Johnathan and I made the decision that we couldn’t afford our all-access passes this year, and we truly thought we wouldn’t even miss them. We weren’t able to take the whole week off, so I figured it wouldn’t be a big deal. Oh, I was so wrong. We bought tickets for 25 films this year, which locked us in for those films. There were a few that, if we had the ability, we would have skipped on the day. So, we came away having learned a lot this year. Instead of reviewing the movies (especially because I only remember the really good ones and the really bad ones, and that’s not very fair), I’m going to give a rundown of what I learned this year:

• We need passes. Next year, we’re going back to our director level passes. (Or the executive ones if we manage to win one of the drawings! Not holding my breath on that one, but it’s nice to dream.)
• Staggering the evening blocks made it difficult to plan our schedule but it made an incredible difference in traffic. I hope they do it for weekends and Fridays next year, because it was a madhouse the first Friday and on the weekends until the blocks started to stagger.
• I don’t think I will ever really understand Second Life.
• Even when people are prompted to agree that there is no talking during festival films, they will talk anyway. I’m contemplating a shirt for next year that gives a warning that I throw hard candy at talkers. I’ll bring a bag of peanut M&Ms and throw them with abandon if I must. I don’t like peanuts anyway.
• Good films can be made based on books. I thoroughly enjoyed The Hedgehog at the festival, only to learn that it’s based on a book. I purchased it for my nook and I’m in the process of reading it now. It’s a necessarily different experience, but so far just as enjoyable. If it weren’t for the film festival, I might never have heard of this book.
• Holocaust subject matter is always devastating for me, yet I continue to be drawn to it. I came away from The Roundup quite literally sobbing. I would see it over again, because I think sometimes I need to be reminded that there are people who extraordinarily bad and also those who are extraordinarily good.
• Our method for picking films worked well for us this year. We were able to minimize the number of films that ultimately disappointed (although I expect there will always be some). It needs improvement, though – next year subject matter needs to be taken into consideration. No more starting or ending the day on a heavy film. Too rough.
• I need to avoid anything that’s labeled “thriller.” Even if I think it’s different than horror, others may not. (I’m looking at you, True Nature blurb writer.)
• The CIFF staff is incredible, from the core staffers down to the volunteers. If my biggest complaint about the festival is the talkers, that means they did their job in spades.
• It’s okay to cheer and clap after realizing you never have to see the year’s trailer again.
  • Side-note: It was then that I discovered that I wasn’t the only one not so enamored with the whole theme. Clearly others agreed!
• The relief that the festival is over only lasts a little while, and then I’m back to wanting to watch tons of movies. Thank goodness for Netflix!

My top films:

1. The Hedgehog
2. Matchmaker
3. With Love, from the Age of Reason

Runners up (in order that we saw them): 2030 – Revolt of the Young, Here Comes Lola!, These Amazing Shadows, The Rowan Waltz and The Roundup. Okay, so I liked a lot of the films we saw.

I love the film festival, and I’m glad to be a part of it, even if some of the others who also attend the festival can be trying at times. Just like in past years, there were some hallmark films that I’ll continue to remember and think about for years to come. That’s a successful festival for me.

Finals were last week. I finished them all with a bit of a whimper. I was really ready to be done with classes. I questioned the point. I asked myself if grades really matter to anyone but me. (Do they, honestly? Is anyone going to care what grade I got in a random class in community college? I really doubt it.) I wondered why I was putting myself through all of this. I talked about school at the beginning of the semester, before things had started to overwhelm me. Reading it again, I seemed so positive, so hopeful! At some point, I lost that. Possibly it was when I realized that my theater teacher was making the class very difficult for working students. (A weekday, daytime meeting requirement, really? Isn’t that the point of online classes? That they’re flexible for working students? Meh.) Maybe it was when I realized that most of the students in my classes were basically incapable of analyzing anything, and that I was doing way too much work to get the same grades as they would get. Maybe it was just because I lost the plot somewhere after the midterms. I still got my stuff done. I managed ultimately to get, I’m pretty sure, three As (in history and my two music survey classes) and a C (in theater – I could say a lot of mean things, but I’ll just say this: if you want a paper that’s 5-6 pages, tell me that; if you say you want the paper to be 4-5 pages, and I hit 4.5 pages, do not say it is on the short side! No! It is not! It is right in the middle. So there). I’m pretty satisfied with that. The perfectionist side of me is kicking myself for every point that I lost in that theater class that would have given me a C. Despite the fact that I lost 100 points (of 1100) because I couldn’t justify taking four or five hours off of work to go and watch a video of a play I’d already read (and he offered no alternative other than trying for extra credit in the discussion boards), I still blame myself. Surely I could have done something else to make up the points, right? Yeah, whatever. I vacillate between kicking myself and being overwhelmed by apathy about it. Either way, it’s over. So, this semester is done.

Before the semester ended, I made a few decisions. I was not going to take full time classes through the end of the year. This was my original plan. I’d have an Associate of Arts by the end of the year if I did. It would look really great to achieve that much! But that’s for students who have part time jobs or even no jobs at all. I can’t justify the sacrifice of life and sanity to get a degree that doesn’t actually achieve anything for me. I won’t get a raise or promotion because I have an associate’s degree, particularly in arts! That’s just not what IT departments are looking for, I’m pretty sure. So I dropped three of my classes for summer term and registered only for two classes in the fall. I’ll probably need to do classes next spring and summer, too, just to make sure I get all the classes I need for my degree, but with every semester, I’ll be getting a little closer. And, since I wouldn’t be pushing myself so hard, I’ll retain my sanity. That’s always a positive, I think.

In the last week, I decided to read one of the books that I go to when I want some comfort. It took me about one day to read through it, so then I picked up one of the books I brought in and sat up on the shelf on my desk before the semester started, when I thought I would still have time to read now and then. (That didn’t so much happen. They’re all a little dusty at this point.) I finished that one the next day. That night, we went to Barnes & Noble, just because. I bought two books. I started that one the next day and finished it last night. Then I started on the other book I bought. I’m reading it today at work (Friday! Whoo!) with every intention of finishing it today, unless things get crazy and busy. I have two books on my shelf here at work and at least two at home that I haven’t read before. I’m predicting that I’m going to run out of new books to read before the new semester starts up.

What I’ve really discovered is that it’s amazing what you miss out on when you have to sacrifice self in a busy schedule like I was living. I lost track of myself, and I really bottled everything up, because I didn’t want anyone else to see how hard it was on me. Earlier this week, as I was driving home from work, I basically lost it on the way home. I started sobbing, and I couldn’t stop. I cried halfway home, then came home and cuddled Beethoven for as long as he would let me hold him. Then he deserted me. My kitties, for once, couldn’t seem to tell that I needed them. So I took a nap. And when I woke up, I still felt off, but better. We went to the bookstore that night, and I started to feel more alive than I’ve felt in four months. I was reliving interests that I’ve had to put aside, not only for lack of time but also for lack of money. (We’ve been pretty ruthless with ourselves, and there just wasn’t money to buy books or many other fun things in past months.) We got coffee and meandered through the bookstore. I remembered what it feels like to find so many books that are begging to be taken home and to have to practice the self-denial which usually still involves buying two or three books. (I only got two! I was so proud of myself!) It felt like a piece of myself came back to me.

Now I’m reading voraciously, and thinking about imaginary characters in imaginary places and disappearing into their worlds for a little while. And then when I come back to real life,  I feel more alive again, like it’s easier to handle again. I’ve missed books. I didn’t realize how much I missed being able to read because I wanted to read, not because I needed to for a class. And it feels like, with the re-introduction of reading to my daily schedule, I have regained a piece of myself that has been dormant for months. It feels wonderful. I’m hopeful that I can avoid a repeat of this mania at the end of every semester to follow.

Hello, me! I missed you!

January and February were uneventful for me. I was working for the Evil Cable Empire, not really loving it but managing nevertheless. There was snow, it was cold, and generally the status quo stayed the same. Our year in snippets:

• We bought a new couch (which is pretty great).
• We saw Spring Awakening (which I loved).
• I joined my very first D&D campaign.
• We saw The Drowsy Chaperone again (to much less satisfaction than the first time).
• The Cleveland International Film Festival started again (and we loved it from start to finish).
• We saw Spamalot (and it was only okay).
• We saw The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee again (and it was exactly as expected).
• We went to Knoebel’s opening weekend.
• We saw Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin live in concert (it was pretty great).
• I lost my job at the Evil Cable Empire.
• I started knitting again.
• Johnathan started working for the hospital again.
• I finally got my wisdom teeth out.
• We went to Walt Disney World for two long, long weeks (it was really, really hot! but fun).
• We saw They Might Be Giants in concert (it was a Flood show – pretty fun!).
• We saw Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm in concert again (last year’s concert was better).
• I got the flu twice – the “regular” flu and H1N1. It was a “fun” month.
• I got a job at the hospital working at the new help desk.
• We saw Mamma Mia! (it was enjoyable).
• We saw Wicked (still a great show).
• We quit our D&D campaign.
• We visited Allison in Bloomington for a few days. (She visited us in Cleveland a few times, too.)

In other news, I watched 361 movies this year. It’s not quite one movie per day on average, but just about. I’ve seen a lot of good ones, a lot of bad ones, and a lot of mediocre, unmemorable movies this year. I really loved doing this, though. It was nice to have something to work toward this year, particularly after I became unexpectedly unemployed.

In addition to my 361 movies, I read 26 books. I seemed to let my “50 Book Challenge” fall by the wayside this year in favor of films, and that is okay with me. I completed 24 projects: 4 scarves (none for me), 10 hats (about half of them for me), 3 headbands, 2 coffee cozies, 1 pair of mittens, 2 market bag (very stretchy and wonderful), and 1 tank top (not my favorite project). I partially completed one set of fingerless gloves for myself, I made one flip-top mitten for Johnathan (the other is still in queue), one more market bag, two hats for me, half of a sock, part of a scarf for my brother (for which I have once again changed patterns), half of a second tank top (which I loved, but didn’t have the patience to finish), and another try at flip-top mittens for Johnathan which ended up not working as well as planned. Not to mention, one of those 10 hats had to be ripped out and started over again because I made it far too big for a normal-sized woman’s head.

As far as “big things” go, this year has been nothing compared to last year. I’m okay with that. A job loss was bad enough, I think!

2009 hasn’t been bad to us. I hope that 2010 will be better.

Bold the books you have read, italicize books you’ve started buy not finished, strike the books you read but hated, add an asterisk* to books you’ve read more than once, and underline those you own but still haven’t read yourself.

The books on the list are the top books that have been tagged “unread” or something similar on LibraryThing. It’s a long list of books, but a simple task, so I undertook it. I was ashamed to find out how many of these books that I haven’t even heard of, let alone put on my To-Be-Read pile (which, incidentally, is slowly but surely decreasing). Here’s how I came out with this list of 106:

001. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
002. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
003. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
004. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
005. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
006. Catch-22: A Novel by Joseph Heller
007. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
008. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
009. The Odyssey by Homer
010. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
011. Ulysses by James Joyce
012. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
013. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
014. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
015. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens *
016. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
017. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
018. The Iliad by Homer
019. Emma by Jane Austen
020. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
021. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
022. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
023. The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
024. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen *
025. The Historian: A Novel by Elizabeth Kostova
026. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
027. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
028. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
029. Life of Pi: A Novel by Yann Martel
030. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
031. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
032. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
033. Dracula by Bram Stoker
034. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
035. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
036. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
037. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
038. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi
039. Middlemarch by George Eliot
040. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
041. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
042. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
043. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
044. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
045. Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson
046. American Gods: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
047. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
048. The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver
049. Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire *
050. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
051. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
052. Dune by Frank Herbert
053. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
054. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
055. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
056. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
057. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
058. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
059. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
060. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
061. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
062. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
063. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
064. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay: A Novel by Michael Chabon
065. Persuasion by Jane Austen *
066. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
067. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
068. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
069. Anansi Boys: A Novel by Neil Gaiman
070. The Once and Future King by T. H. White
071. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan
072. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
073. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
074. Oryx and Crake: A Novel by Margaret Atwood
075. Dubliners by James Joyce
076. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
077. Angela’s Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
078. Beloved: a novel by Toni Morrison
079. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond
080. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
081. In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its… by Truman 0Capote
082. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
083. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
084. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
085. Watership Down by Richard Adams
086. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
087. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
088. Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Anonymous
089. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
090. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into… by Robert M. 0Pirsig
091. The Aeneid by Virgil
092. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
093. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
094. The Personal History of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
095. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
096. Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
097. The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling by Henry Fielding
098. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
099. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
100. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
101. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
102. Candide, or, Optimism by Voltaire
103. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
104. The Plague by Albert Camus
105. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
106. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

This is a fairly respectable list, as far as I can figure from the number of “classics” that fill it, but all the same it means that while they’re classics and people have them, they aren’t reading them. Judging by the ones that I’ve forced myself through and not enjoyed, I think the classics are overrated. Oh well! I’m not inspired to add many of these to my reading list at this juncture; I’ve enough to read already!

Speaking of books and reading: I’m now 42% of the way done with my 50 Book Challenge! I have a feeling that I’ll hit 50 books before January 1, 2009 rolls around. I’m very pleased with my progress. If I do meet the challenge, I will have knocked approximately 40 books off of my to-be-read list. More, if I’m ambitious enough to keep going through the end of the year on unread books. If I don’t make 50 by the end of the year, however, I have committed myself to refraining from purchasing any new books until I have read every book on our bookshelves that I haven’t yet read. It should be interesting to see if I’m able to make it! For my own sanity, I sure hope that I can!

I’m keeping track of my progress for my 50 Book Challenge on livejournal and on LibraryThing. Feel free to friend me if you like!

My first encounter with Anne “with an E” Shirley was when I was about ten years old. My mom owned the two TV movies with Megan Follows and Jonathan Crombie on VHS. At the time, I was a bit young to take in all of the depth of the stories, but I fell in love with Anne (and Gilbert, of course) nonetheless.

When I was twelve, I got the whole set of eight books as a gift for Christmas in 1997 from a family friend who continued the encouragement of reading by giving me books for my birthday and for Christmas for every year that I lived with my parents. I didn’t start on the books immediately, but by the end of January of 1998, I had devoured at least two of the books. It didn’t take me long to fall in love with Anne all over again, this time as she was originally written.

I’ve been thinking about the centennial since around November of last year and unfortunately I’ve been unable to come up with any kind of unique and extrodinary way to commemorate such a historic event. Instead of doing something ground-breaking, I’ll be reading one book a week, starting this Sunday, for the next eight weeks. Essentially, I’m going to take a series that I already know inside, outside and upside down and make it last for eight weeks. Something must be done to celebrate 100 years of Anne, and this is the only way I know how.

If you’re interested in having discussions or simply squeeing with me as I read through the books, find me over at livejournal. I’ll have to friend you, but then we can frolick in the literary White Way of Delight together for eight glorious weeks.

Anyway: Anne of Green Gables has been around for 100 years and I hope people still enjoy it for 1000 more.

Sunday morning (afternoon, really) Laura and I decided to check out a little cafe down the street that we stumbled across while looking for something to do Saturday night. It was too crowded when we stopped in on Saturday so we put it on our to-do list for Sunday. We rolled in and got some coffee at about 2:30 or so and decided that we didn’t want to go home. We had the idea to get in the car and drive somewhere.

It’s about an hour and a half to drive from the Cleveland area to Columbus so we opted to head south and see where typing “Columbus, OH” into my GPS would take us. Wouldn’t you know it took us to downtown Columbus?

After we ran home for a bit, grabbed a bit to eat, and grabbed a few CDs worth of music to take with us we were on our way. We got to a random spot in downtown Columbus and decided to use the “find food” function on the GPS to find a cafe. We ended up finding a nice little coffee shop in the Germantown section of Columbus which was right next to a really nifty book store that was built into an old house that had been expanded. There were 32 rooms worth of books!

We grabbed some coffee, headed down the street to grab some yummy German food, then wandered into this book store. I’m not that much of a reader, but even I had a bookgasm when we walked in. We spent a good hour walking around in there. That’s saying something since neither of us is much of a shopper.

What I’m really trying to say is sometimes it’s good to plan things to do, but sometimes it’s good to just cut loose and go wherever the wind takes you. We didn’t know what we were going to be doing when we got in the car on Sunday but we ended up having a great time. What’s more special is we got to share some experiences together.

Things are better when you share them with somebody important to you.

Among things that are hibernating on the shelf right now are:

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Twilight by Stephanie Meyer (I’m unsure about this one)
Everyone Worth Knowing by Lauren Weisberger
Mary Poppins Comes Back by PL Travers
Rococo by Adriana Trigiani
Making Avonlea by Irene Gammel

Not to mention at least ten LM Montgomery books that I haven’t read yet, but are sitting on the shelf just begging to be pored through. I figure, by the end of this year, if I haven’t finished all of the books on my shelf which currently remain unread or at least try to do so, then I’m not giving it my best shot and I need to stop buying more books. (Well, until we get a new bookshelf, I need to do that anyhow.)

I’m hoping this can be The Year of the Book, but given the events that loom ever closer, not to mention my desperate need for employment, I don’t know how much reading I’m actually going to get done.

The long of it is so: I’ve been applying for jobs left, right and center and still have nothing, not even retail. I think after the holiday is over, I’ll contact a temp agency and get the ball rolling that way. I vaguely tried a few weeks ago but it came to nothing and I didn’t really follow up. That was my fault. It’s not a lot of fun, this job searching thing, and honestly it’s a bit frustrating for me overall. I will prevail, though. Somehow, I’ll prevail.

What I’ve been doing since Allison left is trying to keep up with the housework, and doing so poorly, fighting off several colds (Johnathan working in a hospital and all, and me not having any immunities to the exact cold strains that will have gone around over the years in Ohio, I’m very susceptible to basically anything that comes home), and reading books. I’ve gone through several over the last month or so. I’d say six or seven, at minimum. I don’t know.

Let’s see, Thanksgiving happened in the meantime. Johnathan’s mom came over the Saturday after and we had dinner and played Mario Party 8. Not a big to-do, but fun nevertheless. Christmas is next week, obviously, and we’re going over to her house for a couple of hours, but spending the majority of the evening on our own. We’re going to see his dad and step-mom on Friday, so that’ll get all the holiday stuff out of the way, and then we’ll be able to coast until the new year.

As far as Christmas, due to a constrained budget, we weren’t thinking we were going to have any decorations and certainly no splurging on gifts for one another. I bemoaned our lack of festive decor on my livejournal and some of my friends from there, particularly the people I knew in Hogwarts Elite stepped in and sent a large box filled with sweets, cookies, ornaments, lights and a few knickknacks like a reindeer with teeny bells on its antlers and some poppers which I put into the stockings that we put up. Allison sent a tree and a bunch of ornaments as well so we’re done up quite a lot with lights and our adorable three-foot tree. Incidentally, here are some photos of what we were sent:

So, we’ve got a fair amount up now. I haven’t taken pictures of the rest of it all done up yet, but I will before it comes down and I’ll share for sure. Unfortunately, we had to take the tinsel off of the tree because the cats decided it was incredibly tasty and I know that’s no good for kitties. So, we have a huge bag of tinsel that we’ll have to sort out something to do with for next year. Obviously we can’t use it because of the feline buttheads. Ah, well!

While we’re on the subject of Christmas, it’s been an interesting year what with our plans to get married in April. We want to get married this year, which means we’d like to go on our honeymoon this year, so all we’ve told anyone that we wanted for Christmas (with the exception of my drooling over a Kitchenaid Stand Mixer…) is money toward our ideal honeymoon trip. So far, my mom has pitched in, which I’m really grateful for, as has Allison. So as of right now, we’re at…

$210 / $4000

Super impressive, I know! But hey, a start is a start, right? I’m hoping we can afford it by April, but if not, we’ll have to put it off until September or so, or maybe as long as next year. I know his mom has something up her sleeve so we’ll see what happens. I’m really excited about all of that, too. (Of course, if anyone wants to contribute, you’re more than welcome. )

I guess I should mention that we’re officially getting married on April 25 of this year. It’s going to be very small – his parents and anyone important to me who can manage to get out here. I’ll be inviting my mom, step-dad and brother for certain – inviting my dad and step-mom is a bit more iffy because I haven’t heard anything from either of them since before I moved and really, I mostly don’t care – but I don’t know whether they’ll be able to get out here this April for a one-day, very small and unassuming situation. I’m planning to invite Allison as well, because I figure she’s close enough to come to it so long as school or work doesn’t interfere. It’s exciting to know that in about four months, we’ll be married. A Smith no more, hurrah! So, there’s that.

Recently, I picked up the His Dark Materials trilogy because I read about all the controversy surrounding it from religious groups. I want to write about it, but I haven’t sat down and done so as yet. Honestly, I loved them and I really don’t see where the controversy is coming from. Of course, after I finished reading, the immediate thing I thought of was how awesome it would be to roleplay in the world that Philip Pullman presents. Go figure, huh? Geeky ’til I die! That said, I’ve jumped in – well, not jumped so much as eased in – at HisDarkMaterials.org which is honestly one of the most attractive websites I’ve seen. It’s set up nicely and the graphics are pretty without being overwhelming. It’s not often I find a black-themed website that suits my fancy, so it makes me happy. Oh, incidentally, they’re having a book giveaway for a book about the Golden Compass books and I put in for it on a whim, because who doesn’t like winning, right? Well, I got notice today that I actually won! So I’ll be getting a free copy of the book, autographed by both the author and illustrator as well as a pack of Golden Compass cards (which are movie-themed, I believe).

Another new interest of mine is the Young Frankenstein cast album, which I recently acquired. The cast is very talented, and the songs are very amusing. I’m glad I have the soundtrack, and I think if it were to tour, I’d probably make an effort to see it. Oh, speaking of musicals, awful news! The Drowsy Chaperone which is by far my favorite musical right now (I say ‘right now’ because it’s always subject to change, but it’s been ‘right now’ for almost two years now…) is closing on December 30th. When it closes, it will have played 32 previews and 674 performances. It’s so sad that it’s closing after only a year and a half on Broadway. I’m sad that I won’t have seen it on Broadway before it closes, but I did get to see it on tour and loved it. Can’t be too choosy, right? I’m just saddened that it’s ending. Who knows, though. Maybe it will pull a Les Mis and have a revival in three or four years.

I’ve also thrown myself into the groups and talk area over at LibraryThing. I’m really enjoying that as well. I finally got my whole library catalogued there, and it’s interesting to note that even after parting with a fair number of books to make the move, I have 160 books. I’d very likely have over 200 if I hadn’t parted with some before moving. There are others that I’ve made the decision to part with as well, since moving here. So, I’m impressed with my own numbers. Of course, there are people with upwards of 10,000 books, and many people have between 2,000 and 5,000 in their libraries, but I’m still fairly young and just moved across the country as frugally as I could manage. I know I’ll get more books together once I’m fully settled and employed. At any rate, if anyone wants to friend me, I welcome them to do so!

So, really, I’ve been keeping myself busy, I think that’s plain to see. I finally met some more of Johnathan’s friends, including his friend Nicole, who we wanted to see when she was performing in Forbidden Broadway here but unfortunately we didn’t manage to do it before it closed this month, and his coworker Dennis. I think we’re going to start doing more social things – meaning more things outside the apartment that don’t necessarily involve computers or gadgets of any kind. It will be good for me, even though it still gives me a fair amount of social anxiety.

I think I’ve made this entry long enough, don’t you? So, I leave you with my dæmon and go back to … whatever it was that I was doing before.

The first thing that struck me while reading this series of short stories is that divorce is a heavily used theme, as is parental abandonment. I think in almost every story, some form of one or both themes manifests itself. I was comforted to see Weiner make comments about this very same thing in an interview that was printed in the back. Apparently most of these stories were concocted during her early college years, which occurred just after her own father left the family.

I think, inexplicably, my favorite series of short stories were those which were the most clearly autobiographical – those of Josie, Nicki, Jon and their mother. Even while Nicki was whiny and sour, Jon was sullen and Josie seemed to have very little backbone of her own, always afraid of making a wrong step, I found the family endearing. Throughout the whole thing, it’s clear they care about each other, to some degree. They also seem to be very bad at showing it. I really liked reading the trilogy of short stories about them that were interspersed throughout.

My least favorite had to be the story of Dora getting robbed in a manner of speaking by Amber and Dawn, two girls from New Jersey. None of the characters jumped out at me as characters with whom I could identify or at least find endearing features. It seemed a poor ending to a series of short stories that did keep me reading. I think the novel would have best ended with the last of the three autobiographical stories, which seemed to have the most realistic and final of the endings.

On the whole, it was a nice novel. Not a great one, but a series of short stories cannot be expected to compete with a longer, more cohesive novel. Still, it was a nice read. I look forward to the time when I have the money to pick up Little Earthquakes, which I believe is the last of her novels that I have not yet read.

Of all of the Austen books I’ve read, I found this one among the harder ones to complete. I adore Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice. I was able to easily enough complete Sense and Sensibility. This one, along with Emma, I found very trying. The main character, Catherine seems bland at best, and while there are a limited number of characters we are supposed to find endearing, I found many of them trying. It was a constant question of, ‘Is this person going to stay in our good graces or will he or she too find disgrace on the next page?’ I managed to finish this one, but it was hardly pulling at my attention, begging for me to read it in the wee hours of the morning and keep at it for various intervals throughout the day until I get into bed. The characters were alright, but the book seemed to have no flow or direction, almost as if the novel were as inexperienced as the heroine.

I will say that there were some very good lines and probably some very good messages in it. However, I didn’t find this book to be treasurable enough to read over and over as I have found the other named Austen novels to be. I’ll probably class it with Emma, a book to read once (which I have yet to manage with the latter), but to leave on the shelf thereafter.

I’ve previously read two of her other novels, and have the newest novel sitting right here, just begging to be opened. The best I can say about the others is that I enjoyed them enough to read them straight through and finish them. There are other books to which I cannot be so kind. It isn’t as if I didn’t like them – on the contrary. I’ve ready them both more than once. On the other hand, they didn’t leave me wanting to rave about the books from rooftops.

This one was different, though. I had a bit of a hard time getting into it, a fact which I owe to starting it while I was working at Comcast and rarely able to read more than three or four pages at a time before I would have to put it down to take a phone call. (I know, I know. It sucks to be me, having to actually do my job.)  At any rate, I picked it up again recently and really haven’t been able to put it down since. The main character has a kind of appeal to her that most other characters in books I’ve read don’t have, so she appeals to me in a kind of different way. She has none of the confidence and social togetherness that the other heroines have, and in that way, I guess I can identify with her more as I am rather than as I would like to be. She is an excellent if struggling mother, an intelligent woman and an all-around caring person who just doesn’t quite seem to have it all together.

What surprised me most about this book was how much into the murder mystery storyline I found myself diving. Usually I’m content to “watch” on the outside, with only vague curiosity in ‘whodunnit’. I was right there with Kate the whole way, trying to find out who was the killer and what had happened to cause the situation. I was really quite taken in by this book. It is a definite keeper for me; I’ll probably read it again. My only complaint about it was the way the story skipped around. Sometimes I like a little shifting in time – not telling the story in order, but this didn’t seem to work out for me. It wasn’t well-timed flash-backs, it was simply flash-backs interspersed with current story so that nothing seemed to come together at all – not even in a vague way – until halfway through the book. Still, I really enjoyed reading it, even if the ending wasn’t as clear-cut about what happened as I would like. Life doesn’t end up with clean endings, though, so I guess I should stop hoping my books will.

That said, I did pick up and start reading this book on and off over the last month, and finally read it cover to cover in earnest over the last two days. I would have finished sooner (it’s not a difficult or slow read), but I kept putting down the book in disbelief. For those who haven’t read it and would like not to have their reading of it spoiled, I’ll put this behind a… thingy. I don’t know what it’s called. Anyway.

My disbelief was fueled by the fact that the main character kept having run-ins with Mr. Darcy. Not just a man with the surname of Darcy, but the genuine flesh-and-blood representation of the Mr. Darcy of Pride & Prejudice fame. The interludes would only happen when she was alone and separated from her tour group, and would end quickly with her being jolted back to reality by someone else. I found it entirely unbelievable. We’re supposed to subscribe to the magic, I’m assuming, but I really wasn’t buying into it.

Something else I found a bit grating was the very, very obvious parallels to the aforementioned book. Discussing every woman’s obsession with Mr. Darcy is not at all a problem to me, but the only thinly veiled likenesses to the book without any mention or recognition of this fact until nearly the end of the novel was also a bit annoying to me. I love Pride & Prejudice – I truly do, but I would rather read the book itself rather than a copy of it set in modern time with added alcohol and hallucinations.

The book wasn’t bad, but I found it a little forced. I knew there would be a Darcy-type character, but in the guise of “magic” or as I found it more like, hallucination,  it didn’t work for me. I think this book is going into the give-away pile because I doubt I’ll find myself wanting to read it again.

I will say that there is nothing – nothing that beats curling up with a hot cup of citrus tea when it’s cold and rainy, with a fuzzy blanket, a purry cat and a good book. You just can’t get that kind of satisfaction from a computer. DailyLit is super convenient, though!

It sends installments of books on a daily basis, which means that while I’m at work, I can have installments of books sent, and just read them in little chunks at a time. I plan to add tons of books to this, and read them as I’m at work. It means that I’ll be able to knock out some books that I’ve been meaning to read.