If zombies were to eat my brains, all they would find would be mush.

I know. I have not been blogging.
Or reading.
Or responding to comments.
I managed to twitter a little bit.
My brain is mush.

Thesis defense tomorrow.  Eek.

Sunday Salon

Technically it is Sunday.  But I don’t want it to be because that’s always just a few more hours closer to going back to the work/school week, and this one is going to be killer.  It’s exam week, and I’m up until 12 on a Saturday doing homework.  To be turned in in the morning.  Sunday morning. And I’m shockingly okay with this.  I’m feeling good, feeling motivated (well, sort of.  I’m taking a break to write this.)  I’m still up to my neck in stuff to do, but the light is on the horizon.  This time in two weeks I will be a college graduate. That is freaking weird.  I will possess a BA in Spanish.  I’m not really growing up – hopefully in the fall I will be attending graduate school for my MA in Spanish, then after that… who knows.  But honestly?  Probably more school.  I’m doing that job thing that everyone keeps talking about right now, and I’d much rather go to school.  Really. Not that I don’t love my job, but school and I are best friends.

I’m pretty sure the reality of graduation hasn’t hit yet.  I’m still thinking about those two 10 page papers left to turn in and my thesis defense next Friday.  And how I’m going to coordinate two sides of a family that have no connection other than me.  I have a feeling that it’s going to be a checklist of things to get done, and when the family leaves on Saturday afternoon, it’s going to hit me like a bunch of bricks.  The emptiness of my schedule and the lack of a concrete plan for the next year will be a rude awakening, I’m sure.  So I’m bracing myself just a little bit, but I’m also reveling a little  in writing this paper tonight.  I’m going to enjoy the next two weeks – because I’m not a college graduate yet.

As for book news, I read If I Stay by Gayle Forman.  I’m still thinking about it.  It was a fast read – I started it Friday night and finished it this morning while Z was still sleeping.  It was certainly a tear-jerker.  I bought it for my 14-year-old sister for her birthday and wanted to read it before I gave it to her.  Just to make sure (and for my own enjoyement).  And she’ll never know, unless she reads this and I don’t know it (Hi sis!).  I think she can handle it.  I also bought The Invention of Hugo Cabret for my other sister’s birthday and I’m working my way through that one.  She doesn’t like to read (gasp!  I know!) and she’s stuck in a family of avid readers.  She always wants to find books that are interesting, but they never keep her attention.  I was thinking that maybe she just isn’t reading the right kind of books.  From what I’ve seen so far, I think Hugo Cabret might just be something that she can really enjoy.  I hope so!

One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot is commenting.  I’m the worst comment responder on the planet. It’s not that I don’t want to respond to your comments, it’s just that I don’t know how to do without being awkward.  So I think I’m going to start a new weekly post where I respond to all the comments that week.  Is this a dumb idea?  Is it something you would want to read, or even care about?  Let me know!

So I’m back off to paper writing.  I’m up to 11,000 and 34 pages… just a few more to go.  Wish me luck!

New Challenge

Subtitled: Lu needs to get a grip.

I feel like I’ve been waiting for this challenge my whole life.  Rose City Reader is a blogger I have not read until now, but Lezlie over at Books & Border Collies is participating in this challenge and it looks like a blast.  I love the Battle of the Books that fellow bloggers are posting about and I am going to hold my own.  This is Battle of the Books Regular Rumination style, going back in time to see if the Pulitzer or the National Book Award* is the better judge.    I hope Rose City Reader doesn’t mind if I change things up a little.  I’m going to read the books she requests, one from each category:

Chose three books that you have not read before:

1) One that won both the Pulitzer and the National;
2) One that won the Pulitzer but not the National; and
3) One that won the National but not the Pulitzer

But I’m also going to pick a year from each decade that the Book Award has been around and I’m going to do a Battle of the Books.  Yessssss.  It will be amazing.

1) Double dipper: The Color Purple by Alice Walker

The Showdown!

1965:
Pulitzer: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
National: Herzog by Saul Bellow

1979:
Pulitzer:The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
National: Going After Cacciato by Tim O’Brien

1985:
Pulitzer: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
National: White Noise by Don Delillo

1995:
Pulitzer: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
National: Sabbath’s Diner by Philip Roth

2001:
Pulitzer: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay By Michael Chabon
National: The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

Be prepared my pretties, because I’m fixin here to get graduated and I’m going to have a whole world of free time to do silly things on my blog, I promise.

*I thought this meant the Man Booker Prize.  One day I will tell you about how much I hate the Man Booker Prize.  How about right now?  They picked The Sea, Life of Pi, and worst of allVernon God Little.

First paragraph, and a confession

So, I feel like a little bit of a book-blog-stalker-creep.  Why, you ask?  Because do you ever accidentally read every book that another blogger has been reading?  And then worry that they’ll notice?  Well, that’s how it has been with Daphne’s blog “somewhere i have never travelled.”  I just had to confess that all her reviews are making me read the books she’s reading.  First I read The Wood Wife and I’m so glad I did, it was awesome.    I just picked up The Ghost Writer by John Harwood and the first paragraph has me completely hooked!

I first saw the photograph on a hot January afternoon in my mother’s bedroom.  She was asleep – or so I thought – in the sunroom at the other end of the house.  I crept in through the half-open door, enjoying the feeling of trespass, breathing the scents of perfume and powder and lipstick and other adult smells, mothballs for the silverfish and insect spray for the mosquitoes our screens never quite managed to keep out.  The net curtains were drawn, the blind half lowered; there was nothing to see through the window except the blank brick wall of old Mrs. Noonan’s place next door.

Man, I don’t really know what it is about this first paragraph, but I tell you I’m sold.

I might add Anansi Boys and the Seance to my list, but wouldn’t that be too weird?  Don’t judge me!

Review – The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

“I don’t know, maybe we’re all chaos theorists.”

Review – The Wood Wife by Terri Windling

“Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality — for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.”

- Terri Windling

Cheering on the read-a-thon-ers

Just a quick post to let all the people doing the read-a-thon that I am cheering for you!  I wish I could have participated this year (next year, when there is no thesis!), you guys look like you are having so much fun. I know that we’re starting to get to the later end of things, so keep going!  Keep going!  Don’t give up.  Drink some coffee, take a break, and then get back to reading   I can’t wait to read all the reviews you guys are going to post.

Good luck!  Now, stop reading my blog, and read more books.

Review – Specials by Scott Westerfeld

“Freedom has a way of destroying things.”

Sunday Salon – Reading into the wee hours of the night

Hello Saloners and regular readers!  How are you?  I’m doing well, minus the rings that are probably forming around my eyes.  Why, you ask?  Because, I fell asleep last night with my face plastered the book I was reading and didn’t think to wake up and move it until 5:45, but then I couldn’t get back to sleep.  None of this is necessarily a bad thing, because I was completely engrossed in the book I was reading!  I didn’t fall asleep because it was boring, just because I wanted to keep reading it, but eventually could not stay awake.  I officially read 327 pages yesterday.  That’s a lot for me.  My dad and two little sisters came to visit yesterday too, so I didn’t even have a full day of reading.  I’m reading The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb, which first of all is an amazing title.  Second of all, I love the cover.  Third of all, it’s amazing.  I’m only really half way through, but I’m so impressed.  It’s going to be hard to concentrate on all the homework I have to do today.  I had been staying away from Wally Lamb after all the horrible things I’d heard about She’s Come Undone, but I read a review at the Bluestocking Society that said they too were put off by the lewdness of She’s Come Undone, so I jumped into this one.  I’m so glad I did!  It’s amazing.

Also this week, I finished The Wood Wife, which was superb.  My dad also let me go to the bookstore and pick out some books I wanted.  So I got: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, because I wanted my own copy.  The Complete Poems: 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop and American Primitive: Poems by Mary Oliver.  I’m really excited about all three!

Have a happy holiday today, everyone!  Whether your celebrating Easter, Passover, or just plain Sunday.

Review – The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner

“Where we are is vital to who we are.”