listening:

to the new Owl City album:

the boyfriend says Owl City is, and i quote, "LACKING."

lacking what?

"TALENT."

but you know what? i LIKE IT.

speaking of music i like, i ordered a new Ben Folds cd today that i'm pretty stoked about.

i actually heard about said cd via television. Mr. Folds was a judge in the recent special, The Sing-Off.

the show is all about a cappella groups, and it turns out that Ben Folds just put out a cd with a cappella versions of some of his most popular songs.

check out samples of the songs on amazon. and read the story behind the album here.

weekend update.

i had plenty of time to read this week.

no school.
and although i worked more this week than i usually do, let's be honest.

i do NOTHING at my job.

i sit at a desk, watch a lot more Netflix than i should, obsessively check facebook for updates, and READ my HEART OUT.

it's awesome.

so, thanks to my lax work environment, i was able to finish up two books:

Flowers for Algernon
by Daniel Keyes

and

I am the Messenger
by Markus Zusak

i bought Flowers for Algernon a while back, when a bookstore near my university was closing, due to the rough economic state.

at the time, the book sounded really familiar. i read the summary, and knew that at some point in time, i'd come into contact with this book before. however, i was pretty sure i'd never read it.

flash forward to about a week ago. i start reading Flowers, and find that this book is eerily familiar. parts of it, anyway.

i do some internet research, and find out that's it's a film was made of the novel. it's called Charly. maybe that's how i know this story? although, when i think about it, i'm pretty sure i've never seen that movie.

i finish the book, make my ritual goodreads post, and the next thing i know, one of my friends (who i knew all through primary and secondary school) has commented on said post. she says, "i think we read a part of this book in a class. i don't remember which one."

ok, so now i'm sure i'm not crazy. but why only read a little snippet of this book? it's so lovely.

do a little more google research, this time consulting wikipedia.

ouila!

turns out that Flowers for Algernon is also...(drum roll, please)...a SHORT STORY!

now it's starting to make sense. i don't know which class, either (that's going to take a little memory digging), but i KNOW we read the short story at some point in my academic career.

one of my next goals is to read the short story. i'm very excited to see if it jogs any memories.

anyway, after Flowers, i headed on to I am the Messenger. Zusak is also the author of The Book Thief, which has been sitting on my shelf for a while now, but has yet to be cracked open.

Messenger is a little hard-hitting with its message, but it's good regardless. it's an interesting story about an average, underage cab-driver kid who starts getting cards in the mail with addresses or people's names on them. he becomes a sort of messenger/saint, going around and making these specified people aware of things they need to be made aware of.

in other news:
i've started on a christmas craft project for the boyfriend. more details on that later.

i'm also pretty excited about James Franco hosting SNL tonight...
Taylor Lautner's performance last week was entertaining, to say the least.

enjoying:

Catherine's Animals: Animal Prints by Catherine Ledner.

awesome animal pictures featuring animals of all kinds.

i'm especially enjoying this cute little owl:

and this picture of an adorable hedgehog,

who is cute, but not nearly as cute as my own hedgehog, Spike Lee Jones.

monday reading.

what i should be doing is writing this damn paper. i've only got about a page or so left, but i just can't bring myself to finish it and send it off.

as soon as this paper is over, so is this semester. and my undergraduate English courses. it's kind of a weird, big step that i thought i was ready for...but i'm beginning to think i'm not.

just finished this book:

Our Town
by Thornton Wilder

it's actually a play i had to read for this paper i'm supposed to be working on.

i was supposed to have read it about two and a half months ago, but since i've already proved myself to be a procrastinating fool, it's probably apparent that i didn't read it when i was supposed to.

but since i have a paper due over it...today, actually...i finally read it. and it turned out to be a really wonderful play. it's about a very small town called Grover's Corners, and the people in that town. it's also about not noticing everything we have in life while we're living it, and how depressing that is when we understand it.

final verdict: very good. i highly recommend it.

now i just have to finish this paper...

enjoying:

the Nicholas Sparks reference on ABC's Castle last monday.

let me reenact it for you:

a man has been brought into the precinct for questioning. however, the man has been hit on the head and cannot remember anything, including his own name.

meanwhile, the rest of the officers are looking for a fifth bullet on the crime scene of a recent murder. there are five bullet cases on the ground, but only four bullets/bullet holes that can be found.

back to the man with amnesia. one of the officers has him empty his pockets, in the hope that there may be some clue as to the man's identity.

eventually the guy pulls a copy of Crime and Punishment out of his coat's inner breast pocket.

they've found the fifth bullet, and it's a miracle this guy didn't get shot.

next scene: the officer who was working with amnesia guy strolls up.

"Good thing he was into Russian literature. If he were a Nicholas Sparks fan, he'd be dead."



so true, so true. i laughed for a very long time at that one.

listening:

the newest album by my personal hero, mr. ben folds. i was a little unsure of it at first, way back when i bought it earlier this year. i feel like he gets wackier with each cd he puts out. i love the old stuff, and i didn't want anything different. but i finally acclimated, over a three hour drive back to east texas this week, and now i can't believe there was ever a time when i wasn't sure i loved it.

weekend update.

it's been a while. currently, i'm working on wrapping up the fall 2009 semester. my last semester of actual classes. next semester comes student teaching, which i'm very excited about.

i decided to celebrate winter break a little prematurely this year. and how, you may be wondering, did i choose to celebrate?

by reading, of course!

i hadn't read a book for myself in almost four months. my goodreads account was feeling a little neglected, and so i wasted no time in reading something i wouldn't eventually be writing a paper over.

over thanksgiving break, i finished The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci.

i LOVE this book. i read it for the first time way back in junior high school. eighth grade, i think. and i remember finishing it and thinking, "wow. that was epic."

it's a teensy bit less epic now, eight years later. but it's still a wonderful read. this is the kind of book i think often gets looked over by teachers but could really be useful in a classroom. it brings up ideas about bullying, acceptance, gossip--things teenagers are usually pretty apt to converse about.

i just wish i could find it to buy. i checked it out from the library, after nearly dying from complete shock that they had it in the first place. i hadn't seen the book since i was thirteen, even though i often look for it at bookstores. i may have to resort to buying it off amazon.com.

i don't know why, but for the most part, i resist buying books on-line. there's something wonderful about the hunt that's involved in finding a great book, whether i'm searching for it from the get-go, or i stumble upon it in my wanderings. amazon kind of takes that thrill out of it.

this past week, i finally finished The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

i bought my mom this book last christmas, and had read about three chapters of it before i finally wrapped it up and handed it over and christmas morning. i didn't think about it again after that.

but then, as a very generous end of semester treat, one of my teachers (the one we call Aunt Joan, because she's so incredibly sweet and motherly) gave each of the students in her class a copy of the book. it was a complete surprise, and the only stipulation was that she ask we take the time to read it once every 10 years.

since it's a pretty quick read, i don't think that will be any trouble at all.


this is the book i just finished.

Dear John
by Nicholas Sparks

i'd seen the preview for the film that's coming out in 2010 a couple of times, and since the film looked really appealing, i decided i'd better read the book before i was tempted to see the movie first.

the book is cheesy, but that's to be expected. it is Nicholas Sparks after all. however, all cheesiness aside, it was a pretty good read. i'm even more excited about the film now. the preview only gave me the impression that it was a long-distance love story. but there's a lot more to it than that.

check out the trailer here.