Category Archives: reading rainbow

Teen Idol/Queen Geek Social Club

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I admit it, I adore Meg Cabot.

I like Meg Cabot way more than I probably should…she of the Princess Diaries fame is an extremely prolific and immensely readable chicklit/YA author. There’s nothing surprising or unexpected about her stories, and yet she captures my attention and imagination in a way that’s truly commendable. Her protagonists are real. They’re likable. They’re believable.

In Teen Idol, Jenny is asked to play chaperone to a Hollywood actor gone undercover as a student at her school. No, she doesn’t fall for him, but he does play a fundamental role in her romantic story. I couldn’t have loved this book more.

And then there was The Queen Geek Social Club

Was it bad? Well, no I wouldn’t say that…but let me put it this way. I put this book aside, with less than 50 pages to go, and I forgot to finish it.

I was disappointed. I wanted to like this book, I really did. It just didn’t quite have the stuff. It took way too long to tell the story, and then rushed the predictable ending. When I finally did remember to pick it up and finish it, I was left feeling pretty “meh” about it.

Books read in 2006

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Here’s what I think is a comprehensive list of what I’ve read in 2006. I’ve been trying to keep it up-to-date, but I’m not 100% sure that it is. I’ve also been adding links to the individual book posts that I’ve moved over from the book blog. I’ll keep adding them as they’re moved.

1. Undead and Unappreciated
2. Undead and Unreturnable
3. McSweeney’s Chamber of Astonishing Stories
4. Risking Everything (yay!)
5. The Five People You Meet in Heaven (meh)
6. The Ice Queen
7. The Walking Dead (yay!)
8. Teaching with Fire
9. See Jane Date (yay!)
10. Sexy
11. Carpe Demon (yay!)
12. Night
13. Feed
14. Pushing 30
15. Bridge to Terabithia
16. Whose Wedding is it Anyway? (meh)
17. This Must Be Love
18. 32AA (yay!)
19. Promethea
20. Inkeart (yay!)
21. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
22. On the Couch
23. Bone (yay!)
24. Stargirl (yay!)
25. Does She or Doesn’t She?
26. Undead and Unwed
27. Undead and Unemployed
28. A Room with a Zoo
29. The Nanny
30. Hoot
31. Cut
32. Vanishing Acts
33. Girls’ Night In
34. Slow News Day
35. Sophie’s World (yay!)
36. Slightly Engaged (meh)
37. Awakening Genius in the Classroom
38. The Breakup Club
39. The Pact (yay!)
40. Ghosts of Boyfriends Past
41. Breakup Babe (meh)
42. The Other Side of the Story
43. The Solomon Sisters Wise Up (yay! with one meh ending)
44. Queen of Babble
45. Just Ella (meh)
46. New X-Men (Grant Morrison run)
47. Animal Man
48. Undead and Unpopular
49. Sushi for Beginners (yay!)
50. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
51. Bookends
52. Rhymes with Witches (meh)
53. …Full Frontal Snogging
54. We Thought You Would be Prettier (meh)
55. Strangers in Paradise (through vol. 14)
56. The Fourth Bear (yay!)
57. Living Buddha, Living Christ
58. Doom Patrol
59. I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader (yay!)
60. Tangerine
61. Dark Angel
62. Teen Idol (yay!)
63. Peanuts (collected strips, volumes 2-4)
64. Calvin and Hobbes (collected strips)
65. The Passionate Teacher
66. Sandman (through vol. 6)
67. The Queen Geek Social Club
68. LBD: Friends Forever!

Those entries denoted with a “yay!” are books I particularly enjoyed. 🙂

YA novels

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Tangerine, by Edward Bloor, was one of the books I finished last week.

And with a day of subbing and very little to do. I was able to finish Dark Angel by David Klass.

These two books had similar themes…male central characters, one in middle school and one in high school, with older brothers and dark secrets. Both explored the ideas of family and friendship. Bloor used this scenario as a backdrop to talk about race and class and bigotry. Klass explored the nature of good and evil.

I enjoyed both, but thought they both were maybe a leeeeeetle bit heavy handed.

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: Still working on Calvin and Hobbes. Finished a YA novel I pulled off of a teacher’s shelf last week called Tangerine. It was a fast and suspenseful read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it…although there were a few things that left me a little cold.

I’m still working on bringing my posts over from the book blog. I noticed that you can import from an RSS feed. Has anyone actually done this?

Soon I’ll have my “books read in 2006” post up. I’ll bet you can hardly wait. 😉

Watching: Ok, I’ve been busy here!

I finished disc 5 of Veronica Mars and anxiously await the final disc of Season 1! I’m dying to talk about this show, so if you’ve seen it, please email me or leave me a comment! That’s the biggest drawback to watching something after the rest of the world has already seen it…

Rand, John and I went to see Borat over the weekend. I thought it was funny, but not that funny.

And I finally watched Pirates of the Carribbean, which we had borrowed from Ron, um, way too long ago. I liked it, but found it a wee bit longer than I think it needed to be.

I thought last week’s episode of The Office was great. Plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.

And finally…Studio 60. It may have been a bit of a bumpy ride getting there, but good Lord, was the Christmas episode amazing. It was everything that is good about Aaron Sorkin. I was weeping and cheering by the end of the episode. I’ll be on this ride for as long as NBC will let me. 🙂

OH! And I nearly forgot…we got the first disc of SNL: Season 1 from Netflix. Interesting. The second episode might as well have been called Paul Simon and friends Live. 😉 I don’t get the Muppets. We’ve seen the first three episodes, and so far, I have to say John Belushi’s performance as Joe Cocker is the shining moment. I was practically rolling on the floor by the end. 😉

Listening: I’m going to take this opportunity to pimp what may just be my favorite Christmas album:

It’s not a traditional “Christmas”…with the exception of Silent Night, all of the tracks are original songs. But they are amazing songs. “First Snow of the Year” is ridiculously catchy. “Three Generations” is a happy and yet wistful tune…the line “three generations are only together for so long” never fails to bring a tear…and the love songs–Merry Christmas (I Love You) and A House or Maybe a Boat are my favorites–are sweet and achingly romantic.

Check it out. You won’t be sorry. 🙂

A quick book post

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Gah…busy day today. Will post a full “Reading, Watching, Listening” tomorrow, because I will have a large chunk of free time. 🙂

So here’s that book post I promised last week.

As I said before, this is pretty much the novel I would have written, so it’s a good thing I didn’t. 😉 It was a quick, fun read. Few surprises, but that’s to be expected. I loved Annisa, I loved that she was able to win over the (seemingly) bitchy cheerleaders at her new school and still be friends with the quirky Bethany. I loved that she got the cute boy. I loved that she was a brunette (with short hair, I might add…) who made her way in a sea of blondes. I loved that the cheerleading squad pulled together and won the regional competition. It made me want to turn on ESPN and watch a cheerleading competition. It made me want to watch Bring it On. Again. (er, that’s “once more”, not the sequel. heehee)

And it’s a series, of course. I’ll have to check out some of the others. 🙂

Thursday Thoughts

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With apologies to Hilary…I’m working on something better, but right now, Thursday Thoughts it is. 😉

  • Thanks to Jen, for hosting game night. 🙂 LCScotty and I kicked butt at Cranium! I’m glad I got to assure him that I was, indeed, a real person and not a figment of Jen’s imagination.
  • I need to find a place to buy some quality loose tea, preferably locally. So if anyone knows of a place I can go in the Buffalo/Niagara region, or someplace I can order from (in the US) that has reasonable prices, please let me know! *I’d like to avoid international shipping rates, if possible…*
  • I cannot stop watching Veronica Mars. I just finished the 2nd DVD, and I want more NOW. Like, immediately.
  • I finished I Was a Non Blonde Cheerleader. Full post later, but let me just say that I’m glad I kind of wandered away from my original idea for the NaNoWriMo novel. Because someone else already wrote it…except for the part where it was set in Florida and everyone was blonde. 😉

Reading, watching, listening

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So, I’ve decided this is going to be a regular Monday feature.

Reading: As most of you know, I haven’t been doing much novel reading, mostly due to the fact that I spent the past month writing a novel of my own. (more of my thoughts on NaNoWriMo and the fruits of my labor to come soon) Additionally, it was the month of reading submissions for the December issue of Toasted Cheese, up now! I think it’s a pretty strong issue, and the editorial staff was in very solid agreement about our picks this time.

Apart from that, I’ve been reading collections of Calvin and Hobbes strips, which I’m enjoying very much.

I’ve added a couple of things to the “to-read” pile…The Awakening, so we can get on that book club thing, and I Was a Non-Blonde Cheerleader, which I picked up used for under $5 with shipping. Hardcover, even. 😉

Watching: I am continuing to adore Heroes…we’ve got the last episode before it goes on hiatus tonight! I admit, I’m a little skeptical about how this whole Sylar thing is going to play out…last week’s episode left me going, the-wha?

ETA: I forgot to mention my favorite moment in last week’s episode. Hiro, upon discovering that he has sent himself 6 months into the past, says “Great Scott!” hee.

Got the second disc of Veronica Mars S1 last week. I just watched episode 5. It made me cry a little. I *heart* this show.

Rand and I are working our way toward catching up on Studio 60…we watched up to The Wrap Party last night, and I thought it was a fantastic episode. Yay for the Sorkin! Now that the characters and issues have been introduced, we really get to see some of the actors shine. I’m really enjoying the Christine Lahti character, who seems to occupy the same space as Felicity Huffman on Sports Night and Allison Janney on The West Wing. They have the same vibe, the same speech rhythms, and even a sort of similar look.

And in a blast from the past, Rand picked up a DVD of the first season of Night Court. I did love me some Night Court…the pilot episode was kind of scary, but the show quickly got on track. I remember why I liked it. 🙂

Listening: John Denver and the Muppets, A Christmas Together. Who can hear the Twelve Days of Christmas without thinking of the Muppets?

Jellyfish, Spilt Milk. I’ve heard much of this before, on Rand’s iPod, but I took the CD to listen to in the car. I really enjoy The Ghost at Number one, and I think New Mistake was the other one that really stood out when I listened.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Carpe Demon

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I cannot believe how fast I burned through this one. I absolutely loved it and am looking forward to the release of the second installment, California Demon. It’s a little bit Buffy (all grown up, of course) with a bit of Catholicism thrown in. (Kate was apparently an orphan who grew up in the Vatican. It was the Church’s Forza that trained her to be a Hunter.) Kate was supposed to be retired, but finds that she can’t escape her destiny. 😉

This also had a bit of a mystery/thriller feel to it.

I’m also going to check out some of author Julie Kenner‘s other work. (ooh! she has a blog, too!

Living Buddha, Living Christ

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Yes, I’ve been neglecting the book blog. This is partially due to so much of my reading time being devoted to freshman comp papers.

Anyway, this is one of Rand’s books that I’d been meaning to get to for a while.

I did mark a few pages which had passages I wanted to note. The first one is about meditation:

Meditation is not a drug to make us oblivious to our real problems. It should produce awareness in us and also in our society…Looking deeply at our own mind and our own life, we will begin to see what to do and what not to do to bring about a real change.

And this one, about the nature of Christianity and prayer:

Christians who pray to God also have to learn deeply Christ’s art of living if they want to enter His teachings.

And finally, this one, on faith:

Our faith must be alive. It cannot be just a set of rigid beliefs and notions. Our faith must evolve every day and bring us joy, peace, freedom and love.

This is a remarkable little book…simple to read, and yet deeply profound. I can’t help to think what a better world we would live in if more of us lived our lives this way.

Reading, watching, listening

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Reading: Yeah, it’s been a while since I finished anything.

Recently, Rand and I finished a collection of Jules Feiffer cartoons, mostly political, from the 50s through the 80s.

I picked up The Passionate Teacher earlier in the week, and I read a bit more of Teaching with Fire.

I’ve been working my way slowly through Living Buddha, Living Christ.

And it looks like I’m going to have to go hunting through boxes for that copy of The Awakening that I know I have, as All Things Jennifer, Lady Turpentine and I are going to try and get a little book club thing going…

Watching: Almost through the first season of Deadwood. I admit, I was skeptical at first, but I’m now fully hooked.

Some interesting facts about Deadwood:

Deadwood features many historical figures, such as Wild Bill Hickok, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Calamity Jane, Al Swearengen, Wyatt Earp, E. B. Farnum and George Hearst. The plotlines involving these characters include historical truths as well as substantial fictional elements.

I knew that some of the characters were historical figures, but had no idea so many of them were. Also, all the scripts are written in iambic pentameter. How cool is that? Once I was alerted to this fact, it became more apparent. And interestingly enough, EB Farnum (played by the guy who played Larry on Newhart, as in “Hi, I’m Larry. This is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl“) gets all the cool Shakespearean soliloquies.

EDITED: Finished S1 of Deadwood. Another interesting fact…as I was listening to the character Jewel (the “gimp”), I thought, “Hmmm…I’ll bet that actress really has cerebral palsy. In fact, she sounds a lot like Blair’s cousin from The Facts of Life. Could it be?”

A quick trip to IMDb confirmed that, indeed, Jewel is played by actress Geri Jewell, one of the first actresses with cerebral palsy to have a recurring role on a TV series…that role, of course, being that of Blair’s cousin Geri. Also, Jewell is from Buffalo. Who’da thunk?

Oh, wait…more Buffalo connections. David Milch, the show’s creator, is from Buffalo. Also Jeffrey Jones (aka Principal Rooney) is from Buffalo. I did not know that.

Continuing to watch Season 2 of The Office. Without entirely meaning to, I watched the season premiere with Jen and Mark on Thursday…I wanted to wait, and watch it all in sequence. Oops.

Listening: Hmmm…do I have anything new? How about something I want to be listening to:

Carbon Leaf–Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat