Update!!!!

I totally did not forget about this blog. I am having computer issues and until I can get that fixed, blogging is a bit difficult. At least I have some down time to finish the next blog post book! So hang tight my friendsand you will have a new book to check out soon enough!

Happy Reading,

Alexandra

P.S- I may end up writing as a job. Been sifting through manuscripts and poems to out together for a portfolio.

Happy Birthday John Lennon!!!!

On this day in 1940, John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool. As a boy he used to make his schoolfriends laugh with his drawings and parodies of teachers and friends. Years later in 1964 he wrote "In His Own Write", a collection of his stories and drawings, printed as they were written and drawn. I won a copy of this in a Beatles art contest, and I have prized it ever since. Lennon was influenced by authors such as James Thurber, Lewis Carroll and James Joyce, but you can tell from the writing that Lewis Carroll really struck a chord. Here's an excerpt from "On This Churly Morn":

On This Churly Morn

Small wonder on this churly morn

I crivy like a black

To think wot I should be farlorn

Through knorb this packymack

Of course no one can forget "Good Dog Nigel". I can still recite it word for word, cause it such a funny little poem. But I'll let John entertain you :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jhec4z-l32k

I also have to mention the second book he published, because this was just as good as his first one. There were more short stories and drawings. The book is a little longer and is also written in Lennon's odd nonsensical tongue. Here's an excerpt from a story entitled 'The General Erection":

"Azue orl gnome, Harrassed Wilsod won the General Erection, with a very small marjorie over the Torchies. Thus pudding the the Laboring Partly back into powell after a large abcess. This he could not have done withoutspan the barking of thee Trade Onions, heady by Frenk Cunnings (who noun has a SAFE SEAT in Nuneating thank you and Fronk (only 62) Bowels hasn't)."

Scratch your head if you will at that, but it all makes sense. He was a creative genius, and both of these books show a whole different side of him. One of the best stories in  Spaniard is  "The Singularge Experience of Miss Anne Duffield" which is a story involving "Shamrock Womlbs". It's a crazy mystery story that will have you giggling the whole time.

Happy Reading, and Happy Birthday John!!!!

-Alexandra

The Nanny Diaries

Ahh yes, time for something a little modern.

For some reason I had a beef with this book, despite the fact I liked the writing and the style of the storytelling. This book was written by two people, Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, who I guess can't come up with a name for the main character between them. Seriously  "Nanny"? even I could have given her a name. There were also some stereotypical rich people things that the authors played around with quite a bit, and that was a little annoying as well.

The story is about a college student named "Nanny" who transfers from Brown University to NYU to pursue a degree in Child Development, and works as a nanny to the elite rich people in New York City, through a nanny agency called the Parents League.  In the beginning she walks you through the process of being interviewed by the rich mothers, who seem to be looking for someone to do their job for them. While walking in the park, she meets the X family (I liked the cleverness of keeping the family anonymous), and their adorable son Grayer. Mrs. X  takes a liking to "Nanny" and they arrange a meeting.

Mrs. X decides to hire "Nanny" and replaces her already hired nanny, Caitlin, with her. Grayer, however dislikes "Nanny" and he continues to be a spoiled little brat and does whatever he can to get rid of her. But she wins him over slowly with the "Glinda the Good Witch/Wicked Witch" approach. While she's doing that, Mrs. X puts her in charge of getting things together for a party for Mr. X's clients. Something apparently "Nanny" has trouble doing, and she gets into some hot water. But the party turns out to be a huge success, and all is forgiven. Then things seem to go downhill with the Xes' marriage and the Harvard Hottie makes an appearance here and there.

All in all, it's a fantastic read, and I hated to end it, but it's definitely going on my bookshelf as part of the definite read agains for the future. At some point I plan on seeing the movie, but I'm gonna let the book sink in first.

Happy Reading!

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Ahhh an old classic.

This one was kind of a stretch for me to read, but it was great. I've read Thomas Hardy before, having borrowed Far from the Madding Crowd, which was the book that established Hardy as a brilliant writer. This book was interesting in its own way. The subtitle for the novel is "The Life and Death of a Man of Character", and I really thought the main protagonist Michael Henchard, was more of an idiot, than a man of character.

The story starts at a fair in Casterbridge where a young Mr. Henchard, who makes his living selling hay, gets drunk on rum laced furmity (boiled cracked wheat. I'd put rum in it too if I had to eat it.) and sells his wife Susan and  baby daughter Elizabeth Jane in an auction to a sailor for five guineas. The next day, when he's sober, he realizes it's too late to get his  family back, and he really doesn't search much because he doesn't want to reveal how much of an idiot he for selling his family. So he vows to never touch alcohol for as long as he's been alive, which at that moment in time was TWENTY ONE YEARS.

Fast forward nineteen years, Mr. Henchard is now the mayor of Casterbridge and a very successful man. No one likes him because he has a foul temper and he's very secretive and impulsive and selfish. But totally sober. The people in Casterbridge think he's a widower, because he refuses to tell the truth about what happened to his family ( can you blame him? "once when I was 21 I got real trashed, and auctioned off my family...."). After a while Henchard begins to believe this lie and think that his wife is dead.  So when he goes of f to the isle of Jersey for a business trip, he meets and begins to fall in love with this lady named Lucetta, who takes care of him when he gets sick. Their relationship seems to be of a sexual nature, because at one point it's revealed that Lucetta's reputation in Jersey has taken a bit of a nosedive since she met him. But they decide to get married.

Around the same time that Henchard decides to send for Lucetta, his not so dead wife Susan and daughter Elizabeth Jane appear in Casterbridge. How convenient, right? Well Susan is not the sharpest pin in the hatbox, and she believed for a while that her supposed marriage to the sailor, Mr. Newson was legal, but now she is thinking that she was still married to Henchard. Since Mr. Newson is lost at sea, and Susan and her daughter are poor, she goes looking for Henchard to square away some truths and get some financial help.  We are also introduced to another grain salesman  Donald Farfrae of Scotland, whom I like to call "Emo McScottish Kilt" because everyone knows he's pining for the lochs, but he refuses to go home. Henchard befriends him and offers him a job and confides in him secrets of his past life.

Henchard and Susan are reunited, and in an effort to keep up appearances, he sets her and Elizabeth Jane up with a house, and begins to court Susan. They keep all their past life a secret from Elizabeth Jane, because they feel she would be better off not knowing. What about Lucetta? Henchard tells her that the marriage is off, and she asks for her letters back. She never gets them back due to a family emergency. The return of  his wife and daughter sets in motion a decline in Henchard's fortunes and he has a series of bad decisions and luck that leads to the end of his friendship with Donald. This is mostly because Donald becomes well liked due to his amiable nature, smarts and  the fact that he's everything Henchard wishes he could be. Elizabeth Jane takes a liking to him as well and they begin courting, with help from Susan.

Then things get kind of ugly and you realize how much of a lying, deceptive bastard Henchard is, but I'll let you discover that part. The chapters are short, and the story is excellent, especially for an old timey book (it was written in 1886).

Happy Reading!

-Alex

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Volume II

I am a big Alan Moore fan (despite how crazy and scary he looks) and this particular book has been waiting for me since I bought it a few months ago. I had put off reading it till I was done with school, and it was worth the wait.

For those not familiar with the comic series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a group of exceptional individuals: Allan Quartermain (played in the movie by the legendary Sean Connery, but I digress) from King Solomon's Mines, Captain Nemo from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Hawley Griffin from The Invisible Man, Dr. Henry Jekyll/Edward Hyde from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Wilhelmina Murray from Dracula. They are recruited by Campion Bond on behalf of British Intelligence to protect the Empire. They end up stopping Fumanchu from blowing up Britain with his crazy newfangled airship. At the end of the book the group is told to remain in service to the crown.

In volume two, we find our heroes in a world that takes place during War of the Worlds, when an alien pod lands in England. The story itself starts on Mars, where Lt. Gullivar Jones is fighting Martians, who decide to come to earth. Hawley ends up making an alliance with the aliens, which no one knows about till the aliens begin to strike. Dr.Jekyll has permanently chosen to be in his Hyde persona so he's this huge ape thing with a very quick temper. The group gets split up by Mycroft Holmes, (who now heads the League instead of Professor Moriarty) in an effort to subdue the aliens. Nemo and Hyde patrol the Thames in the Nautilus, and Allan and Mina go to Dr. Moreau and his creepy talking animals, in search of a weapon known as H-142. While on this trip, Allan and Mina get hot and heavy in a whole bunch of graphic panels that really skeeved me out ( some things are better left implied and off stage Mr. Moore.). I'll just say Allan is into some weird things. I'd also like to point out the irony of the F-word being replaced by "****" but there's gratuitous nudity and sex. I got a chuckle out of that, as it was the only bright spot to that part.

Hawley is left alone which proves to be a bad idea. Hyde returns to the British Museum, (where the group has their HQ) and tortures and rapes Hawley in an effort to gain information about his doublecrossing, and for the attempted rape of Mina. I'm not gonna spoil the ending because it's kind of cool and futuristic and it has to do with biological weapons, but it's worth the reading.

What I liked also was at the the end there was some bonus cover art from each of the issues, and a board game, but the highlight was "The New Traveller's Almanac". This was more words than pictures, and it was an account of the travels of the members of the League and some other literary heroes to the odd and strange places in the world.

So there you have it. Well, part of it, anyway.

Happy Reading!

-Alex

Shazam! A Blog!

A lot of my good friends are starting the blogging trend, and I thought since I am looking for work and running out of things to occupy my attention, might as well blog about the things I am reading.

Normally when I read, I try to stick with one genre, but I have gotten so behind in my reading that there really was no time to figure out what I wanted to read. So there's some old and some new books. Plus I have been in love with the iBooks app, because I can read books that I haven't been able to find that I really wanted to read (like Bleak House).  I'll try not to spoil the main plots of the books, but if I do, I will warn you.

So sit back and enjoy, and check out my reviews!

-Alex