books i've read: january + february

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk: I liked it. Way better read than the first Palahniuk book I read, which was Rant. I also enjoyed the plot twist. I can't wait to pick up Invisible Monsters next. In my humble opinion, if anyone is looking into reading their first Palahniuk novel I think Fight Club is a good book to start with.

Chemistry for Beginners by Anthony Strong: Was a bit of a struggle to read through this book, mostly because the author made most of the female characters seem like top-rate snotty bitches and the male protagonist was so freaking oblivious, like, seriously, ARE YOU REALLY THAT CLUELESS. However, I liked all the random science-y, biology facts that popped up throughout. For example, did you know the act of crying makes you feel better because you're releasing the chemicals that make you sad via your tears? 

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates: I loved the writing. It's like you can totally picture a movie in your head because everything is so descriptive. And it isn't descriptive in a long-winded way. However, the entire story itself was pretty draggy and because I read it in the midst of project deadline week I took about 2 weeks to finish this book. The ending left me underwhelmed, although in hindsight I guess it was the only way to end things. Not sure if I want to watch the film because I think it will either leave me bored to tears, or just in tears.

The Accidental Father by Greg Williams: Meh, I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I was just attracted by the cover. You know what they say, never judge a book by it's cover! (I do that all the time though) Very typical and tired storyline. Also very forgettable, as I am trying to remember what went on and I only vaguely remember parts of it.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas: First things first, I don't like it when authors incorporate a part of themselves into their stories and in this case, race. Feels very Stephenie Meyer to me but I guess it's also a case of write what you know? Keith recommended this book to me and I thought it would be boring at first but I liked it. I read it within a day. Although now that I think about it, I don't really get the point of the whole book. However, it was still very entertaining. 

Hector And The Search For Happiness by Francois Lelord: Probably my favourite book out of the entire bunch. And I bought this, so yay me! It's a very easy read, I read it within a few hours but it's rather meaningful. 

Ironically enough I read the most books during my study break. During February there were a lot of times when I felt really bad and kept having negative thoughts and the only way I managed to keep my mind off things was to read. It really was a huge comfort.

And I realize that I have lots to say about books I don't like but I have nothing much to say about books I like except for the fact that I enjoyed them. Being a book reviewer is not a future career path I should embark on. 

I created a tag for this! I just think it will be interesting to see what books I've read in 2013. Hopefully I manage to keep this blog till the end of the year. I'm also going to create a 'films i've watched' tag, but first I am going to go down for a jog because I promised myself if I jog continuously for a week I can buy the shirt  that I want in Uniqlo, hahaha.

PS. I don't know why I favoured pink nails so much in February. 

BBC Book Meme

The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.
Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.
Underline those that you plan on reading in the near foreseeable future.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling 
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee 
6 The Bible (umm, haha, I used to read chunks of the bible when I felt bad for skipping church)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger (didn't get it lol)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (sew boring, sew gross, eaux. I borrowed it from Jill and I still have not returned it)
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White (Sec 1 Literature class haaay. I was so excited about studying literature I finished the book even before school started)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom (didn't get it)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (I read one book, Hound of the Baskervilles. It creeped me out so bad.)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (didn't get it also, haha omg)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas (I LOVED IT AS A CHILD LOL)
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Oh hay I read 10! Out of a 100! Actually there are a bunch of books in this list I'm not sure if I read as a kid because I used to have a bunch of tiny palm-sized classics. I don't even know how I got them. Swiss Family Robinson was one of them. GOD, I LOVED THAT BOOK. I REREAD IT TIME AND TIME AGAIN. I need to look for a copy of that book! Great Expectations too! Damn, I can see how I grew into my inactive social life.

There's another list of books around the internet if you google 'BBC book meme' but I just took this list off a blog I read. And when I pasted it in HTML it came out as a huge wall of words so I painstakingly pressed the 'enter' key for every number hahaha I AM SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING.

Also, please notice a trend. I don't get a lot of the books I read. HAHAHA. And most of the books I actually read as a kid at around 12 years old. Seriously, I totally see why I don't have more friends.

I will try to read more books this year! (and hopefully understand what I've read) Haven't been reading a lot lately and it bums me out. Whenever I do read, it's chick-lit. Not ragging on chick-lit, I love them, but I think my brain needs to be put to work more.

So excited for school to end now so I can drown myself in books, films, and music!