I've never been one for reading multiple books at one time. In fact, when I was a little girl, I thought to do so would be blasphemous. Lots of my friends read multiple books and the thought just made me feel dirty. 

I grew up, eventually, I learned several things about reading habits. One was that it was okay to stop reading a book before you finish it. If it's not for school and it's just not doing it for you, it's okay to put it down. There has only been one time that I have ever done this and I haven't really put that particular book down for good. I'm planning on going back to it having heard some interesting things about the end. 

Another was that reading multiple books at one time can actually be enjoyable. I've only started recently started reading Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke (as you may see in my last post), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams, and Burning Your Boats: A Collection of Stories by Angela Carter. Surprisingly, all of these books tend to balance each other out. 

I've had a lot of different moods in the past few weeks, due to stress at work and with my friends and all of these books have fit the mood I have been in. 

I have also recently given up cable and I'll be honest, there are just sometimes when Netflix is not doing it for me. Of course, there are times when I get really bored with what I'm reading. I'm very rarely a marathon reader. 
I've done it with Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, but there are very few books out there that can grip me by the shoulders and pull me in. 

Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke


Sigh. I'm getting a little tired of it and I've thought of putting it down. However, I've waited so long to actually finish this series that I really need to just get through it and be done with it. Plus, I have this deep internal desire that the book will take me back to the times when I was a 12 year old who sat under my covers with a flash light reading about my favorite characters, Meggie, Mo and Dustfinger. 
It's just that every one of those characters is so damned depressed in this book. Oh god, I don't know how much longer I can take it. I know the whole world is sad and junk, but even the happy moments seem dismal. That's why I have....

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams


I am always a fan of British Humor. Whether it be television, film or literature. I just love the Brits! Especially, when I get to read about London. I was only there last year, but the memories are as clear to me as this laptop. I love hearing about all the places I used to go after class or the secret side streets I used to explore and find hidden treasures and etc. 
But the main reason I'm listing this great British read is a) I love Douglas Adams (who doesn't) and b) it's fun to read something only semi-mindless. There are lots of literary and scientific jokes that can be hard to miss, but Adams sets up these jokes so that you're prepared for them when they pop up. The anticipation doesn't actually give away the joke, but it does get you ready for something funny. 
It's a nice break from the depressing features in Inkdeath, but there are times when I'm looking for a little more in reading which brings me to...

Burning Your Boats by Angela Carter


I've actually been going through this thing for a while. I bought it when I was in London (of course) and had to read several stories out of it for a class I was taking, but there are some stories that my Professor didn't cover and they are actually quite good!
One of my favorites is "The Victorian Fable" which is written in old Victorian Rhyming Slang, similar to Cockney or other British dialects. It's a very short story only about a two and half pages, but the trick of the story is to read while translating with the Victorian Rhyming Slang dictionary that Carter provides after the story. It's sort of brilliant because at first glance there doesn't seem to be much happening in the story, but once you are able to translate the whole thing you realize that it is actually a pretty tragic story and moralistic for the reader. 
Carter is brilliant with language, which is what I think draws me to her. I love language myself and am planning on doing a lot of graduate research on the subject. Carter's stories are rich with sounds and the use of language as a story-telling device. She's honestly amazing and extremely underrated. 


So yeah! That's what I'm reading. And I'm reading them all at the same time. 
Maybe I still feel a little blasphemous, but at least I feel like I'm making some headway in my TBR list!

So, I'm reading The Chronicles of Narnia and I like it so far. 
Maybe I'm heading out of that phase where I like fantasy books (maybe I'm growing up! Heaven forbid!) but I feel like I'm sort of missing it. 

I've read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe about a million times (and can I just say that I had to look up the title in four different places to make sure he wasn't using the Oxford comma in the title. Funny, isn't it?) and now I'm on The Horse and His Boy. I like the way that the story is set up in this one. Like all of Lewis' children's lit, you can see where he's intended the young readers to notice when a character is being good and being bad and that sort of stuff. And as always he does it incredibly well without beating the idea into the readers' heads. But I guess I'm just sort of thrown off by the plot. 
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was so good you couldn't put it down, with The Horse and His Boy I'm a little less interested most of the time. Until you get to the part where Shasta and Aravis cross-paths with the Narnians, you don't really see much going on... 
Blah, I don't know this seems kind of like a pointless post, since The Horse and his boy is so short and like a filler episode compared to the other books. 
I guess I just want to skip to Prince Caspian already and be done with it.... 

Narnia! Please redeem yourself!

Hello!

So, I'm pretty excited about this summer. 
And I when I mean "pretty excited" I mean mildly dreading it. 

This will be the first summer that I am NOT a student and will be working full-time at my College and being a big adult and stuff.
However, I will mostly be alone in my little lonely town aside from my boyfriend who will be about 2 hours away and my colleagues. 
So, that means free time? Or time to get another job - which could be the case. Having just started out on my own, I am in serious need of paying off student loans come September and in need of some extra cash to cushion the rent costs, etc. 

However, even if I don't get this extra job, I'm hoping to keep up on my reading, since I will have nothing else to do. And writing (possibly, I've got some ideas). 

Also, I really want to start making a PODCAST! What I would need to do is pick a topic and just run with it! I was hoping to incorporate some of my literary nerdy skills and some of my personal commentary on current events and stuff. 

If anyone is actually reading this (or has made it this far) I would like to enlist your help:

Have you ever made a Podcast?
What did you do? 
What kind of software did you use?
If none of the above are applicable, do you listen to podcasts?
If so, what do you look for in your podcasts?

Anyway, just trying to get that out there!

Thanks for reading and sticking with me! 

So, I've finally started reading Inkdeath (the last book in the Inkheart Trilogy). It came out a few years ago and I had read Inkspell immediately after it came out, but after I read it I was somewhat less excited for the next installment In fact, my initial feelings about Meggie and Mo from Inkheart had severely diminished in the second book, but I bought the last book anyway. 

And I've just started reading it. 
Well, I still feel this diminished emotion for Meggie, Mo, Resa, and the rest of the characters and I'm not sure if it is the book or if it is me! When I first read Inkheart I got this exciting feeling of adventure that you get with all great bibliophile young adult books (at least in my opinion) and I loved it! I couldn't stop reading. 
With Inkspell, I felt like I just got through it and with Inkdeath it's taken me a while to actually work myself up to getting past the first chapter. 
Now, that I have I only get little reminiscent of my first feelings with Inkheart. And I'm not sure if it's because I'm older or it's been so long since I've been invovled with the story that I've lost interest. 

I'm going to keep reading, of course, because some parts of it do keep me very entertained, but I think it will take me a while, because I'm just not motivated to know more about the story right now. 
All of this makes me feel so bad too. Is it me? Have I changed so much that I can't get into a story that I once loved? Maybe I'm just getting too old for young adult novels now. I think that's what makes me feel the worst. 
We'll see. I'm hoping the plot gets better and the characters become lovable again. Right now, most of them just feel so whiny. 
I want them to be the characters that made me want to read their story - is that too much to ask?
 

Hello!
So, I realize I have some things to catch up on. I also realize that no one really care about LiveJournal any more, so I'm not too concerned if no one understand a word I'm saying. (Mostly, because most of the comments I've been getting recently have been in Russian, and apparently, I sound really good in Russian. Успех!)

Okay. So, I graduated in December and now I am living on my own... with my cat... in Polk County. 
I mean I've got a really nice job, an especially really nice job having just graduated. And I can totally move forward in my career - I can spend 2 years getting my masters at the College I work for and then work in any school anywhere essentially. 
So, it's not too bad. I won't be able to apply for my masters until the summer, though. Just because I won't be able to apply for benefits until March. So, I just need to wait and see. 
But right now, 8-5 gets pretty boring. At night and on the weekends, I feel like I need something to do. 

So, there are a few projects I have in mind, I just need to define them for myself and decide which I want to start. 

Well, the first is I want to start a themed blog. I wanted to do The Search for High Fructose Corn Syrup for a while; it would basically center around a daily picture of something that I had eaten that had High Fructose Corn Syrup in it. Becuase, seriously, who really knows what it actually is. I thought it would end up turning into a search to figure out what it is, how it is actually made, and how it actually works into food production. 
It would start out easy, and then would build up into something bigger. 
Then I thought of doing something like Julie and Julia where she made different recipe everyday, but that would get sort of expensive for me right now. But maybe I could a different movie every day, I think that would be my sort of thing. But I would probably end up falling of that schedule because, SHOCKINGLY, I do have other things going on in my life. 

So, I could pick up knitting again, which would definitely give me some easy direction. There's not much that actually goes into it other than knitting, which I can totally do. Or I could do something else pretty artsy, like an art journal or something. That's another thing that doesn't really need that much commitment, but does give me some direction. 

I mean I'm reading, which is always an ongoing thing for me. I can't NOT read - curse of being an English major. 

I've also thought I writing a book. Sort of a continuation of my senior seminar. I'm already presenting it again in March for the English Department Lecture Series (ugh, why did I agree to do that?) But I'm also thinking of rearranging it and including Harry Potter so I can submit it to Ascendio and maybe present there in July! That would be pretty neat! 
Then I've thought of developing it completely and writing a book like Arika Okrent. (Gah! English Major Fan-girl moment). 

Then I've also thought of writing a novel. Which would be a completely different story (hahaha) from the other book idea. I've sort of got a plot in the works, but I just don't know if it will really pan out. We'll see. 

So... I guess those are a few of the projects I'm thinking about. 
that's really all I've got for now. 

I'll come back with some more thoughts later. 
Thanks for still reading if you're out there, readers!

1. Heartless - Gail Carringer 8/10
2. Club Dead - Charlene Harris 7/10
3. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card 10/10
4. Heat Wave - Richard Castle 5/10
5. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 10/10
6. The Horse and His Boy - C.S. Lewis 7/10
7. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency - Douglas Adams 9/10

Well, I didn't hate this book, but I'm not sure how I feel about it now. 



I will assume that everyone that has been in a High School English class will know that this book is meant to be a satire of the other more serious travel narratives of the time. The writing is dense: yes, it's a parody 18th century travel narrative. The jokes are outdated: yes, it's a parody 18TH CENTURY travel narrative. Swift is trying too hard to be funny: YES, it's a PARODY of an 18th century travel narrative. 
I knew this, but it seems to me that many people didn't get it. 

I started reading the book for my Senior Sem project and read reviews online where people were complaining that "it was torture" and "he went on and on for a million paragraphs" or "it's so crude"
At first, I thought these reviews were completely ridiculous. Obviously, those people had been forced to read the book in High School and hated it or didn't get the point of the book at all. 

Well, then I got 100 pages in. By the time Gulliver got into the fourth description of the grotesqueness of the Brobdingnagians, I was ready to throw the book out of a swiftly moving car. I finally understood where "it's just so crude" was coming from.
IT REALLY IS CRUDE! I'm sorry, we're calling this book a children's book? I hardly think that multiple descriptions of human feces and discharge and women's breast account for a children's book. And that's not even mentioning the blatant and gratuitous references and criticisms of politics, government and society. 

I heard several reviews that said the last venture was with the Houyhnhnms was the best written, but seriously? He's so disgusted with the human race after his three year experience with them that he can't stand the sight of his wife and children (with whom he has barely seen their entire lives). I'M disgusted. 

By the last page, I was fully convinced that Gulliver's wife was doing someone else, Gulliver was a submissive, bestial, womanizer who was afraid of his own sexuality and the entire book could have been cut down to 100 pages and had the same effect with less poop and sex.

A children's book? Really? 

Alrighty.
Finished The Fellowship of the Ring and I think I'm going to continue on to Two Towers. It's a challenge, but it's 2011 and I might as well get it done now.

Also finished The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan.



It was surprisingly fantastic. I was expecting something with a little less luster than the Olympian series, but I was very pleased with the different voices from the new characters and I REALLY liked how Riordan covered his bases at the end and connected the stories of Percy and the new story line. I'm actually looking forward to the next one.
It was a nice quick easy read after LOTR.

But - BACK TO THE OLD GRINDSTONE.
I have to read A Clockwork Orange and The Silmarillon AT LEAST before I start classes in the end of August. I'm almost worried, I got into a sort of funk the other day. My grandfather just passed away and I came home for the funeral service and I was just depressed and really didn't feel like doing anything. I began to question my senior sem topic - maybe it's not what I really want. Maybe I just can't make it an argument. But I started thinking about it today after I spent time with the family, that I really just need to spend a day solely focused on working on research for this project. I've kind of just been milling with the idea, but my monthly deadline is coming up and I think I need to get serious. SIGH. We'll see. (I'm looking for tips/comments/anything if you readers compelled to comment)

So I've got a project. And I need to get to it... even if it's not as fun as all the other stuff I want to do.
So ONWARD TO The Two Towers!

IT'S BEEN AWHILE
I'm aware.

A lot has happened since I last saw you, LJ. I went another country. I dropped 35lbs. I saw some movies. Read some books. Getting ready to graduate. I'm a changed woman.

Since I am getting ready to graduate, I've decided to get back into my book blogging. To my readers (if you even still care) I am on Tumblr now (brenleyisthegame.tumblr.com and if you want to check out my trip abroad: tobakerstreet.tumblr.com). It's nice, but for less organized things. I thought I about leaving you forever, LJ. The truth is though, I need you. I wouldn't have been able to find the date that I first read my favorite books or found when I had read that play for that role or remembered various things that I needed to remember. There is just a comfort that comes with LJ that I missed.

So here I am again and I think I am going to stick to LJ for my book reviews, because it's sort of difficult to make long posts on Tumblr. LJ is just nicer for these types of things. I have missed you, LJ.
*kiss tear*

NOW. On to more serious matters. I have set myself a reading goal for the summer: READ THE LOTR SERIES (or atleast The Hobbit and The Fellowship).


And I KNOW I KNOW I haven't read the series. I'm an awful person PLAGUE ON MY HOUSE. Get it out now.
So far, I'm almost done with The Fellowship and it really explains all the mixed reviews I've been getting about Tolkien. The thing really reads like an epic! I'm so reassured finding all these literary characteristics of medieval literature and epics in the story. It's hard for normal people to get through Beowulf. Since I loved Beowulf - I love The Lord of the Rings. So, yes. I'm a fan.

My reasons behind starting my task is because it's about my senior seminar in the fall. My topic is on Invented Languages and I'm thinking of using Elvish in my presentation. I also really want to use Klingon, but my professor is not too keen on it because it's technically not LITERARY (BUT I AM DETERMINED! I WILL USE IT. I HAVE TO). So, everyone will have to wait until November to see what happens with that.

So I think after I'm finished with Fellowship I'm going to explore The Silmarillion a little - just because I hear it has more Elvish (which is what I really need). I mean, I'm definitely going to continue the series (I CAN'T STOP NOW!) but it may take longer than the summer (I hope not).

So that's my reading life. Other news is about work, my sprained ankle, training for a triatholon and how I have no social life so I can accomplish all of these things.

BTW - My reading has been greatly enhanced by my NOOK COLOR!

That's right. I've succumbed. I LOVE BOOKS - don't get me wrong, BUT I CAN READ SO MANY BOOKS! It's really amazing how much I've read this year and I'm not even trying. I will still read the printed stuff because I need a break sometime. Plus, I look back on my hard copies of LOTR for maps and symbols and stuff (ebooks have flaws). So, anyway - that's my big update, LJ.

I really don't know what I do without you.

I love this woman.
So, I'm all caught up on the series. And I'm such a lonely single woman for admitting that I read these, but I love them.
The great thing about them though, is that they aren't typical romance novels. They actually have a well-developed story line with character depth and sassy women! It's perfect!
Gail Carriger is also amazing, fashionable, witty and wonderful. One of the greatest writers of our time.
If you have any inclination to enjoy something, read these.