barbed_whispers

i feel like i've forgotten a book that i read this week. i don't really see how that could have happened, but URGH nonetheless. (speaking of forgetting books...i nearly flipped my shit yesterday when i looked at my pike bookshelf and saw a book was missing. could not remember what was missing or where it could possibly have run off to, and was v. v. unhappy. realized a few minutes later that i loaned falling to a coworker a few weeks ago and stopped freaking out. PHEW.)

(in my defense, i've been working on those shelves since i was 12 and most of those books cannot be replaced. and also i am insane.)

(oh wait, just remembered that i read 4 pages of this stupid book about these virgins boning for the first time before i tried to stab my eyes out on sunday. hopefully that's what i was thinking of.)

anyway, i finished suite scarlett today. it was really good! it sounded so much more like maureen johnson than her other two books, and i actually liked a lot of the characters. almost all of the characters, really. (eric can suck my dick.) v. excited for scarlett fever now. (& fyi, the paperback editions are horribly bound. if you care about that sort of thing and you are buying this, go for the hardcover.)

apparently next week i am out of the office for at least a little while every day, which is awesome except for the part where i only have 1.5 library books out, and one of them may not get read. might reread a bunch of pike books. like, the ones i've read less than five times. or maybe just the star group. i am craving it for some reason.

UNRELATEDLY, here are my GOALS FOR THIS WEEKEND:
-get caught up on tumblr / idolator / whatever other blogs i usually read
-redo my jenny wallpaper ONE LAST TIME because the text is looking weird. maybe upload it to loveforthejoy. or maybe just stare at it for a couple more hours, as one does
-make some fucking icons, geez
-get drunk & mock edward cullen

-i watched all of sports night last week. it was good, but not amazing or anything. dan and casey were totally adorably gay though.

-i am halfway through instant star now. even though i really don’t ship them, the jude/tommy s1 kiss is still incredibly awesome. “you are asking the wrong guy” nghghghggb! oh ridiculous canadian teenage soap operas, how do i live without you?

-i am on a vampire book kick for whatever reason. first was that really terrible hard-on-filled romp through victorian wherever, the brotherhood. then i read nightwalker by jocelynn drake, which was pretty good. the edward equivalent is named DAN! i liked him a lot. and the vampire girl grew on me. it’s an interesting take on vampires, anyway. now i’m reading the last vampire series by christopher pike. i’ve obviously read these before, but it’s been a while. i’m always afraid when i go a while without reading a pike book that the next time i pick one up i will realize that it’s poorly written and badly plotted and just plain old stupid, but i still love these insanely. i mean, a six-book series about vampires and jesus 2.0 and those creepy reptile guys that freak me the fuck out should not be this good, AND YET! there is even time travel! ridiculous, heartbreaking time travel! <3

-as of this moment, there is exactly one show in 2009 that i semi-want to go to (andrew bird). this is disappointing. people need to start announcing their spring schedules asap!

-i bought a couch! and a recliner thing! they are squishy and awesome, yaaay. also got a table and counter chairs cos ikea was out of the table chairs i wanted. the cave is pretty much furnished now, or will be when the couch gets delivered in january. i should plan a gathering of some sort. hm.

-i leave for jersey friday morning and will be gone for 9 days or whatever. yay! and then i am definitely getting internet as soon as i get back, because being unable to look shit up was driving me crazy this weekend.

-oh for realz, sky_was_green is totes awesome, and i have been listening to bandom music CONSTANTLY. also, there may or may not have been squealing last night when i noticed the photo file on the disc, hahaha.

this afternoon, while i was clearly not reading the book i need to finish by tomorrow, i found something out about christopher pike that i never knew before (i am, apparently, a terrible biographer) and now i need to re-evaluate my entire LIFE. or whatever.

seriously though you guys, the tachyon web was one of his first books! his first books are, oh, what's the word? oh yes- WRETCHED. i love the man, and i love all of his book, but his mid- to late-80s stuff is just not good. he really hit his stride in the mid-90s, i think, which is when the tachyon web was re-published. but it was first published in 1986! i need to get my hands on a first edition so i can see if there was editing involved. (i already found a few copies for cheap, i just haven't invested yet.)

(and okay, you're probably thinking "you couldn't have really known this, because you have never seen a first edition and it was with a different publisher and the writing style & themes match up with his later works, etc etc" except there was a point in time when i organized my pike books by publish date! i think i gave up before i got to the Ts, but still. i am a failure :/)

(also, do will and bran make out in silver on the tree by susan cooper? cos if so, i might read faster. just sayin'.)

I needed something to read before I could pick up The Golden Compass (getaway_machine and I are reading it together, so I had to wait til she finished her assigned reading), but I didn't want anything long, in a series, overly taxing, or that would set my brain on fire (she only had one book to go), which rules out a lot of my books. I ended up grabbing Sati off the shelf, cos I haven't read it in a while and I knew I could put it down with no regrets if it didn't really catch my attention.

Of course, as always, it caught my attention and reminded me how much I love it, Christopher Pike, and the world in general.

It's one of those books that I can't reread all the time because it's slow-paced and character-driven and philosophical and I know it all like the back of my hand, but I still try to get through it once a year because it leaves me refreshed and ready to face the world. It's the only book that came with me every single semester of college for the same exact reason. (It's also the book I am most likely to buy copies of whenever I find it so I can give it to the people who matter.)

Anyway, I had a pretty shitty week, and then I read Sati, and now I feel a lot better. If you want to read it, I will loan you my (well-loved!) copy, as long as you swear on your life that you will return it. (Cos even though I have a spare copy, the spare is a signed first edition and therefore is for petting, not for reading.)

i finished my mother's day shopping! except for the parts where i need to buy scratch-offs and a card for nana and oh yeah, one for aunt helen. but i got my mom a present! which was so hard, for realz. she and i have um, completely different taste in books. to put it diplomatically. to put it less diplomatically, you'd have to pay me to read the stuff she reads, and even then, i make no guarantees. so it was hard to buy her a book when they all sounded pretty equally shitty (I'M SORRY, OKAY? i just have no interest in these books!) but i finally prevailed! she got a jodi picoult book. i ended up choosing the bestseller with the most interesting cover. heh.

i also found so many books i wanted! so many! soooooo many! want! i didn't buy any though. i deserve an award of some sort. the last six books on my wishlist all looked so good. ned vizzini!! i loved that one book of his! and manga! i liked the art. i have no clue what it is about or anything, i just...liked the art. heh. (that hp knitting book further down? not really worth it. i checked it out while i was there, and meh.)

HOLY SHIT THE NEW PIKE IS OUT! how did that happen without me noticing?? WHY WASN'T IT ON MY CALENDAR??? (oh, it was. OOPS.) ... it has a SEX SCENE? a STEAMY sex scene? i am more than a little freaked out by this development. my boyfriend NEVER has sex scenes! (except when he does, most notably in blind mirror, which is possibly his worst book ever.) and...it actually has a lot of good reviews. hm. i'll have to look for it. and i should probably finish that other book of his that i'm reading. and the book i borrowed from ie since she's leaving next week. and i have to fix her computer still.

instead, i will go eat some ice cream and celebrate that tomorrow is friday and i do not have work til 1. weeeeeeeeeeee!

i remembered another song i wanted to upload: the white stripes - the denial twist. so so ridiculously good!

...

sansa emailed me back. they are going to replace my mp3 player. SIGH. does this mean i have to think of a new name, or can i just call it uni 2.0?

...

i haven't read the yanti in almost a week. cos he's gone crazy again. sigh. TEH INTARWEBZ R EV0L ZOMG! yeah, they think there's a demon in the internet. (as far as i can tell, it's name is not moloch.) he couldn't even bother fact-checking when the internet was invented ("the internet didn't exist 13 years ago!" what? of course it did, boyfriend! it may not have been very sophisticated or popular or user-friendly, but it existed and there were games. so there goes your plot point!) and he also maybe jumped the shark. a little. when he decided that the girl who used to be an ordinary human but who then found out she was queen of the fairies (in another dimension) found out that she was ACTUALLY an ANGEL in YET ANOTHER DIMENSION WTF. god, the shaktra had SO MUCH PROMISE. i was right about jira though, so at least there's that?

...

i saw the premonition last night. first of all, that title is rather misleading. second of all, that movie pretty much sucked. third of all, the ending was kind of brilliant and amazing and i am almost willing to give the movie a thumbs up based on the last ten minutes. but it was otherwise pretty horrid, confusing, and poorly acted.

...

if i had a rather immense amount of free time, i would: reread the weather warden books; watch firefly; design a new website; watch season one of veronica mars; organize and tag all of my mp3s; clean. what would you do?

last night i dreamt i was stalking christopher pike. i even had his ADDRESS. i have tragically forgotten it since waking. anyway, i baked him some cookies and was going to deliver them to his house. unfortunately, it had been knocked down and was being rebuilt from scratch, so i started knocking on his neighbors' doors in a quest to find him. i did not succeed. :(

then i dreamt i was drinking with simplykatie and telling her about a dream i had about...getting drunk with simplykatie. heh. she had a strawberry daiquiri, and i was drinking something darkish pink that may have contained vodka and was kind of thick? i don't know. and i let her drive the rufusmobile (before we got to the bar) and she parked it excellently, which i commented on because she had also done so in the dream i was telling her about. and also i strongly disliked the bartender for some reason.

i finally brought g. my copy of the golden compass last week. she took it home, and her four year old son asked her about it before picking it up, hugging it, and telling her it was his favorite book ever. smart kid! (apparently he likes polar bears, heh.)

other things that happened last week: i listened to kind of a sickening amount of jenny owen youngs and lior; i realized that nobody is ever going to buy my car and that kind of really sucks (it's a '92 beige taurus, it has over 120k miles, it has a tape player, the passenger side mirror is broken, the radio mysteriously stopped working last month, the windshield wiper fluid has never worked, it leaks a mysterious black fluid from the parking brake, and it still smells vaguely of vomit when it's too wet outside- IT'S CLEARLY A REAL WINNER) since i can't even drive it to florida to kill it and then buy a new car because i wouldn't make it out of delaware- dumping a bunch of money into it last summer sure seemed like a good idea at the time, dammit; both of the books i am currently reading are good- one has CANONICAL dystopian incest omg and the other is a non-crazy pike book which is just something i can't explain the awesomeness of very well but it is basically like catching up with the best friend you haven't spoken to in forever and it makes me so so happy; this paragraph is getting kind of ridiculous so i'm going to stop now.

my absolute favorite part of this song is when he laughs (?) at the end. ahahahahaha it makes me laugh every time.

01. in lieu of going to the library and getting more orson scott card books that i've already read, i decided to reread the black jewels trilogy. these books make me so happy! in other book news, i still really really hate laurell k. hamilton, and i am still boycotting her books until she writes me my goddamn edward story. (it has been confirmed that he is not in the next book, which should be out in july.) since i haven't even thought about lkh in forever and now i am thinking (angry thoughts) about her, i'm kind of craving an edward fix. should i reread obsidian butterfly, or should i do the whole series (up to narcissus in chains, which is when i stopped buying her goddamn books)? PLUS, the new pike book has been out for over a month and i don't have it yet (I KNOW), so i have to buy that asap, and reread alosha so i can read the new one so i can marvel at his brilliance. AND SPEAKING OF HIS BRILLIANCE! boy, can pike write a mystery or what?? final friends is freaking brilliant, still. i knew what happened (obviously), but it was cool watching it all fall into place and picking up all the little hints he left. i think that is one murder mystery that i would never be able to figure out on my own. (i think the best part of loathing my roommate and not having a computer is that i spend at least three hours a day reading, which makes me feel better about life in general.)

02. I GOT PAID TODAY! so i can actually buy the new pike book! zomg so excited. but they took almost $100 out of my $450 paycheck in taxes and crap. that is so freaking annoying. i hate being a legitimate corporation and paying taxes :( but it's $359 more than i had yesterday, AND the school owes me $2000, so WOO and HOO.

03. it is 99% sure that i will be going to europe for spring break. i will be there from march 10-19 (approximately) with my friend sheena. the two of us have no idea what we should do. we definitely want to go to amsterdam, and we will be spending st. patrick's day in ireland (or possibly scotland, i don't know why, but sheena thinks this is a fabulous idea), but we don't know what else to do. she'll be in austria all semester, so that's not necessary. we might hit paris, just to see if my name is still carved into the eiffel tower. we think england sounds boring. when i went to europe, we didn't really do cities, and sheena's only been to southern france, so any suggestions for good nightlife or cool museums / touristy things would be awesome, as we are clueless about things.

04. i'm trying to come up with an amazing sob story so the school will give me my $2000 tomorrow (instead of sending me a check god only knows when). i asked my friend for suggestions, and the two he gave me were to tell them someone died and that i need the money for a funeral (and then to ask of they know how much a coffin costs these days) or to start sobbing and tell them i'm pregnant (but we think they'll just tell me to sell my baby for next semester's tuition). bursar's office is heartless, man. (my dad said to tell them my car insurance is due, which would not be a lie. i could also tell them that my phone will be shut off soon, which is probably also true.) i need my freaking money!

05. i'm going to go see harry potter by myself at 10am on friday, just to make sure i see it on opening day, cos i have not yet missed an opening day. (that afternoon is class + argo, and that night is a drunken spoons tournament. hooray for spoons! and for vodka! yay!) not gonna lie- i am pretty darn excited about this movie, but only because i miss fandom so goddamn much. it's so weird to not be thinking about hp all the time! (i might print out copies of my favorite fic so i can read it whenever i want. i'm still working on that.)

06. i'm gonna attempt to read some lj now. YAY YAY YAY. ♥ ♥ ♥

I finished the Remember Me trilogy yesterday. I still really, really love it. The second one is kind of dull, but it's a great bridge between the two books. And oh man, will I ever not be awed by "The Starlight Crystal"? If I ever get around to it, I will do a post of all of my favorite quotes. The third book is all highlighted from years ago, heh.

I finished Lirael today. Holy fucking shit, dude. I need the third one. ( Spoilers and stuff. )

When I ventured to the bookstore (I went to Freehold actually, but Tray was not working :( ), I also got Ender's Game because they did not have the BJT short story book thingy. ARGH. But yay, Ender's Game! I haven't bought books in such a long time that I decided it doesn't matter that I'm poor, because I deserve them. Or something. Whatever.

Also petted the new Tamora Pierce covers. Oh my GOD, they are so fucking pretty. And of course, they're for the Alanna books. So now there are two AMAZING sets that I would love to own, and then there is the set that I DO own, and there is no way I could ever justify getting one of the new sets, because I can't even *read* those books anymore. Hmph. Also grumbled because they still have not printed the Aly books in covers I will actually buy. Why can't they make them regular book sized? Do they hate me and my need for conformity amongst my book covers?

Then I petted the various Pike covers. It's so sad, but I don't have any from this newest set of covers. I have the oldest ones, and the next ones, a few of the third set, but none of these. And these are nice. Someday, when I'm rich, I'll have every printing of every Pike book, and also, shut up. I've been reading his book for ten years this fall, which is almost half my life omg. This is terribly exciting.

Why why why can't I be a knight? I would absolutely love to spend my life thinking about things like honor and kicking ass. Plus knights are sexy. Mm hmm.

If I could become a character at the start of his or respective book(s) (such as being Harry from the time he goes to Hogwarts on), I would most definitely want to be Kel from the Protector of the Small quartet. That's like, my ideal life. She hangs out with awesome guys. She doesn't waste her time with idiotic females. She has honor, and courage, and a cool head, and ok, she likes math, that's a bit odd. But animals like her. I especially admire her ability to (mostly) diplomatically tell people (Jon) that they are being assholes. If I had 7 years of Yamani training, maybe I'd bite my tongue more often! Plus, she has the most amazing friends, and I miss the boys (and everyone else, really) so much, GAH. I am madly in love with Owen this time around, which is new and different. And his adorable cousins! And Dom and Neal, of course, And Raoul and GEORGE!, as always. And Wyldon. Just a little bit. Shut up.

(My #2 choice, hm, might be Shari from Remember Me. Which is odd, cos she starts the book off dead. But her afterlife is terribly exciting! OOH, or Sita, from The Last Vampire. She has many adventures, and oh, my love for Seymour knows no bounds!)

ANYWAY, I am going to lay in bed and read the rest of Squire, and maybe start the fourth one, because it's my day off, and I have decided to ignore all of the plans I made for today (which included exercise, sunbathing, getting work done, and putting on real clothes) and laze about reading children's books. Hooray!

(Also, I just spell-checked this because I can never spell "exercise" properly. Shouldn't it recognize "doesn't"? And maybe even "Hogwarts"? I mean, for realz people.)