time for some recs

last.fm has not given me a headache in the last few weeks. recently, i noticed that some tracks kept appearing in my scrobbles list and they were last played on the ipod over a month ago. so i had to reset the play count on the ipod itself. wonder if it'll work. and the site was recently overhauled, and is sporting a clean, new look. methinks every audiophile should seriously think about going with this application. i love how ne-yo is slowly creeping up into my top 5 artists. lolz.

speaking of favourite artists, no. 6 is (surprise, surprise) smashing pumpkins. i loved this band since today, but i found that i'm not that big a fanatic because i only like about half their songs - at least the half that i'm familiar with. i recently added their greatest hits album into the pod, and with some luck managed to single out this gem. it's called try, try, try.

the top song in my ipod is ne-yo's closer, followed closely by because of you. now that is a big surprise, though the playlist cleanup may be partly to blame, because i usually don't go rnb when i could go alternative. a few spots down is this lovely depressing song by little bit, called forget about me. it asks the question: why don't you love me? which coincidentally is a question i've been asking in my mind a few short years ago toward a certain person. at the risk of being accused of sour graping, i still want to know the answer. dammit.

i think i regret not paying more attention to lifehouse's concert here, based on the few reviews i bothered to look at. but this song from who we are on constant repeat more than made up for my loss.

i finally succumbed and bought the first book in stephenie meyer's twilight series. i lent it to my dad and he promptly returned it - that's how easy it was to read. i haven't tried reading it yet; i think i want to savor it and save it for a rainy night. also, i didn't want to be interrupted while daydreaming about robert pattinson i'm in the middle of an exciting part.

oh, and i bought tracey thorn's (everything but the girl) solo album from last year. it sounds just like ebtg without ben watt. whatever.

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yeah, i think i've read more than six

this is a meme I've seen do the rounds at lj a few weeks ago, but never found the time to do myself. then a high school friend posted it, so i thought i might as well.

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1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your own multiply/lj so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;)

The 100 list:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - my favorite of all of Austen's, hands down.
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien – tried reading it when I was a kid but gave up after one page.
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling – I love love love this world. And the fandom.
   
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
   
6. The Bible – I don’t think I’ve read half of the whole book
   
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
   
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
   
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
   
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
    
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott – this is one of the first three books that my granny sent me while she was in TO, and led me to appreciate children’s classics. Jo&Laurie = OTP
    
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
    
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare – is it possible to find them in prose? I love the themes of the stories; unfortunately, I’m just distracted by iambic pentameter. Which is why I love watching movies based on Shakespeare – I understand them better.
    
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
    
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
    
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
    
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
    
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
    
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
    
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
    
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
    
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
    
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
    
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
    
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
    
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
    
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
    
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
    
34. Emma - Jane Austen – not as good as P&P, but I loved the idea of her falling in love with a man she knew very well, almost all her life.
    
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
    
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
    
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
    
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
    
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
    
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne – I’ve read The Te of Piglet (which is a sequel to the Tao of Pooh), but not the original.
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
    
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown – issues about Christians aside, the story is brilliant.
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
    
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
    
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery – I am such a romantic. But I read the Emily books before this, and I found Anne a more engaging heroine.
    
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
    
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
    
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding – Good story, but really scary.
    
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
    
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
    
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
    
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
    
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen – I liked the movie too (yay Alan Rickman!)
    
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
    
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
    
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
    
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
    
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
    
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
    
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
    
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
    
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
    
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
    
68. Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding – the first movie was a v. good adaptation. The second one, not so much.
    
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
    
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
    
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
    
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett – another one from that first set of books. Unfortunately I lost that copy, so I bought another one.
    
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
    
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
    
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
    
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
    
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
    
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
    
80. Possession - AS Byatt – I read this in parts after seeing the movie. Have yet to read it in full. Maybe soon.
    
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
    
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
    
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
    
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
    
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
    
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom – yeah ‘tis good. Bought it for my parents’ wedding anniversary gift. Hehehe.
    
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – I have the complete works borrowed from my highschool friend, but I have yet to start.
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
    
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
    
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery – I think I loved the snake most of all. And the boa constrictor.
    
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
    
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
    
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
    
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
    
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
    
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare – Lorybeth says this was required for high school, I seem to remember only Merchant of Venice.
    
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
    
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

the end is the beginning is the end, and it stinks

there's so much i want to write about harry potter. i know, it's been a month since i read deathly hallows. i have since read all the others, haphazardly though. but i seriously need an outlet for my angst (i am such a fangirl) because it's seriously interfering with my long-delayed schoolwork.

let's talk about that greasy-haired git. one of my favorite lines has got to be the one on my homepage. snape has been one of my favorite characters, precisely because he was a character. he's not like wise old dumbledore, the spinster aunt-ish mcgonagall, the overly confident yet bitter sirius, the paranoia-inducing mad-eye... the list could go on and on. he's not overly impressed with harry -- well, he's not overly impressed with most people -- and even dumbledore was not spared his sparkling wit.

"would you like me to do it now? or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?"

it's rather disturbing to be reminded of his capacity for hatred and revenge. but then why be surprised, knowing how appallingly he was treated when he was a student, even beforehand. the character of snape is deliciously complex, in toeing the very fine line between good and evil, and knowing that sometimes it really is what we value most that makes all the difference. jo did a great job picking alan rickman as snape. alan is such a great actor, plus he does get the mumbling down pat. and oh god, he and the hair are like an old married couple. whenever i think back to love actually and his scenes with laura linney, he possesses the right amount of sarcasm needed to take on snape. snape needs load of it.

like harry, i thought the appearance of sirius in his life was far too short. the battle at the department of mysteries was definitely a three-hanky moment, which extends after harry's rage and grief has been spent somewhat. but in the grand scheme of things, sirius has served his purpose: to reveal the truth of what happened that halloween night, to be a proper (or not) godfather and friend to harry, to help along the revival of the order of the phoenix. i'm sad that i missed seeing the movie while it was showing at the cinemas, because even though i thought gary oldman was downright spooky when i saw prisoners of azkaban, i looked forward to hearing that maniacal laugh when sirius went through the veil.

finally, remus and tonks. i so did not see that coming at the end of half-blood prince. but when i reviewed the archive on fanfiction.net, stories on them started appearing even before the release date of hbp. since i went about reading the series in the wrong order (pun not intended), i wasn't sure if they weren't being set up since tonks first appeared on ootp, or if it was just wishful thinking. so anyway, they are my current flames. the dreadful (but understandable) lack of detail about their relationship is a mine of inspiration for fanfic writers, and i am really enjoying all the back stories they made up. it made me realize all the more that i am so into quiet, witty, bookish (as opposed to sporty) guys, but they must have a slightly sarcastic yet excellent sense of humor, originality, and also be a bit of a risk-taker. tall order, i know (again, not intended). and i am a little bit like tonks, especially about the clumsiness (plenty flat-footed), the music, and being a tomboy. not as brave as her, though.

so, the point of all of this is... i love tonks and remus! (can't deny it, i am a fangirl.)

just some buzz

thanks to pk for the video clip of m5's makes me wonder. i couldn't play it on my office pc (it has *gasp!* windows media player 2) and i can't wait until i got home... so i bugged officemate larsen, who also loved the new album, to play it on his pc. most people think adam levine is so hot and i'm no exception. dunno why i brought it up, it's such a boring subject. but sorry, this is my blog so i'll do what i want. so sit tight while i sing along to makes me wonder, live @ aol version. (thanks to doug for this one!)

...

ok, song's done.

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there's a rumor going around about a hardy boys movie, starring tom cruise and ben stiller. actually, it's almost a done deal. but the general consensus seems to be: take tom out of the project. can't imagine him as frank. really. and he's too short. the fanfic i read suggests keanu reeves as frank and matt damon as joe. i'm not that sold on keanu, either... too brooding (or in pinoy slang, o.a.) i like matt just fine, though owen wilson might be a more obvious choice for joe. and after racking my brains, maybe eric bana for frank. yay! that's because i saw lucky you a few weeks ago. it has to be a perfect match, because i love frank! but right now, it just doesn't look good. what can i expect, since frank didn't end up with nancy...

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ever since i've heard of blackberry i've always wanted to own one. when before i preferred the look of palm, the new bb models are the machines to beat. i'm currently setting my sights on the newest, the blackberry curve. by the time it gets here or maybe in singapore, i'll hopefully have enough money to get it. i wish.

31 songs

good ideas do not have to be yours

a few days ago i came across a book review, which i did not even read entirely. the book was 31 songs by nick hornby.

since i haven't read the book either, i'll reserve my judgment (and my review) until such time when i have read it.

in the meantime, i am on my own mission: to actually list down those 31 songs or less (or more, maybe in the future) that have changed my life.

that list will not be final. it never will.

tunnel vision

i found out today that it was the birthday of a favorite officemate. i like her a lot because there aren't many people around that i feel i'm on the same plane with, even if we are different in many aspects. we're the same age, we have similar taste in music and books, we're both on the other side of the kikay meter... we even go to the same gym (though not at the same time). when you meet that kind of person, especially in the office where most people are too different from you, it can feel like going back to those care free days.

it was a bit coincidental that she's in my mind a lot these days, because she just lent me her copy of harry potter and the order of the phoenix. i've wanted to read the series for a long time but i only got as far as book one and book two (which i saw on tv). now i'm so attached to the book that i bring it everywhere. i had to stop myself from reading it during work hours! that's the way i am when i'm fixated on a book. a good book is my waterloo. i can never rest until i finish it. even to the extent of staying up the whole night just to get to the end.

i can just imagine what i'm gonna do once i get home. i'll be chatting with my housemates for a bit, maybe finish off my macaroni salad. get dressed in my jammies and turn up the radio. i'm set for my marathon reading night.

(huh? strama? what strama?)

sentimental overdose

last night i finally saw the notebook. the movie, silly -- not the school supply. and i wouldn't have seen it if not for a few well-masked bribes and persuasion. you see, i'd heard from somebody that it's a five-hankie movie. and my pragmatic facade protests over too much drama.

i wasn't surprised when my best friend asked for some tissues like half an hour into the movie (i had to give her my handkerchief). i was reasonably skeptical when my other friend (who was a guy) kept muttering jokes to himself at possible mini-climactic scenes. and i was privately amused when the guy sitting beside me (and who was not a companion) started sniffing and (gasp!) wiping his eyes. but when it came to the crunch, i betrayed the truth about my hopeless-romantic sentimental nature and broke down. yep, i meant it. not just a few tears shed or a few sniffs. but i so did not bawl. that would be too much.

afterwards, you would think we'd been watching a comedy from rise and fall of laughter you'd hear. from everyone. and no, it wasn't because of some blooper scenes shown at the end. we'd all been laughing at the way we'd succumbed to the drama. and laughing hysterically. i'm sure i wasn't the only one who had a male seatmate who shed a few tears. or who had to borrow my own hankie back because i was so overcome with emotion.

so when my best friend and i got home, after hearing her wax enthusiastic about the story and my other friend sarcastically pointing out that we'd been had, i thought i had enough for one night. but nooooooo. i had to ask for more punishment. as if reading can ever be that for me.

my best friend bought a novel two weeks ago, the newest title of one of my favorite authors. i had converted her into a fan when i lent her two of my better titles. but i was taken by surprise when it finally sank in that she has only read four chapters in the whole two weeks she's had the book. my curiosity was piqued. i had never been able to resist the books i had bought for more than a weekend, especially if they're romance novels. and i considered it as a challenge. at 11.15 last night i dared myself to finish the book during the night. for however long it took to read the whole thing.

and the result? i sent a text message to two of my friends when i had just finished reading and was still unable to sleep. the time was 5 am.