Thanksgiving is almost here!

Yes, it's about that time, folks. The feast day is almost upon us, and one of my favorite days of the year. I love having my family come over to my house and eating good food and spending time with all of these people I don't see often enough. I'm very thankful this year for so many things, including my family, my fiance Steve, and the wonderful life I lead. I'm very thankful that the semester is winding down to a close, and I will be graduating soon. Yay no more school, ever! :)

On my other blog, by the way, I've listed the ten authors I would most want to invite to my Thanksgiving dinner. It's part of Top Ten Tuesday, something the gals (of which I am one) over at The Broke and the Bookish do once a week. Check out my list here.

What are you all thankful for?

I'm engaged!

Sooo in case some of you haven't heard, I recently got engaged! I am very excited about this, I'm not going to lie. No date has been set, but I'm hoping this will be decided fairly soon. Anyone in the Boston area, I'm looking for venue advice! :)

Running some more!

As some of you may know, I recently ran my first race! It was the Patriot's Day 5 Mile Road Race in Lexington, on (obviously) Patriot's Day. I actually did really well! I ran it in 41:35, which was way faster than I expected.

Also, they gave us these little band things that we had to strap around our left ankles to give us our time. And hey, it rubbed the skin right off my leg. So by the time I crossed the finish line, I apparently was bleeding. Who knew! Certainly not me, I can tell you.

Anyway, because I did so well on this one, I am thinking of signing up for the 7-mile Falmouth Road Race in August. A little bit nervous about that one, but I think I can do it! I found out my epically long run is just over 6 miles, so in time I'm pretty confident I can make it to 7. For those of you who aren't from Massachusetts, Falmouth is on Cape Cod, so that should at the very least be pretty.

And WHO'S READY FOR SPRING. I know I am. Thank goodness it's pretty much here!

Rock the Drop!

So you all know how I'm studying to be a teen librarian? Well, today is Support Teen Lit Day, a part of National Library Week. And readergirlz is hosting Rock the Drop, a day when all YA lit lovers spread the love! As I love teen lit like it's my job (oh, wait...) I have released two teen books into the wild.

This first book is ttyl by Lauren Myracle, great YA author and often found on top banned books lists! Automatically she is awesome. And this book is the reason she makes it on there, though it is a shame some people are deprived of it. It's written all in IMs, which is really fun, but deals with tough issues and growing up (apparently this is a good reason to ban books). I hope someone finds it who will enjoy it!

This second one is a mystery, Down the Rabbit Hole by Peter Abrahams. I left this one in True North Cafe on Cambridge St. I hope someone who will appreciate it finds it!

Go ahead, world, spread the YA love today! Even if it's just reading a YA book or talking about them.

Running.

I've recently decided I want to be a bit more serious about my running. Not necessarily ready to train for a marathon or anything, but I at least want to make it a regular part of my lifestyle instead of doing it whenever I feel like it (not always often, I can tell you that!).

I've been kind of inspired by my friend Sara, who's running a half marathon in May and has been blogging about it. Not sure how far I'll get with this, but I have a goal of getting to 7 miles by the end of the year. Right now I think the longest I've gone is around 5.5 miles.

Anyone else a runner? I would gladly accept tips for getting motivated, which is the hardest part for me. I can't for the life of me get my butt out of bed early—thank goodness I don't have to go to class until later on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and don't have work until 1 on Wednesdays. Good music to listen to would also be appreciated, especially if it's energizing.

Really? Lyme disease? REALLY?

So some slightly irritating news that came on Saturday. Lucy apparently contracted lyme disease from a tick. AWESOME. She will be okay, she just couldn't come home on Sunday to be with her new family! And she has to take antibiotics for a month. Not so bad, but just a little wrench in the cogs. Boooo.

In other news, I have 3 more weeks of classes. Yay!

In other other news, Zaven found something on YouTube called A Very Potter Musical. And it is hilarious. I highly recommend finding it now.

Lucy is coming home.

Hi loyal readers. I know. I'm a bad blogger person for not updating this more often. (Isn't this how I usually start my posts here on fill in the blank?) Lots has happened, but I'll only tell you the most exciting news.

We're totally getting a puppy. And her name is Lucy.

Here she is!

Aww! Hi Lucy!!

Luckily my family was willing to get a hypoallergenic-type dog, since Steve is allergic. That wouldn't work so well. I don't even know if this will, but here's hoping! She'll get here on Sunday, hooray!

Also, and this is not related in any way, I had pumpkin cheesecake today and it was DELICIOUS. Really, that's all. :)

Blogging is good and bad for my professional development.

Hoo boy! Man, I never realized how much work being in the book blogging community requires. I'm kind of addicted to finding new followers and getting my name out there as a blogger, and it seems to be kind of working. I am up to 9 followers (yippee) and hope to add way more to that list. As a result, I'm kind of networking with other bloggers, especially my friends from GR and The Broke and the Bookish.

It's actually getting to the point where I'm beginning to procrastinate doing homework, and before I know it an hour has flown by. Like for example: I have to finish The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 in an hour or so (I'm not quite halfway through) and here I am, blogging. Whoops. At least my class is helping me by giving me books to review! I'm coming across a lot of titles I'd never heard of before, or had been meaning to read and never got the time. It's also given me the opportunity to reread a lot of my favorites. (I'm reading A Wrinkle in Time for Tuesday—squee!)

Anyway, I should hit the book again. Off I go, I'll return someday soon.

From Tahleen's Mixed-Up Files

That is what I think I'm going to call my new blog. Either that or Capturing the Castle. Thoughts? Anyone? I would really appreciate feedback... I need to know if they sound dumb or not. Also, does anyone catch the references? Help me out here, people!

Great quote that wouldn't fit on Twitter.

Just now I watched Neil Gaiman's acceptance speech for the Carnegie Medal he won just a few days ago for The Graveyard Book, and he ended with a quote that I wanted to share with everyone.

"Libraries are our future. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever. Closing libraries can be seen as an easy way for a local authority to save a little money, and it is. But it is a terrible, terrible mistake as we have recently begun to learn, to steal from the future to pay for today."

Thanks for supporting libraries, Neil Gaiman, and thank you for the enormous contribution you have made to children's literature. You are to the younger generation what C.S. Lewis was for you.

My Top Ten childhood faves!

As some of you may know, I am collaborating on a new blog, The Broke and the Bookish. Today is our very first Top Ten Tuesday, and the theme is top ten childhood favorites. Obviously you are all wondering one thing: What are Tahleen's top ten childhood favorites? Well, let me tell you!

1. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle: This is probably my all-time, super-duper favorite book ever. It combines fantasy, adventure and concepts of ethics as Meg and Charles Wallace Murray, with their friend and accidental companion Calvin O'Keefe, search for their father through space and time. I can't recommend this book enough. I've read it at least three times.

2. Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech: I read this sometime in elementary school, though I can't remember exactly when. 13-year-old Salamanca goes on a cross-country road trip with her grandparents to find her mother. Through stories she tells her grandparents, we learn about her previous year in a new town, and bit by bit secrets are revealed to the reader. I loved the juxtaposition of the road trip with Sal's narration of her past. I'm way past due for a rereading of this one.

3. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell: When I was younger I would read every Scott O'Dell book I could get my hands on, and it all started with this one. It's a survival story, but at its very core it's a coming of age tale. Karana is left on her home island after her tribe leaves, and with (eventually) a dog as her only companion, she must deal with growing up alone and surviving with only a few tools and her brain to get her through.

4. Boxcar Children series by Gertrude Chandler Warner: Oh my, these books were like candy to me. They were probably the books that sparked my love of reading. I remember using the hall light to read by so I could keep reading past my bedtime. Probably why my eyesight is so bad. But anyway--I remember these mysteries as being extremely wholesome yet exciting. I really liked them.

5. Baby-Sitters' Club by Ann M. Martin: I can't tell you how excited I was when I found out these were going back into print. I was a bit disappointed to hear that they'd be "updated," but according to Ann M. Martin in an interview with Forbes, they weren't so much updated as made more vague, which works for me. All I have to say is that I did not learn about diabetes because of Nick Jonas--Stacey McGill taught me all I know. (For any of you wondering, I did watch the TV show... and still remember all of the lyrics.)

6. A Voice in the Wind by Kathryn Lasky: I must have read this book at least 7 times. Every summer I would take it out of the library and reread it; I loved the Southwestern setting and the ghost story, the Native American culture, everything about this book. The fact that the two sets of Starbuck twins could communicate telepathically was pretty awesome too.

7. It's Nothing to a Mountain by Sid Hite: Another book I've reread at least once. Set in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia in 1969, it's another sort of survival story, though it's more adventurous and spiritual than anything. Lisette and Riley, after being orphaned, go to live with their grandparents in the mountains, where Riley finds a surprise in a nearby cave--a boy named Thorpe.

8. Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene: I didn't read all of these, but I remember thinking they were great. It definitely makes me nostalgic to think of the series--at one point I read one that had to do with archeology (digging for artifacts or something) and for a while I wanted to be an archeologist.

9. The Giver by Lois Lowry: I read this in eighth grade, so I guess I wasn't little, but I still thinks this counts. For some reason I am drawn to dystopian literature, and this might have been the first dystopian novel I read. Actually, scratch that; it might have been Fahrenheit 451, which I also read in eighth grade, but I can't remember which was first. I "borrowed" these from school (meaning I took them without asking from the classroom--but I returned them!) because I wanted to find out how they ended, and for whatever reason we never read them again in class. Stupid class. We read The Pearl but not this stuff? C'mon!

10. Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: I read this in sixth grade and thought it was just awesome. What a kickass heroine! Strong and independent, despite her setback of being cursed to do whatever she is told. She finds a way around everything! Great retelling of Cinderella.

BONUS: American Girl Magazine Okay okay, this isn't a book, but I was a loyal subscriber and reader for YEARS. I couldn't wait to get these in the mail--I even bought some of the books, like the Help! books and Pages and Pockets. I loved all the great ideas they had for finding fun things to do and party ideas and games. Thanks for helping making my childhood awesome, American Girl!

Mom is funny.

Mom to Zaven: "Why don't you go get some chocolate cake, get your book and then go study?"

Zaven, excitement palpable: "We have chocolate cake??"

Mom, deadpan: "No."

The look of soul-crushing disappointment on Zaven's face was priceless.

New blog excitement!

Long time no talk, I know. Sorry, friends. I been busy. Well, not really terribly busy, but forgetful is probably a better word to use. Yes, I forgot about blogging. Shame on me!

Anyway, I have some lovely news to share with you. I am going to be a regular contributor in a book review blog that is a collaboration with peers in a Goodreads group of which I am a member. It's called The Broke and the Bookish, and you should check it out right now. Well, maybe in a week or so. It will go live soon, by the end of the month. But read it! And enjoy it. And follow me on Twitter so you can find out when my posts are up.

I'm also considering doing my very own young adult/teen book review blog, as well. I am open for name suggestions; I have proven to be bad at choosing names in the past. Please leave comments! But I like the idea of doing my own reviews whenever I want to put them up. I'm looking forward to the idea. Now all I have to do is find the drive to do it.

A3G at it again... but with less than stellar results.

I don't know how many of you remember my post sometime last year about the comic strip Apartment 3G, when dope fiend Alan got shot by a junkie, but I've been following a somewhat similar storyline in that strip that just ended. Although, there was much more buildup to the climax and we actually saw the gun far before it was brandished menacingly. I was getting excited that we'd see some kind of action. Some exposition: Bobbie is a crazy, crazy lady who is dating a psychiatrist character who is giving her pills because they are dating. Bobbie (as it turns out!) is also the stepmother of Margo, one of the main characters (who lives in apartment 3G). Because she is crazy she buys a gun off some guy who tries to mug her and then confronts Margo and her husband, Martin, who wants a divorce. I WAS GETTING SO PUMPED TO SEE WHERE THIS WAS GOING. And I wasn't the only one, both Maggie at The Lovely Ladies of Apartment 3G and Josh at The Comics Curmudgeon were waiting for the gun to go off too! But ALAS it was the WEAKEST ending to a storyline I've ever seen. Bobbie's freaking PHONE rings and she gets distracted, wondering if she should answer it?! (That's called an interrobang by the way, or as I prefer the quesclamation.) When you are taking out revenge, you aren't conflicted about answering your cell phone. In fact, you should turn it off, Bobbie.

Not that I promote violence. But seriously that would have made for some great drama that was funny by accident. (As is most drama in this strip.)

Whew, got that off my chest. I'm going to go now. Enjoy your day, faithful readers (who put up with stupid posts like this one!).

AGAIN WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME

AGAIN I can't sleep! Right now I'm trying to do my homework, which I started at 6 am, because I couldn't fall asleep. I'm freaking out internally about this job prospect I have, I am one of two people they are considering for a young adult librarian position and I don't know if I'm going to be any good at it because I've never worked at a library before. I am worried that I'll get the job and then won't be able to perform the duties because I won't have any idea how to. I'll have some help, but I'd mostly be on my own. Why is it that I have such a hard time coping with new responsibilities? I wish I weren't afraid and could just tackle them head-on without a hitch. And I know it's the same for most people when they start a new job, but I can't help it.

Bah. I also have a cold and just ran out of tissues. LIFE amiright?

So. Sorry about my early morning freak-out session; I think I am going to try to get a couple more hours of sleep before I have to get up for church. At least I only have to be vegetarian for one more week. Then it will be Easter. And properly springtime (if the weather will only comply).

Ignore this post if you don't like reading late-night musings that make no sense.

It's nearly midnight and once again I'm alone with my thoughts. I think having my computer might actually be making it worse, because I'm having that hope of connection with someone but am being disappointed over and over. It's late and no one is on the computer, silly. Except for me.

I hate feeling isolated like this, and I know it's just dumb because I'm not really by myself. I just want to talk to someone and no one is there to talk to at the moment.

Listen to me, all melodramatic.

This is part of the reason why I love books so much--they provide a companion, or give me a place to escape to. I sound like a grammar-school "reading is fun" cliche, but there it is!

I'll spare you all the rest of my late-night musings and get back to my book, which is actually pretty illuminating--it happens to coincide with some things going on in my life right now which is kind of ironic, especially since I bought it about eight months ago. I will finish it tonight! That is my goal.

Good night!

He might be my favorite.

Zaven, about this book: (As female character) "We were lovers. In medieval Germany." (As male character) "No. We weren't. Now get out of my hospital room. I was just in a car accident, I don't need this."

A fun game for lit geeks like me.

I found this when I was surfing StumbleUpon, which is fantastic by the way. I play this game at work during summer reading time, when we have tables and tables of classics for everyone to read in the summer (mostly students who do not want to read them but whatever). Here is the list and the original post I found!

aquascum of the German language LT loosed this list on the English threads, and I can't resist passing it on. Please copy and paste your bolded books read, italicized books not completed, and then sum up with a head count, so to speak. What does the list say about your reading habits?

Who's first?

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

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
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 - read some, but not others...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
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
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
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 Mitchell
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
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
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
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So I've fully read 34 of these titles (not bad but not fantastic--I own 5 of them that I haven't read yet though), and I've partly read 8 of them (mostly because I couldn't bring myself to finish, although I will someday finish reading Austen's Persuasion, I swear).

How did YOU do?

Another gem.

Zaven got a new scally cap (suede!) for his upcoming role in Titanic: The Musical and was checking himself out in the mirror. Out of nowhere, he came up with this gem:

"When I zip up my jacket all the way, I look like I would like poetry and stuff. But when I do this," as he unzips it halfway down his chest, "I look like one of the Boondock Saints."

I am going to break my ban--sort of.

So I've been thinking recently about a book that I would like to not only read, but to own. I know I've been under my book-buying ban for seven and a half months (wow!) and it's become more a way of life than a challenge (I've only REALLY broken it once, and of course I haven't read that book yet--but I promise I will soon!). But this one I have heard about from enough different people and publications to make me use the remainder of my Christmas B&N gift card on an actual book instead of magazines or CDs or cafe food.

The book I'm talking about is Eve Ensler's new one, I Am an Emotional Creature. I read about it in two of my favorite magazines (BUST and Glamour, which are two fairly different audiences) and heard about it from a crazy lady customer at B&N (via a coworker of mine). The crazy lady customer asked my coworker, an older woman, if she had read it, and when she said she hadn't, the crazy one said "Let me buy this for you--you NEED to read it!" She ended up disappearing after going to the bathroom, and my coworker thinks it was some kind of scam, but I think she was just SO IN LOVE with the book that she wanted every woman to read it. Which I understand, in a weird way. I think I would offer to buy a book for someone if I thought it would make a positive difference in their life. I'm willing to make that bet with this one, and buy it for myself.

I may or may not post a review afterward, but I'll at least put one up on Goodreads.com so you can read it there. (And also, you should join Goodreads because it's fanastic.)