100 Books

I was watching the news a few minutes ago and it seems the average Mexican reads 2.9 books a year. Ouch.

It reminds me of something– a few weeks ago, I was looking at the Facebook profile of one of my classmates from high school. Nobody really liked her, because she wasn't nice and she sucked up to all the teachers at the expense of the rest of the class. She worked hard to get good grades, but she wasn't one to enjoy knowledge. Just good grades.

ANYWAYZ. In her profile she'd listed about fifteen "favorite books". Cien Años de Soledad, Doce Cuentos Peregrinos, El Amor en los Tiempos de Cólera, María, ... Hmm. That's odd, those are ALL THE BOOKS THEY MADE US READ IN HIGH SCHOOL. And you're not fooling anyone, María is really crappy. Seriously, hardly anyone actually read the whole thing (I did, it sucked. Waste of time). I'll bet my eyelashes that she just listed every books she's read in the past ten years, and that those books happened to be obligatory.

So, the whole Facebook-book fiasco coupled with the thingy on the news have spurred me to try to raise the national average by about 0.000000001 books per capita. Not that it will have any effect on the survey– not so much because it's such a small amount, but because they've never included me in their little survey (party poopers!). Oh, unless they're basing their data on that which is collected from book fairs, which they shouldn't.

So I've cobbled together a list of books I want to (re)read this year. Not Anna Karenina or similar paper bricks, just something nice and doable. Also, I'm going to start the counter at zero as of today. I've finished some books this year, but I'm not quite sure which ones were in January and which were last December. Better to start fresh.

This is going to be a lovely mash-up of really good, good, okay and crappy books.

1. Three Men in a Boat (Jerome K. Jerome)
2. One of the many Lord Peter Wimsey novels (Dorothy L. Sayers)
3. Chocky (John Wyndham)
4. Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
5. Something by Dick Francis.
6. Something by Jane Austen
7. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
8. Prince of Foxes (Samuel Shellabarger)
9. Seeing Voices (Oliver Sacks)
10. The Third Chimpanzee (Jared Diamond)
11. Doomsday Book (Connie Willis)
12. Something by Ursula K. LeGuin

I've started Three Men in A Boat about five times, and each time I absolutely love it, but then slowly grind to a halt when Jerome gets to the point where he rambles about the scenery and the kings of years gone by more than he talks about George getting lost in a maze, or Harris trying to sing a comic song and failing miserably. But this time I'm further in than I'd ever been before, and I'm determined to finish it.

It's clicked in my mind, now– in Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of The Dog, there's all these jokes about Victorian people having sudden fits of poetic-ness. I'd never fully understood just how severe they were.

And as for #12 on the list, I have read one Ursula K. LeGuin's books– I picked up The Word for World is Forest last year, and enjoyed it very much. I'm liking science fiction quite a bit, but I'm very under-read in it (actually, I'm under-read in general).

Speaking of science fiction, I never got to finish Ender's Game. My sister brought it with her during her visit last summer, and I got really into it, but she left with it when I was maybe 30 pages from the end. Fruuuuustrating. If I can wheedle my Mom into ordering a copy, I'll add that to my list and re-read it. Ditto Kurt Vonnegut; I read Slaughterhouse Five last year and it was amazing, so I'd like to read more of his.

Oops. I've really rambled on. Ah well. This list– the blog, actually– is for myself (in the future, you know. In case I bonk my head and have amnesia, or if I make it to old age but can't remember what my life was like back in the day).

2011 revisited

I went back and read over my 2011 resolutions. I kind of churned them out, one after another, without putting much thought into them. Now that I'm a bit saner, I'll change them up a bit. For instance, I'm eliminating the one about watching Dr. Who. Partly because I've already watched about five episodes (and that's enough for a while), and partly because I just wrote that on a whim.

I'm going to whittle down my list until it's eensy and doable. So:

1. Get a 9+ average one semester.
2. Talk to people more.
3. Make my own school lunches. Healthier and cheaper!
4. Brush my teeth more often.
5. Learn to drive.
6. Stay reasonably informed about the going-ons of the world.
7. Read 100 books.
8. Finish a 5k race (and get a free T-shirt from it or something).
9. Eat 8-9 serving of fruit and veggie a day (I think I have about 5 or 6 currently).

There! That's nice and small.

Who's cleaning up?

I just finished watching Appleseed. The last time I watched it was about 5 years ago, and while the dialogue is kind of cheesy and the storyline is a bit blah, the mecha and background design kick some serious ass. The music is quite nice, too. All lovely and epic.

At the end of the film, ten HUGE "mobile platforms" (five-legged AT-ATs, basically) stomp all over the city. I'd say each one is roughly the height of 1.3 Godzillas. It was cool and all, but throughout the entire scene I had to wonder how much it was going to cost to repair all the damage. Oodles of money, that's how much. Oodles.

And when they managed to deactivate the platforms, they all just froze where they were, and this raises an even bigger question: how the hell did they cart them off back to the sea (or something)? Maybe they just left them as decoration, and let grapevines grow all over them. Or they got disassembled and sold as scrap metal.

Also, in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf was all buddy-buddy with the giant eagles, right? And an eagle rescued him when he jumped off Saruman's tower, and at the end, more eagles went and scooped up Sam and Frodo. Which leaves me wondering why they didn't come and help a bit earlier. I mean, the hobbits had to WALK the WHOLE WAY to Mordor!! And they probably got flown home in about two hours! Pssh. It was in the best interest of the eagles to have the Ring destroyed anyway, because they hated orcs (I think. It was orcs, right?). And, you know, there was an army of orcs being bred because of the Ring.

Oh, and ALSO in the Lord of the Rings movie. The Shire is maybe ten miles across, so why do the Hobbits have different accents? It can't be just the different classes.

ELEVEN!

Yesterday I jogged not 3, nor 5, nor 7593756 kilometers, but 10! Or possibly 12, I'm not sure. Let's split the difference and call it eleven.

ELEVEN!! YAY! That's even MORE than ten! And a bit of a relief, because I did that after sitting around on my bum all week and not doing much of anything.

On other news, on Saturday (since I slept in and didn't go to the gym, hee hee*) I started to organize aaaaaall of our books.

We have lots of books. Lots.

So I made huge piles on the floor of:

• childrens' books
• very young childrens' books
• science fiction/fantasy
• young adult fiction
• classics
• mystery/crime novels
• war novels
• popular science
• Canadian/Mennonite history
• books about Mexico
• books in Spanish (to be properly sorted later)
• books about housekeeping
• books about woodworking
• dictionaries
• teach-yourself-[some language or other]
• books about translation and teaching English
• regency novels
• reference books
• chick lit
• books about writing
• how-to books
• (auto)biographies and memoirs
• textbooks
• software manuals
• classics
• general fiction
• religion (Bibles)
• religion (reflections on)/philosophy/poetry
• stupid books to be hidden in a cupboard**
• books in German (no idea what they all are)

And others that I'm forgetting about (yes indeedy, those were only the ones I could remember off the top of my wee head), as well as several piles that belong to a specific author or series (such Harry Potter, which we have like 17 copies of in different languages, PLUS companion books. It's not like we ever read it in French, I don't know why we don't just have a bonfire one night and burn the repeats***).

It's pretty cool– and useful– that my Mom has read the vast majority of our books, because she can tell at a glance which category pretty much any book should go in, although this gift can also be a bit annoying at times ("That's a historical young adult science fiction crime novel!"). But I guess it's only fair, as I also have a little pile of books that don't have a blurb on the back and I can't tell from just glancing through what genre they are, so every so often my Mom gets bombarded with,

"Where does this go?"

"Oh, that's a fun read! It's about [summary of plot]"

"But where do I put it?"

"It could be adult, or young adult, or even childrens'"

*Blank sheep stare* "But where do I puuuut iiiiit?"

Also, it turns out my Mom really likes her mystery novels, and intentionally bought four copies of this one book which she says she really, really likes. "To give away," she said, "because it's so good!".

And one last story: one time, years ago, my sister let her hamster loose in the bookshelf. Before we knew it, he had chewed up our ancient copy ofAnne of Green Gables, among other unfortunate volumes. Maxie chewed up a book too, recently. My Mom is going to trade it away this weekend at a bookswap. Ha. She said it was badly written anyway.

*I'd better not write so much about exercise, or I'll come across this when I'm 86 years old and get sad because by then I'll probably be old and frail. And I'll remember back in the day, when I was young, and get teary-eyed and then go on a cruise and fling myself into the sea in a fit of desperation. Ha! Just kidding, I'd never do that. Cruises are so expensive.

**Including books from the series of Sweet Valley, Full House, Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, and a few select others.

*** Just kidding. I'd never damage a book on purpose. Except maybe the Twilight series, which is lousy, IMO. I wouldn't mind toasting marshmallows over those.

2011

Just over an hour into a new year. It doesn't really mean much to me this year, for some reason, and I found the people on TV talking about peace and happiness and resolutions and good wishes very irritating. But I think that was just me being irritable and cranky. Sorry, TV people!

Also, I can't sleep. Luckily my laptop was beside my bed, so I picked it up and now I can make up some resolutions. In the following 12 months I intend to try to:

1. Watch Dr. Who, so I can talk about it with my sister when she visits next (also the new Doctor is HOT!)
2. Do better at school, grade-wise. At least next semester, I'd like a 9+ average.
3. Talk to people more. Try and make a friend, as in a real friend– not just someone I hang out with when we happen to be in the same place.
4. Obtain pajama pants.
5. Modify those metal band tees that are too big so they fit better (currently it's like wearing a tent. Almost. Sort of. A bit...)
6. Be more comfortable with myself.
7. Be nicer to my Dad. Particularly after how I ended 2010.
8. Walk the dog! The small one.
9. Actually, be nicer in general. Not just to my Dad.
10. Make my own school lunches, and definitely not buy rice from the woman who sells pseudo-japanese food at school. Her stuff is way over-priced.
11. Stop eating tuna and salmon, substitute with sardines (mmm!).
12. Be on time/early/anything-but-late for school (and stuff in general, but mainly school).
13. Brush my teeth more often. Prevention is the best way of keeping your teeth in their place.
14. Learn to drive. My mom insists that my awesome Mario Kart Wii skills won't do for real-life driving. Also, apparently "manual" mode in real cars doesn't mean that you can hop up and down when turning a corner. Which is dumb, because then how are you supposed to avoid POWs?
15. Read the news!!! I am grossly uninformed about, um, stuff, and it matters because I'm a child stuck in the body of a now-legal "adult".
16. Read the Lord of the Rings. There's ten-year olds floating around that have read LotR! Why haven't I? If there's one thing I have, it's an odd sense of pride over stupid things that don't matter, like how long I can jog and what books I've read.**
17. Practice the accordion! PRACTICE!!!
18. Enter a 5k race :)

That's quite a bit to do in a year! Well, not really, but it's mostly stuff that I suck at, so it's going to be hard to keep to it all. But it's all stuff I want (or should want), so there you have it.

ARE YOU HAPPY, BRAIN?? I'VE UNLOADED YOU, LET ME REST NOW!! INSOMNIA BE GONE!!

**Story for you: I was jogging two or three days ago, and was planning on doing only 3km, to rest a bit, but I kept on passing people and being paranoid that they'd think I was a loser if I stopped. Despite being very badly hydrated, I squeezed out 6km. Stupid? Yes. Did it make me feel good? Not physically, obviously, because I was rasping like an effing Dementor by the end, but it made me realize that it was all in my head when one of the people involved in my aforementioned paranoia actually cheered me on. I've gotten sidetracked here. What did this have to do with reading The Lord of the Rings? Ah, who cares.