Let's See if I Actually Complete Any of These

I've always loved beginnings - New Year, new month, new book, new sheet of loose-leaf (for notes I've already written and re-written at least three times), new semester.  I think it's the feeling that any mistakes I've made are, in a way, erased; I can start with a blank page so to speak.

Beginnings give me the chance to make goals - to change, to make myself who I'd ultimately like to be.  Even if "eat healthy" ultimately turns into eating Cap'n Crunch for dinner.  Even if my goals come to very little, I think they still accomplish something; whether or not there's a noticeable change, goals make a difference in who we are.

So this semester, I have goals for each piece of my life: School, Internship, Work, Blog, Personal Life; and I'm going to share them here both for accountability, and for a record that I can make myself look at come November 3 when I never want to open another textbook.

School
- Make Dean's List, which at my school means a 3.67 GPA.  I've only made it once in my college career, and I want to again, because as weird as it sounds, it was a really awesome feeling to know I did that well.

Internship
- Create a portfolio I'm proud of, and will be excited to show to potential employers.  The newspaper I'm working for is offering me the opportunity to write for them, rather than to bring the staff-writers coffee and mail.  I want to make sure I take full advantage of that, because I know finding an internship like that is difficult.
- Leave a mark.  Make my supervisor remember me in a good way, one that makes him want to hire me full-time when I graduate.

Work
- Earn employee of the week at least once
- Top three server sales at least two weeks a month

Personal
- Create and follow at least some semblance of a budget.  Knock it off with the Starbucks every time I go to work or class, and try to remember that I'm working, at best, half as much as I did over the summer.  That means half the income.
- Work out at least twice a week - whether it be running, going to the gym, or attending the group fitness classes my school offers for free to students (I'm not going to even bother telling myself to eat healthy.  I think after nearly 22 years, it's clear that that particular ship has sailed).
- Read at least 4 books for pleasure.  I know that class readings, articles, text-books, and essays are going to keep me busy for the most part.  But I'd like to get in the habit of reading every night before bed, even if it's only a few pages.  Right now, my reading list includes:
          ~ Edelweiss Pirates by Mark A. Cooper
          ~ I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak
          ~ Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver (I'm reading this right now...even if it is soaked in wonton
             soup from the great lunch-box massacre of 10 hours ago) 
          ~ Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
          ~ Insurgent by Veronica Roth
Got any good suggestions to add to that list?

Blog
- Start posting regularly again.  None of this three times a week crap with only a couple hours left in the day (ahem, 10:13PM right now).  Regular might mean three times a week, as long as they are consistently the same three days.
- Consistently read the blogs I enjoy following.  And don't follow blogs just for the hell of it - every time I do that, I get overwhelmed when I go to my Bloglovin' feed and find 127 unread blog posts.  All that accomplishes is that I don't read any blogs.


For right now - that's it.  What about you; do you make goals?  What are they? 

I'm Hungover because of a Book

Have you ever loved a book so much that when you finish it, you don't know how to move on to something new?  That's where I'm at right now.

This morning before work, I sat on a bench down the street from my restaurant, sobbing over The Book Thief.  Every time I started to calm down, I remembered that even though Liesel and all of the other characters were fictional, the story was not.  Hitler, at least, existed.  Even now, thinking about certain lines in the last 50 pages of that book, I want to curl into a ball and sob for hours (and this is when I realize that my inability to take Holocaust Studies is probably for everyone's benefit). 

"I have loved the words, and I have hated them. And I hope that I have made them right."

- The Book Thief

In retrospect, I should have seen it coming.  Any allusion to the Holocaust has always made me feel this way; I still remember sitting in my 10th grade classroom, crying hysterically at Schindler's List.  Years later, when I read Milkweed and then The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, I cried again.  This particular piece of history has always, and will always shock and horrify me in a way that I can't find words to describe.  Only tears.

I came out of this particular experience not knowing how to move on from it.  When I close a book that good, I never know how to read another book, one that I'm sure will never live up to my new expectations.  So my question is this...what books have left you speechless and unable to move on?  What books have left you hungover the next morning, the next week?

Happy Birthday Harry Potter

Dear Harry,

Happy birthday!! 

33 years old...you're getting up there; (but don't worry, in my mind you'll always be my age, which is 21 right now).  It's hard to believe that 20 years ago you were getting ready to start your third year at Hogwarts, huh?

How have you been these last few years?  I'm sure you don't know it, but you've had a pretty enormous impact on the lives of a lot of Muggles, especially the ones who are my age.  

The thing is, I almost can't remember a time before Harry Potter; I was so young when the first book was published.  I can remember staying up late, with my mom reading the books to me; and even later when the next book came out and we'd go to Barnes & Noble at midnight to buy it.  I still remember when the last movie came out: my mom picking me up from work so that she, my brother and I could all go see it together.  The theater was filled with people dressed up like you and your friends - people who loved you, and the stories you'd filled their lives with for as long as they could remember.  I remember people crying, knowing that this would be the last time the story would ever be new.  As much as we'd anticipated that moment, we'd also dreaded it - because it meant that the story was really over.  It's incredible really, how much time and thought and love came out of your story, and how much is still coming today.

We grew up reading about you, and even though the books and movies stopped coming years ago, we're all still celebrating your birthday today.  You were always around for us, and in a way, you shaped who we all became as we read about you from the time you were 10 until the time you saved the wizarding world (not for the first time) at 17 years old.  I imagine we'll spend the rest of our lives reading and re-reading about you, to be honest; learning different lessons from the same words every time.   

I just want you to know that even though the world you saved was a fictional one, you still managed to shape our world through the words we read, and the stories you created.  Your friendships were our friendships, and none of us are really ready to let go just yet.  

So happy birthday, Harry Potter.  I hope you know how important you are to a lot of people who you never knew.  I'll have a glass of butterbeer for you.

<3

Facebook     ~     Twitter     ~     Pinterest     ~     Bloglovin'

My Comfort

For as long as I can remember, books have always been my comfort.  My dreams.  My escape when I need one, and my friend when I'm lonely.  From a young age, I have memories not of mud pies or falls on the playground, but of a single white bookshelf, stacked with all the stories I brought home.  First Harry Potter, hard covers as each new book found its way into bookstores, The Giver and Memories of Summer - both read so many times I'm amazed their spines haven't given way, falling off and letting the pages go with them; then, as I got older, different books - Practical Magic, Edgar Allan Poe and The Fault in our Stars, all read so many times and so thoroughly I could quote my favorite passages.

I find books that speak to me, take them in like some people take drugs - finding a peace there that I long for in every other book I read afterwards and that I hold onto memories of the way some people hold onto beach trips and first loves.  I remember stacks of books from the school library, placed next to and under my desk, because I never could decide which book it was that I wanted to read.  I remember the nights in my mother's bed, reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets together.

I find a certain comfort in my stacks of books - lying however they fit along my walls and in my corners.  I stare at the shelf for hours, trying to decide what to reread - Water for Elephants or Peter Pan, or whether I should start something new, try to find that same emotion in a different story that I've found in every Harry Potter book since I was 7 years old.

<3

Facebook     ~     Twitter     ~     Pinterest     ~     Bloglovin'

Got Books?

Day 41

For now, I'm off to work.

Tomorrow, I plan to reorganize my bookshelf.  It only holds roughly 100 books, and I'm long since out of room for my new ones.

What? Isn't that what most people do on their days off?

<3

Guess What?

I have ears!!!

No, but actually, I got my ears pierced (again).  That one on the left? The halfway-up-my-ear one? 

Yeah, that happened today.  

It's a piercing I've been wanting for a while, and I finally did it today! :)

(and it hurts like a...)

ps. please ignore the "maybe if I smile at it, it'll go away" look on my face.  It was supposed to be a smile.

Day 39

In other news, I finally got that new book I've been wanting!  Just from reading a couple chapters while at my friend's house (yeahh....I'm that girl) I can tell I'm going to love it!
Like stay-up-all-night-reading-even-though-I-have-work-in-the-morning kind of love it.

(It's called "This is How" and it's by that guy...Augusten Burroughs...in case you were wondering. 

(Thank me later)

<3

This May...

This May...

I will finish my sophomore year of college.

My brother will officially decide which college to go to in the fall.

My best friend will learn whether she's having a boy or a girl.

A lot is happening this May, but do you know what I can't wait for?

I can't wait for Augusten Burroughs' new book, This is How.  

If you've read Burroughs before (Running With Scissors, Dry, A Wolf at the Table, etc.) this is a bit different from his usual fare in that it's not about HIM.  This book is a "self-help" book of sorts, if you can call it that, containing chapters on "How to Finish Your Drink", and "How to be Thin".

I can't wait.

How about you?  Do you have a favorite author whose new books you anticipate?  Have you ever read Augusten Burroughs?  What did you think of him?

<3

The Wicked Witch of the West

In the past month or so since I told you guys about my 100 in 2012 Project, I've been reading book after book, waiting for one good enough to share with you guys.

The Time Traveller's Wife, for instance? I adored it, every page.  And of course rereading Harry Potter was wonderful too.  

But I've been waiting for the book that I wanted to tell you guys about. I couldn't have told you what I was waiting for; I just knew that when I read it, I'd know.

Well, this morning I finished Wicked, the first book in a four-part series called The Wicked Years by Gregory Maguire.

I'm sure plenty (if not all) of you have heard of it.  It's a Broadway musical, for crying out loud! But I strongly think that this book is worth mentioning.

In case you haven't seen the play, Wicked chronicles the "life and times" of the Wicked Witch of the West from the beloved story The Wizard of Oz, from birth till her well-known death.

And for those of you who have seen the musical, or at least know the gist of it, I promise you that the book has so much more to it than the Broadway rendition.*

Maguire beautifully writes about a world we haven't visited since Dorothy killed the Witch, and in so much more detail than L. Frank Baum did in the original fairytale that we all know and love.

From the first page till the last, I was absolutely spellbound, and I already can't wait until my copy of Son of a Witch, the second book in the series, arrives!

<3

*I'm not saying that the musical, Wicked wasn't amazing. I saw it a few years ago, and I absolutely adored it!

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living."

- Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss would be 108 years old today, and it's incredible to me that a man who wrote his first book, To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street was published in 1937 (credit to Google for helping me figure that out), is still being read today in 2012.  

As a kid, Dr. Seuss books were a staple of my personal library, and I still can't wait to see the new movie coming out based on one of his books!  He's been a part of almost every childhood since he started writing, and I think that he will be for a long time.

So happy birthday, Dr. Seuss!!!

What's your favorite Dr. Seuss book? Mine is "Oh the Places You'll Go" - I still stop to read it in the store every May when they start selling them for graduating seniors!

<3

100 in 2012

Reading was always something I loved - I could visit other worlds.  It was almost like a connection with anybody else who had read that book and founding meanings in the words.  

In my past few semesters of college though, I've sort of let reading fall to the side.  Being busy with classes and clubs and new friends, and just the thrill of living away from home has kept me away from it.

Just recently though, I finished re-reading the Harry Potter series, and that meant that I'd been reading constantly.  Or, at the very least on days when I was busy, every night before bed.

I've read somewhere that you sleep better when you spend the time before sleeping reading or writing rather than in front of the TV or on the computer.  And I've found that, over the past couple of months, I've dreamt more.  I've woken up less throughout the night.  And falling asleep in the first place has been easier.  

So, I'm making a promise to myself, and a goal.

The promise is that I will read more this year.  I will always have a book that I am actively reading, and I won't forget about that when I get busy.

The goal is a little more difficult.  It's something that I may or may not reach, but that I want to spend the next ten months working towards.  My goal is to read 100 books in 2012.

So far this year, I've read 9 books:

 -Harry Potter Series (7)

-Milkweed

-The Fault in our Stars

And currently, I'm working on book #10 - The Secret Diary of a Call Girl.  

So how about you?  Do you love reading, or do you find that as your life gets busier, you have less time for it?  Are there any books you absolutely love that I should read?  I swear - I'd LOVE suggestions, so either leave them here, or drop on over to The Bookshelf and let me know what books you've fallen completely into!

<3