Book 7/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

The seventh book I read for the "Off the Shelf" Challenge was The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.  


I don't really have much to say about this book, other than I enjoyed it, and I wanted to watch the movie version with Guy Pearce as soon as I finished it, but it isn't available to view instantly on Netflix, so I'll have to wait a while.


I really enjoy Science Fiction novels and movies (or are they called SF now?), and although I don't know the history of novels focusing on time travel, I would have to say that this must be one of the most influential, if not one of the first of its kind.  It's a simple story, and I was kind of left wanting more - wanting the narrator to join the Time Traveller on a trip to some other point in time, just so that I could read about it.  I think that's why I enjoy Doctor Who - The Doctor and his companions are always going to a different time, to a different place, with each one being more wondrous than the one before.


Overall, I enjoyed the book and, in reading it, realized just how much I want to read more about time travel.

Book 6/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

Book cover courtesy of reader2.com

The next book I chose to read for the "Off the Shelf" Challenge was The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks.


Let me just start by saying that for me, liking a book like this is a bit weird.  Yes, I am a bit of a hippie and I believe in things like love and equality and such.  Yes, I am madly in love with my husband, and I believe him to be my soul mate.  But, other than that, books like this - cheesy romance novels, I guess you could say - I normally don't want to read.  Don't get me wrong - I love a good love story, and I think that most stories have to have some type of love included, whether it be romantic love, friendship love, love between parents and children, whatever.  But most of the time I cringe when I see something too sappy.


Oh, who am I kidding?  I loved this movie, and I really liked the book.  It wasn't the best writing in the world, and while the author tries to give you a bit of mystery, you know what's going to happen in the end, who she's going to end up with.  I've only read one other Nicholas Sparks book - The Last Song - which was a book club pick, and I really didn't like that book at all.  But I don't know what it is exactly with this story (The Notebook) that makes my heart feel like it's going to burst and makes me worry that I'll start crying and never stop.  I think, though, when I first watched the movie, it was simply the love story that did it to me, and the pain of watching your love slip away with Alzheimer's.  But this time around, as I read it, I think I also had strong emotions towards the details about them watching their children grow, which makes sense because now I am a mother myself.


Anyway, you might call me a hopeless romantic or whatever, but I'll always love this movie and I really liked the book as well.

Book 5/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

Book cover courtesy of illiterarty.com

For my 5th selection for the "Off the Shelf" Challenge, I read The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  This was another book that I should have read in high school, but I don't think I ever finished.  Looking back, I'm really not sure how I passed some of the tests I took in school.  I must have skimmed over it and found out the major details, or maybe used Cliffs Notes.


So, reading this book now, it took me a while to get into it.  But I think that was partly because of the writing style, and partly because the book just didn't get interesting until about two-thirds of the way in.  Therefore I ended up liking the book more than I thought I was going to, but I think I really only enjoyed the last third of the book.


I'm interested in seeing the film now, especially since a new adaptation is set to come out in 2012, and is starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire, and possibly Ben Affleck.  Overall, though, I think I still have to give this book a medium rating, like a 3 out of 5, because, even though it's considered a major classic, it doesn't rank up there with my favorites.

Reviews in 5

Happy April Fool's Day!


It's been a long time.  I shouldn't have left you...without a dope beat to step to... (Sorry, Timbaland's part at the beginning of that Aaliyah song always gets in my mind when I hear the phrase "It's been a long time.")


So I haven't posted in forever.  Surprise, surprise.  But I've been busy.  So busy, in fact, that I'm not going to even attempt Script Frenzy this year, and that kind of makes me sad.  But I've been reading up a storm.  I recently finished reading my friend's manuscript and I really really liked it!  And she didn't think my comments and suggestions were a load of crud so now I can officially say that I am a Beta Reader extraordinaire!  Or maybe just a Beta Reader.  But reading her book makes me realize that I need to get to work on the second draft of my NaNoWriMo 2010 novel.  I guess I'll just add it to the to-do list.

Photo courtesy of www.sweetvalleytenyearslater.com

Also, I guess some of you will think this is crazy, but my friend Courtney and I have gotten a bit nostalgic lately because of the recent release of Sweet Valley Confidential:  Ten Years Later.  Yes, I was an avid reader of Sweet Valley Twins when I was a child.  I didn't read Sweet Valley High - I was a bit young, so I started with "Twins" and by the time I was old enough for "High" I wasn't really reading anymore.  So Courtney and I went on a mission:  to find Sweet Valley High (and Sweet Valley Twins, for me) books to read before we read "Confidential."  I looked at our local library - nada.  Just a few of the "Jr. High" spinoff.  So we both ventured online, and I stumbled upon eBay.  Now, I had an eBay account but I had never bought or sold anything before.  So I was amazed when I found tons of people selling Sweet Valley stuff!  So I found a lot of 32 Sweet Valley High books and bid on them, and ended up winning!  My first eBay experience and it was a success!  (Courtney warned me not to get hooked, so I'm staying away from the site for now.)  So I got 32 books for only $39 (shipping included), and out of the first 15 books, the collection is only missing #1 and #5!  Talk about a score!  So we'll have to find #1 and #5 soon.  I hope to post some blogs about it once we've started.  Yeah, we're dorks, but we're not ashamed!  Sweet Valley, here we come!  ;)


But the big, huge, wonderful, exciting thing that I really want to tell you guys about is my new project.  I was a bit vague about it in a previous post, but now that the site has gone live, I can tell you about it!  


I had an idea recently to start a blog about movies - but rather than just being the normal movie review, I wanted to focus on one actor or actress at a time, and to look at several of their movies.  I also wanted it to be a collaborative blog, where there were a few people posting, so that there would be more than one opinion featured on the blog.  So I mentioned it to my husband, Jeremy, and he loved the idea, and came up with the idea to limit it to 5 movies per actor/actress.  Then we mentioned it to our friend, Courtney (aka my Sweet Valley co-dork) and the three of us came up with the name Reviews in 5.  


So here's how the site works.  We take suggestions from our viewers as to which actor or actress we should review.  Then, once we've decided on an actor/actress for the upcoming month, we will post a poll where viewers can vote on which of the five movies they want us to review by that actor/actress.  Then, starting on the 1st of the month, we will post one movie review every five days, and then finally we will have an overview of that actor/actress.  We will also have individual pieces every Monday where, say, I blog about my Top 5 Childhood Movie Obsessions (this actually will be my first individual piece, which is slated for Monday, April 18th).  We also plan on doing a few different features, where we have guest posters or focus on one movie series for a month.


For this month, since we're just starting and have no suggestions as of yet, we decided to start with some of the winners at this year's Academy Awards.  So we started with Natalie Portman, who won Best Actress for her role in Black Swan, and will be reviewing The Professional, Beautiful Girls, Garden State, The Other Woman, and, of course, Black Swan.  Our site went live today and our first post for The Professional is up!  Next month we will focus on Colin Firth, winner of Best Actor for his role in The King's Speech.


Please go to our site, "like" it, add it to your RSS feed, send in suggestions for actors/actresses, and comment on our posts!  And share the heck out of it!  We plan on making a facebook page for it soon, and also, if anyone links to our site on their blog/site/whatever, let us know and we will link to your page as well!  We're very excited about it and have lots and lots of posts coming in the future!  Here's the address:  www.reviewsin5.com, or you can just click on the picture below!  Hope to see you guys there!

Book 4/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

For the fourth book of the "Off the Shelf" Challenge, I chose to continue to read the books in the Hitchhiker's Guide series, by Douglas Adams.


Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the series, and unfortunately it didn't, to me, live up to the first two installments.  There were parts that made me laugh, parts that made me nod at Mr. Adams's genius, but there were way too many parts that made me look up from the book and shake my head and say, "What did I just read?  Why is this not making any sense?"  Of course, that might be what a lot of people think while reading any of the Hitchhiker's Guide books.  The fact is that Mr. Adams continually goes off on tangents that you presume are random, but in fact, they come back later on in the book, and if you simply glossed over those tangents earlier, you won't get the humor in their later appearances.  But for some reason this book seemed to drag on a bit more than the first two and didn't seem to have quite as interesting of a plot.


All that being said, I must also mention that the reason that I might not have enjoyed this book as much as the first two could perhaps be because of the oodles of books on my shelf that I am dying to read right now.  Those books will have to wait a bit longer, though, because I just got a copy of my friend's book and I'm itching to read it and become a real-life Beta Reader.  ;)


But overall, I love Douglas Adams and his humor, and I envy his creativity.  This book, while good, just wasn't as good as the first two.

Where's Hermione When You Need Her?

I feel a bit overwhelmed.  I think I might need a schedule, one akin to the studying schedules that Hermione makes for Harry and Ron in the Harry Potter books.


Here's what I've got going.  I've challenged myself to read 35 books this year (I read 30 last year), but this goal is totally doable.  It's how I do it that's the problem.  I've also challenged myself to the "Off The Shelf" Challenge, where I will read 15 books that have been on my bookshelf for a while but I haven't read yet.  I've already read 3 books for this challenge.  But here's where the problems start.  I have book club books to read as well (only one a month, so not too big of a problem), and I have other books that I bought a few weeks ago that I also want to read.  Then I relieved one of my friends of about 9 books that she was getting rid of - also books that I want to read, but since they just joined my overflowing book shelf, they won't count towards the "Off The Shelf" challenge.  Then, yesterday, I went to a closing sale at the Borders near me that is closing and came back with 6 more books, and most of these are of the "oh-man-I-must-read-them-now" caliber.  Yes, all of these books can count towards my year goal of 35 books.  But the question is, how do I read them and still read the books for my "Off The Shelf" challenge?  I mean, those books have been sitting there for a while, and yes, I want to read them, but these new books are so nice and shiny and are calling to me...


And that's just the problem with the books.  I also was hoping to participate in NaNoEdMo in March, where I challenge myself to complete 50 hours of edits on my recent NaNoWriMo novel.  I really want to edit that novel, and I feel like the deadline given in NaNoEdMo will help to make that a reality.  I will edit it, but I'm afraid if I don't participate in NaNoEdMo I'll just keep putting it off.  Then there's Script Frenzy in April, and I'm not sure I'm up for another 100-page script in 30 days, but I really enjoyed it last year.  Then one of my friends has deigned me worthy of being a beta reader for one of her novels.  This is one thing that I will definitely do, no matter what my schedule's like.  I'm so excited to do it, and nothing can stop me!


And then there's this other thing that I'm going to be completely vague about and make it frustrating for all of my readers.  ;)  I'll just say that it's a new project, a new blog project that I'm really excited about and it's just now at the starting gates.  The first post won't go up for a while, but it is somewhat time-consuming because a lot of work goes into each post.


And I have all of this to do while also taking care of my 1 1/2-year-old son.  He's a lot of work. But I do get to read and do other things while he naps and after his bed time.


So here's what I think.  My husband suggested that I make sure I read one "Off The Shelf" book every month, and that I can't read any other books (besides book club books) until I've read that specific book.  Right now I'm reading the March book club pick, and I should be done within a couple of days.  So I think after that I'll start my ritual of reading the "Off The Shelf" book first, and the others after.  Then, of course, when I receive my friend's novel, I'll be reading that ASAP.  And I'll be working at least a few hours a week on my new blog project.  But I feel like I may have to forgo NaNoEdMo and Script Frenzy this year.  But if I don't do NaNoEdMo, I feel like I still need to pencil in some editing time.


So, readers, what do you think?  Any tips?

Book 3/15, "Off the Shelf" Challenge

I went through a phase, as I've said before, where I didn't do a lot of reading.  This meant that many of the books that most people read in high school went untouched or unfinished on my shelf.  One such book was the third book I chose to read for the "Off the Shelf" Challenge:  To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee.  


When I started this reading challenge, I knew there were several books that I simply could not ignore on my shelf any longer.  This was one of them.  I was supposed to read it in high school or junior high, but I never finished it.  So when I sat down to read it recently I had a few ideas about it in my head.  I knew the main plot of the story.  I remembered a few of the characters' names.  And I knew that it was one of those books that you're "supposed" to love.  And if not love, at least like a lot.  It's a classic.


But I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy it.  And for the first 15 or so pages, I was sure that I had stopped reading it as a teenager for a reason.  But I stuck with it, and lo and behold, I ended up really liking it.  I am a strong supporter for equal rights for all humans, no matter their race, religion, sexual orientation, or nationality.  So this book was right up my alley.

But regardless of the moral of the story, there were other things that simply appealed to me.  I loved the court-room scenes.  One of my favorite movies is 12 Angry Men, with Henry Fonda.  If you love mysteries, whodunits, court-room dramas, etc., check out this movie.  It, too, is a classic.  So when Atticus Finch was in the court, questioning witnesses, it made me excited to figure out what actually happened between Tom Robinson and Mayella Ewell.


Then the ending happened.  Or snuck up on me with a vengeance, is more like it.  Now, I know most people out there have read this book but for those who haven't, I won't talk about it.  I don't want to spoil it.  But let me just say, I didn't see that coming.  And then, in the final pages of the novel, I have to say that there was closure.  And with all the series that I've been reading lately, it's refreshing to read a stand-alone book with nice closure.