A Meme Where I Talk About Myself

Kerry over at Entomology of a Bookworm tagged in a game of, well...tag.  (It's my way with words that keeps you coming back, isn't it?) I've been trying to avoid these type of memes recently but, what can I say, I like talking about myself.  It's the one topic I can discuss with full confidence.  But because I'm sure many of you don't actually care, I figured I'd post this over the weekend when most people aren't checking blogs.  Especially Halloween weekend.  Anyway, onto tag

So the rules say I need to link to the blogger who tagged me (done!), answer the questions honestly (we'll see. I won't outright lie anyway) and tag 4 other bloggers.  OK so this last step I won't do because what if there is someone that doesn't want to play but I tag them and then they feel like they have to or I'll stop following them (I know my approval rules most people's decisions)?  So instead I'll say, if you feel like it congrats! You've been tagged.  If you don't want to, that's cool too.  You're a less vain person than me.

Four Things in My Handbag

1. iPod Touch and iPod Shuffle.  Why both? Cos clipping the little shuffle to my clothes is far easier on my commute than making sure my Touch doesn't fall to the bottom of my bag and rip my headphones out.
2. Wallet, since my purse is essentially a vessel for holding this thing.  It's huge and heavy but pretty so I keep using it. 
3. Keys. I'm always paranoid I'll forget these and get locked out so I have them on a huge lanyard from college that gets tangled in all the other things in my bag, but makes it really easy to find them.  It also has a New Jersey bottle opener on it so win.
4. Book. Currently it's Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories.  The fact that I keep a book in my bag at (almost) all times is the reason I avoid hardbacks.  So if Fforde and Bryson would like to hurry up and push their latest pieces to paperback, I would be most appreciative.

 Four Favorite Things in My Bedroom

1. Bed. As it stands my bedroom is very small so the bed takes up about 85% of it.  It's not that I think this bed is the best ever but I do love sleep.
2. TV/DVD/VCR I like to fall asleep to something but I don't have cable hooked up in my room, so I've been watching DVDs.  I recently finished re-watching the entire Critic series and 1 disc from the Simpsons season 8 with my favorite episode "You Only Move Twice".  I'm now onto watching the Planet Earth series.
3. Window AC. I don't know why it's been hot and humid in Boston recently, but my window AC at least makes sleeping possible.  I'm pretty sure that's how an army of mosquitoes has been getting in, but seeing as I have no where to store the AC if it's not in the window, it'll stay there and I'll just keep blasting the window with bug spray.
4. My dresser I had some trouble coming up with the last item and this is essentially the only other thing in the room.  But I do appreciate that it holds some of my clothes. The rest are down the hall in a closet/room off the living room.  (By the way, there is a good chance this closet is larger than my room, but I don't want to depress myself by actually measuring and finding out that is true.) And keeps my TV at eye level.

 Four Things on My Desk

1. My Computer The only desk I have is at work so I'm just naming stuff on there and surprise! It has a computer
2. Drawings, doodles, cutouts. It looks like kindergarten art class projects have vomited all over my desk. When Co-Worker was here we would make drawings for one another so in between post-its with important phone numbers I have a drawing of a duck eating Sun Chips and a giraffe flying a WWII plane.
3. Cheap Decorative fan I won it at this amazing place called Good Time Emporium that has since shut down to make way for an Ikea.  Now I love Ikea but I also love a place where I can play skee ball, laser tag, pool and drink all in one super sketchy location.
4. Drink containers I currently have 1 reusable water bottle, one bottle of sparkling flavored water, 2 foam cups from Dunkin, 1 plastic cup from Dunkin (I need to throw out), an empty water bottle (also needs thrown out) and an over sized coffee mug that needs washed.  I am not a particularly neat person apparently.

Four Things I've Always Wanted to Do (but Haven't Yet)

1. Move to Seattle This is actually a relatively new thing, but ever since I've visited I want to live there.  At least for a few years.
2. Visit Australia/New Zealand   It looks so beautiful out there that I will get over the 25hour flight just to visit.  You know, and find the necessary funds to make the trip happen.
3. Learn a foreign language fluently I took French for roughly 10,000 years from middle school through college but I still suck at it.  I'm far better at Italian but even that is barely passable now.  
4. Figure out a long term career I change my mind a lot but maybe at some point I'll think of something I want to do for the long haul.  Owning a bookstore would be nice.

 Four Things I Enjoy Very Much at the Moment

1. ABP's Pumpkin Soup Now if only the location over here would stop being lazy and start carrying it.  Fall's going to end soon people!
2. Boots I have so many pairs but I still want more.  So pretty
3. The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Rocky Horror Picture Show My two favorite Halloween time movies. I should probably splurge and buy a DVD copy of Nightmare.  The VHS is getting worn down.
4. El Guapo burrito from El Pelon I'm not eating one now but I suddenly got a craving. Might be a quest for the weekend.

Four Songs I Can't Get Out of My Head

1. Electric Avenue by some guy that made an annoying song I read something that referenced this song the other day and now it's stuck in there
2. New York, New York by Sinatra   Must have come on my iPod at some point.  That's the fun thing about listening to music during my commute.  I don't usually pay all that much attention to what's playing but I'll suddenly find myself humming some song.
3. Drunken Lullabies by Flogging Molly Also came on the Shmuffle recently
4. Time Warp from Rocky Horror It's just a jump to the left...

 Four Things You Don't Know About Me

1. I love punk, ska and Broadway musicals My music taste is a bit schizo but it makes me happy.  And the American Idiot Broadway soundtrack is the perfect storm of those things I love. 
2. I keep my nails painted at all times or else I bite them I bite them even when they are painted, but it is more of a deterrent.  And I'm not a big fan of red/pink/french manicure nails.  Recently I've been keeping them green but currently they're black
3. I love Tosh.0  The show just consists of tasteless jokes and gross internet videos and yet I love it.
4. I get Ebert's newsletter emailed to me weekly yet I won't read the review until I've seen the movie.  And then once I have seen the movie, I'll look up reviews elsewhere and won't usually go back through my email to see if the review is there.  It seems pointless yet I like getting them anyway.

 If you've made it down this far, congrats! I probably would have quit.  TL,DNR.  Happy Halloween!

Such ordinary things make me afraid

I was browsing around a bookstore one day when I came across the book Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories.  I loved Dahl as a child and I have a book of his short stories aimed at adults, so I was very excited when I found this book.  So excited in fact, that I didn't notice Dahl didn't actually write these stories.  He just compiled them.  Whoops.  I was disappointed when I found this out but the disappointment didn't last for long because Dahl picked out some great stories and he includes a number of short stories written by women.  In the intro he decides "women have an unusual flair for writing about the supernatural," (14) and I'm personally always happy to see a story written by a female writer that doesn't completely center on finding a man and/or shoe shopping.

I've gone through half of the book so far and the stories about children have been the ones that stood out to me. Most likely because children scare me.  Unsettling tiny people...Anyway here are my thoughts on the creepy children stories.

"Harry" by Rosemary Timperley
The post title actually comes from this story.  The main character begins the story talking about the ordinary things that frighten her: "Sunshine. Sharp shadows on grass. White roses. Children with red hair."*  (33) Mr. and Mrs. James have adopted a young girl who was the only member of her family to survive her father's attempted family murder/suicide, saved by her brother's sacrifice.  Christine has made an invisible friend that her mother cannot stand but the more Mrs. James rails against him, the more Christine retreats to the friend in the garden.

"Playmates" by A.M. Burrage
A creepy Victorian bachelor decides he would make an awesome parent so he takes on a ward whose father just died and no one else seems to want, so he see if teaching her the bare minimum (though giving her access to a full library so she can mostly teach herself) and keeping her from other children will make her the perfect person.  This results in the girl being well cared for physically but sullen; she never laughs, she never plays. The man, the little girl and the household servants move from the city to the country, where the little girl begins to play and smile and seems to have a group of invisible friends.


So the first thing you'll notice is kids who talk to invisible friends are actually talking to ghosts** so you'd better watch out. And kids are totally unafraid of ghosts because child ghosts apparently make fantastic playmates.  The creepiness comes from the fact that the children are interacting with something otherworldly in an entirely nonchalant way.  These companions make perfect sense and are preferred to real children around them.  The adults may try to deny a presence but their own reluctance shows how much they really believe in the friends are real and more than just an overactive imagination.  The stories aren't frightening so much as they are unsettling.  You won't scream while reading these stories but you will feel uneasy.  Dahl says in the intro the reason he compiled these stories was originally for a TV show.  It sounded like The Twilight Zone and any of the stories would fit into that sort of format.  Less sci-fi, more horror, all creepy.  It's too bad the show never got picked up; I'd love to have seen some of these stories made into short movie.


*Man, red heads just get picked on left and right.  For other examples see: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and South Park. One of my nicknames is "daywalker" though I do have the pale skin and very light freckles.  But I'm pretty sure non-redheads just can't tell gingers apart.
**I thought about saying "Spoilers" here but since I'm talking about a book of ghost stories, if the fact that ghosts are present surprises you, well, here's your spoiler alert. You're welcome.

Title quote from page 46

Burrage, A.M. "Playmates."  Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 1983.

Timperley, Rosemary. "Harry." Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories.  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. 1983.

Top 10 Scariest Books

In honor of Halloween, this week's top 10 hosted by The Broke and the Bookish is the top scariest books.  I love Halloween so I actually think I might be able to make it to 10 this week but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

1. Everything's Eventual by Stephen King This is a book of King's short stories and it has some of my favorite King stories, including my favorite short story "1408".  This story sincerely creeped me out and I immediately started it again.  It's not only unsettling but a truly great tale.  I wrote posts about "1408" and another great story from the collection "The Man in the Black Suit". 
2. The Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark collection by Alan Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell I loved these books when I was little but at the same time they gave me nightmares.  I'm pretty sure the illustrations were responsible for that.  Even now those drawings are pretty terrifying. 
3. Misery by Stephen King King might come up a few more times on the list, so heads up.  This is one of the few King novels I've read that doesn't include the supernatural and I think that makes it that much more terrifying.  There are no ghosts or monsters, just a psychotic paranoid number one fan.
4. Jaws by Peter Benchley My favorite book when I was little was The Golden Book of Sharks and Whales. And then many years later I read Jaws and a few other "terrors of the deep" books and no matter how many times Shark Week tries to tell me otherwise, I am terrified of deep water and things in the water attacking me.  I have trouble playing video game underwater levels (Damn you, BanjoKazooie).
5. Dracula by Bram Stoker I took a Horror Fiction class in college and this was the basis we used for horror stories to come later.  It has some slow moments but it's the original and does have some great scenes.
6. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe The fact that the story is told from the PoV of the crazy narrator makes this story that much better.  You're made an accomplice to his crime but you never really understand his motivation.  You're with him and yet apart from him and there's something in that contradiction that makes the story so eerie.
7. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis I love this movie so I read the book.  The movie is child's play compared to the novel, which is incredibly graphic.  Incredibly graphic. Rats get shoved places rats should not go.  But the movie is still one of my favorites so it stays on the list. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the book. Also if you really, really like the book, no matter what you say, I will think you have latent serial killer tendencies. Update! I found this list of 50 most hated literary characters and Patrick Bateman, the main character, is listed.  Here's what they have to say: "Only the most twisted of individuals would admire Patrick Bateman, a slick, priviledged executive who enjoys murder, rape, cannibalism, torture, necrophilia and other wholesome activities."
8. World War Z by Max Brooks. I actually plan on re-reading this in the near future so be on the lookout for those posts but I'll tell you that while awake I'm not afraid of zombies but apparently my subconscious is terrified of them.  Every night while I was reading this book I dreamt of zombies and they were some strange dreams

And 2 horror stories I want to read but haven't yet...

9. Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson I've had this book for years but still haven't gotten around to reading it.  I will, eventually.  I love the idea of a pure evil character as part of all of us. 

10. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson I almost included "The Lottery" on this list but I decided to save the spot for this Jackson novel.  I've heard time and again that this is a horror must read.

Look at that, I made it to 10!  Amazing.  I even had to remove some book to keep it at 10.  I knew this had to happen eventually.  Just don't expect it to happen again in the near future. 

A talent for seeing patterns and understanding abstract reasoning where other people perceive only white noise.

*This may contain spoilers.  I'm not very good at judging what could be a spoiler and what isn't, other than the obvious things. I should probably put Spoiler Alert at the top of the blog somewhere*

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo wasn't what I expected.  I assumed it would be a non-stop thrill ride.  I can't tell if the story was over-hyped and if I would have enjoyed it more if I didn't have these raised expectations.  The story was slower than I expected it to be and I never got to the point where I had to read "just one more page".  To be honest, I never really cared about the whole Wennerström plot and I found Blomkvist to be boring.  I thought Salander was the most interesting character and unfortunately the story didn't stick with her for long enough.  The title leads you to believe that Salander will a more prominent character than she is and I can't decide if the new title is false advertising. 

I wrote the other day how I understood the original title of the book was Men Who Hate Women.  The rape against Salander is violent and in my opinion unnecessary to her character development.  I don't think we learn too much more about her after this scene, other than she's capable of violence.  Violence I was totally behind because, well, I can only be so sympathetic to a rapist, but violence nonetheless.  I guess I see where Larsson was going with this scene, given the violence against other women described later in the book.  It isn't just a crazed serial killer that attacks women, it happens elsewhere.  But the rape is so violent that it isn't really making a statement about the general atmosphere of condoned violence against women, it's just another sadistic exaggeration.  That's not to say it doesn't happen, but it's not the norm and the extreme violence just makes the act all that much less believable.  

I'm going to read the next book in the series, because it's the next book for book club.  I hope that Salander plays a larger part in that book.  If she doesn't I don't think I would bother reading The Girl Who Played with Fire.  I guess that's s a compliment of the character Larsson did create.  The book may have a lot of violence against women, but the female characters are far more interesting and more well developed than the male ones.  

Overall I wouldn't really recommend the book.  It wasn't awful but it wasn't for me.  With the exception of the Salander scenes, which I did enjoy, I would have been fine putting the book down at any point and walking away from it.  

Title quote from page 552.

Larsson, Stieg.  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Vintage Books, New York.  2008

Book Blog Hop XIII

Another Friday, another Hop, hosted by Crazy-for-Books.  I've missed the last few hops due to friend's weddings and concerts and a desperate need for sleep, but I'm back this week!  I know, you missed me.

This week's question is: Where is your favorite place to read?  Curled up on the sofa? in bed? in the garden?

As I've mentioned a number of times, I do a large amount of my reading during my commute.  Not my ideal place to read but there you go.  However, when I read elsewhere I usually do it curled up on the couch.   I also enjoy wandering around the city and reading in a park somewhere.  Reading in Central Park is one of my favorite places to be in the spring.

What about you?  Where do you like read?

New Book Review Page

I was feeling ambitious/bored yesterday and put together a Book Archive page.  I'm sure many of you* are dying to get a look at all of the books I've written about but using the search button is a pain and looking through the blog titles in the other archive isn't all that helpful.  So to help you (and me) out I put together this page to track all of the books I've written about and links to the articles.  I may even add images to this page but I got distracted last night (damn you Tosh.0) and didn't get around to it.  I hope if you actually did want to see all of the books I've talked about that this is helpful.  And if it's not let me know and I'll either fix it or tell you to go look up "sad trombone".

Oh Hey! More Archives.  Exciting

*By many of you I mean me.  I'm sure you aren't actually combing through old posts trying to see what other brilliant thoughts I've shared.  Also, I know Blogger has the "tagging" option but I thought this was easier.  Until I need to actually maintain this page.  Plus I have a lot of ridiculous tags.