Books in 2009

Well, I haven't really been keeping up with the blog much, but school was taking up most of my time. I didn't even get to read any of my books! Fortunately, now that school is done, I've been busy remedying the situation. So, I figured I'd list the books that I've read since the beginning of 2009, rate them, and write a few comments about some of them, as well as writing about a few of the ones that I've been waiting on. I read about a 100 book challenge, and though I'd keep tabs on what I read this year, and see how I do. 

1. 1984 by George Orwell -- 5/10

2. The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling-- 6/10 -- It's a nice book to pick up every once in a while and read a story from, but that's all it's really meant to be.

3. Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter -- 8/10 -- These books are fun to read, and one of a kind. Looking forward to the next one.

4. The Host by Stephenie Meyer -- 9/10 -- After reading the back, I wasn't too sure about this book, but my mom read it, and told me I needed to read it. It was much better than I'd originally thought, though a little slow to get started.

5. Brisingr by Christopher Paolini -- 8/10 -- Better than the last two, and I can't wait for the next one! Only complaint is a little too much detail in parts.

6. The Eye of the Forest by P. B. Kerr -- 8/10 -- This series doesn't disappoint! I'm hoping that there will be more.

7. The Awakening by Kelley Armstrong-- 9.5/10 -- The much anticipated sequel to The Summoning didn't let me down! Loved it, and really loved all of the parts with just Chloe and Derek! <3

8. Evil Genius by Catherine Jinks -- 10/10 -- A unique book, although it did have elements that reminded me of Artemis Fowl and I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You. Very good story.

9. Genius Squad by Catherine Jinks -- 10/10 -- The sequel to Evil Genius, it was very entertaining, and held up to the standards of the first book. Can't wait for the next one!

10. Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead -- 10/10 -- Excellent book! Kick-ass main character, and an interesting take on vampires. Not your usual vampire novel.

11. Frostbite by Richelle Mead -- 10/10 -- Another success in the Vampire Academy series. I liked the addition of Adrian, but I was a little teary at the end.

12. Shadow Kiss by Richelle Mead -- 9.5/10 -- The most recent book in the Vampire Academy series. It was just as great as the other two, but I didn't like the way it ended off... I don't have much hope for what many of the fans wish for in the next one. So it lost half a point.

I've also taken some time and re-read a few books. They were Twilight and New Moon (and I plan on re-reading Eclipse and Breaking Dawn at some point), as well as Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In retrospect, it wasn't as funny as I remembered, but then again, I had since read the Dirk Gently books.

Here's some books that are coming soon that I'm looking forward to:

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan -- The last book in Percy Jackson and the Olympians. It's already out, I'm going to pick it up tomorrow... so excited!

Kiss of Life by Dan Waters -- The sequel to Generation Dead, comes out May 12.

The Soldiers of Halla by D. J. MacHale -- Ohh! So excited! Comes out May 12th. It's the 10th book in the Travellers series. I think it may be the last one too. I love the series!

Well, I'm going to head off. Hopefully I'll remember to write something about the Last Olympian when I'm done it, and maybe gush a bit about the Sims 3!

Much Love for Tablets!

Towards of November of this past year, I finally got fed up with my "dinosaur" laptop. I got it in May of 2006, on sale for $1200 CAD. It had a 120 Gb hard drive, and 1 Gb of RAM, and runs Windows XP Media Edition. It's an HP dvc4000. Since then, the hard drive crashed, and I got a new 160 Gb one, because I really want to get my pictures off of the old one, if nothing else. I have pictures from a trip I took to Alaska on there, that were never backed up, but that's another story. So, when I got fed up, I went out and bought an HP tx2000 tablet laptop I'd been eyeing. It was $999.99 CAD, with 4 Gb dual-channel RAM, and a 320 Gb hard drive. It's got voice recognition, a built-in mic and webcam, among other features. I love it. Except I didn't know about the difference between 32-bit processors, and 64-bit processors, which has since given me a tiny bit of grief. I know that 64-bit is the way of the future, so hopefully I won't have to worry for much longer. For one thing, I can't get my Google side bar, with all of it's great gadgets. I'm stuck with Vista's low variety of gadgets. Another problem is that I can't use our newest printer with this computer, because I can't find the CD, and the website with the driver's supposedly has drivers for both 64-bit and 32-bit, but there is a problem on the website, that makes the 64-bit driver inaccessible.

Even though I do love the laptop, it's been making Mac's look more appealing to me, because my friend's Macintosh laptop is so much sturdier than my HP. For one thing, the monitor has a lot of room inside it's case, and if I put some pressure on it, I can feel it give a little, which worries me. Another problem is that my CD drive keeps falling out! I popped it out once, because I wasn't sure what the slider on the bottom did there, and once I'd seen that, I pushed it back in. A few months later, I'd shut down my laptop, and was turning it around to put in my bag, when the CD drive goes flying out, across an aisle in my lecture hall! I freaked out, but the only damage was a little dent on the corner of the door, that doesn't make a difference. Since then, the problem has happened a few times, and I've made a habit of always securing the CD drive by placing my hand over it when I move my laptop. My only other complaint is that it's malfunctioned on me before. Two days before I left for vacation in December, the keyboard and volume buttons on my laptop stopped working. I did chat with HP's tech support, uninstalled and redownloaded drivers, restarted and other things, but nothing worked. So I brought an external keyboard on vacation and they sent me a box for the laptop. I still haven't done anything with the box, although I probably should, but a Christmas miracle happened! I turned on my computer on Christmas day (5th day of the problem), and lo and behold, everything's functional! The only other time the keyboards done something, is once it stopped working when I took the laptop out of stand-by. I simply shut the laptop again and reopened it, and it was fine. And of course, the common problem of the keyboard language randomly switching to French. A few friends of mine as well as my dad have all had this problem with laptops running Vista. 

Over all, I don't think I'll be going back to normal laptops after this. And I really love the Wacom technology for the touch screen (I've heard some bad things about the digitizer on the tx2z model), it's got an eraser on the end of the stylus, and detects how much pressure you put on the screen. I'd just really love to see a sturdier design on the body. I really don't care if it's plain matte silver, at least my old laptop doesn't have scratches all over the top like this one (4 years vs 6 months!) and is still completely sturdy. HP, if you're listening, please, PLEASE go back to the older dv4000 style bodies for the laptops! 

A List of Teen Books, and Other Randomness

I just happened to come across an interesting post on WORD for Teens, which came from The Page Flipper. 

Hmm, maybe this could make up for my lack of book posts. Although in my own defense, I've read 2 books (not including Twilight, which I was unable to put down once I picked it up, even though it was in the middle of exam season!) since September, what with school and all.

Instructions:
Put an "X" next to the books you've read
Put a "+" next to the books you LOVE
Put a "#" next to the books you plan on reading
Tally your "X"s at the bottom
Share with your friends!

1. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy / Douglas Adams X+

2. Kit's Wilderness / David Almond
3. Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian / Sherman Alexie 
4. Speak / Laurie Halse Anderson 
5. Feed / M.T. Anderson
6. Flowers in the Attic / V.C. Andrews
7. 13 Reasons Why / Jay Asher 
8. Am I Blue? / Marion Dane Bauer (editor)
9. Audrey Wait! / Robin Benway 
10. Weetzie Bat / Francesca Lia Block
11. Tangerine / Edward Bloor
12. Forever / Judy Blume
13. What I Saw and How I Lied / Judy Blundell
14. Tyrell / Coe Booth
15. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants / Ann Brashares 
16. A Great and Terrible Beauty / Libba Bray X
17. The Princess Diaries / Meg Cabot 
18. The Stranger / Albert Camus
19. Ender's Game / Orson Scott Card #
20. Postcards from No Man's Land / Aidan Chambers
21. Perks of Being a Wallflower / Stephen Chbosky
22. And Then There Were None / Agatha Christie
23. Gingerbread / Rachel Cohn
24. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist / Rachel Cohn and David Levithan #
25. Artemis Fowl (series) / Eoin Colfer X+
26. The Hunger Games / Suzanne Collins #
27. The Midwife's Apprentice / Karen Cushman
28. The Truth About Forever / Sarah Dessen 
29. Little Brother / Cory Doctorow
30. A Northern Light / Jennifer Donnelly 
31. Tears of a Tiger / Sharon Draper
32. The House of the Scorpion / Nancy Farmer
33. Breathing Underwater / Alex Flinn
34. Stardust / Neil Gaiman X
35. Annie on My Mind / Nancy Garden
36. What Happened to Cass McBride / Gail Giles
37. Fat Kid Rules the World / K.L. Going
38. Lord of the Flies / William Golding X+
39. Looking for Alaska / John Green 
40. Bronx Masquerade / Nikki Grimes
41. Out of the Dust / Karen Hesse 
42. Hoot / Carl Hiaasen 
43. The Outsiders / S.E. Hinton X
44. Crank / Ellen Hopkins
45 The First Part Last / Angela Johnson
46. Blood and Chocolate / Annette Curtis Klause
47. Arrow's Flight / Mercedes Lackey
48. Hattie Big Sky / Kirby Larson
49. To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee 
50. Boy Meets Boy / David Levithan
51. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks / E. Lockhart 
52. The Giver / Lois Lowry #
53. Number the Stars / Lois Lowry #
54. Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie / David Lubar
55. Inexcusable / Chris Lynch
56. The Earth, My Butt and Other Big, Round Things / Carolyn Mackler #
57. Dragonsong / Anne McCaffrey
58. White Darkness / Geraldine McCaughrean 
59. Sold / Patricia McCormick
60. Jellicoe Road / Melina Marchetta
61. Wicked Lovely / Melissa Marr #
62. Twilight / Stephenie Meyer X+
63. Dairy Queen / Catherine Murdock 
64. Fallen Angels / Walter Dean Myers
65. Monster / Walter Dean Myers
66. Step From Heaven / An Na
67. Mama Day / Gloria Naylor
68. The Keys to the Kingdom (series) / Garth Nix X+
69. Sabriel / Garth Nix X+
70. Airborn / Kenneth Oppel
71. Eragon / Christopher Paolini X
72. Hatchet / Gary Paulsen X
73. Life As We Knew It / Susan Beth Pfeffer 
74. The Golden Compass / Phillip Pullman X+
75. Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging / Louise Rennison X+
76. The Lightning Thief / Rick Riordan X+
77. Always Running: La Vida Loca / Luis Rodriguez
78. how i live now / Meg Rosoff
79. Harry Potter (series) / J.K. Rowling X+
80. Holes / Louis Sachar 
81. Catcher in the Rye / J. D. Salinger X
82. Push / Sapphire
83. Persepolis / Marjane Satrapi
84. Unwind / Neil Shusterman 
85. Coldest Winter Ever / Sister Souljah
86. Stargirl / Jerry Spinelli
87. Chanda's Secrets / Allan Stratton
88. Tale of One Bad Rat / Brian Talbot
89. Rats Saw God / Rob Thomas
90. Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
91. Stuck in Neutral / Terry Trueman
92. Gossip Girl / Cecily Von Ziegesar 
93. Uglies / Scott Westerfeld X+
94. Every Time a Rainbow Dies / Rita Williams-Garcia
95. Pedro and Me / Judd Winick
96. Hard Love / Ellen Wittlinger
97. American Born Chinese / Gene Luen Yang
98. Elsewhere / Gabrielle Zevin 
99. I am the Messenger / Markus Zusak
100. The Book Thief / Markus Zusak #

Total: 17/100

Well that's not a very good total. However I'd like to read a lot of them, if I ever get the time, and I haven't even heard of half of them!

I tried not to put too many +'s, but they picked some good books to put on here. One that I would switch would be The Outsiders. I prefered Rumble Fish; if that one had been on there, it definitely would have had a + sign. I'm not sure exactly why I loved Rumble Fish so much, I mean The Outsiders is a good book, but something about the darkness of Rumble Fish got to me, and kind of wiggled it's way into my brain. It's become one of those books that I always want to re-read. 

In other news, just before I bid thee farewell, I've been working on a website for my Internet class. So far it's going well, my only problem is my darn image map! For some reason it randomly stopped showing up in Firefox, which happens to be the browser it's being marked on! Otherwise it's okay, although I'm using tons of tables to organize my pictures and information. 

Well, I'd best head to bed.... I'm going to be tired in the morning -.-

Geek Out. 

CUPE Is Making Me Mad

I’ve been very disgusted by certain unions in Ontario recently that affect me specifically. The Ontario leader of CUPE, the union representing public employees, is now trying to put through a proposal urging all universities in Ontario to boycott and cut ties with Israeli universities that are working on projects that benefit the Israeli military, while the conflict in Gaza is happening. This is a revised proposal, from the original idea to have the universities boycott any Israeli universities that do not explicitly condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza. This brings many things to my mind. The first thought I had was “well this sucks for all us Ontario university students; geeze, thanks” because Israel is a home of innovation, a think-tank. I don’t think that Israel would particularly lament the loss of some collaborations with a few Ontario universities. Another thought that comes to mind is “Hello? What about all of the other wars that are going on? I don’t see you boycotting any US universities for invading Iraq...” or Africa, or the Czech Republic, etc. Yet another thought, where’s the government here? I’d think that if I were in government, I wouldn’t want the employees that represent me, and as a taxpayer, I don’t want the employees who get paid on my money, to take this position. It does not represent my desires. And as a quick note, in the newspaper, the leader (*ahem-Sid Ryan-ahem*) who’s coming up with these great ideas said something about “Israel’s illegal occupation of Gaza”. Well helloooo, since when has the occupation of territories been legal? I’m rolling on the floor laughing over here!

Another thing that’s getting on my nerves, is these people... People like those who say that people who support gay marriage “oppose traditional marriage”, make me laugh and vomit at the same time. You know what, I support traditional schooling, so let’s get all of the blacks out of the schools, and into special ‘negro’ schools. And you know what else, I also support traditional families as well as marriages, so let’s fire all women in the workplace, and send them packing, back to the homes. They need to watch the kids, clean the house, cook, and make themselves look nice, and not bother their pretty little heads with any manly things like politics or science. If supporting gay marriage means opposing “tradition marriage”, I don’t want anything to do with this so-called “traditional marriage”. Marriage should me marriage, between two people who love each other. Wow! Look at that, I’ve just written what should be written in all government books, ‘marriage is between two people who love each other’. And voila, problem solved!

While I’m in this late night ranting mood, I might as well throw in one more thing on rights; the rights of atheists. Why is it, that an atheist cannot hold office in some states in the USA? It can’t just be because we can’t swear on the bible, because there was such an uproar about a Muslim swearing on a Qur’an in court. Even before I became an atheist, swearing on the bible would not matter to me, it wasn’t my bible. Having me swear on the Torah would be a different thing. I think that atheists in office would be a good thing; we come from many different backgrounds and religions, we think logically, listen to evidence, and would keep church and state very separate.

Okay, that ends my rant... gotta get up and go to my Ontario university tomorrow. I'll definitely be at the protest about this CUPE thing this week.
As my favourite webcomic artist, Mookie says, "Geek Out".