WHOOOOAAAA.

My little egg timer just went off and scared the HECK out of me. O_O

But disregarding my lameness, I've been rereading the first Maximum Ride book lately. I stopped, what with all the homework screaming at me, but it's sitting on my desk waiting to be read. I already reviewed Max (the fifth book), but I think I should do the first, too. :)

What I'm Reading: Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment. Like I said before, it's the first in the Maximum Ride series. (Yes, I'm sure. The series is set up really confusingly [WHOA, confusingly is a word?!], but this is the first.) In this book, Max and the flock are living in secrecy, unknown to anyone, but one day an old enemy shows up and kidnaps Angel, the youngest flock member. Now they have to go find her before a crew of complete psychos uses her for their experiments...

They were getting closer. Dim light filtered in through the woods in front of me -- a clearing? Please, please... a clearing could save me.

I burst through the trees, chest heaving, a thin sheen of cold sweat on my skin.

Yes!

No -- oh, no!

I skidded to a halt, my arms waving, my feet backpedaling in the rocky dirt.

It wasn't a clearing. In front of me was a cliff, a sheer face of rock that dropped to an unseeable floor hundreds of feet below.

In back of me were woods filled with drooling bloodhounds and psycho Erasers with guns.

Both options stank.

The dogs were yelping excitedly -- they'd found their prey: moi.

I looked over the deadly drop.

There was no choice, really. If you were me, you'd have done the same thing,

I closed my eyes, held out my arms... and let myself fall over the edge of the cliff.

Ooh, cliffy! :D

Erases on Film and Paper

The title of this post came from the little label on my eraser I got for art. Finally, an eraser that actually works well! *throws an eraser party*

Anyway, not much to blog about. Sorry. :/ 

Although I did start a new blog: http://notactuallyatwitter.blogspot.com. They're just little 'status updates,' like on Facebook or Twitter or Google Buzz (yay!) or something. Unless I find some more interesting stuff to blog about on there, it's going to be a total fail. But that's okay, because it'll occupy my time. :)

What I'm Reading: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. It's old, and the language is kind of hard to understand, but it's actually a really good book. (Assigned reading that I like?! Apocalypse!! *passes out*) It's pretty intense- usually, when I'm reading chapters that were assigned for school, I have a nice system.

1. Read the chapters

2. Throw book across room in utter confusion

3. Go on SparkNotes so I can actually understand what I just read

4. Rinse and repeat every time another chapter is assigned

It works pretty well, actually. (Nightshade + SparkNotes = LOVE) It sums up Frankenstein really nicely, because even though the language is somewhat understandable, Mary Shelley was even MORE in love with her thesaurus than Stephenie Meyer is. However, her ridiculously difficult language can sort of be excused, because it was written in the early 1800s and, well, people wrote stuff like that. (But for Stephenie Meyer, there's no excuse.)

In the ORIGINAL Frankenstein story, it's even freakier than all the other "actual" versions that are out there. Victor Frankenstein has a nice childhood, skipping through flower meadows with his BFFs and hugging puppies (figuratively). But then he goes off to college and gets obsessed with anatomy... When he creates the infamous monster, the stuff that actually happens is WAY cooler than all the Mary Shelley wannabe writers out there (yeah, they exist. Probably). I give it 4 out of 5 stars! (I deducted one star for the crazy writing style.)

Remove by friction.

Random title, I know. I just looked around my desk and saw this "erasable" highlighter that says "remove by friction" on the side. I thought it was funny... by the way, it doesn't erase. So don't blow your money on erasable highlighters, because they really don't erase well. Believe me, I tried it myself. :P

Anyway, I'm still taking an attempt at Twilight... I haven't had much time to sit down and actually go through it in detail, so I'm just through chapter 2. So far, I've done chapters 1, 2, and a bit of a later chapter... 7? 8? One of those. Still excited for Chapter 13 (the one where they're in the meadow and Eddiekins sparkles for Bella)! I haven't reread THAT part in a while, so it will be extremely entertaining. >:D

Also, I'm officially ADDICTED to unrelatedcaptions.com. It's seriously an amazing site! I just sent an email to a bunch of my friends with a bunch of unrelatedcaptions.com links... they'll probably be quite annoyed with the spam, but at least they'll be entertained when they view the links. :D

What I'm Reading: Nightlight, by The Harvard Lampoon. It's actually a group of a few people who collaborate to write parody books (like this one). It's amazing and about ten million times better than the original Twilight! :D When I read it, I couldn't stop laughing. My family thought there was something wrong with me... but that's okay.

In THIS version of Twilight, Belle Goose abandons life in Phoenix to live with her window-washing dad in Switchblade, Oregon. She quickly discovers Edwart Mullen, a strange germophobe whom Belle is absolutely convinced is a vampire. After all, he DID save her from a speeding snowball...

"About three things I was absolutely certain.

First, Edwart was most likely my soul mate, maybe.

Second, there was a vampire part of him- which I assumed was wildly out of his control- that wanted me dead.

And third, I unconditionally, irrevocably, impenetrably, heterogeneously, gynecologically, and disreputably wished he had kissed me."

FREEDOM!!

Freedom is MINE!! MINE, I SAY!! I'M DONE WITH FINALS!! AH HA HAAAAA *manic laughing*

Heheh. Anyway.... XD

Obviously, I'm now done with finals. Just finished late this morning, and now it's late afternoon and I have nothing to do. And I am perfectly happy. Actually, I wanted to teach myself how to harmonize (my voice is weird), and I was right in the middle of getting started when the rest of my family decided to arrive at home. It was like, Great. An hour of solitude, and the second I try and do something that I'll only do by myself when no one's around? They come back. Okaaay.

Whatever, I'll try it again... um... some other time?! O_O

What I'm Reading: Dork Diaries, by Rachel R. Russell. It's way below my reading level (it's actually my sister's book that she got when we were at B&N), but it's actually a really good book. (Infinitely better than Twilight, too.) It's kind of like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but it's a girl telling the story (instead of a guy). It's reeeaaally funny :D

Highlighting Twilight

So right now, I'm in the process of rereading Twilight and adding snarky little comments in pencil. I'm counting how many times...

1) A form of the word 'murmur' is used

2) A form of the word 'glower' is used

3) A semicolon is used (they're awesome, but if you overuse them? LAME.)

4) Edward's physical traits are described

5) Edward tells Bella that it's dangerous to be around him

#5 isn't applicable yet, since I'm only on chapter 2 and they haven't spoken yet. But so far, in 1 chapter plus one page (a total of 29 pages), there are...

1) Murmurs: o

2) Glowers: o

3) Semicolons: 15

4) Descriptions: 18

5) Dangerous: (N/A)

That's right, folks. And the physical descriptions are only on TEN pages. Scary, I know. Unfortunately, I'm not to chapter 7 yet, so I can't rewrite much yet (plus, I'm in the middle of finals). I'm especially looking forward to commenting on chapter 13- the chapter where Bella and Deadward are in the meadow. >:D

What I'm Reading: Twilight. Duh. Didn't you read the rest of the post? ;)

Ew, finals...

Bleah, sorry I haven't posted in so long... I just kinda lost motivation. :P Unfortunately, I may have to put the Breaking Dawn stuff on hold because I have finals coming up. I mean, Christmas break was nice and amazing and relaxing, but once I get back to school? INSANITY. So for the next four weeks or so, anything outside of school will be pretty much nonexistent. My finals schedule is a bit like this...

~Drag myself out of bed at the ungodly hour of 5:40 AM

~Somehow get in the car and to school on time

~Attempt to stay awake in my morning classes, both of which pound finals material into my head

~LUNCH! 25 MINUTES OF FREEDOM! HOORAY!

~Back into the death trap of afternoon classes (still trying to stay awake), both of which attempt to engrave finals stuff into my brain

~Get home and procrastinate for an hour or so

~Procrastinate some more while "studying for finals"

~Actually start studying for finals at like 7:00 PM

~Stay up until approximately 1:07 AM frantically trying to cram as much information into brain as possible

~Go to sleep at about 1:30 AM and repeat the whole thing. And repeat again... and again... and again...

On a lighter note, I finished the WHOLE Cirque du Freak series! (*sob*) I read... er... one of the later ones, and I got super depressed and was like "Why should I even keep reading? ___________ happened... there's no meaning to reading OR writing... the world is ending..." But then somehow I got the motivation to keep reading. (The fact that my best friend threatened to murder me if I didn't finish the series soon helped a lot.) :D

What I'm Reading: Sons of Destiny, Cirque du Freak Book 12!! 8-O It was AMAZING! I cried! A lot! Uncontrollable crying/whimpering/rolling around on the ground in the fetal position is a sign of a very good book. If it can evoke strong emotions, it means the author did their job right. Darren Shan did a little TOO well... (just kidding) :D

Twilight...?

Okay, I have to say this: I don't like Twilight. Not really. I mean, sure, it's a sorta-decent book, but OMG-worthy. Maybe OMG-these-characters-are-so-lame-worthy, but not OMG-this-is-amazing-worthy. I don't know WHAT I was thinking earlier, posting about how Twilight was good. (Did I even say that? I honestly can't remember. Wow.) But last summer (2008), when I first read Twilight, I'm a little ashamed to say that I was one of those crazy fangirls. Not anymore, though, because I've seen the light. Er, the come-back-to-Kansas light. (Get it? Like... come back to Kansas now, Dorothy... enough daydreaming... ah, whatever.)

But I'm not just ranting about my annoyance with Twilight. Nope, there is actually a REASON for my rant! (That's pretty much a first.) I was on SparkNotes yesterday (ew, I HATE Paradise Lost) and I noticed that one of their writers blogged about Twilight. He was reading the series for the first time, and blogged about each chapter as he read it. It is absolutely THE most hysterical book review I have EVER read, and it inspired me! I'm pretty much going to do the same thing. Differences- I've got a different viewpoint (being my own person and all), and I've read the series before. Get ready for some pret-ty long blog posts!

I'm not sure if I should do the whole series or just some of the books. Leave a comment and tell me!

Also, I was talking to my sister, and she brought up Disney Princesses. Okay, I must say that I pretty much went off on a crazed rant about all the princesses (well, almost all). Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and almost everyone else. (Can't really touch Giselle, because Enchanted was so awesome, or Tiana, because The Princess And The Frog comes out today and I haven't seen it. Besides, it looks awesome.) But really, some of those darn princesses are so... passive.

So I'm doing the Disney Princess rants first, then the Twilight review. I'm going to do the princesses in chronological order (the order in which their movies were made- Snow White first, etc.), and hopefully by then I'll have gotten enough opinions to start my Twilight review.

Oh! Almost forgot. Song of the moment: Viva la Vida, by Coldplay. Book of the moment: Still Cirque du Freak! Just finished the fifth and sixth books this week and they were even more amazing than I expected!

Also, I just changed the template. I saw it and thought OMG PRETTY DOTS and just had to change it. :)

NEW SERIES!!

Just read a new series and it's super amazing! *SCREAM*

What I'm Reading: Cirque du Freak, by Darren Shan! Yes, it's awesome, yes, it's a movie now, and yes, it's about vampires. However, DON'T stereotype the vampire genre- these vampires are definitely different from Twilight vamps. Three words: They. Don't. Sparkle. They're also not particularly gorgeous or anything (that doesn't mean they're all hideous, though), and no, they don't drink animal blood. (Well, they can, but... it's complicated.)

It all starts when Darren Shan and his best friend Steve find two tickets to the Cirque du Freak, the self-proclaimed best freak show around. Of course, you'd have to be really twisted to go to one of those... which is exactly why they'd love to see it. But neither of them expects the effects the show will have on them...

So, a series about vampires (that drink human blood and don't sparkle) that doesn't center on romance. It makes you laugh, cry, and throw the book across the room and scream AAAHHHH I HATE YOU, DARREN SHAN!!! and three seconds later scream AAAAHHHHH YOU'RE AMAZING, DARREN SHAN!!! (It's the sign of a really good book.) Twelve new novels to read! Who wouldn't love it?

This is a true story.

I don't expect you to believe me- I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't lived it- but it is. Everything I describe in this book happened, just as I tell it.

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books, the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.

In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall out of a tree, you break some bones.

Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.

I just wanted to make that clear before I began.

Don't know what to saaaayyyy...

That totally sounds like a line from a song, but it's not. Er, I don't think it is. If it IS in a song, I haven't heard it before. o_O If someone recognizes that line from a song, shoot me a comment and tell me what song it is! I wanna know! (It might not EXIST, Nightshade...)

ANYway, speaking of songs, I'm going to start putting a couple of my favorite-songs-at-the-moment in my posts... even though it's not related to books whatsoever... Maybe if I find a song that matches a book reasonably well, I'll put that. :)

Top of my Favorites playlist right now: Animal I Have Become, by Three Days Grace (unrelated to any books I know. It's just my favorite song at the moment)

What I'm Reading: Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins! It's amazing! :D It's the second book in the Hunger Games series (the first is The Hunger Games). Get right out to the bookstore and get it! Make sure to read these in order, though, otherwise the whole series is DEFINITELY ruined.

In this second book, after surviving the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen tries to resume life as it was before the Games. However, nothing is quite the same as it was before. She owns a brand-new house, has everything she could ever want; but at the same time, her best friend turns his back and the districts whisper of rebellion. Now Katniss has to stop something she wasn't meaning to start. The stakes are high and are pushed to the highest when an unexpected turn of events adds yet another twist on her life...

Something seems to be wrong with my vision. The ground is too bright and shiny and keeps undulating. I squint down at my feet and see that my metal plate is surrounded by blue waves that lap up over my boots. Slowly I raise my eyes and take in the water spreading out in every direction.

I can only form one clear thought.

This is no place for a girl on fire.

A little motivation to read it soon: A third book is expected! Not sure when it's coming out, but it's definitely going to be published!

Assigned Reading :P

Raise your hand if you hate- er, deeply dislike assigned reading for school! *hand shoots into air* I had to read The Canterbury Tales. Thankfully, we just finished and it's OVER!! Admittedly, it was much better than Beowulf, but still. It was confusing. Also, it's got some... er... certain content of an inappropriate nature, so readers beware! It's kind of creepy, actually. Like, not scary-creepy, but strange-weird-creeper-stalker-creepy.

But enough about bad books. Focus on good books!

What I'm Reading: Fruits Basket!!!!! It's the most amazing manga series EVER! And don't be turned off by the manga genre. I'm definitely not a big fan of manga or anime or anything, but this series is GOOD. I'd say it's maybe age 13 and up, for a little bit of language (nothing, like, extremely profane or anything). It's the second series to ever make me literally almost fall off my chair because I was laughing so hard (Percy Jackson was the first). Natsuki Takaya (the author) is an absolute genius!

What I like so much about this series is that it's got something for everyone- I'd classify the genre as comedy-romance-sitcom-inspirational. Yes, inspirational. There's some good stuff in there. You know, stuff that makes you go "Whoa, I never thought of that..." because it's... deep, I guess? (I sound really lame right now, don't I?) It's a little odd, but overall hilarious and amazing!! READ! IT! NOW!

Here's a couple lines from the series, since a big quote wouldn't work (it's manga, after all):

"Wow! There's a lake! It's so pretty! And so big!"

"Is it that unusual for you to see a lake?"

"YES!!"

"A novelist can't be without a kimono and pen! Although I use a computer."

"Sometimes it feels like the whole world is conspiring to destroy my house..."

(And now one of the really good ones!)

"When we are first born, all we know how to do is want. We want food, we want attention. Natural instinct, I guess. But kindness is something that we all have to learn as we go. It's something that grows and develops over time... True kindness isn't something we are born with, it's something we have to work at. We have to mold it and shape it inside ourselves. Not everyone has it, but I think everyone has the potential."