4 posts tagged “books”
yesterday, while i was at work, a conflict broke out on the street below and shots were fired. we may be on campus property, but this school is in the city, and in a highly active area. a place where cops hang out because of the abundance of traffic violations and parking dilemmas, good food, and courtyards with loiterers. i dont think there has ever been a day where i have not seen a police officer walking around down here. so then what would possess someone in an arguement to leave, retrieve a gun, come back and take a few shots? i suppose i will never understand people.
this book club things seems to be working out pretty well. not only has there been decent discussion, but we've picked two good reads so far.
i just read the previously mentioned f s fitz "curious case of benjamin buttons" and it was a pretty interesting short story. theres really not much to it but the mere fact that it handles the enormous hurdle of encompassing a persons life and events within 20 pages is pretty amazing. the beginning and ending are well done, with sort of filler in the middle. but really the focus at first is how bb's birth is such a mysterious thing, and how his father handles it. and then as the story ends it becomes how people will not put up with him because of how he is unable to handle himself. its strange but worth of discussion, which will surely be done in my new book club!
abs and i started a book club. we'll see how far that goes in terms of getting people together and having them all read the book proposed.
other reading ive done? just tpb comics i picked up from matt. hes got this huge collection and i went through and started picking off some of the well recieved titles. i think ive become an even bigger nerd in the last year than all through high school. anyways, finished BPRD vol 1 + 2, goon vol 0 + 1, battlepope 1.
for the past few days ive been trying really hard to find something to post about because i know i havent in a while. or at least it seems to have been an incredibly long time since ive posted anything significant.
but maybe this will do?
im reading to kill a mockingbird for the Xbillionth time. ok, maybe like the fourth or fifth? i really like it and sometimes ill just pick it up out of the blue and read. its like one of those comfort fall-backs.
but what i really should be reading is harry potter. i have to reread all of them. except half-blood prince; because i sort of neglected to read it X( i know, blasphemous; but i just never got around to rereading the series to remember where everything was in order to read hbp. but with the movie coming out and me having a ton of free time, i suppose i no longer have legitimate excuses not to catch up /prepare.
anyways, to kill a mockingbird showed up the other day on one of my favorite blogs, passive agressive notes: in a found message.
and while im sharing things, i started making the swim kids do these exact yoga stretches (no balance poses though) during our medicine ball exercises. have i yet mentioned that im taking a yoga class through school? yeah, exciting stuff. i love it, minus the fact that its a really fast paced class. i barely make it to some poses before we change over to something else. im not really sure why we run through routines so quickly, but it doesnt give me much time to work into things. i think my teacher is just abnormal like that. shes got this heavy-as-a-lead-elephant accent from russia or ukraine or something that makes it impossible for anyone to really understand what shes saying. we all just kind of look around and mimic what we see. but still, that corpse nap at the end is nice and meditative and awesome so i still enjoy everything.
umm. what else... i bought and watched the first two seasons of veronica mars? im sad it got cancelled it was a pretty good show. oh, and im going out of town this weekend all the way till like wednesday for work. its a training trip, so ill be driving a big 15 passenger van across virginia to wintergreen and waynesboro and stuff. we'll also be stopping by busch gardens williamsburg, im pretty psyched about that new rollercoaster the griffin.
What are five books that changed your life?
Inspired by Ms. Genevieve.
Lets start with the bruce coville, jeremy thatcher dragon hatcher: this was my favorite book back when i was little. it started my interest in reading, and put me further onto the path of science fiction. also, its a cute moral tale of growing up and letting go of things you love so they can grow too.
sometime in middle school, my cousin worked for random house publishing inc, and she sent us this giant tome of language known as an unabridged dictionary. it weighs somewhere around 15 pounds and holds more words than i can query. it started my love of linguistics.
also in middle school, i was forced to read a tale of two cities. and i trudged through it with the dictionary by my side. but i love this story, and it changed my life because 1.i was forced to memorize beginning and ending paragraphs and recite them in front of giggling peers and 2.it was a great example of sacrifice. i think i base much of my conscience on what i learned from this book.
then, in ninth grade, i read romeo and juliet and fell in love with shakespeare. this continued through tenth grade when i read julius caesar, and twelfth grade with hamlet. all of the little secrets, the puns, the political jabs, social commentary; it all thrilled me and set me off to write. thats why i create poetry, and its the reason i blog.
hamlet is by far my favorite of all the plays ive read, and after we covered it in twelfth, we read rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead which completely blew my mind. r&g took everything i knew about life and twisted it just enough to question it all without trying to pull the wool over my eyes. this book sparked my interest in human mentality and psychology, and generally made me question lots of things going on in life. thats why i liked it, and thats what i continue to do all the time.
