I finally (ok so it's only been out for 3 days) went and saw Harry Potter.
Best movie of the lot.
I didn't make the same mistake I made LAST year. For the first half of the Deathly Hallows I re-read the book. And I PICKED APART the movie. Like seriously. All that was left of it was bones. This time though? I remember the core parts of the book but I don't have all the details fresh in my mind. And it was AMAZING. ONLY Harry Potter movie I've EVER watched without thinking "That didn't happen" or "No one said that in the book" or "They forgot to do THIS".
It was amazing. How many times have I said that so far? It was. A. Maz. Ing. I LOVED Aberforth. Even though his role was minimal. I loved Neville. I LOVED Draco. And McGonagall was awesome as always. And of COURSE Molly's part was great.
BUT. I must say.
The star of my night?
Snape.
I don't think I could have imagined his part even HALF as good as he played it. Oh my gosh he was terrific. The absolute BEST role I have EVER seen him in. He played it beautifully. Hats off to you Alan Rickman.
This was the greatest series I've ever had the pleasure of reading. And the best group of movies I've ever been fortunate enough to watch. I wonder if Ms Rowling knows how many lives she's changed. If she could have envisioned what this would do for so many people when she started writing on that napkin... Yes I'm sad that it's over. That there are no more new books. No more new movies. But these are the ones that I will NEVER tire of.
<3
Monday, July 18, 2011
Sunday, July 17, 2011
In My Mailbox #13
In My Mailbox is hosted every week by Kristi The Story Siren.
THIS week, I got an advanced readers' edition of Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan. I won this in a Goodreads giveaway and had forgotten about it until I received it yesterday. It's set to be on shelves September 27, 2011!
I love the cover. It's simpley, but pretty.
Description from Amazon (Goodreads is down right now for some reason):
If a violent battle destroyed the only world you’ve ever known, would you be brave enough to save who was left? Would love be strong enough to survive the fight? Either way, there’s no turning back.
What did you all get in the mail?
THIS week, I got an advanced readers' edition of Glow by Amy Kathleen Ryan. I won this in a Goodreads giveaway and had forgotten about it until I received it yesterday. It's set to be on shelves September 27, 2011!
I love the cover. It's simpley, but pretty.
Description from Amazon (Goodreads is down right now for some reason):
If a violent battle destroyed the only world you’ve ever known, would you be brave enough to save who was left? Would love be strong enough to survive the fight? Either way, there’s no turning back.
What did you all get in the mail?
Labels:
Amy Kathleen Ryan,
Cover Love,
Glow,
GoodReads,
In My Mailbox,
The Story Siren
Friday, July 15, 2011
Follow Friday #14
Q. What do I do when I are not reading?
When I are not reading I do lots of things. Hehe.
But seriously.
Umm... I take pictures. I have a photography blog and a photography/design Facebook page (which is updated more than my blog). My camera is really like an extra, freaky appendage. I've been taking photos for as long as I can remember. And I've been actually SERIOUS about photography and editing and design and all that stuff for at least the last 10 years. I LOVE taking pictures. I love being able to see things through my camera that people don't even see without one.
I spend time with my beautiful little girls (both pictured above, 3rd picture is my nephew playing frisbee in the ocean). They are my life. My world. I love them both more than anything else. My ongoing divorce issues have not exactly made things easy for either one of them... me either, but they're more important than I am. Long story short, I am just happy that I have both of them here and together now. They are my sunshine.
Like I said above somewhere, I do design too. Mostly my own but I do stuff for friends every once in a while. I like to make mock covers for up and coming novels too. Those are wicked fun.
(ps, click on each one of the 3 pictures immediately above and it will take you to their respective pages!)
I really don't know what else I do. Haha. I'm sure there are other things. Like for a while, my mom and I were feeding a starving horse we named Lilly. She's about 30 minutes away and her owner just wasn't feeding her. Wasn't feeding her, she had nails from her shoes coming through her hooves. She was dirty. She was lonely. We fed her hay twice a week for 3 months until my brother in law died. Two days after that happened we went back and filled up her grain bin so that my mom's friend could distribute her food when she fed her own horses (Lilly had jumped the fence to join the other horses in THEIR pasture and has been there ever since). Her "owner" has been buying her grain ever since then with my mom's friend putting it out for her. We haven't been able to make it to see her as much as we'd like since then. But she's beautiful. She always was beautiful but now I look at her and my heart is just filled with so much happiness.
She went from this:
Skinny and scraggly... to this:
Beautiful creature. We may have saved her... but she saved me. And I will love her forever for how she saved me.
And I reckon that be it. How about you?
Monday, July 11, 2011
Harry Potter
As it all draws to a close I find myself nostalgic for the days when Harry Potter was still new to me. I regret that I didn't start reading the series until after the 4th book was already published, but it was still wonderful and exciting to me. Entering the world of magic with Harry. It was better, almost, that I didn't have to wait for another book to be published after I'd finished reading the first one. I don't think I could have stood it.
When book number 5 was due to come out, we pre-ordered it from the local Borders store and the night before the release we went and stood in line from 9pm until midnight when they finally started handing out the copies. There were people with bottle cap glasses on and hand drawn lightning bolts on their foreheads. People wearing cloaks and scarves with different house colors on them. And my own mother, dressed up as a witch.
I remember carrying the books around with me, reading while I ate, while I "watched tv", sometimes while I was sitting in traffic, always when I was a passenger in a vehicle and not its driver, while I was supposed to be sleeping... I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. I loved reading all of the theories online of what the next book would contain. I loved finding the websites with all of the random information about names and people in the books. Like the word Dumbledore means bumblebee. And that the school motto translated to Never Tickle Sleeping Dragons. I loved going in to stores and finding Harry Potter memorabilia, long before the movies were ever thought of. The posters of Harry playing Quidditch. The stuffed dragons named Norbert. The Hagrid statues with pockets full of sausages and other odds and ends. The Jelly Bellies turned in to Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Finding out that some of those beans really DID taste disgusting. But loving them because they were supposed to.
Harry was the first person to truly pull me into his world and away from my own when I needed to be. I'd read fantasy before, but nothing that really swept me up in its story the way Harry Potter always did. It was with these books that I found my escape when things got too painful to handle. It may not have made them go away completely, but it held them at bay for as long as I had the books open.
I have always been a reader. But for a while... I stopped reading. There weren't really any books that interested me, and being forced to read books for school work turned me off of doing it all together. Harry Potter is what got me reading again. Hard to believe it started out on JK Rowlings napkin.
I love the movies too though. In a different way than I love the books. They leave out so much of the stories, but I understand you can't put all of that wonderful world into a 3 hour movie. I had to learn to look at them objectively, or else I'd do nothing but pick them apart and point out that "this didn't happen" or "that wasn't REALLY what he said" or "they forgot to do that!". It was nice to see the movies, to be able to put faces with the names I was reading. To really feel like I knew them. That they were my friends.
That's what JK Rowling did. She wrote about people who really felt like they were friends when I was reading. And every time a book ended it felt like my friends were leaving for a while. And I was sad. And now? They're gone for good. Or at least... they won't come back the same way they did before. But I'll always be able to remember the way things were. I'll always be able to read the stories again and remember the way I felt the first time I picked up the books. I'll always be able to watch the movies and feel just as excited to finally see Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and Harry and Hermione and Ron.
This series really was incredibly magical. My 8 year old has just started reading The Sorcerer's Stone. She's a reluctant reader unfortunately. I can only hope Harry opens up a world of reading for her the way it did for me.
When book number 5 was due to come out, we pre-ordered it from the local Borders store and the night before the release we went and stood in line from 9pm until midnight when they finally started handing out the copies. There were people with bottle cap glasses on and hand drawn lightning bolts on their foreheads. People wearing cloaks and scarves with different house colors on them. And my own mother, dressed up as a witch.
I remember carrying the books around with me, reading while I ate, while I "watched tv", sometimes while I was sitting in traffic, always when I was a passenger in a vehicle and not its driver, while I was supposed to be sleeping... I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen next. I loved reading all of the theories online of what the next book would contain. I loved finding the websites with all of the random information about names and people in the books. Like the word Dumbledore means bumblebee. And that the school motto translated to Never Tickle Sleeping Dragons. I loved going in to stores and finding Harry Potter memorabilia, long before the movies were ever thought of. The posters of Harry playing Quidditch. The stuffed dragons named Norbert. The Hagrid statues with pockets full of sausages and other odds and ends. The Jelly Bellies turned in to Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. Finding out that some of those beans really DID taste disgusting. But loving them because they were supposed to.
Harry was the first person to truly pull me into his world and away from my own when I needed to be. I'd read fantasy before, but nothing that really swept me up in its story the way Harry Potter always did. It was with these books that I found my escape when things got too painful to handle. It may not have made them go away completely, but it held them at bay for as long as I had the books open.
I have always been a reader. But for a while... I stopped reading. There weren't really any books that interested me, and being forced to read books for school work turned me off of doing it all together. Harry Potter is what got me reading again. Hard to believe it started out on JK Rowlings napkin.
I love the movies too though. In a different way than I love the books. They leave out so much of the stories, but I understand you can't put all of that wonderful world into a 3 hour movie. I had to learn to look at them objectively, or else I'd do nothing but pick them apart and point out that "this didn't happen" or "that wasn't REALLY what he said" or "they forgot to do that!". It was nice to see the movies, to be able to put faces with the names I was reading. To really feel like I knew them. That they were my friends.
That's what JK Rowling did. She wrote about people who really felt like they were friends when I was reading. And every time a book ended it felt like my friends were leaving for a while. And I was sad. And now? They're gone for good. Or at least... they won't come back the same way they did before. But I'll always be able to remember the way things were. I'll always be able to read the stories again and remember the way I felt the first time I picked up the books. I'll always be able to watch the movies and feel just as excited to finally see Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and Harry and Hermione and Ron.
This series really was incredibly magical. My 8 year old has just started reading The Sorcerer's Stone. She's a reluctant reader unfortunately. I can only hope Harry opens up a world of reading for her the way it did for me.
Labels:
harry potter,
It All Ends Here,
JK Rowling,
Nostalgia
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Audio Books
I just got back from my trip to the Outer Banks with a few of the members of my family. On the way down and most of the way back up we finished listening to the Full Cast Audio version of Graceling which I thought was awesome. I loved Katsa's voice and Prince Po's. And it was so great to kind of listen to the stories come alive. It will make reading Bitterblue so much easier because I'll be able to hear them as I read.
Once that was over (Booo!!!!) I put in the audio book for Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. I thought that might be a full cast audio, too but apparently I read the cover wrong. It's read by two different narrators instead. I must say, I'm not fond of the guy chosen to read Sam's chapters, but the girl who reads Grace's? Love her. She sounds so incredibly convincing. It's like conversation instead of a manuscript. And she does such a wonderful job. I kind of wish I had another road trip so I could listen more. Hehe. A few minutes here and there when I have to go to the grocery store just isn't enough.
I definitely recommend both of those audio books! Check them out!
Once that was over (Booo!!!!) I put in the audio book for Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. I thought that might be a full cast audio, too but apparently I read the cover wrong. It's read by two different narrators instead. I must say, I'm not fond of the guy chosen to read Sam's chapters, but the girl who reads Grace's? Love her. She sounds so incredibly convincing. It's like conversation instead of a manuscript. And she does such a wonderful job. I kind of wish I had another road trip so I could listen more. Hehe. A few minutes here and there when I have to go to the grocery store just isn't enough.
I definitely recommend both of those audio books! Check them out!
Labels:
Bitterblue,
full cast audio,
Graceling,
Kristin Cashore,
Maggie Stiefvater,
Shiver
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Still
I'm still on vacation! But I wanted to check in and see how everyone's week was going!
What are you all reading this week?
What are you all reading this week?
Friday, July 1, 2011
Beach Baby
I just wanted to let you all know I may not be here for the next week. I'm headed to the beach in a few hours!! YAY!
Of course, I may fall asleep while I'm driving, but at least it will be on my way to the ocean.
So I hope everyone has a great 4th of July and a beautiful week!
Of course, I may fall asleep while I'm driving, but at least it will be on my way to the ocean.
So I hope everyone has a great 4th of July and a beautiful week!
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