1. Pride and Prejudice, the Colin Firth one
2. Noth and South, the Richard Armitage one
3. Sense and Sensibility, the Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant one
4. Holes
5. Princess Bride
6. The Princess Diaries
7. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
8. Harry Potter and the ___________
9. Lord of the Rings
10. Ella Enchanted
11. Chocolat
12. Seabiscuit
13. Charlie and Chocolate Factory, the Johnny Depp one
14. Peter Pan, the play with Cathy Rigby
.... and I'm sure there's many many more.
Interesting that some of these listed above are some of my all time favorite movies!
Last week we took off for spring break and drove 11 hours to play for four days in San Diego. Wow, it was beautiful there! We got sun burned even! We experienced sailing for our first time ever and it was a blast. The kids loved the zoo... a zoo unlike any other. We also had fun experiencing "Saturday in the Park" as the song goes.... Balboa Park that it. Wow, it was hopping there. And we did the beach of course. On an overcast, windy afternoon of course! But still, it was the beach!
Anyway, we are home. I read nearly two books while gone. Finished one just now, and the other needs a few more pages to be called finished. I bought a book too. Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson. Anyone heard of it? It takes place down there in old San Diego. It sounds very intriguing. So, that was my souvenir buying for the trip. Oh, and a little muffin cookbook too. :)
I'm scared to death of Google Reader. All those readathon posts and all. How'd it go? Did you all have a blast? Did you skip it this year, or read a ton? If you read along, comment with the BEST book you read during the readathon. Anyway, I'm going to try and see what you've all been up to this week, even if it's a bit daunting.
Today, I came home from the library with two books, and got another one in the mail. Seriously. I think I truly have gone over the edge of sanity here.
This week it's book club at my house already! Wow, time flies. But it is the third Thursday this week, right? We'll be discussing Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. I'm very curious to see what everyone thought. I'll let you know!
Well, I managed to sneak in a little post! But now I have to make dinner, keep the laundry going and continue to clean up the after trip mess. Don't you hate that? But I'll be back soon to make my Listless Monday list!
I had big plans for my spring break reading. Here's how it's going so far:
* I've read half of my ARC of Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martell. My thoughts so far... strange. Very very strange.
* I've read a good 100 pages of The Ask and The Answer by Patrick Ness. My thoughts so far... this book is heart wrenching! I'm hoping that something good happens sometime!
* I hauled Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier with me to the beach. (BEACH? Did I just say beach?) But instead of sitting back and relaxing and reading, I actually GOT WET and played in the water, then it got too cold and we left. So no idealistic beach reading for me after all.
I keep picturing nice long evenings of reading, but by the time the evenings get here, I'm too tired and my eyes end up closed instead of reading. I hate it when that happens!
Happy readathon to everyone tomorrow! I'll be thinking about you all! Maybe I'll get some reading done sometime during the day. Then again... maybe not.
Monday night we saw Muse in concert. Muse, if you've never heard of them, is a three man alternative band from England. They have amazing guitar skills, song writing skills, piano playing skills, and drumming skills. In fact, they are really really amazing all around, if you are into the alternative rock thing.
So, we went to the concert on Monday. And unfortunately, I have yet another sad story to tell about my experience there! I know! How can this happen to BOTH of my concerts that I've been so looking forward to for so long!
So this is what happened. First, Mr. Stuey got stuck at work and so we left without him and he came later on his own. That was a bummer. But we could deal with it. He had no desire to see the opening band anyway.
When we got there, we HAD to let Moder (15 year old fanatic fan son) buy a t-shirt. So we suffered through the t-shirt buying mosh pit of sorts, and I had to remind myself to breathe in the claustrophic inducing crowd. But the happiness of said 15 year old son after the black Resistance t-shirt was in hand was worth it.
Then we made our way to our seats. Moder had seats with his friends in a different section, so I got him there and situated. Then I went to find our four seats (besides me and The Mr. who was coming later, I had with me JJ and Toto) and as I was approaching I could tell that two of our seats were being sat in already. So I said, "Um, you're in our seats." And of course we then compared tickets only to discover that they matched! So we, all together, went to guest services. They took the tickets to make copies, and told us to either wait on the floor (so we could watch the opening band which had started by this time) or wait by our seats. We choose the seats.
So we had two seats and three people at this point. Toto sat on my lap as we suffered through the opening band. I have no idea who they were. They had a few okay songs, but also some quite grating songs. And filthy mouths. I hate that. Dudes, really. It's not cool. Besides, I couldn't concentrate for worrying about the seat situation.
Meanwhile, Mr. Stuey is out stuck in traffic. Trying to get parked. And I'm texting him that we have seat problems. He was gearing up for the fight!
They came back with our tickets just about the time the opening band ended. My husband finally arrives. And he proceeds to yell, not nicely, to the dude, who says. "Sorry, you can go on the floor if you want." The Mr. says, "NO WAY." But meaner. And so we say, we'll all just stand here by our two seats. (I knew that Muse is a standing concert if you know what I mean. No one would be sitting anyway.)
Oh, man. We were mad! Finally, some other lady came and said "We'll refund your money, you can't all stand here, and come with me and we'll find you seats." So he and JJ went off with her. They ended up in okay seats and were somewhat calming down by then.
Luckily, all that was figured out just as the concert started. So Toto and I just tried to forget the stress and enjoy the concert.
AND the concert itself was fabulous! Loud! Crazy! Rocking! I loved it. I love their songs. I sang to pretty much everyone of them. There was only two I didn't really know. I screamed for encores. I crossed my fingers they wouldn't forget to sing Knights of Cydonia... and they didn't... forget I mean! It was great.
Afterwards, when we all meet up again, and I saw the look on my son's and his friends faces, it was all worth it. They had completely lost their voices and were so pumped and excited. It was very fun to see that.
We then proceeded to walk to our cars and drive home in a complete blizzard! I couldn't believe it, but we survived and made it home without incident, ears numb and ringing the whole way!
Anyway, in the end, the managers from the event place called us to get the whole seat fiasco story. It turns out they double sold about 30 seats in that section. Those who ended up with the seats were pretty much whoever got there first. My husband was demanding a refund on at least the two of our seats, which that one lady had told him would happen. Now they were saying they couldn't. Anyway, as it turns out, they are giving us four tickets to another event to say "sorry". We've chosen to go to Cirque de Soleil in May. I guess we'll see how THAT one all turns out then.
So, how's that for a long story? Anybody ever have any similar things happen to them? It was crazy I tell you!
Bottom line: MUSE, you were freakin' awesome! Online ticketing computers and whoever else is the culprit, you sucked!
Whew. Once again, I sure do feel better! :) Maybe I should give the concert going thing a break now, what do you think?
Here's a video someone else took of the concert, when they came back for a second encore and did Knights of Cydonia that I needed to hear so bad. Matt (lead singer) was doing the spotlight and making the crowd crazy, and Chris (bass player) was doing a cool funky harmonica thing before they started the song. Loved it.
Congratulations to Julie from A Small Accomplishment. Her pick A History Mystery is the new bookword to describe a book where the characters from the present are researching the characters from the past.
Now let's find a word to describe this scenario:
What should we call a book that makes you interested enough in its topic that you are inspired to go and do some more research on it?
First, I don't really remember a whole lot about going to the library when I was really little, though I'm sure I did. What I do remember was visiting my grandma, who lived on a farm and thinking that visiting the bookmobile when it rolled around was the the coolest. thing. ever! Even though I was from a city and had a "real" library!
I remember loving to just browse the shelves and pick whatever looked good. I miss doing this. Once, my dad was doing this with me, and he picked one for me called The Enchanted Cup by Dorothy Parker. We knew nothing about it. But I took it home, read it, and LOVED it! This was the first I'd heard of the Tristan and Isolde story. I've never forgotten how cool it was to just randomly pick a book from the shelves, then love it so much.
When I was first married and we only had one car, I would walk several miles to the library because when I needed to go, I needed to go right then! It wouldn't wait until I had the car. That library at the time had the paperbacks all separated out from the rest of the fiction section. I loved just picking through those and seeing what I came up with. It was during that time that I discovered The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye. Wonderful book!
When I had little kids, I'd haul them to the story time at the library every week. Hopefully, they now have early memories of those first library days!
Just a few years ago, whenever I went to the library, I'd always think... how cool would it be to work here! I'm here all the time anyway, might as well earn a little money! One day, a job dropped into my lap and now, three mornings a week, I get to go to the library to earn a little money. It never fails to amaze me, really.
The library is the first place my kids learn to drive to all by themselves when they first get their driver's license. I've always thought that was an interesting tidbit. We've gone to the library once or twice a week for their whole lives. We've supported the summer programs for years and years. I truly can't imagine a world without libraries and when there's talk about getting rid of them, it makes me physically sick.
Here's a couple of pictures of "my" libraries. The first two are from the one I work at. The first one is part of the famous stained glass window, and the second one is of the children's wing that was added to the original building several years ago. The bottom picture is of the the "other" library, where I check out most of our book club sets. It's in a restored building that once upon a time was completely falling apart. Seeing how beautiful it is today never fails to make me happy!
And the picture on the Weekly Geek post of a famous library? My guess is that's the Reading Room at the British Library in London. I was lucky enough to walk around that library and stick my head in this room, but there wasn't time to really soak it up. Some day, I'm going to go again!
Genre: YA Rating: A- For: ARC Challenge From: the author/publisher for review (Penguin Young Readers Group) Release date: May 2010
It was such a fun surprise to see this one show up in the mail awhile back. I was so so excited! Love Janette Rallison and all her books. Clean, funny, fluffy, happy teen romances.
So I expected the same from this one. However, it took me by surprise and was quite different! Still very good, very fun, but different.
It's the story of a girl, Alexia, who gets discovered by the people of pop star Kari Kingsly because the two girls look so much alike. The singer's manager wants to get more out of the singer, so she thinks it would be a wonderful plan to hire Alexia as Kari's double. That way, Kari can work harder on her next album yet still be making money as Alexia goes to appearances and lipsyncs at small performances.
You can see how this set up could be the basis for some funny situations. And there are a bit of those, but mostly, it's about Alexia coming to grips with her mother's past, her father's abandonment of them both, and her own feelings about who she is. In fact, the underlying story is quite a serious one indeed.
In the end, even though I was a bit surprised by this serious turn, I still enjoyed the characters, the situation, the writing and everything.
