Books 42, 43, 44

Book 42 was Away Laughing on a Fast Camel, by Louise Rennison.

This is part of the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series, number five or six, I think (can't be bothered to look it up). I picked it up because I wanted something I could read on the bus during the weekend I spent on a field trip; our copy of this book has relatively large print (good for bus-reading) and is covered in plastic (essential for avoiding cookie crumb impregnations and accidents involving filthy pond water).

Anyway, as for the actual book, I'm pretty sure I've read it before, because it seemed quite familiar. It was very, very silly but also entertaining and a fast read.

Books 43 was Then He Ate My Boy Entrancers, also by Louise Rennison

Next in the series of the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson. I read this because I wanted to know what happened after the last book, but this one didn't answer the big question (does Georgia end up with Masimo, the Italian Stallion Sex God?). Pfff, I thought, have it your way. I'm done with these for now.

It was fun, but I don't think I can read more than two of these in a row. My brain could quite possibly melt.

Book 44 was my comfort book, my favorite book, the one I save for when I really want it. Bellwether, by Connie Willis.

I don't know what to say about this book. I like the format: short chapters (less than 10 pages, in most cases) that start with a short description of a fad. Much like Scott Westerfield's Peeps does, actually. Except Peeps is about parasites, and Bellwether is about fads.

When you see a movie, read a book, listen to a song, look at a picture repeatedly, with enough time between viewings, you notice things that you hadn't seen before. Like in Shaun of the Dead, there's little jokes that hint at the end of the movie but you only catch them when you see the movie for a second time. Or the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets VHS that's sitting on top of a pile of movies in Mean Girls, in the scene where they're watching scary movies on Hallowe'en.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. Anyway, repeated readings of this book make me notice things that had previously gone in through one eye and out the other. One of the fads described at the beginning of a chapter was the Dr. Spock books (Spock the childcare expert, not Spock the Science Officer from Star Trek). A few months ago I was in a bookstore sifting through piles of used books from the bargain table with my mom and I found an old edition of Dr. Spock's Baby and Childcare. I was all "Hey, look, Spock!", and my mom looked over and briefly explained that Dr. Spock was really famous back in the day.

It wasn't a hugely important moment to me, and I probably would have forgotten it completely if I hadn't been reminded of it by the mention of Dr. Spock in Bellwether. But I think it's interesting that my brain formed the association immediately and without effort while I was reading what I had repeatedly skimmed over many times before.

Here's a picture of Shaun the Sheep, because sheep are an important part of Bellwether. In a herd of sheep, the bellwether is the leader sheep that the other sheep follow around, sheepishly. And Shaun is obviously the bellwether of his flock.

Books 39, 40, 41

I don't have anything specific I wanted to write about. Actually, I clicked the "New Post" button by accident, but I figure I might as well write. Right?

The end of the semester is starting. I didn't do too well this time around. I started out motivated and capable, but lost steam about one month into the semester and eventually dropped a class (I can't get home at 11PM, be at school at 7:30 the next morning, and do my homework in between more than a few times, it turns out). It was horrible deciding wether to drop it or not, but when I did I felt much better. And I'm going to fail another course (damn lab), which means that effectively I'm only going to pass four courses out of six. Ironically, I only decided to take six courses to make up for last semester, when I only took four.

So that backfired. Lessons learned.

On the other hand, I feel better in general. Better than I did a month ago (miserable) and much better than five months ago (very miserable). So that's good.

I have no idea where this post is going. Oh, I read some books.

Book 39: This Place has no Atmosphere, by Paula Danziger

I thought this book was pretty bad, but somewhat entertaining nonetheless. Entertaining enough that I finished it, anyway. At the end it gave me a few things to think about, but I'm guessing that's because I was thinking a lot about things when I read this book (I mentioned I've been feeling better; that didn't just happen serendipitously, but rather it is fucking hard work).

Book 40: The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams

A compilation of letters, essays, interviews, etc. etc. by Douglas Adams, as well as a portion of a book he never finished. Immensely funny and thought-provoking, and also made me feel rather guilty that I don't have strong opinions about some things (namely politics and society, and that sort of thing). I really enjoyed this book, especially so because I was still thinking a lot when I read it. The only bit I didn't quite like is when there are several articles about technology, one after another. I mean, it's fascinating stuff, but after a while I felt like I was reading the same things over and over again. Four stars.

Book 41: A Spot of Bother, by Mark Haddon

I was feeling miserable one day and spent some time in a bookshop to cheer up (also I bought some lip balm that claims to taste like cookie dough, but really just smells faintly of sugar). I was going to buy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I can't find our copy at home and I've wanted to read it for about five years, but then I saw this and got it, instead. Firstly because I've read another book by Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I think about half the English-speaking world has read as well). Secondly, I was sucked in by the description on the back cover (it said that a character "quietly begins to lose his mind". SOLD!). The first half was pretty hard to read and took me about a week and a half to chew through because it's really well-written and I kept getting nervous on behalf of the characters, but it got easier as they became less sane. Liked it a lot.

Wow, I write about the same things over and over. School and books, basically. I don't do much else that I want to write about...

Contact lenses

I skipped the gym today and picked up my contact lenses from the optometrist's instead. Since it's my first time ever wearing them, I needed to have a one-hour session with one of the employees in order to learn the correct eye-poking technique necessary to insert and remove them, before being trusted with two boxes full of them (just in case I were to become hyper, rip the boxes open, and run around in a circle with contact lenses stuffed up my nose. Maybe). And don't think you can just drop by whenever you see fit and demand to be taught– no! You need to go early before the shop fills up, otherwise they'd run short of employees and eye-testing rooms. So the only time you can do it is right after they open, or at six in the evening on weekdays.

Since I have classes all day during the week, it had to be the weekend. Today I was really sleepy and so was delighted when I groggily realized that I could sleep in a little more, skip the gym and get my contact lenses instead: a win/lose/ultra-win situation.

While the optometrist taught me how to pull my eyelashes out of the way and pretend I was in a blinking contest so that I could get the lens in, we chatted about metal. Metal as in the music genre, I mean; we didn't converse about tin cans or remark about how, when you run a piece of metal through the sand on a beach, you come up with a bunch of microscopic magnetic particles. This, by the way, is pretty annoying if you're using a pair of metal tweezers to sift through a sand sample looking for foraminifera.

Anyway, after dropping a contact lens on the floor, exchanging band names and staring at my eyes in a magnifying mirror for about half an hour, I finally left the shop and wandered through the mall, the supermarket, the bazaar, a fabric shop, the street and a home goods store looking at stuff. Everything looks much clearer when you don't see it through a layer of fingerprints and muck accumulated on your glasses.

I had to come home from my wanderings when my sister called me because she was locked out of our house and nobody was home, but that was alright because at that point I was debating whether it's okay to buy a plastic eggplant just because it's funny and on discount (!), despite the fact that you know it will sit around the house looking ugly, gathering dust and generally being clutter-y, until one day several years into the future, someone puts it in the trash.

Logic says no, it'll sit in a landfill until the next ice age, but my heart was saying yes, yes, yes, it's an EGGPLANT!

Now that I have contact lenses I can:

a) See where I'm going in the rain

b) Identify people in the gym

c) Get an infection more easily and lose one or both eyes

d) See things under microscopes normally and not have to fiddle with, sharpening the image to my myopic eyes, and thus leaving it out of focus for everybody else

e) Get hit on the nose a bit less painfully

That last one reminds me of that STUPID F***ING thing people do where they sneak up from behind you and cover your eyes. Half the time the idiots are too busy ham-handedly touching your face (ew) that they don't realize that your glasses are crushing the bridge of your nose.

Ahem. Anyway, I have bionic vision now!! You know, sort of.

Nineteen

What a nineteen-year-old looks like from afar. Actually I was a few days away from being nineteen here, but whatever.

Last Thursday was my birthday. On Thursdays, frozen yogurt is on sale (two for one) and there's a special deal on chicken wings– it's like the planets had lined up. On my birthday, my friends and I would eat frozen yogurt in the afternoon and chicken wings at night (and no vegetables! *hip thrust*)

The frozen yogurt part of the plan was especially for the people who couldn't make it later that night, but everyone was too busy at the last minute (surprise!) and only three of us had assembled by one o'clock. Being lazy, we drank frappés and coffee in the cafeteria and chatted out heads off, instead of going to the mall. It was actually more fun that way, I think. I mean, it sounds lame ("Uuuuhh, we drank coffee. And, um, talked!") but it was really nice because normally nobody has an hour and a half to set aside and devote specifically to nattering.

Ahem.

At night, I skipped my last class (Botany, which I'm not a big fan of, anyway. And I've never skipped it before) and went out with a bunch of my friends to eat chicken wings. There was the obligatory sequence of the three cars losing track of each other, and only one person knowing where the place is, and yelling out the window "No! Don't turn there, it's straight ahead!", and confusing phone calls ("But the OXXO is before the supermarket! We're there, but where are you?").

Anyway, we sat in a kiosk and ate a few batches of fried chicken wings (a whole lot of which were 80% skin) and my friends spelled out "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" in bones. And then we rolled around and laughed and so on. Really fun.

And when I got home, my mom had made VARENYKY!! I was full of chicken wings and it was around midnight on a Thursday, so I didn't sit down and have my yearly feast, but still: Varenyky and motherly love.

So I actually did something fun on my birthday, for once, other than seeing a movie and eating cake. Although I'll still be having cake, make no mistake!!! Probably the weekend after the next, when I have time… unless I have a field trip that weekend, I don't remember.

Well, whatever. I'M OLD NINETEEN!!!!

Books 35-38

I'm not going to bother saying much about these books. This list is still tiny and it's already October... crap! I still have like sixty books to go before I meet my goal. School is getting in the way.

Book 35 was Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card

There's thousands of review of this book already and I don't have anything to add, really. Basically it was really, really good (a bit less so the second time around) and the ending was excellent.

We have a used copy that once belonged to a student, so it's highlighted, annotated, and heavily decorated in marker. I googled the name written in the cover, and it appears that this girl is now a cross country runner. Cool.

Scribbled all over.

Book 36 was Ender's Shadow, by Orson Scott Card

It took me ages to finish this book. About two weeks, I think... I mostly liked it, about 8 out of 10. Since it takes place at the same time as Ender's Game, which was written before it, some parts felt a little forced (since they had to fit in with the other storyline) but there was nothing terrible about it.

Book 37 was Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry

It also took me a while to finish this book. It was good, although it felt a little bit too educational. That's what it's for, though, so that's not really a problem.

Book 38... crap, I forgot what it was. Oh, yeah, POD! Book 38 was POD, by Stephen Wallenfels.

My mom really wanted us to read this book, so she ordered it online. It got lost in the mail (bitch) so she ordered it again. It was reminiscent of the Moon trilogy by Susan Beth Pfeffer, except POD is faster-paced, and funnier. Also there's less emphasis on things such as hunger and thirst; they're all, "Oh, yeah, we're down to our last can of kidney beans. I'll go to the window and spy on my neighbors now." This has the advantage of not making you want to go to Costco and buy several dozen cases of tinned food just in case.

Reporting home

I've started drinking a lot of coffee from the faculty café, which is run mostly by communists. The blend is actually quite good. I've been having one or two large lattes a day, and I look forward to them so much that it's weird. This morning I was nodding off during my first class, and the guy sitting next to me had a flask of coffee which he would periodically sip. It was tortuous. I felt like jumping on him and stealing his drink (I didn't).

Oh, and also today I crammed studied all day for a test, only for the teacher to not show up. It's a bit weird, actually, because he's not the type to just vanish. I suggested that he maybe fell into an open manhole and lost his phone, so he couldn't call us to say he wouldn't be able to make it. Or maybe his mom is still in the hospital. I hope not. I hope it was a manhole with a pile of pillows on the bottom to cushion his fall.

Pardon my terrible writing. I want to get this over with so that I can do my homework before I get too sleepy.

On Saturday it's my first field trip for this term. We're going to some mountain or other to gather mushrooms, so that should be fun. And then, in a few weeks I'm going to... um, I forgot where. Somewhere for Botany, someplace else for Earth Sciences, and then four days at the beach for Zoology.

Going to the beach should be a lot more fun than it was last term, for Algae class. I was in a funk that time, plus I didn't like anyone in my class and spent all my free time being talked at by a really annoying teammate:

"Let me see your iPod! *grab* My ex-boyfriend had an iPod like this. I used to borrow it. But he's an ass because he..."

"[Teammate dude] is making me really angry!! He didn't help carry the algae back up the beach [or something stupid to that effect]!! All men are the same. Like my ex-boyfriend, you know! He..."

"…but he changed, and I changed. It just wasn't the same. We spent some great times together, but then he started to…"

"…and his dog had seven puppies. One of them was called…"

If I hadn't been in such a crappy, apathetic mood back then, I think I might've smacked her over the head with some ever-handy Sargassum and told her to shut the hell up.

Anyway, in my Zoology class I get along pretty well with my team and I don't feel like rolling around in a hamster ball all of the time anymore* so I'm looking forward to it. Also I always hated Algae class anyway, but this time we'll be looking for ugly, slimy, spiky, worm-like invertebrate... things… hanging out under rocks. Much more fun.

* You know? So I don't have to talk to anyone?

Tired + prose

This schedule is cracking me. Last week I had my first baby stress attack ("I thought this assignment was due next Monday! NOOOO!!! World... shrinking...! GAAH!"**).

Actually, that's wrong, now that I think about it. The first stress monster was like two weeks into the term. I think.

Anyway, the point is that my schedule is kind of wearing me out. I don't actually hate it; in fact, I like not having lots of free time between classes, I like constantly having something I need to do, and I don't mind spending so much time at school. The only bad bit is that, in order not to fall back, I have to get a big chunk of my homework done ahead of time, so that I can do another big chunk of my homework ahead of time, and that way I can get the last chunk done in time.

Also, time seems to pass really slowly. Today was Tuesday and it felt like Thursday. When I'm going home at night, I think back to what happened that morning and it seems like it was two or three days ago. The beginning of the semester seems like it was before the summer holidays.

Also, I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to. I used to get through a lot of books while I stood in the bus, during lulls in labs, and when I was procrastinating. Now I sleep even when I'm standing and I don't have time to procrastinate. Basically I read in lab, while waiting for our test tubes to stop bubbling*** or for our turn on the single spectrophotometer (the Molecular Biology 2 lab is sort of under-equipped. The Molecular Biology 3 lab, on the other hand, is REALLY under-equipped).

I did finish two books... in the last month or so. I'll do a post on those sometime later.

Wow, this post is boring. I'll tell you a story to try and salvage something from the wreckage. Your mission is to guess how much of it (if any) is real.

Peanuts

So there I was, walking up the first flight of steps to the library. Some men in blue overalls kneeling on the steps, chatting about videos they'd watched on YouTube. Sawing at a thin, wooden board. Can't they do that somewhere else? This isn't a place to fill with dust. The hostile thoughts come to a halt when I become aware of the crunch underfoot. Glass. The glass that was in the library door lies shattered on the floor.

The men in the overalls are cutting the wood to fit into the doorframe. I continue up the second flight of steps to enter the main part of the library. No shattered glass here, but the door is hanging off its hinges. I pass under it quickly– knowing my luck, it must be waiting for me to get near to finally collapse on top of my body.

What happened here? The books I've so often browsed are lying in tatters on the floor. The library computers are spread out in pieces, the desks have all been knocked over. The bookshelves are leaning at odd angles against each other and against the walls. A loose page flutters down the staircase leading up to the reading room. The place is deserted.

I hesitantly ascend to the reading room. I don't know what to expect. I don't even know if I should be here. I'm alone. Where is everyone? I consider asking the men I saw before, but then realize that the sawing noises have stopped. They've gone, too.

I'm jerked from my thoughts when I see the state the reading room is in. It's even worse than it was below. Feeling uneasy, I turn to leave– and see the peanut shells. They lead around the corner of the room, away from me, away from the stairs, away from the exit. A perfect trail. I can hear my heartbeat, feel it in my throat. Are the rumors true?

I make a decision; despite my misgivings, I get down on my hands and knees. I don't want to be seen before it's inevitable. I slowly crawl forward, painstakingly inching my way towards the photocopy machine. There's a cracking noise now, constant, growing louder as I approach the source. Crunch. Crack. Munch.

Munch?

We catch sight of each other at the same instant. Stiffen in surprise. Hold each other's gaze unblinkingly. I stop breathing.

Then he blinks. The spell is broken, and I exhale in relief. The librarian left her peanuts here when she finished her shift. It was just the library elephant that got loose again.

Oh, come on, it's 1:00 AM. Cut me some slack. Yesterday (or last week? I don't know, I told you about my time distortion) I went into the library, and some guys were boarding up one door, and the second door was on its hinges. As I walked under it I thought, "What, did an elephant run through here?".

** I'm just kidding. When I get stressed I find the nearest corner, put my forehead against the wall, close my eyes, hyperventilate and cry breathe deeply. If there are no corners handy I curl into a little ball. Then I go for a run the next day, or as soon as possible.

*** Which sounds like an odd thing to do, but imagine they're full of strong acid. There you go.