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Updates and reviews

Hmm, where to start. This Friday we'll be finishing the most awesome (and one of my favorite) movies of all time: Howl's Moving Castle! It's the extremely strange story of a girl named Sophie who has a spell put on her that makes her look like an old lady. Sophie sets out to find the Witch of the Waste who cursed her and becomes housekeeper to the mysterious Wizard Howl in his moving castle. There is a little boy apprentice, a bespelled scarecrow named Turnip Head, a fire demon named Calcifer, and many more crazy characters we have yet to meet, while Howl tries to avoid becoming part of a war and Sophie attempts to get rid of the spell on her as well as the spell that binds Calcifer to Howl. Come join us!

= totally awesome movie. Try the book too!

In other news, I stayed home from work yesterday because I was sick (I feel much better today, think I just needed to rest), but that meant I had a chance to catch up on some reading I've been meaning to do (you should see the piles of books I have waiting to be read! :P)

First, I finally finished The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. I've actually been reading this book very slowly for a few weeks, one chapter at a time every few days because I sometimes like to savor books by favorite writers. And Neil Gaiman is definitely in my Top 5. Anyhow, The Graveyard Book is about a boy named Nobody Owens (Bod for short) who is raised by the inhabitants of a Graveyard (i.e. the dead). This book is deliciously creepy and funny and sad and overall wonderful. It's sort of based on The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (where Mowgli is raised by the inhabitants of the Jungle, get it? :D) You should really check it out. And even better, if you just want to get a feel for what the book is like you can watch the author read each chapter online! This is another reason I love Neil Gaiman so much, he does things like this because he loves his fans so much. Here is the first chapter of The Graveyard Book as read by the man who wrote it: How Nobody Came to the Graveyard


The next book I read yesterday was the second book in the Morganville Vampire series, The Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine. This series is really engrossing. The main character is Claire Danvers who graduated from high school at sixteen and was accepted to lots of great schools like MIT and Caltech, but her parents were worried about her moving so far away so she is forced to attend a Texas Prairie University for a few years. However, the town of Morganville holds a lot more than a University. The town is run by vampires. Yeah. How awesome is that? After being hurt at school (by a human, not a vamp) Claire moves off campus and that's when the real adventures begin--with her new roomates Eve the Goth Girl, Michael the blonde-haired musician who never leaves the house, and the super hot Shane. So far these books are really entertaining, they're set at a really fast pace, with one disaster happening after another. The characters are really believable, and Claire is smart and brave and a little freaked out about what's happening which makes her all the more likable. I definitely recommend this series, start with the first, Glass Houses.


Hopefull I'll find more time to read my massive stack of books and report back to you on my opinions, here's a shortened list of what I've got waiting for me:
Let it Snow by Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle
Paper Towns by John Green
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Cathy's Key by Jordan Weisman and Cathy Brigg (you should read the first one, Cathy's Book)
Gregor and the Prophecy of the Bane by Suzanne Collins
and
The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan
and the list grows every day.
Give me some suggestions in the comments for your chance at a prize!


Much loves,
Sti

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