Exactly Eleven Questions

As I dust off my blog, I have an announcement to make:

I would like to invite you to be a part of my book reviews for the summer!

I'm finally getting back to my poor abandoned blog, and will (at least for now) be using it to help organize my thoughts on the books I'm reading this summer. Here is where you come in:

Sandwiched between a brief summary and my personal recommendation will be a section called Exactly Eleven Questions. I would like to answer eleven unique questions provided by eleven of my friends for each book I read. You don't have to know anything about the book to ask a question about it; I just want a varied group of questions for each book. I won't use exactly the same set of questions for each book: it will change according to what you all ask.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

- characters and their preferences (explicit or what I imagine)

- the author

- quotes

- places in the book

- non-human characters (animals, or in the case of The Ruins, plants)

- film adaptations

- anything your little heart desires

Sample questions:

- If you were to cook dinner for one character in The Ruins, who would it be, what would you cook them, and why?

- Have you seen any of the film adaptations of Wuthering Heights? (spoiler: I haven't.) Okay, then who would you cast in the major roles?

- What was your favorite/least favorite quote from The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

- If Emily Bronte had written a follow-up novel to WH, what do you think would happen?

- Who was your favorite/least favorite character in ________ and why?

- Could you relate to any of the characters in __________?

or WHATEVER! It can be as trivial or deep as you want.

The books I will be reviewing are The Ruins by Scott Smith, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. Google them if you want to know more about them. :)

Please do the following in the comments:

1. TITLE: Write the name of the book you are asking about

2. QUESTION: Write the question(s) you want me to answer

3. PERMISSION: Tell me whether I can use your name in the blog in conjunction with the question you are asking.

4. SEPARATE: Use separate comments for questions on separate books!

I will need 11 questions for each book. Yes, you may use one of the sample questions! Please respond ASAP!

Thank you all,

Kirst

All aboard the awkward train.

Sometimes, when in the company of people I'm not horribly familiar with, I clam up and just listen so I can learn more about the people I'm with, and get a feel for the conversation. Other times, if I feel like I know a couple of the people well enough, I'll start trying to contribute. This often ends badly, particularly if I'm trying to impress someone. I present you with the following exhibits from this afternoon:

This is what happened when I was going to tell Jamie about the glitter on the ceiling of my bedroom back home during high school. The ellipses represent tangents I decided not to include for length's sake.

Me: "Yeah, I redid my room the summer before freshman year of high school...I spent two weeks in the garage staining my loft, so I got very familiar with the music of 96.3 in the summer of 2003, which was okay; lots of Evanescence...and we painted the room blue" [no one was listening at this point]
JM: "Wow. You should tell that story again...except this time include something interesting."
Me: [profoundly embarrassed] "Shut up."

Lesson learned: People I don't know as well will probably not put up with my awkward ramblings. Who knew!

This is an example of me trying to incorporate a reference to a television show that in my circle of friends back home would be highly appreciated:

JG: "She said something like 'These questions might show up somewhere else soon, so you should probably keep them. WINK.' "
Me: "I think if Mary ever winked, it'd look like...[to JM, as no one else is listening at this point] have you ever seen Arrested Development?"
JM: [shakes head]
Me: Oh...well, nevermind. [I was going to say I imagine it would be reminiscent of Lucille Bluth trying to wink]

Lesson learned: Sometimes I need to have an AD filter. I'm better at having a Drop Dead Gorgeous filter since it's lesser-known, but since Arrested Development is the other piece of pop culture I constantly reference, I guess I should probably pop a filter on that as well. Ah, well.

Here's something else, I guess.

Me: "I was telling the altos something, I don't remember [ramble on about what I could have been telling them, at which point no one is listening anymore except for MH and maybe JM and JG] and I told them...have you seen Mean Girls?
MH: "Yes!"
Me: [at the same time the waitress has come to get more drink orders and etc, so it takes me like two minutes to say instead of 4 seconds] "So I told them 'If you do this or wear this (or whatever) YOUCAN'TSINGWITHUS!!"
MH: [laughs]
Me: [shuts up and takes a drink so I can sink back into listening to the conversation]

Just when I think my awkward side is tamed, this happens. I guess it's a similar situation Kelli is in, where I find my niche with my regular friends, but as soon as someone new is in the mix, I'm just like "well oh crap I have to define myself, PLEASE FIND ME INTERESTING AND FUNNY, I BEG YOU."

Oh, and I'm now actually thinking about grad school, which is mildly terrifying. I just wanted to get through undergrad and teach middle school choir and strings. Is that so difficult?

Things I Have Learned in the Past Month [ish]

In no particular order:

- The fact that something is "understandable" won't necessarily make it hurt less.

- When you give a really solid performance, perhaps the defining performance of your career so far, there is bound to be a downer feeling afterward, a lack of energy in the days to come.

- Also, don't beat yourself up if every performance isn't exactly as perfect as the best one you've given. Life will go on, and someone somewhere enjoyed it.

- God puts some beautiful people in your life when you're not looking, in places you wouldn't expect.

- Sometimes it's actually a relief when your D&D character dies...when you haven't put much time into them and you want to move on with another character.

- Shirley Schmidt is perhaps my favorite character on Boston Legal.
- There are few things that a night of Arrested Development and Boston Legal can't cure.

- Don't watch Audition. Just don't do it.
- If you're not careful, history is bound to repeat itself.

- SAI sisters are amazing.

- Matthew Allen? Really not a bad guy. Though he may have at least a man-crush on a certain freshman in our studio.

- Romans is a really freaking sweet book in the Bible.

- Money should not come before friendship.

- Being constantly busy is actually not a good thing.

- Sleep is highly underrated.


I think I'm going to pop in some Boston Legal and eat some lunch. It's going to be a good day.

Add to that list...Schmidt.

It would seem that I haven't updated my blog in over a month, now. I do apologize, for the few of you that read this. I can hardly believe we're already halfway through the first semester here at CMU, and so much has happened. I'd like for everything to slow down, but I'll just have to deal with it.

I'd especially like to slow down this week because mine and Monica's voice recital jury is on Friday, and I have a sore throat. I can still sing, but I fear the condition of my voice this week. At least I know my music backward and forward now!

I've also gotten some semblance of a job: tutoring students in voice pedagogy! I signed up as a theory tutor, but we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

Oh dear, I'm slightly distracted by Boston Legal, as Denny Crane just bust into the courtroom in Revolutionary War apparel. I also just died a little of cute as James Spader hugged Betty White.

It'll take me a little bit to get back into the swing of regularly posting, and getting my creative juices flowing. So to speak. Er.

Denny Crane.

Of Cabbages and Kings

I was going to review Brave New World and Bell Jar, then I realized I only have like 15 minutes and I don't have the books with me for reference. Bah.

At the beginning of the week I decided to start writing everything in cursive. I've just noticed a lot of cursive lately in Monica's writing and in a lot of signatures. As I've been experimenting with it, I've discovered new ways of making my handwriting distinctive, and I've actually enjoyed picking up a pen and just writing lately for the fun of it. I guess it's just a small part of myself I want to improve. I've started using the "Disney D" as my cursive capital D, and experimenting with how I write letters like i and t. It also makes me really think about what I'm writing, like what comprises the words and sentences. It'll be interesting to see where this goes.

Bach. I don't even know where to start with the man. He wrote some fabulous music, and was utterly brilliant, but somewhere along the way he must have been, I don't know, given a venereal disease by a singer because he just seems to have hated them. I imagine if I had to sing the Esurientes implevit bonis from his Magnificat for him, Bach would cackle with glee to see me fall over dead from asphyxiation when he didn't let me take a breath during that second sixteenth-note run. The man wrote beautiful music, it's just all written instrumentally. It would be infinitely easier to play than to sing. And that is all I will say about that.

NOTE: To those of you who saw the CMU choir concert last fall, you should come up again this October to hear us sing another Whitacre piece. We're doing Water Night.

This post was going to be longer, but I have to go to ACDA, so nevermind! This weekend I'll write about having to conduct to Katy Perry and Ke$ha in class this week.