Winner!

The month of November was big for me. As you can see from the widget over on the right-hand side of my blog, I successfully began and finished my very first novel during National Novel Writing Month. It is 20 chapters and 55,502 words. As with almost any novel that was written during only 30 [...]

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Finally Young Adult

I was a voracious reader as a child. And I am a voracious reader now. But I wasn’t much of a reader during the years in between, my high school and college years. At the time, I felt like I got my fill doing my assigned school reading, and when I did read just for [...]

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Nano (Or, Why I Won’t Be Blogging This November)

I am particularly excited for my next two 12-hour sessions at the dermatologist’s office, because it will give me a pretty much perfect opportunity to work on my main project for November. This year, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, and this year, for the first time, I am COMMITTED to finishing my novel. BY GOD, [...]

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My Favorite Book Ever: To Say Nothing of the Dog

I have a lot of books that are favorites in different ways. Infinite Jest represents one of the most rewarding reading experiences I’ve had. The Diary of Anne Frank had an enormous affect on me during my middle school years, and remains an area of interest. Hamlet is my favorite work of Shakespeare. And then [...]

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What are these feelings inside me?

My sister and I went to see New Moon this afternoon. It was not what we expected. I have written before about my multi-layered ambivalence toward the entire Twilight franchise. When I read the books, I both hated them and loved them. I hated the misogyny. I hated the atrocious writing. I hated that there [...]

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“The Art of Racing in the Rain”

Today, I finished The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. My mom gave me the book with her recommendation, and I was skeptical of it at first. It is narrated from the perspective of a dog, as he goes through life with his family. The concept seemed a little too cutesy for [...]

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Keep Coming Back

So! Moving on from talking about one form of highbrow entertainment to another, we go from celebrating iCarly to Infinite Jest. I set a goal for myself at the beginning of 2009 to finally read and finish reading Infinite Jest. I had no idea that Infinite Jest would become the target of a mass online [...]

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Infinite Summer

At the beginning of 2009, I set out for myself a rather ridiculously impressive list of goals I hoped to accomplish in the year to come. I’ve done really well on some of them–for example, by my becoming fully financially independent and buying a house of my very own (and let’s not play around, that’s [...]

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Dazzled

When I purchased the first book in the Twilight series this past summer, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I knew about the books was that they involved vampires and that they were immensely popular. I was trying to be virtuous and to read more, so that I could follow [...]

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I can barely feel my hands as they are typing this

Louisville is “special” in that from one day to the next, weather can change completely. As in, last March when a massive snowstorm was immediately followed by 70 degree sunshine. As in, a few weeks ago, the high temperatures were close to 90, and now, just a few short weeks later, the lows are in [...]

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