Thoughts on Books

Two years ago, while sitting on a bunk bed in a hostel in Mexico City, I saw one of my fellow travellers reading a book with a topless (possibly naked) guy on the cover. This book has been highly memorable to me, and since then I've seen it a number of times. My sister read it. Our friends read it. They all talked about it, but nothing really inspired me to read it.

I know it's not really fair to turn your back on an entire genre. I'm just not naturally disposed to like fantasy novels. Harry Potter being an exception. Dragons and fairies and magic just doesn't excite me as a reader.
It was probably because of this that I halted reading City of Bones for so long. My idea of the book was so off. I had judged it too harshly. The picture I had in my head was of demon hunter people (true enough), on some sort of quest to save the world. If you've read the book, you know that my image of it was a little askew. Yes they hunt demons, and yes they sort of in a very vague way, go on a quest, but I had envision it wrong. Bad Alex. No more judging books based on genre again.

But the thing is, it's nearly impossible for me not to judge a book based on genre. As much as I try to be open minded, I can't just pick up a sci-fi novel and start reading. It's different.

I'm just going to give me thoughts on the trilogy now. I'm trying to be spoiler free.

City of Bones
The first book in the Mortal Instruments certainly had a gripping start. You are introduced to Clary and Simon, who are immediately endearing and relatable. Slowly and carefully the author informs the reader of Shadowhunters, mysterious demon hunters and everything starts to fit together, with tons of missing pieces to keep you reading. You meet Jace, sexy, cynical, sarcastic and charming, and watch the emotional and physical stuggles of Clary slowly discovering her past.

I'm usually weary of any person who thinks that you have to know who your parents are to know who YOU are. I just don't believe you have to know who your father is to truly discover yourself. However, I was not irritated by Clary's want for information. I loved this book; it was so full of plot twists and secrets, it kept your interest throughout. Plus there are tons of hilarious lines, worth reading again and again.

City of Ashes
The second installment in the Mortal Instruments trilogy was equally intriguing. Unfortunately I read all the books extremely fast, and therefore they all blend together in my mind to an extent. I remember it was an emotional roller coaster with tons of twists and turns and unexpected drops (sorry for that cheesy metaphor, but it's true). The series itself is filled with so many secrets that the reader can't help but devour the book chapters at a time.

City of Glass
At this point in my reading frenzy, I just wanted to get to the end of the book so I could finally see all the secrets unravelled. I regret reading it a little too fast, but I'll just have to read it a second time to get more out of the experience a little later.

A few charming new characters are introduced as Clary continues to struggle to save her mother and discover the secrets of her past (some things can't NOT be corny). Her battle against her feelings is startleingly realistic. The end of this series was nail-biting, tense, and satisfying. It was fulfilling to finally discover the truth about everything, and see how it all ended.
***
After you've read something like Twilight, it's a relief to grab onto something with round and believable characters. I thought Clary was a beautiful, understandable, complex character. It marks an incredible romance when you can actually understand why the characters fell in love with each other. It makes it so much more real when you can see the attraction and believe it.

I loved these books. They were page turning, intriguing, well written and comical. Some of the lines are just so funny, and the dialogue is intensely realistic. I don't know how much more I can rave about the series without exploding so I'll end here. I would recommend these books to anyone, regardless of past relations with the genre. You won't be disapointed.

Solutions!

I have come up with a solid plan for this blog. I will continue to post to Raving Persuasions on Thursday and Sunday, and if I feel the need to blog on any other day, I will post here. I know, it kind of feels like this blog is being shoved to the back burner, but at least the stove is still on, right?

I think you'll mostly be seeing the odd journal-like posting here, because I'll be saving most of my interesting content for RP. I'm sorry A2A1 (according2alex1), but that's just the way things are. I wrote the following to kill time with no intent to blog it, but it seemed like worthy material at the time, so forgive the rambling and topic-less nature of it. If you're still reading that is. Because usually I like to fill this blog with what I'm thinking, because that seems much more interesting than what's actually happening. What here it is, my thoughts on my ACTUAL LIFE...

It’s 10:59pm, and mom is sleeping in my bed so that Rachel and Maddy can watch Hellboy, so I get to stay up until the movie ends so I can sleep on the couch. My other option is to attempt to fall asleep with the movie on, but seeing as I can’t even focus on my book, with the background noise and other distractions, I don’t think that option is the best one.

As I said above, I can’t really focus on reading, and Jane Eyre requires constant attention. I often do this thing when reading, where my mind starts to wander off, and I don’t notice until my eyes reach the bottom of a page and I can’t recall what I just read. This is a problem if you're actually attempting to follow the book's plot. 

I really like Jane Eyre; it isn’t completely riveting and gripping, but I’m invested enough in the story that I want to continue reading. The writing is good, and I like the character of Jane, for some reason. She seems like a good person, and reasonably talented.

But I can’t focus. Why is that? The book is captivating; I guess it’s more me that is failing to be captivated. Typing works, too, as entertainment.

I really don’t understand the appeal of movies like Hellboy and The Hulk. It is definitely not because there are good-looking male leads, but I guess it must have some appeal, otherwise my sisters would not be watching it at this moment, and I would not be typing here.

My birthday is in two days. I’ll be fifteen on Sunday, which also happens to be Mother’s Day. Today, when my mother asked me what I would like on the menu, I had an innovative idea. Normally in our family, on a person’s birthday, that person gets to decide what we eat, when we eat it, what we do, &. But for a few reasons, such as I don’t feel like deciding such things and it feels a little repetitive, I have asked my mom and sisters to come up with the menu and other events for the day. It’s going to be a surprise for one said birthday girl.

I have to say I’m quite impressed with my plan. Not only do I have no decisions to make, but it’s going to be interesting seeing what my sisters think I want to eat and do. It’ll be a kind of test, to see who knows what my favourite cake is, and also very enjoyable for me, the surprisee (I just added that the the MS Word dictionary—WIN!).

I guess we survived the week without mom and Rachel. We deviated from the menu for most of the time, but we survived (mostly due to the Special K). Everyone made it to all their activities promptly, and I think we had fun. We had fun, right?

Last night was actually a lot of fun. My dad came home from his soccer game, feeling extremely sore, with a craving for pizza. We hurried out the door to the car, before we could lose our nerve, and drove to Safeway, to see if it was open at 10:30pm. It was--apparently the establishment closes at 12am. After wandering the aisles for a while, we came out with a Delissio pizza, some bulk candy, Miss Vicky’s and a box of Fudgesicles. Talk about epic success. 

Driving home we debated what movie we could watch and headed in the door to pop in Hot Fuzz. Unfortunately, at about midnight, we were all too tired to go on. We turned off the movie about half-way through and all stumbled off to bed, sugar laced, but sufficiently tired. What a night... 

That is all, hope it wasn't to boring, and if it was, well, there's not a lot I can do about it. That is my life. Deal with it.

Conundrum

I have a bit of a problem here, reader. You see I've started up this Made of Awesome group blog with my BEDA buddies, which I am supposed to post blogs bi-weekly on Thursdays and Sundays.

That, however, is not the problem. The blog itself, Raving Persuasions, is completely awesome and I'm really excited about it. The problem is, that I don't know what is going to happen to this blog. I don't know if I want to post my blogs on both of the blogs, but I might do that anyway.

I've had this blog for so long, I started it in March of 2008. That's a year and a bit. How long have you ever kept writing something for a year? 

I want to bring back some memories from those days of blogging, simply because 1. I need to prove how much my blog skills have improved and 2. I need to show you how much things change (namely my obsession with Twilight).

This is an excerpt from my first ever blog post:

So what else is there? Right, books. I love to read. Reading is the best, you can go anywhere with books and I try to explore different genres though my favourites are vampire romances. Well just one favourite. Three words: The Twilight Saga. One word: Love. If you havn't read Twilight or it's sequels I order you to stp reading this right now.... I mean right now..... stop reading. Go read Twilight by Stephenie Meyer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm going to stop writing now so you can read it. Get it from your library or buy it! Trust me it's worth it!!!!

Look at all those exclamation points. I write like an insanely deranged and obsessive teenage girl. Which I suppose I was at the time. Back in that time, I used to end my blog posts with "Alex loves you!!" and write about things like America's Next Top Model (how lame it was--I wasn't a completely different person) and how hot Robert Pattinson was and about how I met Avril Lavign's drummer (which I actually didn't, he was some creeper PRETENDING to be Avril Lavign's drummer). The amount of sentences ended like this!!! is astounding.

I wrote about some noteworthy things, like global warming when I had just seen An Inconvenient Truth, and my issues with Girl Guide cookies, but most of it was about Twilight. I know, it's sad.

One thing I did notice, is that the month I blogged the most in last year was April. There were 17 blogs written by me in April, and though they weren't as long as the ones I wrote for BEDA, it was still significantly more blogs than I wrote any other month. I guess I was in training or something. Haha. BEDA training ;)

I have to stop reading my old blogs because I pass out due to the inferiority of my past writing. If you're interested in a laugh or seeing how much things change I recommend you check out the archives of my blog. I just have to say, I've come a long way since March 17, 2008.

Another charming blog finish:

Signing out! -Edward's water bottle (aka Alex)

The Bone Thief

I feel like blogging. I have a story I have been meaniing to tell. I can't tell if it's as funny as I seem to think, but I guess you can decide after you've heard it. 

I have a joint-ish backyard with my neighbours. There's this huge yard and we both have sliding glass doors, which we usually leave open in warm weather.

My neighbours have a dog. He is a keeshound (if you're into that kind of thing) and extremely fluffy. I have never seen this dog when he was wet, but I'm sure he would be a third of the size he normally is, if he were soaked the the skin. He is a fluffy hairball of a dog, and this may be irrelevent information to the coming story, but he is quite unattractive. Oh and his name is Willy. Or Willie, I'm not entirely sure.

Anyway, sometimes when the door is open, Willy will sit outside the glass door, looking all sad and pathetic. He sits there and sometimes he comes in and looks around. He usually keeps his head down but if you look up at him and he sees you staring at him, he'll leave, like he knows he shouldn't be in there. You don't even need to tell him. He KNOWS.

We have these red containers that we keep the dog's food in. One for kibble, one for doggie bone treats. After restocking the bones we had so many in there we couldn't put the lid back on. But that was okay, because Maggie wouldn't take more than one per day. It was like a self reward system. She's very intelligent, that dog.

One day, the weather was nice, and we left the door open. I was sitting in the living room, when I saw Willy walk into the house, head straight towards the dog treat containers, grab one, and walk out the door. As soon as he was out the glass door he sat down looked right at me and started eating his stolen bone.

It was so odd, I just started to laugh. He had known exactly where the treats were kept, like he'd been watching us all this time, and had finally caught on to our routine. Seriously who does this dog think he is?