Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity-Jig

I blame my long absence on the excessive amounts of time I've been spending sleeping and reading. Sorry about that. School is properly over until August so now I'm not technically too busy to update here; I'm just distracted by my suddenly copious amounts of free time.

I know I haven't posted any new book reviews in a long, long time now, my apologies, but I really wasn't able to get much pleasure reading done at all during April-May. I am trying to make up for that now. So in the coming weeks look forward to reviews on these books as I finish them (I'm over halfway through them all already): Titus Groan, Time Quake, Royal Assassin, Throne of Jade, Crown of Stars, Wives and Daughters, Shadow of the Wind, and Deathless. I read The Night Circus last week but it was ultimately disappointing after a very promising beginning. The book had a lovely mood of slowly brooding tension, and a gorgeous playground for the reader's imagination in the form of the circus itself, as well as some promising characters, but then fell apart greatly in the last act. The tension doesn't lead to any appreciable climax, most of the characters never reach the potential promised for them in early pages, and everything ends up feeling too rushed, too skimmed. Which is a pity. I imagine this could be a more effective film than novel since it's so very visual on the page and seeing these characters visually might help give them a bit more of an emotional impact than what the author managed in the book.

Lately I've also been RE-reading--Plain Kate, The Scorpio Races, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, all books I have earnestly recommended in the past and which I will enthusiastically recommend again now. Is anyone else almost unseemly excited about the prospect of a sequel to Fairyland being published this Autumn?

I should amend what I said above; in addition to spending my time sleeping and reading I've also been doing a lot of swimming. The weather has been glorious so far this summer, aside from today which has turned out to be a bit gloomy and cool, and so my brothers and I have been walking to the pool and then swimming in said pool pretty much every day since I came home. This means I'm actually getting a little tan; how strange for a girl who usually stays paper pale due to her spending most of her time in her favorite habitat of libraries and other places where books reside and the sun does not.

It's very pleasant being home.

Ooh, Blogger's posting format's changed

I guess that's a sign that I've been away too long. Also it now apparently defaults to the default font setting for this browser, which I set as a joke as Tengwar about two years ago. And then promptly forgot about. I was a bit surprised when I started typing just now, but it's fixed now.

Well, the time-turner thing didn't work out but I'm managing anyway, slowly and linearly. Only two more final exams to do, one tomorrow and one on Friday, and then I am free! Free to go home and bake cookies with my siblings and read books to my baby sister who's not such a baby any more and watch The Avengers again with my brothers (one of THE best movies ever, by the way) and get back into proper dance training again and prepare to go to Comic-Con! It's my first time going and I'm extremely excited.

My proposal presentation, in what I still consider to be a not-so-small miracle, actually went well. I even won an award for best Arts and Humanities presentation. Hopefully this means the worst of this whole project process is behind me now, because honestly these past few months have been slow, agonizing torture. I've never had a worse academic experience.

In other news I am also going to be posting my creative writing a lot more over the summer, I hope. I've signed up for Camp Nano, no idea what I'm writing yet and maybe I'll just use it to finish The Outlaw's Hand, but I dunno. Also I'm back to practicing my drawing. And there's many, many books I want to read--the rest of the King's Assassin series, the first Gormenghast book, a Kate Elliot novel, the rest of Wives and Daughters, Great Expectations, and much more. In short--bring on summertime, I can't wait!

I need a Time-Turner.

Now.

First I will use it to go back in time and get all the homework done that I need to get done for this week.

Then I will use it to go forwards in time until I'm back home on May 13, with the presentation I have to do on the fourth completely and forever behind me. As well as all these research papers. And finals week.

Can Time-Turners even go to the future? Well, mine would be able to.

Homework Distraction #1

I've been thinking a lot about stories and how they are told lately. My research project that I'm developing for the honors project I'm in at university revolves around storytelling. I've been reading some great books lately (His Majesty's Dragon, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making) that are wonderful exercises in storytelling. And of course, I am using what free time I have to write stories of my own. I used to tell people I love reading--and, well, I still do! If there is any one thing in my life that I love, it's the art of reading and writing stories. But I will also now tell you that I love storytelling. And good storytelling is not confined by the medium the story is told in; I've come to appreciate television, film, radio, art, as well as written text because a good story is a good story no matter how it is told.

I've especially been thinking about television lately, though, partially because my research project heavily involves both Doctor Who and Sherlock, and partially because I've been doing a lot of homework lately and something I really enjoy doing is multitasking! Which is just a fancy way of saying that while I'm typing out that essay I tend to have my favorite episode of Doctor Who or Avatar or Lost playing in a window on my computer alongside it to keep my creative side happy. This thinking about television and watching television while I study has in turn reminded me of a lot of my favorite moments from my various favorite shows. So because I like making lists I've been making up some lists just for fun, like 5 of my favorite TV character introductions or 5 of my favorite funny TV moments. It's fun to revisit those moments that are the visual equivalent of my favorite lines in my favorite books, the moments when storytelling really shines.

And since I've made the lists already I figured I might as well post some here on the blog, to share them with y'all. First up: 5 of my Favorite 'AUGHWHATNO' Moments, which basically just means those moments that made my jaw drop in agonized, delighted disbelief. Aren't those just the best? I'll embed video when I can, and when I can't I'll just have a link to take you to video of whatever scene I'm talking about. Sharing is caring! And we can all use a little break from school sometimes :D

Note: Of course these lists will have spoilers. Shows featured here: Doctor Who, Lost, Sherlock, and Supernatural.

#5: "It's good to see you out of those chains."

Admittedly, this is only one of many, many shocking Lost moments, but I just love FakeLocke and Richard's faces in this scene and Richard was one of my top 5 characters in the whole show so to see him suddenly getting knocked out like that after so many seasons of seeming invulnerability was just awesome. In a terrible sort of way.

#4: "Do we have a deal?"

I was going to put the ending of Waters of Mars here but couldn't find a clip so this'll do fine too. This episode is just a series of WHUT moments, and it's also one of my favorite DW episodes ever. And this moment is just the part where everything gets much, much darker and uh-oh and awesome.

#3: Richard Brook, he's on dvd!

I could probably have all 5 of these be scenes from The Reichenbach Fall, honestly, because I love that episode just that much. But here's one of the two moments that seriously gave me chills and made me scream at the screen, which is not something that I do often, to be honest. Really it's the whole scene that gets me, the escalating panic and fury, but here's one part of it anyway since I can't find the whole thing in one vid on youtube.

#2: Demon semi!!!

My favorite season finale cliffhanger ever, only tied perhaps with Juliet hitting the bomb in Lost Season 5 and Sherlock aiming his gun at the bomb in Sherlock. Heh, guess I have a thing about cliffhangers involving bombs. No bomb here, just AN ENORMOUS SEMI TRUCK THAT COMES OUT OF NOWHERE. When I first watched it I literally jumped and then just stared in incredulous shock for a few minutes. The episode was so full of terror and drama and awesome and then after an extremely nailbiting climatic scene it finally slows down for a second and then BLAM CAR CRASH and now you have to wait 'til next season. So. Good.

#1: "Well, good luck with that."

The other RF moment that absolutely chilled me. This entire episode is a work of art, honestly, storytelling at its superb best. And this was so unexpected and so horrible and so absolutely, completely RIGHT. Even in just this 30-second clip you can get a feel for the stakes here, the tension and emotional devastation this moment meant after the previous 1-hour-plus of exquisitely multi-layered plotting and unravelling the characters and it was just wow. Also the music is exquisite.

Anyone out there who's seen these scenes before? Do you agree with me in my assessment of them? What other scenes do you think are superbly AUGHWHATNO? Share them in the comments!

So busy.

I don't really know what else to say. I'm kind of overwhelmed with school and dance and honors and things right now but I am still writing my creative projects as I can find the time to so hopefully I'll post more soon. Book reviews will have to wait until things are more settled I think; I've hardly had time to read any this year so far anyway. Let's see, I know I can recommend "No Country For Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy and "In the Night Garden" by Catherynne M Valente (the former for February and the latter for January). I can also tell you to avoid the novel "Shiver" like the plague.

Oh, wait! I know what more I can say! Happy Ash Wednesday!

. . . sort of inappropriate to say 'happy' Ash Wednesday I suppose but how else do you wish someone well at the beginning of Lent? Oh well, whatever. Have a blessed Lenten season; I'm looking forward to Easter already.

Pondering between classes

My last class of the day is due to start in about, oh, half an hour, and I'm currently sitting at a circular stone table just waiting. Not THE Round Table, of course--for one thing, there aren't any chairs, just benches--but still it's a bit more fun to sit at than one of those boring rectangular ones I can see just a little distance away.

All my classes so far are promising. I'm not much of an Anthropology enthusiast but we do get to go to the Honolulu zoo to look at monkeys apparently, so that's nice. All of my other classes are English classes, which means I have an insane amount of reading and writing to do this semester. I'm happy about it now, but just wait until a few weeks have passed; I'll probably be rueing the day I decided to sign up for a full schedule! Oh, and I have an Honors seminar but I honestly don't know much about what that entails other than it's supposed to begin my Final Senior Project process, so I'm withholding judgement until I learn more. I have my first one this Thursday.

The weather's been shockingly pleasant, especially since I just came back from home where it's cold and somewhat rainy right now. Today in fact has been very hot, so much so that I've had to put my hair up and am continually thirsty. This is really odd, as I'm used to bundling up after my three weeks home. I'm breathing a lot easier now that I'm back in the tropical warmth, though; the cough that plagued me all Christmas break has mysteriously vanished. I'm like Robert Louis Stevenson, retreating to Hawaii for my health!

Nothing much else to report right now. Life is moving along placidly and without untoward disturbance, and I'm just going with the flow. I do have to refocus and get back to exercising rigorously and eating healthily, though--during Christmas break it's not much of an exaggeration to say that I was living entirely off of butter, sugar, caffeine, and chocolate.

Oh, wait, one more thing! Last Sunday's episode of "Sherlock" was brilliant, and I am extremely excited about "The Reichenbach Fall", hopefully it doesn't let me down. Last week I went to the movies with some friends and watched "War Horse" (which was extremely good, by the way, if you haven't seen it you should, despite the slow beginning, it's honestly all worth it by the end) and seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston dressed up as British WWI cavalry officers galloping side by side on some splendid horses with John Williams music playing was one of the greatest things I have ever seen ever. Huzzah the Brits!

New Year's Resolutions

Are overrated.

But in the interest of procrastinating on unpacking and other necessary things I am made some up for myself anyway.

1. Stop procrastinating.

2. Write every day.

3. Don't put things off for later, that only leads to headaches and panic.

4. Finish "The Outlaw's Hand" by the end of the year.

5. Don't get lax about classwork halfway through the semester like you usually do. I know it usually works out fine in the end but just don't do it.

6. Sew those Hobbit plushies.

7. Never forget your watercolor paints and fabric pens in California ever again.

8. Read at least 5 new books per month.

9. Make Irish dance more of a priority.

10. Exercise every day.

11. . . . Write every day some more.