Literature Meme

April 27, 2009 at 6:46 pm (Uncategorized)

1) What author do you own the most books by?
It’s totally Francine Pascal.  I own most of the Sweet Valley High Series.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
That’s kind of a weird question.  I guess I own a few copies of Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry.  Oh, and I have two copies of Wifey by Judy Blume.

3) Did it bother you that both of those questions ended with prepositions?
Yeah, a little.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

  • Marcus Flutie from the Jessica Darling novels
  • Henry DeTamble from The Time Traveler’s Wife
  • Fred and George Weasley from the Harry Potter series

4a) What fictional character would you most like to be?
It’d be kind of awesome to be Hermione Granger.  I’d also settle for Sookie Stackhouse.  Is that weird?

4b) What fictional character do you think most resembles you?
It’s totally Jessica Darling from Megan McCafferty’s series.  I just reread the entire series, and it’s uncomfortable how closely I identify with her sometimes.  I also see myself in Tibby from Ann Brashares’ The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
Finding My Voice by Marie G. Lee might teeter near the top of the list.  Princess Furball is probably the picture book I’ve poured over most.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Oh, Christ.  I don’t know.  I was neck-deep in my non-ironic SVH obsession then.  Probably something from the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer.

8.) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
So many things.  Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn was phenomenal.  I couldn’t put it down.  The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by e. Lockhart was great, too.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
The Portable Dorothy Parker.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
I’m so unqualified to answer that question that I’m not going to even attempt to respond.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
The Jessica Darling series.  It needs to be done, for real.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
A Girl Named Zippy. Any attempt would just ruin it.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I’ve definitely dreamed about Marcus Flutie before, but I’m not sharing the details.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker “I’m a Douchebag” Max.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
How are we defining difficult?  I’ve never made it through the Bible, even though I’ve tried more than once.  I find Hemingway to be absolutely unbearable.  But the hardest time I’ve ever had with a book I had to finish?  Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
That’s a weird question.  I don’t know.  I’ve seen MacBeth, Romeo + Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew…

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
The Russians.  I really enjoy Nabokov.  I’m going to get through Tolstoy at some point in the future.  I swear it.

18) Roth or Updike?
Yeesh.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Double yeesh.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare by default.

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen FTW.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

I’ve never read The Catcher in the Rye.  I read a lot of YA fiction.  I don’t get this question.

23) What is your favorite novel?
Oh, it’s like my Sophie’s Choice.  The Handmaid’s Tale by Magaret Atwood?  I don’t know.

24) Play?
The Taming of the Shrew is pretty awesome.  I also really like Wicked.  Whatevs, don’t hate.

25) Poem?
Dorothy Parker’s Unfortunate Coincidence.  Emily Dickinson’s I’m Nobody.  ee. cummings’ i like my body when it is with your.

26) Essay?
I don’t have a good answer for this one.

27) Short story?
“The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson.

28) Work of non-fiction?
Why We Read What We Read by Lisa Adams, A Girl Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel

29) Who is your favorite writer?
Dorothy Parker.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
David Sedaris.

31) What is your desert island book?
Just one?  The Portable Dorothy Parker.  Sensing a theme?

32) And … what are you reading right now?

  • Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli
  • Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart

Permalink Leave a Comment

This Morning

April 27, 2009 at 7:47 am (Uncategorized) (, , )

There was a tampon on the floor of my classroom.  It wasn’t used, but it was out of its wrapper, and this seemed to distress the students most greatly.

“Ew!  That’s nasty, man!” One girl said loudly during their writing prompt.  She raised her hand.  “Can you come and pick this up?”

“I’m not going to pick it up if it’s gross,” I said, walking over to where she was.  “Oh, for goodness sake.”

“What is it?” various students inquired from around the semi-darkened room.

“It’s a tampon,” I said, exasperatedly.  “It’s not used, you guys.  Get back to work.”  I went over to the teacher’s desk and pulled out a rubber glove, mostly for show, and picked up the offending object, dumping it in the trash.

One of my best slacker students raised his hand.  “I can’t concentrate on the questions now that this has happened.”

“Shock,” I said, smiling.  “Get back to work.”

The students followed my directions and got back to answering their questions in silence, the mini-drama of first hour over.

It’s going to be a long week.

Permalink Leave a Comment

The Dangers Present in Wireless Internet

April 25, 2009 at 10:16 pm (Uncategorized) (, , , , , , , , , , )

My addition to the Internet is well-documented.  I can’t go more than a few hours without checking my email, my google reader, the top headlines on Jezebel.com.  I can give or take a TV in my living space, but that’s because I use my computer for almost everything there is.  It’s my entertainment source, my preferred method of communication, my news source, the way that I prep for classes.

That being said, my addiction has its drawbacks.  The immediacy of the Internet allows for a great deal of idiocy from its users, myself (often) included.  Social networking sites allow users to post their statuses at the drop of a hat, mini-blogs like Twitter allow people to post their musings in 140 characters or less, people use blogs like this one to write post after post of navel-gazing pseudo-intellectual crap.

Crap that they might regret at a later date, when they’ve sobered up, calmed down, re-examined the situation in the harsh light of day.

It tends to be my biggest regret in life.  Posting my most secret thoughts on the Internet is something I’ve been guilty of since I was sixteen years old and was dealing with the absolute pain of high school.  When you’re a sixteen-year-old girl, life is absolutely excruciating.  To be honest, it’s alarming that at 24, my outlook isn’t that different.

So I’m sitting here, listening to sad bastard music, my cell phone within arm’s reach for a phone call that was supposed to come over 20 minutes ago but in all probability won’t arrive at all, feeling the melancholic strings of nostalgia pull at my heart.

Christ.  Did I really just write “feeling the melancholic strings of nostalgia pull at my heart?”  I’m losing what little grip I have left.

Driving home tonight, after hanging up unsatisfied with how my conversation had ended with The Boy (who is out with friends and not me and who referred to me as “a friend” when someone at the house party he’s at asked who he was on the phone with), I willed myself not to cry because I’ve been doing too much of it lately and it doesn’t do me any good and then I turned up the music in my car really loud and I sang-shouted the lyrics to a sad song and it made me feel better and powerful if even for a moment because most of the time I feel like everything is so far out of my control and then I started thinking about whether I’m happy at all with how things are in general and how sad I am about the uncertainty of where my life is headed and also about how I feel like this relationship that I’m in yes I am in a relationship is at a standstill because he won’t acquiese to what was a lighthearted gesture that didn’t mean what he thought it meant and if I really admit it to myself, it still stings and then I started thinking about other nights when I would drive around in the dark and listen to music and think thoughts that I thought were so deep but were really shallow and are still shallow and I’m so SICK of thinking about The Boy and boys in general and then I randomly thought about the original BOY and I wondered if he ever thought about me and

my mind flashed back to this random night early in our relationship where we went to a show of a friend of his and we sat outside while the band loaded up their stuff afterwards and I remember sitting in the chill night air while He smoked an illicit cigarette and sulked about something but I can’t remember what it was.

I wish I remember more about certain things.  My mind used to be so sharp, and even the most insignificant details stuck in my mind and I so confidently boasted that I had a photographic memory and I never forgot anything but now things are slipping away and I

can’t

hold on to them.

I’ll probably delete this in the morning.

Permalink Leave a Comment

Top 20 Movies of 1997

April 24, 2009 at 7:05 am (Uncategorized) (, , , , )

Pajiba’s been doing this awesome thing where they post the top 20 movies of a certain year.  They’ve posted the top 20 for 1997, which is awesome because that’s really the first year where I started to see movies obsessively.  The list follows below.  The ones in italics are those I’ve viewed, parentheses are my commentary.

1. Titanic $600,788,188 (7 times in the theater, countless times at home)
2. Men in Black $250,690,539 (With my mom and sister in the theater, bought on VHS)
3. The Lost World: Jurassic Park $229,086,679
4. Liar Liar $181,410,615 (I watch this movie every time I catch it on TV)
5. Air Force One $172,956,409 (I hated this movie.  I watched it with my family one night on cable.)
6. As Good as It Gets $148,478,011 (Viewed in preparation for the Oscars.)
7. Good Will Hunting $138,433,435 (The first R-rated movie I ever saw in the theater.)
8. Star Wars (Special Edition) $138,257,865 (I didn’t see this in the theater, nor have I ever seen the movie from start to finish in one sitting, but I’m counting it anyway.)
9. My Best Friend’s Wedding $127,120,029 (The first time I saw this, I was upset by the ending.  Now I can’t stand Julia Roberts’ character.)
10. Tomorrow Never Dies $125,304,276
11. Face/Off $112,276,146
12. Batman and Robin $107,325,195 (Rubber nipples.)
13. George of the Jungle $105,263,257 (I secretly loved this movie.)
14. Scream 2 $101,363,301 (Watched while baby-sitting my sister in our basement.)
15. Con Air $101,117,573 (I watched this with my dad one night.)
16. Contact $100,920,329 (I still don’t understand this movie.)
17. Hercules $99,112,101 (Not one of my faves, I have to say.)
18. Flubber $92,977,226 (Watched on a TV at the Holiday Inn a few months before my Bat Mitzvah.  Hated. It.)
19. Conspiracy Theory $75,982,834
20. I Know What You Did Last Summer $72,586,134 (Again, watched while baby-sitting T.  When my parents found out, I was grounded.)

Considering that I was 12 when these movies came out, I think it’s pretty impressive/embarrassing that I’ve seen all but 3 of them.  What’s more is that I can remember where I was and who I was with when I viewed these movies for the first time.

Permalink 1 Comment

Google Your Name + Needs

April 23, 2009 at 7:13 am (Uncategorized)

Clementine needs your item mall feedback.

Clementine needs new sneakers.

Clementine needs to mellow its lighting.

Clementine needs a cold period.

Clementine needs the Jaws of Life to extract her and loses one of her eyes.

Permalink Leave a Comment

When I am sitting in a nearly empty coffee shop

April 2, 2009 at 1:58 pm (Uncategorized) (, , )

and three fourteen-year-old girls choose to sit at the table directly next to me, I am allowed to do a little mocking.  It’s just the rules.

I understand the push for freedom and independence that comes with the onset of high school.  Being raised in suburbia, my options were limited, and I remember how frustrating it is to be that old and yet that young.

But, seriously?  The inane topics of conversation are enough to make me pack up my stuff earlier than I intended just to get away.

“Guys, I’m sorry that I didn’t invite you to my 13th birthday party last year.   I should have, but I invited a bunch of people that I shouldn’t have.”

“If the two of them dated, I’d have to like, shoot myself in the face.”

Haha oh god.  They’re still in middle school.  I have to leave.  Now.

Permalink Leave a Comment