Reading...

Currently I'm reading and enjoying a YA fantasy called The Goblin Wood by Hilari Bell which I've had for a while after getting it for free from the UM library which was getting rid of a mint condition copy. I was reminded of it recently when I picked up a galley for the yet unpublished sequel at the ALA conference. But I probably still might not be reading it now if not for my sister devouring both the first and second book and firmly recommending them. I've never been much for goblins but my sister was very right that the characters in this book are very well-written.

On the other end of the spectrum I decided to read the blog of Belle de Jour because I've long had in interest in Showtime's series Secret Diary of a Call Girl, but I have yet to be able to watch it with the exception of a few episodes online. The blog is fun though and one of these days I plan to rent the show, but I'll have to go to Blockbuster or something similar because I don't watch enough movies to justify the monthly charge of Netflix.

World's Best Use for Haters

Ever wish you had a penny for every hater on YouTube? Well, now this girl does. She made a video on YouTube for a contest to win $100,000. Every rating and comment (from different people per day) counted as a vote. So the people that always regale videos with such profound comments as "ur gay" were actually voting for her. It's just so beautiful. Trolls were actually useful for once.

Read Any Good Books Lately?

So after being spoiled by my early copy of I Shall Wear Midnight I'm hungry for some great books. Not just good books. Not okay books. But the best of the best. I'm in the mood for some good fantasy novels, but I'm open to many other things. So please leave suggestions of your absolute favorite books.

Windows 7 Starter Complaint

Where to begin really? Is it the fact that the ability to change your desktop isn't a defailt feature? Is it the fact that it can't (or won't) run the full Windows 7 on my netbook? Is it that it doesn't seem to have addressed the things that were wrong with Vista?

Well, all of the above. But also, when I received, my galley of I Shall Wear Midnight, I wanted to do a vlog. The previous Windows Movie Maker, despite all its faults, did allow you to record straight from your webcam. That was what made it so easy to use. This one does not. Grrr!! It's as if Windows wants me to find alternatives to their programs.

I Remembered to Write

But I forgot to blog last night. Hmm. But no one called me on it so I'm safe for now. All my word counts recently have been for a project my sister and I are collaborating on. It's a science fiction novel which is a lot easier to write with my sister's help since I'm not naturally a sciencey person.

When I Grow Up, I Want to Be Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman's speech does a lot in reminding me the importance of writing. He also reminds me why authors are the best advocates of any cause, because their eloquence of words can say in one line what most people need an entire speech for. Neil's quote on libraries is my example:

"Libraries are our future. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever. It is a terrible, terrible mistake to steal from the future to pay for today."

Going to the Zoo

I probably won't be back until late and will likely be very tired.

EDIT: I just got back a few minutes to midnight, so no writing today either.

A Good Book

Today I finished reading I Shall Wear Midnight. I won't review it before the rest of you unfortunate souls have a chance to read it. Of course, be sure to read The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith first. I will say that it's an excellent book (of course, how could it not be?). I was relieved to read it because it's been a while since I've read a book of its quality. The type of book that reminds me why I love books. But more importantly the type of book that can rescue you from darkness and help you see the world in a different light. A good book is beyond precious because it's what makes you understand what precious is.

On a writing news note I've decided to reintegrate my Twitter into my blog because that's where I'm giving my writing updates. See the side-bar.

BEST THING EVAH!

So I arrive home today to the world's best delivery. The new Terry Pratchett book. That's right. Because I went to the American Library Association's conference I get this book not only for free but EARLY before the rest of you suckers! Okay, fine, I'm probably the biggest Pratchett fan of my blog audience so the rest of you aren't nearly as envious as you should be.

Birthday Break

My birthday is tomorrow and I'm going to take a two day hiatus from my blog so as to not interrupt any wild celebrating I should choose to do...

In the meantime, you may all enjoy some kayaking pictures my sister took of me and my friends last weekend.

Me, Thomas, and our friend Becky

My solitary reflection.

All of us in alignment, actually a far more difficult and rare thing than this picture makes it look.

I know the hair is suspiciously pretty, but this is in fact Thomas and not a pretty blonde girl.

Ninja Poem

Tim challenged me to write a 20 line poem about the awesomeness of ninjas for my punishment. I don't like writing poetry, so this really is a punishment. On the up side, I think this is of sufficient length and difficulty to count as my writing for the day. Here goes:

Ninja, ninja, of the night,
Black and sleek, a frightening sight,

The moon shines off your silver blade,
The sharpest sword t'was ever made,

An arrow hurtles through the dark,
A ninja never misses his mark,

There will be no sound in the hush,
All his enemies he will crush,

A moving shadow need never hide,
Simply wait and patiently bide,

Boredom is his only fear,
No other danger can get near,

His task complete, he needs not rest,
His heart beats swiftly in his breast,

Then he hears the faintest hiss,
Something he could almost miss,

The only thing that could defeat,
This ninja of the high elite,

The second ninja's hair flies free,
He sees he's fallen to a she.

Despicable Me Mini Review and A for Effort

My sister and I saw Despicable Me and I thought it was cute but nothing fantastic UNTIL the end credits. This movie is worth the money just for the end credits alone. Ever since the 3D craze hit I've been complaining that none of the 3D pops out of the screen anymore. I don't care if they think depth is more "artsy." I want stuff flying in my face! And Despicable Me delivered--just not until the end credits.

I also didn't have the most spectacular start to working on my writing again but I get an A for effort because I went all the way back to my house from the movie theater to get my computer. We live quite close and our movie didn't start for an hour and a half and I hadn't done any writing so I felt I needed to do something. So I got a little bit of editing in before the film but hopefully today will be better.

Seeing a Movie

Might not be back till late. But I WILL get editing or writing done. Will explain how later. Notification of how much writing may come late but this is acceptable as long as it is done. (And notification is within the next day).

Forgot to Say

That I would not be blogging today.

Love, Self Respect, and Approaching Birthday



Cheesy and I'm still too immature to handle the "learning to love yourself" line, but I admit I like this song and it's fitting to my post.

There are many bad reasons to start a relationship such as money, loneliness, green cards, and legitimizing babies. But I think the most toxic thing in any relationship is an unhealthy mentality. There are a lot of different variations of those as well but one of the most common is trying to use another person to boost your self-esteem. But that never works. Even if that person loves you more than life itself, you will never be happy until you can love yourself (ha, ha, not in that way. Though it does help...).

This ties into another thing I've been thinking about: birthday presents. I admittedly get annoyed with people who say they don't want anything. I don't judge if people don't give me anything, but it's always nice when they do. Although, if anyone's curious (hint, hint) I do prefer people doing nice things for me as opposed to most presents. The best birthday I've ever had remains the one year in college my friends threw me a surprise party and to the best of my recollection I didn't receive any presents. It just meant a lot to me that they put that much thought into me to actually plan something.

Anyway, the point of all this is I was thinking that none of the things I truly want in life can simply be handed to me. Even more than financial independence, I want to know that I am productive and accomplishing things. It's how I measure my worth. Sure, if someone told me I could have anything I'd probably ask for a billion dollars. But I'd still want to have some kind of job. True, that job wouldn't have to produce money, which would be nice. But I'd still be unhappy if I wasn't doing it. In that situation I would want to be writing.

I've been going a bit bonkers recently and feeling a bit down. Part of it's that I was I was sick for a month! I think I caught two different colds. Blah! But the other major part is just that I haven't been writing. Even just in this blog. Well...I have in the twitter novella I'm collaborating on, but that's hardly enough for me. So I need to get back into gear. My writing has been tossed aside with a whirlwind of moving, settling, getting sick, and jetting off to DC for the ALA conference. But I'm back now and I'm feeling better. I'm actually going to a picnic tonight with my French conversation group and tomorrow I'm staying at a friend's house. Both things I know mean it wouldn't work well to start my resolution now. But on FRIDAY, MAY 16th, I will pick up my writing projects. Now, I won't always be able to do word count because two of my novels just need editing. I may decide I just need to focus on that until it's done. But starting Friday I need to do something writing related every day (unless I'm going to be gone all or most the day in which case, just as with the blog, I will notify in advance). Writing related activities could be editing, sending my book to agents, writing in my novel, or just writing a long blog post like this one (long posts will be more than 3 paragraphs).

I will once again tweet what I've done. I don't put my Twitter feed on my blog because of a running challenge I have with my friend that he find my Twitter. But since I'm willing to bet he hasn't read this (and if he has, he deserves it) here's the link.

The Dao of Having Done

When I was in college a wise man told me that you should be a Confucianist when you study for a test and Daoist once you've taken it. For those of you who don't know, that means that you should work really hard studying for the test, but don't worry after you've taken the test. I try to apply this to many types of difficult tasks. But it's not easy.

Bath Computer

It used to be there was nothing I liked more than a nice relaxing soak in the tub. But now my brain always feels like it needs to move faster than that. I won't blame computers. I love computers. I also don't necessarily think it's a bad thing that my brain now desires a faster rate of knowledge acquisition. Our world is just more interactive now. Yes, I can still read in the tub and I do but if there's something I'm curious about, like Walpurgis Night, I like to be able to look that up. I was recently watching a movie with a friend who thankfully took pity on my desire to look up some of the actors on IMDB. True, I also used to have an impeccable memory for actor faces. But why do I need that info cluttering my brain? Is it really so bad that that space can now be devoted to something else? And while looking up actors be unnecessary, learning about something isn't. Plus, internet users often seem to have a knee jerk reaction to fact verification. That's right, verifying stuff! People actually want to do that. Yes, there's still the issue of information literacy and making sure the websites they use are accurate. But just having culture of people who want and can access information seems like a good thing. On the other hand, as this ramble shows, it's also something that I feel often needs to be defended from accusations of making us all into drooling idiots with a five second attention span an the inability to remember a simple phone number.

Anyway, all this means I wish I had a computer I could take into the bath with me so my body could enjoy a good soak while my mind just kept on running.

Heat Stroke

Okay, not really but I went quite a ways today in the heat and I think it may have melted my brain.

Eclipse Mini Review

Girl hearts sparkly vampire. Sparkly vampire wants to marry girl but not turn her into eternal vampire he'd have to spend the rest of his life with... Girl wants to spend rest of her sparkly eternal life with vampire but not marry him. That's just silly. Lots of vampires and werewolves fight. Vampires also stand around and look cool. Hang out in a meadow full of miracle grow flowers. The end.

Hope I didn't spoil anyone.

What Would I Do For a Klondike Bar?

Nothing. I only ate one out of desperation today because all the ice cream sandwiches were gone and I wanted ice cream.

Spidercide!

Okay, normally I feel bad about killing spiders even though I'm afraid of them. I usually make the effort to catch and release. But this apartment is infested! And TWO were in my bed. NOT okay! So it's war. I will smush anything with eight legs. I figure they're bringing it on themselves at this point. They should have gotten the message when the first twenty didn't come back alive.

Blast From the Past

I was very pleased and surprised that I was finally able to get in touch with my former boss from Taiwan thanks to LinkedIn. Hooray for social networking, making the once impossible, possible! I can be somewhat grumpy about social networking when I feel people actually grow farther apart using it. For instance, if you don't know anything that's happened in the lives of your 400 Facebook friends but you do know they have a cow on Farmville. But finding people you never thought you'd hear from again is definitely what these should be used for.

As for the above picture. I think that was my last day in Taiwan. I had wanted to take some last-minute pictures but it was pouring rain. Can't recall if I purchased that excellent yellow bag I'm wearing or if it was loaned to me. Either way, my co-worker found it so hilarious, she had to take a picture. She called me "the yellow submarine." They all were really great to me and I had so much fun working there.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Film Review

So I loved the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and was excited when the Swedish film finally came to America. I went to see it this Sunday. (That's right, I celebrated Independence Day by seeing a foreign film). I really enjoyed the film and felt it captured the important essence of the book. Also, despite having to condense such a long and complicated novel, I think the movie was very coherent while still staying true to the story. The only changes I noticed were clearly for time and I think they were done artfully. Visually, it was very close to what I imagined in my head, which is always what you want from these types of adaptations.

I was trying to explain to a friend why I was glad to see the original Swedish film and not an American adaptation, but I had to eventually confess that it wasn't an objective thing. I just picture the characters as being Swedish and the story as taking place in Sweden. In the book it's more important, but in the movie it's just an ambiance.

I would recommend reading the book first just because it's brilliant, but if you do just see the film (and do see it if you can!) the only warning I give are there are some pretty violent rape scenes. If you're really sensitive to that sort of thing you may want to steer clear of both book and film. But I think that would be a shame because in the end it's a very empowering story with beautiful and vibrant characters.

Spoilers!

So I did love how Blomkvist slept with three different women through the course of the book but I understood why they would take that out. Not only does it save time but it also helps focus his relationship with Lisbeth. In the book you have time to understand that regardless of sleeping around, Blomkvist does genuinely respect and care for the women he's with. But in the film that would be tough to get across.

Caught and White House

So Chrissy noticed that I didn't blog on Saturday. She has not yet noticed that I didn't blog on Sunday. Tim, however, did notice, so he may pick a punishment if he likes. If he doesn't, the punishment goes to no one.

Anyway, in personal news I came back from DC recently. Here's a picture of me and the White House. I'd say "in front" of the White House except I wasn't exactly sure if that was the case. But I've definitely seen this side on the West Wing. I wasn't sure how into seeing the sights I'd be since American History isn't a huge interest of mine. But when I got there I decided I wanted to see the White House. Except I found out you can't tour the inside without contacting your congressman in advance. So that's a note to anyone wanting to do that. I did, however, tour the Library of Congress and just see the city in general.

Ha, HA!

I feel like I get more satisfaction out of forgetting to post and not getting caught these days than I do the actual posting. I need to address this. But for now, a fun fact! I just realized the bad guy in the third season of the guild is Wesley Crusher from The Next Generation! Above is an excellent and hilarious recap of the third season. If you like The Guild I highly recommend it. I wasn't going to watch a recap at first but I'm glad I did.