Anyone who enjoyed the movie will enjoy reading The Blind Side. I decided to read the book after seeing the movie. I was surprised by how closely the movie followed the book. There were aspects of the story that were understandably condensed for the screenplay, but the story of Michael Oher and the Touhys shown in the movie stayed relatively close to the one presented by Michael Lewis. Lewis did write several chapters that talked about changes in the game of football, hence the subtitle Evolution of a Game. These chapters were really the only noticeable part of the book not included in the film version.

I found Lewis to be a very compelling writer. He’s written close to a dozen books, but this was the first I ever read. I found myself drawn into even the parts of the book that went into detail about football strategy and other aspects of the game, even when I had no idea what any of it meant. I know nothing about football and have no desire to learn more, but Lewis made his topic so interesting that I couldn’t help but be drawn in.

Of course most people will probably read this book for Michael Oher’s story. Certainly that is why I did. I enjoyed getting a more complete picture of the story I found so inspiring in the movie.

The books that Mr.Sam showed us What You Think, Think the Opposite and It’s Not How Good You Are Its How Good You Want to be I also have at home. (I gave the books to Mr.Sam for new year present) There are lots of good quotes that I wanted to share with everyone, so I thought I should make a posting about the quotes in the book everyday. Here’s one of them, it is targeted to people who are shy and don’t really socialize with people.

photo by box bilbo

I don’t like public speaking. So you can imagine my horror when I realized that I would be required to do the occasional introduction for book signings. As some of you know, I worked at an independent bookstore that specialized in large events. Those, thankfully, were introduced by the store owner. The smaller ones (under 500) tended to fall into my lap. Unless, of course, the author was a store favorite like Chris Bohjalian. Our events didn’t look like this concert photo to the left. . . but it might as well have been. Especially when we started filming them!

I have met a lot of authors- most of them big names. I have met authors, like Walter Wick of the I Spy series, who think they’re brilliant and the whole world should sit through a 40 minute presentation so they, too, can bask in his greatness. And I’ve met authors who, like Jon Scieszka, are impossible to dislike. My favorite personality is still a local author/local TV investigative reporter. Hank Phillippi Ryan is the investigative reporter for one of our local TV stations. A few years ago she came out with a mystery called Prime Time. That’s when I met Hank. I have since done four signings with her- even made sure we said yes to her request at my new store.

These books are a fun read. I’m not big into romance (don’t say it’s because I’m on my way to being an old maid) but I’m a sucker for a good mystery. These books are mysteries but, like most people’s lives, there is a bit of romance mixed in. Hank’s books give you an insight into the life of an investigative reporter with Charlie McNally, the main character in the series. All four books are quick reads and are perfect for a day at the beach. The stories are realistic and unique.

Library Journal Review of Drive Time:

Buckle up and prepare for a wild ride as Charlie McNally and Boston’s Channel 3 News investigate a nefarious car theft/forgery operation and race to get their story on the air before their lives are endangered. In the meantime, Charlie becomes consumed with secret sleuthing as blackmail and suspicious deaths threaten the private, prestigious Bexter Academy where her fiancé teaches. Amid late-night stakeouts and dangerous car chases, Charlie finds time for romance, wedding planning, and bonding with her future stepdaughter. In her fourth series entry (after Prime Time, Face Time, and Air Time), Ryan once again channels her Emmy-winning investigative reporting expertise to craft a realistic and compelling mystery, full of hairpin turns and dangerous intersections at breakneck speed. VERDICT Placing Ryan in the same league as Lisa Scottoline and Julie Kramer, her latest book catapults the reader into the fast lane and doesn’t relent until the story careens to a stop. New readers will speed to get her earlier books, and diehard fans will hope for another installment.—Mary Todd Chesnut, Northern Kentucky Univ. Lib., Highland Heights

SECOND THE BEST
THIRD THE GOLDEN PRINCESS

Dear lord, how childish of me. But, who knows, perhaps this first post WILL be the worst on this little blog thing, and, inversly, the next one I produce will be the best.

About the Golden Princess however, I don’t know.

Hum.

Yes.

I suppose I need to introduce myself to the phantomesque little faces lit by the whitish-blue gazes of their LCD screens.

See that. That’s poetry. I jest, of course. I myself try to keep my prose as simply worded as possible. But that can be hard. It’s just sooooo easly to go off on a long spiel, using impossible, pretty-sounding words to make yourself sound distinguished, intelligent. The Victorians were brilliant at talking absolute crapola in that manner.

Aaaand, I’ve gone off the beaten track again. Brilliant.

To be honest, I don’t know what I can actually SAY about myself which is overtly interesting. I could gab on about how I’m one of those poor souls languishing in their parents small-town house in a small-town town over the summer, but that isn’t interesting. I could babble for hours about how much I want to be a writer, how I spend most of my time either writing, or thinking about what I’m going to be writing next, and my head is like this tiny little cave which somehow manages to hold thousands of bats and they’re frequently shaken up and start fluttering about the place and screeching so loud I don’t know what I should be focusing on. I could coo on about my kinds-long-term relationship which is still in it’s sort of new beginning-stage where you’re fascinated with the other person and cling to them like moss but it’s been eleven months (and one day) now and nothing’s died down. I could also bitch about my job as an underpaid, overworked (how overused is that phrase? I’m terribly sorry for being so cliched. I’m trying to avoid that) and technically illegal checkout worker at Pak N Save Supermarket.

Is my train of though too hard to follow? I’m kind of just writing things as they come to the forefront of my batcave.

Batcave. Heh. I sound like Batman.

Being Batman would be terrible. I’m sorry, but that comic book character has just endured too much mental turmoil to have a desirable life. Despite the dizzying wealth and social status. Interestingly, are there ANY comic book characters who don’t have a deep dark past?

And I’ve gone off on a tangent again. This is what makes writing hard. See, here I am, attempting to introduce myself to my unsuspecting little intarwebz audience out there, and I immediately go off and question the fact whether most of the characters in the multivers(i?) of DC and Marvel should be committed with severe PTSD (Answer? Yes). But it’s not that far removed from my own personal psyche, I suppose.

Not that I suffer from PTSD – I’m just wearing a T-Shirt emblazoned with the Heroes (and Magneto) of Marvel at this current moment. No Watchmen characters, however. This upsets and saddens me.

Hell, there’s a proverbial can of moral worms.

Anyways. Introductions. Let’s go this as a quick, short succession of sentences. Get it over with.

I am nineteen. I live in New Zealand. I have two cats which I love dearly. I am about to begin my second year of university. In Literature and Linguistics. Yes, I know I won’t get a job. But I don’t give a shit. I’ve always been on a different mental wavelength. But I’m not completley removed from reality. I eat MacDonalds and Burger King. I’m a full-out consumerist. I guess. My credit card is approaching it’s limit. So yes I am a full-blown consumerist. My personal library spans nearly 1300 years. I have no siblings. My parents never really saw a child as hindering their live-fast-party-hard lifestyle. I am afraid of cockroaches. But not spiders. I’m an Athiest. With an interest in physics. I’m waiting for string theory to be proven. I’m dating an engineer. Student. Yes I know about /b/. Who fucking doesn’t. I like video games. Perhaps too much. I’m a picky movie watcher. Pseudo-intellectuals make me want to commit unspeakable acts of evil. But I know later on in life they will be my only friends. I still like Pokemon. I don’t like sleeping. My addiction to coffee could be a reason for this. Apparently I’m weird. Don Brash for Prime Minister. American politics both fascinates and repels me. My favourite all-time Author is Shakespeare. My favourite Modern auther is Atwood. But I dislike radical feminists. I don’t smoke. I have reproduction Italian Renaissance tiles on my walls. For some fucking reason. I have a Toshiba Satellite from ‘94. I know you are jealous. I wore Trilby hates before they were cool. Does this make me an elitist faggot? Possibly. I believe in Aliens. But we’ll never ever see them.

If I think of anything interesting and noteworthy about myself I’ll post it later. Or something.

For now, however, I think I’m going to push the little blue ‘publish’ button. It’s not LATE, but I’m astonishingly tired. Although in my defense I woke up ridiculously early and spent five hours on a bus, where I tried to read “Orlando” by Virginia Woolf.

Maybe I need to give it another try. Put it down and pick it up in a week or so. It just wasn’t clicking for me, if that makes sense. Happens sometimes. Although it might have been the environment I’m in. Buses filled with headphones screeching at top-tinny volume, screaming children, people murmuring on phones, and the bus driver barking over the speaker because he forgot to turn it off and he’s bitching at his HQ about a cock-up in a booking, whilst lurching all about the place, plowing at a respectable speed through the disgustingly windy road of the NZ countryside are just not the greatest reading environments.

Funny that, eh?

After Herod died, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who were trying to take the child’s life are dead.”

So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: “He will be called a Nazarene.”

In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” This is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah: “A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’ “

John’s clothes were made of camel’s hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. Confessing their sins, they were baptised by him in the River Jordan.

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptising, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance and do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The axe is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptise you with water for repentance, but after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John, but John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptised by you, and do you come to me?”

Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness.” Then John consented.

As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ” ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”

Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’”

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

Matthew

I am so behind on my reading!

Olive Kitteridge is a fantastic read but I’ve been so busy (and sleepy) that I only get to read a few pages, maybe half a chapter every night. I’ll reserve most of my thoughts on Olive Kitteridge for my book review but this much I can say, this novel made me feel all of these emotions: sad, giddy, hopeful, nervous, inspired, and other feelings I can’t really describe. I’m down to my last 104 pages, and I’m excited to get immersed into the lives of the people around Olive Kitteridge.

I’m also reading The New Rules of Marketing and PR, which I borrowed from our office library. It’s the coolest thing! I get to borrow a book for a month (usually you can just take it home for three days); all I need to do is submit a short write-up on the book and what I thought about it.

These are the books that I plan to read next: