Movies, Music and Mondays Part I: A Tribute to John Hughes

As you may have heard, this country just lost someone who, in my opinion, was one of THE most talented people to grace said country- John Hughes. In case you don't know who that is- GASP!- John Hughes is the creator of The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty In Pink, and- my personal favorite- Ferris Beuller's Day Off. (Watch them!)



He really, truly understood what it was like to be a teenager in the '80s- the unrequited love, insane crushes, awkward gawkiness, bad clothes, and embarrassing moments constantly populating life. To quote myself, he is the Judy Blume of cinematics.



I found this link to a girl's blog who was pen pals with him- check it out, you won't be sorry!



I'm really glad I made my essay about his work- I feel like I did something for someone important to me.



Some advice: Next time your crush blows you off, you get a huge zit, etc., watch one of his movies- it's worked for everyone else ;)



Excuse me while I mourn/write Part ll of MMM.

In My Mailbox- August 15th

Hey guys, guess what?

I got 21 books this week. Yes, I see your jaws dropping over there ;)

So here's the breakdown for this week!

THE RECIEVED FOR REVIEW: None (at least, not THIS week... *rubs hands in a scheming manner*)

THE LIBRARY:

My thoughts:

Waves: Yay! I can't believe they had this at the library. I almost bought it just before I went to the library, but I decided against buying any more books and got this. It's a kind of mystery novel, and it sounds realllllly good, but sad. I love the cover.

Just Listen: I'm sorry to say I'm technically a Sarah Dessen... VIRGIN (the reason it's emphasised is for Sara L, You asked for a hint in the comments on the review of Triple Shot Betty? There it is!), and apparently you guys are nutso for the stuff, so I figured why not when they actually had it on the shelf.

Envy: I'm almost done with this one already! omgomgomg I can't put it down. SO much drama... I can't wait for Splendor (love that title)!

Triple Shot Bettys In Love: As you know, the first book wasn't that good to me, but I saw the sequel on the shelves and I couldn't resist. This one looks better :)

Teen Inc.: I've been looking everywhere for this! Shorty that I am I had to CLIMB the bookshelf in the library to get it. I got caught by the librarian xD So she brough me a stool and all is well.

Does My Head Look Big In This?: I shied away from this for some reason or other, but then I saw it when someone had put it on the shelf with the back cover, and I had to pick it up on account of the polka dots of adorableness! It looks awesome.

Wintergirls: I finally got it! Mom put a hold on it for me and I got it the next day. Fantastic- words can't convey the worthiness of this book. I sense a rave review in our future.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox: I love the cover of this, absolutely gorgey (sorry Sasha, I'm stealing your word!). And the book so far is even better.

Click: This sounds really good too- I haven't heard of any of the authors contributing but I have incentive to now :)

Aurelia: Another book I almost bought but decided against! Part of my historical fiction (I can't think of the exact genre of books like this... Ivy, Ophelia, Aurelia... anybody know? It'll be a big help when I go on a hunt for those!) kick.

The Film Club: For once I'm glad the people misshelved (they're AWFUL about that) at the library- it's teen non fiction but it got placed in the new shelves. I wouldn't have found it otherwise. It sounds completely my thing, and I'm getting movie recommendations along the way :)

Graceling- I'm reading this for Sara's challenge, as a substitute. I saw it on te shelves (serendipity is my best buddy lately, especially kind. Maybe because I named my review site after it? :D) and I grinned. I got some weird looks.

Ready or Not: An All American Girl novel- The sequel to All American Girl, which I read the other week. My sources (meaning you guys) tell me it's better than the first!

Isabelle's Boyfriend: Just popped into my hands off the shelf today. I saw a review on Em's Bookshelf a while ago, I just remembered- probably why it looked so familiar :)

THE BOUGHT:

Lipstick Apology: I read a review of this on Sunshine Edition (Rachel's blog- hey! :)) and I decided I had to have it. It's amazing, I love it- another rave review on your way ;)

Sisters in Sanity: I love the cover... pretty! The main thing that drew me to it was the fact that it's the author if the phenomenal book, If I Stay. If it's half as good as that, it'll be fantastic!

Exclusively Chloe: This is one of the Elusive 3 (Exclusively Chloe, Shrinking Violet and Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies- debuts connected in my mind- 2 down, but the last still is no where to be found!) and it sounds great. (Sorry that phrase is popping up too much in this post! Actuallyh I'm not, it means the books are good ;))

Shrinking Violet- Again, Elusive 3. I am almost exactly like Violet, and the book has a really fresh good plot.

Ophelia: Reading for Sara's challenge. Pretty good so far.

OTHER:

Other, in this case, meaning I stole it from my mom's room :) I just saw the movie, I definitely recommend it! I was going to review it for Movie Monday tomorrow, but I'm doing a John Hughes memorial tribute instead.

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So that's my enormous haul this week! What about you guys?

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Margo's Challenge

If you're like me, you're totally and completely in love with this button, and if you're REALLY like me you'll have named them too (Oh, you want to know their names? *sigh* I suppose... from left to right and down it's: Mr. Bubby, Kat E. Kit, and... MO. Expirimental names of course ;D)

So Margo's challenge is as follows: She found this list (I saw it on the N website a few weeks ago, kept meaning to post it!) by BBC of books, classics and the like, that they say most people have only read about 6 of out of the whole list. Margo's challenge is to read through all the books on the list below- I'm going to post it, and then put an x by ones I've read... Eep!- no time limit set, but her own personal one is a year.

And without further ado, the list!

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up? Instructions: Copy this into your blog. Look at the list and put an (X) after those you have read. Pass it along to other book lovers...

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Total: 0 (I've read the bible, but not like a book, and others I haven't finished yet)

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
Total: 0


21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Total: 1

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini -
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden-
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Total: 0 (but I have the Kite Runner checked out, per my friend Erin's instance that I read it)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell -
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
Total: 1

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (x)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon (x)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Total: 2

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Total: 0

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
Total: 1

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Total: 2

.91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas9
8 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
Total: 1
So, my overall total is...

6.

I'm having trouble looking myself in the mirror! Technically it's 5, because I don't *think* I finished Cold Comfort Farm. Not only is BBC totally right about me, they OVERestimated me!

So what do you guys think? How many have you read? Will you do the challenge?

UPDATE: Hey, me again! I forgot the final 90- 100 portion of the list, and thanks to Margo for pointing outI missed a point... so my total is actually 8 (maybe 7, see the Cold COmfort Farm incident :P)

Good luck everybody!

I Gotsa Awards!

I got these a week ago from Margo and then again from Sara- thanks guys!- but I kept forgetting to post it :( So here it is, in all it's glory... the gorgey (omg I love this word, I stole it from Sasha- sorry, Sasha!) awards!






Isn't it pretty?

So, according to the rules, I have to list 7 of my fave things and 7 of my fave blogs (but how do I choose between you guys?!)

My favorite stuff:

1) iPod
2) The blogoverse!
3) Friends and family
4) This teeny tiny netbook laptop
5) Library
6) Compulsive book buying
7) Movies

Not in that particular order, obvs :)

Now I shall nominate (again, in no particular order of favoriteness!)...

1) Bookworm Barista
2) Dragonfly Book Reviews
3) Read Into This!
4) Collegiate Bookworm
5) B.A.M. Book Reviews
6) Bookalicious
7) The Striped Sock Story Society

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And now for the hearthfelt award!

I'm having trouble uploading the award, but picture an adorable widdle bunny in a pink tea cup peaking out of the tea cup and crouching back in. :)

So here it is, the rules blatantly copied from Margo (sorry, Margo!):

Do you reach for a cup of cocoa or tea when your relaxing, seeking comfort, sharing a plate of cookies with family and friends? You know the feeling you get when you drink a yummy cup of cocoa, tea, or a hot toddy? That is what the Hearthfelt Award is all about, feeling warm inside.

Rules

Put the logo on your blog/post. Nominate up to to 9 blogs which make you feel comfy or warm inside. Be sure to link your nominees within your post. Let them know that they have been nominated by commenting on their blog. Remember to link to the person from whom you received your award.

Here's my nominees...

1) everyone I just gave the Kreativ Blogger Award to!

2) The Sweet Bonjour

3) Write About What?

And that should cover all nominees possible :) Thanks for being awesome, guys!

Confessions of A Triple Shot Betty Review

Title: Confessions of A Triple Shot Betty
Author: Jody Gehrman
Edition: Paperback Reprint
Publisher: Puffin (reprint)
MSRP: $7.99
Pages: 272
Rating: * * */ 5

SYNOPSIS: Geena, 16, plans to spend her summer working at the local coffee shop in her Sonoma Valley town with her cousin Hero and her friend Amber. She envisions grinding out espressos and supersize iced mochas during the day and spending sleepover nights painting toenails and confessing secrets. Within the first few hours of her arrival home from a Connecticut boarding school, Hero falls in love with an Italian boy working at her father's vineyard and it's clear that she and Amber are not going to be friends. As the story unfolds through Geena's diary entries, readers discover each girl's strengths, flaws, and personality.

PLOT: The plot was a little repetitive- I kept getting this feeling of deja vu when I was reading it- I was like, "Didn't this happen already?" It did, but in slightly different circumstances. I really would have like a fresher deal.

CHARACTERS: I didn't feel a connection to the characters at all, and that's really important to me! If anything, I was annoyed by them a bit. Geena was so crabby and whiny, I could barely take it. It gave me a headache.

SETTING: Even for it being a diary entry, it lacked details about the setting. So, not much to report besides that.

START/ENDING: Pretty slow beginning, but once you got into it and got the characters down, their personalities and whatnot, things picked up and got better. Great ending, though- by the end, I DID start to like Amber a little- well, I could tolerate her more than the others, anyways :)

OVERALL: We had some good times, and I might recommend it, but it's DEFINITELY not on the top of my list at all.

OTHER THOUGHTS: Anyone else think the cover is appallingly pink!? I'm not a big fan of pink. That probably should have been a warning sign that I wouldn't like the book much :(
Also, for some reason I KNEW Amber was a ****** (Spoiler, I'm protecting you)! I don't know how, maybe because that's how I would have done it if I wrote this, but it's supposed to be a shock, so that wasn't good. If you read it and knew tell me!

Apology!

Hey everyone! Just writing to say sorry for what an awful blogger I've been. Neglected Theme Thursdays, abandoned Waiting on Wednesdays (what'll you wait for now?!), teased Teaser Tuesdays. Not to mention I have to enter lots more of you guys into the Bowl of (soon to be!) Winners! I've gotten more entries then I thought I would- thanks so much, by the way :)

I promise I will try to attempt to work to blog more features, kk guys?

xoxo,

Meggin

Now I'm off to write reviews for you xtremely cool peeps.

Heaven Looks A Lot Like the Mall Review; My Assignment Turnout

Title: Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

Author: Wendy Mass

Edition: Paperback Reprint

Publisher: Little, Brown

MSRP: $7.99

Pages (numbered): 251 pp

Rating: * * * */5

(So, I really like this new format. I cover more points and it's more organized. Agreed? TOO BAD if not coz it's my blog- MUAHAHAHAHA!! *ahem* Sorry ;))

Synopsis- When 16 year old Tessa suffers a shocking accident in gym class, she finds herself in heaven (or what she thinks is heaven), which happens to bear a striking resemblance to her hometown mall. In the tradition of "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol", Tessa starts reliving hrt life up until that moment. She sees some things she'd rather forget. learns some things about herself she'd rather not know, and ultimately must find the answer to one burning question-- if only she knew what that question was.

Written in sharp, witty verse, Wendy Mass crafts an extraordinary tale of a spunky heroine who hasn't always made the right choices, but who needs to discover what makes life worth living.

PLOT- I loved the way this book was plotted out: once you got into it, and she's given a bag with seemingly random items purchased by/for her throughout the years at the mall, and she tells the story behind each. I LOVED that! You really got to know Tessa, for better or worse, and all her imperfections. It was executed beautifully.

CHARACTERS- Seeing as it's a verse kind of thing (not rhymy, though. I couldn't take it if it was :{) there aren't neccessarily a lot of characters. Mainly Tessa, her family, and her 3 friends. But Tessa was really wonderfully written- expressed perfectly, and her faults are shown as well as the good times, which is important. She seems so real. My complaint about it, though, is Tessa is kinda a horrible person! She steals and lies shamelessly, and she was SO unbelievably self-centered. But looking back, I think that was the point- sure, she did some awful things in her life, things she tries to forget, but that doesn't mean she doesn't deserve to live. But, y'know what, it could have been done down a little. :(

SETTING- I loved the mall heaven thing! It was so different and fun.

START/ENDING- Start was pretty good. It definitely drew me in- I was standing in front of the shelve at B and N, and I read the whole first 20 pages just standing like that! Then my legs started cramping, and some really tall dude is guyliner, etc. pretty much knocked me over. So I just went and bought it :)

Overall: A quick yet deep book that won't leave you dissapointed, and will have you thinking enough as this summer comes to an end so as to remove some summer brain damage.

P.S. Here's my English journal, how it turned out ( I found my camera!):

Do ya like it? I was v. v. picky about the movies :P And the books on the back are a) my favorites or b) books that have meant something important to this blog. Also, any thoughts on my button for Serendipity Reviews? I used Picnik- ridiculously easy and fun, BTW- at midnight last night, so I'm not sure if I was fully under creative influence :P JK.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, here's some piccys of my puppy Maddi:

Enjoy! xD