Showing posts with label follow friday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label follow friday. Show all posts

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Follow Friday: Best Book

Well, as I am not the kind to read a lot of books in one month (well . . . sometimes), I will just focus on the best book I've read this month. (Which, this month, happens NOT to be the ONLY book I've read.) Just a few nights ago, I finished Julian Barnes's The Sense of an Ending. It won the Booker Prize last year, and for good reason. (Review forthcoming.) It's quite a short little thing, but don't let that fool you. Gems on every page. My poor little red pen (or green colored pencil, as it were) was overworked. Do you ever get that weird feeling sometimes like you are underlining more than you are NOT underlining? Well, I had to, otherwise I might not remember some of the best lines . . .

This book gets you thinking, really thinking. About what you've done with your life and what it's meant, and if it's meant something to you and another thing to someone else, and yet another thing to a third person, and how all those dominoes line up and fall down. And then where does that leave you? And where does it leave all those other people? And then these questions (and still others) swirl around and around in your head for days until you get disoriented and decide to read the book again from the start. In other words? An amazing novel--you ought to read it. And now I better stop before I have nothing more to say in my aforementioned forthcoming review. =)

Happy hopping!


parajunkee

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Follow Friday: Resolutions

I love a new year.  A fresh start, full of potential.  I try not to bog myself down with resolutions too much, because then I can't keep up with all of my good intentions, and that makes me sad.  It also makes my fresh, new start sad . . . very, very sad.

What I really need to work on this year is simply posting more often. (haha) Easy enough.  I love to read; I like to write.  Those aren't the problem. The problem is time.  Like the tide, it waits for no man, and it doesn't pause for me while I'm writing my new post, hoping my teething toddler will stay asleep just one more half hour.  So, I want to start getting up an hour (yes, I'm giving up my sleep!) earlier than normal and using some of that time to keep up with blogging and to spend more time reading. This may fuel a caffeine addiction, however.

What sort of resolutions are you working on this year?

Friday, December 2, 2011

Follow Friday: Peevish

If you are new to the #FF fun, Feature & Follow Friday is a blog hop that expands your blog following by a joint effort between bloggers. Here's this week's question.

Q: What is your biggest pet peeve when it comes to books? Maybe you don't like love triangles or thin plots. Tell us about it.

This may be because I'm sitting next to a YA novel I just finished, but I'm going to say that what frustrates me is when an author takes a pretty creative plot and junks it up with a lot of stuff (for lack of a better term), so at the end, I want to say it was good, but it really wasn't. What junk am I taking about? Here's an example: Breaking Dawn. The first thought Edward would have of a child with Bella would be to "get that thing out"? Wolf pack explosion, do I really care what every single wolf is thinking all the time? Do we really need to start calling Jasper "Jazz" in the forth book? Did we really need the characters to actually mention that there were so many vampires that it would help to have an index to keep them straight, and then add a footnote to said list? Would Bella really have named her child that, I mean, really? And don't even get me started on the final battle scene.

But the most disappointing thing about all of that, is that the story could have been so much more. It started out great, and then went way downhill, and then up and down, and over again. The ideas behind it were awesome, but the execution of those ideas left much to be desired. And just simply cutting out a lot would have been a start. I just have to shake my head and say what a shame! Anyway, that's about it. That's kind of a downer, sorry!  Hopefully I'm not offending anyone's deep and abiding love for the Twilight series.  I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have a sort of love-hate relationship with some of these books because the creativity is up here, while I feel the interpretation of that creativity into words can sometimes be down there.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

Follow Friday: Turkey Day


Eat lots of turkey!
Then find a corner and a pillow and bury your nose in a book.  =)

I'm just thankful for this outlet--to be able to write about books and read others' thoughts who feel just as strongly about the written word as I do. Since I stay at home with my daughter now, it's nice to be able to have that kind of interaction with other book lovers. =) I guess, just to name a couple names, I'll have to say I'm thankful for Angie at Angieville for introducing me to so many great YA novels and Trish at Hey Lady! for always making me laugh. And so many others . . . =)

Two of my favorite books discovered this year are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, which if weird because I'm not that big on sci fi, but I really loved that book.  And The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which I read for the Dewey Read-a-thon, last year, actually, but it's close enough.  =)  And I'm so so so excited (and thankful) to see the movie soon!

Happy Thanksgiving!