It's Winter Break and I'm Not Allowed Out. What Else Do I Have To Do?

So I read. I'm at home this whole week doing nothing except reading, running with my dog, watching random movies (ZOMBIELAND!) playing Sims, playing Drake's Fortune, and playing Sonic. Speaking of video games, I should play more today.

But I finally finished Pride and Prejudice on my Kindle! This is the cover I found on wikipedia.org... I kind of like the old look. Of course on my Kindle the only thing that looks old about it is the language.

I'm really starting to like Jane Austen. She was like the Meg Cabot of her time: gossipy, seemingly vapid, but actually writing with the strong intention of telling a great story always kept in mind. She definitely knows how to employ the whole satire aspect, poking fun at upper-class snobbery that people like the Bennets have to live through.

And the Bennet parents in this CRACK ME UP. The mom is just SO COMPLETELY INSANE! Her ambition in life is to have all her daughters marry well, to people with high titles, and she is simply frivolous. The way her husband deals with her is by rolling his eyes and trying to come to compromises between the frivolity of living an aristocratic life and his way of reason, but there are times when he puts his foot down. Luckily, his daughter Elizabeth, the protagonist, takes after her father and not her mother as much.

The one part I didn't like: Mr. Darcy. He was too much of a downer in the first parts of the book. Lydia entertained me though, as did Miss Catherine de Bourgh in all her snootiness.

Second book:

The World's Worsts, organized and compounded by Les Krantz and Sue Sveum.

This book was so flippin' ENTERTAINING! I found the worst lawsuits, worst celebrity marriages (Drew Barrymore was listed TWICE in that category), worst deaths, EVERYTHING! There were things I never needed to know that I now know and am much happier for knowing.

Like how America doesn't have enough hospital beds for its population and how Titanic was a really bad idea (although I already was catching on to that one. But if it wasn't built, then Jack and Rose would never have met!)

I highly recommend this book if you like randomly uselessly awesome knowledge. Weird looks from your friends guaranteed.

I also read an E. L. Konigsberg book, The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World. This book is actually a companion to her other book, Outcasts at 19 Schuyler Place, my favorite book by her, so I was excited to read it.

What I didn't realize about her style of writing until now is, it really isn't middle-grade fiction like they say it is! This book was FILLED with allusions from older works of art and literature and references to events that happened WAY before the kids supposed to be reading this book were even born. Some of the jokes were even over MY head sometimes, but if you pay attention, you find she has a subtle amount of humor.

Of course, I always love a good obscure treasure hunt. And while this isn't a treasure hunt in the traditional sense, something lost is definitely found, discovered, and deciphered.

Well, I'm off to go hog the TV to play video games... maybe that will distract me from the fact that my best friend is having a party down the street and I CAN'T GO. Thanks, parental control. Nah, maybe I'll hole up in my room with a book. Sounds comfier.