While flying back to Nashville on Sunday, I finished my 50th book of the year. #15 was a children's picture book, so I'm going to read another bigger book to make up for that one. Still, 50 books!!

( Here's my list )

Good, fast reads: Misery, The Eyre Affair, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Hitch-hiker's Guide

Not so good, but still fast: Riding the Rap, Extravagance, the Pratchett books

Good, more time-consuming reads: Seek My Face, Ivan Denisovich, What's Bred in the Bone

Really really good, once you get the hang of the language: A Clockwork Orange and As You Like It.

See the play, don't read it: All's Well That Ends Well, the Chekhovs

Look up 'purple prose' in the dictionary and you'll see: The Lovely Bones, Memoirs of a Geisha

My favorite book of all time: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

I wouldn't even recommend to my worst enemies: Pride and Prejudice

So, I finished THE BOOK. No spoilers for now, but I will say that I burst into tears (read: had to put the book down and sob a bit) three times. I wanted to go slowly, since it was the final book and all, but that didn't work out. Once I got started, I tore through the book as fast as I possibly could. From start to finish, it took me 25 hours. That might seem slow, but in that time I also made arrangements to sell my table, went out to Bellevue and sold the table, got Liz a birthday cake, went to her birthday dinner, celebrated said birthday at a couple of bars downtown, and got six and a half hours of sleep. Quite the busy weekend.

Deathly Hallows is apparently available online, in its entirety. An online community that I drop in on from time to time has already had an invasion of people posting spoilers just to be assholes. Alas, I glimpsed something that might have been a minor spoiler. That's a little upsetting, but it was far from the list of each character and their fate that some people saw. So I'm still unspoiled. Mostly. And the plan is to fill all my time with work and reading other things, so the tiny spoiler I do have will be shoved into the back of my mind and forgotten.

So now it's time to go into paranoid anti-spoiler mode. That means avoiding all sites where the unwashed masses are allowed to write things. Facebook, Wiki, all message boards, and all blogs (unless they're being updated from Kenya). And CNN, of course. Basically, for the next few days I'm going to be magically cured of my internet addiction. Let's just hope that works out.

Time for another book update! I just finished number 30: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This book was a national bestseller, and an Oprah's book club pick, and all that jazz. I really didn't like it. Considering that the narrator is a young girl who was raped and killed and is looking down on the aftermath from "her heaven", I thought I'd be in tears the whole time I was reading. The writing was so bad, I spent most of the time laughing/rolling my eyes instead. I love a good metaphor or simile, but every other sentence had a bad one. It made for a very tedious read. But I got through it, and I'm going to tell the person who loaned me the book that it was pretty good, thanks!!

Of the five I've read since my last book update here, A Clockwork Orange was by far my favorite.

Only twenty more to go!! ( Here's the list. )

Well, I'm halfway to my goal of reading 50 new books in 2007. Finishing six books during the ten days I spent at home really helped.

( List of completed books )

In other news, I officially reserved movers today. One step closer to getting the hell out of Bellevue!! On the 29th, we'll sign things, get keys and start moving Liz's stuff, because she has to be out of her apartment by the 1st. The 29th is also the day I'll answer important questions like "Where do I want to put my bed?" Then on the 30th, we'll get all our furniture and heavy stuff moved in. I have my current apartment until the end of July, so I can take my time moving the rest of my stuff. But I start sleeping in the new place on the 30th, so that's the day to which I'm counting down. Huzzah!!

It's Tuesday at 7:30!! Shouldn't I be somewhere??? Where's my Chicken Snack???

So what have I been doing with my time off? I've been reading a lot. I finished The Ground Beneath Her Feet and officially added it to my list of all-time favorite books. Then I finished 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find' and Other Stories. Flannery O'Connor was definitely a short story master, even if she could only write depressing ones. I actually started the book during exams, reading the title story during my break between the Virology exam and studying for Physio. Probably not the best way to get myself motivated for the final stretch of first year, but oh well.

Now I'm reading Pride and Prejudice. I plan on making it the first Jane Austen novel I read all the way through. That statement is funnier when you know that when I played quiz bowl in college, I was the team's Jane Austen expert. Seriously. Such is the nature of college quiz bowl: you don't read books, you just know things about them. I've come to realize that this method is preferable when it comes to Jane Austen. The characters do nothing but go between two manors, have balls, and talk A LOT. I'm sure it's all amazingly witty social commentary, but I refuse to believe that people of any class and any time period spoke in sentences that long. I'm only sticking with it because I've convinced myself that this is one of the Books I Must Read™.

Yesterday, I watched a good chunk of Emory's commencement ceremony. I thought it was sad that they didn't have the announcer guy proclaim the entrance of each school, like he did last year. Also, Paul Farmer seemed really nervous during his speech. Also, I'm pretty sure Sean Penn wasn't there filming the whole thing for his movie.

I have an appointment with the optometrist tomorrow. Yaaay, new glasses!

May is National Salad month, so every day I'll be posting a recipe...just kidding.I hope everybody enjoyed last month's poems!

One of my New Year's resolutions was to read more, and I set the goal of 50 books for the calendar year. One-third of the way through, I'm pretty much right on pace.

Here are the 16 books I've read so far this year. I decided to only count books that I read for the first time. And yes, one of them (guess which!) is a picture book for children, but I decided to count it anyway.

1. The Pursuit of Happyness -Gardner
2. Black Like Me -Griffin
3. The Color of Magic -Pratchett
4. The Light Fantastic -Pratchett
5. All's Well That Ends Well -Shakespeare
6. Tender is the Night -Fitzgerald
7. Equal Rites -Pratchett
8. The Alchemist -Coelho
9. The Three Sisters -Chekhov
10. The Cherry Orchard -Chekhov
11. The Golden Compass -Pullman
12. Extravagance -Krist
13. Seek My Face -Updike (my favorite of the ones I've finished so far)
14. As I Lay Dying -Faulkner
15. Edwina the Dinosaur Who Didn't Know She Was Extinct -Willems
16. The Lyre of Orpheus -Davies

In other news, an excellent showing at trivia tonight was spoiled because we didn't know the capitals of Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Albania, and Tajikistan. I'm pissed at myself, because capital-country pairs are the basic foundation of trivia knowledge. There is no reason that shouldn't be in my head. It's not like I've had to memorize any other large chunks of information lately.

On that note, I must get back to my toga party. (Yeah, togaviruses.)

I finished the first two "Discworld" books, The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. I was disappointed. It's my own fault, though. I got the books based purely on the dozens of recommendations I've gotten over the years. It seems that every time I mention that I like to read fantasy, there's someone who tells me "You should read Pratchett, he's really funny." Unfortunately, I only went by that, and did absolutely no research of my own. So I went in expecting the historical/high fantasy that I love, but tinged with humor. Needless to say, getting absurdist satire that only happens to be set in a fantasy world was a shock and disappointment that colored my opinions of the book. If I'd gone in expecting it, I'm sure I would've liked them better. But I wasn't, so everything bugged me. For example, the repetition: Death himself comes for wizards, haha I get it, must it be repeated dozens of times in two relatively short books? I also found myself mentally tuning out the constant "laugh lines", which is probably why I tore through the books so quickly.

Terry Pratchett is very good at what he does, BUT what he does is not at all what I want to read right now. So I'm setting him aside. I'm going to have to reread some chapters of A Feast for Crows to cleanse my fantasy palate.

I had a great semester break, and really enjoyed the time I was able to spend with my family. However, stuff like being told when to go to sleep gets old pretty fast. And by 'pretty fast', I mean the first time it happens. So it's good to be back in Music City, in my own place, where I make all the rules and am in charge of my own schedule.

Today my schedule involved church, a workout at the Rec, and then hanging out at Borders for a long long long long time. I bought The Power and the Glory, which I read once, almost four years ago. I'm usually the type to read the books I love over and over. The fact that I've claimed The Power and the Glory as my all-time favorite ever since reading it means one of two things. Either it really is that amazing, OR I've built it up far too much in my own head. I remember that by the end of it, I was too devastated to even cry, but who knows? It could've been hormones or something. Now I'll see how it holds up to rereading.

I also bought the first 'Discworld' book.

Class tomorrow?? Really?? I wish I could just be in Nashville and hang out with people without worrying about the whole schooling thing. That'd be so much more fun.

Well, it's my last day at home. My flight back to Nashville leaves at the buttcrack of dawn tomorrow. I don't really mind, since I need to get back into the habit of waking up early anyway. The full days start immediately on Monday. I'm excited about the upcoming semester, even though I've heard some horror stories about Physiology. I also have yet to pick my elective for the semester. I really want to do another clinical preceptorship, this time in a pediatric subspecialty. I think neuro would be really interesting, but after last semester I don't want my focus to get stuck above the neck. I know there's spine and peripheral nerve stuff, but still. Also, I'd probably get more out of the experience if I've already taken Neuro. So that leaves...pretty much everything else.

Cadaver Ball stuff progressed at a rapid pace once I actually began to work on it. I have my really important parts cast. We may begin filming as soon as Monday. It just depends on when the star gets back to me about her availability (*eyeroll* Celebrities...). Also, I need to get over my moments of "This isn't funny, let's just forget the whole thing." People who've read the script like it, but I'm worried about my ability to make it funny on video. I'm also working on part of another skit, and lyrics for a song parody. I think that by the time this is finished, my desire to be a staff writer on a comedy show will be quite satisfied.

I'm reading The Pursuit of Happyness, since I'll probably never get around to seeing the movie. I'm enjoying it so far. The style is kind of rambly, and it can be hard to follow Mr. Gardner's train of thought sometimes. Other than that, it's really good and I was sucked right in. Really sucked in. I cried at some of the accounts of his childhood. He grew up in some sucky circumstances, but worked really hard to overcome all that. Then he lost everything he had worked to earn, and the circumstances in which that happened made me so mad, I'm currently taking a break from the book. I'll probably finish it tomorrow.


Any more takers for the lyrics game?? It's good practice for trivia!!

It's October!! Already!!

I filled my partying quota on Tuesday night, so this weekend was pretty low-key. I did some studying, because I have a biochem exam a week from tomorrow. Yesterday, I spent a few hours studying at Starbucks, then I went to the mall nearby. It's a dying mall, so there wasn't much exciting stuff. However, I did find a discount bookstore that I never knew was there. I immediately resolved to start reading for pleasure again, and bought accordingly. I started Tender is the Night yesterday afternoon, and when I finish that I'm going to reread All the King's Men.

Today I slept through church, justifying it to myself by saying "If I didn't need the sleep, I wouldn't keep sleeping." And by saying that I was possibly the only first year who went last Sunday, before Anatomy, so that had to be worth extra. Neither of which are acceptable excuses!! Bad LaKedra. Anyway, when I finally did get up, I went to Light Hall and studied both Biochem and Anatomy. Not simultaneously, though. We've covered more info than I realized in Biochem. I have quite a bit of work to do.

This evening was domestic stuff. I bought groceries, so after weeks without them, I will finally have decent meals that I cooked myself. I also did some laundry so I can keep up this whole "professional" charade.

Tonight, I just chill. Last weekend was so full, I'd like to spend as much of this one in bed as possible. There's an entire, brand-new batch of stuff I have to add to the thesis, but that's what Saturdays are for.

Last Dance wasn't exactly a hard read, but I devoured that book. The chapter on the selection committee, the guys who make the bracket, was my favorite. There were also a lot of stories about all these famous coaches and games. I'd say my ability to answer college basketball trivia questions has increased by at least a factor of ten.

At some point last semester, before the whole truthiness fiasco, I saw A Million Little Pieces at Target. I picked it up because the cover caught my eye. I think my exact thought process was, "Oooh, a hand covered in teeny sprinkles, maybe it's about brightly-colored edible things!" Then I looked at the back cover: "Oh. Drugs. Okay then." I opened it up to read a bit, and, to my horror, saw stream-of-consciousness. But not just any kind of stream-of-consciousness, oh no.

It was
page after page
and oh my god
more pages
that were all
written like
this
every one
in short
choppy
sentences
that each
formed one
paragraph
with lots
and lots
and lots
and lots
of repetition

I practically threw the book back onto the shelf. I got through four pages, maybe. Truth or exaggeration, memoir or autobiographical fiction, is it bad that I don't care?

Hey everyone, I'm still alive. I don't know why I haven't updated that much lately. I haven't been all that busy. But then again, I don't have much to say, either. I'll just touch on some things that have happened:

My sister took me out to lunch as a late birthday gift. Keva knows every restaurant in town because she gets all sorts of free dinners through her job. Because I love Chinese, she suggested P.F. Chang's. When she asked me if I'd heard of the place, I could only say "Yeah...did Chino ever get one?" That's a little The O.C. reference right there. She didn't get it. But the food was tasty, and then we looked around the new shopping area at Corporate & Jefferson, whatever it's called. That is a rich people shopping center, y'all. There's a Whole Foods.

I had a dream last night that I went to Whole Foods and got a loaf of bread and some apples, and had to pay $250. I have weird yet boring dreams.

Let's see...what else? Taking down all the Christmas decorations took the better part of two days. So there was that. Amd there's hanging out with family, which is fun. Other than that, not much is going on. My parents have had, between them, about seven thousand doctor's appointments. Seriously. My dad just has his cardiologists. Mom has a neurologist, a neurosurgeon, an endocrinologist, an orthopedist, an anesthesiologist...I think I'm missing someone there, but you get the picture. If I'm not acting as a chauffeur, I'm staying at the house with Momo while they're gone.

Yeah, it's our turn to have my Momo here at the house. I think Mom's usual months are October-November-December, but she had our hurricane-displaced family members then. So Momo's here now. It's interesting. Her memory's really gone, but her personality's still there. (For instance, in response to my "Do you think I could fit in this?" she helped me get a GIANT wreath over my head and around my waist.) It's just that whenever I leave the house and come back, she thinks I've just gotten home from college. Every single time. I'm not used to being greeted so warmly upon my return from the bookstore.

Oh, I just remembered! About three days of my LJ hiatus were devoted solely to reading A Feast For Crows. That darn George R.R. Martin. I started the book, all prepared not to get sucked in by it. Because he made me wait so long. Yeah...that didn't work. See, he does this thing in his writing, where A LOT of his sentences are compound and of the form: Benign independent clause, conjunction, Witty/Suspenseful/Dramatic/Shocking independent clause. And it's catching. That's another reason I haven't written; I guarantee every one of my sentences would've been like that. (I kinda just did it, but without the wit or suspense.)

ANYWAY, since I hadn't read any of his stuff lately, I'd kinda forgotten about that style. I'd forgotten how it affects me and draws me right in. Then there was a particularly striking example of it on page 11. I put the book down for a minute, sighed, and said "Yeah, you've got me," and did not stop reading again until I'd finished, six hundred seventy-three pages later. Entire days were lost. It was great.

Also? A character named Victarion plays a rather prominent role. I had to love that.

Did a little bit of shopping today. I bought a Live CD, and then I went to the bookstore and bought A Feast for Crows. This is the long-awaited fourth book in the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. And by long-awaited, I mean long. I believe the book was supposed to be released in fall or winter of freshman year. I've been annoyed, especially when I heard through the fan grapevine that the result of the 2004 Presidential would delay publication because they depressed Martin. I was disappointed too, but geez. Sack up, man.

So anyway. The book was finally released a couple of months ago, but I refused to get it right away. I'll have to reacquaint myself with all the plots and characters anyway, thanks to the ridiculous wait. Not that my delay in buying it affected George R.R. Martin in any way; it was more of a personal statement. That I would not pre-order the book and be waiting for it the day it came out, but that it could wait until I had nothing better to do but wander to a bookstore. The next book will be a continuation of the one I just bought, and is supposed to be out this April. If it's out before I have a "Dr." in front of my name, I'll be surprised.

I guess I'll go read now.

Well, I no longer have to be careful in my websurfing, avoiding random blogs and messageboards for fear of being spoiled. I should reserve final judgement until I've had time to truly internalize the book. But for now, I'll just say: eh. The pacing was awkward, I didn't really find myself sucked in. And, moreso than book 5, it was blatantly written with the intent of being filmed. I could practically see indications for smash cuts and camerawork written in the margins.

That's all I'm going to say about that.

That was my day. I was in lab for maybe an hour total. I didn't go to the gym. I barely ate food. Tomorrow, I must try to be productive. Hehe...who am I kidding? I'll just sit and count the days until I'm back in Baton Rouge. I love Baton Rouge.

Went to lab at 10, found out that the last batch of messed up simulations was due to a stupid mistake I made. So that's buggy code: 5 or 6, LaKedra's stupdity: 1. Not too bad. Dr. Kindt also gave me this book to look through. It's called Polymeric Liquids & Networks: Structure and Properties. Boy, I can't wait to crack that baby open. It's going to be a fun weekend.

Every Friday evening, chem department people go down to the lower fields and play a friendly game of softball. Today was my first time going. Emily B. told me about it. I've been around for three years, she's been around for a month, and she knows more about chem department goings-on than I do. The computational people really are kinda cut-off from the other labs. Anyway, the game was really fun. I was on Dr. Gallivan's team, and we definitely lost 15-0. We sucked at offense, we sucked at defense. I made quite a few errors at second base. But we had fun, and that's what counts. The best part was Dr. Gallivan's threats, trying to get us to play well: "Strike out and your PhD will take a year longer!" Hehe.

Plans for the weekend: Nothing that costs money.

Lab was pretty good. Some of my simulation runs time out before they finish, so I don't get the nice little data summary that's normally found at the end of the output files. I wrote a nice little piece of code that does not give me the information I need. However, it works and actually gives information. It's just that I don't know exactly how to make it do what I want. Let me repeat that, since I'm not sure you all are taking the journey with me. I started with nothing but a general idea in my head. I finished with code that does something. Wonders never cease.

Went to the library today, and checked out some books that I've wanted to read for a while. I really wanted to get If Upon a Winter's Night a Traveler, but it was checked out today! Just missed it. Well, there were copies left, but I cannot read Italian. One day...one day I will read that book. I'm afraid I've built it up so much in my mind, that it'll suck when I finally get around to reading it. So what did I get?

Hopscotch, by Julio Cortazar. This book is well-known in quiz-bowl circles because of its unique format (read chapter 73, then 1, 2, 116, and so on). I started with this one at the gym today, but only got through one chapter during my twenty-minute workout. It's a bit more flowery and non-linear (duh!) than I usually like, but it's okay. I think I'm more interested in the chapter-jumping than in the actual book.

Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux, by John Updike. Just because.

Cakes and Ale, by W. Somerset Maugham, because I liked Of Human Bondage and loved loved LOVED The Moon and Sixpence, so I'm just...going with it.

The Agony and the Ecstasy, by Irving Stone. This is a fictionalized biography of Michaelangelo, and apparently is ridiculously long. Seems interesting though. Also, this is third in a series of four books I've wanted to read, called Books I Mix Up In My Head. It was the similar-sounding names that d me to decide to read all four: The Power and the Glory (absolutely my favorite book), The Moon and Sixpence, The Agony and the Ecstasy, The Naked and the Dead.

Back to my time at the gym...I'm soooo out of shape! I had trouble with situps, and I used to rock the situps. Back in the day, I could crank out 5-10-15-20-25-20-15-10-5 no problem. Well, I kinda hated life by the end, but I could do it. Today I had trouble with 5-10-15-20. Oh man. I should fix that.

All inorganic. All day. So much material. And I'm ignoring all the other stuff I have to do, like MoMoSim reports. It doesn't feel like the weekend before a 2-day week.

I was going to use my English reading to break up the monotony of inorganic. But when I opened my cover of Small World, I found that the first 85 pages were of some other book, called Sharpe's Revenge! Now, Small World is about professors of English, so at first I thought it was some book-within-a-book gimmick, complete with a bio of the "author" and a list of his other books. No, turns out it was an actual binding mistake. I suppose it's my fault for not noticing that when I bought the book...but who buys a book for class and thinks, "I should check to make sure that there's not a third of another book in here"? I certainly don't. At least I can be amused by the fact that somewhere, out there, there's a person who thought they bought a copy of Sharpe's Revenge, writing an entry very similar to this one.

...and all of them were sweet."

I finished reading Xenocide today. Hehe, at one point I had to put the book down and cry for a while. It was good, overall. But parts of it got kind of uber-technical, and parts were uber-philosophical, so I skimmed a bit. I'll read it again, more deeply. I always do that. The first time I read a book, I neeeeed to know what happens too badly to wrap my mind around the deeper ideas. That's for the next time.

In other news, beware of Dooley's! Danielle and I went there for dinner...and we'll never ever go again. We ordered at the same time. But I got my food after about ten minutes, and it was an hour later before Danielle got hers. Then, they gave her what I had ordered. Because, they wrote all the orders on the slips of papers, and laid them all out on the counter...and shuffled them, and threw some away, and did other incompetent things. I suppose that's how my order ended up getting filled twice, and Danielle's never. But, she took it because there was no point in waiting another hour for food that wouldn't even be that good.

Not much else to say, except the Matriarch returns tomorrow. That should be superfun.