Good stories/Good reads:

• Please – Alicia Aspinwall
• The King and His Hawk – Retold by James Baldwin: (It’s about Genghis Khan’s temper)
• The Vulture – Hilaire Belloc: (If you want to watch your food intake)
• Mr. Vinegar and His Fortune – Retold by James Baldwin
• The Fisherman and His Wife – Retold by Clifton Johnson
• George Washington’s Rules of Civility
• How Much Land Does a Man Need? – Leo Tolstoy
• Aristotle on Self-Discipline
• Etiquette in a Nutshell
• The Bell of Atri – Retold by James Baldwin
• The American’s Creed – William Tyler Page
• The Charge of the Light Brigade – Alfred Tennyson
• F Scott Fitzgerald to His Daughter

I started reading the Bible. I asked God to let His words speak to me and that I may have the understanding to know His words. This was the verse that spoke to me strongly.

Ephesians 2:8 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God”

This album seems to be the soundtrack of my life right now esp. track Not Over You, Run Every Time, and Stealing. I probably listened to Run Every Time for about a hundred times. Love this album.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this book or how it ended. All I know is that I needed more answers, more revelations. It felt like this wasn’t the end. I did like the symbolism of good and evil in reference to the python and the apple in an ironic way. I like how Lemony S. was faithful in including Beatrice till the end.

My fave “anybody-can-relate-to-this” parts:

“It is one of the strange truths of life that practically nobody likes to be stared at and that practically nobody can stop themselves from staring.”

“If you live among people… then every moment of your life is an incident of peer pressure, and you cannot avoid it… And if you try to avoid every instance of peer pressure you will end up without any peers whatsoever…”

I stop reading in the middle of chapter three. I guess I got tired of getting to resolution part of the story. After a week of just looking at the book on my desk staring back at me, I went back to reading it. As soon as I got to chapter four, I couldn’t put it down. I could kick myself for not continuing on when I was on chapter three. Anyway, to me this book is about moral corruption. Can good, decent people be corrupted morally?

My favorite “anybody-can-relate-to-this” part:

When someone has disappointed you, it is often difficult to decide whether to continue their acquaintance, even if the disappointers have done noble things in the meantime. (Chapter Eight)

(I love the mirror-written chapters since I do mirror-writing, too.)

Sooo good! It’s my favorite pizza right now.

Oh, Gavin DeGraw. How I’ve missed you. I’ve been wondering when he was going to make another album. So glad it’s here. It was worth the wait.

I read this book when I was in high school and read it again last week. Back then, I was imagining all these places that the author mentioned in the book. It’s different now because I actually know the places and cities that the character was talking about… all in Southern California. I thought that was cool.

Back then, I was wondering and expecting that relationships happened that way. Now, I thought that the relationship developed quickly. That’s young love for you, I guess. And the ending happened too soon.

Overall, I still like the book. I’ll recommend it to young readers.

My favorite “anybody-can-relate-to-this” part:

The ways sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world…You may feel as if you have been set aflame and may spread over your life; find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape; find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors on everything; find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness." (Chapter Ten)

This movie is very disturbing. I missed the first 20 minutes when I saw this movie, so I wouldn’t know if it stated in the beginning that it was a true story. So when it ended and had information about the babysitter, I just couldn’t believe that it was a true story. Her insanity is a different category on its own. So unsettling. So disturbing. So sad.