Blog Post Bingo Take Two Wrap Up

So, I didn't do near as well as last time, but it was fun to try! Here's what I did, or didn't post:

A link post: nope, not a specific link post this time

A Short post: I had a couple, but I'm counting the BBAW Post

A List post: my list of Places I've Read Around the World for WG

An Opinion Post: I gave an opinion and asked every one's opinion on Reading: Luxury or Necessity?

A Poll or Question Post – Dang! This one should have been easy. Oh, well. Next time!

A How-to Post: I couldn't think of anything I was an expert on this time!

A Long Post : I didn't feel wordy either, so none of my recent posts were long enough

A Review Post – I'm counting my American Idol Concert review instead a book review

A Definition post: nope, not this time

A Personal Post: how about my

TV Talk post about The Gilmore Girls

A Resource Post: I had an idea for this one, but never managed to make it happen. Oh, well.

FREE SPACE – Can I count this week's Weekly Geek with all the movie embedding about

Great Movie Adaptations as this post? I hope so.

Booking Through Thursday: Preferences

Booking Through Thursday asks us to answer... quickly.. the following questions:

Which do you prefer?

Reading something frivolous? Or something serious?

I love them both! I can't pick on this one!

Paperbacks? Or hardcovers?
paperbacks

Fiction? Or Nonfiction?

Fiction

Poetry? Or Prose?
Prose

Biographies? Or Autobiographies?

Autobiogrpahies

History? Or Historical Fiction?

Historical fiction

Series? Or Stand-alones?

Another one I can't pick because I love them both equally.

Classics? Or best-sellers?

Classics, if I HAD to pick, through I love best-sellers too.

Lurid, fruity prose? Or straight-forward, basic prose?

What's Markus Zusak's style considered? Lurid or basic? Whatever he does, that's what I love. I don't like major wordy stuff, but I love simple basic prose done in an amazing creative way.

Plots? Or Stream-of-Consciousness?

plots

Long books? Or Short?

long

Illustrated? Or Non-illustrated?

non-illustrated

Borrowed? Or Owned?

owned

New? Or Used?

new, if I had to pick one, but used is great too.

Fun little exercise this week!

Weekly Geeks 2009.27: Best Movie Adaptations

Over at Weekly Geeks this week it's all about movies, specifically, what movies we think were wonderful adaptations from books. I think there's many, but the first ones that come to mind for me are:

Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth one of course)


The Lord of the Rings (I especially like the first one)



Holes (we've watched it over and over)



Chocolat (I love this movie, but have never read the book... yet... so I'm wondering if it's a good adaptation or not. What do you think?)



The Princess Bride (one of my all time favorites)




I'm really looking forward to the adaptations of The Time Traveler's Wife, The Hunger Games (there is going to be one right?), Beastly, Pope Joan and The Lightning Thief..... and.... what else? I know there's more! Oh, New Moon of course! :)

I think a good movie could be made from The Goose Girl, Katherine, and perhaps The Book Thief. Oh, and maybe a gazillion others.

Ah, books and movies, both so fun!

Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Book: Review: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
Genre: YA
Rating: B+
For: Printz Project

So I was really looking forward to this one. It seems lots of people have given it a great review. So I nabbed it from the library to add it to my Printz Project pile of the summer.

However, I must say, I just didn't get this one. I mean, it was good, and entertaining and fun, but the whole point of the book, I just didn't get it.

It's about Frankie, who goes to school at this posh boarding school, and she's just been dumped by her boyfriend of the previous year. So she's ready to start anew. And because of the great and wonderful physical change that's come over her during the summer, she is suddenly noticed, and ends up embraced by a very fun group of boys.

So what's the problem? She is just not happy because these boys have a secret club and she is so bugged to not be part of it! So I found myself thinking "Frankie, you're weird" and "whatever" all the time.

Bottom line, I think the book got a little preachy on women's rights issues, which just seemed a little jarring to me.

BUT, there's many who loved it, so be sure and check out their reviews too!

Other Reviews:

Becky’s Book Reviews
Books. Lists. Life.
Casual Dread

Fyrefly’s Book Blog

Maw Books Blog

Muse Book Reviews

Presenting Lenore

Reading is My Superpower

Sassymonkey Reads

The Story Siren

Stuff as Dreams are Made On

and finally Jessica of The Bluestocking Society who just barely posted her review also (and whose list of reviews I just swiped because I'm lazy and didn't want to look up all the links myself, so giving her the credit for that!)

Reading: Luxury or Necessity?

I overheard a conversation the other day about reading. One person mentioned that they don't have that luxury... to read. I instantly felt defensive. Why does this always make me so crazy?

I think it's because in my head, reading is not a luxury but a necessity. No matter how busy I am, or how crazy a day is, reading will still happen. (Well, usually. I mean, there ARE days where I do collapse dead tired in bed.)

But if it's considered a luxury to others, than I must be extravagant with my time since I read even if things get insane, right?

Wrong.

Well, at least to me. Reading IS a necessity. If a day goes by without reading, I notice it and it feels weird to me.

Really and truly, I have to have it.

So, what do you think? Luxury or necessity? I need your opinion, since this is officially my opinion post for this installment of Blog Post Bingo! :)

The Sunday Salon: Not a Review of The Road

This weekend my book of choice was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I just finished it minutes ago. Wow. This book was quite the contrast. I think it was a very easy book to read word-wise and length-wise.... and yet, such a hard book to read subject-wise. In fact, it was horrific in parts.

But, this is not a review post! So enough on that! But that was my reading experience this weekend so far.

I grabbed a Sarah Dessen book from the library, This Lullaby. I think I'm going to jump right into that one next. That should be a nice contrast from The Road.

Oh, I knocked off a few War and Peace pages this week too! I know. Amazing.

But my Gilmore Girls marathon is really cutting into my reading time. How to balance the two leisure activities of choice? I have no idea.

Other random Sunday thoughts:

- We hope to see Harry Potter tomorrow afternoon. We're feeling very out of the loop seeing it almost a whole week into its run!

- Yesterday it was 102 degrees at least. Not my favorite part of the summer, that's for sure.

- My daughter's friends came and raided our YA books stash! There were three of them, and they each took like 10 books! I was in a bit of a panic... and now, I really hope that we see those books again.

- We're going camping this week. Keep your fingers crossed that everything turns out fun and that there are no bears wandering around like there were a couple of years ago!

Review: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Book: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

Genre: Literary Fiction (old enough now to nearly be a classic, published 1925))

Rating: A-

For: TBR Challenge

I didn't really know what to expect from this book, but it seems like I've been reading some pretty good reviews lately. I bought it years ago simply because the author was one I'd heard of but never read yet. (Besides, it was on sale I think!) Also it was around the time the movie came out, a movie I have yet to see, but looks pretty good actually. (Click here for the movie trailer if you are interested.)

The story is about a girl, Kitty, who marries this guy just to get out of the house and away from her family and sister. He takes her to Hong Kong where she promptly has an affair. When he discovers this, he takes her away with him to the countryside to help with a cholera epidemic. It's there that Kitty grows up some, learns to appreciate life a bit more, and realizes that her husband is perhaps a better man than she thought.

So, I liked it fine. It didn't wow me or anything, but I would recommend it. Kitty was a quite the whiny character and I never really felt sorry for her. (I DID feel sorry for her husband however.) I do give her credit for starting to come around a bit, however, it all ended before I could tell if she really DID learn anything.

From watching the above mentioned movie trailer, I can see that the movie has much in it that was never in the book. In fact, it bothered me that the scene on my book cover (which is from the movie I think) never happened. Also, I don't get the title. Anyone who has read it want to explain that one to me?

Other Reviews:

A Comfy Chair and a Good Book
Kimmie's Krap
Book-a-rama
BooksPlease
The Magic Lasso