Casablanca, Raging Bull and the Oscars.

Casablanca. Quotable, unforgettable, beautiful.

Boring.

I feel bad saying so, but for my fourth film, I struck out. Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe because I wasn't super happy about life that day, but I honestly managed to read through the film. I normally can only read through classical music and baseball games. And I don't mean fun reading where I can tune out the world. I am referring to the boring, plodding kind of reading which is already a bit of a chore. I honestly had to rewind the film, put down my book and shut off my laptop so I wouldn't surf the internet. For whatever reason, I just couldn't really get into Casablanca. I tired, I just didn't succeed. Maybe because it is something that has so seeped into American film culture that there was no real innovation in it left for me (even if originally it was the innovation.)

To be fair, I knew  I would hit this point relatively soon. I mean, I've been putting off watching Titanic for a few months now, even if that translates to it taking up space in my DVR (no, I have never seen it.) I just honestly did not thing that Casablanca was going to be the tipping point. I really wanted to like it, I did! But...no dice.

Anyway, I also watched Midnight in Paris which was totally brilliant and lovely. It definately deserved the Oscar for best original screen play. In fact, over all, I can't complain about the Oscars. I didn't catch the 'Twilight' reference so that didn't bother me, I generally like Billy Crystal and I won the Oscar pool that I was in, which, admittedly did a good job to improve the thoughts on the Oscars overall. I didn't see The Help so I can't judge how good or bad that lead actress was in it, but I LOVED Meyrl Strep in Iron Lady. 

Next up on my list is Raging Bull, and I recorded The Godfather II as well. All I know about Bull is that De Niro gets beaten up. I also know that my legs are currently completely, inexplicably bruised up and I don't know why. I blame the cats, though I don't think that is the case in the film. We'll see.

And it's 52 degrees outside, the magical 29th of February, I'm getting Japanese food tonight and I've posted twice in one day.

Happy Wednesday!

Books, Books Books!

I love books! Heck, a good portion of my boxes when I was getting ready to move involved my books, and a nice chunk of the furniture of my apartment consists of bookshelves. Seriously, I think my entire family would be happy if we had a library. I bet between us, we already have enough books and bookshelves to have a small one I'm sure. And we also all anally organize our books, with each of us with our own specialties. My dad's shelves are filled with war and spy books, both fiction and non-fiction (including some of my books from college), my mom's with turn of the century literature (she loved Dickens and books about the human condition), my sister with art history, and beautiful English classics, and my own with tons of fantasy and animal books, from Pavlov's dogs to pet first aid.

Plus, if you've been reading my blog for any significant amount of time, you'd know that I'm working on the BBC 100 list. Last time I updated, I was about 7 books away, and now I'm only lacking 5. Soon, I will own them all! Anyway, this last set is super difficult for me to find as I had planned it, with them coming to me via used bookstores and by chance (more special/exciting that way) but my mom discovered something amazing. It's called the PaperBack Swap. (http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php) The idea is, you sign up with books that you have that you want to trade with other people (sort of like we use to do at the used book store.) When you do, and someone asks for the book, you get credit for sending it to them. It costs you the postage, which via media mail is somewhere between $2.50-$3.99. But at the same time, when you want a book, you use a credit, and they spend the postage. If you want a book and they don have it, you can put it on your wish list, with the website emailing you when they get that book in. I've actually now gotten two of my BBC books from there, and I'm super excited by it.

My mom has been sending out books of ours that we've been looking to get rid of, but without a bookstore to trade them to, they've just been taking up shelf space. It hurts to throw away a book, so unless it is completely decimated (which never happens in our house, even with pets), we don't do. On occasion I have loved a book to death, but I try and glue it back together...my copy (1 of 5) of Watership Down is in especially terrible shape these days, but it still sits proudly on my shelf.

Anyway, I feel like this is an awesome opportunity for the bibliophiles among us to trade books.

My next bit of book commentary involved World Book Night (http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/). This was started in the UK last year and now has made the jump stateside. The idea is, you sign up for one of 30 book titles that you can pick up a stack and distribute to light or non-readers, to try and get more people bitten by the reading bug. (Clearly, I am not among them.) Anyway, I signed up, and I got my third choice (my first was  Hunger Games and my second was The Book Thief), The History of Love (here is its amazon listing- http://www.amazon.com/History-Love-Nicole-Krauss/dp/0393328627/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330366500&sr=8-1). It looks really good. You were suppose to pick books that you've read before so that we don't horde them to ourselves...but anyway, I'm super excited about world book night, even though it isn't until April, but I can't wait for it to get here!

 I also have the issue where I read five books at once, because I can never choose between them. At the moment, I am reading Sherlock Holmes, Eldest, Midnight Children, Lolita and NightWatch. Oh and Emma. They just are all  so soul-satisfying (except for Emma, though that has more to do with my personal likes than the book) that I can never decide which to read first and finish. So I end up with a weirdly circular book reading where none of them get done anywhere near as fast as they should.

Anyway, I think that is everything for my books and the thoughts I have on them. Now to get back to reading my book!