This is a witty documentary about a normal every day guy who’s had a crush on Drew Berrymore since he was six. He wins $1100 on a game show and uses that as the budget to make a film about his attempts to get a date with her through the Six Degrees of Separation method. He charges the best camera Circuit City sells with full intent to return it after 30 days, so he only has a limited amount of time to acheive his goal.

It’s a silly concept, yes, but the spirit of the movie is that it’s worth taking risks to follow your dreams. It also shows how incredibly generous people can be if you just give them the chance.

A feel good film, this one is certainly worth renting as a cheery pick-me-up.

I felt guilty reading this book for some reason. I can’t help but imagine that the life of a geisha around the time of the second World War would have been especially troubling. Reading a book written by an American man retelling the fictional story of a geisha though, almost seemed wrong. I understand that Arthur Golden did a tremendous amount of research on the topic on top of what he already knew of the subject of Japanese history, however as much as I want to believe that this could possibly be even remotely accurate as historical fiction, I can’t.

I feel guilty mostly because I know so little about Geisha in the first place. I don’t know whether or not I can believe Mr. Golden when he tries to reassure me that he was indeed accurate in the day-to-day life of a Geisha.

Supposing he was correct though, the information was amazing. The story wasn’t anything spectacular. In fact, the basis of the story has been told over and over and over again. Poor girl endures hardships and ends up with a happy life. The history behind the story and the detail that goes into describing what it means to be a geisha is why the book should be read.

I would have preferred it if the book didn’t take place around War World II though. I would have been more interested in following a geisha throughout a life not interrupted by the pangs of war. It would have been interesting for Sayuri to take an apprentice under her own wings and allowed the story to come full circle in that way.

The one thing that seemed most artificial about the book was Sayuri’s infatuation with The Chairman, a character she encounters once during her childhood and can’t ever get from her mind. He showed her kindness when he first met her and had probably been the only person in her life to show her true kindness, so her early infatuation with him was understandable. As her life continued though, the whole thing just seemed unnatural.

I could have stopped three quarters of the way through the book and been happy. I didn’t really care for the last hundred pages or so and just kept reading to get through the book. Overall though, this is one of the best books I’ve read so far (if not the best book) If you have any interest in history at all and haven’t yet read this book, it’s an absolute must.

I finally finished this book! It took me nearly a month, but I did it.

There’s so much to this book, that I can’t really give it a good book review. I was never good at book reviews anyway. It’s a story about a group of people from all walks of life that find themselves living in the cathedral town of Kingsbridge Priory.

While a cathedral is being built, politics and pettiness of enemies get in the way. People fall in love. People make bad decisions. People die.

The book was nearly 1000 pages, yet I still felt rushed at the end. I’m wondering if the author would have told the story better if he made this a trilogy or series. Overall, I felt it was a good book and would recommend it.

Mark has OCD and Tourette’s Syndrome which have recently begun to take over his life. As a result, his wife, job and friends are slipping away from him. He’s spent most of his life trying to hide his disorders from the world and feeling like he’s a freak. Then he meets Charlotte (played by Shirley Henderson aka Moaning Myrtle from the Harry Potter movies!) She also has OCD and invites Mark to a support group where others like them talk about their compulsions and try to overcome them.

I very much enjoyed the beginning of the movie where we learn what Mark is going through as well as the middle of the movie where it feels like he’s gaining control over his life. Then, Mark snaps and loses all control. He isolates himself from the world and lets himself go. The ending was a little too dramatic for me, but overall, the movie was great.

It’s funny, dramatic and romantic all rolled into one.

For an animal lover, this isn’t the greatest book in the world. A good portion of the book deals with vivid descriptions of how animals are killed and eaten by man or by beast.

And let me save you about 100 pages. The whole entire first part can be skipped. Pi likes animals. His family are zookeepers. His dad thinks tigers are the most dangerous animals on the planet. Pi secretly goes around practicing Muslim, Christian and Hindu religions until they all find out about each other’s roles in Pi’s life and try to convince him to choose one – theirs. And because money isn’t good and India is falling apart his family decides to get on a boat with all their animals and move from India to Canada.

There, 100 pages saved – completely skip that part of the book.

The remainder of the tale is nearly its equal in boredom. Maybe I’m just not “proper” enough to “get it” but it wasn’t my favorite book. The most interesting part was when Pi finds a floating island of flesh-eating algae. And the final conversation with the Japanese men who want a believable tale about why their boat sank was also interesting.

The rest of the book I could have skipped.

Beware of the New York Times bestseller list.

First, I am not sure what part of this movie was unrated because it all seemed PG-13 to me.

Next, these are the sorts of movies you have to be in the mood to see. They are mindless and stupid and exist solely to poke fun of modern culture.

In the style of the Scary Movie series, Date Movie attempts to make fun of every modern romantic film out there. Among the many are: Bridget Jones’ Diary, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers, Wedding Crashers, My Best Friend’s Wedding, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Napoleon Dynamite, The Wedding Planner, Hitch and Shallow Hal.

We rented this for free from Blockbuster. It was definitely worth free, but I’m not sure I’d pay for it in any way. This would be a great movie to catch on TBS on a boring Sunday afternoon.

Phil (played by Will Ferrell) has spent his entire life trying to live up to his sports-crazed, competitive father’s expectations. He’s more of a sensitive man who’s no good at sports, therefore his father Buck (played by Robert Duvall) wants little to do with him.

Buck coaches little league soccer for Sam, Phil’s son. Sam isn’t the best soccer player either, so just wanting to win, Buck trades him to the Tigers, a team of misfits who don’t know the first thing about soccer. Phil, trying to beat his father for once, decides to coach the Tigers. Since he knows less about soccer than the kids do, he gets Mike Ditka (his father’s enemy neighbor) to help him out.

This is a typical sports movie about a team of rugrats who turn it all around in the end. It’s peppered with a lot of comedy and only a few “kicks in the nuts” jokes. As with most soccer movies, it also displays some truly awesome moves.

I’m glad we didn’t rush out to the theatre to see this, but it was definitely worth the 100 minutes we spent watching it for free on HBO.

I got this book a long time ago from PaperBackSwap and having no recollection what it was about, I put it in my bag as an option to read while I was in Texas. As it turned out, I read frequently when I was in Texas. I really miss reading a couple books a week and hope this will kick-start me on reading again.

The Cove is a small town Sally escapes to after the murder of her father. She doesn’t remember what happened that night, but she very well may have killed him. Or perhaps her mother killed him. Either way, both she and her mother are safest if Sally runs away. At least that’s what she thinks. An FBI agent named James Quinlan easily tracks down Sally and begins to work his magic on her trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle leading up to her father’s murder. In the meantime, strange things happen in The Cove which can’t easily be explained and James finds he has another mystery on his hands.

My description probably sounds boring, but this book was anything but. The pace is quick, which I’ve discovered I prefer in books. The mysteries are plentiful and kept me guessing. Sometimes I had aspects of it figured out and other times I was shocked to discover the truth. Overall, it was a pretty good suspense book with a little romance thrown in for good measure.

This was a really quick and boring read. I figured so many people were ranting and raving about it that perhaps reading it might do me some good. No, not really.

The book is about a story of two mice and two little people who live in a maze and try to find cheese. They all find a huge supply of cheese and when the cheese is all gone, the two mice go off to find more cheese while the two little people can’t quite accept that the cheese is gone and isn’t coming back.

The story of the people at their high school reunion telling the story is laughable. They’re all so excited to discuss how the story changed their lives. I wrote better stories in the 3rd grade.

I was not motivated at all by this book. View me as a Hem if you want, but the book is filled with things you SHOULD already know. You have to change and adapt in this world if you’re going to get anywhere in life. You have to pay attention to your surroundings so you can notice when things are changing and be prepared for it.

I honestly can’t believe that there are people who don’t already know this. I can’t see how reading this horribly written book will motivate anyone to change their ways.

I’ve heard bad things about this book, but I completely enjoyed it. It was a beautifully written yet tragically depressing story. I’ll be renting the movie soon. I’ll be interested to see the differences. Since most of the book takes place in Astrid’s mind, I can’t imagine how this has translated into a movie.

Perhaps more of a proper review later.