Thursday, August 25, 2011

Liebster Award!





First off, I would like to thank Lacie Myers for giving me this award
. I'd seen it going around in some of the other blogs that I follow (and some that I don't) and thought it would be really fun to get it. Not even because it would mean someone loves my blog (I mean, sure that's always a plus) but because I was looking forward to selecting the five fellow bloggers that I could give it to.

Basically the point of this award is to get the word out about blogs with less than 100 followers so that all of us small-time bloggers can be noticed for our brilliancy and at the same time link up with more people who have similar interests.

And so, I give you my picks:


1.Amaranthine @ Amaranthine Forever-- I'm pretty sure this was the post that made me want to follow her blog because I, as you know (or if you don't, you should) am a major bookworm. And she is too. But even if you don't like reading , check out her blog because it's fun and I told you to.


2. Margaret @ Hello, World -- Margaret is a writer and photographer(and a good one, at that) and I love reading her posts, whether they're about her favorite book covers, or a conversation she had with one of her characters, or tips for getting rid of writer's block.


3. Suzy @ Suzy Krause and the Skyscrapers-- Click here for some great pearls of wisdom. Aaand...you should surf the rest of her blog too for awesomeness like paper rants, and cool music and stuff like that.


4. Kayla @ You Rebel Scum -- Just go there. You know you want to...with a name like that it has to be interesting. ;)


5. Cassidy
@ Learning to Dance in the Rain -- Cassidy is a dear friend of mine, and one of the few on this list that I have actually spoken to in person. Cassidy's blog is more like a journal - in which she tells of her adventures in acting, and church, and sisterhood, and all that fun stuff. :)

Many thanks to you all for being my friends and giving me delightful things to read.


For those of you who received the award and care to pass it on. Do the following:
1. Show your thanks to the blogger who gave you the award by linking back to his or her blog.
2. Reveal your top 5 picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
3. Post the award on your blog.
4. Bask in the love from the most supportive people on the Internet—other writers.
5. And best of all – have fun and spread the karma!



Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Wednesday...

Today I will just blog about a bunch of random things I have been thinking about.
So here we go.

1) YA books. I walked into Barnes & Noble yesterday, went over to the YA section, and proceeded to become gradually more and more disgusted. The subject matter for many of these books included: cheating boyfriends, drugs, cutting, abusive relationships, and of course paranormal romance. Yuck. Herein lies the reason why I read more middle grade fiction than YA.

2) I finished reading Possession by Elana Johnson today! :D

3) Shout-out to Suzy @ Suzy Krause and the Skyscrapers: You should do a paper rant about getting the absolute last half seat on the bus during the first week of school. Just saying...

4) Guess what?!? I got a new bookshelf! Which was SO needed. Between my sister and me we have like three big bookshelves and then two little ones and waaaay more books than can rest comfortably within.

5) Over at Shannon Whitney Messenger's blog there is an AWESOME giveaway! Like, one of the best giveaways I have seen during my time in the blogosphere. And do you want to know WHY it's so awesome?? I'll tell you. Because one of the books that is part of the giveaway is an ARC of.....CROSSED by Ally Condie (#2 in the Matched Trilogy)!! And there's some other pretty legit stuff too. Check it out! http://ramblingsofawannabescribe.blogspot.com/2011/08/spread-love-arc-giveaway.html

6) FACT: Listening to Owl City makes just about anything better. <3


Have a fantabulous week!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Phantom of the Opera!


So for forever and a half my friends have been telling me how good Phantom of the Opera is, and how I should see it and all that. And, well I had heard some of the music and thought it was amazing but pretty creepy. So I didn't really have any objections. But I still didn't watch it. I would go to watch it at a friend's house and they realized they didn't know where their copy of it was, and so we would end up watching other epic things like Doctor Who and Harry Potter. ;) Anyway.... last night I went to a friend's house to watch a DIFFERENT movie (Lost in Space) which by the way, was pretty good too... so the friend found out that my sister and I both hadn't seen Phantom of the Opera and so we decided to watch that too. And it was really good. I kind of wanted a better ending. But it's kinda hard to say what I mean without making the movie sound really horrible...which it wasn't! It's like it was becoming really beautiful and amazing and then they just killed it! But anyway... moving on. It was kind of funny though because as I was watching it, I was thinking "Oh my gosh!" it's Twilight all over again! (Except of course, Edward didn't strangle people and he was actually the right one) But it just made me think of it because well, Raoul was super amazing and wonderful (except for the fact that he didn't believe her about the Phantom at first. That kinda ticked me off, not gonna lie) and so I was afraid that he was going to die and she was going to go with the Phantom or something... and her relationship with the Phantom was so unhealthy. And of course, both of them are fighting over her. But the other really weird similarity between it and Twilight was the way it made me feel afterwards. I remember when I went to see Twilight (and possibly New Moon) I came home and felt so depressed. And it was like I didn't want to even think about it, but at the same time that was the only thing that I wanted to do. Read them, watch them, listen to music off the soundtrack, etc. And with Phantom, it was pretty much the same. I came home and was somewhat depressed. But what do I do? I listen to the music (which is so breathtakingly gorgeous! Andrew Lloyd Weber--you're like, my favorite!). Which is really NOT a good way to get rid of movie-induced depression. But oh well...I think that's it for now. I've seen it, and I'm really glad that I did. I'm off to rejoin the real world and listen to happy music! :)

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Review: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
First Published: 1847
Publisher(of the edition I read): Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Number of Pages: 466
ISBN: 156619024X

I felt a myriad of different things about this book. First, I should probably let you know that I saw the new movie (which is now available on DVD! YAY! :D) before reading the book *gasp!* Shocking, I know. I really wanted to read it first, because that's kind of a big thing with me. And well, I did read the first 30-50 pages before seeing it, so that counts for something, right?

Anyway... I finally read it! It took forever. But it was totally worth it. It was definitely one of the best love stories I've ever read! But I think one of the disadvantages to having seen the movie first was that I would get to a certain part and think that it was the part where everything gets better (y'know before it gets worse) and then it wasn't! But on the other hand, I think being able to read it with the knowledge that it WAS going to get better was part of what made me want to keep reading.

Is it a light read? No, not really. And there are several reasons:

1) The characters speak in french not infrequently and most of the time with little or no explanation. So unless you know french, that could be a little frustrating. A few times I was able to guess a couple words here and there because of my knowledge of spanish, but not much.

2) Charlotte Bronte's diction is INTENSE. That's all there is to it. I'd like to think that I have a pretty good vocabulary and thus do not require the aid of a dictionary in most of my literary adventures. And I really don't mind(and even sometimes enjoy) looking up a word here and there. But I can't even tell you how many times I had to pull out a pocket dictionary and then a bigger one because it didn't have the word in it, and then finally just give up because I couldn't find the word anywhere. After a while I just abandoned the whole process and had to be content with not knowing.

3) For most of the book Jane is unhappy. Like, excruciatingly unhappy. And of course you feel a certain amount of that because she is the main character and you are in her head. And this is really a good thing because we don't read books to be passive, right? We read because we want to be there and to feel what the characters are feeling. It's an essential element of good storytelling because if it's not there, your reader is--more likely than not--going to get bored and put your book down, because they simply do not care whether your character gets eaten by a great white shark or is thrown over a cliff by his/her best friend. So that's definitely one of the book's strong points.

So if you are majorly depressed or insanely happy, I'd wait a little while to read it. But you should read it. Really. Because it's amazing! And I guess if you're like me, the fact that it's a classic might be part of what motivates you to read it, too.