More Thoughts On The Royal Wedding

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Now that I’m much more awake, I thought I’d talk more about the royal wedding.  I wasn’t all that into it, mostly because the amount of coverage going to it was insane, and I was really sick of it.  I did watch it, pretty much because I couldn’t sleep, and it was a nice distraction from everything going on in the world.  I was completely exhausted by the time I went to bed yesterday morning, because I had been up for nearly a day at that point.  At least I slept well.

Anyway, I loved Katherine’s dress- for the most part anyway.  I didn’t care for the lace. but overall it was a really pretty dress.  I didn’t care for the coverage before the wedding, so I attempted to sleep but I couldn’t, so I figured I might as well stay up.

Is it weird that I was bored?  I know people were all excited about it, but it’s a wedding.  Of a prince (with a bunch of other titles) to his college sweetheart who’s now a duchess of…somewhere.  I can’t keep track of all this duke and duchess and viscount and earl stuff, which means that I am going to have major issues when I get around to writing that historical fiction I’ve been researching.  Anyway, it was just a wedding of two people who just happen to be well-known.  Yes, it was nice to see, and yes, it was a nice distraction from everything else going on, but at the same time, why on earth are people so excited about it?  I.  JUST.  DON’T.  UNDERSTAND.

If only we had a DVR at my house.  Then I could have recorded it and watched it at a more reasonable hour.  But alas, I found myself awake for nearly 24 hours to watch a wedding.  My grandma was sad she missed it, but she ended up finding a replay of the wedding on some random station…and the commentators were translating everything into spanish, so she didn’t know what they were saying.  I guess she thought all the coverage started at 4 am, but didn’t get the whole 4 am on the east coast thing, so she ended up missing the entire wedding by a few minutes.

I have another funny story too!  My mom comes out into the family room wondering why me and my grandma are up so early, so I tell her we’re watching the wedding stuff.  My mom then asks me what channel it was on.

My response?

Pick one channel, any dang channel, and they’re probably showing the freakin’ wedding.  My mom’s like, okay, cool, and she wanders off.

Like, really?  It’s one of the biggest things to happen, ever, so like…hello.  Everyone’s going to be showing it.  Then again it was early, so she might not have been completely awake.

Have a great day everyone!

Movies And A Wedding

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Yesterday, I saw Water For Elephants, and I liked it!  I wasn’t sure what to expect, but it was really good.  It’s been a while since I’ve read the book, but it stuck fairly closely to the book, from what I remember.  There were a couple parts that were hard to watch, and I ended up not looking, but I got through it.  They left out a good chunk of the book, but despite that, it was a really good adaptation.  At some point I’ll probably give Water For Elephants another read, when I don’t have so many books checked out from the library.

One idea that has popped into my head is the idea of going to culinary school and become a pastry chef.  I have no idea where it’ll go, but I’ve discovered a love of baking over the last 7 months, and it seems interesting enough.

I stayed up to watch the royal wedding, and I will say that the hats brought up a couple questions.

One: How on earth did some of the hats not fall off?  They were at such odd angles for a hat, and yet were firmly on the heads of the guests.  I’m guessing they used bobby pins, or fastened the hats in some way, but still.

Two: How could some of the women see where they were going?  There were several very large hats, and from the camera angle, it honestly looked like they couldn’t see where they were going!  Furthermore, how did the people sitting around them manage to get a good look at the ceremony?

Maybe the weird hat angles were so people could see…like a response to the overly large hats.  I would like to say that I thought most of the outfits were ugly.  Not that ABC really showed anything.  Maybe I should’ve watched it on a different channel- actually there were some technical difficulties with ABC, so I switched to CBS, and the CBS guys weren’t nearly as annoying as the ABC people. 

Have a great day, and a great weekend everyone!

The Children Of Henry VIII

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Book: The Children Of Henry VIII

Pages/Format: 366/Paperback

My Thoughts: I thought this book deserved a re-read, especially since historical fiction is one of my new projects.

I really liked it, and found the relationships between his 3 children (plus Lady Jane Grey) really interesting.  There’s definitely a lot of material I can use.

Since I took notes, there were a lot of things that I noticed- one being how important religion was.  There was a lot of back and forth between the Catholics and the Protestants, which wasn’t a surprise, but still…a lot seemed to go back to religion.

One of the criticisms I have is that anytime medical issues were mentioned, different possibilities about what they were followed.  While I appreciate Weir’s attempt to be thorough, and mention the possibilities of what the different monarchs had, we can’t make assumptions because what we know may not be accurate.  What was recorded most likely isn’t the whole story, and how the doctors described something might not be how doctors today would describe something.  After all, we still have no idea what the sweating sickness was. 

A great example would be the times that Mary thought she was pregnant, and even showed signs she was pregnant, but actually wasn’t pregnant.  Weir goes through the different possibilities about what may have caused Mary’s false pregnancy, talking about how a phantom pregnancy was the most likely cause.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it, because I did.  It was interesting to read about the different theories about various illnesses they all had, but at the same time, it was frustrating because we can’t know for sure what they had.  I will give Weir the benefit of the doubt, and assume the different theories were in the sources Weir used when doing research for the book.

Another major issue I had was when she talked about Lady Jane Grey.  I was reading the part about Jane’s execution, and couldn’t figure out why it was so familiar.  And then I realized that the same passage was used in Innocent Traitor, nearly word for word!  She clearly used her own books as research for Innocent Traitor, which I don’t have a problem with, especially since Weir is known for writing about British monarchs.  But to use the exact same passage in a completely different book?  And not only that, but the wording in Innocent Traitor was almost exactly the same, if not entirely the same. 

Despite the couple criticisms I have, it was still a great book, and very informative.  I have several pages of notes, front and back, plus lots of highlighting and underlining, and even notes in the margins.  And I have quite a few questions and things I want to know more about.    

Rating: 4 out of 5.  I’d recommend it to anyone, especially those who like history or want to learn more about the relationships between Prince Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth.

The Yearling

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Book: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Pages/Format: 428/Paperback

My Thoughts: Honestly, I didn’t like it at all.  It’s not funny how much I could not stand this book.  I couldn’t get into it, and waited for it to get better.  Sadly, it didn’t get better.  I’m utterly confused as to why it won a Pulitzer Prize. 

I had a hard time relating to the main character, Jody.  His family’s poor, and they live in backwoods Florida.  I found him pretty annoying, actually.  And they way the talked!  The dialogue grated on my nerves, and that’s when I could actually figure out what they were saying.  I didn’t understand most of what they were saying, and spent most of the book wondering what they were saying.  Maybe that’s how the people talked where Jody lived, but reading it was a nightmare.  Thankfully, there wasn’t a lot of dialogue, which is probably the only reason why I finished the book.

I really don’t get the point of the book.  I kept waiting for something to happen…and it really didn’t.

Rating: 1 out of 5.  This was one of the worst books I’ve ever read.

Harry and the Potters

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With my Harry Potter obsession, and my growing obsession with wizard rock, it’s rather surprising that I’ve never devoted a whole post to any specific wizard rock bands. 

Harry and the Potters were my introduction to wizard rock (henceforth known as wrock), and they are one of my favorite bands.  They were the only band I had ever heard of, as far as wizard rock goes, and they’re definitely a great place to start. 

One of the things I love about wrock (besides the band names) are the song titles.  Based on the song titles alone, I’d say some of my favorite songs are Hermione Screws Up The Polyjuice Potion, Never Going To The Bathroom Again, Smoochy Smoochy Pukey Pukey, We Save Ron’s Life, Part 8, the Hogwarts Tonsil Hockey Team and the Human Hosepipe. 

Other favorite songs include Bertie Botts, I Am A Wizard, Phoenix Tears, and Harry Potter.  As for my favorite album, I honestly can’t pick because they’re all good, but The Enchanted Ceiling is probably the one I’d start out with. 

They’re pretty creative, because all of the songs are from the perspective of Harry Potter, and they’re all about Harry Potter.  Anything that can inspire a whole genre is pretty awesome in my book.  If all of the different bands can do music in character, there’s no reason why I can’t write a harry potter fanfic. 

Hopefully they’ll come out with something new soon, since I’m always looking for new wrock.  I may have to start taking a look at the multitude of compilation albums.

The White Queen

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Book: The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Pages/Format: 408/Hardcover

My Thoughts: I’ve read several of Philippa Gregory’s books about the Tudors.  I saw this one at the library and thought I’d give this one a try.

The book is about Elizabeth Woodville, who married Edward IV, and is the mother of the Princes in the Tower.  I liked the idea of the book a lot better than the actual book. 

I didn’t like the parts about Melusina at all.  It was mentioned a lot, and I got really tired of all the references to the water and witchcraft.  It was interesting the first couple times, but after that, I wish she had been more subtle- or even left it out completely, because it didn’t really add anything to the plot, or helped move it along in any way.  It didn’t bother me, and I would have enjoyed it if it weren’t so darned repetitive. 

It started off interesting, but then went downhill from there.  I was bored reading it, and had to force myself to finish it, which is really rare for me.  Part of it was the writing, which was worse than the writing in her Tudor series.  At times, I couldn’t believe that it was the same author who wrote The Other Boleyn Girl. 

The story didn’t seem coherent, the 1st person narrative didn’t work for the story very well, and the characters weren’t likeable.  If it weren’t for the fact that it’s a library book, I would have thrown it at a wall or something.  And it wasn’t just the Melusina bit that was repetitive.  Overall, several things were mentioned so many times that it was like she used the same few pages and wrote it in as many different ways as humanly possible.  One other example would be Elizabeth’s need for vengeance.  I get that there were several people she didn’t like, but her constant need for vengeance and revenge made her seem like she didn’t care about anything else.  And when you add that to the fact that she constantly tried to further her family above everyone else made her seem selfish and greedy.  I get it to a certain extent, because it seems like that’s what people did back then, but Gregory took it to a completely different level.   

The author’s note at the end is a completely different story.  Since I’m so annoyed with it, it’ll probably end up as a blog post, because I have quite a few criticisms of it.

Rating: 2 out of 5 because I liked the plot and thought it could have been better with a little more editing.

I Hate Lemon Meringue Pie

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It’s evil.  Very, very evil.  At least I tried making it, but sadly I failed.  The lemon wasn’t lemon-y enough because I forgot to add lemon juice.  And the meringue was not cooperating either, because it was not doing what it was supposed to.

So I gave up. 

That’s right, I gave up.  And I was so frustrated that I almost started crying.

And then I was like, why am I crying over a FREAKING PIE?  I mean, it’s a pie.  I’ve never made pie from scratch before, so of course there’s a chance it’s not going to turn out right the first time I make it. 

I think the whole crying thing is probably because I’ve had a weird week, and a pie not coming out right was the final straw in a way.  But I will try lemon meringue pie again one day, and I’ll get better at it eventually. 

I ended up buying a lemon meringue pie, because there was no way I was going to feed the pie I made to people. 

At least the cupcakes turned out okay.

Have a great day everyone!

Just Plodding Along

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I’ve been surprisingly productive this week. 

I read 3 books, am reading 4 others, and wrote 553 words.  And I have 3 (mostly) complete character profiles.  So what if I only went to the gym twice? I still have today to go, and I probably will.  

There isn’t really anything else I can add, since I’m achieving the goals I set.  But it feels great to actually accomplish something. 

Next week, I will:

  • write 175 words for the 3 novels I haven’t worked on yet- I have 2 other fanfics that I started years ago, plus one of my old NaNo’s that are on my list of things to work on, so it might help if I actually work on them.  And I’ve decided that I’m going to slowly increase the number of words I write each week.  It seems like I write more than the goal I’m setting, and I’d like to write more, so hopefully slowly upping the number of words I write each week will help me find something that works really well.   
  • go to the gym 3 times- 3 seems minimal, but it works for me, and I don’t want to overdo it.  Plus, I do some stuff at home too, so it all balances out.
  • finish 2-3 books- I’m reading 5, so finishing 2 or 3 of them shouldn’t be a problem.
  • start the character profiles for the 2 characters in one of my other plot bunnies- hopefully taking a look at them will give me a better idea of what I actually want to do with the story.

Hopefully, I’ll continue to write and read and all that good stuff.  Oh, and relax.  Maybe I need to start meditating or something.

What Do I Write About?

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I’m not really sure what to talk about for today’s post- absolutely no clue whatsoever.  I was hoping to have a book review done, but unfortunately, the book I was going to review is taking a little longer than I expected. 

I’ve been cooking and baking- I’m making dessert for Easter, which is scaring me a little.  I’m doing cupcakes (which isn’t scary, since I’ve made them before) but I’m also making lemon meringue, which is scary.  It doesn’t look hard, but since I’ve never made pie from scratch, I’m a little scared.  Well, it’ll be partly from scratch because I’m using a pre-made crust, and the rest will be from scratch.

Speaking of cooking, when I was returning a couple books to the library, I decided to go into the bookstore adjoining the library, and found a copy of Mastering The Art Of French Cooking by Julia Child!  I’ve been curious about Julia Child for a while, and so when I saw it, I got really excited. 

I haven’t been listening to a lot of music, mostly because I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts.  I may do a music post one of these days.  I’ve actually been looking at a lot of “spa music.”  I’ve never been to a spa, but I imagine a lot of it would be played at a spa.  I’m still trying to find something I like, but previews only go so far.  Plus, a lot of it sounds very similar (if not exactly the same), so I can only preview stuff for so long.  I have to say that it seems relaxing enough, and honestly, if there’s anything I need to do, it’s relax. 

I’ve been doing a lot of reading this week, and with the small stack of library books on the floor, I’ll be doing a lot of reading over the next couple weeks.  And there’s a few books I requested that are on the way, so I have plenty of books to read. 

I think that’s it for today, because I think I’ve rambled on enough.

Sula

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Book: Sula by Toni Morrison

Pages/Format: 174/Paperback

My Thoughts: I decided that I would give Toni Morrison another chance after reading Beloved.  Looking back (and after reading another of Morrison’s books), Beloved probably wasn’t the best introduction to Morrison. 

I actually liked Sula a lot.  I’m pretty impressed with Morrison’s writing- there really is beautiful imagery, and I feel like I’m experiencing what the character’s are going through. 

I’m still not sure of how the character of Shadrack fits in, other than he’s just a really odd man who lives in Medallion.  I also didn’t get the whole thing about the deweys, who were 3 boys that were taken in by Eva, who is Sula’s grandmother.  I honestly don’t get why they were so important, and I kept thinking they were Sula’s uncles, even though they really weren’t.

I liked how Morrison divided up the chapters- each chapter was a different year in the lives of the characters.  I found the gaps interesting, and it made me wonder what had happened as time moved foward.  I also liked seeing the characters develop over a span of about 40 years. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.  While I liked it a lot better than Beloved, it didn’t capture my attention in any way.  It felt like something was missing, and it’s driving me crazy that I don’t know what it is!