After an exhausting day of work, I am in need of a little eye candy. Who’s in?

Gaspard Ulliel!

I really didn’t mean to go on hiatus…again. Somewhere during late May or mid-June (time is really starting to escape me), I had gotten myself back on tract and was updating almost daily. I remember finishing Going Solo by Roald Dahl and composing a post about it in my head, which I never got the chance to write down. Then a series of graduation parties later, it’s July. So what happened during the time in between? Was I in La La Land? And why can’t I remember anything?

So now I’m back—hopefully, I’m coherent—and since I feel really bad about leaving you high and dry, I’m going to turn this into a mega book post!

June was a slow month (obviously, since I can’t remember what happened in the middle) because I only read a total of 6 books. In comparison, I read 13 during May. I think the small number has to do with me attempting more books than I actually finished. June was the month of abandoned books.

Books that made the cut (To be discussed at a later time).

1. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray

2. Going Solo by Roald Dahl

3. Stardust by Neil Gaiman

4. The Luxe by Anna Godbersen

5. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

6. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

Books that failed to make the cut and my reasons for abandoning them:

Here, I jotted down some notes on why the novel didn’t work for me.

1. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes “I loved the excerpt I read on Amazon, which was the reason I decided to read this book. But I ended up abandoning it because there seemed to be too many ornate (and unnecessary) vocab words clustered together and I got tired referencing the dictionary. The ten dollar words interrupted the flow of the story to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. Just use the right words, not the most flamboyant ones!

2. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger “I went along with it until I was half-way through and then I lost interest in the love story. I’m not a big fan of switching back and forth between POVs. I’ll just wait for the movie.”

3. Blood and Chocolate by Annette Curtis Klause “I really wanted to like this book, but the author went overboard on italicizing her heroine’s thoughts, which were distracting. Furthermore, I didn’t care for Vivian; I knew the author was trying to make her into a rebellious, independent teenage werewolf, but she just came off as …bitchy. Her love interest, a human, is referred to as a ‘meatboy,’ which put a slew of non-intended, icky images in my head.”

4. The Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson “I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for a fairy tale at the time of reading. The preface began with a grandiose string of ornate sentences and references to European people and place names that, under different circumstances, I would be glad to Wikipedia, but I just didn’t feel like playing Trivial Pursuit when all I wanted that afternoon was to lose myself in a love story.”

1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
2. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks—E. Lockhart
3. The Sopranos Season 2
4. The Tudors

1. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer
2. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
3. Travels with Charley in Search of America by John Steinbeck

I have been tagged by Just a Girl, so without further ado, here goes:

*A book that made you laugh: One for the Money by Janet Evanovich.

*A book that made you cry: Markus Zusak’s collected works (The Book Thief, I am the Messenger, Fighting Ruben Wolfe, and Getting the Girl). I’m serious, I teared up during each and every one of these readings. Crap, now I’m getting all emotional just reflecting back on it.

*A book that scared you: The Shining by Stephen King.

*A book that disgusted you: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, though this book is a weak contender because nothing much disgusts me these days. Not even the whacked out sex scene in American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis can offend me. My boyfriend, however, was incredibly disturbed by the Jamie Fraser rape scene from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. I was cool as a cucumber.

*A book you loved in elementary school: The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.

*A book you loved in middle/junior high school: The Duchess by Jude Deveraux, The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike.

*A book you loved in high school: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, The Gormenghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake.

*A book you loved in college: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. I guess I loved it enough to read it twice within a 3 month period. This was way at the beginning of college though. I feel lukewarm about it now.

*A book that challenged your identity: I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak.

*A series that you love: Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, the Stephanie Plum mysteries by Janet Evanovich, The Great and Terrible Beauty series by Libba Bray. I would say Harry Potter because I was an avid follower, but now I’m just not feeling the love anymore.

*Your favourite horror book: I have read tons of horror books, but none that I can single out as my favorite. So I’m just going to close my eyes and point at a random Stephen King title like Desperation.

*Your favourite science fiction book: The Giver by Lois Lowry.

*Your favourite fantasy book: Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (I guess this can be considered fantasy because vampires aren’t real). As you can tell, I’m not a big fantasy reader either.

*Your favourite mystery book: The Stephanie Plum mysteries by Janet Evanovich, though I really read it for the humor and sexual chemistry while I skim over the mystery. I’m not a big mystery reader.

*Your favourite (auto)biography: Boy by Roald Dahl, On Writing by Stephen King.

*Your favourite “coming of age” book: A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

*Your favourite classic: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

*Your favourite romantic novel: Outlander by Diana Gabaldon, A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux.

*My favourite book (non-fiction): Manhunt by James Swanson, In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick.

*My favourite short story(ies): A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote.

I tag Chartroose, Eva, Bookchronicle, Love and Stephanie!

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why there’s a random picture of Gaspard Ulliel in this post, well, I just think he’s hot, okay? This being a book blog and all, I so rarely get to post hot guy pictures. Sometimes I like giving myself heart palpitations…

Since brevity is the soul of wit and I’ve been a tad on the long-winded side in my past few posts, I leave you with this week’s library finds and the reasons that drew me to them.

1. The Luxe by Ann Godbersen …because of the cover.
2. The Somnambulist by Jonathan Barnes…because I read an excerpt on Amazon and loved it! I’m dying to find out what happens next. This will be the first book I’ll read.
   
3. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger…because there’s this thing called the bestseller bandwagon that I’ve been known to hop on. There’s also a movie coming out and if I see it before I read it, I may never read it, so I’d better get cracking.
   
4. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott…because this year, I’m participating in NaNoWriMo and yes, I realize I should spend what precious time I have between now and November writing instead of reading a book about writing, so I forsee a lot of skimming with this bad boy.
   

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I was so distraught over my scant library finds that I went out and bought a pair of shoes. These shoes to be exact, which I got from the Target barn at an incredibly marked-down price ($7.48 baby!). They are Loeffler Randall Rosette ballet flats and don’t let the picture fool you, for they are much cheaper looking in person. That doesn’t bother me because I’m a cheap girl who likes cheap shoes, clothes, food, books, not so much cheap men—well, you get the picture. I just realized that the former sentence has all sorts of different connotations, but let’s just focus on the shoes and how I wanted to take ballet lessons but my parents wouldn’t let me on account of the dance instructor being a pervert.

My dad use to own a fish store. Not the fish you eat, but the kind you keep in a bowl, though you can eat those too (not that I would know). The fish store was situated in a concrete and stucco strip mall located a block away from my elementary school and in the corner of that strip mall was a dance studio run by a man with the flaming red hair of Jamie Fraser, but oh ho ho, he was no Jamie Fraser. In fact, he looked like he could be David Caruso’s twin brother if David Caruso had a fondness for polyester shirts and gold chained necklaces. His name was Perry and my dad thought he was a pervert.

Though that’s nothing new because according to my dad, the world was teeming with perverts who were a handle-bar mustache twitch away from robbing young maidens of their chastity. Of course, my parents read one too many true crime stories in the newspaper and I’m certain if we were living in another time, they would have me outfitted with a chastity belt, but this was 1993 and the best they could do was forbid me from taking ballet lessons at Perry’s Dance Studio.

It should be noted that my dad, who hadn’t the faintest clue who David Caruso was, thought Perry resembled Ronald McDonald, and we all knew Ronald looked like a pervert, what with that hair and that mouth and that hideous color combination. Don’t even get Dad started on the Hamburgler who said “Robble, Robble.” He got the hebbie jeebies every time we set foot in McDonalds.

I didn’t think Perry’s resemblance to Ronald McDonald was any reason to ban me from ballet lessons, so I protested and pleaded to no avail. That is, until the day the cops raided the dance studio and dragged Perry out in handcuffs for being, you guessed it, a pervert. My parents were right after all and when the Michael Jackson shit hit the fan that same year, it only confirmed their suspicions that every man who has a penchant for jewelry, whether they be sparkle gloves (in the case of MJ) or gold chains (in the case of Perry) was a degenerate.

Although I remained unmolested (I have my parents to thank for that), I missed my chance at ballet lessons, never learned how to be graceful, and as a result, I find myself stumbling through one life disaster after another like the time I locked myself into an organ freezer (this really happened) or when I accidentally sprayed a professor with liquid nitrogen (this really happened too). In case you’re curious, she didn’t shatter like the T1000, and after we defrosted her sweater and shoes over the bunsen burner, she wasn’t all that mad. That was probably the point when I realized that I didn’t exactly have the nimblest fingers in the science department and my parents’ dreams of me being a neurosurgeon was wishful thinking. Imagine me opening up someone’s brain!

God, my life is weird and this post has verged off on all sorts of tangents when I initially intended to show off my new shoes.

Since this is, after all, a book blog and the theme of today’s post has randomly centered on the topic of perverts, let’s marry the two topics and talk about literary perverts. Off the top of my head, I can name a few: Black Jack Randall from Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series tops the list. And then there are the filthy men that populate the V.C. Andrews world. In the future, I’m going to composite a top ten list of the greatest literary perverts of all time and I want your input. So think very hard: have you encountered some really nasty characters in your readings?

This week’s library finds are skimpy as a result of my library system going through a complete overhaul. None of my requests came in, so after an extensive browse up and down the fiction aisle, I came away with one book: Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I’ve never heard of Neil Gaiman until I started book blogging; for those of you who are not familiar with Neil Gaiman, you should know that he is a God amongst book bloggers. Ever the curious one, I’m jumping on a new bandwagon on the quest to find out why Neil Gaiman is the shit. Unfortunately, I must postpone my Neil Gaiman investigation until I’ve sufficiently whittled my way through the stack of library books left over from last week.

While I’m still on the topic of libraries, would it be too nerdy to admit that I’m really excited about the changes being made to my library’s out-dated online catalog system. In a few days, they will unveil the new high tech system and I can get email notifications of my holds! I’m secretly counting the days! The fact that I’m even writing about this is a testimony to how uncool I am. There’s probably no way to redeem myself after this paragraph. Um… Yeah… Sooo… do you want to hear about how I walked by this guy surfing porn at the library? (When in doubt, employ a distraction). He closed his window as soon as I passed by, but not before I got an eye full of studs in thongs (oh, I forgot to mention it was gay porn—I guess I know his little secret). I remember thinking “I didn’t know you can download porn at the library!” which just goes to show you that the library is a wonder place of unlimited resources. Not that I’m advising you go to the library just to download porn, because you can do that at home, but just in case your Internet connection fails, you always have options…

Anyways, I’ll get off that topic before someone slaps me silly with censorship and accuses me of leading my readers astray.

On a related note, I like to observe complete strangers. Sometimes, curiosity gets the better of me and I would peer ever-so-casually over people’s shoulders so I can see what they are doing on their computers, what books they’re reading, or what they’re studying. I guess I’m just fascinated by people in general and, well, living in a big city is pretty lonely what with being surrounded by people day in day out yet never making contact. So when I walk behind someone while they’re on their laptops (this is usually at the library because I’m not a frequenter of Starbucks), I can’t help it: I look. I try not to be obvious; I inch closer and closer on the pretext of looking for some book and then when they least expect it, I break out the stealthy head crane. The observations, however mundane, are fascinating.

There was a guy playing an endless round of Spider solitaire, which begs the question, why would you go to the library to play solitaire unless you’re a) waiting for someone b) avoiding that essay like the plague or c) bored out of your mind.

There was also a woman who was typing away on a Word document. Because she didn’t have any books or papers strewn about her, I crossed out the possibility that she’s working on a paper and wondered if she was writing a novel or short story (something I don’t see every day). Then again, she could be composing a letter or writing an essay off the top of her head for all I know, but still I wonder.

What about you? Are you plagued by people curiosity? What is it about complete strangers that fascinates you the most?

I know I’ve already posted an Outlander-related collage, but as you can see, I have a one track mind. When I like something—and that includes, books, movies, music, etc…—-it isn’t so easy to move on to the next topic.

This collage is more Claire related. Since I love her look, I used German actress Felicitas Woll’s screen captures from the movie Dresden in my collage. Whether I think she should play Claire in the Outlander movie (should there ever be one), is hard to say as I’ve never seen her act.

A while ago, I wrote a post called The Outlander Movie: Casting Claire Randall Fraser, in which I picked British actress Ruth Wilson because I was quite taken with her work in the new Jane Eyre adaptation. Some readers agreed, while others begged to differ.

Since then, this post and my other Outlander related posts have garnered a surprisingly extensive debate on who should play who. So below, after re-reading all my comments, I’ve composited some of the popular suggestions for Claire.

Kate Winslet

Rachel Weisz

Kate Beckinsale

Eva Green

Kate Winslet is by far the most popular picks for Claire. I agree: I mean, HELLO, Titanic! As for the other actresses, I could go either way. I’m not so invested in a single actress that when the time comes and the final cast is announced, I’ll be up in arms and shouting bloody murder if they don’t pick my actress. Then again, I’m always up for an unknown troupe of players; that way, I won’t be as distracted by their movie stardom.

I am aware that an unknown cast, however ideal, is wishful thinking on my part. Historical costume dramas are expensive to produce, hence, Hollywood will need a couple of big names on the marquee to draw movie goers. If Outlander should ever become a movie, I’m predicting that the role of Jamie and Claire will go to big name movie stars while the rest of the cast may or may not be well known.

I hit the sack last night with what felt like an extra dosage of caffeine surging through my bloodstream. In other words, I had trouble getting to sleep. It was one of those restless insomniac nights where I was too tired to read or write, but I still felt like I had to do something creative, so I logged on to Polyvore and created a few character-based collages.

Since I’m currently reading The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray, I made the entire Gemma, Felicity, Pippa, and Ann set!

Let’s go on a walk-through, shall we?

Gemma Doyle

I used images of Rachel-Hurd Wood (from Perfume) as Gemma Doyle. Included among the set are Gemma’s two love interests: Kartik (Steven Strait) and Simon Middleton (Hugh Dancy).

The golden elephant represents Gemma’s upbringing in India while the horse-drawn carriage symbolizes Gemma’s new life in as a member of the London elite. I’ve included the crescent moon amulet given to Gemma by her mother.

Don’t ask about the shoes, the costume mask, and the emerald teardrop earrings. They symbolize nothing. They are a fashion statement. Gemma’s gotta dress up, right?

Felicity Worthington

Felicity is the self-assured, confident, and at times, more uppity of the four girls. At the same time, she’s very much drawfed by the shadow of her father, Admiral Worthington, which is why I included a picture of Her Majesty’s navel fleet in the background. I used images of Romola Garai (from Daniel Deronda) for Felicity because Romola is a confident blonde who just so happens to be in Victorian clothing while shooting an arrow.

Pippa Cross

The Pippa collage has an ethereal, Elysian fields motif going on. This is in consideration of Pippa being trapped in the realms. Alexis Bledel (images from Tuck Everlasting) is blessed with long brown mermaid hair, milky white skin, and violet blue eyes, so in my opinion, she’ll make the perfect Pippa.

The Pre-Raphaelite painting of a maiden and her knight stands for Pippa and her knight.

There peacock in the birdcage represents Pippa’s entrapment. She is the most beautiful of the four girls (the peacock is the most resplendent bird in the Avian Kingdom), and yet, in London, Pippa is carefully locked in a gilded cage, forced to marry against her will.

Ann Bradshaw

Ann is the song, the girl with the beautiful voice. Hence, the music notes and the piano. For Ann, I used the image of Ann Maxwell Martin (Bleak House). And if you look closely, there is a etching of the interiors of a Victorian theater to stand in for Ann’s dreams of becoming the star of the London stage. There is also a picture of Sarah Bernhardt (”the most famous actress in the history of the world”) lounging on a fainting couch, which is reminiscent of Ann’s run-in with the fictional actress Lilly Trimble. Notice another picture of Sarah Bernhardt superimposed onto a photo of the Victorian slums, symbolizing the contrast between Ann’s inferior class status and her dreams of becoming a renown stage actress/singer.

Whew. After saying all that, you’ve found out a couple of things about me. I kicked ass in Art History and I spent a lot of time in art museums. I’ve also read one too many Victorian novels and seen one too many Victorian Era costume dramas, which is one of the reasons why I seemed to enjoy Rebel Angels more than A Great and Terrible Beauty.

Rebel Angels—don’t you love how I oh-so-casually slipped in an impromptu review—takes place during Christmastime and transports the girls to London. London, 1895! Christmas goose, Dickenesque carolers, little street urchins who say “Please sir, may I have some more?,” aristocratic balls and colorful gowns, absinthe (”the green fairy”), opium dens, dangerous carriage rides into Whitechapel (remember Jack-the-Ripper?)—-now this is what I want to read about! This second installment of the Gemma Doyle trilogy has it all and I found myself wishing they would never go back to Spence or the realms.

Although, I should mention that this time around, the scenes involving the girls entering the realms are a lot better and more cohesive than the first book. The second book is creepier, there is more character development, and the addition of Miss McCleethy, the suspicious new arts teacher had me worried that this series was going to turn out like Harry Potter (are they going to keep switching art teachers like they swapped Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers?), but Miss McCleethy’s dubious character really brought about some of the book’s tensest moments.

Verdict: Loved it!

Also see my original casting picks for A Great and Terrible Beauty.