Breakathon Readathon Review: The Name of the Star

Fresh out of my mood for fluff, I dove right back into the action plot! I elected to read another Maureen Johnson book that I acquired a few months ago and absolutely devoured this book. The story was dark, but not quite as dark as Hunger Games, but the violence and threat of danger was similar, which I liked. In the story, someone is recreating the Jack the Ripper murders, but while most of the murders are caught on the network of CCTV cameras in London, the killer is never visible. The main character gets involved with a special unit of the police force, and helps track down the copycat killer... I read most of it on my way out to California, and can't wait to read the next one in the series! Unfortunately, it's not due to come out for some time, so we'll see...

Likelihood I'll reread: 90% (probably when the next book is released?)
Likelihood I'll recommend: 80%

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Total Pages: 3278

Californialand!

I hope this comes as a shock to people as much as it has been a shock to me - apparently I DO have a life outside of reading books! At the moment, I am blogging from San Diego, California, where Texas has successfully trounced Cal Berkley at the Holiday Bowl. I am exceedingly pleased, as you might imagine. The final score of the game was 21-10. We played pretty well, though there were a few weak points in the game - as is to be expected, really. More on that in a moment!

My trip has been pretty simple - I flew out yesterday, I fly back tomorrow - but it has had some very nice highlights! Last night, I had delicious Mexican food with my APO friends who are also here. And this morning, a family friend, Bill, who lives in San Diego picked me up from my hotel and showed me around the city and fed me breakfast! Delicious pancakes at his house, where I also got to see one of my dog's puppies (Her name is Sangie - I didn't take a picture of her because I was too busy loving on her!)

And then it was off to the stadium! Things were a little bit smaller and better-coordinated than last time I came out for the Rose Bowl two years ago. We didn't have any trouble getting inside the stadium this time - last time we had to get our flag sniffed by dogs and we had to wait outside the stadium for absolutely forever. We opened the flag out in the parking lot to do a sort of practice run for closing it. We only had fifteen (fifteen) field passes for this game, so opening and closing that 500+ pound flag was going to be difficult, and we knew it! 

On the field, we were able to do it, although it was a lot harder with thousands of eyes watching! A big bubble of air came in under the flag and prevented me from gathering up the fabric of the flag very efficiently, and it was pretty hard to recover the bubble of flag that seemed to be collapsing on top of me! But all went well. 

We were almost immediately upstaged by what is probably the only flag in the entire world bigger than ours! A football-field-sized American flag held by 250+ Marines. Hah - we did ours with only fifteen! (Fifteen...) 

Also, paratroopers landed on the field before the game started - SWEET.

Of course, we won the game, but not before several members of our party yelled themselves hoarse!  

Tomorrow morning I fly back to Austin. I wish I could hang around San Diego a little longer, but it's been a nice jaunt out to the west coast! My next jaunt is to the east coast in a few weeks! Off to visit my Gramma for her birthday!

And now I am off to bed... I am exhausted!

Breakathon Readathon Review: Lola and the Boy Next Door

I needed a good mental break after finishing Mockingjay due it's super intense plotline, very little humor, and unrelenting action, and I chose to mentally vacation in some good, reliable, Young Adult fluff. Now, it's not that this story has nothing going for it - far from it - it has a clear message, likable, well-developed characters, and an appropriate happy ending. I love Stephanie Perkins' style, and I especially love that characters from her first novel (Anna and the French Kiss, which I read earlier this year in more or less one evening) feature prominently in this one. It was a funny, rewarding story, and a delightfully quick read.

Likelihood I'll reread: 70%
Likelihood Ill recommend: 75%

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Total pages: 2908

Breakathon Readathon Review: Mockingjay

So... I finally finished Mockingjay just before Christmas. It was a relief to finally come to the end of the third book - it was a roller coaster from the get-go, and the second book left off at a really awful cliffhanger. In what must have been my infinite wisdom (of course) I am glad I left reading these until they were all published. I would have been a wreck if I hadn't had this one at my disposal. Similarly to the first two, I read about forty or fifty pages and then put it down for a while. Some things just need time to settle - and these books, more than most I've read before, need time to settle. They're violent, weighty, dark, and absolutely unrelenting... and I absolutely loved every page. I even shed a tear. I won't say when, you'll see.

Likelihood I'll reread: 100% (Absolutely)

Likelihood I'll recommend: 100% (Already happened many times in the last two days. I want everyone to read them so we can talk about them!)

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Total page count: 2570

Breakathon Readathon Review: Seriously, I'm Kidding

This popped up in my reading list in an unexpected manner. I needed a break from The Hunger Games (which isn't to say I don't still love them - I guess I just needed some time to absorb the plot twists) and this book provided exactly what I needed. On a similar vein to reading Tina Fey's autobiography and the Daily Show's book, Ellen's was an excellent read. Along with the other two books, I feel like Ellen's voice was easily able to shine through the text of the book, and I happily devoted a few hours to reading and enjoying. It features a combination of stories from her life (which you take with a grain of salt) to imaginary letters to mall cops about how it really wasn't her fault she broke the vase in Pottery Barn, to imaginary conversations between someone named Suzie and a Psychic ("Do you want some more water?" "Yes, thank you!" "I knew that already.") to practical advice on how to become a billionaire ("1. Make lots of money, 2. Don't spend it"). I loved reading it, and, with its short chapters it'd be easy to pick up again and read a few pages in the future.

Likelihood will reread: 90% (like I said, bits and pieces)
Likelihood will recommend to others: 95% (if they like this sort of book)

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Total page count: 2180

Breakathon Readathon Review: Catching Fire

I was right when I set out to list which books I wanted to read during this break to include the sequels to The Hunger Games. Everything I had heard about the books were that they were riveting, addicting, and fast-paced. Somehow, I have continued to underestimate them. I won't make that mistake again. I guess I just get suspicious and mistrustful of the quality of books. This is in no way a stab at modern writers or a statement in support of the Good Old Days or anything (because who am I, at age 22, to know anything about the good old days of anything except perhaps classic Nickelodeon lineups?) Anyway... Catching Fire was surprising to me for many reasons. One, that it didn't seem to go the way I was thinking it would, that I was even more confused by the end of it (imagine if books gave you answers instead of answering the old questions! Crazy, right?) and lastly, that it was even more addicting than the first. Mom and Mike can attest to the fact that, immediately upon finishing it, I leapt up out of my seat and ran to grab the next, and last, book of the trilogy.

Likelihood of rereading: 100% (There is simply too much I must have missed the first time round!)
Likelihood of recommending it to others: 100% (though I would warn that addiction to the series will probably result in some weird dreams.)

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Page total: 1939

Breakathon Readathon Review: Earth (The Book)

This was a diverting read, and an excellent change of pace after all of the fiction I have been reading. I don't have much to say about it, other than that I was totally engrossed in Jon Stewart's humor the entire time. It was witty, off-beat, and just self-detrimental enough (of humans as a race, as opposed to only of himself) to keep me giggling away on my couch all afternoon. The premise of the book is that it is a visitor's guide to Earth, so that aliens, when they come to Earth long after we have totally destroyed it, can get a sense for what was - who lived here? What did they do? What did they like? How did they work? You know - everything we've been trying to figure out about our ancestors and potential aliens alike... but in convenient travel guide format. There was a brief introduction to just about everything - from religion, to culture, to land masses, to major scientists of the last three hundred years.

Likelihood I'll reread: 50% (probably just portions when I am bored)
Likelihood I'll recommend to others: 35% (if the topic is raised)

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Page count: 1549

Breakathon Readathon Review: The Last Little Blue Envelope

As anyone who has read the first book, 13 Little Blue Envelopes, will know… the ending goes a tad, well, unresolved. I was cautious about beginning this book – not because I didn’t want to read it, but because I wasn’t sure that Maureen Johnson would be able to send me back on that magnificent journey that I had embarked on in the first book, and it was very important to me that I be able to embark on that voyage, but any hesitation I had was entirely misguided. Not only was it everything I hoped it to be, it was better. It was a beautiful journey, even the second time around. I laughed, I cried (literally – I did cry), and I happily was swept off on Ginny’s journey again, this time a few months after the first book took place. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I won’t… I’m just going to leave it at Holy sneezeballs, Batman, this book was freaking amazing, and move forward.

Likelihood I will reread: 100%

Likelihood I will recommend it to others: 100%

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Page count: 1293

Breakathon Readathon Review: 13 Little Blue Envelopes

Maureen Johnson is made of magic and win. I’m pretty sure this is fact.

Given my history of travel, especially solo travel, this story struck a very personal chord within me. The story is about this girl named Ginny, who at the beginning of the book learns of her aunt’s death and is given a bundle of blue envelopes from her. The first letter instructs her to book a flight to London – to leave behind all forms of communication and follow the instructions to the letter (hah – see what I did there?). She ends up travelling all over Europe – to Amsterdam, Greece, Italy, Scotland, France, and Denmark – makes friends, and completes little tasks along the way (such as finding her aunt’s old friends, who end up teaching her a variety of lessons.) Most of you will remember my own personal trip around Europe a few years ago. My personal experiences in Europe that summer, and from other trips there over the years, made me really identify with the narrator. It reminded me of how much I loved to travel, especially alone, and while I followed Ginny’s travels throughout the book, to many places I have been (the exceptions would be Amsterdam, Rome, and Greece) I craved those places again. I think Maureen Johnson was able to paint a very interesting, realistic picture of a young girl travelling alone and discovering herself, and who her aunt really was, along the way.

Likelihood I will reread: 100%

Likelihood I will recommend it to others: 100%


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Page count: 541 
(I only read 70 pages of this book, to finish it, during the readathon)

Breakathon Readathon Review: The Hunger Games

So I sat down to start this book a few days ago when I was all set to start babysitting, but had twenty minutes to kill and a hankering for a coffee from Starbucks. I went to Starbucks (where they have started to recognize me...), got my coffee, sat down in a cozy armchair, and set an alarm. (I have learned to set alarms!) When my alarm went off, alerting me that it was time to leave  I was fifteen pages in and scowling. No! I didn't want to go babysit! I wanted to keep reading! Finally, when I had this free afternoon with which to do absolutely nothing (and having previously done some serious 'damage' to the Christmas knits), I put my cozy slippers on and went to town. Well, I easily read 75% of the book in one sitting (with the exception of a break to bake some Christmas cookies) and I have to say that the book was everything it promised to be. It's tough nowadays to pull that off, I think. There is so much overdone in any genre of fiction, and so I was very pleasantly surprised to find this book was both original and a story well-told. I was worried about two things, primarily. One, that the writing style wouldn't be great (because, well, look at how popular Twilight is, despite Meyer's style) and two, that it wouldn't be graphic enough. It's a Young Adult book - and I worried that it would be toned down. (Kind of like how I can't really forgive several of the Harry Potter movies for their PG ratings.) The story of the book is graphic (it's about a competition of 24 people fighting to the death - it kind of has to be!) In any case, both of my fears were never realized, as it is both extremely well-written and doesn't spare us the gory details. To be clear, I don't relish in violence or extremely vivid detail... I just prefer that the author do justice to their story. The last thing I have to say about the book is that the story itself was a lot more self-sufficient than I thought it would be. It left just enough of an inconclusive conclusion at the very end of the book to make me want to start off immediately and go buy the next one (or, let's face it, the next two. I won't be put in this position again!) but it wrapped up the individual story of the book very well. Kudos to Suzanne Collins!

Likelihood I will reread: 100%
Likelihood I will recommend to others: 100% (as I have already done so)

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Page count: 855

Breakathon Readathon Review: An Abundance of Katherines

I’ll be honest, it took me most of the book to properly get into the story - I was probably on page 150 (of 215) and that’s when I found that I didn’t want to leave the story! I love John Green’s voice, his characters, his sense of story and how he seems to know the best way a story should be told, but it was a little hard to follow for one specific reason: the interruptions. Let me explain - the premise of the story is that the main character, Colin, has only dated girls whose name is Katherine. He has just graduated from high school and has recently been dumped by Katherine XIX. To get some space and to try and get over her, he and his friend Hassan take off on a road trip and end up in Tennessee, where they befriend a girl named Lindsey, and her mother, Hollis, who offers them a job if they just stick around for a few weeks during their summer break. Colin is a bit of a prodigy, stuck in the idea that he has failed (in that he hasn’t met his parents’ crazy expectations that he do things like memorize 25 Latin verb conjugations a day, etc.) and he embarks on developing a mathematical formula that predicts the length of a relationship depending on all kinds of variables. Interspersed between the boys’ story in Tennessee is the history of Colin’s relationships with the Katherines (which vary from camp flings, to elementary school hand-holding, to full-blown nearly year-long relationships), and to be honest, the interruption was hard to get used to (because they’re, well, interruptions.) That said, I enjoyed the story itself, thought the characters were well-developed, the voices of the main characters distinct (which was important, because I’ve noticed that John Green tends to leave off the he said/she saids a lot!)

Likelihood I’ll read it again: 25% (Once seems to have done it well for me, but who knows?)

Likelihood I’ll recommend it to others: 30% 

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Page count: 471

Breakathon Readathon Review: Bossypants

What an absolutely hilarious read! I’ve noticed in the past that, when I obsess about something, I immediately go for the roots. With Lord of the Rings, it was learning everything I could about the history of Middle-Earth… with 30 Rock, it was reading this autobiography. Since reading Tolkien’s biography for my paper, I’ve been on a bit of a (auto)biography hunt, and certainly Tina Fey’s was everything that I hoped it would be, and more. I could hear her voice leap right out of the text. I laughed out loud many a time, (which is a big thing for me! I am a silent reader... Most of the time I am the idiot reading in public who is beaming like a ray of sunshine at the happy ending or pulling the same faces as the character in the story). Anyway, I got everything I wanted from this book - including some really great embarrassing photos, highly amusing anecdotes, and a generous dose of her trademark humor - and I recommend it very highly.

Likelihood it will be reread: 95%

Likelihood I will try to recommend it to others, so I can talk about it to them: 75%

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Page count: 288

Challenge: Breakathon Readathon

My roommate and I have a bit of a competition going on over the break. We call it: The Breakathon Readathon.

Rules:

1. No Harry Potter. Or Twilight, for that matter. 
2. No rereading things over the break (but you can reread books you have read before.)
3. Try to stay away from audiobooks, but they are allowed.

During our break from school, we are to read as much as possible. We're quantifying it by page number, so the idea is to just read, and read a lot. I am challenging myself to read as many books that I haven't read before, (with the exception of one or two, because it's been many years since I've read them!) For some added fun, I'll be writing reviews of the books I read, too. I'll give you an updated page count, too.

Interested in what's on my list? They cover a wide array of genres... Here's a list of the books I've pulled from my shelf:

• 13 Little Blue Envelopes, Maureen Johnson (I have to finish this one - I started it months ago!)
• The Last Little Blue Envelope, Maureen Johnson (Presumably I'll want to read it, as it's the sequel!)
• Name of the Star, Maureen Johnson (Because I got it months ago and it has been EATING AT ME that I haven't been able to read it yet!)
• An Abundance of Katherines, John Green (I've been meaning to read this for ages - I've loved his other books and this is just on my list.)
• Looking for Alaska, John Green (Same as the above reason!)
• The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (I have heard that this is an AMAZING read.)
• Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins (Presumably, I will have to read this one, because it's the sequel to Hunger Games)
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins (The last book in the Hunger Games trilogy... same reason as above)
• Lover Eternal, J.R. Ward (Because I read the first one and borrowed this from Ally months ago and should probably return it. Also, throwing in a romance novel seems like a good idea for a change of pace.)
• Lola and the Boy Next Door, Stephanie Perkins (I loved her first book, Anna and the French Kiss, so I picked this one up a few months ago and have been meaning to start)
• The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien (Because the movie is coming out next year, because I haven't read it since I was 14... because I just want to read it again, okay?) 
• All Wound Up, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (The latest in the Yarn Harlot's collection of knitting-related books, so naturally it's on my list.)
• Bossypants, Tina Fey (Over Thanksgiving break, I watched all five seasons of 30 Rock, and since then I have been a teensy bit obsessed with Tina Fey...)
• Earth (The Book), Jon Stewart (Sort of linked to my obsession with Tina Fey, in that it's a book written by a comedian and looks hilarious!)

So that's the list right now, and by no means will I be sticking to the order! It will in all likelihood change! Any suggestions for books I should read?

Penultimate Day of Classes Blog

(Too bad I didn't write this blog yesterday, otherwise I would have gotten to use one of my favorite obscure words: Antepenultimate. The third to last in a series.)

I have some photographs to share - as is my way, is it not?

I've been trundling along the end of the semester - through the biannual Finals Cold (I always seem to get sick. Stress colds, I suppose.) This semester isn't so awful as previous ones - things are nice and spread out. I guess I'm just ready to be done with these classes.

Tomorrow, 12/2: Exam.
Monday, 12/5: Paper (15-20 pages)
Monday, 12/13: 3 Essays (2000 words, 750 words, 750 words)

On my way to work the other day, I saw a camel.

Yep, that's a camel.

It's part of a "living nativity" thing that this church at Bee Caves and MoPac do every year. Every year I forget about it, and so inevitably I drive through through the light thinking, "Was that a camel?!" I pointed it out to Emma after I'd picked her up, and she said, "I LOVE camels!"

She's a bright girl. She also saw the moon the other day and said, "The MOON. Isn't it BEAUTIFUL, Stefanie? Stefanie, the moon came out to say hello to you!"

How could anyone NOT like gratuitous pictures of Emma?

Also, Emma can recognize some letters now. My hart practically bursts every time I show her the letter E and she proudly says, "That's E. E for Emma!" And to show how SUPER smart she is, she also recognizes S. "S for Stefanie!"

My new current favorite picture of her. Emma LOVES to swing.

Every time I tell her it's bath time, she looks at me very seriously and sais, "This is Emma's last bath. No more baths."

And the other day, I was eating a snack with her and she looked directly at me, pointed her finger, and said (through a mouthful of banana), "Stefanie, chew."

Miss Emma also knows how to operate an iPad. She can unlock it, find her favorite TV shows, and start and stop episodes. All by herself. I watched her go through like six different Dora the Explorer episodes before she decided on which one she wanted. I knew Apple products were intuitive, but I guess I underestimate the toddler population! (She loves to play with the volume. I love to snuggle with her and read a book while she watches Dora.)

She's such a big girl. Look at her a year ago!

Miss Emma still can't eat yogurt without being messy. Not much changes, except now she has more hair. (And she can speak better this year. And she has more teeth. And she...)

Miss Emma will be THREE soon. Don't talk to me about it.

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I went to see my asthma doctor the other day. Ever the sample-giver, he gave me a sample of my favorite kind of inhaler. The usual number of doses in an inhaler is 206, but this one is MINI. It only has 65. AND IT'S MINI.

Really, it just supports my theory that everything is more awesome in its miniature form: muffins, sharpies, squashes (my roommate gave me a mini acorn squash the other day!) And now, inhalers.

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I have some thank you notes to send out for my birthday presents. Mom gave me these stickers last weekend (since her last name no longer begins with a P) and I thought it would be ULTRA CLASSY to put them on.

Don't they just SCREAM classy?

We also determined that I must be an adult if I send thank you cards with absolutely no prompting from her. 

Well, crap... 

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Also, tomorrow's my last day of classes. Where did the semester go?