michanna | Entries tagged with books

I'm going to write some posts in reverse chronological order. I have a backlog of stuff I need to post about but for now, let's just stick with what I'm doing.

I just got back from a trip to Guelph, Toronto, Norfolk and Boston. For the trip, knowing that Mark was reading it, I took The Book Thief out of the library on audiobook. I'm now sitting at work starting into his reviews (having finally finished reading his Mockingjay reviews and crying about them all over again).

I've said before that I didn't really like The Book Thief. The narration style was not for me and the story itself dragged. I also, however, noted that some of that might have to do with the fact that I was listening to it as an audiobook when it's become even more clear from Mark's reviews that this book should be read.

I have something to say in defense of audiobooks though: they create a strange link between book and situation. As I read clips from the first few chapters of the book, I'm jerked vividly back to the Guelph bus terminal, cold rain falling on my face, the smell of bus fuel in my nose, waiting in the wind for the bus driver to let us board. As I continue reading, I remember listening to this book on the long bus ride that followed and how I kept having to listen to pieces over again because I'd fall asleep (as I said, it drags). When I was in Paris, I listened to a book while I was walking around and reading that book can still recall me to Parisian streets. The end of the book I listened to while walking around Boston so that should be more interesting.

Back to Mark. Maybe reading his reviews will change my mind about the books.

Uhhh. ... hi guys. I should maybe post more often?

All of the things!
Finished Cryoburn, the most recent Lois McMaster Bujold book. ("You know what has eight legs? Two ponies!")

Watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with

shihadchick I remain super in love with all that it is.

We've also stayed caught up on Leverage despite killing our internet and having to spend 14 hours downloading the most recent episode.

I really want to be watching new Eureka but I've decided to rewatch it all with C before getting to the new stuff. Also, bandwidth limitations.

Watched Inception a couple weeks ago.

Made everyone watch Clue. I think I was the most delighted of all by this turn of events.

House sitting at a HUGE mansion with a pool that's too cold to use, a hot tub we've used extensively, 2 ponds, which we've named Amy and Rory, 4 cats and many fish. I'm glad there are two of us in it to mitigte its horrible emptiness, but C goes to Melbourne next weekend. I'm trying to con people into joining me here for that few days.

Mystery surveys rock.

Harddrive has died along with all my pictures. I'd like to make a request that if anyone has some decent (or really touristy) pictures of me in my Tilley Hat, that they send them along. I should be able to get myself a new one at half-price that way. (

kiaarra I've got pictures of Africa and stuff backed up on my external at your. It's probably in Waterloo and not with you though ne?)

Today we get a

digitalsprawl and a Shihad concert and now it's 2pm and I should go make myself some breakfast.

I'm going to try and post more again ... Twitter's bad for my LJ habits.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Twilight

heh

So I finally watched Forbidden Kingdom today. Liked it, as expected. Nothing too exciting to say about it - I'm just happy I finally got to see it.

Still no job news. Tomorrow I intend to HOUND them.

Picked up To Say Nothing of the Dog from the bookshelf of

strayfish as a result of the recommendation of

shihadchick a while back and I haven't been able to put it down. Awesome.

Fireball whiskey goes good in apple cider.

My friend is having a medieval wedding on Saturday and apparently I'm going - I don't have a thing to wear!

Okay, so I'm upset about the two books missing thing, so I googled the big read top 100 list and found this website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/bigread/top100.shtml
The books on it are different and I can't find a more recent list.
There's also this website: http://www.neabigread.org/index.php but their book list is much shorter. So I'll just do the top 200 from the first site.
( book meme )

Okay, well, let's start doing these posts that I said I would write:
First, 5 books that I would recommend to anyone. Well, I'm not going to be terribly original here; I feel like I should choose books that are somehow deep and meaningful, but I don't actually read very many of those nor do I find them particularly recommendable when I do. Melanie Rawn's dragon trilogies probably top the list, then Robin Hobb's three trilogies about Fitz and Fool. After that, it gets a little more challenging. Can I use comics because Sandman keeps popping to mind. I'll say A Sand County Almanac to assauge my guilt about not choosing any important books. I know I'm just not thinking hard enough ... I should make one of these movie posts for books and see what people say. Everyone knows that everyone has to read Hitchiker's. Atlas Shurgged was an interesting commentary. I also love Carol Berg and Sharon Shinn, but I don't know if I'd recommend them to everyone. As far as manga goes, Deathnote was amazing. Oh George R. Martin is amazing. There are also a few children's books that everyone should read - notably, Winter of Fire, Island of the Blue Dolphins and The Dark is Rising series. Am I getting out of hand? Perdido Street Station was also amazing.

There, I think that's good for now :p
Suggestions?

So Navin gave me Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand to read. I'm really surprised by how enthralling it is. I thought I'd have to work to get into it, especially after HP:DH but I haven't been avle to put it down. It is a long read though.
When he gave it to me he said that one of the characters was just like me, and later confirmed that he was talking about Dagny Taggart, which is extremely flattering as i may have had a crush on Dagny after about 20 pages. Navin would like to be a womanizer but he's extremely bad at it (Emily, Jess and I have frequently been reduced to helpless giggles by his attempts to pick up girls) so I think the compliment is genuine.
Now, Navin also commented that he feels he is similar to one of the characters in the book. I am trying to decide what the ratio of mockery to flattery I should put into my response. Of course, it's starting to look like the only hopeless womanizer in the book is actually a coniving genius and is merely pretending to be a spoiled brat, but I'm still tempted to tell Navin that the character I feel most resembles him is Lillian Rearden.
Oh, incidentally, if any of you have read this book, I'm only on pg 200; no spoilers please.

'There only was one choice' is a good song: *sings* "good dreams don't come cheap, you have to pay for them. If you just dream when you're asleep, there is no way for them to come alive, to survive. It's not enough to listen, it's not enough to see, when the hurricane is coming hard it's not enough to flee. It's not enough to be in love; we hide behind that word. It's not enough to be alive when your future's been deferred."
In other news, sorry for falling off the face of the planet. I wasn't going to do that!
I really, really want to see 300! I'll go sometime this week I hope.
I spent most of the weekend in the lab trying to get our impromptu water softener to work. It's a lot more complicated than it looks and than we thought it was. Bummer.
In meme news,

shihadchick asked me to ( explain my username )
( Top )
That's all for now; back on later

I thought about waiting up until 12 to buy my Pirates tickets, but I think I'll just get up early tomorrow.
I made the mistake of going into Chapters today and realized that there was a sale on 4 for 3 and you have no idea the willpower that it took for me to walk out of that store.
I have a question though, does anyone know how good the Jaqueline Carey books are?
Similarly, Rozen Maiden the manga and Telepathic Wanderers.
Okay, I went to my uncle's house today and got very little work done and apparently he's taking me to a play tomorrow, so I won't get anything done then either. As a result, I should do some work tonight.

Current Music: Civ 4 theme - Talisman A Cappella

This particular blend of chai tea has a few to many cloves in it. *makes a face*
*wipes brow* okay, it's about 6 hours later than that original sentence and now I forget all the super important stuff I had to say. I was going to go to Chinatown for Bubble Tea at lunch, but alas, my lunch break became non-existant and I'm just getting around to eating now ... I want to go for a nice, relaxing walk, but I think that maybe I shouldn't leave the office. Especially since there are about 3 more people I wanted to talk to today and most people around here leave at about 4:15.
You know, I really feel like part of the family here ... I'm going to be sad to leave.
It looks like I'm having my goodbye/trade stuff party on the 5th of May for anyone reading this who can come.
Okay, so yesterday, I got home and asked who wanted to go on an adventure with me. Mom said I was crazy, Amy said she had choir, I knew Pei-Yun and Nikki couldn't go, so I called Tasha. She regaled me about her exam and then agreed to come. I dropped Amy off then Tasha and I went over to Northland mall. We failed at finding Easter candy and Wal-Mart's price of 23.80 for Pride and Prejudice was still a bit much for me, but our spirits were not dampened! We went to the food court for dinner. Arby's made me pay $8 for a couple of chicken strips and some fries, but I got to rail at the poor worker about how those chicken strips and fries were $0.50 cheaper if I also got a drink. Honestly people, is it any wonder our world is rotting!? (sorry, I was watching too many good 'how the environment is screwed' documentaries on Monday) Tasha had to listen to me rant about it, but I figured fair is fair since I listened to her rant about her class on Hell and the Bible.
We moved on to Comikaze. You knew it was inevitable. We did a super lot of laughing at ourselves for reading manga because some of the titles there looked super bad. I got Hands Off 6 *cheers* and Tash and I each bought a volume of Yaoi ... I suppose more sad than me buying it is the amount of reading it I've done without so far buying any. There are also a couple titles we need to look into because they looked good, but we weren't sure, so we didn't get them. We may have pondered whether or not to get them longer, except that Tasha reminded me we had to pick up Amy and I swore loudly and proceeded to pay in a swift manner before running back to the car.
Amy had already been picked up by Mom, so we went home and got her before heading out for ice cream at Phil's. They have lychee ice and I wasn't going to get too many more chances to go for ice cream before having to go back to Guelph, so in celebration of the first day of the year when I didn't need a coat to walk home, we decided to go.
Tasha gave me the second book in Kate Forsythe's new series, so I have to start reading that.
And that was the end of our Glorious Adventure. *grin* ... yeah ... ahem
The room is spinning as I write this ... I guess I really should eat something ...
Also, the faster I get this done, the more time I have to make sure I leave everything behind in an organized fashion next week.

Current Mood: Dizzy
Current Music: Bon Jovi

Alright, I'm going to post early today before anyone else gets here to give me a tonne of work to do.
Thursday night last week I didn't hear what was happening with my usual Thursday night buddies because they were all out partying for the UofC's last day. So, I went over to Earl's with Tasha,

narikalen and

teddy0bear instead. We ate appetizers and deserts and tried out a bunch of their drinks and all was good. I was tired after being up since 5 taking soil samples, but it was still worth it and I got to see Tasha.
Then on Friday, Pei-Yun and Nikki came over and we watched some more Kyou Kara before Pei-Yun had to go to work. Amy and I made Dad come with us to a Theatre Calgary play instead of going to watch more curling. It was nice to spend time with him, but the play was kind of meh.
Saturday was a lot of fun. The three of us got together again and headed over to Kensigton. We wandered around through used book stores and CD stores and toy shops with fun marble works. We ate Indian food for lunch and free Easter Eggs being handed out by people dressed up as fluffy bunnies for dessert. For the most part, we didn't find anything exciting, but one of the used book stores had some really good comic trades that Pei-Yun bought for her friend that I'm reading before she gives them to her *inner Teri does a victory dance*.
That book store had Anne Bishop's Pillars of the World, so I got it and I got Revelation and Transformation by Carol Berg. For those of you not in the knowing, those are my two favourite authors currently, so it was a good haul. I also bought some used manga. Good store.
I bought myself three rings because ... well, because I couldn't leave any of them behind, they all fit and I needed some after losing two in the last 5 months. You think I'd learn ... but they're really pretty and I'm fairly certain I still have enough cash to make it through the next three semesters ...
We stopped off at Chinook to return a shirt that fell apart in the wash and we looked for CDs, but there were none, so we went home. We were going to go rent a movie, but Amy hadn't cleaned the kitchen and my Mom was coming home from Ontario, so being the horrible friend that I am, I made Nikki and Pei-Yun help and by the time we were done it was 9, so we decided to postpone it. We couldn't decide what to rent anyways. Nikki wants to see the He-Man movie and I want to see Kiki's Delivery Service and Pei-Yun wants to see neither but had some other suggestions that I don't remember ...
Anyways, we watched Avatar instead because a) Nikki and I are obsessed and b) we're losers like that. Oh, while we were on the LRT that morning, we watched Captain planet. Yeah, that's right. I love my friends. Also, I'm sure everyone around us knew what we were watching from our conversation and were probably quite disturbed by the discussion of Captain Planet's love life with Mr. Clean ^_^ *preens*
Okay, so it's 8 now and I do have a bunch of work. Stay tuned for information about my and Tasha's Wednesday night adventure!

Current Mood: chipper
Current Music: Breakaway - Kelly Clarkson