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!