A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe." – Madeleine L'Engle
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| Mar 23, 2011 |
Last night, Weremonkey and I were watching these wonderful Russian dubbed Disney movie clips she found when we came across this.
I love Disney. I love The Prince of Egypt (A LOT.) and I love other languages. Thus these are full of awesome.
PS. We are mourning the loss of Pterodactyl, Weremonkey’s mouse. Please head over to her blog and say hello!
“Nothing, she thought, had ever been so interesting.“ pg. 137
“I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.”
pg. 33
This has been the laziest weekend ever. It was Weremonkey’s and Weretree’s birthday this weekend. Those are two of my roommates and we had the weirdest conversation on Friday night about what kind of animal you would prefer to “were” into, like a werewolf. I chose weredolphin first, but then decided on werebumble bee. So what kind of animal would you were into?
Other than a little party on Friday night, mostly what I did this weekend was read. I finished reading Good Omens and wrote two reviews for Love Medicine and The Reluctant Fundamentalist (review to arrive tomorrow!). Then I got totally sucked into the book Uglies by Scott Westerfeld. It was such a good story. I love reading YA fiction because it’s such an escape. No one is trying to be moving, they’re usually just trying to be captivating. Especially science fictiony/fantasy YA novels. It was nice to just escape into this world for one day, not have to worry about moving prose or bad writing or great writing – it’s just exciting. I was thinking about this book series I read a couple years ago called the Young Wizards series by Diane Duane. I remember them being so exciting and fun to read. I want to get them again from the library. Has anyone read them?
Reading this week looks like it’s going to be good because I’m going to be doing a lot of traveling. I’m going to start The Red Tent tomorrow because one of my roommates just read it and really liked it. Then the sequel to Uglies, Pretties. After that I have a couple more lined up. I’m Neil Gaimaned out for a while, but I really appreciated Coraline and loved reading Good Omens, so he has redeemed himself after the disappointing American Gods. As for over Spring Break, I have plenty of TBR books I own, that aren’t from the library. I’m going to try and get the majority of my library books read and returned before then. It’s going to be a good reading week, I can feel it!
“What’s your love medicine? I asked Nanapush that evening after I was allowed back inside. Rushes Bear had walked off, slower and more thoughtful as she moved down the hill, merely brushing the leaves out of her way. “She hates you but you drive her crazy.”
He lighted his pipe of kinikinnick, thought before he spoke. “No clocks. These young boys who went to the Bureau school, they run their love life on white time. Now me, I go on Indian time. Stop in the middle for a bowl of soup. Go right back to it when I’ve got my strength. I got nothing else to do, after all….”
pg. 71.
“People believe, thought Shadow. It’s what people do. They believe. And then they will not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjurations. People populate the darkness; with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe: and it is that belief, that rock-solid belief, that makes things happen.”
- page 418
Everyone has been getting interviewed lately and I wanted to jump in on the action, so I asked Kim to send me some questions. Here it goes 
1. If you were to write a novel, what would your novel be about?
Maybe I’m already writing a novel. Maybe. Maybe not. I want to eventually write something worth publishing, but you have to start somewhere right? I’ve had a couple of ideas for books in the past, but right now I’m working on one that I really want to finish. It’s a story told from many points of view about something big that happens in the United States. I know that’s vague, but I’m a little superstitious about writing about it. One day I’d like to write a book about my family, or at least based on my family, because they are some crazy kids who have lived interesting lives. And I’ve just been watching and recording them over the years.
2. What is your dream job?
To own my own bookstore and to be a writer. As for slightly more realistic possibilities, I wouldn’t mind translating novels for a living. I don’t know how lucrative that is, but I enjoy the translating I’ve done so far, and wouldn’t mind keeping it up.
3. What is one book that changed your opinion on an important issue?
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s not so much that they changed my opinion about anything that it got me thinking about what’s going on in Africa, what we’re doing over there and what we’re not doing over there. It opened my eyes to a history of the world that I had never even begun to learn about in school. I wrote my high school senior thesis on the independence of the Congo and it was fascinating, and scary that not a word of it had been mentioned in my classes.
4. If you could only read one genre for the rest of your life, what genre would it be and why?
Sweeping family dramas! Does that count as a genre? I love them.
5. What is one book that you think everyone should be required to read? Why?
There are lots of books I think everyone should read. One book, which is actually a play, that I think people should read is the Athol Fugard play Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act. This is another one that really got me thinking about African history, in this case South African history. I had never heard of the play before I took a class on post-colonial literature. The play is based on Antigone, but set it a South African prison. It’s so good, and it’s not very well-known in the US. If you’ve read it, let me know!
Want to be interviewed? I’m sure most of you have done this one already, but if you want some more questions, let me know and I’ll ask
I have been falling behind in the Weekly Geeking, so I’m going to post on both last weeks and this weeks. I started a post for last week’s book cover question, but could not figure out which book I wanted to talk about. So, now, I’ve decided just to post on American Gods, the book I finished most recently. Here are the covers I found:
Hello, bloggers! I have missed you so. I am sorry that it was such a slow blogging week, I had a pretty crazy one for sure. First, I had 5 papers due on Tuesday. Yes, f-i-v-e. Which is strange, because I’m only in four classes. But I got through it. THEN, my honors thesis adviser announced to me that I had to have all of the experiment materials in on Wednesday night. I didn’t finish in time, but I got it done. Eventually. It was in by Friday, it was the best I could do. Fortunately, my adviser was really understanding. Now I just have to actually do the experiment and work on translating it into Spanish.
Needless to say, I haven’t gotten a lot of reading done. I did try to read every chance I got, between classes and when I was waiting around for meetings to start, that kind of thing. I have been reading American Gods, but the book, which normally would have only taken me a couple of days has taken over a week. It’s good, but I’m going to have to wait until I finish the last 100 pages to make my decision. I went to the library last week and have a good library loot to post soon. Now that I’m back, I just want to post and post and post all about all the things I missed. (And get going with that Blogging Improvement Challenge post!)
As for Valentine’s, I had a really great weekend with Z. We went to DC for the day on Saturday and went to the Natioanl Gallery and the Zoo. At the National Gallery there was this amazing exhibit called The Americans of photographs by Robert Frank. They also had an Ansel Adams exhibit, but to be honest it was a little underwhelming in comparison to Frank’s exhibit.
Image copyright Robert Frank.
Z and I were both really impressed with the exhibit. After the National Gallery we went to the zoo, which was a little disappointing because we only saw a couple of animals. But Z and I are determined to go back! We still got to see the red panda, which is the cutest little thing ever! It has the amazing animal talent of making you want to snuggle it immediately. We also saw an emu. And lots of squirrels. That night, Z and I made calzones which were delicious. Pictures and recipe to come soon. Tonight we made meatloaf and watched How I Met Your Mother (one of the funniest tv shows ever.) It really was a wonderful weekend.
I’m looking forward to posting regularly again. I’m sorry I abandoned you for so long! Now to my google reader which has way too many things to read on it…
“What you do, what you think, makes you beautiful.”