Lysistrata and Other Plays - Aristophanes

I first heard of Aristophanes at some point in high school, while studying something cheerful like Antigone or Medea during VCE. And in comparison, Greek comedy sounded like a hell of a lot of fun, which is why I figured I may as well add some to my Classics Club list, especially after hearing Lysistrata referred to as essentially a feminist story.

This collection started with The Achanians, which is essentially arguing for peace during a long war with Sparta. Next came The Clouds, which basically takes the piss out of the Greek philosophers. And finally, I came to Lysistrata, which features the women of the various Greek city states deciding that the quickest way to end a war is to withhold sex.

Of the three, I think The Achanians may have been my favourite. All three featured a hell of a lot of dick jokes, but The Achanians also involved a lot of poking fun at the other city states, which was still pretty damned funny thousands of years later. That said, Lysistrata is definitely a rare classic in that it's very female dominated and revolves around women having agency over their bodies, so it was definitely a pretty great read as well.

I had a few issues with the translation in this one. Obviously, a lot of the humour wouldn't translate well to modern English - thankfully, Penguin always provide plenty of footnotes on that front! - but Alan H. Sommerstein made the decision to make the Spartans have stereotypical Scottish accents and mannerisms, and the Corinthians have stereotypical Irish accents and mannerisms. Which DID work moderately well - it gave a sense of how the Athenians felt about each of their neighbouring city states. But at the same time, it was totally bizarre to have characters with Scottish accents talking about Zeus and Athena and Poseidon.

On the whole, this collection was funnier than I was anticipating - I thought it would be more like Shakespeare's comedies, where they're hilarious in person but on the page, they tend to be pretty dry, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself laughing out loud while reading it, and I'm definitely glad I put it on my Classics Club list!

Have you read it? What did you think??

K xx

Middlemarch - George Eliot

I have a confession to make: I got this book as a present for my seventeenth birthday. It's taken me fifteen years to get around to reading it. Why? Because I had to read The Mill on the Floss for first year university fourteen years ago, and it was non-stop struggle street for me. Essentially, it put me off reading George Eliot for a really long time.

So when I was putting together my Classics Club list, I figured I may as well put this one on the list and see if I could get over my preconceived notions about George Eliot.

I...had mixed feelings about this book. It's essentially the story of a town's worth of inhabitants. The story starts with one or two major characters, then moves on to focus on a couple of characters who appeared as minor characters in the previous section etc etc.

As a general rule, I struggle with stories that jump around between a lot of characters. I had the same feelings about Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte. Hell, I even felt that way about Game of Thrones. And it's not because any of those books were bad (although personally, I thought Game of Thrones was decidedly mediocre). It's just that they jumped around so much that I found it difficult to keep all the different threads of the story straight in my head, and I struggled with the sections dealing with characters that I didn't especially care for.

What I liked most about Middlemarch was that the characters weren't perfect. And I'm not talking flawed in the way that Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy are flawed where you can't help but love them. In Middlemarch, the characters are deeply flawed. They don't always get happily ever afters. They rush into marriage and then discover that their new spouse isn't the person they thought. They stand back and let people die. They hold grudges, they screw up, they're vindictive, they're petty.

And all of that was great. They were actual human characters leading actual human lives. But there were a lot of characters that I just didn't particularly care about. Either I didn't find them interesting or their stories dragged on and on without any real progress for hundreds of pages, and then all of a sudden things would be wrapped up in a neat little package with two pages to spare.

Really, I think the problem here was me more than the book. It was long and often dry, and there were times when I felt like I was reading page after page without making any real progress. The characters that I liked were enough to get this a three star rating from me. But I definitely didn't have the five star "OMG AMAZING" experience that so many others seem to have had. Which, frankly, makes me a little bit sad.

Have you read it? What did you think?

K xx

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

Eight books down, fifty-two to go...

Source

I had a small heart attack this morning when I went to cross this book off my handwritten list of Classics Club books and couldn't find it. I instantly became convinced that it wasn't on my list at all and that I'd read this 850 page whopper for no reason. Luckily, it was just a case of not being able to read my own writing. I think I would have cried otherwise...

I first read Anna Karenina in year 11 literature, and we had a pretty rough time together, Anna and I. Still, with the exception of the big train station scene, I'd forgotten practically everything about the story and managed to convince myself that my vaguely remembered dislike was just because I didn't enjoy the assignments I had to write on it. Unfortunately, my vaguely remembered dislike proved to still apply 15 years after the fact.

I...did not enjoy this. There were elements of it that I enjoyed, to be sure. But for the most part, this was a long hard slog. I found myself tuning out and reading the same page over and over again, and had to force myself to pay attention to read it in 30 page blocks to actually get through it.

I think the main problem for me was that I didn't find any of the major characters engaging. I didn't like Anna or Vronsky at all, Oblonsky drove me nuts, Dolly was kind of a wet blanket, and the most interesting of the lot - Levin and Kitty - became dull as dishwater once Kitty had their first child. I mean, I get that Anna was miserably trapped in a loveless marriage. But her story felt, to me, like the epitome of #firstworldproblems. And while Levin's proposal to Kitty was pretty much the most adorable thing ever, all the tangents about Russian peasants and their ties to the land or politics or horses or election processes reminded me far too much of Victor Hugo's hundred page tangents in Les Miserables: probably fascinating to people at the time, but not even remotely of interest to me.

I honestly think the thing that annoyed me most about Levin's character was the last 50-odd pages in which he's clearly suffering from depression, but everything is made right when he finds religion. Because uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh. SERIOUSLY??? I know Levin is clearly the counterpoint to Anna's character - they both love passionately, have serious trust issues, struggle to bond with their children, and have mental health problems - but did we HAVE to have a "JESUS FIXES EVERYTHING!!" storyline?! Blurgh.

I did appreciate the complexity of his characters - there's no villain, no hero. They all inhabit the moral grey areas, they all experience jealousy and hatred and humility and kindness. But ultimately, I didn't care about any of them and wasn't engaged in their stories.

One thing I *did* find interesting was all the ideas about giving additional power to the peasant classes, and making them invested in the land and their work. One line only pages from the end made me flip to the front to check what year the book was first published because I felt sure it must have been not long before the Russian Revolution:

"Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but to-day the voice of the Russian people is heard, ready to rise up as one man and sacrifice themselves for their oppressed brethren." 

In that little speech, Koznyshev is talking specifically about Russia going to fight for the freedom of Christians in Serbia, but it could easily be applied to the workers uniting to free themselves from the rule of the elite in 1917. In all honesty, though, I was desperately hoping for the Revolution to happen 50 years ahead of schedule during this book just so that there would be something worth paying attention to in the story...

I know I'm well and truly in the minority in not loving this book. But I was firmly on the "HOW MUCH MORE??" train from start to finish. And no, the irony of being on the "kill me now" train is not lost on me. Final verdict? 2.5 stars, and the half star is for the adorableness of Levin's proposal...

Have you read Anna Karenina? What did you think?

K xx

TTT - Banned and challenged books

It's time to link up with the Broke and the Bookish again!

This week is a freebie topic, and I'm usually pretty awful at coming up with my own topic for these things. You'd think that given how much I love books and lists, I'd be good at marrying the two together, but apparently not. I dithered around with half a dozen topics, and eventually decided that it was a good opportunity to talk about books that are regularly banned or challenged in school and public libraries, particularly in the US. 

I don't know what it is about the US, but y'all love to ban you some books. Good Lord... Australia's not entirely innocent either - American Psycho is still banned in Queensland and can't be purchased or borrowed by under 18s in all other states - but the American Library Association records about 500 challenges or requests for bans each year. If you want to find out more, you can click here. As always, all images are from Goodreads. 

1. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

This is STILL consistently in the top 10 banned and challenged books every year. You'd think after 50-plus years - and after the Civil Rights movement - that people would be used to its contents, but apparently not. SIGH. It's gone from being contentious for discussing rape to being contentious for using racial slurs. And look, I get it. But you can't rewrite and sanitise history. Plus, it opens up discussion opportunities in the classroom about racial inequality at the time and in the present. Which is far more valuable than giving kids a boring, politically correct book to read. 

2. Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling

This was a big one back in the early 2000s, with parents regularly complaining to librarians and teachers that the book promoted Satanism and was against family values and was anti-Christian blah blah blah. Oh my God, get the giant stick out of your arse and just be happy that your child is reading, will you? Some of the most religious people I know adore everything about this series. So quit burning it (seriously) already.

3. The Diary of a Young Girl - Anne Frank

Seriously, people?? It was already heavily edited by her father prior to publication, and people are STILL complaining about it? And before you go thinking that this was contentious a million years ago, NOPE. Last year. Apparently a parent decided that Anne being all "Huh. I have a vagina" was too pornographic for her daughter to handle. Her DAUGHTER. Yup. That happened.

4. Looking for Alaska - John Green

This one doesn't get banned because of Alaska's fate. Oh no. It's contentious because it's basically considered a "gateway drug" to lewd behaviour because it features teenagers drinking and smoking and making out and swearing. WHATEVER IS THE WORLD COMING TO??? Teenagers NEVER do any of those things in the real world, right??? *headdesk*

5. 1984 - George Orwell

Another one that falls into the "Seriously?? We're STILL challenging this??" pile. This one was banned outright in the USSR, and is still regularly challenged or banned in US schools for being pro-communist (ironic, considering it was banned in the biggest communist country on earth) or anti-government. Um. So it's anti-government, but it's still pro-government, just not the government you approve of? My head hurts. Just let your kid read the damned book already.

6. Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson

So you don't want your kid reading a book about rape, I get it. But considering 1 in 6 women will be sexually assaulted in their lives and considering I've heard stories of many MANY boys complaining that the raped protagonist is "whiny and should just get over herself", it's essential that books like this remain in libraries, schools and classrooms, regardless of its controversial content.  

7. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins

Again, I totally understand why it gets challenged. It's an incredibly violent series with some pretty horrific concepts in it. And, thanks to the movies, younger and younger kids are wanting to read them. But there are ways around it rather than just demanding that they be banned outright. I work in a primary school library, used by kids from age 6 to age 12. We have The Hunger Games series, but they're kept behind the circulation desk and are only loaned out to kids who are mature enough to handle the subject matter at the discretion of the librarian. Demanding that it be banned is an excessive reaction, especially in a high school library!

8. Thirteen Reasons Why - Jay Asher

So...you want to ban a book about suicide for being a book about suicide? Um. What. Look, I get that it's serious subject matter. But teenagers need to know that their actions can have major consequences, that something that seems insignificant to them can be a huge deal to someone else. And this book shows that perfectly. 

9. Letters from the Inside - John Marsden

This one was pretty contentious in Australia back in the early to mid-90s. It's the story of the pen pal friendship between two teenage girls, one of whom is in prison and the other of whom has a seriously creepy older brother. It's pretty dark, and I can understand why people didn't want their lower secondary kids reading it. But the fact remains, sometimes family members ARE insanely creepy and you DO need someone to talk to about it, even if that person happens to be in prison. 

10. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky

Look, this wasn't one of my favourite books. I found it pretty meh, to be perfectly honest. But I can understand why a lot of teenagers adore it. It tackles a lot of difficult subjects simultaneously, including child abuse and same sex relationships, so it's understandable that parents aren't too keen on their kids reading it. But the fact remains, it's a coming-of-age novel, and every teenager will likely find SOMETHING in there that they relate to personally. 

Which of these have you read? Do you think they should be banned in schools?

K xx

Macbeth - William Shakespeare

It had been a whopping fifteen years since I last read Macbeth - we studied it for year 11 English - so it seemed appropriate that I revisit it for Classics Club.

I think everyone knows the plot of Macbeth. Three witches tell an already rich and powerful dude that he's going to get even more rich and powerful, and then become king. He (or, more correctly, his wife) takes this to mean that he should kill the current king. He does so, and the king's sons flee for their lives, which inadvertently makes them look guilty. Macbeth rapidly becomes a tyrant, killing off anyone who he thinks has a chance at overthrowing him, even children. Macduff goes to track down one of the old king's sons, who's hanging out in England, to persuade him to stage an invasion and overthrow Macbeth. Macbeth is all "Pff, whatevs" because the witches told him that he could only be killed by someone who wasn't "of woman born". Except PLOT TWIST! Macduff was born by caesarean. He kills Macbeth, and the old king's son takes the throne.

(Yes, that's vastly oversimplifying things, but you probably knew the basics anyway.)

It took me a while to get into the knack of reading Shakespeare again, simply because I haven't read any of his plays since I studied Hamlet at university in 2001. Thankfully, I was using my year 11 textbook, which is still filled with all my scribbled translations into modern English! Still, I found it much easier to read if I muttered the lines under my breath.

Macbeth is possibly my favourite Shakespeare play. It's filled with murder and spooky supernatural nonsense and ruthlessly ambitious characters. Lady Macbeth is an absolutely brilliant female character, especially given that she was created in the early seventeenth century. She's ruthless and calculating and manipulative. When her husband freaks out about killing Duncan, she tells him to suck it up. When Macbeth can't bring himself to smother the guards in Duncan's blood, framing them, she takes over. And she gets FABULOUS speeches of badassery:

"Come, you spirits/ That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/ And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full/ Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,/ Stop up the access and passage to remorse, /That no compunctious visitings of nature/ Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between/ The effect and it!" (Act 1, Scene 5)

Macbeth is an interesting character, too. He starts out full of disbelief at the witches' prophecies. Then, when he's made Thane of Cawdor, he sees a little glimmer of possibility, and grabs onto it with both hands. He justifies things to himself time and time again, whether it's the murder of Duncan, or of Banquo, or of Macduff's family. He's convinced that the three prophecies about his downfall can't come true, and stares in astonishment when they do.

There's some interesting historical narrative involved on Shakespeare's part. First we get Banquo's kingly descendants appearing to Macbeth in Act 4, Scene 1, who are widely accepted to represent the new Stuart monarchs who finally - in the form of James VI/I - united England, Wales and Scotland under one crown. Though James I had only been king for a couple of years when Macbeth was written, his descendants are still on the throne today.

Then there's a (rather long-winded, to be perfectly honest) section in Act 4, Scene 3 in which Malcolm and Macduff are at the court of Edward the Confessor and discussing how he could cure scrofula by touching the sufferer. Apparently when James I came to the throne, he declared that he wasn't going to practice the whole idea of curing the plebs of scrofula with the king's touch because EW GROSS with a side of THIS SOUNDS TOO CATHOLIC FOR MY LIKING. Though whether Shakespeare was having a sneaky dig at his patron or not should be left to the academics and not the likes of me!

It's not always an easy read - without the descriptions of the character's facial expressions or emotions that we'd get in a novel, and with only limited stage directions, the reactions of some characters to certain events (the death of a child, for instance) seem cold. There's also some serious artistic interpretation of history on Shakespeare's part (really? They had cannons in Scotland in the 11th century?? How interesting, considering the British Isles didn't have gunpowder prior to the 1300s!). It's definitely not a perfect play - some scenes drag longer than necessary while others seem a little short - but it's still excellent.

What do you think? And are you excited by the new movie version coming out next year starring Michael Fassbender as Macbeth?

K xx

Classics Club

When I was writing up my bookish goals for 2014, one of them was to read at least one classic that I'd never read before. Shortly after writing that list of goals, I stumbled across The Classics Club. When it comes to classics, I have a tendency to stick to my safety zone and reread the same things over and over again - Persuasion, Jane Eyre, pretty much anything Dickensian. In short, nineteenth century English stuff, because the Victorian era is my jam. This, I have decided, is an excellent opportunity to branch out, and also to revisit some classics that I had to read in high school or university but which I haven't revisited since.

The goal of The Classics Club is to read at least 50 classic books within a five year period and review them all. I'm planning to read 60 in just under five years, so by 1 January 2019. I've tried to include a good mix of stuff, though I couldn't entirely force myself away from my beloved nineteenth century English literature. Still, I've included some stereotypical American high school reading, some things I was forced to read in high school, a decent dose of Australian classics, some "true" classics (in the Greek and Roman sense), and a little smattering of some of my favourites that I haven't re-read in years (and therefore haven't reviewed before).

Without further ado, here's my list (alphabetically by author's surname, of course):

1. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
2. Lysistrata - Aristophanes
3. Emma - Jane Austen
4. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
5. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
6. Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
7. Agnes Grey - Anne Bronte
8. Shirley - Charlotte Bronte
9. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
10. The Seagull - Anton Chekov
11. For the Term of His Natural Life - Marcus Clarke
12. No Name - Wilkie Collins
13. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
14. Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
15. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
16. Our Mutual Friend - Charles Dickens
17. The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens
18. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
19. The Lost World - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
20. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
21. Middlemarch - George Eliot
22. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
23. Passage to India - E.M. Forster
24. The Diary of Anne Frank - Anne Frank
25. My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
26. North and South - Elizabeth Gaskell
27. She - H. Rider Haggard
28. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
29. The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
30. The Odyssey - Homer
31. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
32. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
33. Lady Chatterley's Lover - D.H. Lawrence
34. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre
35. Picnic at Hanging Rock - Joan Lindsay
36. The Prince - Niccolo Machiavelli
37. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
38. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery
39. 1984 - George Orwell
40. Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton
41. The Mysteries of Udolpho - Anne Radcliffe
42. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
43. Macbeth - William Shakespeare
44. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
45. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
46. Dracula - Bram Stoker
47. Uncle Tom's Cabin - Harriet Beecher Stowe
48. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
49. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
50. The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien
51. The Two Towers - J.R.R. Tolkien
52. The Return of the King - J.R.R. Tolkien
53. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
54. The Way We Live Now - Anthony Trollope
55. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
56. The Aeneid - Virgil
57. The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
58. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
59. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
60. The Chrysalids - John Wyndham

Have you read any of these? What should I start with??

K xx

TTT - Top ten sequels I can't wait to get my hands on

Time to link up with the Broke and the Bookish again!

It's Cup Day in Melbourne today, which means a public holiday for a three minute horse race. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon at a family barbeque, eating far too much and paying very little attention to the races. WHEEEEEEEEE. 

ANYWAY. Let's get on to the top ten sequels I'm fangirling like a lunatic over:

1. Curtsies and Conspiracies - Gail Carriger
I literally JUST got an email from Amazon saying that my Kindle edition is now available to download. However, I'm currently hoarding e-books (including this and Alligient) for my trip to New Zealand at the end of the month, so I won't be reading it for a couple of weeks yet. Womp womp.

2. Fairwil - Alysia Gray Painter
OH MY GOD, ALYSIA. YOU HAVE TO WRITE FASTER BECAUSE I WANT THIS BOOK, LIKE, YESTERDAY. I NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DIVING BOARD RELATED THINGS. Kthxbai <3

3. Cress - Marissa Meyer
I've loved both Cinder and Scarlet, so I'm really looking forward to this one.

4. Raising Steam - Terry Pratchett
Another one that comes out this week, and another one that I probably won't be reading for a little while. If the price is right, I might buy it at the airport because I *have* to have Discworld books in physical form. The covers are too brilliant not to!

5. Isla and the Happily Ever After - Stephanie Perkins
Oh my goodness, I need this book immediately, because Perkins writes such completely adorable books. I only hope it lives up to the fabulousness of its predecessors.

6. Clariel - Garth Nix
THERE'S A NEW ABHORSEN BOOK COMING OUT OH MY GOD I AM SO EXCITED YOU HAVE NO IDEA. One of my friends in high school and I were OBSESSED with Sabriel, and I've loved both Lirael and Abhorsen, so I can't WAIT for this one.

7. Lair of Dreams - Libba Bray
The Diviners was long, but fabulous. And I can't wait to see where Bray takes the series next! 

8. The Infinite Sea - Rick Yancey
If you haven't read The Fifth Wave, you really really should. Because it was incredible. Obviously, I'm excited about the sequel.

9. Dreams of Gods and Monsters - Laini Taylor
I LOVED Daughter of Smoke and Bone. While I didn't enjoy Days of Blood and Starlight *quite* as much (and don't ask me why - apparently I finished it, wrote "Review to follow" on Goodreads, and then never actually wrote the review. That was in March. Whoops??), I'm still really intrigued to find out what happens next.

10. Sisters' Fate - Jessica Spotswood
I finished the second book in this series - Star Cursed - only a week or so ago, and it was fabulous. After that ending though? I NEED THE THIRD BOOK IMMEDIATELY OMG I CAN'T EVEN. 

What sequels are you jumping up and down with excitement over? (Also, what does it say about me that so many of these books are YA?!)

K xx

Movie Monday: Scream

Given that it's Halloween on Thursday, this seemed an appropriate choice. I'm an epic wuss when it comes to all things spooky. There are still occasions when I watch Supernatural from behind a pillow/my hands. So when it comes to horror movies, I'm firmly on the Nope Train. Except when it comes to Scream. Because way back in the dim dark past of 1999, the English curriculum included something called a Communication Project. We had to form pairs or threes, and develop a project that required us to work with others from outside the school to do something like hold a masquerade ball or a formal, or put on a play, or host a presentation about something.

Em and I decided that we were going to make a spoof version of a horror movie. And we decided on Scream. We watched it approximately 500 times while writing our script, roped a bunch of friends into starring in it, and then filmed about two scenes because it took FOREVER to do anything. How we were planning on editing our movie, I have no idea...

ANYWAY. That's a really long winded story about why I love the crap out of Scream when I can't stand horror movies.

Reasons why Scream is awesome:
1. Drew Barrymore. She may only be in one scene, but it's a pretty damned fabulous scene.

2. Murder-y trivia competitions.
3. Neve Campbell. She doesn't stand around screaming when she gets attacked. She fights back every step of the way.
4. The ridiculous costume Ghostface wears.
5. Matthew Lillard. He's so fabulous at being an asshat. And this line is solid gold:

Source

6. Cell phones as a giveaway that someone might be the murderer.
7. David Arquette and Courtney Cox.
8. Sid punching Gale in the face.

Source

9. Ridiculously oversized scissors.
10. Henry Winkler. That's right, the Fonz is in it. And he's fabulously awful.
11. Video stores.
12. Rose McGowan.
13. Speaking of, let's add death by garage door.

Source

14. Sid impaling Billy with an umbrella spike.
15. Death by giant 90s television.
16. The hilariously awful 90s costumes. Especially Gale's.

WHAT IS THIS SUIT??? Also, source.

Plus, the following quotes:
- "That is SO sexist. The killer could easily be female!"
- "Liver alone! Liver, liver. It was a joke..."
- "He's my superior!" "The janitor is your superior."
- "How does it feel to be almost brutally butchered?"
- "Oh, now that's in poor taste. If you were the only suspect in a senseless bloodbath, would you be standing in the horror section?"
- "There are certain RULES that one must abide by in order to successfully survive a horror movie. For instance, number one: you can never have sex." "BOOOOOOOOOO" "BIG NO NO! BIG NO NO! Sex equals death, okay? Number two: you can never drink or do drugs. The sin factor! It's a sin. It's an extension of number one. And number three: never, ever, ever under any circumstances say "I'll be right back." Because you won't be back." "I'm gettin' another beer, you want one?" "Yeah, sure." "I'll be right back."
"See, you push the laws and you end up dead. Okay, I'll see you in the kitchen with a knife."
- "There's a formula to it, a very simple formula. EVERYBODY'S A SUSPECT!"
- "Careful. This is the moment when the supposedly dead killer comes back to life, for one last scare." "Not in my movie."
- "You sick fucks. You've seen one too many movies!" "Now Sid, don't you blame the movies. Movies don't create psychos. Movies make psychos more creative!"
- "Where do you get this shit?" "Ricki Lake."

What's your favourite scary movie?

K xx

Nerdtasticness

Remember this time last year when I had Must Be Thrifty, her boyfriend Cheap Geek, and our high school bestie L over for Mexipalooza? Almost a year to the day later, the four of us were together again. With an additional 80 or so people, because MUST BE THRIFTY AND CHEAP GEEK GOT MARRIED!!!!!! And it was quite possibly the most geek-tastic event I've ever had the pleasure of attending.

First of all, Cheap Geek and his family entered to The Imperial March from Star Wars. As played by MBT's nephew's bossa nova band. Awesome. Said band also provided much of the music for the evening, which included the theme from Super Mario, a selection of songs from The Lion King, the Doctor Who theme, the Futurama theme, and the cantina theme from Star Wars. In short, the music was made of solid gold win.

Also made of win? The teapot that was used to serve the tea for the semi-traditional Vietnamese tea ceremony:

The table decorations consisted of old boardgames, a variety of teapots filled with flowers, and completely hilarious books - there was a cowboy book on our table called "The Leather Slapper" and the verso listed other books from the same publisher, which included "The Two-Fisted Cowpoke", which had half the table cackling with laughter. One of the other books on our table? A guide to Chinese cookery from the early 1950s. It included this delicious sounding recipe...

Excuse you, that is acceptable as NOTHING EVER.

The food was TO DIE FOR. I honestly thought that the vast quantities of hors d'oeuvres that graced the buffet with their presence over the course of an hour or so were dinner. But no. They were just the entree. And were followed by a main course, cheese plates, dessert, and wedding croquembouche. Complete with Lego MBT and Cheap Geek on top, because OBVIOUSLY.

In keeping with the "normal weddings are boring" theme, the bride and groom had a first lawn bowl (the wedding AND the reception were at a bowls club) instead of a first dance, and instead of tossing the bouquet, we played bouquet bingo, complete with wedding related bingo calls!

It was definitely the most relaxed wedding I've ever been to - the bride was mingling with guests when I arrived - and also one of the most enjoyable. It may not have fitted what a lot of people think a wedding should be, but pff. It was awesome, and it totally fitted Must Be Thrifty and Cheap Geek!!

Congratulations, guys. Hope you're having a spectacular honeymoon.

K xx

Top Ten Tuesday: Top ten books you were "forced" to read

Time to link up with the Broke and the Bookish again!

Today we're talking about books that we were "forced" to read, whether they were for class, for book club, or because friends were all "You haaaaaaaaaaaaaave to read this!!!". I've gone with a selection of books I loved and books that I really wasn't a fan of, because obviously you're not always going to like something someone else is making you read.

1. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I had to read this for Year 10 English AND Year 12 Literature. I can remember - ridiculously vividly, I should add - getting my school books in January, and looking at the cover of the Penguin Classics edition and groaning because it just looked SO. FREAKING. BORING. I started reading it in the back of the car one day when my parents decided that we should go out for a drive (because OBVIOUSLY I had all my books for the year read before school started), and not wanting to put it down because I was so engrossed in the story. I've loved it every since.

2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

I read this out of sheer desperation because I'd run out of books and it was the only book available in English at the "book store" at the airport in Guatemala City. It kept me distracted, but mostly I spent the time it took me to read it thinking about how much the addition of Buffy Summers would improve the storyline. 

3. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

There was a time at the start of the year when literally half my Goodreads timeline was "OMG, I CAN'T WRITE A PROPER REVIEW OF THIS BOOK BECAUSE SPOILERS. JUST READ IT." I inevitably bowed to peer pressure and wrote my own review very much along the same lines. Seriously. If you haven't read it, you should go and do so immediately. 

4. Trainspotting by Irvine Walsh

In my first year of undergrad, I took English on the basis that I didn't know what my fourth set of subjects should be (the other three were Archaeology, History and Ancient Greek), and English had been my best subject at school. So I ended up doing a subject called Text, Criticism and the Visual, in which we read books, then watched the movie adaptations, and compared the two. It was pretty awesome, but this book? Took me FOREVER to get through, because the only way to understand about 60% of it was to read it out loud in a bad Scottish accent.

5. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling

As I've mentioned approximately a dozen times in the course of this blog, my first exposure to Harry Potter was in 1998 on a flight from London to Melbourne. The ten year old son of a family friend had fangirl flailed about them to us repeatedly in the previous week. My mum - who was on a different flight to me because mine had been booked as part of a school trip - handed me the first two books at the airport, and was like "Read them on the plane and tell me what you think". The rest is history.

6. Fly Away Peter by David Malouf

This book is only 135 pages, but it took me about a week to read it. This was one of our exam texts for Year 12 English (the other was Cabaret), so we had to read it and analyse it approximately a hundred times and then write a never-ending string of essays about it in the lead up to exams. Ornithology plus World War One? SNORE. There's a reason it's on a Goodreads list titled "Read these in school - would rather have a root canal".

7. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Another first year uni English subject book, this time for a class called The Classic Victorian Novel. I'd seen the BBC mini-series when it aired in 1999, so I knew the storyline already. But I wasn't quite prepared for just how much I would adore this book. And having seen the mini-series, I was completely unprepared for the book to just END, practically in mid-sentence. Damn you, Elizabeth Gaskell, for dying before you finished the story!! 

8. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville 

I had to read this last year as part of a book group assignment for a class on YA recreational reading. It was interesting in that when I read it, I mostly enjoyed it but was puzzled by certain elements. But in the course of the discussion, the things we disliked seemed to bounce off each other and snowball into a giant blob of "I DID NOT LIKE THIS BOOK". At the end of the day, I think its biggest problem was that it would have worked better as a series of short stories - it was trying to do too much at once, and wasn't 100% sure of its target audience.

9. Van Diemen's Land by James Boyce

I had to read this for work a couple of years ago, and it's one of the most engaging history books I've ever had the pleasure to read. Boyce is a fabulous writer and if you're interested in Australian colonial history, it's definitely worth checking out. I loved pretty much every second of it.

10. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

This was another one that I had to read for first year English, and I hated it more or less from the get go. I despise all the characters, and the story just dragged on FOREVER. I don't think I've ever been so glad to finish a book in my life. 

So. There are my ten. What are yours?

K xx

Movie Monday: She's All That

Today's movie and I have a very long relationship. In fact, I saw this on my 16th birthday, followed by dinner at Planet Hollywood, because I'm cool like that. I must have watched it at least a dozen times since then, because it's awesome and you cannot convince me otherwise.

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Reasons why She's All That is awesome:
1. The dance routine at prom. It's rare that a non-musical will have the entire cast spontaneously break into a choreographed dance routine. Plus, this one's fabulous.

2. Freddie Prinze Jr. This was the start of his peak period of fame and while, personally, I prefer him in Head Over Heels (at least partly because his character has a Great Dane named Hamlet), he's a pretty great teen heart throb type here.
3. Stereotypical makeover scenes.
4. Rachael Leigh Cook.
5. Who doesn't love a modern adaptation of Pygmalion?!
6. Kieran Culkin. He's a total highlight for me.

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7. Ridiculous artworks.
8. The insane interpretive dance/art show thing that Laney drags Zack to.
9. The notion that, 14 years after it was released, pre-makeover Laney would be considered far cooler than the so-called cool kids.
10. Rapping about prom queen candidates.
11. Anna Paquin. It's so totally unlike her role as Sookie Stackhouse, and she's kind of great.

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12. The high school it was filmed at? Is the same one that served as Sunnydale High in Buffy.
13. Matthew Lillard. His character is the ACTUAL WORST, as so many of Matthew Lillard's characters are. But he does it so well.
14. Sneaky references to Hanson. No, seriously.
15. Felafel hats.

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16. The soundtrack.
17. Paul Walker. LOL.
18. Air horns.
19. The DJ who runs the school's radio station? That's Usher.
20. Sarah Michelle Gellar cameos. Awesomeness.

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21. Epically wrong Jeopardy guesses.
22. Pagers. LOL.
23. Brock's insane dancing. OMG.
24. Taylor's hideous prom dress. SO UGLY OMG.

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Plus, the following quotes:
- "Sometimes when you open up to people, you let the bad in with the good."
- "She kinda blew me off..." "I like her already."
- "Sir, have you reached a decision?" "Yes. Supersize my balls."
- "What is this, some kind of dork outreach program?"
- "I did not wig!" "Oh, there was MAJOR wiggage."
- "I could win this thing in fluorescent lighting on the first day of my period, cloaked in T.J. Maxx."
- "So, Laney, I was wondering if you wanted to...embarrass me horribly in front of all these people..."
- "Hoover it!"
- "I feel just like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman. Except for that whole hooker thing..."
- "I am uninviting you!" "You're not the boss of him."
- "I've seen you in gym class, you run like a girl." "I AM a girl."
- "Not even an M&M's worth of fun?"
- "His dad owns Harrison Ford." "The actor?" "No. The car dealership."
- "Do you realise how lucky you are? You can go to Dartmouth, you can go to NYU, you can go to Borneo and study squid fishing! The point is, you're 18 and that's old enough to start making your own choices."
- "So that's a no?" "That's a HELL no."

So. Thoughts?

K xx

Yay, filler posts!

I wanted to write a blog post today, but I had an assignment due, so a) didn't have time before now, and b) was brain dead about anything other than the history and function of archives, so instead of me writing something that requires brain ability, I figured I'd make use of some photos I took a week or so back and give you guys a tour of my book collection.

This is the bookshelf in my bedroom. It houses the top tier books - my absolute favourites, the ones that I would take to a desert island (yes, I'm aware that taking 117 books to a desert island is rather implausible). The top four shelves are fiction, shelved alphabetically by author and then chronologically within each series. If they're not part of a series, they're shelved alphabetically by author and title. The bottom shelf is nonfiction, shelved alphabetically by author, although recently I've been thinking that I should reshelve the nonfiction section by Dewey number, just because I can.

This is, at the risk of sounding like Dudley Dursley, the bookshelf in my second bedroom. Technically, it's the spare room, but it's the room I was living in when I first moved back from Canberra. And when my little brother moved out and I got my PROPER bedroom back, I moved my Canberra bookshelf up from the garage. These are the books that I still love love, but which don't QUITE make the "take to a desert island" cut. The first three and a bit shelves are fiction, and the bottom shelf and a bit are nonfiction. Shelved, as before, by author and series/title.

This is the first shelf of the cupboard in my "second bedroom". These are the books that I read from time to time, but which aren't important enough to me to warrant being on the bookshelves. They're stacked two deep on this shelf and are in pretty much no order. And the books you can see on the shelf below are picture books that I haven't looked at in forever.

This is the second shelf of that cupboard, which is mostly books from high school or first year English. They're only one deep here, hence the pile of odd books in front of them. And yes, that's a facsimile copy of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management on the right. It's kind of awesome.

This is the top shelf of the cupboard, which is more odds and ends that don't fit elsewhere. As you can see from the fact that Jurassic Park and The Lost World are sitting at the front, I do read stuff from here occasionally!

Moving to the next set of shelves over in the cupboard, we have the back row, which consists mostly of books from my teen years, and the front row, which is mostly Janet Evanovich and the complete works of Shakespeare. Because you never know when you'll want to read Titus Andronicus?

And this is the shelf under that, which is another row of books from my teen years at the back, and the box set of Laura Ingalls Wilder books at the front. As you can see, they're rather well loved. Oh, and my poetry book from year 10 English.

And then there are several of these under my bed and the spare bed. I only pulled out the one, because they're really dusty and they make me sneeze. This is mostly books I haven't read since I was about 15, but which I can't bear to get rid of because I loved them so much as a kid/teenager.

Aaaaaand finally, we have this collection of text books from my undergrad degree, and some other random books about archaeology of the "found in the bargain bin at the bookshop" variety. Oh, and on the right are my high school year books.

Yeah. I'm pretty much a total hoarder when it comes to books. Just call me Rory Gilmore!

K xx

My life in numbers

Don't worry, I'll resume telling you all about meeting Sarah and catching up with Lauren and how much of a special snowflake I've been recently soon. But for the moment, I saw this over on Azra's blog and thought I'd give it a go!

-30: (degrees Celcius) Coldest temperature I've ever experienced.

47.6: (degrees Celcius) Hottest temperature I've ever experienced.

6.5: Number of years I will have spent at university by the time I finish my Masters.

12: Number of houses I have lived in.

175: Number of books I read in 2012.

24: Age I was when I started drinking.

6: Age I was the last time I got drunk.

15: Number of countries I've visited.

5: Number of passports I've had.

5: Number of languages other than English that I've undertaken formal education in.

1: Number of those languages I can vaguely understand now.

2: Number of siblings I have.

3: Number of cousins I have.

1: Number of operations I've had.

0: Number of bones I've broken.

2250: Number of songs in my iTunes.

111: Number of those songs that I actually listen to regularly.

7: Number of cities I've lived in.

38,000: (dollars) Amount of money I will owe the government for post-grad education when I finish my Masters.

1983: The year I was born.

2000: The year I finished high school.

5: Number of schools I've attended.

4: Number of universities I've attended.

565: Number of posts I've published on this blog including this one.

10: My favourite Doctor.

7: Average number of hours I sleep per night.

3-4: Number of times a week I should exercise.

2: Number of times a week I DO actually exercise.

0: Number of times I have exercised so far in 2013. WHOOPS.

324: Number of followers I have on Twitter.

252: Number of Facebook friends.

0: Number of times I've dyed my hair.

12: Standard number of hours between me painting my nails and chipping my nail polish.

So there you have it! What are your life numbers?

K xx

Dark Angel

So you guys already know that I've been rewatching a crapton of 90s/early 2000s TV shows. And about a month ago, I finished one that was aired here over the summer when I was just finishing high school.

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That's right, it's Dark Angel time! In case you never saw Dark Angel, the premise is this: a mysterious government agency was creating genetically enhanced children to be super-soldiers. Twelve of them broke out, and ended up scattered across the US. Then, in 2009, an electromagnetic pulse went off, and knocked out all electronic equipment, throwing the US back into the dark ages. Ten years later, Max - one of the escaped children - is working as a bike courier in Seattle, and all kinds of shit goes down.

Luckily for all of you, I didn't have NEARLY as many thoughts about it as I did about The X-Files, and unlike Dawson's Creek, it only ran for two seasons, so in comparison to my past spiels, this one's going to be short.

• Max is a badass, and Jessica Alba is PERFECT in the role.

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• It's really weird seeing Michael Weatherly as anything but Tony DiNozzo now.
• Logan has really stupid glasses and irritating hair.

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• I find it hilarious that the Pulse happened in 2009, but all the technology is 1999-esque. I wouldn't have a problem if they inserted something like "It sure does suck that the only technology that wasn't affected was the stuff that was ten years old when the Pulse hit". But nope. Massive computer monitors, floppy discs, and pagers abound! 
• I love how the spot where Max goes to think is the top of the Space Needle.
• JENSEN ACKLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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• Original Cindy is fantastic.
• It's almost enough to redeem James Cameron for the snorefest that is Titanic.
• I'm kind of curious about why they suddenly got rid of Lydecker's character.

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• Logan rapidly becomes a holier-than-thou irritation. No single person is THAT good that much of the time.
• The end of season 1 is kind of heartbreaking. Because ZACK, WHYYYYYYYY???

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• Max's boss, Normal, deserves to be punched in the head at least once in every episode.
• Madame X is a pain in the arse, as is her irritating voiceover during the credits in season 2. 
• As weird as the addition of all the other Manticore escapees is in season 2, Joshua is hilarious.

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• While the genetically engineered virus may SEEM like a good idea for maintaining the sexual tension between Max and Logan for the whole of the second season, it really pisses me off. They should have just had them be in a relationship for five minutes, then realise that nope, not actually that interested after all, and then she could have hooked up with Alec and Logan could have hooked up with Asha, and everything would have been fiiiiiiiiine!! 
• I LOVE the episode titles. They're fantastic. 
• BLUE TOWEL.

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• I love that Alec makes fun of Max for having a pager instead of a mobile phone.
• I honestly don't know what to make of the ending. I feel like it was kind of kludged together because the show got cancelled, because I feel like I skipped at least half a dozen episodes. But I didn't.
• How is it that shows like Dark Angel and Firefly get cancelled well before their time, but tripe like Australia's Got Talent and The X-Factor are still on the air??? *sigh*
• Basassery on motorbikes.

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So. There you have it. Did you watch Dark Angel? Were you bummed when it was cancelled? Do you wish it had lasted longer than two years?? 

K xx