Movies Seen:
Predators – Very quick to get into the plot. Silly one-liners. Seems sort of hopeless, because how can humans possibly defeat predators on their own turf? They can’t. Adrien Brody was incredibly jacked, and although I like Topher Grace, he plays most of his roles with the same plucky demeanor and it can be sort of annoying.

500 Days of Summer – Sorry, but this movie still bothers me. JGL aside, I think Summer was an annoying bitch to him.  I thought maybe a second viewing  would change my mind, but it did not.

Restaurants visited:
Carpe Diem for brunch. Tasty, although the service was slow.  Had a bacon omelette, which was egg with bacon, tomato, onions, cheese, and one leaf of basil.  The sides were potatoes and fruit, and with the potatoes some sort of giant, tasty bean. The chai was excellent.

California Pizza Kitchen for my belated birthday dinner with friends. The food was decent as usual. I got the margherita pizza and some water, because I’d had a terrible headache the entire afternoon.

Books Read:

The Pillars of the Earth – Finished this one, finally. What a good book. The style of writing is simple but pulls you along. The characters and plot is engrossing. It reminds me of GRRM (who wrote later, but whom I read first) without the fantasy elements. If you like historical fiction novels, this one is definitely a book to pick up.

Under the Dome – I’m about 350 pages into this one.  It’s okay. The binding is actually falling apart because I took the book out to the pool and it was so hot in the sunlight that the glue started to dissolve… I’m hoping that it won’t be completely dead by the time I return it to the library…

The Walking Dead – Well, the small neighborhood they found was full of zombies. The kid was shot, and now they’re staying at a farm where the farmer has been keeping the dead locked in the barn. What will happen next?

It was a good weekend. Friday night I helped a friend out and wrote a paper for her Shakespeare class. We did this while listening to music and drinking pina coladas. Later we started to watch  Daybreakers and freaked out when a giant insect crawled up the wall, scaring the living shit out of both of us.  It took me ten minutes to get up the courage to go kill that nasty insect and then vacuum up the remains.

Other than that, it was pretty good.

• I, Mona Lisa – Jeanne Kalogridis
• Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk
• The Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler
• The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
• Under the Dome – Stephen King
• A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini

­This month’s reading list is a bit ambitious, especially considering that two of the books (Follet’s and King’s) are over 800 pages a piece.  Realistically, I think I can finish Stephen King’s book if I devote some serious time to it, although I need to return it by the 30^th so that I don’t have it hanging around collecting late fees once it is overdue, which it will be by the time we return from our trip to Maryland.

I, Mona Lisa was rather boring. Nothing spectacular. Forgettable, etc. That and I kept getting the time period mixed up with that of The Pillars of the Earth, for some reason. I suppose reading books concurrently doesn’t always work… Oh well.

The Parable of the Sower was actually listed in the comments below the Top 10 Most Disturbing list.  Others had recommended it on the basis that it was incredibly moving/disturbing, so I decided to get it out of the library when I saw it.

It’s about a girl named Lauren who lives in the time during the decline of the States as a powerful nation; the economy has completely collapsed, and the government has turned a blind eye to everyone’s problems. Food is expensive and water is nearly unobtainable. The country is rife with conflict, cannibals, and gangs of thieves, rapists, and arsonists.  The story itself follows Lauren and her daily life, beginning from when she is fifteen and living in a neighborhood that was thought to be safe, and then continuing to when she is on her own, struggling to survive. It essentially reads as a diary of the apocalypse, divided into entries, and chronicling the growth of her own spirituality, a doctrine she comes to name as Earthseed.

The book contains disturbing elements, of course, but overall, is not one I cringed away from or found hard to read. In fact, sometimes I found it a little difficult to force myself through, as it moved a bit slowly.  I found the spiritual aspects of the book interesting and less intrusive than in other books.

So, my final verdict is that while it’s an okay apocalypse book, it does not warrant a spot on the Top 10 Most Disturbing list.

Oh. Survivor by Palahniuk was weird. He’s such a bizarre, off-kilter writer. I can only take so much of Palahniuk before I have to read slightly more mundane fiction.

Under the Dome seems suspiciously like the Simpsons Movie, where an entire town is kept inside a forcefield/dome. I’ve only read the first 100 (out of like… 800) pages, and so I’m not quite sure what the actual story is.

As much as I like King… I feel like he’s becoming very predictable.  Maybe I’m just outgrowing his style or something though.  This is hard for me to admit because to be honest, King was a lot of the reason why I wanted to attempt writing stories… His early work is incredibly inspiring. But lately… Ugh. Especially after Duma Key, I really just stopped paying him attention. I have yet to read Cell, but then again … maybe I’ll just take it out of the library instead of spending $9 on it.

Finally, A Thousand Splendid Suns was my book club pick, and they picked it. So I get to read it again and revel that I picked possibly the best book since Eat, Pray, Love!

That’s all for now.

I’m 25 now.

It feels sort of odd, being 25 years old. Kind of like I should probably figure out what the hell to do with the last two-thirds (or, optimistically, 3/4) of my life.  I feel old yet still feel young, so really nothing has changed except the knowledge that I am, in  fact, one whole year older.

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It is my birthday week. I’m not supposed to feel this grumpy during the week of my birthday, right?

But, grievances:

• Last night while running, my headphones broke and then the power went out, so I nearly fell off the treadmill as it abruptly stopped
• Sometime while sleeping I bit my lip open and it keeps scraping against this tooth I have that juts out, so it has been raw for a few days now
• My car is acting retarded… needs two new tires and a balance, oil change, and also has to pass emissions tomorrow so that I can renew my registration

Ugh. This week needs to get better, now.

Do yourself a favor this summer blockbuster season, and see Inception.

We saw it last night at Atlantic Station.  My overall impression of it is that it’s got a few script irregularities, but if you’re willing to lose yourself in it, it is a beautiful, rich, imaginative film.

(Spoilers ahead… reader beware): Read the rest of this entry »»

My favorite memory from this year’s Fourth of July show was the Owl City song choreographed to fireworks that went up and then exploded silently in the air, raining down and glittering just like fireflies.  I know a lot of people despise that song, but I think it is beautiful in its simplicity, especially when paired with things that sparkle in the sky

• Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days – Tim LaHaye
• The Man from Beijing – Henning Mankell
• Stardust – Neil Gaiman
• The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade

I suppose it isn’t fair to say that I ‘read’ the de Sade book, but whatever. The rest I finally finished.

Hopefully this month will be better for books:

• The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follet
• I, Mona Lisa – Jeanne Kalogridis
• Survivor – Chuck Palahniuk
• Parable of the Sower – Octavia E. Butler

These are the books I’m going to read this month, hopefully. I have to read the last three, at the very least, because they are due back to the library. An ambitious month for books, since I have limited time to read and because the Ken Follet book is about 900 pages long, but it’s very engaging and I have no doubt that if I set my mind to it I can finish.

I’ve also rekindled my romance with Fallout 3, and so that’s been sucking down a lot of my time as well.  I’ll definitely update you about these books though (the Ken Follet book seems especially awesome so far…)!