May 27, 2012

Seven books in a week...

...and almost as many blog posts! Whew! I feel like I've gotten so much done lately. Although, I suppose it would be a little more impressive if I'd actually done some housework somewhere in there, but hey! It's a start :) I've finished the Hunger Games trilogy, and I think the first one is definitely the best. They went a little downhill for me, especially 95% of the way through Mockingjay, but it resolves beautifully. The writing is far more skillful than Twilight, the first person perspective is quite well done. There's much less contradiction, and the character actually grows like a real person. There were still a couple of things that I felt were unresolved by the end, but it didn't detract from the whole, just minor plot points that I would have liked to see pursued. I'm not sure what to expect of the movies, really. I'll have to come back to that later.

May 25, 2012

Books vs movies, and pride

I watched the first three Twilight movies last night. Ick. I'm not going to say much,  just because if I got going, it wouldn't be over quickly. Kind of like the movies... Argh! I was in so much pain! It took me several hours to finish the first one, and then I sped up the playback on the next two, just enough that I could still hear the dialog. Horrible, awful, stupid movies! Having just read the books, I can say with certainty that only about 10 percent, total, was from the books. That means a handful of lines, the names, and some of the appearances of the characters. It can't be easy to mess up that badly, honestly. What's worse is that the writing and directing are so bad that it makes stunningly talented actresses like Dakota Fanning and Bryce Dallas Howard (one of my all-time faves) look stupid, stiff, and unconvincing. Can you tell that I'm just a little annoyed about this? And keep in mind, I'm not even a huge fan of the books, so that's really messed up! Sigh... So, let's just sum this up so I can be done with it:

May 24, 2012

Reading and popularity

When I posted my impossibly long thing about Twilight on Sunday, I was already halfway through the first book. I finished the fourth one today :D I love reading like that! Good heavens, it's amazing how much reading I can get done in a sitting... After all that, though, I stand by what I said before: it needs a serious editing job, and there are a few major structural flaws in the plot (such as an over-use of dei ex machina) that would be really fun to re-write. I can easily compare it with Harry Potter, though I need to read all of those again before I try. My biggest peeve about the books are the views on marriage and the poorly constructed reasons for them to abstain from pre-marital sex (as long as the books have been out, I don't think I need to worry about spoilers), and even then, my issue is not the fact that I disagree with the author's views. My issue is that these characters are hugely popular, and they are horrible role models! I cringe to think of so many young girls reading these books. But I'd better not go off on a tangent :) Suffice it to say, I enjoyed reading them, but it will be a very long time before I read them again, and they'll fall under the category of mature reading when I have kids.

May 21, 2012

To clarify, and continue

I realized after posting my thesis on Twilight yesterday that I forgot another thing I was going to mention: despite my intense desire to simply dismiss them as rubbish because of reviews and how popular they are, I'm planning to give the Hunger Games books a try. After I finish Twilight, of course :) And again, after the books, I'll probably have to watch the movies, if merely for the ability to say "yes, I have" when somebody says "you don't know, you haven't seen them!" Ah, lemmings...

While I'm talking about hugely popular book series,
I should write something about Harry Potter...

May 20, 2012

Things I Don't Like

How do you learn to be open-minded while still standing for what you believe in? Maybe that's a little too deep for what I'm actually talking about, but it's worth considering. Something I've been learning more and more in my library classes is that I need to be able to discuss any subject with a straight face (as opposed to the face above this post: let's not make that face). What do I mean by that? Well, for instance, the things I feel negatively towards (like Apple products, gay marriage, or Twilight) should be things I can talk about without being negative. And to be fair, I should be able to make things I dislike equal with the things I adore: like cheese, opera, and Charlotte Bronte. It's not my place to judge anyone: EVER. Inside a library or outside. And I certainly can't force my own opinions on others, even if I wanted to. While I'd like to be able to influence people in a positive way, I can do that much better through my attitude. Amazingly, I'm actually learning to consider things more carefully, with less bias one way or another. Some things are, naturally, a matter of right and wrong, and are not up for discussion. But matters of opinion... I'm surprising myself with how flexible I can be. For instance, I've always loathed Apple products, but my husband talked me into looking at iPods to replace my Zen Mosaic (which I still love, it's just dying). Now I love my iPod Nano almost as much, and I can use the speaker dock to play my music, too. 

What are the rules on photo credits
when you get it from Google Images?

May 19, 2012

Form and content

I've noticed that three of my recent posts begin with "So," and that bugs me. I hate repeating myself, especially within the body of a single paper, essay, post, etc., but even beginning the posts the same way is lame. I'm going to work on finding a new way to introduce topics :) And aside from introducing topics, I need to actually be more consistent about which topics I talk about! So far, this blog is a series of disconnected, rambling posts interspersed with an odd poem or two. Not exactly professional-looking. At the same time, I don't want to restrict myself to a certain set of topics. This is my blog, and it's going to be about my life: work, play, church, family, friends, and everything else. But I also want it to be interesting XD We'll see how that goes.


In the mean time, I want to seriously consider the format of this blog. It's the internet, so I've got a few options: audio, video, pictorial, plain text, or a combination. You might notice that I've been trying to break up blocks of text with images, and that's a start. My sister commented on my recent Kindle tutorial and it really stuck with me: she said, first, that I had a sexy voice (lol) and second, that she could see me doing a vlog. That's an interesting concept to me, but, since I don't know how often I could actually record myself, I wouldn't want to try and make it a regular thing anytime soon. School, busy busy, etc. It could be fun, though :) I would want to make it a combination thing, though: video and text. It seems to me that it would defeat the purpose of talking about libraries and literacy if I translate it all into a format that doesn't require reading!

May 18, 2012

Relativity

So, I think that frequency, like so many other things, is relative. I posted earlier this week and said I was going to post more often, and then a few days went by. But, considering that I sometimes let full months go by, posting twice in one week is actually awesome: yay for me! XD Somehow, even knowing that I've given myself permission to make little posts, it's just so hard to make the time to blog. That should change when I'm done with school, though.


Moving right along... Over the last week or so, I've been working on getting more connected. How? Well, after my dad sent me an invite to Klout, I was really made aware of which social media sites I use, and how, and how often. I think I can blog, tweet, and (insert verb for facebook here) more effectively now, and that's exciting to me! On top of that, I joined LinkedIn. Before today, I had no idea what it was, so that's certainly a step forward :D My next step will involve hunting down like-minded bloggers, and actually building an audience. Right now, nobody reads this XD

May 13, 2012

Posting!

So, one of the reasons that I don't blog very often is the length of time it takes for me to come up with something worth reading. With that in mind, I've decided that I'll be trying something new: posting frequently in small amounts, just a paragraph or two at a time. I don't need to write a whole page to just get a few thoughts out. 


What's on my mind right now: literacy! I want to get involved, teaching people to read, helping them understand how amazing a good vocabulary can be, and how many cool ideas there are stowed away in books. I did some research already, and while looking for local literacy groups, I found out about AmeriCorps and I think they're probably the way to go. I can work locally, and if I give a year as a volunteer, I can even get a little money to pay off school loans: heck yes! Win/win/win :D I'll be doing some more research when school is out, so I'll keep posting what I find out.