Merry Wanderer of the Night [Search results for Vlog] 

Alright — I was too lazy to record an IMM for about 2 weeks & then, I got a package of complete WIN in the mail and just KNEW I had to vlog right THEN! But... I got a lot of books, so it's a bit of a long video.:)

Before the video though — Quick Note about the pen pal thing — I'm late getting everything together because my sister is going through a lot of personal drama right now, that includes toxic people putting her and her children at risk and an emergency move beginning at 8pm... LONG story full of more drama that I want to get into. But I have been spending a lot of time helping her, watching her kids etc so that they can try to find a safe place to move with their family. (UGH. I hate stupid drama). SO. I'm hoping to get this put together soon, but it's taking longer than I thought it would.

Anyway — the video. (Also... sorry... It seems the syncing is off again at the end.)

There are too many books to list here (read... I'm too lazy to do it, maybe later, but probably now...)

So, I will link all the bloggers that I mention as well as the books I got for review.

ALSO — Update re Lisa Schroeder — I have converted another lover since this video was recorded!! Ya, I'm that good.:)

Review:

Breadcrumbs — Anne Ursu (excerpt, review)
The Beginning of After — Jennifer Castle
Dark Eden — Patrick Carman
The Power of Six — Pittacus Lore
The Kid- Sapphire (DNF review)

Joli @ Acting Up with Books

Shannon @ Books Devoured

Lindsi @ Books, Sweets and Other Treats

Enna @ Squeaky Books

Cyndi @ Dog Eared and Bookmarked

Jacinda @ The Reading Housewives

Not mentioned by name in video — But my cousin is Ems @ In Which Ems Reviews Books

Back of the Book Reviews

Rachel @ Reading Angel

Rachel @ Fiktshun

Nancy @ A Musing Reviews

Also — OH MY GOODNESS!!! LISA SCHROEDER!!! LOVE her!!:)

Last Fairy Tale Fortnight, Misty and I hosted an *almost* published author, Marissa Meyer. Her fairy tale retelling was "in the works" and it sounded pretty sweet. And hey — the more fairy tale love, the better, right?! Well, this year, I am delighted to have Marissa back on the blog for this year's fairy tale fortnight! And guess what folks — Now she's published!!!
Marissa wrote Cinder, a futuristic retelling of Cinderella and one of my favorite reads last year. Seriously folks, if you haven't had a chance to read Cinder, do to that now. Well... Almost now. First watch this really awesome vlog from Marissa, where she totally brags about her Cinderella collection and then go get your hands on a copy of her awesome book!:) And, to make that easy on you, Marissa is giving away a UK copy! (See details below)

So fun!:) In order to win a signed UK edition of Cinder, you need to comment on this post telling me what you think was the coolest part of or piece in Marissa's video! Please do not leave any contact information in the comments, but instead, make sure that you have filled out the giveaway form!

Click the button to be taken to the Fairy Tale Fortnight Main Page & Schedule (button image via)

It's been a big day for me! Today I was on KRUI's show Not Your Literati to talk about English Major's Junk Food. It was a great show and if you haven't heard about it before and are in the Iowa City area you should tune in next Sunday at 11 AM. They also put a post about our interview on their blog today, and you can download the interview if you care to listen to it. Just head over to Not Your Literati. They also have posts on their blog about past shows so be sure to check it out!

Last week was crazy busy for me so I didn't get quite as much reading done as I wanted but I was a lot better about getting posts done on time. This week I reviewed Harriet the Spy and Villette. My children's book this week was Old Bear. Rather than writing a review of the children's book this week I decided to do a vlog and read the book. This seemed to work out pretty well so I think I might do this more in the future. Friday I complained about the University of Iowa's Intro to the English Major and yesterday I had a picture of a weird initial letter.

This week I'm planning on finishing three of the four books I'm reading. I'd like to finish The Woman in White, The Jungle, and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I'm going to put Pride and Prejudice on hold until I finish those three. I've got three awards recently and I will probably post those this week, and then I'm considering doing a post on literary talk shows. I was inspired to do this by Not Your Literati. There are a few other podcasts I listen to that I'd like to highlight. It should be an exciting week!

Happy Reading!

Today I have a special guest post. Misty from The Book Rat is pretty much one of my favorite blogging people. Misty hosts a weekly book chat over on her site, where she talks about different trends, genres, topics, characters etc and etc in books and it's a pretty awesome feature. She has a linky set up on her blog, so that if you participate in the chats, you can link up your post and bounce around to all the other awesome people.:) (And, you don't have to do it as a vlog either, it can be a normal post too. Whatever you are most comfortable with.:) in my blog TO BE TAKEN TO HER LINKY POST!:)

I asked Misty if she'd be interested in guest posting for me for Just Contemporary, even though she isn't a huge Contemporary reader and she suggested giving me this weeks Book Chat. That makes her awesome!

The topic this week is Favorite Contemporary Reads and it's AWESOME. (Oh ya, and she starts with Jellicoe Road, which I love and it was totally me that 'made' her read it... I win.)

And, if you want to participate in the chat next week, the topic is going to be Most anticipated Contemporary reads!! How awesome is that?!

Oh I love them all!! Seriously — Those are some legitimately amazing books! Everyone watching this should most definitely go out and read them all!!:)

I made myself a new layout last night! I think it's much improved from my previous layout, which I never thought reflected me very well. This is closer to what I'm wanting, but I only have time to do a little bit on the layout every once in awhile. Luckily I'm ahead on posts for next week so that gave me some extra time to work on layout.

I've been tossing over what to do Sunday Salon about this week. It's not quite the end of March, so I didn't really want to do a March wrap-up post, but I did just reach 25 books which I think is something to celebrate! So I think I'll do a 1/4 year wrap up today, and next week I'll do a quick, more focused, March wrap-up. You can check out the full list of books I've read on my 2010 Reads page.

Books read in 2010: 26
YA Books: 5
Classics: 7
Graphic Novels: 3
Historical Fiction: 12
Romance: 2
ARC/For review: 4
My favorite: The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen
My least favorite: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig
Distributed grades: 10 A's, 8 B's, 6 C's, and 1 D.

I was actually really surprised by a few things on this list. For example, I thought I'd given out mostly C's this year, but I've actually read more A books. I think this is partially because I read a lot of C books at the beginning of this year and recently I've had a streak of awesome books. I was also surprised to see how many "Classics" I have read, since it seems like I haven't read that many. I was really surprised by how many historical fiction books I've read because I felt like I've read hardly any, although to be fair I counted graphic novels in that which I don't really consider historical fiction while I'm reading them. 26 books in three months means I should be able to read 100 books this year. This was never really a spoken goal of mine, but I thought it would be neat. I'm glad to see I'm on my way.

This week I posted a review of Dawn of the Dreadfuls and Aurora Floyd. I brought back Children's Book Thursday with a vlog about a great book called Library Lion. I shared my thoughts on Writing Classes and posted a review of the Moleskine Passions Book Journal. Also, don't forget to enter the contest to win a bag from Strand Bookstore in New York City! I will announce the winner next week so be sure to leave a comment on last week's Sunday Salon before next Sunday!

Wow, it's weird writing 2010 in my Weekly Geeks post title, but here it is a new year. With a new year beginning, I like to think this is the year I'm going to get organized. At least I'm starting out that way. So it's time to put a plan into action, clean out the closets and whatnot. Why shouldn't we do that for our blogs as well?

For some of us, this will not be so difficult as many bloggers are joining Bloggeista hosted by Maw Books this weekend, but if you are not up for 24 hours of blog cleaning you can still do something.

This week take a look at your blogs and do a little generally cleaning. Fix those broken links, straighten out those blogrolls, make some labels. Stuff like that.

Your blog is perfect, you say? How about your email? Time to delete some of those old messages. Have a look at your blog subscriptions in your blog readers. Maybe it needs a good going over. Are you a member of LibraryThing? Add those Christmas gifts to your virtual bookshelves. Upload your audiobooks to your ipod. Download some ebooks.

Nothing to do online? How about looking at your bookshelves at home? Organize them anyway you see fit. (Take some pictures.) Take unwanted books to the used book store or give them to charity. Get a library card.


After you've done your cleaning, write a post about it or vlog or haiku. Just let us know what you did. Come back see what others have done.

If none of this appeals to you, write a blog resolution post. Or a blog to-do list. Or tell us about your upcoming projects (a challenge you're hosting, newsletter, new blog).

Remember this is just a prompt. Take the idea and do whatever you choose with it. There are no hard and fast rules.

Have fun!

Whoa, guess what today is. My six month blogaversary! Yeah, that's right, it's English Major's Junk Food's half birthday. I was really excited about this day, but when I told my friends and family they all said they couldn't believe it had only been six months. I guess I kind of feel that way too, sometimes it's hard for me to remember a time when I wasn't blogging. I've always been big on celebrating halves because I figure it's an extra incentive to get you to a whole. In my six months of blogging I've met some veteran bloggers and helped some new bloggers get a start. I've been interviewed on the radio and for a newspaper. I've reached 100 followers and surpassed 100 followers. I've read twice as many books as I did before I was blogging. I've read books for review and joined in on a blog tour. I've bloggiestad and I've changed my layout a lot. In short, I've done a lot in six months!

Unfortunately I did not bake this cake, but if I could bake a cake I would and I'd want everyone who has helped me these past six months to have a little cake too. I couldn't run this blog without all of my great blogging friends and followers- like you!

So this week I posted a review of the The Lightning Thief and I revisited a teen favorite, Fifteen. These are both YA books and I'll just warn you I've read a lot of YA recently so several of my upcoming reviews will be YA. Not all of them though. If you're ever curious to see what books are coming up for review you can check out my 2010 reads page. I usually review the books in order. (PS, If you love YA I'm probably going to have a Hunger Games week next month as I just finished The Hunger Games and I'm reading Catching Fire right now. So good.) I revisited Where the Wild Things Are in my children's book vlog. On Friday I posted an awesome music video that makes literary references. Check out the Filligar video and enter to win a free t-shirt from them!

Reviews
Dead End Gene Pool by Wendy Burden
The Bell Jar by Syvlia Plath
The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen

Other
Moleskine Passions Book Journal

Where the Wild Things Are Vlog

Please use the same links for all categories.

April is National Poetry Month in the US and Canada. It is "a celebration of poetry first introduced in 1996 by the Academy of American Poets as a way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry."

Now I'm not one for poetry but maybe I should learn more about this literary form. For this week's theme, I encourage participants to to help celebrate National Poetry Month by:

• Posting a favorite poem, or
• Reviewing a poem or book of poems, or
• Discussing a favorite poet, or
• Posting a vlog of yourself reading a poem or find a video of someone else reading one, or
• Writing a poem yourself- any form

Here are some resources to help you out.

Serena at Savvy Verse and Wit is hosting a Poetry Tour. Check out the links from her participants. She encourages others to join in.

Readwritethink is a resource for teachers but you might find something useful there.

Scholastic also has a resource site for teachers with writing prompts, etc.

The League of Canadian Poets has a website. This year's theme is climate change.

The New York Times wrote an article for Poetry Month in their education section.

I hope you'll join in and participate in this week's theme. Sign the Mr Linky with your post.

(Edit: If Mr Linky isn't working, please leave your link in the comments. Sorry about that.)

This week has been a week of changes at English Major's Junk Food. In case you haven't noticed already I have gone from http://englishmajorjunkfood.blogspot.com to http://www.englishmajorjunkfood.com. If you go to the old blogspot address you should get redirected here, but please update your bookmarks and blogrolls with the new address. It helps me out a lot! So far I haven't seen any unusual change in traffic due to the domain name change. I know a lot of people have questions about changing over and if you are one of those people please email me at englishmajorjunkfood AT yahoo DOT com.

Well the next few days are going to be insane for me so I probably won't get a whole lot of reading in. Tomorrow I have a midterm and a presentation and Tuesday I have a paper due plus I'm a discussion leader. It's probably a good thing I'll be busy this week though, because next week I have a job interview! I'm very excited about it and I hope I get it, although I think it will be awhile before I know for sure. I'm obviously stressed though, because just last night I noticed a lovely pimple forming right above my lip. Thank you very much.

This week I posted reviews of The Woman in White and The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I posted a vlog where I showed you bunches of books for Children's Book Thursday and on Friday I let you know about some of my favorite lit podcasts. Go forth my friends, read, comment, enjoy! I also reached and surpassed 70 followers this week- less than thirty away from 100! I never thought I would have this many followers so I am thrilled to see that actually do have 70.

Happy reading!

My first vlog! Sorry it's kind of sloppy, I will get better.

In case you haven’t realised by now, yes, it’s my first blogversary. It seems insane to think I started this unusual blog on this day a whole year ago. Alas, 286 posts later, here I am still ranting and raving about anything semi-movie related. Over the past few weeks, when my brain has gone for a wander mid-conversation, I’ve pondered about what to write/do on my blogversary. I tend to get uncomfortable when it comes to celebrating my own birthday so I figure there is no harm in celebrating this one properly. That is, I have caught and trained 13 marsupials and shaved this web address into their fur. I intend to release them at the entrance to the nearest shopping centre and let their frenzied rampage be its own kind of celebration/marketing ploy. My plan does not go into effect until 2100 hours. In the meantime, I thought I would share some personal reflections about this blog.

• Surprisingly, I’ve kept to my original mission statement and avoided any posts about the exploits of my personal life. Except for the post about my friend who broke her vagina because, well, that was simply too good NOT to share.
• Originally I was inspired to start this by the brilliance of good friend Rickis’ much wittier and substantial blog. That has not changed, however, the pool of writers who now inspire and entertain me has grown to include the likes of Siamese Saffron, King Of New York Hacks, Fuck You Penguin and Little Bohemian.
• A fitting tagline for this site finally occurred to me a few weeks ago in a dream which may or may not have featured Mark Wahlberg.
• Within a year some friends have gone and others nearly been lost which makes me appreciate having this outlet to write about things I love, however trivial that may seem to some.
• I have maintained this site for a year, which is approximately 11 months and 15 days longer than any relationship I’ve maintained with a member from the opposite sex.
• A newspaper journalist by trade, I founded art & architecture as a way to improve my writing and vent all the film thoughts I had going on in my head. After the first few months I began to realise how much I loved writing about movies and started treating this blog as a portfolio of movie related stories. Without revealing too much, a year on this site has helped me take those few important steps closer to my dream career.
• Damnit! I did not want to get soppy and here I am preaching about dreams coming true if you work hard enough and blah blah blah.
• Thanks to this blog I have met an awesome bunch of like-minded people on the 20 something bloggers network. They were even helpful enough to suggest some ways to celebrate my first blogversary. These included strippers, a vlog (which it turns out is not a vampire-hog like I originally presumed), commemorative post, getting hammered, strippers, give-away’s and strippers. Er, thanks guys.
• I have had the opportunity to meet some amazing up and coming filmmakers, actors, producers, special-effects experts and bring their work to you. With an exciting trip on the horizon, I hope to give you some more juicy juice in the next month.
• 365 days does not change the fact that despite being of indigenous France heritage, I do not appreciate being called `cuz’ or `Maori-a’. Unless it is amongst the select group of friends with whom racist and parental jokes are allowed.
• I have broadened my readership from two faithful subscribers to a bunch of peeps from all around the globe. I hope you continue to find something mildly interesting on this site so you keep coming back and sharing your opinions with me.

VIA «Happy blog birthday to me, happy blog birthday to me!»

The Death of the Moth is a short essay by Virginia Woolf, which I recently read for my nature writing class. It seems to be rather popular though, because I saw that it is also in Phillip Lopate's The Art of the Personal Essay. The essay is a rumination on life and death, but we see it through a moth. In the beginning, the moth flies quickly, encompassing all the energy in the world to do his fancy acrobatics. But that energy can only go for so long, and eventually the moth must face death. Virginia watches, wanting to help him, but knows that it is inevitable. Death is much too strong. In the end she says, "Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange."

In nature, I feel like many of us have had this experience. We have seen an animal or insect die and we wish we could do something, but it is inevitable. Where I grew up there were several deer who were frequently hit by cars. You wish you could do something to make it stop, but there just anything you can do. And this is often how we see death of our friends and family. It's painful to watch it happen and it is a great reminder that we all must meet our ends. Do we want to help them live for them, or do we want to help them live so we can convince ourselves that we are stronger than death?

You can download a PDF of The Death of the Moth at the link, and I would really encourage you to read it because it is very short. It should only take you about five minutes to read it. If you do take the time to read it please come back with your thoughts. Some things to think about as you read the essay might be: What does the moth represent? How does Woolf's view of life and death change over the course of the essay, if it does? How does the essay make you feel about life and death?

I'd love to hear your responses! Also, I'm hosting a readalong of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, so check that out and if you enjoy this weekly post you might want to check out this week's children's book Thursday vlog about the Curious Garden.