Twilight Hangover

Today had been a pretty great day. Since I was up until the wee hours at the New Moon midnight showing, I decided to have a lazy morning and finally finish Her Fearful Symmetry, the newest book by Audrey Niffenegger of The Time Traveler's Wife fame. I know that everyone in the world(well, maybe not everyone) has already read and reviewed this book, so I will just give you some of my brief thoughts on it.

• Niffenegger is a brilliant writer. Her prose is virtually perfect. She does not create a character that is shallow. Her settings are gorgeous. This book is no exception. I want to go to Highgate Cemetery after reading this, her descriptions made it come alive for me. This entire novel had a creepy feel to it that I loved.
• That being said, I had to make myself finish this. Yes, part of it is that I am slammed with schoolwork, but when a book is good enough, you find time for it. I had no problem letting this one sit on my bedside table for a month. I read The Time Traveler's Wife over the summer and could not put it down. I was disappointed that this book did not grab me in the same way.
• Overall, after the incredible experience of The Time Traveler's Wife (and yes it was an experience for me-I cried for a day after I read it), Her Fearful Symmetry does not fulfill my expectations. I just didn't care about the characters. I really wanted to, but I didn't. However, it was well written and it did have an original plot. I still look forward to her next book.

Now, regarding New Moon, all I have to say is Jacob is so freaking cool in this movie. And Edward is not. I'm sorry if that makes me some enemies, I totally understand. Oh, and Dakota Fanning was awesome! New Moon was my least favorite book of the series, so I am happy to have that over with so that I can look forward to Eclipse.

I'm Paying for This?

Well, I have embraced college life. I no longer have free time. I no longer sleep in, or actually sleep much at all. My mornings consist of pulling myself out of bed while it is still dark out, stumbling down the stairs to start the coffee and back up to the shower. During this trip Harold attacks me on the stairs both times. Harold is a kitten, not a zombie, in case you are wondering. The drive to school while I guzzle coffee and slowly wake up blurs into my early morning class, which seems too loud and intrusive when I want to be back in bed.

The breaks spent eating granola bars and conjugating Spanish verbs. The ten minute sprint up the hill across campus, rushing between classes. Hiding out on the third floor of the library because I am scared of/annoyed by the 18 year olds, maybe because they don't understand. The intentions: I'm going to write that paper a week before it's due, I'm going to read that book over spring/summer/winter break, I'm going to figure out a brilliant paper topic this time. Yet here I am, 2am, after work, typing a paper 6 hours before it's due or fighting sleep off while trying to read that last 50 pages.

What did I do with all of this free time before? TV, books for pleasure, movies, lunch other than peanut butter, sleep, all of these are now privileges I rarely enjoy. And writing this blog can be added to that list.

Some days, I feel strong, empowered, educated. Most days, I feel exhausted, defeated, lonely, stupid, ridiculous and humiliated. I have fallen down more than once in front of people. I have made an idiot out of myself several times in front of whole classrooms and on the flip side of that, I have kept my mouth shut because I was afraid. I have cried in front of strangers and alone in my car. I have lost many friends and pissed off many family members who think I do not make time for them. I ask myself every day: "Why am I doing this?" And the answer that always comes to me is that for the first time in my entire life, I feel whole. My entire being craves to learn and to become what I know I can become. The sacrifices are painful. But I keep telling myself they are worth it.

Hello Again!

I have been a very busy girl this year and I have not kept up on this blog at all. I did go back to school and I have been focusing on getting good grades and working lots of hours to keep food on the table. I am still reading however and as I have a week until fall term starts I will try to throw a couple of posts up here to see if anyone is still following me.:) I cannot promise that I will write everyday or anything, but I do plan to make a bigger effort to keep this more updated. So to my devoted fans(crickets chirp in background), hello again!

Blindness

Blindness by Jose Saramago
Published:1995 Pages:293

What if everyone went blind? With no explanation and no cure? That's the question that this novel answers. An eye doctor goes blind after examining a similar case in a patient and is quarantined in an effort to contain the quickly spreading epidemic. His wife tries to go with him and when stopped, pretends to suddenly go blind and is convincing enough to be able to stay with her husband. She is the only person who never loses her sight and the only witness to the horrors that take place afterward.

The blind people are at first kept in an old mental hospital and left to fend for themselves except for a delivery of food at the front gates three times daily. Eventually this slows and then stops and chaos takes over the inmates. Finally a fire is started, the place burns down and the doctor's wife leads a small group to safety, only to find that chaos has spread to the entire city. As the only person who can see, it becomes her responsibility to keep the small group that she has saved alive.

I don't remember the last time I connected with, and loved a character so much, as I did with the doctor's wife. She was strong and yet so heartbreaking at the same time. I felt her feelings and cried her tears. My favorite line in the book is at one point when a certain man takes over the mental hospital that they are trapped in and starts making them pay for their food with valuables, and eventually the women. The doctor's wife speaks up in protest, and the man says, "I won't forget your voice." She reponds back, "Nor I your face." At this point she is pretending to be blind and no one seems to notice those few words that a blind woman shouldn't be saying. That was probably my favorite line in the book.

Nothing is ever explained in this book. We are not told why the blindness started in the first place, or why the doctor's wife never loses her sight. Which ultimately makes it more frightening, because we really don't know what's going on.

I loved Blindness. I love dystopian novels and this is one of the best I have read. Saramago's writing style was perfect for the story. Names were never mentioned, the characters were called by their description. For example, The Doctor's Wife, The Doctor, The Girl With The Dark Glasses, etc... It reminded me very much of another dystopian novel I read recently(which I also loved), The Road by Cormac McCarthy. McCarthy also used no names in that book, and similarly, nothing was explained.

I read Blindness because I saw an amazing trailor for the movie that recently came out and I wanted to read the book first.

It was a pleasure to burn

It has been awhile since I posted, but I have been a reading fool lately! So this post is going to be four reviews crammed into one, all for you, my reader's(all two of you) enjoyment! Aren't you excited!?


Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Published:1953 Pages:179

"It was a pleasure to burn."

This is the best first sentence ever! I was hooked from the first page. This book is about the near future, where firemen go and set fires purposely. Reading is outlawed because it makes people think too much and any books that are found are burned. One fireman meets a seventeen year old girl who changes his mindset, and he starts questioning his job.

This was a quick read for me, but impact full. First of all, I can't imagine life without books. I would be one of those people refusing to leave their houses and being burned with their books. Secondly, it was creepy to me how Bradbury wrote this 50 years ago, but our country is headed that direction. I think that anyone who has ever tried to ban a book should read this and see what the possible consequences to their actions might be. This was the first of Bradbury's books that I have read, but I will definitely read more.


The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Published:1959 Pages:246

Hill House has been haunted for hundreds of years and has set empty for several of them. Four people set out to try to stay in it for a whole summer and investigate the said haunting. All kinds of crazy stuff breaks loose.:)

I read this book in the span of a night and an afternoon and I couldn't put it down. I loved it that much. The whole thing was so creepy and suspenseful. Jackson does an amazing job at subtly building up a feeling of unease in you that you don't even notice. It was so good and perfect for Halloween. As I've said before, I am obsessed with Shirley Jackson right now. So creepy!


The Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict by Laurie Viera Rigler
Published:2007 Pages:293

This book is about a thirty something LA women, recently single, to a Jane Austen like setting. She becomes Jane, an entirely different person. As the days pass, she realizes that she isn't in a dream and that she must learn to live the life that Jane Austen might have lived.

This book was a lot of fun. I love Jane Austen, so I caught all of the references and enjoyed myself quite a bit. This is definitely chick lit, which I haven't read in awhile, but I found that it was a nice break from the heavier books I've been reading. I don't think that I would have liked it as much if I didn't love Austen as much as I do...it was basically a love letter to her works.



Sun Storm by Asa Larsson
Published:2003 Pages:307

This book is the first book of a mystery series featuring Rebecka Martinsson, a lawyer. A pastor is found dead in his church and no one will talk, she is forced to go home and help a childhood friend(the sister of the deceased) and gets involved in a mystery where no one is who they say they are.

I don't normally like mysteries very much, but I got drawn into this one. I love Rebecka, she is an unwilling heroine and not your normal rush to the rescue Nancy Drew type. Also I tend to enjoy mysteries with religious undertones...maybe because I grew up in a very strict religious household. Asa Larsson is Swedish and her books take place in Sweden. I've never read anything about Sweden, so another first for me.

The other two books in the series are The Blood Spilt and The Black Path. I just got The Blood Spilt from the library and I am excited to start on it soon!

TGLAPPPS

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer And Annie Barrows
Published:2008 Pages:277

I just finished this book earlier today, and you know that quiet, satisfied feeling you get when you finish a really great book? Sad that it's over, but satisfied at the same time? I'm still kind of floating on that. So be prepared for a lot of gushing.

As a rule, I kind of stay away from too many brand new books...OK, OK I've been to a few midnight release Harry Potter parties. But, really who hasn't? And yes I got sucked into the Twilight series. But at least I waited until this summer to do so! Anyway, my point is, there are a few authors that I will gladly wait in line to devour their brand new books, but I've had some bad experiences with people over hyping new books and then I put my expectations too high, and then the book sucks. So I was a little wary of this book at first, because I have read countless blogs praising it's pages. And it took five weeks to get it from the library. So I read it preparing to be underwhelmed.

I finished it in a day. Well a night and a day. I laughed. I smiled. I cried. A lot. I have completely fallen in love with this novel. The characters are adorable, Guernsey is adorable, the stories told are heart breaking, but still adorable. I want to go to this book's Guernsey and live there forever.

The book is about an author living in London following WW2. She gets a letter from a man on Guernsey who bought a book that she sold, requesting more of the same, and they start corresponding. In doing so, she meets a whole score of other people on the island and decides to write a book about them. This book has an amazing love story, but also some very sad parts as the characters share their experiences from the war. It is a good balance.

I loved the main character, Juliet. I totally related to her. I really know that feeling when you look at someone that you thought you knew and thought you could spend your life with, and say "Who are you? Get out!" She dumped her fiancee because he packed her books up, how awesome is that?

So this book is as good as everyone says it is. It kind of reminded me of L.M. Montgomery's writing(I was obsessed with her books growing up). I want to just curl back up and read it again.

Read it!


In other book news, I also recently read a collection of Shirley Jackson's short stories. Short stories are hard for me to review, so I'll just say that I loved them and I am a bit obsessed with Jackson right now. I just got The Haunting Of Hill House in from the library, so I am very excited about reading that soon!

The Finishing School

The Finishing School by Muriel Spark
Published:2004 Pages:181

This was a random grab at the library for me. I have been hearing a lot about Muriel Spark lately, but have never read anything by her, so I just picked a book from what they had. I would really call this book a novella, it was super easy reading and I read it in about two hours.

It's about a husband(Rowland) and his wife(Nina), who run a finishing school that moves every year to a new country. Their students are all about 17. Their marriage starts to unravel and Nina starts having an affair, while Rowland becomes weirdly obsessed with one of their students, Chris.

Chris is given a lot of special treatment because he is writing a novel about Mary, queen of Scots. He is arrogant and manipulates everyone around him to get whatever he wants. He also lies like crazy. Rowland is trying to write a novel of his own and becomes extremely jealous and starts stalking Chris.

And that is pretty much what happens in the entire book. Some action happens in the last chapter, which I will not write here because I do not want to spoil the end for anyone. The book is vague all the way through. The ending was a surprise. And not like, "Oh my gosh, I didn't see that coming!" But like, "What?! When did that happen and that doesn't even make any freaking sense!" In my opinion, anyway.

Overall, not the worst book I've ever read, but not the best either. But I will try Sparks again, because I hear a lot of great stuff about her and I think this just wasn't her best work.