Been Awhile, Yes

Hello, guys.  Sorry it's been so ridiculously long.  I'll skip the details, but I've been really, really busy lately.  Like, for the entire last month, yes.  Too busy to blog?  Well, probably not, no, but you know how it is.  My every free second isn't filled with "oh, I need to blog..."  So yeah.  Whatever.

Anyway, I'm throwing my schedule out the window today--even though it's Music Monday and I love and greatly miss it--and I'm going to talk about a book we just read in English.  I may come back to music, though... just cause.  I have a confession to make, haha. =3

The Rag and Bone Shop: Robert Cormier

It's about this little 7-year-old girl named Alicia Bartlett who is "brutally murdered" (honestly, she got a rock to the head.  Brutal. Hah) and found in the woods.  The last person who saw her alive was Jason Dorrant, who is 12, and lives down the street, thus making him the prime suspect.  (He didn't do it.)

The thing of it is... The book is short, and not just in length.  It's very concise.  Frill-less.  There are very few descriptions, and those available are short and semi-vague.  It is cut-and-dry, but it all just adds to the story.  It doesn't matter what season it is (summer) or where the story takes place (Monument, whatever-state--CT?).  It doesn't matter what anyone's wearing, or what anyone really looks like.  People are described, but in a manner to make it seem highly unimportant and a person tends to just skim over it.  Well, I did.  She gave it to us and I had it read in just over two class periods.

It was really good.  I give it a two thumbs up--might give it more if I had more thumbs, even.  (=

Also, I finished reading Deathwish by Rob Thurman finally.  It was a really good book.  A perfect conclusion to the trilogy about the Leandros brothers (mostly Cal)...

Until I was in the bookstore Friday night and found Roadkill, the next book in the Cal Leandros once-trilogy-now-quad.  The guy lied to me when he told me he was only writing three books! (Yes, I emailed him once upon a time becaaauuuuse... haha, well, long story.  Anyway. Hah.)  Bitch.  Oh well, I don't mind.  I'm just... at a lost for the real motivation in it, because--I can't tell you if you intend to read them.  Hah.  Oops.  Anyway, yeah.  I'm pretty pumped because it's going really well so far and it's--of course--really good and I like it a lot.  I don't even mind theeeeee lack of a certain element.  So yep. (=

...I just gotted caught on my teacher's laptop, soooooo I'ma go now. heh.  toodles!

Wah-Wah-Wednesday!

Okay, that was quite likely the single dumbest thing I've ever titled anything.

Anyway.  So what's Wednesday supposed to be anyway?  I totally cannot remember.  I'm hyper right now, by the way.  I don't know why; I'm tired as hell.  But somehow here I sit, hyper and annoying.  HAH! As if I'm ever anything but annoying.
No, I'm kidding.  That in itself is annoying, and I didn't really mean it.  Well, I might have sorta meant it, but never mind.  I don't hate myself that much.

OH! BOOKS!  Duh.  I knew that.

So this is a book I just got done reading--All Q, No A: More Tales of a 10th-Grade Social Climber by Lauren Mechling and Laura Moser.

Funny... I never realized it was cowritten...

Anyway.  Yeah.  It's the sequel to "Rise and Fall of a 10th-Grade Social Climber" which I read... as a sophomore, actually, hahaha.  Maybe a freshman?  It seems like it was a really long time ago.  But I'm pretty sure it was last year.

It wraps up a lot of loose ends from the first book, which is good, because I remember longing desperately for more at the time, haha.  But it's got its own little plot, and it must've been what I was looking for at the time when I picked it up at the library, because I read it in 2.5 days.  Haha.  I used to do that a lot.  Now it takes me awhile longer to read things because I get so side tracked.  But it's a good read, definitely.  If you've read the first one, you'll want to pick up the 2nd.

It's a painfully bright book in reality, if you can't tell from the picture.  It's several decibels brighter, actually.  HOT PINK AND LIME GREEN.  It's a little hard on the eyes.

Anyway.  It's called Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty, and it's actually an Australian book!  Takes place in Australia and everything.  I think it's really cool.

But it's written entirely in letter/note format.  It's great.  She gets notes and letters from all of these funny little societies (not really, it's basically just like, story information/filler and stuff. It's hard to explain) and then these strange, random notes from her mother.  And then her English teacher has decided that kids need to relearn the joy of the envelope, so he's making them write letters back and forth to kids in the school a few blocks away.  So pretty much, this complete stranger very soon knows more about her than anybody else and gets in on her struggles with her best friend, Celia, who... well... her family's one of those weird "free spirit" families that you see around?  Where the mom thinks that anything her baby does is absolutely joyous and she has every right to explore her own world of her own volition in her own way.  It kind of becomes a disaster.  Hence the title.  But I'm not quite finished with it, so I'm anxious to see how it ends

And to get it returned to the libary! It's due on the 19th, but I'm not going to be here! ACK!  I need to get it there somehow... oi.

And then I'm reading book 7 in my kinky Laurell K. Hamilton series.  It's really good.  Dramatic, obviously; is Hamilton anything but?  Regardless, I'm not reading it very actively right now because I've gotten into a light-reading phase.  It's hanging out in my purse, actually.  So it's not like I never read it, haha.  Just not as much lately.

AND I STILL HAVE TO READ DEATHWISH! GOD!  Erg.  I need to do that.  I promised Tara that I'd bring it with me when I went to see her, but I haven't finished it and that's just dumb.  =/  She'll want to discuss it and I won't be able to because I'm not DONE!  I need to read more.  =/

Anyway, that's about it for the time being.  I've only got so much material that I'm actually reading.  I've got a lot of material, but I'm only reading them a couple at a time.  It's vaguely ridiculous.  haha...

Until next time, with love,
--Emily
~xoxo~

"Arise and be all that you dreamed, all that you dreamed."
--Arise: Flyleaf (Momento Mori)

Post playlist (http://www.pandora.com/):
Feel Good Drag--Anberlin: Never Take Friendship Personal
Bruised--Jack's Mannequin: Everything in Transit
Marching Bands of Manhattan--Death Cab for Cutie: Plans
You--Switchfoot: The Early Years 1997-2000
Bring Me to Life--Thousand Foot Krutch: Welcome to the Masquerade
Dying to Live--Jonah 33: The Heart of War
Ignition--TobyMac: Portable Sounds

It's Wednesday!

...What's Wednesday mean?  I completely just forgot... music monday, intro tuesday.... fucker... [storms out to check, grumbling]  BOOKS!!  That's it.  I forgot, obviously.  Whoops. My bad.

So I finished How I Became Stupid, and I liked the ending a whole lot.  It was quite amusing, as a matter of fact... although it did seem a little unfinished.  I think I give it....4.3 stars. (Of 5, obviously.)
Still reading Mistral's Kiss, but I'm almost done with it.
Deathwish is still just kinda sitting in the pile of stuff I carry everywhere...waiting for me to get to it.  Sorry, Cal; I'll read you eventually.

Today I think I'll talk about Generation Dead, and the sequel, A Kiss of Death--which I haven't finished yet, obviously.  Generation dead is about how all of a sudden, teenagers are dying...but not really.  They're coming back as zombies--ahem, my bad, "living impaired."--and some of them function quite well, others hardly at all.  They talk slow, have monotone-voices, and are, of course, quite pale.  However.  Anyway, there's a lot of controversy over the whole dead-kid issue thing and whether they were now citizens or not or whatever.  Some of them don't want to be with "the beating-hearts" and some of them do.  It's hard to really describe.  Regardless, the plot and writing style make it a really intense read, keeping you on pins and needles page after page until you've burned through the whole thing and you're left sitting there going, "Hey, hang on a minute!"
So then you get your hand on the sequel, A Kiss of Life.  And the intensity hasn't dropped at all.  It's still pins and needles through this thing--it's a wonder I got it put down, haha.  I guarantee, it'll be the first I pick up when I need another book.

So that's it for the week!  Short, I know.  I'm sorry.

Until next time, with love,
--Emily
~~xoxo~~

(sorry; no playlist again.  I've taken to writing these at night when it's unavailable.  I'll try to change it up one of these days and give you some music again.  kay?  ^.^ loves!)

Novel Wednesdays!

Yay! It's time to talk about books. Always a topic I thoroughly enjoy. Haha, it happens when you're a bookworm. C=

So anyway. At present, I'm reading three different books. Well, two, and I just started one.

I'll start with the one that I'm reading most often--e.g. the one I pick up more times than the other(s): Mistral's Kiss--Laurell K. Hamilton

Preceded by A Kiss of Shadows, A Caress of Twilight, and Seduced by Moonlight,it's a continuation of a quite impressive--and intriguing--story line that I haven't been able to stray away from. I won't deny that they're graphic...in both senses of the term used here. There is a lot of violence in these books--about as much as there is sex. Oh, dude, there's so much sex in these books it's pretty much like porno in print! But at least it's good sex. Hah, I know, I shouldn't really be saying that, but come on. The series is about the princess of the Unseelie Court of Faerie, Meredith NicEssus--who goes by the alias "Gentry" when she's hiding from the court in Los Angeles--in a race to get pregnant with her cousin Cel--who's trying to impregnate one of his harem--to take the throne from her aunt (and his mother) Queen Andais. Each book is riddled with assassination attempts on Meredith and her men, along with torture and battle and magic duels, et cetera. Steadily, the Unseelie Court is regaining the power that it lost over the years--from various causes, including moving from Europe to America--and so are the members of the royal guard, now Meredith's, rather than the Queen's....and it's because Merry is having sex with them. Well, sometimes; sometimes if they're just around when she's having sex, then shit happens, but now we're back to sex, and I'm avoiding that bit. ASIDE from the sex, Laurell (the author) is a brilliant wordsmith and artist. She paints the most beautiful--or macabre--and vivid pictures with her words, it's just incredible. I can see everything she describes in perfect clarity in my mind, and that's part of the reason why I love her so.
Not really a book I'd suggest to the weak of heart....or those who can't handle reading sex...and really macabre torture and such... yeah.

Book 2: Deathwish: Rob Thurman
Preceded by Nightwish, Moonshine, and Madhouse, this book concludes the Cal Leandros series in ever-more hilarious tension, sarcastic comments, and unbeatable action. (By the way, these really are my words coming out here. I could write reviews for stuff, no problem, haha.) I love this guy, partly because his writing style is like mine on a really good day--only all the time--and his sense of humor is nigh identical to mine. That, and I actually happen to find men's habits and thought processes and reasoning amusing. Don't ask me why, I don't really know, but I'm sure it stems of the fact that I'm a girl. Haha. Anyway. The books contain great characters, thoroughly developed, but with things that you either like being left ambiguous, or wish they weren't. I haven't finished it, though, so there may be a few more things discussed. I'm hoping on a couple of things. [= Anyway. The series is about Cal and his brother Niko living in New York and fighting monsters, meanwhile trying to evade and kill off the nastiest monster of them all: the Auphe. They're like elves, but the nastiest, most terrifying elves you could ever in your darkest nightmares come up with...so far as I can tell. The description of them isn't so terrible, but if you let your imagination run wild--as I so often do--they get pretty ugly. Anyway. It's a really good series, and one that I totally would recommend to about anybody. They're just great. [=

And I just started this book called "How I Became Stupid" but I don't remember the title because I just got it from the library today. I picked it up on a reccomendation of a friend of mine from Fargo, the ever-amazing Harri Boyd. That kid's just great. I love him. He's one of the best writers I know, and I aspire to be as good as he is. He doesn't read a lot of books, and he's got the same reason as I do, only he freely admits to being kind of conceited about his writing talent--which he kind of has right to be, but he knows that he still needs critique, which is the important thing--so he hardly ever finishes books. Fat Kid Rules the World--another book I forgot the author of--was one that he finished, and I read, and thoroughly enjoyed. Hawksong--no author again, sorry; too lazy to go look--was another, but someone stole it from the school library, so I haven't read it. But my best friend Tara read it several times and loved it, so... I'm going to say it was probably a pretty good book. I'll get around to it later, perhaps. We'll see.

Well, that concludes my reading material discussion for the week. Next Wednesday, I might let you know about How I Became Stupid. Or I might talk about something else. Who knows? It's all fair game in the big wide world of Emily's Bookshelf.
Ha ha

Until next time, with love,
--Emily
~~xoxo~~

Blog tracklist (courtesy of www.jango.com and my own library):
TiK ToK--Ke$ha
Rock is Dead--Marilyn Manson
Say Anything (Else)--Cartel
On and On (About You)--Bowling for Soup
Don't Count on Me--The Secret Handshake
Heart Surgery Isn't That Bad--Jeffree Star
One Thing is For Sure--The Spill Canvas
Gunslinger--Avenged Sevenfold
In Fate's Hands--The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
Now or Never--Madina Lake
Do It For Me Now--Angels and Airwaves
Sleeping with Giants (Lifetime)--The Academy Is...
Breathe Today--Flyleaf
Boyfriend--Ashlee Simpson (I normally wouldn't admit her, but I like this song.)
Homecoming--Hey Monday