Books I Read in 2009 and the Months In Which I Finished Them:

January
1. The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky
3. Tears of a Tiger, Sharon M. Draper
4. Forged by Fire, Sharon M. Draper
5. Nothing But the Truth, Avi
6. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison
7. Redwall the Graphic Novel, Brian Jacques
8. Buried Onions, Gary Soto
9. A Heart Divided, Cherie Bennett & Jeff Gottesfeld

February
10. Upstate, Kalisha Buckhanan
11. Burned, Ellen Hopkins
12. The Beast, Walter Dean Myers
13. Fire from the Rock, Sharon M. Draper
14. Introducing Linguistics, R.L. Trask & Bill Mayblin
15. America: a Novel, E.R. Frank
16. The God of War, Marisa Silver

March
17. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ann Brashares
18. The Second Summer of the Sisterhood, Ann Brashares
19. Girls in Pants: The Third Summer of the Sisterhood, Ann Brashares
20. Forever in Blue: The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood, Ann Brashares
21. Street Pharm, Allison van Diepen
22. Push, Sapphire
23. A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
24. Among the Hidden, Margaret Peterson Haddix
25. The Watsons Go to Birmingham (1963), Christopher Paul Curtis
26. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
27. Rebel Angels, Libba Bray
28. The Sweet Far Thing, Libba Bray
29. A Brief Chapter in My Impossible Life, Dana Reinhardt
30. Persepolis: A Story of a Childhood, Marjane Satrapi

April
31. What They Found: Love on 145th Street, Walter Dean Myers
32. American Born Chinese, Gene Luen Yang
33. Worlds Afire, Paul B. Janeczko
34. Among the Impostors, Margaret Peterson Haddix
35. Persepolis 2: A Story of a Return, Marjane Satrapi
36. The Gift of Fear, Gavin deBecker
37. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak
38. Among the Betrayed, Margaret Peterson Haddix
39. Among the Barons, Margaret Peterson Haddix
40. Among the Brave, Margaret Peterson Haddix

May
41. Maniac Magee, Jerry Spinelli
42. Confessions of a Teen Sleuth, Chelsea Cain
43. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith
44. Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Jeff Kinney
45. Popular Vote, Nicol Ostov
46. Bluford High: Blood is Thicker, Paul Langan & D.M. Blackwell
47. Extras, Scott Westerfeld
48. The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett
49. Do You Speak American, Robert MacNeil & William Cran & Robert McCrum
50. Eclipse, Stephenie Meyer
51. Among the Enemy, Margaret Peterson Haddix
52. Among the Free, Margaret Peterson Haddix
53. No More Dead Dogs, Gordon Korman
54. Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer
55. Yellow Brick Roads: Shared and Guided Paths to Independent Reading 4-12, Janet Allen
56. The Time-Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
57. Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
58. Chew on This: Everything You Didn't Want to Know About Fast Food, Eric Schlosser & Charles Wilson

June
59. Notes from the Midnight Driver, Jordan Sonnenblick
60. The Twentieth Wife, Indu Sundaresan
61. Wanted, Caroline B. Cooney
62. What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Daniel Pool
63. Bad Mother, Ayelet Waldman
64. The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, Susan Faludi

July
65. American Creation, Joseph Ellis
66. Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, Ayelet Waldman
67. We Beat the Street, Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins, and Rameck Hunt
68. Just Ella, Margaret Peterson Haddix

August
69. Much Ado About Grubstake, Jean Terris
70. Stumbling on Happiness, Daniel Gilbert
71. Peeps, Scott Westerfeld

September
72. How to Talk So Kids Can Learn at Home and In School, Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish
73. Maus: A Survivor's Tale - My Father Bleeds History, Art Spiegelman
74. Maus: A Survivor's Tale - And Here My Troubles Began, Art Spiegelman
75. Bluford High: The Bully, Paul Langan
76. Bluford High: Lost and Found, Anne Schraff
77. Bluford High: Until We Meet Again, Anne Schraff
78. Bluford High: A Matter of Trust, Anne Schraff
79. Snitch, Allison van Diepen
80. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, Jeff Kinney
81. The Case Against Homework: How Homework is Hurting Children and What We Can Do About It, Sara Bennett & Nancy Kalish
82. Intensely Alice, Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
83. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Last Straw, Jeff Kinney
84. Lucky, Alice Sebold

October
85. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte (reread)
86. Skin, Adrienne Maria Vrettos
87. Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float: Classic Lit Signs On to Facebook, Sarah Schmelling
88. Al Capone Shines My Shoes, Gennifer Choldenko
89. Black Students, Middle-Class Teachers, Jawanza Kunjufu
90. Monster, Walter Dean Myers
91. The Trouble With Black Boys...and Other Reflections on Race, Equity, and the Future of Public Education, Pedro Noguera
92. The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perrotta
93. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, Jeff Kinney

November
94. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand

So, even though movies have been disappointing lately, TV has not been that way at all. I zipped through season two of The Wire last week and I really think this is the greatest television show of all time. It's just unbelievably good. I don't even feel like I'm watching TV - it's like reading a great, complex novel.

There are just SO many interesting characters. It's almost impossible to pick a favorite, though I try - my dad's is Bunk, Jesse says he thinks Prez has the best storyline over the course of the series, but I think I have to agree with my mom, who loves Omar the best. He just KILLS me.

As for upsetting character deaths...lord. You think Joss Whedon is bad? You think J.K. Rowling is bad? You think Lindelof & Cuse are bad? You think GEORGE R.R. MARTIN is bad? NOTHING compared to David Simon.

( spoilers up till the end of season three )

I'm going to take a break before watching season three. It was a lot of fun to see Amy Ryan as Beadie Russell. She can pull off a slightly naive cop just as expertly as she can play a cracked-out neglectful mother in Gone Baby Gone. Wonderful actress.

Did I really only update twice in the past month? Huh.

Anyway, it's November, and I wanted to update my fall movie to-see list. It's officially Oscarbait season, which means we'll get a lot of treacly schlock mixed with legitimately good movies.

I want to be psyched. I want to look at the fall movie preview and get excited and schedule viewing dates, meeting up with friends and arguing over what to see.

But really? There are only three movies I care at all about seeing this fall: Precious, The Princess and the Frog and New Moon. Only two of those I expect to be *good* movies; New Moon is purely for the LOLZ. I *was* excited to see The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, but Terry Gilliam is dead to me for signing the Free Polanski petition and I don't want to support him financially. (This REALLY irks me because one of my Monty Python DVDs is missing and now I can't replace it!)

I don't know - am I missing something? What good movies are coming out this year?

Oh, and fox1013 alerted me to this.

Filmmakers, why are you trying to destroy our childhood? First you gave Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs a plot, then you gave the Wild Things all these Adult Issues and Angst, and now you're making the Berenstain Bears interact with PEOPLE?!

Where the Wild Things Are was an issue of adults dumping all their issues on a story and projecting their problems through someone else's characters. It made a children's book into a Movie For Adults ABOUT Childhood...wow, deep. I swear, sometimes I really love autism, because I saw that film with my brothers and the best part about it was watching Daniel crack up laughing during the movie's biggest "emotional" scenes.

But now? Now the Berenstain Bears will be a ZANY comedy about bears meeting people...except the entire point is that they live in a society of ONLY BEARS.

Some children's books just aren't meant to be movies, darnit. A kid's book/YA book that WOULD make a good movie? The Westing Game. But nowadays I don't trust anyone to do it right.

My icon is directed at the Free Polanski pledge going around and all the morally bankrupt fuckers who signed it.

Terry Gilliam! TERRY GILLIAM! You are a member of MONTY PYTHON. Shame on you. SHAME ON YOU. You too, Martin Scorsese. And you, Woody Allen - although, that's not a shocker, really.

I am pleased, at least, that the public opinion against Polanski seems quite strong.

Polanski is a rapist and pedophile and should have to serve time. I don't care how good his movies are.

Yeah. No.

This country is so deeply divided on every issue, it's nice to know that there's at least ONE thing Democrats and Republicans can agree on - BOTH sides see students as nothing but walking test scores, and they know fuck-all about education or how kids learn. Make the school days longer? Sure, if that means schools can bring art, music, and PE back! But if it means EVEN MORE reading and math drills? Combined with three hours of homework they get every night? For the love of all that is holy, let kids be kids.

Thanks for the well wishes on my last post, everyone. I appreciate the good vibes.

In other news, HIMYM is love, and as much as I love BroTP to the point where I sometimes make them my LJ mood theme, I loved Proffessor/Professor Ted even more. "My name is Professor Mosby. What up, dudes? SILENCE!" Hee hee. Ted as teacher >>> Lily as teacher.

I decided to pick up with season six of BtVS just when the new TV season is starting! I know, it's the worst timing ever, but as much as I'm enjoying this season of Top Chef, as much as I'm looking forward to HIMYM and 30 Rock and Dexter and The Simpsons (yes, STILL), I doubt there's any show that will grip me like BtVS does. There's nothing else out there that has the same wonderful blend of melodrama, tragedy, comedy, horror, sci-fi, cheese, and the macabre like this show does. In fact, I should stop being silly and pretending like it's only my second-favorite show of all time - it's tied with The Simpsons for first.

( Random thoughts on Bargaining through Life Serial )

I hate September. Between paying my tuition, paying for my books for grad school, and buying supplies for my classroom, my credit card bill is so high that, after I pay it off, I have very little left for October. Meaning I can't do anything fun for my birthday. Very annoying, especially since I'm turning 25 this year AND my birthday falls on a Saturday.

When did Romeo and Juliet become the poster children for dumb, irresponsible teenagers who kill themselves because they have no lives?

Did I miss the entire point of Shakespeare's play? I thought the whole idea was that it was the parents, the Montagues and the Capulets, who were caught up in an extremely petty feud, that the sins of the fathers (and mothers) were visited upon the sons (and daughters).

Did I miss the part where Romeo, a lovesick fool with his head in the clouds at the beginning of the play, tries to avoid a duel with a hotheaded Paris ("Tempt not a desperate man."), because he's over the whole family feud bullshit and Paris is still a foolish boy playing with a sword?

Did I miss how Juliet was a completely docile complying little lamb at the beginning - "I'll look to like, if looking liking move/but no more deep will I endart mine eye/than your consent gives strength to make it fly" - and how she changes into someone who refuses to be essentially sold into a marriage, to someone who refuses to let her father dictate her life?

Yes, in the end, they kill themselves, and yes, it's because the other one is dead. But it's the parents, the authority figures, who are to blame. ("Heaven conspired to kill your joys with love.") Anytime people criticize Romeo and Juliet for being stupid and irresponsible, I always feel like they're (the critics) are putting their own modern sensibilities on an Elizabethan play and trying to show how "edgy" and "cool" they are for not buying into the whole star-crossed love thing.

Come on. It's Romeo and Juliet. No one's saying you have to love it - it's certainly not his best tragedy - but you're not edgy or cool for completely misinterpreting the story.

This reminds me of my other big Shakespeare argument irritation - the modern view of Ophelia of a archetypal "woman scorned" who goes crazy and kills herself because her boyfriend dumps her. Yes, a woman who can't handle being dumped is SO much more interesting than the *actual* Ophelia who goes insane and kills herself after her father dies because he dominated her life so completely that she's nothing without him. Sure, either interpretation means that she's all wrapped up in a man, but in one version she's a whiny ninny who overreacts to a breakup and in another she's a victim of her father's dominating, controlling persona.

Ask me my fannish Top Five [Whatevers]. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post. Possibly with pictures.

(Meme stolen from several people on my flist).

The late, great George Carlin wrote in one of his books that people should be allowed 1 legal murder per month. 12 murders a year - but they're not cumulative. Just 1 legal murder per month.

In a world where this was legal, I would like to use my first murder on any racist jackoff who whines about Barack Obama's so-called racism against the poor repressed white people and then immediately turns around and insist that he wasn't born in the United States, but in KENYA, where all the BLACK PEOPLE live, and don't see that that claim IN OF ITSELF is a racist one.

I live in the city and don't have much money. One of my goals this year was to take advantage of the many fun free events the city has to offer. That hasn't always worked out, since this year, the rain, it raineth every day. (Although next week looks like it's only raining every other day!) But now there are a ton of summer movies coming out that are making me squee.

500 Days of Summer - saw it, loved it. They used my favorite Regina Spektor song over the opening sequence, and that in of itself is a good sign.

Julie and Julia - It's all about the food porn. And Meryl Streep.

Adam - Love story about a man with Asperger's syndrome and his neighbor. Hits a lot of things I find interesting, and it looks like a film where the character with the disability is treated with dignity.

Paper Heart - Michael Cera playing yet another version of George Michael Bluth after being such a whiny stick-in-the-mud about the Arrested Development movie, and it also has Seth Rogen who I'm getting sick of, but Charlyne Yi is adorable and the premise is right up my alley.

Taking Woodstock - Something to do with Woodstock and a hotel, I don't really care, because the five names listed in the trailer were Demetri Martin, Imelda Staunton, Eugene Levy, Emile Hirsch, and Liev Schreiber! I LOVE ALL OF THEM!

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS! - I am Tarantino's bitch and my butt will be in the seat...not on opening night, because I'll be at camp, but very soon afterwards!

Oh, and I still have not seen Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It's one of those movies I feel obligated to see but I don't actually *want* to see it. Forget the changes from the book to the movie, those are going to happen, but the first four movies are just exercises in shoddy filmmaking for me. The fifth is the only one that made Hermione cool without going over board with the GRRRL POWERRRRR and gave Ron some dignity and relevance, and I've still only seen it once because, well, I just don't think they're very good movies. But I will feel WRONG if I DON'T see it in the theater. *pout*

STOP RAINING, NEW YORK!

So Sean Bean has been cast as Ned Stark in the HBO Song of Ice and Fire series.

I am pretty pleased. Peter Dinklage is playing Tyrion, and so far the actors playing Robert and Jon Snow look close to the descriptions of them - although now that I saw someone mention Skandar Keynes (Edmund from The Chronicles of Narnia) as an ideal casting for Jon, I can't get that idea out of my head!

I just need people to PLEASE stop suggesting Josh Holloway for Jaime because OMG that would be AWFUL. Jaime Lannister is supposed to be smart and charming, not greasy and smirky. I mean, I have about zero fear about this actually happening since they seem to be going for a British cast, but the very idea just makes me shudder.

Oh, and I've heard people mention the idea of Tricia Helfer as Cersei...that works for me, but now I'm wondering how the series can possibly employ James Callis. The first idea that comes to mind is Petyr Baelish, y/n?

This post is brought to you by the Association of People Who Are Forcing Themselves to Get Psyched Up for the HBO Series Because We've Given Up On GRRM Finishing the Damn Books.

After reading a lot of reviews of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I'm starting to dread seeing it. I'm really not looking forward to another round of, "Harry Potter and Hermione Granger are the MOST PERFECT BEINGS EVER SO BRAVE AND WONDERFUL, oh and Ron Weasley is also there, kind of, fucking up a lot, GOD, why are the perfect Harry and Hermione even friends with him in the first place?" I've had enough of Ron getting the Xander Harris post-season 2 treatment.

( More S5 Buffy commentary )

I got a chance to see a very appealing new musician on Saturday night at one of the free music shows at one of the bars in my neighborhood. Her name is Adrien Reju and describes her style as acoustic/indie/roots music. The first artist that comes to my mind to compare her to is Ingrid Michaelson, but I think she's even better. Check it out; her voice is beautiful.

( Buffy S5: No Place Like Home through Listening to Fear )

"Into the Woods" is going to have its own post because I tend to ramble and even cite feminist authors with that one.

I just made curried stir-fried potatoes and they were yummy. I'm proud of myself. But please tell me that cooking becomes faster with practice, because the recipe time was 20 minutes and it took me an hour just to chop and mince the potatoes/onion/cilantro.

Buffy vs. Dracula
Both BvD and “Restless” mention the Slayer’s power rooted in darkness and all that and I’m looking forward to seeing the Slayer mytharc develop. Anyway, this is not my favorite season premiere but still tons of fun, although I agree with Xander that we’re ALL sick of him being the buttmonkey. Remember when Xander used to make jokes and wasn’t *the* joke? Also, it’s funny to me how Gellar and Blucas had zero chemistry as “hot” lovers in S4, yet in S5, when Buffy and Riley have clearly lost the “zing” and have fallen into boring routine, they *do* have appropriate chemistry.

( Real Me, The Replacement, Out of My Mind: rants on Dawn, Xander, Riley )