At my senior prom, the only boys that were there came with dates, so the girls outnumbered boys 2 to 1.
I watched Pretty in Pink for the first time today. I mostly couldn't get past the part where Eleanor from Eleanor and Park had to be inspired by Andie. (Mostly the weird clothes/kinda poor/red hair/80s thimg.) The boy in that movie was extremely handsome. It's nice to know that James Spader has always seemed old. It wasn't a deep movie, so my comments are limited to spiffy one-liners.
April and Andy's faces exemplify the imminent threat that is my French final. However, I only need to pass in order to have an A in the class so their faces don't scare me!
I finished reading A Clockwork Orange, my first selection from my summer reading list, today. It was very interesting. It took me most of the book to figure out what Alex was saying since his slang is very difficult to decipher. I thought he was in Russia for a really long time until someone said that the kids all spoke slang with Slavic roots.
Honestly, I didn't like anyone in this book, which I believe was the point of the book. The government was corrupt; the revolution was just using the kid for their own purposes. As I write it down I'm reminded strongly of Mockingjay, which I suppose was inspired by this and other classic dystopian novels. I guess the message was that we can't force people into being good because it takes away their humanity. I'm practically done with college so my critical thinking skills are a bit tired.
I was mostly just happy that I remembered that droog was Russian for friend. It's one of my 3 words of Russian (Privyet! Droog! Nyet!)
I also saw this coverflip for A Clockwork Orange today. Maureen Johnson got people to create covers for books IF that book had been written by an author of the opposite gender. The results were interesting; I really didn't want to read any of the books that were redone from being more masculine to looking all teenage girly, which is odd because I often dislike books that are written for adults because they're generally depressing. I'm 21. I have hope! I believe in the future!
The full post about gender-reversed book covers is here!
I'm excited to choose another book from my summer reading list! I also had a to be read list that I've been compiling all year - I'll probably make my choice based on what is available at the library tomorrow!
I re-watched one of my (many) favorite German movies today in order to write a paper about it for film class. (German title: Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei) But you, dear readers, get my actual impressions of this movie because you don't care that the characters in this film are filled with angst and are disappointed in the revolutionaries of the last generation for failing and selling out.
I started taking screenshots 3/4 of the way through so I missed some real cinematic gold.
This is Jule. She's played by Julia Jentsch. She's crazy pretty, and one of the reasons I love this movie so much. I know that deep down, I would really hate to be broke and living in a crappy apartment with 2 guys and constantly protesting everything, but she makes it look so fun. She's so cool, but the scene where she goes through Hardenburg's wine fridge and drops the bottles she doesn't want to drink on the floor makes me wince every time. SOMEONE HAD TO CLEAN THAT UP, JULE. And you know it wasn't Hardenburg. It's going to be the maid because Hardenburg hasn't done anything for himself this millennium.
Speak of the devil! It's Hardenburg, and he's doing something for himself. It's so odd that at this point in the movie, everyone else is fighting and confused about their beliefs, but Hardeburg is at his happiest. I don't completely go along with Jule, Jan, and Peter's anti-capitalistic beliefs, but I can follow them for a bit. How does one live with that much money?
This part of the movie was mostly the characters driving from Austria to Berlin; the scenery was beautiful. I cannot wait to go back to Germany.
I'm also happy that the characters realized that you can't do dumb stuff then try and dress it up as a political thing. They grew. :)
The worst part of this movie is that they have to movie to Spain at the end because Hardenburg is a grade-A scumbag who sold them out to the cops. But I think this photo demonstrates Jan and Peter's bromance. Shouldn't the girl they've both dated be in the middle? Nope, it's bromance over everything here. Also, Jule speaks English to the maid, which confused me the first 2 times I saw the movie because I had somehow not realized they weren't in Germany anymore.
Hardenburg, no one likes you. You had an excellent opportunity to search yourself and repent for being a slimy businessman, and you didn't take it. The worst part is that you pretended to be their friend, then called the cops on them. Stockholm Syndrome is not forever, my friends.
This movie makes me sad though. It has so much angst (the English variety, not fear). Jule sums up why this movie makes me feel this way: I don't have anything that I really believe in. The things I believe in are mainstream and don't need outspoken youth advocacy. This movie always makes me feel a bit guilty and also makes me think, which I believe was its purpose. Benjamin would love that I'm not being passive right now.
This movie originally had a longer ending, which I didn't know about until today, but you can know about right now! Daniel Bruehl is lookin' so fly in that suit.
Stevi sent me a link to a list of all the books ever mentioned on Gilmore Girls last month, and I'm going to tackle part of this list over the summer! I figured I'd start by posting the whole list & italicizing books I've already read. Not sure what I'm going to get through - I started A Clockwork Orange, but the motifs and language are driving me bonkers, so I may not finish it. The Perks of Being a Wallflower is definitely on the list, as is Letters to a Young Poet. I should probably read Metamorphosis in German since I somehow haven't done that yet.
1984 by George Orwell The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (I've only read the redacted version, but that's the version everyone reads. I may revisit this now.) Archidamian War by Donald Kagan The Art of Fiction by Henry James The Art of War by Sun Tzu As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Atonement by Ian McEwan Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy The Awakening by Kate Chopin Babe by Dick King-Smith Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie Bel Canto by Ann Patchett The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath Beloved by Toni Morrison Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney (I'm not sure which translation I've read, but believe me, I know Beowulf.) The Bhagava Gita The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men Who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews by Peter Duffy Bitch in Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays by Mary McCarthy Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (I wasn't a fan.) Brick Lane by Monica Ali Bridgadoon by Alan Jay Lerner Candide by Voltaire The Canterbury Tales by Chaucer Carrie by Stephen King Catch-22 by Joseph Heller The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger (what a phony book...) Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman Christine by Stephen King A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse The Collected Short Stories by Eudora Welty The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty by Eudora Welty A Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Complete Novels by Dawn Powell The Complete Poems by Anne Sexton Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas père Cousin Bette by Honor’e de Balzac Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber The Crucible by Arthur Miller Cujo by Stephen King The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Daisy Miller by Henry James Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende David and Lisa by Dr Theodore Issac Rubin M.D David Copperfield by Charles Dickens The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol Demons by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Deenie by Judy Blume The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America by Erik Larson The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Nikki Sixx The Divine Comedy by Dante (read it, acted it out. Yay World Lit!) The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells Don Quijote by Cervantes Driving Miss Daisy by Alfred Uhrv Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson Edgar Allan Poe: Complete Tales & Poems by Edgar Allan Poe Eleanor Roosevelt by Blanche Wiesen Cook The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn Eloise by Kay Thompson Emily the Strange by Roger Reger Emma by Jane Austen Empire Falls by Richard Russo Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective by Donald J. Sobol Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton Ethics by Spinoza Europe through the Back Door, 2003 by Rick Steves Eva Luna by Isabel Allende Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer Extravagance by Gary Krist Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 9/11 by Michael Moore The Fall of the Athenian Empire by Donald Kagan Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World by Greg Critser Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson The Fellowship of the Ring: Book 1 of The Lord of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce Fletch by Gregory McDonald Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut Gender Trouble by Judith Butler George W. Bushism: The Slate Book of the Accidental Wit and Wisdom of our 43rd President by Jacob Weisberg Gidget by Fredrick Kohner Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels The Godfather: Book 1 by Mario Puzo The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy Goldilocks and the Three Bears by Alvin Granowsky Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell The Good Soldier by Ford Maddox Ford The Gospel According to Judy Bloom The Graduate by Charles Webb The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald Great Expectations by Charles Dickens The Group by Mary McCarthy Hamlet by William Shakespeare Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J. K. Rowling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry Henry IV, part I by William Shakespeare Henry IV, part II by William Shakespeare Henry V by William Shakespeare High Fidelity by Nick Hornby The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon Holidays on Ice: Stories by David Sedaris The Holy Barbarians by Lawrence Lipton House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss How the Light Gets in by M. J. Hyland Howl by Allen Gingsburg The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo The Iliad by Homer I’m with the Band by Pamela des Barres In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Iron Weed by William J. Kennedy It Takes a Village by Hillary Clinton Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare The Jumping Frog by Mark Twain The Jungle by Upton Sinclair Just a Couple of Days by Tony Vigorito The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar by Robert Alexander The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini Lady Chatterleys’ Lover by D. H. Lawrence The Last Empire: Essays 1992-2000 by Gore Vidal Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman The Legend of Bagger Vance by Steven Pressfield Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them by Al Franken Life of Pi by Yann Martel The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis (I have a vendetta against the Chronicles of Narnia. They are sexist and I'm not a fan of their overt Christian symbolism. I do plan to read some of Lewis's other works this summer.) Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens The Little Locksmith by Katharine Butler Hathaway The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton Lord of the Flies by William Golding The Lottery: And Other Stories by Shirley Jackson The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold The Love Story by Erich Segal Macbeth by William Shakespeare Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert The Manticore by Robertson Davies Marathon Man by William Goldman The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman by William Tecumseh Sherman Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris The Meaning of Consuelo by Judith Ortiz Cofer Mencken’s Chrestomathy by H. R. Mencken The Merry Wives of Windsro by William Shakespeare The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides The Miracle Worker by William Gibson Moby Dick by Herman Melville The Mojo Collection: The Ultimate Music Companion by Jim Irvin Moliere: A Biography by Hobart Chatfield Taylor A Monetary History of the United States by Milton Friedman Monsieur Proust by Celeste Albaret A Month Of Sundays: Searching For The Spirit And My Sister by Julie Mars A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf Mutiny on the Bounty by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and It’s Aftermath by Seymour M. Hersh My Life as Author and Editor by H. R. Mencken My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru by Tim Guest My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin Nervous System: Or, Losing My Mind in Literature by Jan Lars Jensen New Poems of Emily Dickinson by Emily Dickinson The New Way Things Work by David Macaulay Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich Night by Elie Wiesel Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism by William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John P. McGowan Novels 1930-1942: Dance Night/Come Back to Sorrento, Turn, Magic Wheel/Angels on Toast/A Time to be Born by Dawn Powell Notes of a Dirty Old Man by Charles Bukowski Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Old School by Tobias Wolff Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens On the Road by Jack Kerouac One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez The Opposite of Fate: Memories of a Writing Life by Amy Tan Oracle Night by Paul Auster Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood Othello by Shakespeare Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan Out of Africa by Isac Dineson The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton A Passage to India by E.M. Forster The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition by Donald Kagan The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky Peyton Place by Grace Metalious The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Pigs at the Trough by Arianna Huffington Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby The Portable Dorothy Parker by Dorothy Parker The Portable Nietzche by Fredrich Nietzche The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen Property by Valerie Martin Pushkin: A Biography by T. J. Binyon Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw Quattrocento by James Mckean A Quiet Storm by Rachel Howzell Hall Rapunzel by Grimm Brothers The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe The Razor’s Edge by W. Somerset Maugham Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories From a Decade Gone Mad by Virginia Holman The Return of the King: The Lord of the Rings Book 3 by J. R. R. Tolkien R Is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton Rita Hayworth by Stephen King Robert’s Rules of Order by Henry Robert Roman Fever by Edith Wharton Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf A Room with a View by E. M. Forster Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin Sacred Time by Ursula Hegi Sanctuary by William Faulkner Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay by Nancy Milford The Scarecrow of Oz by Frank L. Baum The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman Selected Letters of Dawn Powell: 1913-1965 by Dawn Powell Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen A Separate Peace by John KnowlesSeveral Biographies of Winston Churchill Sexus by Henry Miller The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon Shane by Jack Shaefer The Shining by Stephen King Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse S Is for Silence by Sue Grafton Slaughter-house Five by Kurt Vonnegut Small Island by Andrea Levy Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway Snow White and Rose Red by Grimm Brothers Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World by Barrington Moore The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia de Burgos by Julia de Burgos The Song Reader by Lisa Tucker Songbook by Nick Hornby The Sonnets by William Shakespeare Sonnets from the Portuegese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning Sophie’s Choice by William Styron The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach The Story of My Life by Helen Keller A Streetcar Named Desiree by Tennessee Williams Stuart Little by E. B. White Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust Swimming with Giants: My Encounters with Whales, Dolphins and Seals by Anne Collett Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens Tender Is The Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald Term of Endearment by Larry McMurtry Time and Again by Jack Finney The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger To Have and Have Not by Ernest Hemingway To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee The Tragedy of Richard III by William Shakespeare A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith The Trial by Franz Kafka The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters by Elisabeth Robinson Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom Ulysses by James Joyce The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 1950-1962 by Sylvia Plath Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe Unless by Carol Shields Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann The Vanishing Newspaper by Philip Meyers Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground and Nico (Thirty Three and a Third series) by Joe Harvard The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett Walden by Henry David Thoreau Walt Disney’s Bambi by Felix Salten War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy We Owe You Nothing – Punk Planet: The Collected Interviews edited by Daniel Sinker What Colour is Your Parachute? 2005 by Richard Nelson Bolles What Happened to Baby Jane by Henry Farrell When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka Who Moved My Cheese? Spencer Johnson Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Edward Albee – read Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire (I despise this book.) The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
