Books Read - Challenges

Challenges Updates:
-Outdo yourself
 Pride & Prejudice - by Jane Austen (January)
 Avalon High - by Meg Cabot (February)
-Off the shelf
 Pride & Prejudice - by Jane Austen (January)

-Femme fatale
  -
-Horror/Urban Fantasy
  Avalon High - by Meg Cabot (February) [I´m taking a reencarnated King counts as Urban Fantasy?]
-Gilmore Girls (Rory's List) 
Pride & Prejudice - by Jane Austen (January)
-Jane Austen
Pride & Prejudice - by Jane Austen (January)

New Challenges

... it was stronger than me.
It's not like I wouldn't read books that would fit these challenges anyway.
And these are good.
And I'm on holiday I need goals.
So here go:

Gilmore Girls Reading Challenge

The goal is simple: you choose a level (Emily, Lorelai, Rory), each with a number of books to read (4, 6, 10) on different cathegories to choose from (2, 3, 3). I'm aiming for Rory level simply because she has (had) very ecletic taste, so there are several books I already wanted to read/have already started reading/already own. Which always helps. The books and cathegories are here (the levels have changed, new ones here) and you can sign up here.

Jane Austen Challenge

Just found out they had subscriptions until January 7th. So gotta find another one with simmilar specifications. (Shouldn't be that hard, right?) But I will join a Jane Austen Challenge.
The blog that hosted this challenge (A Faithful Journey) had a wonderful list of books not written by Jane but that have something to do with her characters, that I find very useful:

Inspired by Jane Books

The Jane Austen Book Club

Becoming Jane Austen

Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict

Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

Jane Austen Ruined My Life

Mr. Darcy Broke My Heart

Tea With Jane Austen

Mr. & Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy: Two Shall Become One

Loving Mr. Darcy: Journeys Beyond Pemberley

My Dearest Mr. Darcy: An Amazing Journey into Love Everlasting

In the Arms of Mr. Darcy

The Trouble With Mr. Darcy

The Darcys and the Bingleys:A Tale of Two Gentlemen's Marriages to Two Most Devoted Sisters

The Plight of the Darcy Brothers: A tale of the Darcys & the Bingleys

Mr. Darcys Great Escape

 I so wanna read The Jane Austen Book Club after I've read them all! Such a cute movie...
 Anyway, will go back to Lady Catherine's insults against Lizzy and the possible marriage (it's so much better than what I remember of the scene in the new P&P movie! Looving Chapter 56).

xoxo

PS: This is in addition to these challenges, btw.

Book acquisitions and P&P babble

Yesterday mum dropped me off at a used book/dvd/cd store (it's heaven) and I stayed there for a couple of hours, mainly trying to figure out if they had a nice copy of Sense & Sensibility (which I'm reading with my girl friends, finally, at out Book Club, on February) - they didn't. But they had a sort of follow up called Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife (by Linda Berdoll), in big flourished golden letters that caught my attention. Afraid of what a follow up might do with my mental version of Mr. Darcy, I read some of the pages, in which it was implied that Elizabeth (now Mrs. Darcy) had been somewhat mugged with Georgiana, and had suffered rape or attempt of rape, which is why I assume she thought Mr. Darcy wouldn't want her anymore (and of course, here followed the perfect "Of course not, darling" and derivatives). And that was enough to leave it in its abandoned shelf - what the hell are they thinking, putting rape in a courtship-novel follow up? It takes the whole light, easy, breezy feel of it which I - and supposedly most of the Austen fans - love. (And now that I've read the two top reviews on GoodReads I see that indeed it is most unwelcomed by Austen readers.)

Even so, I think I'll venture to read one or two of the sequels to P&P, it is just that good. Apparently, there are several: there is a whole community for it. While I linger on the ending of the actual P&P, I like to read Mrs Darcy vs The Aliens at times, which is quite entertaining. Also, I'd like to read something about the customs and etiquette of early 19th century England - I find some scenes so odd by this lack of knowledge. For example when Mr. Darcy meets Elizabeth and she's with her aunt and uncle, don't you find it strange that she doesn't introduce them right away? And then when he does request the acquaintance she is so honoured. After I reread some passages and excluded all my background with the contemporary "How rude, pardon me. This is So-and-so and this is That-and-that" lines I could understand it partly, but I'd like to know more of it.

Anyway, the books I did buy are:

• "They Dare Not Go A-Hunting" by Dorothea Cornwell, which I have no idea what's about, but it's such a beautiful red hardcover with yellow stained pages and big old fashioned typography that I couldn't resist. Strangely, it isn't even registered at GR.
• "Arabian Nights - Illustrated by Earle Goodenow", very pretty version of stories I never really wanted to read, but now will give a try.
• "Et Tu, Babe" by Mark Leyner, weird, weird book, sounding a little bit like a worsened version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxies, but it might be fun.
• "Nineteen-eighty-four" by George Orwell, really nice hardback of a book I always wanted to read and think I'll be able to persuade the Book Club to read it as well.
• "Must Love Dogs" by Claire Cook, I liked this movie and had no idea it was a book! I read only the first chapter, but it proved to be a very light, fun reading. Looking forward to it.

And now I'll need to maintain my interest in them after I'm finished with P&P, Good Omens (which the bf lent me and I still haven't gone past chapter two), and Sense & Sensibility. I can do this!

Uh. More book challenges that sound interesting. Must keep hold of self. Must. Must. Must. But what about...-

xoxo

Boredom

As I´d mentioned, today is my first day of Holiday and I´m still not sure what I´m going to do. I know I´ll be reading and stuff, but I wanted to do something that actually required moving. *one look at dangerously stacked room desk with books, notebooks, pens that don´t work, photos, cd´s, movie tickets, an earring which I had never seen before, etc., etc.* But something outside! *one look at my dog´s corner, which I reeally have to clean at some point* But something fun!
I miss riding my bike and having homemade chocolate icecream in a cone. Unfortunately those sort of distractions aren´t available in this neighbourhood, so I´ll have to find something else :(
Any ideas? Any one? Anywhere?

xoxo

Wish List #1

I was cover clicking (I do judge a book by the cover, no matter what they say) on my January picks by GoodReads when I found this: 

The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us 

by Sheril Kirshenbaum

It has such good reviews at GoodReads, and you gotta admit it is a compelling subject. Shame I can only order it for 4 to 6 weeks and pay a small fortune. Am adding it to the When I Go To A Decent Bookstore list.

On the author's site there's an excerpt available (really cute and in Flash, here), which only made me want to read it more.

Has any of you, wanderer of this blog, read it? And looved it? Or hated it?

I had forgotten the name of this book, and in my searching at GoodReads I found several The Art Of Kissing and alikes, which lead to these other cute books I may enjoy reading:

The Art of Kissing 

by William Cane

 

This one seems less scientific and more "practical guide", but it's interesting nonetheless and the reviews are equally good. I mean, who doesn't want to know more about kissing?

Plus, it's available on my thrift store website, and that is goood.

Then there are the books by this Kristen Harmel, who I'd never heard of before, but seems to be a sort of Sophie Kinsella. 

                              The Art of French Kissing    The Blonde Theory

                                                  by Kristin Harmel              by Kristin Harmel

          

          

     Italian for Begginers

         by Kristin Harmel   

Specially like the Kissing one to be set in Paris and this Italian one. (Seriously, you could write the most boring story and set in Italy - I'd read it.) I'm pretty sure it doesn't have much in language, though. I love it when teach you new expressions and sayings. Mum was just telling me the other day "Did you know the French say 'J'arrange' for everything?", and indeed, her not too promising novel had three paragraphs illustrating the French hability to manage unmatching buttoms and cheating husbands by saying that things would work itself out. It's fun. France and Italy based books are filled with stuff like that. Sort of like "Under the Tuscany Sun", "Le Divorceé" and - my favourite of all times - "A Good Year" (are there even books for these films? I know there's a Peter Mayle on the latter, but from what I can gather it's very different from the movie, so I'm a bit eery of reading it).

And this is my kiss-themed Wish List #1!

Gonna go watch Letters to Juliet, which mum so kindly rented for me to celebrate finally being on HOLIDAY. I've waited so long for this day!

 xoxo

Organising

I'm one of those people who are terribly disorganised (and sort of like that) but get a strange feeling of accomplishment and purpose whenever they start organising something. So that's what I'll do with the posts in Tumblr (there are only 21 so it can't be that hard).

I'm signed up for these challenges: Outdo yourself, Off the shelf, Femme fatale, Horror/Urban Fantasy. (And thinking about joining the Rory challenge too.) I'll be posting the books I've read in a designed post.

I've rewatched quite a few movies lately, so I'll be posting a weekly or monthly update on those.

I saw a post on BCC about  making a Wish List, which would decrease the amount of emails I send to myself as a reminder of the ones I've read the reviews and liked, so I'm thinking I'll do that as well.

And I was also thinking about finding a new good blog a week (or maybe two weeks, dunno how my schedule will be this year). Today I found The Drama Queen Can Tell Stories, which I reeeally liked. And I also have about a zillion self emails with links on them, so double plus.

And then maybe a favorite look from LookBook every week or so. That'd be a great excuse to browse it frequently.

So many projects, so little time!
Gotta go back to my Pride & Prejudice.

xoxo

Indecisive kind of girl

I'm a bit of a fanatic about writing whatever comes into my head (hence fairly frequent diary entrances in hidden notebooks for the past six to seven years and multiple attempts at blogging), and my last project was a Tumblr blog in which I'd write... not really sure what I intended on writing, but I was going to use it as an update measure for all the book challenges I wanted to join.
Here's my last entry at Tumblr:

What the hell was I thinking? Tumblr may be greeat for trivia, and nice pictures and music, but I write blog-style. Beeh. I'll end up returning to the mothership.

And then Tumblr failed to load and has been dead for some twenty minutes, which I'm taking as a sign that I should transfer back to blogger, where I belong, with my old fashioned way of posting. You know, just to be safe...
I think I'll keep tumblr for updates and reblogging the cute photos/songs/quotes and doing what Tumblr does so well: exploring and multiplying. But I'll be based here. I think. I dunno. I'm undecisive.
If you wanna read me, you better get over it :P

xoxo