Book Report - The Life of Pi

Title: The Life of Pi
Authour: Yann Martel
Length: 319 pages
How long it took me to read: 2.5 days

What it's about: Pi Patel, a God-loving boy and the son of a zookeeper, has a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Chrisianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family and their zoo animals emigrate from India to North America aboard a japanese cargo ship. Alas, the sip sinks - and Pi finds himself in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, and orangutan, a wounded zebra, and a 450-pound bengal tiger. Soon the tiger has dispatched all but Pi. Can Pi and the tiger find their way to land? Can Pi's fear, knowledge, and cunning keep him alive until they do?

My take: I'm gonna do my take after the jump because there will be spoilers.

The ending is the most important part: The end has a twist that will Blow. Your. Mind.

Last word: I never ever thought I would say this ever, but the movie is enough. You don't have to read the book. The movie tells the story beautifully and is a visual feast, so I don't recommend the book, but I recommend the film.

What Artist do you have the Most of in your Music Collection?

This used to be one of my get-to-know-you questions that I would use on dates. It was my test to see how cool a person was. Music is very important to me, so it was important to me that I surrounded myself with people that felt similarly. I didn’t even care if I agreed with the person’s selection, I just cared how the person felt and what their reasoning was behind their choice in music.

What you have the most of in your music collection says a lot about you.

My answer? INXS

DH’s answer? Chicago.

I am a person who is young-at-heart (fourteen, to be exact), and loves to experience things. Emotions, feelings (are they the same thing?), beauty, etc. I like to use all my senses to participate in the goings on around me. I love to see things and feel them on my skin, and hear the sounds and taste the air, etc. I love to move my body, I love to dance. If it has a good beat and I can dance to it, then it’s good music to me.

INXS is one of those bands that just speaks to all of these things in me. The music is completely danceable, and expressive, great and it's a party. When I hear their music, I can see colour and smell it and physically feel it. To me, it is all encompassing. It makes my whole body smile. I always took it as a compliment when people used to tell me I reminded them of Michael Hutchence.

So think about it – What artist do you have the most of in your collection? Have I asked you this question before? Is your answer different now than it was then? What does the fact that you have so many albums by this one artist say about you?

And if you tell me that you only have like 3 albums and they were all gifts, then we can’t be friends.

Book Report - Beautiful Darkness

Title: Beautiful Darkness
Authour: Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
Length: 503 pages
How long it took me to read: 3days!

What it's about: The continuing story of Gatlin, South Carolina and Ethan Wate and Lena Duchannes. Uncle Macon is dead and Lena is depressed and pushes Ethan away, but Ethan can't let Lena go so easily...

My take: Since Beautiful Creatures ended on such a cliff hanger, I was really happy to not have to wait for 95 people to read the sequel before I got to it like I did with the original book. I only had to wait two days for the book to become available at the library. The beginning was slow and answered nothing, but after the first 100 pages, all this new stuff was introduced, and I needed to find out what happens next, and then what happens after that, and then that, and so on. I totally could not put this book down. I was reading one night, looked at the clock and it was 10pm. I thought I would read 'just one more chapter'. The next time I looked at the clock it was 12:15am!! Whoops. I would stay up past midnight reading, dream about the book, then wake up at 6am because I couldn't wait to find out what happens next.
The ending is the most important part: The ending of this one is a little more satisfying than the first book. If I needed to, I could take a break from the series, I'm not going to die if I don't find out what happens next, but I'm loving the series and have the next book on hold at the library.
Last word: Totally read it. I recommend this to everyone. This one is a little darker than the first book, duh, it's TITLE has the word "Darkness" in it! Link is one of my favourite characters, and there's a lot of him in this book. I can't believe that there are not more people hooked on the series like I am: i.e. I was number 95 when I put Beautiful Creatures on hold, but I was number 1 when I put Beautiful Darkness on hold, and I don't have to wait for Beautiful Chaos either.

I'm never going to read again!

I have always been a voracious reader. I love to read. When I was in elementary school, if I wasn't running through sprinklers, eating popsicles, riding bikes, or going to the beach, I was at the library. My dream road trip is taking a historical route and pulling over at every road sign in order to read the historical marker. When we go to museums or anything, my family always gets way ahead of me because I stop and read every sign. I read the liner notes in albums. I always spent my birthday money at Coles Books.

My parents joined a children's book club when we were kids, so every month we would get a couple of Disney or Dr. Seuss books. I read these books over and over. I read them to my parents, and I read them to my siblings. Those books are trashed from all the reading I did.

After Dr. Seuss came Nancy Drew. I babysat for a friend of my mum's early in my babysitting career and she had every book ever written about Nancy Drew. Every time I babysat, I would borrow a couple.

About grade six, I was introduced to young teen romance books like Sweet Valley High. These are the books I would spend my birthday money on. These were the books I checked out from the library. They were easy to read, not boring like the books assigned at school, and so addictive.

Once I got to high school, I quit reading books for pleasure. I had to do so much reading for school that I didn't want to look at one more book. Ridiculously enough, I still had a huge appetite for reading, but this was filled with liner notes from cassettes, newspapers, and magazines. I am full of useless information because of all the magazines I read. Berit used to ask me, "How do you know all these random facts?" The answer? I read. She calls me a media maven. I kinda love it. I'm not book smart, I'm not street smart, I'm media smart.

I was introduced to magazine reading the summer between grade eight and nine. We were staying at a cabin in Birch Bay, WA and it was raining and I was, like, so bored. My mum sent me to the little store to see if I could find something to read. I found a couple of teen magazines like the ones my cousin Cyndi read. I bought them, and I was hooked. My favourites were Teen, Seventeen (had a subscription to that one), Elle, Spin, and Smash hits. Reading magazines caused the detour in my reading career that I regret. I missed out on classics like The Chronicles of Narnia and the works of Roald Dahl because I never went to the library any more; I just bought magazines.

I have since been re-introduced to the wonder that is the library, and my love for reading for which I am joyous, but I've been trying to slow down on all the reading to make room for some writing.

Well, a month or so ago, DH was going to lose his Continental air miles unless he used them. He didn't have enough for a flight anywhere, but he could use them for magazine subscriptions. None of the magazines really appealed to him, but were there any that I would be interested in? I now have a stack of the following on my night table: In Style, Glamour, Elle, GQ, Details and Entertainment Weekly.

As soon as the subscriptions started rolling I thought to myself, "Great, I'm never going to read a book again!" Fortunately, Beautiful Creatures came available at the library and I am hooked on a new series of books. I have also discovered that I don't have to read every single article in the magazine, so it doesn't take me as long to get through magazines like it used to.

Now that I've found balance between reading books and magazines, I'm hoping that I can find some balance between reading and writing.

Hiking Diamond Head with big D

I spent all this time talking about planning for my trip to Oahu and then never said anything about it after I got back! Bad Rantgirl! No cookie!

So things were fine. Hawaii is Hawaii. Hot. Beautiful. Ocean. I want to live there. Palm trees, mountains. Perfect.

View of Diamond Head from Waikiki Beach

Things with my brother were fine. He's my favourite sibling and we get along great. I felt like I was sixteen again: waking up every morning to my brother walking around in his gonch. I hardly saw him because he was off doing things with his friends which was the reason I was there; so that he and his wife could go out and have fun and someone was there to watch the kids.

It was so fun having all D's friends be totally unsurprised that I am his sister as we look so much alike. I am like a female version of him. Now that we are all so spread apart and hardly see each other it's nice when people recognize the family resemblance.

The other fun thing was that most people at the wedding thought that Goonie-goo-goo was my son, not D's because we look so much alike.

Goonie-goo-goo and I at the Honolulu airport

On my last day there, D and I hiked Diamond Head which is the one thing I wanted to do with him. Things were so busy that we had to shove it in at the last minute. I'm really glad we shoved it in. We went to Pearl Harbour in the morning, came home, my sister-in-law put the kids down for a nap, and D and I took off. It was nice to get some one on one time with my big/little bro. (he's big because he's much taller than I, and he's little because he's four years younger.) It was so weird hanging out with the grown up version of my little brother. I hardly ever get a chance to see him because I live in another country, and now he's all married with two kids and a job and stuff. Not the little kid with the weird friends that left Legos all over the floor and made the bathroom that we shared so gross. He still leaves the seat up, so there's that. Any way, we talked all the way up and all the way down. I still had to stop halfway up the stairs at the end, so I didn't reach my goal of not having to stop, but it's an amazing hike with the best reward ever at the top: a 360 degree view of Oahu. You can almost see the whole island from up there. It was really crowded as was everything else we did when we were there, because Waikiki, but it was by far the most enjoyable thing I did when I was there. We came back to the condo, he crashed, I did my souvenir shopping, mailed my postcards, took the photos I wanted to take, and walked along Waikiki beach for the last time. (all things I was supposed to do on my first day there, but whatever.)

Big D and I at the top of Diamond Head

I didn't have any major expectations for the trip because I knew I was just going to watch the kids, and since I have only really seen my niece and nephew once before, it was good. I was basically stuck to the condo for most of the trip because of naps and the fact that Goonie-goo-goo went to bed at 5pm and PJ followed soon after at 6pm, and D and J were out every evening, but that was what I was expecting. After the kids went to sleep, I would do the dishes, clean up, grab some cookies and milk and my laptop, and hang out on the lanai until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more, and be in bed by 9pm. With the four hour time difference, I didn't have a lot of chances to talk to my family back home, but everyone lived.

On the lanai

All in all, it was a very relaxing trip for me with the copious amounts of alone time which is what a trip to Hawaii is about, isn't it? I'm so glad I got to go.

One last photo of Goonie-goo-goo because he's so darn adorable

Weekly Check-in

Happy Monday!

Ah Monday. Everyone complains about you, but not me!! Monday is the beginning. The weekend is over. We celebrated the week, we had some good times, and now we have the beginning of a new week! A new chance! Yay for beginnings!

Remember these? Thought I should check-in.

Physically: Sore, but that's because I spent the weekend in bed because of some weird achy flu. My whole body hurt. Even my eyelashes hurt. I'm feeling better now.

Emotionally: Normal. Not stressed, not anxious, not anything., but not numb either. I guess this means I'm satisfied? This is so good.

Spiritually: Um, I don't know the word for this. Guilty? Scared? I know that I'm not where I should be and I feel bad about that but I'm too scared to do what I need to do to get where I need to be.

Goal: This is always where I stop typing and stare off into space. It seems that every time I set a goal I accomplish everything except the goal and the goal becomes the hardest thing to do. My goal this week is to read my scriptures before bed every night.

I Wish I was a Witch

Maybe it’s all the reading I’ve been doing. I’m reading the Beautiful Creatures series, and I’m on book six of Harry Potter with Dewey. Am I envious of Lena Duchannes, or Molly Weasley or Hermione Granger?

Sadly, there are some people who know me who would say that I am a witch. Or, more correctly, something that rhymes with witch. To that I admit, but I’m talking about having magical powers.

I wouldn’t really be the bubble bubble toil and trouble dance around a cauldron making potions type, that’s too much like cooking. I would suck at potions and Snape would be constantly whacking me up side the head. I would be more of the spells and conjuring type of witch.

I would like to be like Molly Weasley and make the dishes do themselves, and have the books dust themselves, the pots stir themselves. I would make cooler looking sweaters and probably not have as many kids, but that’s because I don’t have magical powers.

I would be like Lena Duchannes and manipulate the weather to match my moods. I would have songs playing that are written just for my own personal situation. I would live in a gorgeous plantation mansion where the interior changed to reflect the occasion.

I would be like Hermione Granger and retain everything I ever read and know every spell I ever needed for my protection and that of those I loved. I would also be able to make beautiful things like a white rose wreath to place on the graves of my best friend’s parents, or a circle of fluffy yellow birds to sing to me and cheer me up. I could apparate and disapparate anywhere I needed to be and never have to worry about traffic.

Plus, most witches have such fabulous wardrobes. The shoes alone!

When I was a kid, all witches were wicked and ugly, but now that I’m grown and have learned and read more, I know that not all witches are bad and I wish I had their magical powers. Not so sure I would be able to use my powers only for good, though…

Honourable mentions: Alex Russo, Glinda the Good Witch, Minerva McGonnigal