It's The End of the World As We Know It

Okay, so I may be being just a little bit melodramatic. The world itself is not coming to an end. But, in all complete honesty, life is about to change in a very permanent way. That's right, college is just around the corner. 5 days around the corner, as a matter of fact. Uh-huh. I move my entire life from Olathe to Lawrence (I know, I know, it's only a 20 minute drive if you follow all posted speed limits) in just 5 days. So, needless to say, I've been busy with packing and cleaning and saying good-bye. So,as is unfortunately natural in this given situation, the reading has fallen by the wayside. I haven't read a book since I finished Harry Potter (although I did read that one four times, so I guess you could say it took up a fair share of my time) although all of my class books have come in the mail and are now sitting in my sisters room, waiting to be read. I have recently decided that in the next 5 days, I will be re-reading The Great Gatsby by the great F. Scott and Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. I was also hoping to pick up Fourth Comings by Megan Mcafferty before I left, as it is the fourth and last book in the fantastically teen angst Jessica Darling series (which, if you're ever in the need of a good yet easy book to swallow, I would most definately reccommend. Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds. In that order). Alas, a SEVERE lack of funds (thank you, $600 credit card bill) has left that as not exactly an option. But, even considering all these things, the hardest part of the past few weeks has been the sorting through and boxing up of the books I wish to take and the books I have to leave. Don't mock me, but I cried.



There are books that I have been surrounded by my entire life. Little Women. Les Miserables. Pride and Prejudice. There are some books recently acquired, but that feel like old friends. They are beautifully written and strikingly haunting. Roomates. How to Breathe Underwater. Perks of Being a Wallflower. There are some books that I feel compelled to take, those given classic nature, books that I feel no shelf is complete without. Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Oliver Twist. And then there are books that I just love, for no reason other than I love them. They have been my friends, my companions. More so than any other books have ever been. They have seen my laugh, they have seen my cry, they have seen me become frustrated with their endings or enthralled with their characters. Those are the books who's pages have been torn. Who's covers have fallen off. Who's margins have been scribble in. Those are the books I suffer most to leave behind. Harry Potter. This Lullaby. The Things They Carried. On the Road. But which of these to take? I feel like they have all earned the right to come with me. But I can't take them all. So do I mix them? Take ones I haven't read yet, hoping to start a new love affair? Ones I've read hundreds of times, knowing how much comfort they've provided me in the past? Those were the kind of thoughts running through my head as a packed up the books that will go, leaving the ones I was forced to deem unworthy (not to hurt their feelings, as they are all fabulous books.) Which ones made the cut, you ask?

*Little Women
*America: A Readers Guide to Democracy Inaction
*Roomates
*Pride and Prejudice
*Perks of Being a Wallflower
*The Bible

There were others, but that is just a small sampling. There are about 15 books I'm taking, if not fewer, so it was quite a task, seeing as how I have over 150 books as of my last count. What can I say, after collecting them for 13 years, I've managed to come up with quite the little library. And now, on to the book discussion.

Okay. Harry Potter. I have to talk about it. I can't not. Harry Potter came out when I was 8. Ten years later, as I'm about to leave home and make some major life changes, Harry has set out with his best friends to save the world, and he comes out victorious. It was a very melancholy experience. Having read all six books again before the release of the 7th, I was struck with just how much Jo's writing style had improved in the years between Sorcerer's Stone and Deathly Hallows. She truly is a writer of her own making. She has, in my mind, earned her place along side Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Though she writes modern-day novels for a modern-day audience, her style is strikingly beautiful, strikingly relative. And the novel itself was fantastically crafted. By the epilouge, there were no loose strings left to wrap up. Although I found the scene with Dumbledore and the crying baby to be a tad creepy and tedious, I was more than happy to see him make an appearance. I was wishing, however, that Sirius would have made another appearance (as more than just an apparition). I couldn't believe how touched I was at one of the final scenes, when Harry has realized what he must do and has slipped on his invisibility cloak, only to walk around and watch his friends, wishing he could tell them all goodbye. And I even liked the epilouge, which in any other novel I would have found entirely too sweet. I don't ususally don't like my novels to be wrapped up in nice little packages (with those little red bows) - it's too unlike life for my taste - I didn't mind it at all for this novel. A novel going on this long needed an ending with no loose ends, with no questions left. And the epilouge did that nicely. So, all in all, a perfect 10 all the way across the board, although it never could have been any different.

And now, lastly, why Fitzgerald and DuMarier, you ask? Two reasons, both of them drastically different. The Fitzgerald because, when I was required to read it in 11th grade, I didn't really like it (save your gasps, it happens, even to the best of us). Perhaps it was the teacher, perhaps it was because I didn't devote enough time to it, but I didn't see why it was the classic that so many people had proclaimed it to be. So I'm giving it this one last chance, one more final read, hoping that maybe this time I will see something that I missed the first time. The DuMarier, however, I am reading because I fell madly in love with it the first time I read it. I only had two weeks to read the book, analyze it, and write my final paper, so I know I didn't give the book the time it deserved. So that is what I intend to do now. The book was sweeplingly grandiose, hauntingly sad yet lovely at every turn. And the plot twist (which I won't ruin for those who haven't read it) was possibly the best I've ever seen. And so, in these last few days, I pursue both the loved and the lost.

In Which a Part of My Soul Dies

Two words: Harry Potter.


















I'll elaborate later, after I've stopped crying and had time to absorb. But until then, OH MY GOD.

The Valley of the Low

So I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, after leaving the last, like, ten pages unread for about two weeks. The book, as I have previously stated, was fantastic! It just had such an air about it, an air of sadness and melancholia. The way that the young boy as the narrator would phrase the things he was thinking, and the way he would deal with his fears, was fantastically worded. The only problems I had with the books was the boy's relationship with his mother - it just didn't really seem to be there, which didn't seem realistic. When this young boy starts trecking all over New York, his mother doesn't say anything, which really is just far from possible in any realm. But something that small was clearly overshadowed by the fantastic prose and just general vibe that surounded the book. I think it's safe to say that Jonathon Safron Foer just became one of my new favorite authors. And honestly, if he can do that with one book, then he's more than worthy.

Now that I've finished that book, however, and I had to return almost all the other books I got this summer or risk having my library account shut down, I'm kind of in-between books right now. So, because I feel it necessary to update this God-forsaken blog (I don't really mean that, because I love writing in this thing, even if no one reads it!) I'm going to take a quick second to write about a form of word-play and poetry that I don't feel truly gets the credit it deserves. I'm talking about sound writing and lyrics.

Last night, Rae came over, and her and I just sat around and talked music for two hours out on my deck. We talked about how touching music can be, about how much music meant to the both of us. And we just started talking about how the lyrics to a song can make or break the song, as a whole. If you take a classically good piece of music, say something from classic rock and roll or soul or bluegrass or funk - what have you - and take away it's lyrics, it looses something intrinsic to what made it what it was. Conversely, a song like "The Great Gig in the Sky" or "Ramblin' Man" (I'm sticking to classic rock here, but just know that what I believe applies to all eras and genres of music) - those are great songs. There's no doubt about it. But, for me, they would never make any kind of 'Best Song' list because the lyrics just aren't there for me. When I want good lyrics - when I want a good song - I'll turn to "Tears in Heaven" by Eric Clapton or "American Pie" by Don McLean, or even something by Harry and the Potters or Draco and the Malfoys (along that line, it may seem dorky to love a Wizard Rock band, but if you want to hear smart, funny lyrics that are really poetic AND focus all on one certain topic or theme, then this is the place to go). And it's those certain artists who I love that never disappoint me when it comes to fantistic lyrics and music. Eric Clapton (just one of my favorites, hand down, never fail), Billy Joel, Elton John, Led Zepplin. More recentely there are fantastic bands who unfortunately get pigeon-holed in to a genre and are thus written off by a lot of people. Bands like Bright Eyes, My Chemical Romance, Deathcab For Cutie, Something Corporate.

Another thing that I just feel it necessary to say, thought it may not be technically fitting with the theme of this blog or what have you, is that I just love music. All music. I like rap, when it's done well and intelligently. I love bluegrass and funk and classic rock and blues and jazz and alternative and ska and even some emo music - again, when done well. I love country and pop music and opera and show tunes. The list could go one, but I won't. And so much of what I have as far as musical knowledge goes, and so many of the tastes I have for music, stems from my paretns, who used to sing me "Wonderful Tonight" as a lullaby, or would play "When the Levee Breaks" as we drove around town. Their musical tastes are wide and varied, and I thank them for passin the same thing on to me.

"Alright, alright. Here are my new final words: I DIG MUSIC... and I'm on drugs!" - Almost Famous

Life in the Way

I hate it when life gets in the way.


that's all I'm saying! I've been trying to finish Extremely Loud for the past week or so, but I just can't seem to find time to get through those last 10 pages or so! Between my brother being here and Drew leaving (and having to work on his going-away memory book) and then meeting Rob and kind of having to deal with everything that came along with that, it's just been a busy time. And it makes me sad, because I'll lie in my bed and look at the pile of books on my floor, and I really do want to get through them all! Because I know they're fabulous books. I can feel it. They all just feel heavy with that weight of...literacy. I don't know. I'm probably not making any sense. But let me just say this about Extremely Loud - I don't think I've ever read a book that has so many beautifully, wonderfully, fully sad passages. And I'm not talking sad in the way of death or dismemberment. I'm talking sad in a crushing way. The kind of sad that you can just feel in your chest, way down in the pit of your stomach. The kind of sadness that is almost beautiful - the kind that crushes your heart and makes you want to gasp and sob and just stop breathing, if only for a split second. I hope you all know what I'm talking about, because I'm really not sure I know anymore.

Other than all of that, the only other interesting thing to have happened to me in the past week or so has been my college orientation, which took entirely too long and was filled with entirely too much pointless information. I did, however, end up with quite a cool schedule. Between my "Queen and Contemporary Culture", "Honors Introduction to Ethics" and "Language and Culture in Latin America" class, I'm actually really excited to start going to class! Among other appealing aspects of the college life, of course!

Reaching Mecca

That's right, folks, I did it! I finally finished Special Topics, all 517 pages of it, including the final exam! And I have to say, I ended up having mixed feelings about it. Feel free to stop reading HERE if you want to avoid any type of spoilers:

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that whole "the main characters dad is actually a member of a mythical freedom-fighting cult" thing. And I also didn't really see how a lot of the things ended up piecing together, and felt that there were more than a few moments that seemed a bit of a stretch (i.e; a well placed phone call that just so happened to spell out the secrets of the mystery with two and a half chapters left to go). The book probably could have been cut down about a hundred pages without really loosing anything, and a few of the characters just kind of disappeared (after Milton called Blue a bad kisser in front of the whole group, the whole group just kind of disappears until graduation, where only their names are mentioned. And, along that note, I'm still not sure how to feel about the whole Milton/Blue relationship thing - I haven't decided if it was supposed to be a genuine hookup or just another Blueblood scheme to embarrass Blue, though I tend to lead toward the second option) END SPOILERS. But, even with all of that, there were still some pure moments of beautiful, heart-wrenching prose:

"Never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, although you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better. Increasing the scale, depth of content, the universal themes. Those around you can have their novellas, sweet, their short stories of cliche and coincidence, occasionally spiced up with tricks of the quirky, the achingly mundane, the grotesque. A few will even cook up a Greek tragedy, those born in to misery, destined to die in misery. But you, my bride of quietness, you will craft nothing less than epic with your life. Out of all of them, your story will be the one to last."

"You'd be surprised - Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Totalitarianism - whatever '-ism' it happens to be doesn't matter all that much; there will always be the tricky balance between the human extremes. And so we live our lives, making informed choices about what we believe in, stand by them. That is all."

And, after all is said and done, I read the last page and just kind of sighed. It was one of those heavy sighs, the kind you utter after completing something of importance - that melancholy kind of sigh that means "now its over, and I'm not sure how to feel". For a first summer book, I will say that the entire thing was rather fantastic, although I'm ready to move on. And speaking of which, the next book, which I've already started, has proven to be even higher on the list than Special Topics. I'm about 50 pages in to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Johnathan Safran Foer (who, in case you were curious, also wrote Everything is Illuminated, which is a fantastic book!) I won't write about it quite yet, because I'm only a little bit in to it and want to give it some time to grow, but I will say that I have a feeling that, based on the first to books of the summer, it's going to be a great summer for reading!

PS: For those of you keeping score on the personal end of things, my brother and sister have both left, which makes the house a spooky kind of empty (and I really do miss them like crazy. It sucks having that whole "heavy heart" thing). Drew leaves a week from Monday, which scares me and already makes me panicky and sad, so I try not to think about it. Other than that, I don't work this week, so I'm sure I'll return shortly!

Full House

That's right. I said it. Full House. Unfortunately, I didn't mean it in reference to the loveably sacchrin-sweet TV show once staring a pre-bulima Mary Kate Olsen. I am, in fact, referencing my own house, which is currently full of my brother, his wife, his 16-month old son Jackson, my sister, her signifigant other, and their 2 year old daughter Aubrey, as well as my mom and dad. That is a lot of people, and a lot of action, in a not-all-that large house. You may in fact be wondering why I have chosen to tell you this. The only reason I bring it up is that all of these people have drastically impeded my ability to read or focus on much more than "where are the babies", "will you grab me that baby spoon" and "I think someone just fell down the stairs. Uh-oh." I've been making so progress in Special Topics and have kept Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by my bed to squeeze in a few pages before passing out, but that hasn't been going to successfully, either.

I have, however, recently picked up another 8 books from the library, which I have no intention of returning on time, which brings my "To Be Read This Summer" list to about twenty books. If I do the math correctly, I have approximately 8 weeks, which means about 3 books a week, which means a book about every day and a half. And while this may intimidate some people (and I'm not going to lie, it intimidates me a little, too) I am pretty sure that this won't be an issue. A few of the books are re-reads (as in The Kite Runner and Kafka on the Shore, which I remember loving, but I'm a little shady on the details, hence the re-read) and a few of the others are truly just fluff reads (I'm not planning on taking long with, for example, Devil Wears Prada or a short story collection by the FABULOUS Megan Mcafferty). So hopefully I'll get through the list, as most of them are the kind of modern classics that I feel it necessary to read before I head out to the wide world that is college. I feel as though I've covered most of the classics, thanks to phases that took me through Shakespeare, all kinds of poetry, the Beats, Victorian Literature, and most of the NYU undergraduate reading list by the time I was 15 (yeah, I can hear you laughing. So?) So now I plan on focusing on modern stuff, and have been aided by the Three-For-Two tables at Borders.

The only thing I think I'm going to be missing this summer is a longer trip kind of thing. Something akin to a road trip or some other kind of vacation, mostly because this is where most of my heavy-duty reading gets done. I can't really read at work (I mean, I guess I could technically, but I'd get weird looks, and I work with most of my friends, thus lunch = social hour) and I don't really have a lot of time at home (and my parents thought I'd never develope a social life) and its just the kind of thing where it's not a huge bummer, but it would be nice....

.....on a side note, I recently saw the movie Match Point with one Mr. Johnathon Rhys Myers and one Ms. Scarlett Johanson, and it was fabulous. I have always been a fan of Woody Allen movies, but this one imparticular. I know that this is technically a book blog, but I just wanted to mention a recent affinity for this movie and Bright Eyes. If you haven't seen/heard either one, I suggest you give them both a try! And with that, I sign off.

Break On Through

I got about half way through Special Topics in Calamity Physics before I hit the proverbial brick wall and got that soaring headache that accompanies too close a reading and forcing myself to pay attention. It's not that the book is bad - it really isn't at all! It's actually one of the best books that I've read in quite some time. But, at a soaring 515 pages, it's not one of those books you read all in one sitting, as I originally set out to make it. The parenthetical comments galore, the frequent annotations, and the voracious side notes make the book less of a walk in the park and more of a slog through the swamp of academia. But the charactes and PLOT(!!) keep me reading, page after page, and chapter after chapter. Another interesting aspect of the game is to read each chapter title and try to figure out what each title has to do with the contents of that chapter. I mean, it sounds dull, but sometimes the real relation can be a stretch!

But anyway... I have, possibly unexcusably, taken a small break from the loveable tome that is Special Topics for some lighter reading. I recently picked up a book from the library entitled Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by one Mr. Chuck Klosterman. I'm only about half way through the first chapter, but I already believe this man to be somewhat of a comic genious. Within the first thity pages, he has attacked not only Coldplay, but John Cusak in Say Anything, Woody Allen, Sid and Nancy, and Teen Wolf. It's brilliant, and there are few parenthetical comments or annotations! And though I do feel bad about the fact that I am reading two books at the same time, I just can't put them down now!