Showing posts with label Everyday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Everyday. Show all posts

I Can Help With That... Your Google Queries Answered

Google is a marvelous thing--but a few recent visitors haven't found what they were looking for... I can help with that! Behold, your (common) google queries answered!

"what's the story of macbeth about"

Witches chant, cackle and stir up trouble with prophecies. They tell Macbeth he's going to be king, and he tells his wife. Lady Macbeth thinks this sounds like a marvelous idea and persuades Macbeth to murder the king and make it happen. (What a go-getter!)

Now Macbeth is king... and he keeps murdering to make sure he stays king, and visits the witches to hear more cryptic prophecies. Lady Macbeth goes crazy and kills herself (Stress and hallucinations will do that to a person). Meanwhile, all Macbeth's murdering and tyranny has made him a bit unpopular and the English army attacks his castle. Macbeth dies in battle. All is right with the world again.

"girls playing with hari puss"


You need to work on your spelling issues, but I deciphered. What a cute girl...


"poem about loving a dead guy"

There's no one who talks about death better than Poe:

To One in Paradise
by Edgar Allen Poe

Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine--
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
On! on!-- but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me
The light of Life is o'er!
'No more-- no more-- no more--'
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree
Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances
And where thy footstep gleams--
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.

Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allen Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason, that long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angel, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me...
Yes!--that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we,
Of many far wiser than we--
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee,

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling--my darling--my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

"boeing jokes"


A blonde gets an opportunity to fly to a nearby country. She has never
been on an airplane anywhere and was very excited and tense. As soon
as she boarded the plane, a Boeing747, she started jumping in excitement,
running over seat to seat and starts shouting, "BOEING! BOEING!!
BOEING!!! BO....."

Annoyed by the goings on, the Pilot comes out and shouts "BE SILENT!"

There was pin-drop silence everywhere and everybody is looking at the
blonde and the angry Pilot. She stared at the pilot in silence for a
moment, concentrated really hard, and all of a sudden started shouting,
"OEING! OEING! OEING! OE...."

"the memory keepers daughter and libriVox"


I'm afraid you won't find any newly released books on librivox. Their catalog contains titles on which the copyright has expired, so they don't have to pay royalties. Try looking up some of those classics you've been meaning to get to!


Happy reading!


Can you beat 25?

I saw this at Debbie's World the other day and decided to copy her idea. I thought about using the Guardian list before, but 1,000 books seemed a little extensive (and unfair to anyone who reads this in a feed), so we're going with the College Board's 101 Books College Bound Students Should Read. (I remember the nightmares about this list as graduation approached senior year--I was under the impression that everyone else I went to university with would have read the entire list. After a few English classes on campus, I felt better. I go to a "highly selective" school--but I've not met anyone yet who's run the list.)

The books I've read are highlighted red. If I just highlight the author, that means I've read something else by them, just not the book listed (That counts for something, right?):

Author Title
Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua Things Fall Apart
Agee, James A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul The Adventures of Augie March
Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert The Stranger
Cather, Willa Death Comes for the Archbishop
Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote
Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen The Red Badge of Courage
Dante Inferno
Defoe, Daniel Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo Selected Essays
Faulkner, William As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust
Golding, William Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest A Farewell to Arms
Homer The Iliad
Homer The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik A Doll’s House
James, Henry The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair Babbitt
London, Jack The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur The Crucible
Morrison, Toni Beloved
O’Connor, Flannery A Good Man is Hard to Find
O’Neill, Eugene Long Day’s Journey into Night
Orwell, George Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allen Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel Swann’s Way
Pynchon, Thomas The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William Hamlet
Shakespeare, William Macbeth
Shakespeare, William A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Shakespeare, William Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles Antigone
Sophocles Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher Uncle Tom’s Cabin
Swift, Jonathan Gulliver’s Travels
Thackeray, William Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David Walden
Tolstoy, Leo War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard Native Son



So that makes 25, plus 5 authors I've read, but not the specific works listed. I wish it was a little higher, since I graduate college next year, but I'm actually satisfied with 25%. The Three Musketeers and Things Fall Apart are two of my most recent reads, within the last few months, and Beowulf is actually in my pile of books to read. I really enjoy classic lit when I have the time to sit down and savor it. What on the list have I really been missing out on? How many have you read?

If you do a post on this, let me know and I'll add your link here!

Check out Kitten's list, she puts me to shame with 44!


Correction: I originally had 26, but realized in looking over the list that I had Catch 22, which I have not read, confused with Fahrenheit 451, which I have. That lowers my total from 26 to 25.

Remember Barbie?

Barbie turned 50 this week. (She looks good for her age, doesn't she?) As I was reading a bit about Barbie's history I got to thinking how she hasn't really changed much, in 50 years. When she appeared, in 1959, it was to a storm of controversy over her sexuality, but today you don't hear that so often anymore, or at least I haven't. Then again, there's a lawmaker (a man, I might point out) in West Virginia trying to get the dolls banned from the state. For the most part, though, I think we, as a culture have changed, since we first met Barbie.

I know I have changed.

I remember playing with Barbie. She was beautiful, had a handsome boyfriend, and could be anything--a doctor, a fashion designer, a princess, an astronaut--and I was so optimistic that I could be anything too. I read hopeful books, full of strong heroes and clever heroines, books where everything always came out alright in the end.

Now I study, write, work, search for internships and cross my fingers that I'll find something. I still read hopeful books, but only with heaping doses of cynicism--if it has a storybook ending, it's unrealistic. And I read plenty of books that end in tragedy, heartbreak, and failure. There's a satisfaction in watching a character's world come crashing down around them--like a nightmare that lets you experience your worst fears outside of real life.

I know life might not turn out the way I'd like for it to. I may fail to make a difference when I take over the university magazine next year. I may fail to find a summer internship this year, or a job when I graduate next May. I may fail to find that perfect guy. I may fail to raise my children well. I may fail to do anything significant in my life ever again.

This is how I'm not like Barbie. Barbie, after all, is an eternal optimist and I'm a pessimist. But that doesn't mean I can't learn something from her sunny disposition. On the flip side, Barbie has never been a writer, or a publishing exec, so maybe someday I'll be able to teach her a few things too.

Check out Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll


The first Barbie commercial (1959):




And the commercial that introduced Ken (1961):

Book Review Policy

I'm always happy to receive book review requests at meh471 (AT) gmail (DOT) com. I enjoy a variety of genres including literary fiction, memoir, general fiction and non-fiction, chick lit, classical, and romance. I do not review poetry collections, YA novels or children's titles. I'm not a fan of vampires. I do not accept self-published titles or electronic books at this time.

I post reviews on Library Thing. I do not post to amazon.com regularly, but will if requested. I cannot guarantee that I will review every book I receive, but I will try to pass those I choose not to read along to others reviewers. I do write negative reviews. Please look at review copies, not recommended, and of course, book reviews if you would like an idea of what to expect.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions!

I've managed to gather quite a stack of ARCs, so while I'm still accepting review copies, it will probably be May before I have a chance to review any books I receive from now on.

It's Giveaway Week!

It's that time again... when book bloggers from all corners of the ether join together for a giveaway extravaganza! Unfortunately, I'm not participating this time around, but head over to Bookroom Reviews and check out all the other bloggers giving away great titles this week--over 90 contests last time I checked!

Good luck, and happy reading!

Contest Winners! Plus some blog news!

It's time to draw winners! (Actually, it was time to draw winners a few days ago, but who's counting?) Thanks to everyone who entered, and so without further ado...

The winner of The American Journey of Barack Obama is...

Kat Bryan

The winners of The Italian Lover by Robert Hellenga are...

Miss Grace
Ashley
Anita Yancey
Mommyhood is Thankless
valerie2350


Congrats to the winners! Please leave me a comment, and send me an e-mail with your mailing address ASAP!

On a completely unrelated note...
A friend of mine has decided to take a stab at blogging and her first post will be up Thursday evening. Please come by and say hi--I need y'all to win her over, convince her that she'll be missing out if she doesn't blog! I know you can charm, so I'm counting on you!

I'm on Twitter

I finally gave in and signed up for Twitter! Check out my tweets here!

How addicted to blogging are you?

62%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?
I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. I wish I had more time to blog, but school and work have been keeping me pretty busy. I head to Minneapolis this weekend for a journalism conference and the following weekend I interview with the media board for editor of Detours (our campus magazine).

I have a few books read that I haven't had a chance to talk about yet, and honestly I'm a little stumped for good ideas. So here's my list, and if you'd like to know anything about any one of the books, just let me know and I'll see if I can work it into my review!















Slow Hands by Leslie Kelly -- romance/erotica
Changing Places by David Lodge -- humor, British style
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake -- classic philosophical text

Two decades in reading...

Today is my 20th birthday, which I suppose is a big deal--leaving my teenage years behind and all.

So to celebrate, I thought I would share the highlights of two decades in reading. These are the books that have stayed with me over the years, in semi-chronological order...


The Baby-sitter's Club by Ann M. Martin (the series)


The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis (the series)


A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain


Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine


Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen


Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe


Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes


Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (the series)


1984 by George Orwell


By the Waters of Babylon by Stephen Vincent Benet


Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy


Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy


Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


A Passage to India by E. M. Forester


Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell


Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov


What stories and books have stuck with you over the years?

Just Like Training for a Marathon...

How are those New Year resolutions coming along? I always make a fresh attempt to read more, exercise more, clean more, smile more, etc. when New Years comes around, but around February I've slid back into old habits.

This year, I've actually done pretty well. I go to a step class and a yoga class, I walk around campus more than I drive, I wake up at a reasonable hour on days when I don't have classes... but my reading has fallen off. For me, reading is like training for a marathon--satisfying when I'm doing it, but hard to get back into when I've fallen out of the habit.

It's not that I'm not enjoying the books--I have a stack of tempting texts on my nightstand. The problem is, I'm doing such a good job with all my other resolutions, I'm running out of time to read!

So my question is, how do you find time to read when your schedule is hectic? Share your tips and tricks! Meanwhile, I'm going to get back to looking for news stories for next week's issue of the paper, and pretending to listen to my Media Law teacher--I'm a little bit proud of my triple-tasking!

What Marks Your Books?

I think middle school was the last time I used an actual bookmark. Every time you checked out a book from the school library, you were allowed to take one bookmark. (Sometimes, when the designs were really cute, I would sneak one of each--I was a bit of a bookmark glutton.)

Nowadays, my books are marked by post-it notes, receipts, library return slips, or whatever else happens to be lying around. I randomly stuck this Levi's tag in a book a few weeks ago, but have found myself carefully transferring it from book to book. (This picture is from when I was reading American Wife, right now the tag is actually in Gilgamesh.)

I'm not sure why I'm holding onto it, except that I like the weight and size of it in my books. Perhaps it's a sign I should invest in some bookmarks, but I can't bring myself to spend money on something I'm bound to loose. Of course, when I lose this one, I'll have to go buy another pair of jeans just to replace it!

So, this brings me to my question: What marks your books? Have you ever found anything strange in books you've borrowed from the library or from friends? Do you have a favorite bookmark? Does anyone else find themselves giving companies free advertising, like I seem to be, because their labels make great bookmarks?

Somewhere Between Fact, Fiction, and Farce -- A View of the Publishing Industry

I could help but pass this one along...



Hilarious!

Netflix for Books?



Has anyone heard of the BookSwim Corporation? Set up along the same lines as Netflix (free postage, no late fees, buy what you want to keep, etc), Bookswim seems like a cross between the library and a bookstore.

I'm curious... Has anyone used this service? Would you? It sounds like a good idea, but I don't know if I read enough every month to save what I would have spent in books, although not walking to the library in the middle of winter sounds like a good plan! The plans seem pretty reasonable, it looks like the cheapest one is less than $10 per month, and it looks like they have a good selection, although I didn't spend too much time looking for eclectic titles.

What do you think? Would you use it?

Makeover Time

If you've visited today, you might have seen several variations of the site as I experimented with themes and design. I think all the major changes are done (for now!) and I have settled on a brand new layout so come by and check it out if you're reading this on a feed! Also, I want to thank all the friendly bloggers who gave advice and feedback today as I tried to figure out what needed to change!

If anyone else wants to offer a suggestion or criticism (about either the design or content!), please leave a comment!

Is Your Blog Written by a Man or a Woman?


Let GenderAnalyzer tell you! All you have to do is enter the URL of your blog and the program tells you whether it thinks that blog was written by a man or a woman. It worked for me (I have a 79% chance of being a woman) but Ann at Booklorn came out with a 96% chance of being a man!

Other sites hosted by the same service(uClassify.com) will analyze your personality (I came out an ISTP -- independent problem-solver) or tell you what classical author you most resemble (I'm not the next Lewis Carroll, but I do moderately resemble him at 33% alike) based on your blog URL.

Check it out on with your blog... are you a man or a woman, a practical or an idealist, Jane Austen or H. G. Wells? Leave a comment with your results!

My 33% doppelganger, like looking in a mirror, no?

Happy One Month Anniversary


It's my one month anniversary, and I think I'm in love! Blogging has taken over my winter break (What happened to all those resumes I was going to send out?!) and I'm have a blast. I broke 100 visits on New Years Eve (visitor #100, from Ontario, California according to sitemeter) and I've had visitors from across the US and the world (I'm still waiting on a hit from Africa). I even bribed several of you into following my posts! I've gotten in over my head with those irresistible challenges and become severely addicted to several of your blogs (seriously, I'm going to need a stint in rehab). Thanks to everyone who's stopped by to read posts or comment, and especially to those who have answered my questions and helped me get off the ground! You all are wonderful!

Welcoming 2009

Welcome to the New Year, and the beginning of the 100 Books in 2009 challenge (and a host of others). Check out my list-in-progress here. Today I plan to start A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseni. Good luck to everyone who's participating in this challenge (or any of the other excellent challenges being hosted this year in the blogosphere) and happy reading in 2009!



Also ~ Don't forget to enter the raffle for The Time Traveler's Wife, which ends January 31!

Indies vs Amazon -- Does Anyone Else Have This Problem?!


There has been a lot of discussion lately about the need to support independent bookstores, and I agree with the arguments. I, however, have never been to an indie bookstore. I rarely enter a bookstore at all, preferring to fuel my addiction through amazon.com and the closest library.

Lately I have been feeling some indie guilt, but I live in rural Missouri, and I don't know where any indie bookstores are! (In fact, the closest chain bookstore I know of is at the mall, an hour away). So, I searched the web and came upon this nifty site, Indie Bound.

Turns out, indie bookstores do exist in Missouri, but they aren't in any locations that I tend to frequent. There are 6 indies within 100 miles of my university residence, but the closest one is still an hour away. My parent's house has even fewer options, with only 2 stores within 100 miles, although one is in a city I've actually been to once or twice. So, it looks like my book buying habits are not in for a change anytime soon!

Does anyone else have this problem? Do you go out of your way to shop at the indies?

The Darwin Awards and Stocking up for 2009

I dragged myself and my sister to the library today to pick up a few books. As always, I had written down the titles and locations of the books by searching the catalog online first and planned to be in and out in 15 minutes. Of course, we were there for over an hour and only left as soon as we did because the library has been closing early during the holidays.

My sister ended up with two books, and I managed to find seven, only two of which,
The Keep by Jennifer Egan and
A Separate Peace by John Knowles,
were actually on my original list. I also browsed around and picked up:
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron,
Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong by Pierre Bayard,
Dispatches from the Edge by Anderson Cooper,
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld and
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

I feel that I'm being overly ambitious considering I have a job and I return to school in two weeks. I do tend to check out more books than I actually read because I like to have a variety of choices at all times, but these are all such compelling choices I'm going to have a hard time choosing. I'm leaning toward A Thousand Splendid Suns because I enjoyed The Kite Runner so much, but I'm also really curious about American Wife, and The Keep, and... well you get the picture.

The other issue is that I have all these beautiful, shiny library books in front of me, and several Christmas presents as well, but with 2009 only a few days away, I feel as though I should wait so they will count toward my total in the challenge. I know I won't get very far in the next few days because they're going to be busy, but still, I feel like someone set a steaming cup of coffee in front of me and told me not to drink it.

Thinking back on it, I should have gotten The Darwin Awards Next Evolution by Wendy Northcutt. I put it back because I already had several choices picked out. It's a book I never would have finished, I eventually get bored with stories of people doing stupid things, but it would have been the perfect tide-me-over for the next couple of days.

Don't forget to enter the raffle to win a brand-new copy of The Time Traveler's Wife!
 

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