This is my current reading/to be read pile. I’m nearly done with Blood Price by Tanya Huff, and I’m really enjoying it. I just bought Looking for Alaska yesterday, and that’ll probably be my next read. The two wedding books are here and there reading, as is You Can Do It! (which was a totally awesome gift from Jen!)
Maybe this week I’ll actually venture out of my apartment for photos. đ
Ah, now that I have your attention…
I’m wondering if anyone in the local blogosphere has picked up on this. It’s getting a lot of attention on the book/YA lit blogs I read. I first caught it on Meg Cabot’s journal, and I just saw it on Cecil Castellucci’s LJ.
The story is that some teachers at Depew High School wanted to teach John Green’s book Looking for Alaska. (I haven’t read the book, but it’s now at the top of my to-read list) Because the book does deal with some potentially touchy issues (SEX! he talks about SEX!) they jumped through all the proper hoops…sent permission slips home, offered students the opportunity to read another book if their parents did not sign the slip.
Apparently, that wasn’t enough. Parents of kids who aren’t even in the class are trying to get the book pulled. Because it’s apparently “pornographic.” It’s filthy and evil. *eyeroll*
The author addresses the situation here, as well as on this video on YouTube:
Meg Cabot offered the following information:
There are many supporters of this book among teachers, administrators, librarians, and the school board in Depew (as well as authors, such asâŠme! Well, I donât live in DepewâŠbut you get what I mean). To help them, John is asking people to email letters of support for the book at sparksflyup@gmail.com.
So, if youâre a fan of the book, please send a thoughtful, non-hysterical email to let them know there are many, many people who loved the book.
Also, if you live near Depew, the book will be discussed at the Depew Board of Education meeting on February 5th at the Depew High School Auditorium at 7 PM.
I haven’t met this kind of situation firsthand, of course, but as a teacher (and as a book lover in general), it hits very close to home. It frustrates me that people are so reactionary and close-minded
So I didn’t get around to uploading all of the photos, but here’s a special one, just for Kelly:
Thanks to a very sweet and recently married friend who sent me ALL of her wedding planning books, I now have duplicate copies of Bridal Bargains and Easy Wedding Planning Plus.
Give me a holler if you’d like one or both of these. đ
Reading: This has been fairly well covered, but I did sneak in one more (short) book in the past few days–Abadazad-The Road to Inconcievable by JM DeMatteis and Mike Ploog. It’s the first in a series, and I found it very enjoyable.
Watching: It’s been a busy week!
In the theater: Juno, Charlie Wilson’s War, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Three very different movies, but I enjoyed them all.
I adored Juno. Precious? Yes, but also smart and funny and very well done. I loved the cast. I first encountered screenwriter Diablo Cody through Eden’s blog, and I was a semi-regular reader of her blog for a while.
I have three words to say about Charlie Wilson’s War–Philip. Seymour. Hoffman. He was fantastic. The story was interesting, and I was entertained by the type of dialog I’ve come to expect from Aaron Sorkin. Rand and I both noted, though, that it wasn’t particularly dramatic…the story had very little drama or tension. Tom Hanks was likable as the title character (duh), and Julia Roberts did a fine job in her role as well.
And Walk Hard was simply hilarious. The songs (many of which were written by Dan Bern) were great. In fact, we downloaded the complete soundtrack from iTunes. The cast was great, too.
What else? Slums of Beverly Hills, season 1 of Buffy (not quite finished), more season 2 of Earl, random episodes of The Office, Styx: Caught in the Act (HEE! awesome.), random bits of various New Year’s Eve countdowns. Probably some other stuff that I’ve forgotten…
Listening: Walk Hard, the soundtrack. Styx (discovering some songs that I didn’t previously know…). Looking forward to listening to some of the CDs that I got for Christmas, including Veronica Mars (whee! thanks, Stephanie!!) and the mix I got from Samantha.
Happy 2008, everyone!
Below, you’ll find the complete (mostly) list of what I’ve been reading this year. (sorry, titles and authors only…but you can check out my profile on goodreads, where I’ve at least given most of the things I’ve finished a rating.)
As has been the trend since a certain comic book nerd entered my life, you’ll see a bunch of comics and graphic novels on the list. This is the year that I’ve discovered Brian K. Vaughn. Some other things that I’ve found notable this year:
There were also a couple of disappointments, most notably Hey, Nostradamus, which I didn’t think lived up to Douglas Coupland’s earlier work, and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, which just didn’t live up to my expectations.
Of course, my reading slowed quite a bit from September until the end of the year because of my employment situation, but I can’t complain. đ
Click below for the full list!
One of these days, I’ll post some actual content. But not today. đ Seen at All Things Jennifer first, then at Samantha Says.
These are the top 106 books most often marked as âunreadâ by LibraryThingâs users.
Bold what you have read, italicize books youâve started but couldnât* finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those youâve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.
Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Travellerâs Wife
The Iliad
The Blind Assassin
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucaultâs Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
Emma
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckooâs nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the DâUrbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliverâs Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angelaâs Ashes
The God of Small Things
A peopleâs history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravityâs Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers
*I’d like to add that some of the italicized books aren’t necessarily ones I couldn’t finish, just ones I didn’t finish and never bothered to go back to.
And since I can’t underline, here are books I think I might like to read at some point:
Wuthering Heights
Emma
The Kite Runner
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Middlesex
Wicked
Anansi Boys
Eats, Shoots and Leaves (have it, read parts of it…)
In Cold Blood
Angela’s Ashes
I’m not sure if I want to read Love in the Time of Cholera, since I’m not sure if I like Gabriel Garcia Marquez. There, I admitted it. đ
Reading: Pride of Baghdad, and Ex Machina, vol. 6, both by Brian K. Vaughn. I have an issue of Buffy sitting here for me to read, and I might get to that today sometime.
Watching:Â Finished watching Ed Wood, which was good, but really kind of sad. Poor Ed just had this relentless optimism that he was going to be the next Orson Welles. Martin Landau was amazing, and his Oscar for his portrayal of Bela Lugosi was well deserved.
Bender’s Big Score, the Futurama movie. I adore Futurama, and the movie had its moments, but it was nowhere near as good as the show.
The finale of Heroes. Gasp! Ack! Any speculation about what’s going to happen next?
And by the way, I am so sick of Sylar. I want him to go away and be, like, dead for good.
Rand and I are also slowly catching up on season 2 of My Name is Earl courtesy of Netflix, while also watching the current season. I’m happy that this week’s episode got Earl out of prison. I was really tired of that story.
Listening: I finally broke out the Christmas tunes this past week. I need to once again pimp the Hawksley Workman album Almost a Full Moon. (available at Amazon, Maple Music, and on iTunes)
I was listening to my Christmas playlist and “Merry Christmas, I Love You” came on, and that one always makes me a little bit weepy…
Immediately following that one, “O Holy Night” came on. Sigh.
And of course, we had the Lowest of the Low show last night. More on that to come. I hope you’re all having a lovely weekend!
Reading: I’ve just begun Uglies by Scott Westerfield. It’s the first in a trilogy that’s been getting a lot of attention. The underlying concept seems to be very similar to Lois Lowry’s The Giver, but the story is quite different.
My “to read” pile is beginning to get out of control. đ
Watching: How much do I love Chuck? (the answer is: a lot) Loved seeing Kevin Weisman, even if he was playing a baddie.
Dirty Sexy Money continues to entertain.
Last night, TiVo recorded Don’t Forget the Lyrics, so I went ahead and watched the episode. Hmmm…I’ve gotta say, I much prefer the pure, unadulterated cheesefest that is The Singing Bee. The only thing Lyrics has going for it is Wayne Brady, and he doesn’t even get to sing.
The worst of it? Lyrics is a shameless rip-off of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (according to Wikipedia, the format is similar to “another FOX show, Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader? No mention of Millionaire. But seriously…you get three “back ups” (aka “lifelines”) and Wayne asks you to “lock in your lyrics” as opposed to Regis’s “final answer” question. Even the set and lighting and “dramatic tension” music invoke memories of Millionaire. Hrm.
I also watched another episode of Reaper, which is fun…I’m just not sure I care enough to stick with it.
Listening: Hmmm…not sure I have anything new to talk about. I just picked up Jackdaw’s Blackgrass, but I have not yet listened to it. Check back for a report.
I’ve been updating lots of photos, so be sure to check them out. Tonight, I uploaded two photos of me in my new glasses:
I’m disappointed that you can’t see how truly cool they are in the photo. The frames are brown, but they have a sort of lavender tinge to them. I am pleased. I got lectured by the optometrist, because it’s been way too long since I had my eyes checked.
This is not new, but I have a pterygium on my right eye. (Jen, you probably don’t want to click!) It’s small, and it is not interfering with my vision in any way, so I’m told that it’s nothing to worry about. You have to be pretty close to my eye to be able to see it. If it ever does become a problem, I can have it removed. (eep!)
I probably paid a bit too much for the glasses, because I let them talk me into upgrading the lenses to the anti-glare, scratch-resistant ones. I did not get contacts this time, but I’ll probably go back for them sometime before the wedding (I wear them very, very infrequently).
Anyway, let’s see what’s up around teh intarwebs…
Apparently, the Sweet Valley High books are being reissued. (via Pop Culture Junk Mail) Question is, do the publishers think kids are going to go for this? Or are they for us thirtysomethings who read them as tweens?
It took me a long time to realize this (uh, Jen had to point it out to me), but I was mentioned in jen14221’s last “Buffalo Blogs” column in the Spree. It’s not online, but I took some photos!
Also getting shout-outs were some of my favorite bloggers…Samantha, Mild Mannered Blogger, and Christine.
My
has begun its annual fundraising drive, which means, of course, address labels! I like the new labels–they have photographs of some campus landmarks, and they’re very cute.
(those are just stickers. The actual labels actually have my address…)
And my final tidbit…this past weekend has been “blast from the past” weekend! I got three friend requests/contacts on facebook. The first was from a guy I went to grade school with. He moved back to England with his family in middle school. Hi, Colin!
The others were from a couple of fellow Alleghenians…one was good friends with my ex, K. Hi, Mike! And Reid, well, I didn’t even expect him to remember who I was. Hi, Reid!
(Are you on facebook and not friends with me yet? Click here!)