Po(sey) Sessions

I cannot believe I went to the Kelly Parra book chat tonight and won a book! I am totally excited to read her young adult paranormal novel Invisible Touch . It was great chatting with Kelly and getting some insight into her writing process. One of the things I enjoyed hearing about the most was her story creation/editing process. She said that she starts with a very bare bones story and adds another layer to it every time she rewrites it. I am excited to see what kind of depth this will add to her story. Kelly shares more of her experience about become on a writer on her website. Here is a taste: “I wish I could say I was an avid reader all my life, but that would be stretching the truth. The real truth is, I've been an avid lover of stories all my life. I've loved movies since I was a kid and was hooked on VC Andrews as a teenager. Beyond television, it was art. So when I became pregnant with my first child and someone gave me a Nora Roberts Romance novel, ...

The Iron Heel by Jack London is considered to be on of the first pieces of dystopic fiction. I was eager to read it when I was it listed on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, but was dismayed to find it wasn’t at the library. But I am SMARTER than the library search system and I found the book in a Jack London collection annoyed that it did not come up with my first search. I have never read any of London’s writings previously but I fell instantly in love and feel eager to read more of his work. What Jack London books have you read? The Iron Heel is in the public domain and available online. The first two paragraphs I found overwhelmingly striking and I will share them with you now. (This work uses a considerable amount off footnotes which I am leaving off for now.) CHAPTER I MY EAGLE The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum o...

Learn To Be Quiet Franz Kafka *** You need not do anything. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, just wait. You need not even wait, just learn to be quiet, still and solitary. And the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked. It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

As I mentioned the other week, my 1% Well Read to read list has changed from the original choices. The first two titles on the list were ones that I read otherwise, but within the time frame of the challenge. I decided to include them in order to finish the challenge by the end of the year. 1. The Handmaid’s Tale 2. Frankenstein There are not many young adult novels on the list. As you know this is an area of literature that is a passion of mine so I made a special note of them and have read the following: 3. The Little Prince 4. Franny and Zooey With my recent interest in science fiction titles from that genre have taken a prominent place on my list. Frankenstein, as seen above and 5. The Time Machine Taking part in this challenge has been extremely motivating and I am looking forward to continuing to read books off the list. I have found them to be a nice guide through literature.

I was ecstatic today to find out that I had to been tagged by Chelsea to tell you 25 Things about myself. And while I am pretty sure you don’t care I am going to do it anyway. See, the thing is I have been waiting my whole blogging career to be tagged and no one ever does it. What is up with that people?! So I was all thrilled and honored to be chosen by Chelsea and go to her blog to check it out. And what does she say? “I'm trying to tag people I don't normally tag!” What exactly does that mean, Chelsea? Why have you been leaving me out all this time?! 1. Last night I dreamed I was dating Ricco Rodriguez . We were dating in secret because apparently the first rule of dating Ricco is not to talk about Ricco. Don’t know who he is? Yeah, I didn’t either until I started watching Celebrity Rehab . 2. Out of an out curious moment I decided to take a look at Celebrity Rehab online. BOY, was that a mistake. Because you can’t watch just one. I stayed up all night watc...

So I made it my personal goal to read 6 books this weekend. But I didn't make it. I only read 5. And you know what? I feel pretty damn good about it. Nope, I didn't read 5 full books. But it felt great to get these ones done and mark them off of my books to read before 2009 list! Here they are in order of completion. 1. The Cure 2. Franny and Zooey 3. Coraline 4. Larklight 5. The Time Machine Have you read any of these? My favorite was The Time Machine, though my boyfriend did point out something really interesting about it. He said that the idea of The Time Machine filled him with a sense of dread. He considered the idea of a future that was unrecognizable to be completely grotesque. I thought this was a pretty unique insight and in part an extremely valid one. I tried to think of what would be more upsetting to me, a horrible future with beings recognizable to me or any future with beings unrecognizable to me? I decided that it would be more upsetting to read about a...