Brilliance (4.5)

I don’t know why everyone isn’t reading this book. Brilliance is basically the book that Michael Crichton would write about the X-men. Several of the reviews I read were like “blah blah blah, it’s basically about the X-men, blah blah blah not creative,” if that’s your criteria, technically Harry Potter wasn’t that groundbreaking. Technically, it’s just a book about a wizard, coming of age, and going on a hero’s journey. Technically that stories been told.

Brilliance, by Marcus Sakey takes place in the modern day of an alternate future, where 1% of people born since 1980 are ‘brilliants.’ Brilliants don’t shoot lasers out of their eyes or control the weather or anything super cool, they’re just really, really smart. And that manifests itself into minor powers. A little girl who can always tell if someone’s lying, a man who can sense patterns in the stock market,  a woman who can go invisible by being where no one is looking, and Nick Cooper (our hero) who can read what people are going to do by the tiniest movement of their muscles. Ok, maybe this isn’t Crichton-level science fiction, but it definitely makes sense.

not that I'm knocking these guys

Nick Cooper is a brilliant working for the government to find and track brilliants, namely John Smith, a terrorist who has killed hundreds already and is working on something even worse…

What I loved about this novel was the social commentary that came along with the action-packed plot. There were news articles, copies of speeches, and even advertisements in between some chapters. Not so many that it distracted from the story, but just enough to create a fully realized world.

It started a bit slow, so don’t let that fool you. I was reading it at the same time as Atonement, which complimented it well since Atonement is all about characters with some action and Brilliance is all about action with some character development. I also finished it in the middle of a thunderstorm so I LITERALLY jumped out of my seat a few times. 

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend (5) - Matthew Dicks

If I really, really like a book I find myself still thinking like the narrator after I've finished their story. Which sounds crazy, but I'm an actor, remember? I loved the narrator, Budo, and I devoured this book fast enough that he totally got into my head.

Budo is Max’s imaginary friend. He’s real, but invisible to everyone but Max, and the other imaginary friends he meets. But he has his own emotions, his own thoughts, he can even leave the house and go on his own adventures. He is also the oldest imaginary friend he’s ever met, because Max needs him more than other kids.

I loved this book. It was beautiful and arresting, I loved the characters and I simply couldn’t put this book down.

Budo is obsessed with death. Mostly his own death, because if Max ever stops believing in him, Budo will die. He will fade away until he disappears completely. The novel revolves around this idea, of reality, and of death. Budo is lucky because he can walk through doors, and Max lets him roam around the school. Budo has his own best friend, an imaginary girl named Graham. Budo is also lucky that he looks so much more human than some imaginary friends: such as Puppy, the dim-witted imaginary friend of a kindergartener, Wooly, who looks a lot like Flat Stanley and can’t walk, or Klute, who looks like a bobble head. It is sweet, and funny, and sad, and beautiful.

There is also a thrilling bit after Max gets kidnapped and Budo has to figure out how to save him before Max is taken away forever.

This book has been compared to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which I also loved and remember reading in approximately one sitting. 

A Grown-Up Kind of Pretty (4.5)

 I thought I was going to hate this book. I literally only got it from the library because it was on the Goodread's Choice list from last year. And I figured I didn't have to finish it if it was as dumb as it sounded. The title, the cover, the author's name (Joshilyn? What is this, 19 and counting?) all annoyed me. The book "is a powerful saga of three generations of women, plagued by hardships and torn by a devastating secret, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of family." (Goodreads book description). Kill me. Please.

But I gave it a chance out of sheer desperation. And it was Gone Girl kind of page turner, but with more likeable characters. I was hooked by page 3. Yes, 15-year-old Mosey Slocumb deserves to be slapped for her teenage use of the English language. But seeing the story from her, her mother Lisa, and grandmother Jenny's points of view was a perfect balance.

Slight spoiler alert (like chapter 3): while building a pool in the backyard they find a dead baby buried under Lisa's favorite willow tree. Here's the spoiler...it's Mosey. No, Mosey isn't some weird ghost we're following around for a third of the book. She's real too, but she's not Lisa's biological daughter.

definitely not 19 & counting

Lisa ran away when she was 15 and Mosey was a few weeks old. Jenny assumed that Lisa had run off with Mosey, but real-Mosey was buried in the backyard and Lisa went on a drug-addled tour of the US and came back with a new Mosey. That is what this book is about. Who is Mosey? How did real Mosey die? Can they keep this secret from the town or are Lisa and Jenny going to be prosecuted for murder?

And did I mention that Lisa had a stroke so she can't actually talk to anyone about what is going on? Her chapters are a rollercoaster through the past, revealing piece by piece what really happened while Mosey and Jenny try to figure everything out on their own.

And yes, Mosey knows she's not real-Mosey, and Jenny knows...but both are trying to hide this information from the other, which leads to...

I'm not telling you that. Go read the book.

upcoming books

I think the biggest problem with this book is that it was billed as fiction and sounded like it was going to be some sort of family bonding story, and I felt like it read more like a mystery. Perhaps if it had been billed as mystery/suspense it would have gotten more attention? 

I liked this book so much I have to restrain myself from binge-reading everything Joshilyn Jackson has ever written. Because I do that, but then I get sick of them and never want to read them again (Dan Brown, prime example. J.K. Rowling only exception). Instead I put a hold on her next book. Which is coming out in November. Which would be super pathetic but I'm actually 7th in line. Six people thought of this before me. I am a failure.

The Creation of Eve (4)

I was just in Moon Over Buffalo, which was delightful, but I had 30 pages offstage in Act 2, so I desperately needed a book, but I haven’t been having any luck. Basically, I’ve been going through this phase where I don’t want to read on my Kindle. I know! Quel horreur. I seriously wish there was a way that I could have a physical copy and a Kindle copy of every book. The world would be a better place if books could be ripped like CDs.

the only time Eileen smiled in the entire show

 Anywho, it was Friday, I was about to go to my show, and I had enough time to go to the library, but not enough time to actually think through what I was going to get from the library. I put several things on hold, but none that were physically at the library and I needed something, so I just started walking down the aisles. All I knew was that I wanted a satisfying love story. Like Pride and Prejudice level satisfying but without all the work of reading a classic novel.

I picked up many books before The Creation of Eve. Mostly they were the one’s on display. Nothing sounded good. The Creation of Eve looked pretty. Maybe a little like Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I liked. And printed across bottom-right on the cover were two words: “enormously satisfying” – Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants. Sold.

Sofonisba "Sofi" Anguissola is a student of Michelangelo when she falls in love with Tibero, her fellow student. After they are caught alone together, Sofi runs home, hoping that he will send for her. Instead, the King of Spain invites Sofi to be lady-in-waiting and painting teacher to his third wife, 15-year-old Catherine de Medici. Sofi quickly becomes Catherine's closest friend and sole confidant, and Sofi helps the young queen to learn how to make Felipe happy. Meanwhile, Felipe's sole child Carlos begins to fall in love with the queen. And the queen has her eye on a courtier...

I am a sucker for good historical fiction and what I will call "tasteful romance novels" and this satisfied my need for a love story with real heart. I loved Sofi, I loved the impetuous queen, and I wanted desperately for them to each get everything they wanted.

Lynn Cullen crafted this book well, weaving dramas and flushing out the facts of history into a beautiful story. I wished that the novel had lasted to a more satisfactory ending, as Cullen unfortunately had to stick to the facts, but only the best books leave you wishing that there were more pages to come.

If you like Philippa Gregory, you will LOVE this book. I would compare it most to The Virgin's Lover, because that one felt the most well balanced. I think I have to contain myself from reading everything Lynn Cullen has ever written and burning myself out and never wanting to read her again. 

And if you haven’t read Girlwith a Pearl Earring, go read that too. And The Lady and the Unicorn. Both by Tracy Chevalier. Maybe I just really like books based on paintings. I wonder if there’s one about the Mona Lisa? Oooh, I loved Da Vinci Code.

Has anyone read the new Dan Brown? Should I bother? Or is it as bad as The Lost Symbol (#3)? Anyone?

Rehearsing has taken over my life

Acting is my addiction. That is my only excuse for not having updated in the past six weeks. Between filming a short film, rehearsing for Jesus Christ Superstar and getting ready for TPS auditions, I haven't sat down and thought through a blog post. I I also haven't had time to go to the library, and was trying not to go on too much of a book buying spree...so I steadily attempted to plod through "A Prayer for Owen Meany."

I don't know why I keep quitting that book. It's rich and compelling, while I'm reading it, but then after a few weeks I wander into the abyss of Facebook and can't force myself to pick it back up. Perhaps one day I can admit to myself that I love love stories, and Johnny's lack of a romantic interest makes me lose interest. Maybe it's because my brain is tired, and all I can handle is some good old junk food reading, the kind where you can sit on the couch and devour the book in one sitting instead of, you know, actually thinking.

Judas give us your info

These are the books that made the ADD cut:

Cinder: a scifi YA Cinderella novel set in the future. Cinderella's a cyborg, the prince likes her but politics and all that...definitely an entertaining, fast read but the plot is a bit obvious.
Scarlet: the sequel. Adds a little red riding hood and big bad wolf character. I found this plot less predictable, but I also felt that it was very much a second-book-in-the-series, where characters are added wit their own plot and histories are revealed, but the plot itself has merely inched along.
I read them both in the span of...four? Maybe five? days in the midst of tech for JCS. The next book doesn't come out until 2014, I think I'm going to jump off a bridge. Lol

Night Circus: awesome. Love it. Want to play Celia in the movie version desperately. I'm not joking, I seriously started reading up on moving to LA in time to get discovered. It had everything you need: romance, magic, threat of death hanging over your favorite characters' heads. The book's about a circus which is only open at night which becomes the arena for two young illusionists to compete.
That being said: if a character dies in a book I want to cry my eyes out. This book did not make me cry, but maybe I've just become heartless in my old age. You be the judge.

The Thirteenth Tale: at first I kind of hated the main character, Margaret Lea, because she was quiet and mousy and just sat around and read books, but I think you're supposed to. Margaret gets chosen by the reclusive, best selling author Vida Winters to pen the authors biography.
The real story is, of course, the biography, which at times becomes so fantastical you wonder if its fiction after all. What begins as a slow, quiet novel about a shy, quiet girl morphs into an enticing mystery.

A Stolen Life (3)

I read a lot of sad books, which seems to be kind of unfortunate since my readers like to read about my life more than they like to read about what I think about sad books that I read. Picking up this book from the library made me feel like I was getting a giant People magazine, I felt voyeuristic and a little gross that I would even want to read this tale.

            A Stolen Life tells the story of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped at the age of 11 by a stranger named Phillip and his wife Nancy. They kept her in their backyard for 18 years where they forced her to become their “family.” Phillip told her that she was helping him with his sex addiction by letting him repeatedly rape her so that no one else had to suffer…as she was suffering. Jaycee begins her story by stating that writing it she felt free from her captor. She was denying his commands she had kept for so long by telling the world the secrets he made her keep.

            Jaycee writes her story in her own words, from the day she was kidnapped up to the time she was writing her memoir, two years later. After a story, she’ll reflect upon how she currently is feeling. It is amazing to read such a devastating tale and how much Jaycee has been able to grow into her newfound freedom.

            I feel uncomfortable really reviewing this book, because it is so personal. Her writing is a bit childish, but what do you expect of a girl who was taken out of school at 11 to basically be a sex slave? She was more or less not allowed to leave the confines of the backyard and only had contact with her kidnapper, his wife, and the two daughters she bore. Her greatest joy was in the many pets that came and went during her life. Since being freed she has gone on to start her own foundation to help families dealing with similar situations and helping abandoned animals.

            What makes this book almost a joy to read is that you, the reader, get to watch this woman go from a scared victim to a free woman both physically and mentally. It is not an easy path and it is incredible that you, for a moment, almost see Phillip and Nancy as her “family” and her life as almost happy before she is freed. Jaycee has such a wonderful, happy spirit that she sounds almost content some of the time.

            Considering the content, this book is not too painful to read. She doesn’t go into too much detail about the horrors she was put through, only really explaining them in the beginning, when it is most painful because she is so young. As the book continues, the pain is more mental than physical, but it has a happy ending! It is a powerful story of the resilience of the human spirit and the healing power of family love, caring strangers, and professional therapy.

Follow me on Goodreads  if you want to know what book I'm currently reading!

The Tiger's Wife, Téa Obreht (3.5)

"Everything necessary to understand my grandfather lies between two stories, the story of the tiger’s wife, and the story of the deathless man. These stories run like secret rivers through all the other stories of his life — of my grandfather’s days in the army; his great love for my grandmother; the years he spent as a surgeon and a tyrant of the University."  -The Tiger's Wife

I’ve been having a really hard time writing this review for some reason. I really liked it, and I feel like it’s similar to a lot of books I’ve liked, but I can’t really put my finger on why. What do I have to say besides “I like when a book is in the present, but weaves together stories of the past along with some mystic tale that may or may not be true.”

The story follows Natalia, a young doctor travelling with her friend Zόra to give immunizations to orphans. Just after she arrives, she is struck with the news that her beloved grandfather has passed away. The story weaves Natalia’s memories of her grandfather, stories he has told her, and her current journey.

The novel is both slow and gentle and teaming with love, loss, and adventures with a tiger. Moments like this were beautiful:

“After following him through dark, empty streets, suddenly she sees what he sees: an elephant, a refugee from a defunct circus, being walked to the city’s embattled zoo. “None of my friends will ever believe it,” she exclaims in regret. “You must be joking,” her grandfather replies, rebuking her: “The story of this war — dates, names, who started it, why — that belongs to everyone. Not just the people involved in it, but the people who write newspapers, politicians thousands of miles away, people who’ve never even been here or heard of it before. But something like this — this is yours. It belongs only to you. And me. . . . You have to think carefully about where you tell it, and to whom. Who deserves to hear it?”

 I was surprised to see so much wisdom in a novel written by a 27-year-old. If she could write something of this magnitude, perhaps I should go back to one of my abandoned novels. Perhaps I could do something this great. Critics love this book. 

However, there is so much happening that I’m not entirely sure I came away with a great sense of what the novel accomplished…or what even happened. Characters die as they do in real life, leaving a gaping hole and without delivering purpose to the plot. Death does not tie a pretty bow around the ending of the novel, and yet death is present throughout the book.

I think what has bothered me about this book, and what has kept me from reviewing it, was that I didn’t feel that the story was finished. I enjoyed reading it, and desperately wanted to give it a five star review (I want to give everything a five star review, but have to remind myself that 3 can mean that I liked it, and I should save 5 for the Harry Potter's of the literary world) but I also realized that I had so many unanswered questions, which made me feel stupid. Had I really read the book so quickly that I had no idea how everything came together? Did I miss something? I felt stupid. How could I give you a review about a book I didn’t feel that I understood? And worse yet, how could I tell you that I loved said book, when I could barely tell you what happened?

So here is my review: read it. It’s a good read. Then tell me what you think. Let me know if you understood the great point of this novel. My copy went back into the internet-library before I could re-read or review it. Perhaps next year I will revisit it and try to figure out what happened myself. Leave me a note if you have any idea what happened.

Follow me on Goodreads  if you want to know what book I'm currently reading!

**giant, major spoilers ahead – here’s a picture to keep you from peeking**

Tiger's don't like peeking.

I feel like I would have liked the book better if in the end Natalia had encountered the deathless man, Gavran Gailé, instead of leaving the myth out of the present. One the one hand, I like that the myth remained a myth, but on the other I wish 

We Need to Talk About Kevin (5)

            This was one of the posts that I had started for this weeks blog post, and I tried to choose another post to finish, because I felt like I was doing the thing that I myself blamed the media for doing – capitalizing off of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. The problem is I’m having a hard time writing about anything else.

            I reacted, as most of us did, to the news on Friday with a gut-wrenching call to blame…everybody. We need mental health reform, I cried along with everyone else, and more gun regulation! How did our law makers allow this to happen? But therein lies the problem. While we can try to blame parents, guardians, and other mentors for not being there for this troubled young man, we can blame congress for not regulating everything, we can blame the media for making these horrible incidents infamous. However, the blame can only lie with the perpetrator of this heinous act. And the hardest part is that we may never know why he did it.

            So I offer this novel to all those asking questions and seeking answers. It won’t answer your questions necessarily and may instead raise more, but I think this novel is important and I think it has given us some idea of what its like to really deal with a broken child.

            We Need to Talk About Kevin, is narrated by Eva, whose son Kevin killed seven of his high school classmates, a cafeteria worker, and a beloved teacher two days before his sixteenth birthday. Two years after the incident, Eva discusses her thoughts and feelings through a series of letters to her estranged husband, Franklin. She has stayed in the town her son traumatized as her own personal penance.

            I found this book devastating and sort of beautiful. Eva cannot forget what Kevin has done, and has shouldered some of the blame, wondering where in Kevin’s life she had so ruined him that he would be driven to this act of destruction.  

Winter is Coming...

le scarf!

I finally finished my scarf! I've been working on this thing for ages, which is ridiculous because it was pretty easy to knit. It didn't take me too long to do once I got started, but I'm lazy so it took forever. It's pretty easy, and if you would like to make one yourself, the directions can be found at TLC's website. I had to google a few things myself because I knit so rarely I sometimes forget what they mean when they say "purl" or how to cast off at the end of a piece...
Which reminds me, if I'm ever going to finish my hat I'm going to have to figure out how to "cast off" of circular needles. And find the pattern again.

this is a terrifying picture of me,
but I'm too lazy to take another.

Next, perhaps I'll finish a book.
I have read the first four books in A Song of Ice and Fire or more commonly known as A Game of Thrones, which is the title of the first book. They are quite long and there are a lot of characters, so I've been savoring them a bit. The first one took me a week to "savor" because it was so good. Than the second took me a bit longer, and the third longer than that, and the fourth took the longest. I know they're good because I keep trying to take a break from them and then decide I want to read them again within a few days.

They are the kind of books you need to take some time with, I think, because there are just so many characters and they are competing in the game of thrones, so basically all of them are competing against each other so most of them cannot win. George R. R. Martin is not kind to his readers, he let's us love them until he kills them and he sometimes makes us understand them just to destroy them. So if you want some light reading where the good guys win and the bad guys lose, this series is most definitely not for you. However, if you enjoy political intrigue and the kind of characters that make Snape look simple, than by all means, start the bloodbath.

Stay tuned: while I decide whether or not to finish said hat or move onto making a t-shirt quilt or these nifty headbands, possibly with scraps from the first t-shirt quilt.

The Hunger Games and the truth about Friday the 13th

Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote, which is probably why it took me a couple weeks to get another post up. I left one show, did a 24 film fest, and opened two shows. And read three books.

The Hunger Games (5/5/4)
Those are the ratings for all three since I'm not sure I could completely differentiate one from the other after reading them in four days. I would almost go so far as to say Ender's Game lovers would like this one, but I don't want to get your hopes up THAT high. I don't even know what to say about those books except that you should clear your calendar before starting them or you may ditch some people or get kicked out of class for reading or something, and that would be bad. I, for one, started sneaking reading it on my iPhone during a rehearsal I was directing. Yeah, I'm that responsible.

Maybe I should name this post "Lack of Responsibility" instead, I think that may be a pretty accurate theme of this post.

Anyways, the last one was really good, I was just thought that the ending was a little anticlimatic and after all that drama between Katniss and her two guys, it was resolved too easily.

the last Spirit Singers show

Friday the 13th
I've been working with a 7th-12th grade group at my church since last July, and they performed their show on Friday the 13th this year. I kind of laughed when I found out it was Friday the 13th because seriously, what director in their right mind would pick that day to open a show? Tell me how un-superstitious you are all you want, in theater you just don't mess with that stuff because too much could go wrong. So I laughed and thought "Only at church would this happen."

So we started work on this show in like, January, cast in February? (correct me if I'm wrong) and we had 5ish months to put it together.

Three weeks before opening one of our leads got pulled for reasons unbeknown to me. He'd also choreographed about half of the show and couldn't even come to rehearsals to help us work though his choreography. And that was bad, but mostly we all just felt really bad for this student  because he didn't get to be part of a show he put so much of himself into.

And you know what else happened? My co-director, my boss if you will, the pastor who had created this group and had worked at this church for 23 years QUIT HER JOB the night before we opened. She had her reasons and I don't blame her, but seriously universe? How cursed am I?

And I mean, the show went really, really well. I managed to run the sound (cue up a CD player and press "play" and "pause" not real hard work like a mix board or anything), our replacement remembered ALL of his lines even though he'd only been to about two rehearsals, and everyone just did a really fabulous job.

Sometimes my life feels a little like this.

The Truth 
So let's do a run down of the last year of shows I've done:
Law of Life (opened Sat, plays one more day): had to delay opening because other lead/choreographer dropped out two weeks before show, other dance dropped out a few weeks before that.
Prodigal: one lead got pulled a few weeks before opening, director quit
XX Fest: week one other lead got horribly sick, week two I got sick
*Winter Spirit Singers show: nothing bad happened?
Godspell: fired director two days before opening

So at first I looked at this run down and thought "OMG my theatre career is cursed!! Maybe it's a sign!! I should stop doing theatre!!" And then I realized...some of those shows got better after crazy things happened. Maybe I should run with the opportunity I may be given. As far as I can tell from a brief conversation Friday night it sounds like the church's plan is either I run the group or no one does. The only problem is, how can I run a group that meets from 5:15-7pm in Redmond and still do acting in Seattle? What exactly should I be focusing on?

Focus
The one thing I've been managing to do is keep my plants alive.

Now they're taking over my apartment! They're everywhere!!!

My cucumbers are getting big enough I actually have to start worrying about  terracing them.

VOTING! & The Lost Symbol - Dan Brown (5)

If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you'll like this. It's set in DC, which I liked because I'm more familiar with the area so I was like, "Oooo! I know that building! I've been there! I've seen.....well no....not that....seriously? Is that even true?"

I'm better at writing about books just as I finish it, but I finished this on Thursday and then was really sick so I never wrote about it, and now I have no real opinions except that it was awesome and some "Oh! That [mega spoiler] part was so crazy! I was so pissed and then...." do you want to know how I felt? No. That'd be like telling you the ending of a Harry Potter book. I'm not that lame.

Anywho so I was real sick and started reading The Other Queen, which is not my favorite Philippa Gregory and I might not finish it because I was bored. Nothing happened and I know how it ends and I hate all the characters because their dumb or doomed. That's probably why I loved The White Queen, because I had never studied that part of the story and I had no idea what was going on.

And I had to return Three Cups of Tea, but I checked out the book, so I might finish that soon, but I already started my first Agatha Christie! And then I got a whole bunch of books from the library! What is a girl to do? I think I'll just catalog my books because I have a zillion.

OMG, I just realized one of the books I checked out today is in large print. I don't think I'll read that one because it looks like someone's shouting at me.

So, you choose! What book should I finish first:
a) Three Cups of Tea - Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin
b) A Murder in Three Acts - Agatha Christie
c) The White Queen - Philippa Gregory
d) None of those, pick a new book!