Books, Books, Books

Well, obviously my plan for this blog flopped in a major way. What can I say? Oh well! So what am I to do with it now? Eh! Blog about anything and everything that amuses me, as it strikes my interest as so many other people do! What will I blog about now? A book!

I'm a huge bookworm. As proof you can check out my booklists. Now, not all of the books on the list are in the running for the best novel of the century, but they're books that I hope will be amusing reads. Currently I'm reading Emma and The Vampires by Jane Austen and Wayne Josephson:

I'm on page 282 out of 289, and I must say... I'd rather put the book back on the shelf. I know how Emma ends. She ends up with her good Mr. Knightly, and everyone lives happily ever after. I like Emma as it's own book. There's nothing of Jane Austen's that I don't like! But my goodness!

There have been quite a few mash up books hitting the bookstores recently, and I've read two others, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as well as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. The first was rather witty I thought, the second wasn't awful either! If you're not a fan of Lucy Steele in Austen's Sense and Sensibility you're desire to hit her upside the head is sure to grow when you add the Sea Monsters!

I mention those two other mash ups because the mash ups are actually mashed so well that the stories still flow, but almost as their own stories separate from what Austen created. Emma and the Vampires, however, does not. It's disjointed, and at times ridiculous. As I continued reading the book I realized I was reading it for Austen's story, and not because of the mashed up story. The black curtains covering Mr. Elton's windows, and Harriet's plumpness have no relevance in the story whatsoever, despite Josephson's best efforts.

My bottom line opinion? Save your money for a better book, or some nice Boot's body butter, and pick up Austen's Emma at a library or read it here. If you still insist on reading Emma and the Vampires, ask me for my copy. You can have it. I won't be reading it again.

What the heck is going on here?!

I put this blog together a while ago thinking I could use it to write about my running training; blog about my achievements and failures alike in fitness and weight loss. I thought I could use it to blog about my knitting because who wouldn't want to read about knitting?! No one who's not on ravelry.com, that's for sure. Neither idea seemed all that thrilling to me, especially given that there are countless blogs about both out there.

For what does one blog? Do you blog as an emotional outlet, to stand on a proverbial soapbox, to hopefully be heard by the masses? I guess there are plenty of reasons to blog, and everyone has their own.

For myself, I couldn't come up with what I thought was a good enough reason for blogging until recently. It's been creeping into my mind- well, more or less slamming into every corner of my thoughts- that my life is in absolute chaos! No one wants their life to be in chaos. Well maybe some people, but no sane person does. People want their lives to be simple, neat, relaxing. Calm. That would be the perfect word to describe what I would like my life to be. Calm.

Some people may say "life isn't that way. No one can have that without giving up the real world." Others may say that wanting life to be calm is just a dumb idea because, let's face it, society trains us to stay in stressful situations, to cling to clutter, to jam our schedules full, and to fill what should be moments of relaxation with the constant necessity to mindlessly check facebook, twitter, and the like. Society has trained us to gogogogo until our lives are spinning out of control. I don't want this from my life. I want to be able to enjoy it, make the most of it, and not waste it away while struggling to keep up with an ever growing "to do" list, and endless obligations.

I truly believe it's possible to live this way, without all the clutter, and running around like a chicken with it's head cut off. I believe that in order to live this way we must be willing to make changes, in my case lots of changes, but I believe that if we are willing to make those changes we can each have the type of life we want!

I don't have a plan. I never have a plan. If I did, I probably wouldn't be living an absolute mess of a life. I always have a "to do" list that seems to wind up more unfinished than the list I had before, but never a plan. So what am I going to do? Just dive right in, I guess, and hope that I can get to where I want to be. I'm giving myself a year to get there. I mean, that sounds like a good time span to completely make over my life right?

I guess what this is when you get right down to it is an experiment, not really in the scientific term at all, unless you take into consideration nothing other than the "trial and error" aspect, but an experiment all the same. I guess we'll find out soon enough if this is going to blow up in my face or not. And if it does? Well, I won't be any worse off than I am now, right?

Joanie