on gold mountain by lisa see

we picked this book for a book club.

i hated it.

a lot.

how i live now by meg rosoff

i don't even know how to talk about this book because i love it so much. it's one of my favorite books i've ever read. i limit myself to reading it once a year. gotta keep it special, you know?

the story is about daisy, an american girl, who is sent to live with her relatives in the english countryside since she can't get along with her new step-mother. as soon as she gets there a war breaks out.

at the beginning of the book daisy is stoic and resentful and narcissitic. through the book she finds something to love and life for. she becomes strong and protective.

i love the way this book is written. it's almost like a train of thought. random capitalization. run on sentences. it reads exactly how a teenage girl thinks. it's brilliant. odd, but brilliant.

incarceron by catherine fisher

incarceron is a prison. the story is about a group of people trying to get out of the prison, and a girl on the outside who is curious about the prison. lots of science and political intrigue. curious ideas.

there's a lot of hype around this novel. i'm still not sure how much i liked it. i didn't not like it. there's still just so many unanswered questions . . . . i'm interested to see how it evolves. i'm not very excited about waiting around for the rest of the books to come out.

wait till the whole series is out, then read it. that's be best policy.

the hunger games by suzanne collins

i picked this book up on a lark in target. i remember seeing that my cousin had read it and had good things to say about it. i finished it in one night.

it's kind of a dig at the entertainment industry, especially "reality tv." and if you know me at all, you know i despise reality tv.

the book takes place is a dystopian society after the united states has collapsed. there is a capitol with absolute power and twelve remaining districts. katniss, the main character, lives in district twelve which is a coal-mining district. the people in her district are generally poor, hungry, and hopeless. she is the primary provider for her family since the death of her father in a coal-mining accident. she illegally sneaks beyond the fences everyday to hunt and gather food for consuming and trading.

as a constant reminder of their absolute power, every year the capitol hosts the hunger games. every district must send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen. the twenty four participants engage in a televised fight to the death. the last child standing is allowed to return home.

it's a disturbing idea.

katniss' younger sister is selected to go and katniss volunteers to go in her stead.

what i liked:

i think katniss is a great character. through her experience we can learn to question many things. how much of what we see on tv is real? how much is skewed? are we being manipulated?

i can't understand so many of the television shows that are successful. survivor. real housewives of whatever county. jersey shore. bachelor/bachelorette. girls next door. the hills. etc.

we take the worst examples of humanity and set them up on a television show. we reward manipulation and lying and betrayal with a million dollars. we find the most vacuous and immature humans and videotape their lives and call it entertainment. we send out the message that dating 20 different people at the same time while intoxicated is the best way to establish a relationship.

(i do not watch any of these shows)

how many of these people would you actually want to associate with?

(my answer is none. you?)

i also liked the parts in the book where katniss found herself changing her behavior in order to be more appealing to the watching public in order to obtain support. it shows that even the most disinterested and sensible of people are affected by their surroundings. we have to be so careful about what we associate ourselves with. granted, she's trying to stay alive, so you don't hold it against her. but it helps you realize that people in the public eye are rarely behaving the same way they would if no one was watching. we should be careful how much influence we allow them.

i'm looking forward to the rest of this series.

eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert

i mostly liked this book. i found her self-indulgent and narcissistic at times. but i appreciated the general message and i enjoyed the way she phrases things. i took several quotes away from this book that describe exactly how i view things. she phrases it just right. i read this book out of curiosity, not because I needed help finding happiness. but i can see how this might really help someone figure out how to dig themselves out of an emotional hole. i would recommend it to friends who might be trying to find their way.

some of the quotes i loved from the book:

"the best thing we can do, then, in response to our incomprehensible and dangerous world, is to practice holding equilibrium internally – no matter what insanity is transpiring out here."

"flexibility is just as essential for divinity as is discipline."

"imagine cramming yourself into such a puny box of identity when you could experience your infinitude instead."

"the yogis, however, say that human discontentment is a simple case of mistaken identity. we’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentments and mortality. we wrongly believe that our limited little egos constitute our whole entire nature. we have failed to recognize our deeper divine character. we don’t realize that, somewhere within us all, there does exist a supreme self which is eternally at peace. that supreme self is our true identity, universal and divine."

"the search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. you cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people."

"a family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. when Catherine told me about this, i could only say, shocked, “dear God, that family needs grace.” she replied firmly, “that family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. i do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace."

my absolute favorite: " . . . people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like a fine weather if you’re fortunate enough. but that’s not how happiness works. happiness is the consequence of personal effort. you fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. and once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."

little known facts about well known places: disneyland by david hoffman

i heard about this book after my friend natalie blogged about it. and since i love disneyland and i'm going back later this year, i decided to check it out for myself.

some of my favorite facts included:

- disney management still refers to opening day as “black sunday.” temperatures were unseasonably hot (well over 100 degrees), drinking fountains were dry (thinks to a plumbers’ strike), toilets clogged, food ran out, there was a gas leak in fantasyland, and woman’s high heels sank into the asphalt on main street. to make it easier for female guests to get around, they were given free pairs of moccasins, because those were the only shoes disneyland sold for adults.

- there is a regulation-size half-court on which employees can play basketball inside the matterhorn.

- walt was afraid of mice.

- although the majority of the officers are dressed in plain clothes and go unnoticed, disneyland’s security force has more members than the city of anaheim has police.

- among the items that have turned up in the disneyland lost and found: false teeth, a prosthetic limb, a glass eye, toupees, a waterbed, and a canary..

- r2-d2 and c-3p0, seen in the waiting area at star tours, are props from the original star wars film. the overlay on c-3p0 is real gold; it was the only substance that gave off the shine that director george lucas wanted, and the only coating guaranteed not to rust during production.

- the water in the jungle cruise is tinted brown, not only to make the river look more real, but so that the bottom – which is only 3 feet deep in parts – cannot be seen.

- when pirates of the caribbean opened in 1967, the fake skeletons available to the disney designers were unconvincing and looked like tacky halloween decorations, so real specimens, which had previously been used for research, were purchased from ucla’s medical center.

little known facts about well know places: new york by david hoffman

i got this book on accident. i ordered the one for disneyland and received this one. i intended to send it back, but once i started reading it, i changed my mind. all sorts of interesting little tidbits. i look forward to going to new york someday armed with the inside scoop.

some of my favorite facts include:

65,000 - people who work in rockefeller center

175,000 - people who visit rockefeller center daily for business or pleasure

60 - cities in the united states whose population is greater than the daily population (240,000) of rockefeller center

- the tree in rockefeller center comes down two weeks after christmas, and is then recycled. the mulch (all three tons of it) is donated to teh boy scouts to create forest paths and prevent soil erosion while the trun either goes to the u.s. equestrian team to be used as a jump or is cut into lumber for habitat for humanity.

- in 1961, the matisse painting le bateau (the boat) hung upside-down for two months at the museum of modern art. none of the 116,000 visitors seem to have noticed.

8,872,244 - passengers who rode the new york city subway system on the busiest day in its history (december 23, 1946)

100 million - americans (roughly 40 percent of the population) whose relatives entered the u.s. through ellis island.

- when telephone area codes were first assigned, new york, the largest city in the country (and hence the most frequently called), was given 212 because it took the least amount of time to dial on a rotary phone.

- between 1980 and 2000, new tyork city had more than 2,000 inoperative fire hydrants (from 34th street south to battery park) whose only purpose was to generate revenue in parking fines.

- the most expensive real estate in new york city just may be the sidewalk underneath the pushcart on the south side of the front steps of the metropolitan museum of art. given the vendor's yearly license fee of approximately $350,000 for a space that is approximately four by eight feet, that would break down to a cost of over $10,000 a square foot.