes:
“Bod said, 'I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want,' he said, and then he paused and he thought. 'I want everything.”
And:
“He would go somewhere no one knew him, and he would sit in a library all day and read books and listen to people breathing.”
I feel like that sometimes. I don't want to deal with people, I just want to go e near people and feel like a person.
~~Once Upon a Time. The ABC series. Only mildly entertaining, yet strangely addictive. Curse you, mediocre television, for worming inside my head and not letting me go. Stuck watching season 1 on Netflix because we're not caught up enough to watch season 2 on live tv. *shakes fists*
~~Babel. As in, the new Mumford & Sons cd. I've read mixed reviews on it, seen it accused of being disingenuous, and I'll concede that they've found something that works and stuck to it with their second album, and that the album version of Below My Feet is nowhere near as good as the version that leaked a few months ago; but their music is every bit as good, and the emotions feel every bit as true, in Babel as they did in Sigh No More. The massive sales numbers alone tell you that this band's still got it. But don't let me decide for you, check out my youtube playlist of the cd. For Those Below and Reminder being my favorite songs, with Babel and I Will Wait tied for second.
And, last but not least...
~~Elementary. First off, let me just say...
I am ashamed.
I just knew I should've waited until I saw it to say anything about it. I should've guessed I'd wind up eating humble pie. Johnny Lee Miller brings this sort of manic, puppy-dog, I-need-you-to-like-me energy to the title character, to the point that he's almost unrecognizable (and definitely nothing at all like Cumberbatch's version). I don't love the Watson (not because of gender or race, but because of some other things they changed). But I do like the show. It will, at the very least, tide me over until Sherlock comes back. But, un-canon as it (unarguably) is, I really...rather...like it. It's...cute. Incredibly cute. Come on, that last scene? Watson's a Mets fan? And the Elvis Costello, Watching-The-Detectives outro? Utterly adorable. And funny. Sherlock (the tv show), for all that it's worlds better, is almost never funny. As much as it pains me to say it, I was wrong. And I'm quite looking forward to episode two. :)
Aaaand, I think that's it. Forgive the mile-long post!
Monday, July 30, 2012
A Tale of Two Cities ~ a project
With my newfound fixation for book-binding, I guess I've gotten a bit over-zealous. I figured out the coptic stitch, with the help of this lovely tutorial, I made myself a travel journal; I guess I figured I could do just about anything. So, I rebound my copy of A Tale of Two Cities.
It took me forever (I'd say about forty hours of work total, seriously), but I did it. I didn't want to have to take the time to copy all my notes into a new copy, see? And I've got a BUNCH of notes; from the first time I read the book, for school, throughout the whole thing; and about a third of the way through from my second, closer inspection of it. And it was my dad's before me, and it was utterly falling apart, so I decided to rebind it.
After I'd ripped out the covers completely and peeled off the canvas that was holding the glue-bound pages to the flyleaf, I started by taking a small cup of vinegar, some Q-tips, a pot of boiling water, a knife, some nail polish remover, and a very bright light to work by and dissolving the glue from the spine. Silly me, I figured the pages would've been in signatures (like a composition notebook, the paper folded over and connected in the back) to begin with. But no. As the glue dissolved, the pages fell out into single sheets. Roadblock the first.
So I found some red thread and I arranged the papers into sheets of sixteen and I hand-stitched each page to it's opposite (using a healthy dab of glue to hold the final knot down). Then I used a screw driver to bore some holes in the original covers, an ice-pick to pop the holes in the papers, used the lovely stitch from the tutorial to bind it all together, and viola! It is reborn.
Now I'm just really, really glad it's over.
It took me forever (I'd say about forty hours of work total, seriously), but I did it. I didn't want to have to take the time to copy all my notes into a new copy, see? And I've got a BUNCH of notes; from the first time I read the book, for school, throughout the whole thing; and about a third of the way through from my second, closer inspection of it. And it was my dad's before me, and it was utterly falling apart, so I decided to rebind it.
After I'd ripped out the covers completely and peeled off the canvas that was holding the glue-bound pages to the flyleaf, I started by taking a small cup of vinegar, some Q-tips, a pot of boiling water, a knife, some nail polish remover, and a very bright light to work by and dissolving the glue from the spine. Silly me, I figured the pages would've been in signatures (like a composition notebook, the paper folded over and connected in the back) to begin with. But no. As the glue dissolved, the pages fell out into single sheets. Roadblock the first.
So I found some red thread and I arranged the papers into sheets of sixteen and I hand-stitched each page to it's opposite (using a healthy dab of glue to hold the final knot down). Then I used a screw driver to bore some holes in the original covers, an ice-pick to pop the holes in the papers, used the lovely stitch from the tutorial to bind it all together, and viola! It is reborn.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Feeling Successful
Partly because I managed to finish The Importance of Being Earnest. And once I turned it on, the entire family that had been refusing to let me watch it slowly trickled in and sat, spellbound, staring at the television and trembling before the might of Oscar Wilde's wit. But anyway.
Mostly I'm feeling successful, and a bit accomplished, because my sister just came to me to ask for something to read. And after starting for my room to tear through my shelves in search of something ("Something modern!" she says) that the picky miss would take, I remembered: Oh yeah! I finally did it! Broke down and cataloged my library! So I went to my laptop instead, read off titles until I found one that was satisfactory, noted the makeshift call-number, proudly lead her to my bookcase, and made her watch while I put my hand directly to the book she wanted.
Epic win.
Mostly I'm feeling successful, and a bit accomplished, because my sister just came to me to ask for something to read. And after starting for my room to tear through my shelves in search of something ("Something modern!" she says) that the picky miss would take, I remembered: Oh yeah! I finally did it! Broke down and cataloged my library! So I went to my laptop instead, read off titles until I found one that was satisfactory, noted the makeshift call-number, proudly lead her to my bookcase, and made her watch while I put my hand directly to the book she wanted.
Epic win.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
~Collected Thoughts~
~The Adventures of Tintin. Which we watched as a family Friday evening. And which was fantastic. I mean, really? You put Steven Moffat, Stephen Spielberg, and Peter Jackson working on the same movie, how in the world is the end result going to be anything but fantastic? And the voice cast, too: there are an incredible number of familiar names on that list. And it was hilarious and very well written, with some very Indiana-Jones-style action and really really great characters. And....well, I won't dwell on it in great detail, but it was definitely worth watching and I highly recommend it.
~Through the Looking Glass. As in, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I read it for the first time earlier this week, and enjoyed it even more than the first one. It makes a bit more sense (if sense is ever a word that can apply to Lewis Carroll) and has a character I adore that I didn't even realize existed. The White Knight=<3
~The Importance of Being Earnest. The 1952 movie version. I've got it on my Netflix queue, and I want very much to finish it, but nobody ever lets me. I'm convinced I'll only get to watch it in five-minute increments when nobody else is in charge of the remote.
~I have a new lovely little friend. For extremely cheap at the Dollar Deals (Like Dollar Tree, only cooler) in town, I got a little pink box I can stick my iPod in and plug it into that lets me turn my iPod into an alarm clock, which is extremely convenient.
~I love liking the same kinds of music as my brother. Because whenever he gets up the gumption (or happens to have pocket money to spare), if I pitch in a bit, he buys music I like but don't feel like buying. Like a thirty-two track cd of Athlete singles. I liiiike Athlete singles. :)
~I really. Really. Really. Really wanna see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's meant to be coming within the next couple of weeks, but I'm getting incredibly impatient.
~And. Erm. I think that's it. Ttfn!
~Through the Looking Glass. As in, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I read it for the first time earlier this week, and enjoyed it even more than the first one. It makes a bit more sense (if sense is ever a word that can apply to Lewis Carroll) and has a character I adore that I didn't even realize existed. The White Knight=<3
~The Importance of Being Earnest. The 1952 movie version. I've got it on my Netflix queue, and I want very much to finish it, but nobody ever lets me. I'm convinced I'll only get to watch it in five-minute increments when nobody else is in charge of the remote.
~I have a new lovely little friend. For extremely cheap at the Dollar Deals (Like Dollar Tree, only cooler) in town, I got a little pink box I can stick my iPod in and plug it into that lets me turn my iPod into an alarm clock, which is extremely convenient.
~I love liking the same kinds of music as my brother. Because whenever he gets up the gumption (or happens to have pocket money to spare), if I pitch in a bit, he buys music I like but don't feel like buying. Like a thirty-two track cd of Athlete singles. I liiiike Athlete singles. :)
~I really. Really. Really. Really wanna see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It's meant to be coming within the next couple of weeks, but I'm getting incredibly impatient.
~And. Erm. I think that's it. Ttfn!
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
The Finishing of Unfinished Things
I hate having more than one book going at a time. It feels suspiciously like unfinished business, things hanging over me. Unfortunately, it seems to always happen to me. Especially here lately, when I have far more good intentions than I have time. So very recently, I was reading, if you count schoolwork, four separate books at the same time. Last night, however, I finished the last one of four. In that they were finished, they are:
~Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John LeCarre. You may remember, from this post dated January 2. Well, anyway, I finally got it back, and managed to finish it.
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm either not old enough or just plain not smart enough for John LeCarre. Tinker Tailor was published in '74, so I'm hoping it's the latter. Either way, I had a hard time keeping up, and a number of pop culture references and what I'm sure must've been jokes sailed over my head. That aside, it was a fantastic book. It's a different kind of spy novel, no car chases or explosions here. Most of the "spying" happens in back rooms and nondescript hotels, and consists of poring over files and papers years old, instead of back-handsprings through laser grids and using laughable gadgets. The plot is slow to get going, but once it finally comes to a point, it's impossible to put down. What kept me reading through the dry spells, though, was the characters. It takes an outrageous amount of focus to keep all the names straight (Wait a minute, which one's Percy again?), but those characters that do actually get developed are great. George Smiley is a hugely endearing little man, and Peter Guillam is impossible to not sympathize with, and so on and so forth down the line. My favorite thing is that each of the characters exists on more than one level. On the surface is the level that's dealing with the plot, rooting out the mole in the midst of their ranks; that's where the excitement and the conflict and the action happens. But running beneath that, for each of them, like a completely separate train of thought in the background, they have their personal struggles. They've each built this wall between their professional and their private lives, but they each struggle to fulfill their tasks with their personal lives screaming for their attention. Smiley, whose wife, everyone knows, is cheating on him; Guillam, for whom middle age is sneaking up fast, and who finds himself far more attached to his much-younger-than-himself girlfriend than he's used to; even little Bill Roach, dealing with the guilt of his parent's divorce. So we get this sense of their all being real people; and of the real story happening beneath the surface.
On a side note, I'm hugely looking forward to getting to see the movie. It's well (very well) cast, all around; and I've heard good things about it. Except for the fact that I'm furious that they took my favorite character, Peter Guillam, took away the thing that he's actually struggling with (his dear, enigmatic Camilla) and turned her into a . . . boyfriend. Not only am I mad about what that will do to the story, I Do Not want to see my favorite actor in that sort of roll.
~A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Yes, like, "It was the best of times..." School assignment, or I never would've read it, believe me. Bit of a confession, I've always hated Charles Dickens. I've never managed to actually finish one of his novels. Seriously, I got halfway through Oliver Twist, halfway through The Pickwick Papers, halfway through A Christmas Carol. So I was sort of behind the eight ball starting A Tale of Two Cities. However, I figured out what I've been doing wrong. I've been trying to read them to myself. Staring at a page, his style felt dry and dull and weighty to me. Then I met the love of my life, Librivox.org. Tagling: "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain." A gentleman, name of Paul Adams, I believe, recorded A Tale of Two Cities. Lifting the words off the page that way, bringing them to life (with a lovely accent and excellent expression, besides) let me experience it in a different way, and helped me appreciate the beauty of Dickens' language and word choice. And it let me keep my sanity by having something to do with my hands while I read, erm, listened. In this case, knitting (which you can appreciate the irony of if you've read the book). And, completely to my surprise, I loved it. I had the house to myself one night, and got through the majority of the book, and found myself cheering and crying and laughing and, well, I loved it. (and really need to go write the character analysis and five-page essay that are both due Friday).
~Where She Went, by Gayle Forman. Sequel to If I Stay, which I read several months ago. I loved the first book, I don't hesitate to say that Gayle Forman is the most talented author out there right now. In a world slowly being eaten up by a score of Stephanie Meyers and Lauren Conrads, Gayle Forman's writing, her actual prose, might as well be Shakespeare. However, I wasn't looking forward to Where She Went. It was a sequel, and rather a needless one, or so I thought. If I Stay was heartbreaking, and to tell the next leg of the story, I felt, absolutely ruined the self-sufficient beauty that was If I Stay. I actually wrote, on my to-do list, the day I picked up Where She Went from the library, "Pick up useless sequel. Ugh."
I was proved wrong, though. Where She Went is beautiful by its own right, and the direction it takes the story that If I Stay started really was worth the telling. It's sad and sweet and not easy to read at all, but has a fantastic ending. There's a vast amount of foul language, though, so I don't recommend it to anyone under fifteen or sixteen, frankly.
~And last, but Certainly Not Least, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Whenever I hear that a book is somebody's favorite, I want to read it. And someone whose tastes I, usually, respect, lists Catcher in the Rye as the one book, above all others, that changed their life. So I got pretty excited about this one. I finally managed to pick up an old, beat-up copy at the second-hand bookstore I frequent. I don't entirely know what I was expecting. I hoped to enjoy it, I guess; reading the Wikipedia article about the book seemed to think that it was all about teenage rebellion, which is, kind of whatever; I don't even know. What I wasn't expecting was for the book to have an effect on my life.
It was slow-going. It's from the point of view of a teenage boy, and written as you would imagine a teenage boy would write his memoirs. The swearing alone made it hard for me to keep on, and there's some pretty shocking content. I got through it, though, although it took me almost two months to do it. It's downright depressing, at points, but I found myself identifying with the main character, Holden Caulfield, a lot more than I'd like to admit. Equal parts lost and stuck, frustrated with the present and no ideas for the future, disgusted with most of the humanity, with the way humanity works, and unable to picture a future that doesn't involve a solitary cabin in the woods (or a cottage by the sea, in my case). And the desperation Holden felt was starting to get me down. Then day before yesterday, I came to the two portions that are, I think the whole point of the book.
The first one comes when Holden is sneaking a midnight visit with his little sister Phoebe, one of few human beings he isn't disgusted with. She's confronting him with the fact that he doesn't like anything, doesn't want to be anything, demanding that he tell her one thing that he thinks is worth living for. Trying to make him find a point to existence. Pretty smart for a little kid. And after thinking for a good long while, he replies,
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? ...I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over a cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
Weeding through what's figurative, and what's nonsense, there, I think what he's saying is that he wants to do something that really matters. He wants to help people who there's nobody else around to help.
The second part that I felt was speaking directly to me, I realized when I went searching in the book for the quote, is about four pages long and doesn't lend itself to being abridged, so I won't try to quote it here. Basically, Holden receives some very wise advice from a very wise person. Advice about finding his place in the world, and what to do when he found it. Advice I can, I think, apply to my own life in some way. So, I wound up enjoying (and getting more out of) Catcher in the Rye than I'd hoped.
So I'm feeling pretty accomplished. You know, like, maybe trying to finish all the other half-finished projects in my life. Ehh, maybe tomorrow.
~Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, by John LeCarre. You may remember, from this post dated January 2. Well, anyway, I finally got it back, and managed to finish it.
As much as I hate to admit it, I'm either not old enough or just plain not smart enough for John LeCarre. Tinker Tailor was published in '74, so I'm hoping it's the latter. Either way, I had a hard time keeping up, and a number of pop culture references and what I'm sure must've been jokes sailed over my head. That aside, it was a fantastic book. It's a different kind of spy novel, no car chases or explosions here. Most of the "spying" happens in back rooms and nondescript hotels, and consists of poring over files and papers years old, instead of back-handsprings through laser grids and using laughable gadgets. The plot is slow to get going, but once it finally comes to a point, it's impossible to put down. What kept me reading through the dry spells, though, was the characters. It takes an outrageous amount of focus to keep all the names straight (Wait a minute, which one's Percy again?), but those characters that do actually get developed are great. George Smiley is a hugely endearing little man, and Peter Guillam is impossible to not sympathize with, and so on and so forth down the line. My favorite thing is that each of the characters exists on more than one level. On the surface is the level that's dealing with the plot, rooting out the mole in the midst of their ranks; that's where the excitement and the conflict and the action happens. But running beneath that, for each of them, like a completely separate train of thought in the background, they have their personal struggles. They've each built this wall between their professional and their private lives, but they each struggle to fulfill their tasks with their personal lives screaming for their attention. Smiley, whose wife, everyone knows, is cheating on him; Guillam, for whom middle age is sneaking up fast, and who finds himself far more attached to his much-younger-than-himself girlfriend than he's used to; even little Bill Roach, dealing with the guilt of his parent's divorce. So we get this sense of their all being real people; and of the real story happening beneath the surface.
On a side note, I'm hugely looking forward to getting to see the movie. It's well (very well) cast, all around; and I've heard good things about it. Except for the fact that I'm furious that they took my favorite character, Peter Guillam, took away the thing that he's actually struggling with (his dear, enigmatic Camilla) and turned her into a . . . boyfriend. Not only am I mad about what that will do to the story, I Do Not want to see my favorite actor in that sort of roll.
~A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. Yes, like, "It was the best of times..." School assignment, or I never would've read it, believe me. Bit of a confession, I've always hated Charles Dickens. I've never managed to actually finish one of his novels. Seriously, I got halfway through Oliver Twist, halfway through The Pickwick Papers, halfway through A Christmas Carol. So I was sort of behind the eight ball starting A Tale of Two Cities. However, I figured out what I've been doing wrong. I've been trying to read them to myself. Staring at a page, his style felt dry and dull and weighty to me. Then I met the love of my life, Librivox.org. Tagling: "acoustical liberation of books in the public domain." A gentleman, name of Paul Adams, I believe, recorded A Tale of Two Cities. Lifting the words off the page that way, bringing them to life (with a lovely accent and excellent expression, besides) let me experience it in a different way, and helped me appreciate the beauty of Dickens' language and word choice. And it let me keep my sanity by having something to do with my hands while I read, erm, listened. In this case, knitting (which you can appreciate the irony of if you've read the book). And, completely to my surprise, I loved it. I had the house to myself one night, and got through the majority of the book, and found myself cheering and crying and laughing and, well, I loved it. (and really need to go write the character analysis and five-page essay that are both due Friday).
~Where She Went, by Gayle Forman. Sequel to If I Stay, which I read several months ago. I loved the first book, I don't hesitate to say that Gayle Forman is the most talented author out there right now. In a world slowly being eaten up by a score of Stephanie Meyers and Lauren Conrads, Gayle Forman's writing, her actual prose, might as well be Shakespeare. However, I wasn't looking forward to Where She Went. It was a sequel, and rather a needless one, or so I thought. If I Stay was heartbreaking, and to tell the next leg of the story, I felt, absolutely ruined the self-sufficient beauty that was If I Stay. I actually wrote, on my to-do list, the day I picked up Where She Went from the library, "Pick up useless sequel. Ugh."
I was proved wrong, though. Where She Went is beautiful by its own right, and the direction it takes the story that If I Stay started really was worth the telling. It's sad and sweet and not easy to read at all, but has a fantastic ending. There's a vast amount of foul language, though, so I don't recommend it to anyone under fifteen or sixteen, frankly.
~And last, but Certainly Not Least, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Whenever I hear that a book is somebody's favorite, I want to read it. And someone whose tastes I, usually, respect, lists Catcher in the Rye as the one book, above all others, that changed their life. So I got pretty excited about this one. I finally managed to pick up an old, beat-up copy at the second-hand bookstore I frequent. I don't entirely know what I was expecting. I hoped to enjoy it, I guess; reading the Wikipedia article about the book seemed to think that it was all about teenage rebellion, which is, kind of whatever; I don't even know. What I wasn't expecting was for the book to have an effect on my life.
It was slow-going. It's from the point of view of a teenage boy, and written as you would imagine a teenage boy would write his memoirs. The swearing alone made it hard for me to keep on, and there's some pretty shocking content. I got through it, though, although it took me almost two months to do it. It's downright depressing, at points, but I found myself identifying with the main character, Holden Caulfield, a lot more than I'd like to admit. Equal parts lost and stuck, frustrated with the present and no ideas for the future, disgusted with most of the humanity, with the way humanity works, and unable to picture a future that doesn't involve a solitary cabin in the woods (or a cottage by the sea, in my case). And the desperation Holden felt was starting to get me down. Then day before yesterday, I came to the two portions that are, I think the whole point of the book.
The first one comes when Holden is sneaking a midnight visit with his little sister Phoebe, one of few human beings he isn't disgusted with. She's confronting him with the fact that he doesn't like anything, doesn't want to be anything, demanding that he tell her one thing that he thinks is worth living for. Trying to make him find a point to existence. Pretty smart for a little kid. And after thinking for a good long while, he replies,
"You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye'? ...I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in a big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over a cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."
Weeding through what's figurative, and what's nonsense, there, I think what he's saying is that he wants to do something that really matters. He wants to help people who there's nobody else around to help.
The second part that I felt was speaking directly to me, I realized when I went searching in the book for the quote, is about four pages long and doesn't lend itself to being abridged, so I won't try to quote it here. Basically, Holden receives some very wise advice from a very wise person. Advice about finding his place in the world, and what to do when he found it. Advice I can, I think, apply to my own life in some way. So, I wound up enjoying (and getting more out of) Catcher in the Rye than I'd hoped.
So I'm feeling pretty accomplished. You know, like, maybe trying to finish all the other half-finished projects in my life. Ehh, maybe tomorrow.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Hm. Seems like forever since I've gotten to my blog. I always manage to talk myself out of it. I've done it about thirty times, always the same thing. I'll be attempting to do school, my mind will wander from my pointless Spanish exercises, I find myself bored half-to tears. In search of something to temporarily alleviate the boredom, I will make up my mind to blog. I will then realize that I am currently logged in to my Other Google Account, the one hooked up to my youtube account; and that I am currently using my youtube account to play my fantastically long Athlete playlist on loop; and that I might, actually, die if I turn off the music. I consider trying to find the email address that allows me to post to my blog remotely, realize I can't find it without logging into the account or getting up and finding the notebook I wrote it down in, so Igive up on that idea. I then decide that I do not want to blog after all.
You guys? School really is awful right now. Spanish has been boring since square one, Physics is failing to hold my attention like chemistry did (and the experiments are 78% more pointless), and Geometry is, well, geometry. Points and arcs and angles and line segments and calculating things. Even English has failed me. It's been fantastic this far, but I'm . . . just . . . bored! I'm mired halfway through Wuthering Heights (which under normal circumstances I probably would've enjoyed immensely), I'm supposed to be starting A Severe Mercy tomorrow, and I still have a five-page essay due on If Emma Was So Clever, Why Didn't She Realize That She Was A Dim-Witted Moron; or something like that (My English teacher/curriculum's idea, not mine).
I think I'm discovering what senioritis feels like. I can't focus worth anything. I don't WANT to be doing this anymore. I'm sick of it, and I wish I was anywhere else. I feel lazy and slow and my head feels thick and I can't stay on topic. I have an astronomical deficit of care, and it's really interfering with my whole "finish well" outlook on life.
But Anyway.
In other news, well, what other news is there? Oh! I got my desk. It's lovely and off-white and antique-ey and has lovely brass handles and scrolled legs and lots of drawer space and I love it.
I got my trip to the Friends-of-the-Local-Library book sale this month, which is always a delight and a pleasure. Paper-back classics at twenty-five cents a pop, can't argue with that. To my even greater delight, I managed to fit The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World (plus two other Aldous Huxley novels I'd never heard of), Teh Silmarillion, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Paradise Lost, Emma, Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Eyre, The Canterbury Tales, Peter Pan, The Merchent of Venice, and more on my little, already-overflowing bookshelf. A successful trip, I'd say, for all the shocking lack of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
My little brother turned thirteen, and consequently got a facebook account. I'm feeling positively ancient.
Reese got on an airplane and left the country to study at a Bible college in South America. I miss her terribly already, but she's right where God wants her and I know she's going to have lots of fantastic adventures.
Mr. John's crazy-person scheme of making the youth group read through the Bible in ninety days. Which works out to about eighteen chapters a day. Which has been utterly miserable. Reading the Bible shouldn't feel this much like a chore, and I'm getting next to nothing out of it (though reading half of Proverbs, all of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, and part of Isaiah in one day was, shall I say, interesting).
Athlete. As in, British pop/alternative (or something like that) band, which is delightful and wonderful and addictive. Quite the drug. It gets me through my school work. And pretty much anything else unpleasant I find myself having to do. Their lyrics are clever and their music is enthralling, if you like good music, if you have a brain, if you are currently breathing/have a pulse, go to youtube and look these guys up. They're fantastic. :)
John Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. In love with it, accidentally memorizing it, doodling it everywhere. Yeah.
We finished Star Trek: Deep Space Nine tonight. Which is rather more epic than it sounds. But it is rather epic enough that to deal with it fully, I would need to go on for some time, and this post is already alarmingly long. So I'll cover that in another post. So, yeah. Great to be blogging again. Thanks for reading, have a great day, etc, etc.
~Ella
You guys? School really is awful right now. Spanish has been boring since square one, Physics is failing to hold my attention like chemistry did (and the experiments are 78% more pointless), and Geometry is, well, geometry. Points and arcs and angles and line segments and calculating things. Even English has failed me. It's been fantastic this far, but I'm . . . just . . . bored! I'm mired halfway through Wuthering Heights (which under normal circumstances I probably would've enjoyed immensely), I'm supposed to be starting A Severe Mercy tomorrow, and I still have a five-page essay due on If Emma Was So Clever, Why Didn't She Realize That She Was A Dim-Witted Moron; or something like that (My English teacher/curriculum's idea, not mine).
I think I'm discovering what senioritis feels like. I can't focus worth anything. I don't WANT to be doing this anymore. I'm sick of it, and I wish I was anywhere else. I feel lazy and slow and my head feels thick and I can't stay on topic. I have an astronomical deficit of care, and it's really interfering with my whole "finish well" outlook on life.
But Anyway.
In other news, well, what other news is there? Oh! I got my desk. It's lovely and off-white and antique-ey and has lovely brass handles and scrolled legs and lots of drawer space and I love it.
I got my trip to the Friends-of-the-Local-Library book sale this month, which is always a delight and a pleasure. Paper-back classics at twenty-five cents a pop, can't argue with that. To my even greater delight, I managed to fit The Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World (plus two other Aldous Huxley novels I'd never heard of), Teh Silmarillion, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, Paradise Lost, Emma, Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Eyre, The Canterbury Tales, Peter Pan, The Merchent of Venice, and more on my little, already-overflowing bookshelf. A successful trip, I'd say, for all the shocking lack of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
My little brother turned thirteen, and consequently got a facebook account. I'm feeling positively ancient.
Reese got on an airplane and left the country to study at a Bible college in South America. I miss her terribly already, but she's right where God wants her and I know she's going to have lots of fantastic adventures.
Mr. John's crazy-person scheme of making the youth group read through the Bible in ninety days. Which works out to about eighteen chapters a day. Which has been utterly miserable. Reading the Bible shouldn't feel this much like a chore, and I'm getting next to nothing out of it (though reading half of Proverbs, all of Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon, and part of Isaiah in one day was, shall I say, interesting).
Athlete. As in, British pop/alternative (or something like that) band, which is delightful and wonderful and addictive. Quite the drug. It gets me through my school work. And pretty much anything else unpleasant I find myself having to do. Their lyrics are clever and their music is enthralling, if you like good music, if you have a brain, if you are currently breathing/have a pulse, go to youtube and look these guys up. They're fantastic. :)
John Keats's Ode to a Nightingale. In love with it, accidentally memorizing it, doodling it everywhere. Yeah.
We finished Star Trek: Deep Space Nine tonight. Which is rather more epic than it sounds. But it is rather epic enough that to deal with it fully, I would need to go on for some time, and this post is already alarmingly long. So I'll cover that in another post. So, yeah. Great to be blogging again. Thanks for reading, have a great day, etc, etc.
~Ella
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Mmoooooviiiiing Daaayyyy
I'm pretty sure the last of the not-so-small army of moving-help just left (except for the pastor's wife and boys, who are helping with laying tile in the mudroom). All of the rest of our furniture is here, the couch is waiting to be put together, my trunk came, and everything is starting to look more, well, lived-in.
We were hugely blessed by the help we received from our church family throughout this whole ordeal, and it's so good to know how much people really care about my family, how much they were willing to help with anything we need. I, we, are really, truly grateful.
What I'm having a harder time being grateful for is this cold. I'm dizzy and sleepy and my throat is killing me and my nose is driving me nutty and I kind of want to curl up and die. I'm relatively certain the bug is courtesy of Corinne, someone remind me to thank her for it later. Woohoo.
Tomorrow should be quite a party. I'm not being sarcastic, actually. It'll be a party. After church we're headed to town to sort of, well, celebrate. Our Didn't-Break-the-Stupid-Vase party. See, the whole time we lived at Grandmas, there was this stupid glass vase full of strawberry candies sitting in this little corner. A very poorly-chosen corner. It's an absolute miracle we lasted more than a day without kicking it over, but we lasted two entire years. And Mom and Dad promised, at the start, to take us out for dinner if we managed to make it until moving day without shattering the blessed thing. And we didn't shatter it. So lunch in town, picking up a proper coffee pot (No more grainy, too-strong stuff from Dad's French press coffee pot!!), looking for rugs for the kids bedrooms and fabric to make chair-covers.
And because I'm still not good at the whole avoid-fangirl-stuff thin:I had a miniature spazz attack yesterday going through my boxes upon boxes of books. While I was fully expecting the paperback copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was not anticipating the tiny-print, Bible-style double column printed little paperback of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, and His Last Bow. Yeah, mini-spazz-attack, complete with shrieking and happy-dancing. Okay, maybe not so mini. But anyway. The joys of moving, you find stuff you didn't even know you had. I guess I didn't care about Mr. Holmes when I packed my books up. Actually, I think I actively disliked him. Not so now, so it was quite a treasure.
And does anybody else have a bad habit of buying the same books over and over? As we've been weeding through box after box of books, I've noticed that I have duplicates of rather a lot of books. Apparently, I am incapable of walking by a copy of Julie of the Wolves or The Trumpet of the Swan or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland without buying it. Note to self: learn to break this habit. There is no point in owning more than one copy of Julie of the Wolves. I don't even really like that book!! *Sigh* I just might have a problem.
We were hugely blessed by the help we received from our church family throughout this whole ordeal, and it's so good to know how much people really care about my family, how much they were willing to help with anything we need. I, we, are really, truly grateful.
What I'm having a harder time being grateful for is this cold. I'm dizzy and sleepy and my throat is killing me and my nose is driving me nutty and I kind of want to curl up and die. I'm relatively certain the bug is courtesy of Corinne, someone remind me to thank her for it later. Woohoo.
Tomorrow should be quite a party. I'm not being sarcastic, actually. It'll be a party. After church we're headed to town to sort of, well, celebrate. Our Didn't-Break-the-Stupid-Vase party. See, the whole time we lived at Grandmas, there was this stupid glass vase full of strawberry candies sitting in this little corner. A very poorly-chosen corner. It's an absolute miracle we lasted more than a day without kicking it over, but we lasted two entire years. And Mom and Dad promised, at the start, to take us out for dinner if we managed to make it until moving day without shattering the blessed thing. And we didn't shatter it. So lunch in town, picking up a proper coffee pot (No more grainy, too-strong stuff from Dad's French press coffee pot!!), looking for rugs for the kids bedrooms and fabric to make chair-covers.
And because I'm still not good at the whole avoid-fangirl-stuff thin:I had a miniature spazz attack yesterday going through my boxes upon boxes of books. While I was fully expecting the paperback copy of The Hound of the Baskervilles, I was not anticipating the tiny-print, Bible-style double column printed little paperback of The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, The Valley of Fear, and His Last Bow. Yeah, mini-spazz-attack, complete with shrieking and happy-dancing. Okay, maybe not so mini. But anyway. The joys of moving, you find stuff you didn't even know you had. I guess I didn't care about Mr. Holmes when I packed my books up. Actually, I think I actively disliked him. Not so now, so it was quite a treasure.
And does anybody else have a bad habit of buying the same books over and over? As we've been weeding through box after box of books, I've noticed that I have duplicates of rather a lot of books. Apparently, I am incapable of walking by a copy of Julie of the Wolves or The Trumpet of the Swan or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland without buying it. Note to self: learn to break this habit. There is no point in owning more than one copy of Julie of the Wolves. I don't even really like that book!! *Sigh* I just might have a problem.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Frustrations of living in a world of seven billion people --- the friends of my little siblings. This one in particular. And if the boy child makes it out of here alive, it just might be a miracle.
Very few of my little brother's friends make me feel homicidal, but this one comes close. He's arrogant and loud and obnoxious and he's got a bad attitude and a cruel laugh. And whenever I tell him to do something, he laughs at me.
It's possible that he only bugs me so bad because he reminds me of somebody from a past life. Somebody who, if someone had decided to give him a nice hard smack upside the head when he was the age my brother's friend is now, he might've turned out a better human being.
And now they're watching Mars Needs Moms. Sounds like my idea of a party. Please note my entirely deadpan face. Bah Humbug.
But Anyway.
In other news, The Move is going well. Cleaning at the house is moving along nicely. Actually, it's quite finished. Mom and Dad got the kitchen clean, I scrubbed the (absolutely nasty) window sills and such and cleaned every square inch of my bedroom, the kids cleaned the baseboards and mopped the floor and mom cleaned the miniblinds.
Today we stayed at out current place of residence for the packing and the organizing and the weeding-out. Finally went through all my rubbish college mail, I may or may not be doing a somewhat amusing post about how many pieces of mail I got from each school. Got my bedroom totally ready to go, down to the bare minimums. Tomorrow, after various doctor's appointments and trying to get Anne and Andrew's orthodontist to believe that I'm their nanny (no particular reason, just trying to sell the cover story, for the fun of it), we'll go up to the house for . . . more doing stuff.
All that's left is painting in various places, shampooing the carpets, and a few minor repairs. *cue happy-dancing*
And, umm, let's see. What else is going on? Well, there's attempting to read two-hundred pages of John LeCarre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by tomorrow afternoon. It's due back to the library. I don't usually freak out over due-dates (our library doesn't do the whole fine-thing), but last week when I went to renew it, I couldn't. Somebody else had reserved it. Which means somebody else wants to read this delightful book. Which means I want to get it to them as soon as possible. If they're like me, they want to read the book in time to see the movie. Or possibly, they saw the movie and now want to read the book. Either way, I can definitely identify. So I'd like to get them their book as soon as possible. Actually, I'd like to talk to them about the book, that would be nice. But let's settle for the one that's actually possible.
And, then there was last night's new episode of Sherlock. The one whined about in the post preceding this one. Well, I wasn't whining about the episode, I was whining about the forces of the internet combining to keep me from watching it.
So yeah, finally got it to load when the traffic on the website went down a bit, and it was, well, amazing. More than awesome, but I don't want to go into too much detail (spoilers!!). Let's just say... that only Steven Moffat could take the thing I had been dreading most about the episode, my absolute biggest fear, take ninety minutes, and turn it into the one thing I wanted most in the world by the end of the episode. It was emotionally trying in the utmost. I started the episode sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap...and ended it on my side, curled up in a ball, with the laptop in front of me.
Of course, it wasn't perfect. I have my quibbles with the way they handled it. It wasn't quite canon, and there was a sizable bit of . . . yuck added in. Unnecessary yuck, but isn't that standard with everything these days? The ending was emotionally satisfying, but (can I say it?) a bit rubbish. Too easy. That's a pretty popular opinion, from what I can gather, and yet, I have to say, that I loved it completely even though I knew even as I watched it that it wasn't exactly a genius bit of writing.
All-in-all, it was so absolutely worth the ages-long wait, probably thirty or forty times over. Irene Adler was, for the first time in my experience, thoroughly likable, Ben Cumberbatch's Sherlock is as spectacular as ever, and the way they played Watson's reaction to the whole Sherlock/Adler thing was brilliant. And, wonder of wonders, Molly Hooper even redeemed herself. Really, bit of a confession here, I adore her to pieces. I have to admit I can identify more with her than any of the other characters.
...........And now that I'm done completely geeking out, I think that's about it for the moment. G'night, everybody. :)
Very few of my little brother's friends make me feel homicidal, but this one comes close. He's arrogant and loud and obnoxious and he's got a bad attitude and a cruel laugh. And whenever I tell him to do something, he laughs at me.
It's possible that he only bugs me so bad because he reminds me of somebody from a past life. Somebody who, if someone had decided to give him a nice hard smack upside the head when he was the age my brother's friend is now, he might've turned out a better human being.
And now they're watching Mars Needs Moms. Sounds like my idea of a party. Please note my entirely deadpan face. Bah Humbug.
But Anyway.
In other news, The Move is going well. Cleaning at the house is moving along nicely. Actually, it's quite finished. Mom and Dad got the kitchen clean, I scrubbed the (absolutely nasty) window sills and such and cleaned every square inch of my bedroom, the kids cleaned the baseboards and mopped the floor and mom cleaned the miniblinds.
Today we stayed at out current place of residence for the packing and the organizing and the weeding-out. Finally went through all my rubbish college mail, I may or may not be doing a somewhat amusing post about how many pieces of mail I got from each school. Got my bedroom totally ready to go, down to the bare minimums. Tomorrow, after various doctor's appointments and trying to get Anne and Andrew's orthodontist to believe that I'm their nanny (no particular reason, just trying to sell the cover story, for the fun of it), we'll go up to the house for . . . more doing stuff.
All that's left is painting in various places, shampooing the carpets, and a few minor repairs. *cue happy-dancing*
And, umm, let's see. What else is going on? Well, there's attempting to read two-hundred pages of John LeCarre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by tomorrow afternoon. It's due back to the library. I don't usually freak out over due-dates (our library doesn't do the whole fine-thing), but last week when I went to renew it, I couldn't. Somebody else had reserved it. Which means somebody else wants to read this delightful book. Which means I want to get it to them as soon as possible. If they're like me, they want to read the book in time to see the movie. Or possibly, they saw the movie and now want to read the book. Either way, I can definitely identify. So I'd like to get them their book as soon as possible. Actually, I'd like to talk to them about the book, that would be nice. But let's settle for the one that's actually possible.
And, then there was last night's new episode of Sherlock. The one whined about in the post preceding this one. Well, I wasn't whining about the episode, I was whining about the forces of the internet combining to keep me from watching it.
So yeah, finally got it to load when the traffic on the website went down a bit, and it was, well, amazing. More than awesome, but I don't want to go into too much detail (spoilers!!). Let's just say... that only Steven Moffat could take the thing I had been dreading most about the episode, my absolute biggest fear, take ninety minutes, and turn it into the one thing I wanted most in the world by the end of the episode. It was emotionally trying in the utmost. I started the episode sitting on my bed with my laptop on my lap...and ended it on my side, curled up in a ball, with the laptop in front of me.
Of course, it wasn't perfect. I have my quibbles with the way they handled it. It wasn't quite canon, and there was a sizable bit of . . . yuck added in. Unnecessary yuck, but isn't that standard with everything these days? The ending was emotionally satisfying, but (can I say it?) a bit rubbish. Too easy. That's a pretty popular opinion, from what I can gather, and yet, I have to say, that I loved it completely even though I knew even as I watched it that it wasn't exactly a genius bit of writing.
All-in-all, it was so absolutely worth the ages-long wait, probably thirty or forty times over. Irene Adler was, for the first time in my experience, thoroughly likable, Ben Cumberbatch's Sherlock is as spectacular as ever, and the way they played Watson's reaction to the whole Sherlock/Adler thing was brilliant. And, wonder of wonders, Molly Hooper even redeemed herself. Really, bit of a confession here, I adore her to pieces. I have to admit I can identify more with her than any of the other characters.
...........And now that I'm done completely geeking out, I think that's about it for the moment. G'night, everybody. :)
Friday, November 25, 2011
I have been one busy girl these days, so it's been hard to get to my blog, like, at all. This might've been obvious due to the length of time that my most recent blog post has been on Steven Moffat's birthday. So . . . yeah.
Happy day-after-Thanksgiving. Leftover sweet potato casserole and college football . . . my idea of a party. I'm not being sarcastic. For as much as I don't really care about sports, watching my family watch football is entertaining to say the least.
We're all feeling a little throwback this week, me, Mom and Dad, and the siblings are "out of town" staying with my grandparents. Out of town being, half an hour from home, so maybe we're overstating the situation, but there's an element of "over the river and through the woods" that makes it all okay.
Really, it's a change of scenery. And after two years of essentially the same thing, a change of scenery is enough.
It's been a really sweet time so far. Watching movies together and playing cards and just kinda chilling. "Family" devotions have taken on a fun group discussion feel, with Nana and Papaw sitting in. Interesting conversation this morning, about me and Mom and Dad's whole "Model is Broken" approach to church and Christianity. So yeah.
Joy's bridal shower was last weekend, which was also a sweet time. Little buttons you have to give up if anybody catches you saying the groom's name and swapping funny stories about the happy couple and identifying yourself by your relationship to the bride (Ahem, Bride's best friend, tyvm. Hahaha.) Cake with edible ball-bearings and the classic maid-of-honor role of scratching down who gave what. All a little stereotypical, but definitely in a good way. :)
My story (You know, Sherlock Holmes and the undisclosed title and whatnot?) is going well. Really well, actually. Never easy, but well.
And speaking of Sherlock ('cause aren't we always?), the season two of the new BBC series hits in (drumroll please?) JANUARY of next year. Very big grin.
Just finished Frankenstein for school. I can Quite Honestly say that I enjoyed it the LEAST of any book I've read this year. Paradise Lost included. It literally went flying across the room when I was done with it. The ending was (for the sake of spoiler-free-dom) Horrible. Just horrible.
But I get to read Gulliver's Travels next week, so it's all okay.
Aaaaand, I think that's it for now. Gotta go help with stuff. Thanks for reading!
~Ella
Happy day-after-Thanksgiving. Leftover sweet potato casserole and college football . . . my idea of a party. I'm not being sarcastic. For as much as I don't really care about sports, watching my family watch football is entertaining to say the least.
We're all feeling a little throwback this week, me, Mom and Dad, and the siblings are "out of town" staying with my grandparents. Out of town being, half an hour from home, so maybe we're overstating the situation, but there's an element of "over the river and through the woods" that makes it all okay.
Really, it's a change of scenery. And after two years of essentially the same thing, a change of scenery is enough.
It's been a really sweet time so far. Watching movies together and playing cards and just kinda chilling. "Family" devotions have taken on a fun group discussion feel, with Nana and Papaw sitting in. Interesting conversation this morning, about me and Mom and Dad's whole "Model is Broken" approach to church and Christianity. So yeah.
Joy's bridal shower was last weekend, which was also a sweet time. Little buttons you have to give up if anybody catches you saying the groom's name and swapping funny stories about the happy couple and identifying yourself by your relationship to the bride (Ahem, Bride's best friend, tyvm. Hahaha.) Cake with edible ball-bearings and the classic maid-of-honor role of scratching down who gave what. All a little stereotypical, but definitely in a good way. :)
My story (You know, Sherlock Holmes and the undisclosed title and whatnot?) is going well. Really well, actually. Never easy, but well.
And speaking of Sherlock ('cause aren't we always?), the season two of the new BBC series hits in (drumroll please?) JANUARY of next year. Very big grin.
Just finished Frankenstein for school. I can Quite Honestly say that I enjoyed it the LEAST of any book I've read this year. Paradise Lost included. It literally went flying across the room when I was done with it. The ending was (for the sake of spoiler-free-dom) Horrible. Just horrible.
But I get to read Gulliver's Travels next week, so it's all okay.
Aaaaand, I think that's it for now. Gotta go help with stuff. Thanks for reading!
~Ella
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Another Day, Another Paper
Maybe I shouldn't get into the habit of posting school assignments here, but oh well. This project was to watch a movie version of Hamlet and "discuss staging." Feel free to ignore this post.
For this assignment, I watched the 2009 made-for-television version of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2008 stage rendition of Hamlet. My decision was entirely based on the fact that it starred David Tennant, a personal favorite actor of mine; but I wound up enjoying it for much more than just that.
The movie seems particularly suited to the analysis that is being asked of me, as it deviates from and concurs with the original in very interesting ways.
The costuming is modern. Bernardo and Marcellus wear police uniforms; Horatio wears a sports jacket. This provides sort of a new medium to work with; allowing the creators to use modern conceptions of dress to mold and form the viewer's opinion of a character. For instance, Hamlet begins the movie in a simple black suit and tie suited to his mourning; but as he descends into his 'madness,' he dons a slightly over-sized novelty t-shirt and worn jeans.
The setting is present-day as well, as far as that Claudius's political lackeys tend to wear blue-tooth devices, characters ride in cars rather than carriages, and everyone carries hand-guns instead of swords. This also provides for an artistically pleasing but highly distracting switch of camera angles from third-person omniscient to a crackly, grayscale security camera at various angles near the ceiling. It did play into the plot in a minor way, though. In Act 2, Scene two, just before one of Hamlet's soliloquies, all of the other characters leave the room. We switch to the security camera; the actor scans the room, spots the camera, rips it off the wall, and throws it out the window. The prince's next line, “Now I am alone,” takes on an entirely new meaning.
The use of Hamlet's soliloquies bears mentioning. They were very well delivered, which speaks volumes of Tennant's acting ability. Also, a number of them he delivered into a small camcorder, adding a kind of a vlog-type feel that makes more sense to a modern mind than the actor pacing around and talking to himself.
The original dialogue was left mostly intact; with a very few minor adjustments. Here and there an archaic word would be exchanged for it's modern counterpart. Lines were cut out of some very long, repetitive descriptions and soliloquies. A few scenes were rearranged for the sake of clarity, with great success. As a whole, it stayed very true to the original.
The biggest difference was in stage direction and acting style. Either the scripts we read today leave a good deal of movement to the imagination, or the actors on the stage at the Globe Theatre stood very still, delivering their lines with minimal motion or physical communication. In the version I watched, actors and actresses move around comfortably, embrace, add little hand gestures and such; making the whole thing seem much more natural. These things also helps interpret meaning and portray a character's personality when the language is obscure; and add new, fresh meaning to the dialogue. The scene when Laertes takes his leave of his sister Ophelia and their father Polonius towards the beginning of the play is a good example of this. When Polonius begins to give his parting advice to his son. By Laertes' and Ophelia's manner, a rolling of eyes, a chiming in in unison with their father here and there, we understand that Polonius's long-winded counsel is familiar, frequent, and repetitive. Without changing the lines, the scene takes on a kind sarcasm and hijinks that makes it easier to understand.
The actors themselves add by their acting, as must needs be, their own new take on the characters. Horatio becomes gruff but lovable, further affirming my positive opinion of him. Polonius looses all that is sinister and becomes wise, foolish, doddering, comical, and dear. Gertrude shows real remorse that almost makes us forgive her. Rosencratz and Guildenstern are gullible, unintelligent, and overarchingly effeminate, which almost makes them interesting. Ophelia overacts, turning one of my favorite characters from the play into something utterly insufferable. I responded to most of her lines by pressing the mute button on my remote. David Tennant adds some of his signature charm and quirk and playfulness, his quick, jumpy ways and his dark edge to the title character, really bringing Prince Hamlet to life.
There was a bit of dirtiness added that I didn't see as necessary, though I suppose movie-makers see it as an attempt to appeal to a modern audience. The play-within-a-play was rather vulgar, with one of the clowns wearing a tasteless pair of novelty boxers. When Ophelia lost her mind, I was blindsided by her suddenly and needlessly ripping off her dress. These things really don't add to the play at all, rather cheapen it.
With the exception of Ophelia, the casting was excellent, boasting a couple of well-known names. Using celebrity actors, however, has a downside. Their work may be truly brilliant, but for many viewers, their past roles eclipse their current, making the play more difficult to follow. If, in your mind, you can only think of what was supposed to be dastardly Claudius as Jean-Luc Picard, it is unarguably more difficult to take the character seriously. If you think you hear The Doctor speaking every third time Hamlet opens his mouth, it is sure to be a distraction.
In conclusion, changing things like setting and dress, and acting style to something a modern viewer finds more familiar makes the play more accessible to him or her while still preserving the beauty of William Shakespeare's high, grand, gorgeous language. My twelve-year-old brother sat and watched the three-hour movie with me. He has never read Shakespeare, and has always expressed the heart-breaking, “Because it is Shakespeare, it is therefore boring,” opinion that seems so prevalent among today's youth. However, the setting was so familiar, the acting so clear, that he followed quite well and enjoyed it thoroughly.
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