The Joy of Books

I started this blog because my friend was telling me about a blog she has and it sounded like so much fun. I started this blog mainly because I liked decorating it. The my friend and I decided to make a blog about books with another friend of ours. Our blog is about books because we all love reading and go to some sort of book store at least once a week. We have long lists of books we have read, books we want to read, and books ot suggest for others.

Some times we come across other book lovers but often times people look at us like we are crazy for stayin up until 3:00 in the morning reading. They don't understand how that we get so caught up in the book we still think it is only 8:30 or that the book is so good and we are so close to finishing that we just have to finish it tonight. Books are awesome and everyone should take some time to read a book, any book!

This is a video that I saw and has become really popular and is a lot of fun! It is called The Joy of Books:

Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~Author Unknown

Veronica Mars

My post on Alias inspired me to do another post of a show my sister got me addicted to. Veronica Mars. This show is also really awesome. It is about a girl who uses her investigative skills to solve her best friend's murder and other mysteries thoughout the series. This show got me hooked from the beginning. I love Veronica, she is a strong female character that is not often seen on TV.

While I was in class one day a was on the internet and I saw an artice on televisionwithoutpity.com about Veronica Mars. The article was about how Veronica is a good show for teenage girls to watch and I agree. I really like this article and have read it a couple of times. Here is the link to read it which I highly suggest.

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/brilliantbutcancelled/2011/08/veronica-mars-thinking-twice.php

Now for lots of quotes: Quotes from imdb.com    I put lots of quotes in again,  couldn't help myself.

Wallace: I suddenly feel like I'm in a scene from "The Outsiders".
Veronica: Be cool, Soda Pop

Meg: You believe me, right?
Veronica: You are the last good person here at Neptune High. I believe cartoon birds braided your hair this morning.

Keith: How's about an early peek at one of your Christmas presents?
Veronica: What about our strict "Christmas morning only" rule?
Keith: This Christmas, we make our own rules. Follow me!
Veronica: [following Keith to her bedroom] I'm so impressed you fit a pony into my room!


Meg: All of a sudden everyone's running up to me, saying how they never believed I did those things...
Veronica: I'm glad. Funny, no one's come running up to me.
Meg: It's because people are afraid of you.
Veronica: Then something's working...


Veronica: Look at you, all helpful.
Logan: Hey, your peskiness being unleashed on Conner brings me joy. Annoy, tiny blonde one, annoy like the wind!

Jackson Douglas: I hear you do detective stuff for people.
Veronica: I do favors for friends.
Jackson Douglas: I can pay.
Veronica: Sit down, friend.

Veronica: [surprising the Tritons with a camera] Hi, everyone! Say "repressed homosexuality"!

Mr. Tom Daniels: [walk in to find Weevil and Logan playing cards] Is this Reno or detention?
Logan: Can you believe the best of both.
Weevil: [Daniels takes away their cards] Oh, come on, man.
Logan: What the hell, we were playing a game here.
Mr. Tom Daniels: This is punishment gentlemen, not party time.
Logan: Well, that would explain the absence of balloon animals

Veronica: It's all fun and games till one of you gets my foot up your ass.

Troy: I'm Troy, by the way.
Veronica: I'm Veronica.
Troy: Really? Veronica. Okay, yeah, that does make a lot more sense.
Veronica: Makes more sense how?
Troy: Ah, it's nothing. I just should never listen to those guys. I mean, really, who names their daughter Trampy McBitch?

Veronica: You prank-called Mandy?
Lenny: What if I did?
Veronica: Well, I want to congratulate you. Shake your hand. Congratulations! You've been named the world's biggest cockroach. This award is given in recognition in your unparalleled lack of decency and humanity. Bravo. You're going to die friendless and alone.
Lenny: Hey, everyone knows you're the biggest...
Veronica: Shut up! If I want you to speak, I'll wave a Snausage in front of your nose. You use Mandy again to convince yourself you're not a loser, I will ruin your life. Got it?

Wallace: Oh, you don't even want to mess with me on that today. I just about murked my mom's lazy no-rent-paying tenant this afternoon.
Veronica: That guy is sleazy. So I hope murked means something bad.

Duncan: Great game the other night, man. 18 points and 8 assists.
Wallace: On the streets, we call those dimes.
Veronica: Streets? You live on the corner of Pleasant Valley and Marigold.

Veronica: If I ever die, do me a favor. Go on Oprah and tell the world that I loved kittens.

Cliff McCormack: [to Logan] My name is Cliff, and I'll be your, "If you cannot afford an attorney" attorney.

Veronica: I saw Meg.
Duncan: What do you mean, you...
Veronica: Meg's pregnant.
Duncan: I know.
Veronica: You know?
Duncan: There was a letter, from her aunt. I guess Meg had asked to live up there and raise the baby.
Veronica: Oh my God, Duncan, how could you...
Duncan: Last spring, before we broke up...
Veronica: OK, stop, I was shown a diagram once, I know how it works. But you knew, and you didn't tell me?
Duncan: This has nothing to do with us.
Veronica: Oh, no! Nothing. Your secret illegitimate child gestating in the womb of your comatose ex-girlfriend affects neither you nor me.

Wallace: Underneath that angry young woman show, there's a slightly less angry woman who's just dying to bake me something.


Logan: Excellent. A bar so low we can step over it.

---

Veronica: If there's a justification for my actions right now, it's this: I have gone completely mad.

ALIAS

What to do on New Year's Eve. This is a question I usually ask myself every year. What I always end up doing is just hanging out with friends or around the house during the day and at midnight I either have fallen asleep or I am watching TV only to look at the clock and it is 12:15. I'm not a much of a drinker or party person so my tradition of doing nothing suits me just fine. So while I was thinking of what I was going to do all day I looked over at the book I wanted to finish and the complete series of Alias that I own. And I decided to do both. So after I finished my book I started to re-watch Alias starting in the middle of season 1.

Now if you haven't seen Alias you need to. It is about spy named Sydney Bristow. And let me tell you it is addicting. It is one of the shows that my sister got me addicted to. When I decided to watch it again to waste some time I thought I would watch one maybe two episodes. Three one and a half seasons later and I am still watching Alias while writing this. That is how addicting this show is. There are so many cliff hangers that there is no way to not watch at least one whole season. The series only has five seaons and the first two maybe three are the best. The show starts lacking in the forth season and seriously lacks is the fifth but is still worth watching. I have rewatched the entire series completely at least three times now going to be four. This is one of the many shows that I think everybody should watch at least once.

Here are a couple of quotes that I love from the show: quotes from imdb.com   I kinda went a little overboard with the quotes but I was drunk on Alias all day and I liked so many that I had to put them in!


Vaughn: Let's take things one step at a time. This is a charge of C4. I can tell because there's 'C4' written all over it.


[Marshall has accidentally shot a man; they need the man's eyes for a retinal scan. Marshall digs into one eye with a letter opener]
Agent Marshall Flinkman: Oh god. It's oozing. It's oozing everywhere, sir.
Agent Jack Bristow: [via cell phone] That means you've ruptured the macula. The eye is useless, abandon it. Approach the second one gently, like a soft-boiled egg. You're going to need a digging instrument to assist with this.
Agent Marshall Flinkman: [looks in a drawer] I've got a spork.
Agent Jack Bristow: [bewildered] What's a spork?
Agent Marshall Flinkman: It's like a half-spoon... half-fork, will that do?
Agent Jack Bristow: That will work.


Agent Marshall Flinkman: Syd, this guy buried you alive.
Sydney: Yeah, but he cheated, he hit me with a car first!


Weiss: Jack is going to shoot you in the face.
Vaughn: Just give me a half-hour head start. Tell him that she called your phone and you gave it to me. We only have ten hours to find Kaplan.
Weiss: If we end up sharing a cell in federal prison, I'm not giving you a drawer.


Francie: "Dear Aunt Stephanie. Unfortunately, as my mother has informed you, the wedding is off so I am returning your kind gift of a coffee maker because, as it turns out, the man to whom I was engaged is a deceitful, two-faced, sex-crazed jackass. All my love, Francie."
Sydney: It's not too harsh.

Vaughn: Now, the guys say it's bitchin, so I assume it's... bitchin.

Sydney: I just wanted to rip his finger right off again. Does that make me a bad person?

Sydney: Why does that guy have such a guilty look on his face?
Francie: Yesterday, Ginger told Rod that Gavin was Ruby's pimp, but Rod didn't even know that Ruby was a prostitute...
Sydney: Who's Gavin?
Francie: Ruby's father.
Sydney: Ew.

Sydney: I'm gonna shoot you with adrenaline - we have got to run.
Vaughn: No. Don't do that.


[Sydney and Marshall have just talked their way past a security post]
Sydney: What did you say to him?
Agent Marshall Flinkman: [nervous] I don't know. I think it was "Go away I can smell you from here" in Ewok.


Vaughn: Are you romantically interested in anyone?
[She looks at him weirdly]
Vaughn: It could be a question.
Sydney: No, I'm not.
[Machine jumps to 56]
Vaughn: Interesting.
Sydney: Wait, ask me that again.
Vaughn: No, I don't have to. We have our answer right here. That's very good. Moving on.

[about Kendall]
Agent Jack Bristow: Legally he's right, Ethically he's an ass.

Vaughn: You're probably gonna say no to this, but I wanna go to India.
Kendall: Go.
Vaughn: "Go"? What... Are you trying to get rid of me?

Sydney: You didn't think about it. Not once. The possibility that Rambaldi could be right about me.
Vaughn: No. I didn't.
Sydney: Why not?
Vaughn: Because I believe in you. Do you think I'd just throw anyone in my trunk?


Vaughn: Yeah... I'll break into the Vatican with you.


[the assassin Sark is introduced as an ally]
Marshall: Hi. Welcome. Don't kill me.

Weiss: Okay, whenever you want to have that talk...
Vaughn: What talk?
Weiss: About the cologne or whatever the hell you're wearing.
Vaughn: I'm not wearing cologne.
Weiss: Well, something's going on. No man naturally smells as good as you do right now.

[talking about Sydney]
Weiss: So she gave you a drawer, huh?
Vaughn: It was a gesture of convenience.
Weiss: And, uh, what did you put it in?
Vaughn: Why do you care?
Weiss: What do you mean, why do I care? Do you know how spoiled you are? You know, a drawer! I wish I had a girlfriend to say 'Hey, do you want a drawer?'
Vaughn: I'll give you a drawer at my place.
Weiss: I don't want a drawer at your place.


Sydney: You know any jokes? Because I could use one.
Vaughn: This grasshopper walks into a bar and the bartender says, "Hey, we have a drink named after you." And the grasshopper says...
Sydney: You have a drink named Doug?
Vaughn: Well, I was gonna use Phil

Go take a Photo

 

 

This past semester at school I took a photography class and it was AWESOME!! It was great to take photos around town. We took  field trips for some classes and just had fun editing photos in class. Even if you aren't artistic anybody can point a camera and click a button. Taking photos and just messing with them on photoshop or just leaving them can be a lot of fun. Just see what kinds of things turn up. Many or my photos were acidents or I got the idea for them by acident like my dancer photo on the bottom or the clouds in the boat photo on the top left. For both of those I was just playing with photoshop and my camera and I got some really cool pictures out of them. So if you are board then go take a tour of your town, explore and take some photos. You never know what you might end up with.

                                                

   

The Tony Awards

Let me just say if all awards shows were this awsome I would actually watch them. These are two performances from the 2011 Tony Awards. This is why Broadway Rocks!!!

The opening number



and a duet between Hugh Jackman and Neil Patrick Harris

“Most convicted felons are just people who were not taken to museums or Broadway musicals as children.”    - Libby Gelman-Waxner quotes

The Healer's Apprentice

I love books set in a different time period. I think my favorites are probably ones with princes or princesses. That is what drew me to The Healer's Apprentice by Melanie Dickerson.

Overview:

Two Hearts. One Hope.

Rose has been appointed as a healer's apprentice at Hagenheim Castle, a rare opportunity for a woodcutter's daughter like her. While she often feels uneasy at the sight of blood, Rose is determined to prove herself capable. Failure will mean returning home to marry the aging bachelor her mother has chosen for her—a bloated, disgusting merchant who makes Rose feel ill.

When Lord Hamlin, the future duke, is injured, it is Rose who must tend to him. As she works to heal his wound, she begins to understand emotions she's never felt before and wonders if he feels the same. But falling in love is forbidden, as Lord Hamlin is betrothed to a mysterious young woman in hiding. As Rose's life spins toward confusion, she must take the first steps on a journey to discover her own destiny.

Pasted from <http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/healers-apprentice-melanie-dickerson/1100162136?ean=9780310721437&itm=1&product.urlkeywords=healers-apprentice%2fmelanie-dickerson&usri=the%2bhealer%2bs%2bapprentice>

When I first started reading this book it was a little confusing and hard to keep the names straight. For the future Duke character Dickerson switched between calling him Lord Hamlin and Wilhelm without explaining in the beginning of the book that it is the same person. At first while reading it seemed that they were two different characters rather than the same one with a formal and informal name. Once I made it farther into the book it picked up with Wilhelm pushing Rose toward his brother thinking he would be better for her. Of course that could not work out. My only real problem with this book is the incorporation of religion for the characters. Now don’t get me wrong I am not against religion and I believe that everyone has the right to believe what they want. My problem with the religion in the book is that the characters relied on religion to much. When someone was sick they would be stitched up and then a prayer would be said. What is strange about that is the characters expected God to fix the wound like the stitches were just a precaution. When Rose was in danger Wilhelm prayed more than he did anything. I wanted more action and less sitting around praying about stuff hoping God would just fix it for them.  This is a good book if you like time period pieces and you can deal with all the praying. If you don’t like those things then this isn't the book for you.

Amy and Roger's Epic Detour

I have read a lot of books in my life and I have loved a lot of books in my life. One of my all time favorite books of all time is Amy and Roger's Epic Detour by Morgan Matson.

Overview:

Amy Curry is having a terrible year. Her mother has decided to move across the country and needs Amy to get their car from California to Connecticut. There’s just one small problem: Since her dad died this past spring, Amy hasn’t been able to get behind the wheel. Enter Roger, the nineteen-year-old son of an old family friend, who turns out to be unexpectedly cute . . . and dealing with some baggage of his own.

Meeting new people and coming to terms with her father’s death were not what Amy had planned on this trip. And traveling the Loneliest Road in America, seeing the Colorado mountains, crossing the Kansas plains, and visiting diners, dingy motels, and Graceland were definitely not on the itinerary. But as they drive, Amy finds that the people you least expected are the ones you may need the most — and that sometimes you have to get lost in order to find your way home.

“One of the most touching, irresistible, and feel-good road trips I’ve been on in a long, long while.” —Deb Caletti, National Book Award Finalist

Pasted from <http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/amy-and-rogers-epic-detour-morgan-matson/1100365091>

This book is a must read! I can't even express how much I loved this book. Matson did a wonderful job of incorporating a journey for the main character Amy in her life as well on the road with Roger. I have to say that I liked that the romance came gradually and did not overpower the rest of the story. It seems that in so many of the popular books today a guy and girl meet they talk for two minutes and then they are in love and can't function without each other. This book has the added bonus of playlists through out the book to check out for your own road trip.  Amy is strong even in her grief and repairs her self in a believable way. I have read this book at least three times. This is a book that everyone needs to read at least once and maybe more if you love it enough as me. I don't know about anyone else but this book makes me want to have a cross country road trip and also read the book again.

It's Not The Destination, It's The Journey- Unknown

The Book of Awesome

If you are ever having a bad day then The Book of Awesome by Neil Pasricha is for you. This book is just like it says on the cover AWESOME.

Overview

The author behind 1000awesomethings.com celebrates the good things in life- by the sheer power of their awesomeness. Based on the award-winning blog 1000awesomethings.com, The Book of Awesome is a high five for humanity and a big celebration of life's little moments and the underappreciated, simple things that make us happy, from popping bubble wrap to hitting a bunch of green lights in a row, to waking up thinking it's Monday and realizing it's Saturday. With wise, witty observations from writer Neil Pasricha, this treasure trove is filled with smile-inducing musings that make readers feel like kids looking at the world for the first time: AWESOME!                                                                                             Pasted from <http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/book-of-awesome-neil-pasricha/1100043510?ean=9780425238905&itm=1&usri=the%2bbook%2bof%2bawesome>  

This book is perfect for when you are having a bad day. Why? Because it is a good reminder of some of the awesome things in life. If you don’t have time to be reading an entire book you can just flip through the pages randomly and remind yourself about some of the awesome things out there. It is a sure way to make you smile and feel better when you are having a bad day.

 A Few of my favorites in the book include:

When you push the button for the elevator and it's already there

Licking better off the beaters of a cake mixer

Blowing out the candles on your first try

A long hug when you really need it

Laughing so hard you make no sound at all

Absolute perfect silence

The smell of books

At Last

This is one of the Vegas solo auditions by the season 7 winner of So You Think You Can Dance Lauren. This is another must see dance. It is amazing. And although I love the dance itself and her technique is flawless, I think the judges' reactions to her dancing makes this video even better. One of the moves in Lauren's solo even inspired a move in a dance I was in this past year. So You Think You Can Dance won't be back until next summer but at least we can watch dances from past seasons online to hold us over until then.

Psych

If you have never seen Psych starring James Roday, Dule Hill, Maggie Lawson, and Timothy Omundson you need to. This show is one of my all time favorites after having only seen three episodes. I have since spent days watching the series non-stop from the beginning on Netflix. Netflix offers the first four seasons on their instant play and the sixth season will be premiering on USA network soon. I am so excited I can't even stand to wait anymore. The description of the show on IMDb is:

A novice sleuth (Roday) is hired by the police after he cons them into thinking he has psychic powers that help solve crimes. With this assistance of his reluctant best friend (Hill) the duo take on a series of complicated cases.

The chemistry and comedic timing of the cast is amazing. The two main characters Shawn Spencer and Burton 'Gus' Guster have been best friends since childhood with the witty banter to match. The writing is incredible and even makes me want to learn all the skills to be a fake psychic. If you're tired of the same old detective show with the same murders and the same characters, well this is not it. What makes this detective show so much more fun is that the main character is not a cop. Where other shows rely on drama Psych relies on drama. In the words of Shawn Spencer "He's calling me snarky!" from the episode An Evening with Mr. Yang.