I'M BACK!

Wow, haven't been on here in FOR. EV. ER. Seriously. The last time I posted was for the amazing 24 Hour Readathon, and before that it was early January. And now it's mid-December! It's been so long! So in order to get myself all psyched back up for blogging again I redid my entire blog, changed the name, layout, and my picture, FINALLY, since that other one was a few years old. Not much has changed since then... except finding new best friends, losing old ones that shouldn't have mattered as much as they did, starting a new year of school (with WAY more homework, so I haven't been reading as much anyway), and becoming hopefully a little more mature.
Wait, still immature. I think I'll always be that way, though. Same way I'll always be short. That's right folks, a whole year and I didn't grow ANY. Aren't I supposed to grow at this time of my life? It's so weird... *ahem* ANYWAY.
I'm back on book blogging, but I'm going to try to include a little more of my life on here to give it a little variety. Movies, music, stuff going on, my friends, the usual. And, of course, the unusual. In fact, the usual is a very small percentage of my life. The random takes up a lot more.
To start it off, NEW CAKE! Cake is one of my favorite bands, they've got a good vibe and even when they're talking about sad stuff they make me laugh SO HARD. And they've got a good sense of humor while staying deadpan and straight-faced. And they have new music! Like this song. I heard it on Music Choice the other day and I started skipping around the house with my dog Katie (obviously I was home alone).


So here's the video from they're new song, "Sick of You". I would kill to see this live. Well, maybe not kill, but... burn a Metallica CD. Or a Harry Potter book. And that's saying something.
So yeah, life's been good... out on winter break, the perfect time for getting back into blogging with all my reading, now that I have spare time to catch up. I'm actually deciding to reread a lot of stuff right now.
I started with the Twilight saga (I know, you want to throw rotten vegetables and bottles full of questionable liquids at me) because I was bored and I needed something to make the time pass for finals week. Because otherwise you sit there in class with bated breath as the clock.... just... keeps... ticking... So I brought Twilight. Let me tell you, I got SO MUCH crap for bringing that. The eye rolls, the scoffs, the grabbing my book and hurling it into the nearest trash can... *shudders* But the thing about the books is, they're not actually that bad. Yes, some of the story line gets cheesy, yes, there are a few plot holes and you find yourself screaming "Come ON, Bella, you know he wants you, he's just playing hard to get!" or "That SO doesn't happen in real life," when the stupid, unbelievable stuff happens, but other than that, the books are kind of good. I'm currently on Eclipse, and I don't think I need to go into plot summaries because every reader of this generation pretty much knows it. And if you don't, I'm sure you've seen the movies. Or had a teen girl come up and give you a detailed play-by-play on her way out of the theater. I think that's where the problems started: the movies. Once the whole movie hype hit, the books lost all credibility because let's face it: the movies aren't the best. They're okay movies, but unless you're a blind fangirl like my friends and I once were (gasp, I know! Yeah, we wore the shirts, obsessively reread, and went to the midnight release of Breaking Dawn too, just like the rest of them) they won't hold your attention for long. They're not cinematic masterpieces, like, say, the legendary Harry Potter movies, or THE PRINCESS BRIDE *cue Inigo Montoya quote here*.
Okay, so maybe I'm biased. But anyway, rereading the books just made me realize how much the movies really screwed it up. No offense, Catherine Hardwicke. I guess it's a matter of opinion, but, well, here's mine.
I'm also going to start reading a few classics. I just downloaded a bunch of free Jane Austen novels onto my Kindle (thanks, Grandma and amazon.com!) and I'm looking forward to reading them over my almost-month-long winter break. (Yeah, our school district's messed up.)
And to combine rereading and classics, I'm... rereading some classics. =) I've got my old paperback copy of Jane Eyre lined up, and Little Women on my Kindle too. I've got to be honest, I know it's an amazing book, but I really didn't get into Jane Eyre the last time I read it. That could be because I was only eleven or twelve, though. So I really want to reform my opinion on it and see what happens. Same with Little Women, although I remember really enjoying that. Again, I read it when I was eleven or twelve.
And, on top of all these books I'm planning to read, I AGAIN went overboard and checked out my limit from the school library. I snagged Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (another nostalgic reread from fifth grade), No More Dead Dogs by Gordon Korman (wanted to read this for years now), Chew On This by Eric Schlosser (part of my fast food nation OBSESSION which fueled my research paper), and Night's Child by Cate Tiernan (epilogue to the Sweep series, EEEE! See my older posts on those books!). Yeah. I'm stocked up.
Lastly, to go over what I've ALREADY read, the last book I finished was this novel from the eighties, When No One Was Looking by Rosemary Wells. I found it at a used book sale and it looked like one of those generic authors from the seventies/eighties where they just kept churning out young adult books that all were semi-okay reads. And that's kind of what I got although the book actually was really good. It starts off with this girl with a temper, Kathy, who finds out she has a gift for tennis. It's sad how her parents and her coach push her, even forcing her to cheat in algebra so she can keep playing. (Of course, the author may be a bit far fetched, but still. There are probably kids who have parents like that.)
Plus, Kathy really reminds me of me: she's sort of a tomboy with a bad temper who feel left out and awkward a lot of the time. But she has it worse, because she has a know-it-all sister who resents her playing.
Things only go downhill when Kathy's opponent drowns in a pool and an investigation is started.
I have to say, I did figure out whodunit before they revealed it, but only barely. It took 150 pages and an emotional catharsis to figure it out. But the book was pretty good.
The only thing that cracked me up was all the stuff that was commonplace in the eighties that WOULD NOT happen now. For instance, "Kathy, I got your favorite dessert, Twinkies!" When was the last time you heard that? And the parents are really lenient on drinking, letting Kathy and her friends have a celebratory glass of wine at dinner after her tennis matches. I don't know about you, but my parents don't let me, let alone my FRIENDS, have wine here. I got offered champagne ONCE, and that's when my cousin was born. We have to have A NEW LIFE IN THE FAMILY to even consider a SIP of anything for a teen in this family, not just A TENNIS MATCH.
Just a few discrepancies I noticed. But still, entertaining. Just what I needed for finals. And it made a great match to read alongside Twilight, people kept staring at me weird because I would break out giggling in class over how far-fetched things got in these books.