![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
slytherincess and heidi8 are asking about personal theme songs. I don't have mine available for downloading thank you, lauriegilbert! "Extraordinary" by Liz Phair:
I am extraordinary, if you'd ever get to know me
I am extraordinary, I am just your ordinary
Average every day sane psycho
Supergoddess
Average every day sane psycho
---
Our home modem died. That was not fun. But I have a new one, yay! Only now I'm behind on email, boo!
---
Work has not let up, and on top of all that I have to do on a daily basis I had the Office Plague last week. I will be very happy as of July when one of my biggest time-sucking commitments will come to an end. Normally I'm one of those people who isn't happy unless I'm way too busy, but this is kind of ridiculous.
---
fasterthanlight asked me if I was still writing fanfic and the answer is YES! A more detailed answer is, "When I have the time, which is not as often as I'd like for it to be."
---
Been following the fap over Orson Scott Card winning the Margaret Edwards Award and I have to say...I agree wholeheartedly with the Edwards committee. Card's personal views should have no bearing on receiving the award. Ender's Game absolutely fits the criteria of the award. Applause to the Edwards committee for doing a great job this year. I know one of the members fairly well and I know how hard she worked and how much serving on that committee meant to her.
Like this, only it's not Amy Winehouse.
---
Reading:
Prey by Lurlene McDaniel. I wanted to read this the minute I heard about it. Basic plot: A high-school freshman begins an affair with his thirty-two-year-old history teacher. It's done in three voices: The boy, the teacher and the boy's best friend, who is the one who breaks the secret. It's a great premise and fabulous fodder for discussion written with terrible dialogue, superficial character development, and a predictable ending. Too bad, really. I didn't expect it to be Boy Toy, which was my favorite book of 2007, but I did expect that the teacher wouldn't sound like some professional seductress/evil overlord, and that the best friend would at least be likable (and not in the way where you like a person because you feel sorry for them).
Tyrell by Coe Booth (coebooth). DAMN. This book is STUNNING and I suggest that everyone go out and read it right now. This is easily one of the best first-person novels I've seen in a long time. Normally I like well-done first person because they show how unreliable narration can really drive the story, but in Tyrell's case I liked the first-person narration because it voiced not only Tyrell, but his friends and family and even his physical environment. I love that Booth didn't try to make Tyrell into some kind of Upstanding Teen Novel Hero, whose greatest aspiration was to go to Harvard and Make Something Of Himself. Tyrell wants to be a DJ like his dad and protect all the people he loves. More than anything Tyrell is honest and vigilant, and that makes the reader want to see him succeed at what he sets out to do. The only thing? I wish this were available on audio.
A Drowned Maiden's Hair: A Melodrama by Laura Amy Schlitz. I should have read this book when it first came out. I avoided it, I confess, because it's historical fiction and really long, and I'm no good at history. Doesn't matter with this book. Schlitz's writing is sublime. She has this incredible gift for writing settings so that the reader gets a clear view of what's going on but never once does said reader get bogged down in adjectives. Basic plot: a girl is adopted to help with the schemes of women who make their living as fraudulent psychics. But it's more than that. There's an overlying theme of morality and moral ambiguity, and cruelty and love. Melodramatic? Sure! But it's supposed to be, and it's amazing.
Airhead by Meg Cabot. Dead people and famous people are all the rage in YA lit, so how long was it going to be before we got a book about a dead famous person? This is a different turn for Meg Cabot. It's got her breezy, fast-paced edge but it's not fun and fluffy. Basic plot: Completely average high school student Emerson Watts takes a blow to the head while saving her sister from a falling plasma TV at the opening of a Stark Megastore. When she wakes up, she can't figure out why she's got a manicure and a craving for wasabi peas, and why everyone is calling her Nikki, as in supermodel Nikki Howard. This is definitely a fun and intriguing read, and I'm curious as to where Cabot will take the rest of the series. She's set us up to know that all is not right in Nikkiland, but we don't know how not-right, or who's behind it.
Next on the pile: He Forgot to Say Goodbye by Benjamin Alire Saenz; The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart...which I've had for seven months and still haven't read because I suck...and also I can't find mine :( ; Debbie Harry Sings in French by Meagan Brothers (good so far, but I'm only on page 10); Skin Deep by E.M. Crane, lots of others.
--
and now...back to work
