Quidditch World Cup

Turns out, there's a group of college students who actually get together to play Quidditch. Just...wow. I wonder if this would catch on at the high school?

Weekly Geeks #25: Holiday Gift-Giving Guide

This week's WG challenge: a books-based Weekly Geeks Gift Giving Guide!

1. Think about the books that you and people in your life love. It’s best to use more obscure books, because we’ve all heard plenty about the more popular ones.

2. Come up with categories, based on relationship, personality, or whatever else you like. I think this is easier to do once you have your books in mind; you can then just assign categories to those books.

3. Post your own gift giving guide! Add short blurbs about the books, just enough so that your readers can determine if it’d be a good gift for people on their list. Don’t forget to come back and sign Mr Linky.

4. Visit other Weekly Geeks, and if you like their guides, maybe add links to the bottom of your own.

I know it's late, but I was really excited about this WG theme and wanted to share my ideas. Here goes...

For that friend who made sure you were registered to vote and then pestered you endlessly about how great Obama is:
Anything by Christopher Buckley. The man is a genius at Washington satire. His most famous novel is undoubtedly Thank You For Smoking, which was made into a pretty awesome movie starring Aaron Eckhart (pre-Batman). He has plenty of other great books, too.

In Boomsday, Washington spin doctor and nighttime blogger Cassandra Devine comes up with an unusual way to help defray health care costs. Supreme Courtship, Buckley's newest novel, has a reality show judge being appointed to the Supreme Court. Little Green Men examines what happens when a Beltway insider finds himself abducted by aliens. And for the feminist, Florence of Arabia, in which the youngest wife of an Arabian prince decides to use TV to help women all over the Middle East gain their freedom and independence. Optional: print out a few pages of The HuffPo and use them as gift wrap.

For the reluctant reader:
The 39 Clues #1: The Maze of Bones, #2: One False Note (available for pre-order; it comes out next week), and Card Pack #1

This is a pretty smart idea. The 39 Clues is a mystery series about Dan and Amy Cahill, siblings who have been chosen to find the Cahill fortune. But they're not alone! Several different descendants are also on the trail, and readers can play along. Each book (there will be 10 in the series) comes with 6 collectible trading cards (350 are available in all) which can be registered on The 39 Clues website to help unlock puzzles, games, and more clues. There are special prizes for each country, so no one has an advantage. There are also Card Packs, which have 16 random cards (there are 56 total in this first series), including at least one rare or ultra-rare in each pack. Sounds confusing? Your Pokemon- or Naruto-obsessed son/little brother will understand, and have a field day with it.

For the Jimmy Buffet fan/environmentalist:

I've sung the praises of Carl Hiaasen before, and I'm going to do it again. The man is funny, and his love for Florida is evident in his novels. His YA novels (Hoot, Flush, and the soon-to-be-released Scat) are perfect for middle schoolers, and there's sure to be something in his other novels for the adults in your life. If you live in the UK and enjoy musical theater, why not buy a copy of Lucky You and include tickets to the show as a bookmark? Actually, a great way to package any of these would be to get a metal bucket and stuff it with one of the books, a copy of Songs You Know By Heart, and a few Coronas. Your beach bum friends will thank you.


For the comic book lover:
Everyone loves Fables, but there's another Vertigo comic that's equally amazing: Y: The Last Man. In the near future, a plague kills off every animal on earth with a Y chromosome. Yorrick Brown, English major and amateur magician, is the only male on the planet to survive, along with helper-monkey-in-training Ampersand. The books follow his adventures to find his missing fiance and to discover how he survived the plague.

Other graphic novels: Watchmen (read it before you see the movie!), or, for those who are already fans, Watching the Watchmen. Fans of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series will get a kick out of The Little Endless Storybook, The Dead Boy Detectives, or Death: At Death's Door.

Some other random ideas:
My family is making gifts this year. I've bought a few books for gifts, but the majority of my shopping will be spent finding supplies for these:
Cake in a Mug - put all the dry ingredients in a plastic baggie, include the instructions, and gift it with a thrift store mug. Instant yum!

If you're crafty, Lion Brand Yarn has some really cute amigurumi patterns up on its site. I made this penguin for a friend of mine in no time. There are tons of other free amigurumi patterns available, plus projects for kids and ideas for pets.

I'm also a big fan of mixtapes - er, mixCDs now, I guess. My Secret Santa gifts this year will include my awesome holiday mix, which features Christmas songs by Atlanta area bands. A good place to find music is last.fm: search for the type of music you want, and it lets you listen to full-length songs. It also has some some free mp3 downloads, which is nice. Sign up for an account, and it learns your musical taste and starts recommending stuff to you. Pretty sweet.

Vacation, all I ever wanted...

It's Thanksgiving vacation week here at casa casual dread, and all I can think is, "Thank Jeebus." I have been running myself ragged over the past few weeks, trying to get planning, grading, and holiday stuff done. I've already broken down my days:

Today I will be catching up on reviewing and blogging, so look for last week's Weekly Geeks post and at least four other book reviews later.

Tomorrow is grading day - I have mounds of papers piling up, and I want to get them done! I'll be dog sitting, so that seems like a good time to do it.

Wednesday and Thursday, I'll be at my sister's for Thanksgiving. This is her first year doing hostessing duties, but we're all pitching in to help with the food. I get to make a carrot souffle and wear my kick-ass "To Serve Man" apron that she made me for Christmas a few years ago.

Friday is shopping and a movie. I'm voting for Madagascar 2 or Quantum of Solace. One of my cousins has created an animated commercial that will run before those two movies in the Atlanta area. So, yes, I will be going to the movie for the previews. :)

In between, I've got books to read and Secret Santa presents to ship, not to mention gifts to make. Here's to a productive week...

Review: The Ruins (Audiobook)

Title: The Ruins (Abridged Audiobook)
Author: Scott Smith
Genre: Horror
Published: July 18, 2006
Pages: 384
Run Time: 6 hours (5 CDs)
Rating: 5 / 10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: none, although it was #87 on EW's list of New Classics

Synopsis: From the back cover:

Eerie, terrifying, and unputdownable, The Ruins is Scott Smith's first novel since his acclaimed debut A Simple Plan earned rave reviews and stormed bestseller lists.

The Ruins follows two American couples enjoying a pleasant, lazy beach holiday together in Mexico. On an impulse, they go off with newfound friends in search of on of their group - the young German, who, in pursuit of a girl, has headed for the remote Mayan ruins, site of a fabled archeological dig.

This is what happens from the moment the searchers - moving into the wild interior - begin to suspect that there is an insidious, horrific "other" among them...

My Review: Hoo, boy, Where do I start? Well, first of all, I'm not much for horror stories. I read almost everything Steven King and Dean Koontz wrote back in middle/high school, and I haven't really had a taste for it since then. But I had read some reviews of The Ruins and it sounded pretty good, and I had been wanting to read it. I went to the library last week looking for an audiobook version of To Kill a Mockingbird (for my class), saw this sitting on the shelf, and decided to give it a listen. It's read by Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl/Raoul - swoon!), which was great. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's also abridged, which is also probably a good thing.

Basic premise: four Americans - Eric and Stacey, Jeff and Amy - are in Mexico, getting drunk and enjoying the beaches. They meet some Greeks - Pablo, Juan, and Don Quixote (not their real names) - and a German, Mattias. Mattias is worried about his brother, who has gone off to an archeological dig with some chick he just met. He wants to go after him, because they're supposed to fly home in a few days. Amazingly, Jeff volunteers to go with him, and he manages to convince his friends to come along. They end up finding a huge hill, covered with dark green vines and pretty red flowers. The local Mayans, who had been trying to warn them away from said hill, now begin holding them hostage and refusing to let them leave. And then things start to get bloody.

Honestly, I wasn't a big fan of this book. It's not my favorite genre, for one thing, and for another, I just didn't really like the characters that much. The girls were shrill, only two of the guys were non-moronic, and it took me a while to be able to distinguish them. I'm not a big fan of horror/slasher books or movies; listening to it was infinitely better than reading it, but still had me squirming uncomfortably a few times. The "other" - the enemy, the person/thing that starts killing them - is completely ridiculous and required a leap of logic I wasn't prepared to make.

And here's where I'm going to spoil it for everyone, so if you want to read this book some day and don't want to know what happens, skip this next paragraph.

Ready? Okay... It turns out that the vines are carnivorous. AND they can talk and mimic human speech. How? I don't know. It's never explained. The characters are not exactly scientists; they agreed to go off into the wilderness of a foreign country with a complete stranger, after all. The vines are also capable of setting traps and thinking. They can sense human emotions and manipulate our protagonists by trying to divide them.

So, yeah. Completely unbelievable. It wasn't a terrible read/listen, just not my cup of tea. Plenty of other people have enjoyed it, though. It was even made into a movie:



In conclusion: meh. If you like horror stories, you'll probably enjoy it. I can't imagine what the unabridged version is like, though.

Other Reviews:
If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Star Trek trailer!

ICYMI - STAR TREK TRAILER @ Yahoo! Video

I am so, so excited!

Review: The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love (Giveaway!)

Title: The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love
Author: Rosie Rushton
Genre: YA
Published: 2005
Pages: 325
Rating: 7 / 10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: none

Synopsis:

The Dashwood sisters - Ellie, Abby, and Georgie - have always live an affluent life in their cozy Holly House in Sussex, England. Then one day, tragedy strikes, and the girls are forced to uproot their lives and move to Norfolk, a windswept country on the east coast of England. The sisters are devastated, but what starts off as the toughest challenge they've ever had to face quickly becomes a turning point in each of their lives.
Practical Ellie has always had her head firmly on her shoulders, until she loses it over a boy named Blake. He's perfect, except for two not-so-tiny problems: he's her horrible stepmother's nephew, and he just happens to have a girlfriend.
For impulsive Abby, moving to such a sleepy village is tantamount to social suicide. To amuse herself, she decides to play matchmaker for a new friend at school, but her scheme backfires when the guy falls for her instead. And things get even trickier when she meets Hunter, a boy who just might be too good to be true.
Even youngest sister Georgie finds herself in uncharted waters when suddenly boys are interested in her for more than her love of extreme sports. But will Georgie lose her inner tomboy just to be seen as a girl?
With lots of laughs and a spat or two, the Dashwood sisters navigate the ups and downs of sisterhood and romance, eventually discovering their very own secrets of love.

My Review: This is a very cute book. I won't go as into detail with this review as I normally would, because it should be rather obvious what the novel is about and how it ends. It's a modernized version of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. It's a very cute update, but nowhere near as great as the original.
Things I liked: The youngest sister, Georgie (Margaret in S&S) gets a lot more screen/page-time in this version. The relationship between the Dashwood sisters and their father is explored more.
Things I didn't like: The "Lucy Steele" character in this novel is a raging bitch. I couldn't understand why Blake stayed with her. The same goes for the "Willoughby" character: in S&S, he really does love Marianne, but can't marry her for financial reasons. His loss. In this novel, Hunter is a complete jerk. I could tell from the get-go that he didn't really care about Abby. Having those two characters so unilaterally unsympathetic really bugged me.
Those small quibbles aside, I enjoyed this book. It's a fun, easy read. I registered my copy on BookCrossing; if you'd like to be entered into a drawing to win it, leave a comment. I'll draw a winner next Sunday.

Other Reviews:
AustenBlog

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Review: Paper Towns

Title: Paper Towns
Author: John Green
Genre: YA
Published: 2008
Pages: 305
Rating: 9 / 10
Challenges: N/A
Awards: none (yet!) but it made the New York Times Bestseller List and is being optioned for a movie (via bookshelves of doom)

Synopsis:

Quentin Jaconsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows.
After their all-nighter ends and a new days breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew.

My Review: This was my first John Green book, and I have to say it definitely won't be my last. I actually was familiar with John through his Brotherhood 2.0 project, but I didn't realize it until reading the author blurb at the back of Paper Towns. The project was interesting, but I would totally recommend checking out his blog, which is full of wonderfulness like his "feud" with Maureen Johnson and a discussion of whether or not Margo Roth Spiegelman is a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.

But back to the novel. If you have been anywhere near a bookblog in the past few months, chances are you've heard of Paper Towns. You've probably read rave reviews, telling you how great it is. They're all true! This book is fantastic. From the synopsis and all the other reviews I'd read, I expected it to be similar to As Simple As Snow (which I also loved), and it is, a little. But it's also very, very different. One of my favorite things about Paper Towns is the relationship between Q and his best friends, Radar and Ben. Margo's an important part of the story, sure, but to me the relationship between these three guys is what makes the book great.

First up, Q. I think this passage helps describe him:

Both my parents are therapists, which means that I am really goddamned well adjusted. So when I woke up [after finding a dead body with Margo], I had a long conversation with my mom about the cycle of life, and how death is a part of life, but not a part of life I needed to be particularly concerned with at the age of nine, and I felt better. Honestly, I never worried about it much. Which is saying something, because I can do some worrying.

Q is neurotic. It's nice when Margo comes along to help break him out of his shell and get him to actually take some risks (hence, the MPDG comparisons). Q's two best friends are Radar (nicknamed for the M*A*S*H character he resembled pre-puberty) and Ben (who is slightly obnoxious, but very awesome). Radar is obsessed with Omnictionary, which is a non-copyrighted version of Wikipedia, and spends his free time editing it. Also, his parents have the world's largest collection of Black Santas. Like Q, that made me smile every time it was mentioned. Ben is obsessed with "honeybunnies" and spends his free time trying to get laid. He referred to girls as "honeybunnies" enough times in the first 20 pages that I really wanted to slap him. Mercifully, Q felt the same way:

I'd tried telling Ben that "honeybunny" sounded more sexist and lame than retro-cool, but he refused to abandon the practice. He called his own mother a honneybunny. There was no fixing him.

After that, it didn't bother me as much. Besides, Ben quickly became one of my favorite characters. Q and Radar are the straight men to his zany comic sidekick.

Ben playing video games:

"Come here you little bastard," Ben said, the controller twisting in his hand. "Daddy's gonna put you on a sailboat across the River Styx."
"Did you just use Greek mythology to trash talk?" I asked.
Radar laughed. Ben started pummeling buttons, shouting, "Eat it, goblin! Eat it like Zeus ate Metis!"

Ben drunk at a party thrown by one of his new girlfriend's "friends":

So Lacey and I followed Ben upstairs, where he opened the door to Becca's room and said, "Your party kicks so much ass! Even though you suck so much! It's like instead of blood, your heart pumps liquid suck! But thanks for the beer!" Becca was alone, lying on top of her covers, staring at the ceiling. She didn't even glance at him. She just mumbled, "Oh, go to hell, shitface. I hope your date gives you her crabs."
Without a hint of irony in his voice, Ben answered, "Great talking to you!" and then closed the door. I don't think he had the faintest idea he'd just been insulted.

Sure, Ben's annoying. But chances are you have a friend just like him. I know I do. These characters and the friendship between them (even with all the insults and trash talking) kept the book going. I enjoyed them so much, to me the whole Margo storyline was secondary. I wouldn't even mind reading a book just about Q, Radar, and Ben; they're that awesome.

In case you couldn't tell, I enjoyed this book immensely, and am looking forward to reading more of John Green's YA.

Other Reviews:
Fyrefly
mental_floss
bookshelves of doom
Ali at worducopia
Bold.Blue.Adventure
Nymeth

If you have reviewed this book as well, leave me a message in the comments and I'll link to your review.

Advice from the undead

If you're as excited/scared about the Twilight movie as I am, you might enjoy this: Edward Cullen's Guide to Vampire Dating. He forgot the three most important things, though:

* Smolder ("with the eyes!" as Tyra would say)

* Smile Crookedly (or however your girlfriend refers to as her "favorite")

* Chuckle (A Lot)

This movie has great RHPS potential. I cannot wait for the suckfest (hee!) to begin.

Weekly Geeks #23 Part II: Winner!

Here are the answers from this WG redux two weeks ago. I realized earlier today that I have misplaced my digital camera, so I've done my best to find the book covers using Google image search. A few of them are pretty old (they belonged to my dad) and some of the newer ones I've just finished reading and will be writing reviews on soon. Probably next week, when I will have some glorious time off for Thanksgiving.

1.
The Dashwood Sisters' Secrets of Love, Rosie Rushton

2.
Harry Potter y la camara secreta, J.K. Rowling

3.
Paper Towns, John Green

4.
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros

5.
Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn

6.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter, Kim Edwards

7.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Tom Stoppard

8.
The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd

9.
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

10.
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle (I couldn't the exact cover for this one, so I found a picture of someone reading it and cropped them out. Sorry, random guy.)

11.
Dune, Frank Herbert (This is actually the 1984 movie poster, but it's the same as my book cover.)

12.
How Right You Are, Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse

13.
Watership Down, Richard Adams

14.
Anansi Boys, Neil Gaiman

15.
Thunderstruck, Erik Larson

And the winner is...Heather! Heather, I've sent you an e-mail about your prize. Congratulations!

Wordle!

Make beautiful word clouds with Wordle! The one above is made from words frequently used on my blog. Now let me see...what do I write about the most often? (via N. Vasillis)