1. I have once again lied to you, my reading public. I apologize to all fifteen of you. It has been over two months since my last confession post. P.S. That was inappopriate Catholic humor, for those of you who aren’t in the know. P.P.S. I feel like if I have to explain it it’s probably a bad joke so I apologize again. I’m just going to start throwing out apologies. APOLOGIES, APOLOGIES, APOLOGIES FOR EVERYONE! Did you guys know that ‘apology’ derives from the Ancient Greek ‘apologia,’ meaning to speak in defense of a cause or of one’s beliefs or actions? I only mention this because I find it slightly weird that a word that can now be used to mean the same thing as ‘SORRY I WAS A GIANT DICKBAG’ evolved from a word regularly used to explain the benefits of like, poetry and shit. Words are weird, you guys.

2. Most of you won’t have any idea what I’m talking about, so this is mostly for Jennie and Gretchen, but Lizzie and Darcy finally hooked up in the latest episode of the YouTube series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (which you should totally watch, BTW) and it was both amazing and YESSSSS REWIND but also troubling. Jennie talks about the SQUEEE part here, so I don’t feel like I need to cover it that much. What I want to talk about is the part about how weird it was that Lizzie and Darcy totally made out on camera and then posted it to the internet. Like, obviously from a story standpoint, we’re not going to get any satisfaction out of the Lizzie/Darcy hookup if we as the audience don’t witness it, but the weird part comes when you start thinking about the diaries as “real diaries.”

In order for it to be part of the story-world Team LBD has created, Lizzie and Darcy not only have to sort of forget they are being filmed (which is definitely something that could happen), but then later physically edit the footage together and agree to let the entire internet (and in a larger sense, the world) view their first kiss(es). Up until this point I think Team LBD has done a great job in respecting the boundaries of what a real person would believably post on the internet about her personal life. Part of the joy of the series, at least for me, is that you become so absorbed in the story that you forget it’s not real — in that sense, it functions more like a diary than as a serialized web series based on a novel from 200 years ago. Team LBD is attempting to create the illusion that Lizzie and her family and friends are real people and this is a real diary. So as squee-worthy as those kisses (and extremely personal love connection confessions were), they sort of pulled me out of the moment. I kept thinking, Oh my God, if that were me and my Darcy, I would NOT have posted that video.

Maybe it’s just my inner academic, but I find this whole thing fascinating. It’s very possible that in the next episode, as she has done before, Lizzie herself will justify posting such a personal moment. She has talked before in the several of the videos about how she views the diaries as a narrative, and how she feels beholden to her audience. She has also made reference to the fact that we never get to see certain parts of her life because she edits them out, or simply does not talk about them. Thus, we see her life the way she wants us to. She essentially has narrative control over her own life, and because she has made her relationship with Darcy such a huge part of that self-constructed story, it is very possible that leaving this moment in the diaries was a deliberate act meant to provide closure to the story that Lizzie the character is choosing to tell (while simultaneously being a fictional character in a aforementioned web-series). Anyway, I’ll be interested to see how it’s handled in Monday’s episode.

3. There is no three. I just wanted to write about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. Also, I want a chicken cheesesteak.

This is the face of smug capitalistic excess in action. MUST DESTROY ALL HUMANS.

It may be time for another purge – and no, not like that. Gross. A TV purge. And now I’m thinking about puke.

So, I never make New Year’s resolutions anymore because historically I just end up being mad at myself for failing to keep them. Maybe I’ve just made the wrong sorts of resolutions previously, but I feel like if I’m going to make something a habit in my life, I just have to do it, and making a huge intimidating list isn’t going to help the process. Or maybe I’m just a chicken-shit with no follow through. That’s also a possibility as well. Anyways, if I was going to make resolutions this year, something that should really be a priority for me would be cutting down the amount of time I waste on television. I know I KNOW, what am I saying?

And I don’t mean it, really. I don’t think it’s a waste. I think pop culture is important, and there is some great storytelling going on in television right now, but that’s not the stuff I’m talking about. A large part of me — the cataloguing part? — is very satisfied by keeping up to date on all the shows. Actually, I joke about having OCD, but I really think I might sometimes. A lot — A LOT — of my TV watching these days is based solely on completionism. You know, that thing where wacky people such as myself have to finish something, be it a book, a season of a TV show, etc, even if that thing is awful and horrible. I’ve gotten better in the past year at cutting those sorts of shows from my life (I stopped watching 2 Broke Girls, for example, but as evidenced by my viewing of the entire second season of The X Factor, I still have a problem with this. Man, that show is awful.). It’s like that thing where you save a bunch of old shit in the back of your closet, like old magazines and graded papers and notebooks full of notes you will never look at again, and you’re so afraid to let that stuff go, because what if you want it, what if you need it, in the future? But then rationality kicks in and you throw it away, and lo, one month, six months, five years later, you don’t miss it in the slightest. It’s like that.

I cut a bunch of TV shows when I was studying for my Master’s exams in 2011, but since then, I’ve just been building my list back up. It really hit me this morning, though, when I went to update my TV Calendar (shut up, yes, I have a TV calendar and I couldn’t function without it) and realized that the two week break winter TV hiatus had given me had just been lovely. I read a shit ton of books, cooked food, hung out with friends, and rewatched a bunch of old shows I’d been wanting to rewatch forever. All of a sudden, January and February looked incredibly busy. How am I ever going to have time to watch all this TV, read 150 books, hang out with my friends, date (EEK), write (blogging and non-blogging), and well, have a life? It’s not like the good old days when I was teaching and going to school and had buckets of free time. To illustrate my point, here is what my TV schedule currently looks like come February and March, once all the shows are back:

SUNDAY

7 PM — Downton Abbey
7 PM — Once Upon a Time
8 PM — Call the Midwife
8 PM — Revenge
8 PM — Game of Thrones

(Also count Breaking Bad and Mad Men here even though they’re not back until later.)

MONDAY

7 PM –Bones
7 PM — Continuum
7 PM – The Biggest Loser (my DVR records this if nothing else is on)
8 PM – Lost Girl
8 PM – Bunheads
9 PM — Castle
9 PM – Revolution

TUESDAY

7 PM –Don’t Trust the B– in Apt. 23
7 PM — Ben and Kate
8 PM — Go On
8 PM — New Girl
8 PM – Smash
8:30 PM — The New Normal
8:30 PM — The Mindy Project
9 PM — Cougar Town
10 PM – White Collar

WEDNESDAY

7 PM — Arrow
7 PM — American Idol (whyyyyyy)
7 PM — Whitney (whyyyyyyyyyyyyy)
8 PM — Modern Family
8:30 PM — Suburgatory
10 PM – Top Chef: Seattle

THURSDAY

7 PM — 30 Rock
7 PM – American Idol
7 PM — Last Resort (at least, until it dies in a couple of weeks)
7:30 PM — Community
8 PM — The Office
8 PM — Glee (yup, still watching)
8:30 PM — Parks and Recreation
9 PM – Scandal
10 PM — Suits (yay!)

FRIDAY

8 PM — Fringe (until it dies in a couple of weeks)
10 PM — Spartacus: War of the Damned (Yay!)

And all of that is not including the premieres after March of things like Doctor Who, Veep, Futurama, Legend of Korra, Warehouse 13, and the series premiere of Defiance in May, which I am super excited for because it means Rockne O’Bannon (Farscape) is finally back on TV.

Yeah, so. That’s a lot of TV. Most of them will be airing at the same time, and when that happens, I will technically be watching 36 shows per week. And even with the ones I’m planning on eventually cutting (The New Normal, Smash, The Biggest Loser) and the ones that are on their way out (Fringe, Spartacus, Last Resort, Breaking Bad), that’s still a fuckin’ lot of shows, ya’ll. But I can’t help it! With the cable TV boom getting boomier all the time, there’s just so many more shows to watch. It’s like giving a kid free reign in a candy store, except the whole thing ends with you tying the kid up and heaving him over your shoulder to prevent him from stuffing his face so full of sugar that he goes into a diabetic coma and his brain explodes.

HELP.

P.S. I had this weird urge to recap American Idol this season so I could be mean to it. If I did that, would any of you actually be interested in reading it?

- – -

Once upon a time four years ago I decided to keep track of how many books I read in a year because I have undiagnosed OCD and I like making lists more than most people like sex. I’m not exactly sure where I was going with that thought, but where I’ve ended up is: holy shit it’s been four years like THAT, what is happening to my life. Anyway, in addition to not being able to fathom the passing of four years, I also somehow can’t imagine NOT making this giant list every year. When I was a kid, I read even more books than I do nowadays, both because I had SO MUCH FREE TIME, and because my brain worked faster back then (I miss having kid-sponge-brain). So if I’m regularly reading between 100-120 books a year without even trying now, I can’t even imagine how many I read as a kid. I mean, seriously, you guys. Depending on the size of the books and how my day was going, I could bust out anywhere from 1-4 books per day. I miss my brain.

This year I’ve mostly focused on the books that I love (because being positive is better than being negative), but I’ve also included a small list of books for you to avoid, because that is a service I also provide. The books below are in no particular order, except for the top two, both of which immediately shot in to my Best Books of All Time list, I love them so.

- – -

I read a lot of good books this year, but I only fell in love with two of them. The first was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.  Ready Player One takes place in the year 2045 when the disaster that is humanity has folded in on itself and taken refuge inside the immersive virtual reality environment of the OASIS. The death of OASIS creator, James Halliday, sparks a worldwide virtual treasure hunt inside the OASIS, Halliday having promised to reward his entire fortune and stakes in the company to the person who can unravel his clues first. Enter our hero, Wade Watts, a chubby and poor nobody who has lived his entire life inside the OASIS. Wade is a gunter — or egg hunter — and the quest for Halliday’s easter eggs has become not just a quest for him, but a way of life. Ready Player One is a hero’s quest novel dressed up like a cosplayer at Dragon Con. It’s a videogame disguised as a novel. It’s a celebration of geekdom and technology with a progressive punch to the nuts. It’s a love story and a friendship story and an adventure. I loved it so much I read it twice. It hit a ridiculous number of my buttons. You should read it, too. [My review here.]

The second book I fell in love with took me completely by surprise. I can guess pretty accurately most of the time when I’m going to really like a book, but occasionally one pops up out of nowhere to punch me in the heart. So it was with Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. Bernadette is a hard book to explain, which is one of the reasons why I almost didn’t pick it up. There’s no way a blurb could ever do justice to the irreverent but loving (and kind of magical) way that Maria Semple constructs her story. It’s a story about living in Seattle, and people who think the wrong things are important. It’s a story about sanity and creativity, and about mothers and daughters and husbands and wives. It’s funny and it’s sad; it’s happy and it’s got a nasty bite. Like I said, it’s hard to explain, so you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. Also, I don’t want to spoil you. [My review here.]

Another book I was surprised by this year (though not nearly to the extent I was surprised by Bernadette) was The Rook by Australian author Daniel O’Malley. The Rook is a mystery slash thriller slash urban fantasy slash paranormal slash journey of self-discovery for its heroine, Myfanwy Thomas — it’s a mish-mash of all sorts of cool crap, and if you happen to even like one of those genres I just named, you will like the book. If you like more than one, you’ll probably love it. Plus Myfanwy has one of the coolest character arcs of any book I’ve read this year — where she starts out and where she ends up . . . I’d be spoiling it to tell you any more than that. If you like spooky things and thrilling heroics and people with superpowers, or just a good old fashioned whodunnit, The Rook is worth checking out. [My review here.]

I actually read a couple of other books this year that are similarly hard to categorize. Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines is technically urban fantasy, but mostly it’s just an imaginative story about the power of stories, practically tailor made for book lovers who just want to have fun for a couple of hours. I finally managed to read The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern this year as well, and that was a fun ride — a little plot-lite, but a wonderful feast for the imagination. Probably the craziest book I read this year was Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson, a meditation on spirituality, religion, and the exercising of power disguised as a modern day fairy-tale about a young middle eastern hacker who meets a jinn and goes on secret adventures to protect a mysterious book. It was easy going down, but it stayed with me unraveling new meanings for days afterwards. Plus Wilson’s prose is gorgeous, which is always nice. [My review here.]

I could probably call 2012 The Year of John Scalzi and get away with it. I read his Old Man’s War trilogy in 2011 (and loved it), but 2012 was the year I read everything else of his: all his published novels, most of his short stories, and a novella about gods who power spaceships that broke my brain. I must confess that he was my favorite source of election writing as well (he’s good at writing about other controversial stuff too). But by far the most enjoyable Scalzi of 2012 for me was Redshirts, a delightful spoof of sci-fi conventions that managed to transcend its spoofiness and actually say something important as well. Plus, it was funny. Intelligent fluff is probably the best way to describe it. Redshirts is best enjoyed if you are a sci-fan, but it’s good enough that anyone can read it and not feel lost. Another description would be, “like Galaxy Quest, but different,” if that helps. [My review here.]

2012 was also the year that I think I finally OD’d on YA — especially YA of the dystopian or paranormal romance persuasion. I read SO MUCH OF IT, and with the exception of the always excellent Laini Taylor, whose second installment in the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, Days of Blood & Starlight, was published in September to much well-deserved fanfare, and indie author Susan Ee’s Angelfall, almost all of it was disappointing. But really, the best YA I read this year was not paranormal romance or future dystopia, but belongs to a genre I swore I would never read again in my life: the cancer book. Except it’s not really a cancer book. I discovered John Green through his YouTube activities and liked the guy immediately, so when I learned that he was a bestselling author, and that he had a book coming out within a couple of weeks, of course I had to investigate. I was not disappointed, and I can’t wait for his next book, although I seriously doubt it could ever be as emotionally charged as The Fault in Our Stars. Just to warn you, this is an excellent book, but IT WILL DESTROY YOU. [My review -- which was published on Pajiba! -- here. P.S. That post had 36 comments on it -- where'd they all go!?!]

2012 also marks another milestone: the year I finally read a Stephen King book that I liked. I knew it was inevitable that eventually I’d find one, but until I read 11/22/63, I’d mostly only read his horror stuff, which isn’t my cup of tea at all. King hit it out of the park in this one, and the combination of time travel, the 60s setting, and JFK assassination mythos made for a sort of fictional perfect storm. It showcased just exactly what King seems to be good at, which is weaving a great story. (And my positive experience with 11/22/63 led me to try another, The Eyes of the Dragon, and that was just delightful. I will be picking up Under the Dome soon, hopefully before the show comes out next year on CBS.) I was also late to the party for a couple of other authors this year. I finally gave in and read some Kurt Vonnegut in The Sirens of Titan, and it was just as weird (weirder, actually) as I’d been promised, but all the strangeness was more thought-provoking than unsettling. Another ‘classic’ author I sampled for the first time was Tamora Pierce, an extremely prolific young adult fantasy author whose work I somehow missed growing up, even though I would have loved it. Her heroines and stories were lightyears ahead of their time in terms of their feminist content and positive representation of young women in literature. [My review of 11/22/63 here.]

There’s no doubt in my mind that the most anticipated book of the year was J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy, her first novel since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published in t he summer of 2007, and her first published non-Harry Potter book. The public anticipation and publicity surrounding this thing, including a series of mostly negative reviews, almost gave me an anxiety attack. But I lived. And ended up really liking the book, which was a bit surprising to me on one level, as it was mostly a downer, but not surprising on another level, because it’s Jo, and she’s so, so good at words and especially characters. The Casual Vacancy begins with parish councilman Barry Fairbrother’s death, and the consequences of his death spiral outward in the community. Ian Parker of The New Yorker called it ‘Mugglemarch,’ and I think that’s apt, because the real focus of this book is the inner lives of its complicated and very flawed characters. I plan on re-reading it in a couple of years now that I know how it turns out, and I can’t wait to see how it changes my experience of reading the book. [My review -- which was published on Pajiba! -- here.]

The Year of Scalzi, yes, the year of ODing on YA, yes, but also: the year of the graphic novel memoir. I read so, so many, including Stitches by David Small, which was good but incredibly depressing; Blankets by Craig Thompson, which was an experience, to say the least; Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, a fascinating look at growing up during a revolution; and the classic Maus by Art Spiegelman, which tells the story of Art’s father during World War II using mice and cats. It was pretty genius. My favorite, though, was Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (she of the Bechdel test), which tells the story of her troubled relationship with her father, and it was just so well put together I don’t even know how to explain it properly. Just a perfect little book. I almost don’t want to read her newest book (this time focusing on her mother) because I’m scared it won’t be as good.

Other books that I enjoyed this year: Quiet, Spin, Bonk, The Lies of Locke Lamora, and The Mark of Athena. I also finally gave in and started enjoying The Dresden Files. Took me a while, but I really love the characters now and will be finishing out the series by the end of the year (six more books to go).

As for the worst books? The graphic novel adaptation of Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was abysmal. The artwork wasn’t that great, but it was the characterization and the story that suffered the most. I also read the second two books in the Matched trilogy, and both were a mess. I probably won’t be reading anything by Ally Condie again. Even more awful than Crossed and Reached was the weird princess dystopia, The Selection. Interesting idea, awful execution. Two other YA books actually did a reversal on me — I was expecting to dislike the second book in the Delirium trilogy, Pandemonium, but I actually really enjoyed it. I did not expect to be disappointed in the second Divergent book, Insurgent, but I was. And I really hope book three in that series is back up to snuff. I also want to take a moment for a contrast. If you want to see how not to do a blog-to-book, read Ree Drummond’s Black Heels to Tractor Wheels — it didn’t work as a novel, as a memoir, or as a romance. A successful blog-to-book? Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened.

And that’s that, friends — see you (hopefully much more frequently) in 2013. And happy reading to you all, you lovely little miscreants.

(For the 2009-2011 Year in Books, click here. See below for full list of 115 books read in 2012):

- – -

1. 11/22/63, Stephen King
2. Across the Universe, Beth Revis
3. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
4. The Fault in Our Stars, John Green
5. Looking for Alaska, John Green, narr. by Jeff Woodman+
6. Sphere, Michael Crichton
7. One For the Money, Janet Evanovich
8. The Love We Share Without Knowing, Christopher Barzak
9. Cinder, Marissa Meyer
10. Crossed, Ally Condie
11. Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
12. Spin, Robert Charles Wilson
13. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson*
14. The Girl Who Played With Fire, Stieg Larsson*
15. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, Stieg Larsson*
16. Blood Rites, Jim Butcher, narr. by James Marsters+
17-26. Y: The Last Man, Vols. 1-10, Brian K. Vaughan*
27. The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz
28. Stone of Tears, Terry Goodkind
29. Two For the Dough, Janet Evanovich
30. Three to Get Deadly, Janet Evanovich
31. The Unwritten, Vol. 5: On to Genesis, Mike Carey & Peter Gross
32. The Princess Bride, William Goldman*
33. The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, Ree Drummond
34. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins*
35. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins*
36. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins*
37. A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
38. Ready Player One, Ernest Cline, narr. by Wil Wheaton*+
39. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, Catherynne M. Valente
40. Zoe’s Tale, John Scalzi
41. Let’s Pretend This Never Happened: A Mostly True Memoir, Jenny Lawson
42. Fuzzy Nation, John Scalzi
43. The Art of Racing in the Rain, Garth Stein, narr. by Christopher Evan Welch+
44. Bonk, Mary Roach
45. Divergent, Veronica Roth*
46. Insurgent, Veronica Roth
47. The Serpent’s Shadow, Rick Riordan
48. Stiff, Mary Roach
49. The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch, narr. by Michael Page+
50. Red Seas Under Red Skies, Scott Lynch
51. Lady Susan, The Watsons, Sanditon, Jane Austen
52. Redshirts, John Scalzi
53. Angelfall, Susan Ee
54. Unveiled, Courtney Milan
55. Unclaimed, Courtney Milan
56. Delirium, Lauren Oliver*
57. Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver
58. Shell Game, James Swallow, narr. by Claudia Black and Michael Shanks+
59. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
60. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien*
61. 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson
62. Habibi, Craig Thompson
63. The Selection, Kiera Cass
64. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi
65. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain
66. The Rook, Daniel O’Malley
67. The Eyes of the Dragon, Stephen King
68. Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi
69. Alanna: The First Adventure, Tamora Pierce
70. In the Hand of the Goddess, Tamora Pierce
71. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man, Tamora Pierce
72. Lioness Rampant, Tamora Pierce
73. Maus, Art Spiegelman
74. The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern
75. Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson
76. Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel
77. The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi
78. Leviathan Wakes, James S.A. Corey, narr. by Jefferson Mays+
79. Stitches, David Small
80. Libriomancer, Jim C. Hines
81. The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling
82. Stormdancer, Jay Kristoff
83. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
84. The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula K. Le Guin
85. The Farthest Shore, Ursula K. Le Guin
86. How to Tell if Your Cat is Plotting to Kill You, Matthew Inman
87. Asterios Polyp, David Mazzucchelli
88. Fables, Vol. 6: Homelands, Bill Willingham
89. The Unwritten, Vol. 6: Tommy Taylor and the War of Words, Mike Carey & Peter Gross
90. The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan*
91. The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan*
92. The Mark of Athena, Rick Riordan
93. Caliban’s War, James S.A. Corey, narr. by Jefferson Mays+
94. Blankets, Craig Thompson
95. The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle
96. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor*
97. Days of Blood and Starlight, Laini Taylor
98. Lips Touch: Three Times, Laini Taylor
99. To Dream in the City of Sorrows, Kathryn M. Drennan
100. Dead Beat, Jim Butcher, narr. by James Marsters+
101. Legend, Marie Lu
102. A Million Suns, Beth Revis
103. Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut
104. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Book 1, adapted by Denise Mina
105. Reached, Ally Condie
106. The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, Catherynne M. Valente
107. Where’d You Go, Bernadette, Maria Semple
108. The God Engines, John Scalzi
109. Wild Magic, Tamora Pierce
110. Wolf-Speaker, Tamora Pierce
111. Emperor Mage, Tamora Pierce
112. The Realms of the Gods, Tamora Pierce
113. Frozen Heat, Richard Castle
114. Ghost Planet, Sharon Fisher
115. Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher, narr. by James Marsters+

*Re-read
+Audiobook

Which reminds me, did you guys see the last 30 Rock episode when Jenna was like ‘MY WHOLE LIFE IS THUNDER,’ and normally I don’t really like Jenna, but I am 100% behind that line. Even though my life is boring in reality, sometimes it feels like thunder. And anyway, Jenna was talking about thunder as in ‘stealing my,’ so it’s really not the same thing, but out of context, it sounds awesome. I can tell you one thing and that’s how I didn’t intend to spend an entire paragraph talking about Jenna on 30 Rock, but it’s happening, and I guess that’s progress, if you consider that I’m actually writing something while writing about nothing, which is an improvement over not writing nothing at all. You follow me, stranger? (Is that a thing? Did I just plagiarize allude? Who cares shut up I’m over it.)

And now that I’ve typed ‘shut up,’ I just want to take the moment to say, inappropriately, that I feel very personally upset by the Dooce/Jon divorce and also morbidly curious.

And now I’m sad.

And I just want to say that I did intend to at some point mention what a good mood I was in this morning because I did yoga last night, and because I watched Chuck last night as well, and this morning, and it was my favorite episode of the whole series (“Chuck Versus The Beard”), but hey look at that, I’ve managed to say it anyway, despite getting so unbelievably off track. Basically I can just write whatever I want, and you’re already in this too deep, so you’re just going to keep reading aren’t you. You don’t even know what I’m going to say next (because I don’t know what I’m going to say next), and I don’t have any evidence for this, but

Okay, so I’m pretty sure I was going to say something amazing there but I got distracted by something and closed the document and when I came back to it I had already forgotten what I was going to say.

I suppose this is as good a time as any to end this entry. I know it’s good for me. I’m going to go watch a movie and eat enchiladas with my idiot friends, and then I’m going to come home and watch The X-Factor. Don’t ask my why I watch that horrible show, I just do okay, so shut up. CARLY ROSE WOOOOO!!!

To be continued later, maybe, probably . . . some day.

UPDATE: So I watched the episode, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Carly Rose actually delivered my two least favorite performances. Maybe it’s because she sang two of my favorite songs, “Imagine” and “Your Song,” but actually I think my favorite performances were Tate Stevens’ rendition of “Bonfire” (super fun, and hey, I would buy that album), and Fifth Harmony’s crazy Mad Hatter and glitter inspired performance of Ellie Goulding’s “Anything Can Happen,” which I downloaded from iTunes (and which featured Camila wearing the largest bow on her head that has ever been worn by a human being).

In conclusion, Tate should win because he and his super cute family deserve it. Carly Rose is young and doesn’t need the $5 million like he does. But I also hope Emblem3 and especially Fifth Harmony get snatched up by recording companies, because I love them. THE END.

The election is making me all energized and stuff. It’s reminding me how weird it feels to be an adult, and how awesome it felt the last time around in 2008 when things seemed so awesome and everybody was like, CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT JUST HAPPENED. That was before we realized Obama was just a man who puts his damn pants on one leg at a time. Anyway, back to the exciting. I’m always going to count 2008 as my first election because even though I voted in 2004, that was back before my brain realized it could have thoughts of its own. It’s kind of weird how you listen to your parents about stuff like this. They’re like, THIS IS RIGHT, and you’re like, OKAY, PARENTS. I BELIEVE YOU BECAUSE YOU CREATED ME PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY AND CLOTHED AND FED ME AND PROVIDED FOR MY BOOK AND ICE CREAM NEEDS FOR 18+ YEARS AND EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS THE TRUTH.

I realize that most people have this sort of realization a little earlier than I did, but I had a good relationship with my parents as an adolescent. I never rebelled, never partied, never caused any trouble. I was the perfect child and they were goddamned spoiled. When I have kids I want them to be Ashley Jr.’s. I will be sad for their lack of social life and how they’re losers until the age of 19 and everything, but the parent part of me will be all happy because loser kids who do what they’re told don’t get into much trouble. Or any, really. The most trouble I got into in high school was for totalling my car, and even then it was more like, we acknowledge that you are 16 and an idiot, and even though we are disappointed in you, we cannot logically punish you for this. The only rebellion I ever committed against my parents was watching The X-Files and Friends, even though they came from the Devil and were corrupting my soul.

But my point is that I was basically a parrot in 2004. My parents told me I was one thing, and I believed them. The next year, when I realized that basically my entire belief system meant that I was actually an evil liberal nutcase (a belief system, I would like to note, instilled in me ironically by the same parents who use the term liberal like it was a swear).

So 2008. Yeah. Not sure where I’m going with this.

One time when I was visiting her, my mom woke me up at 6:30 AM just to ask me why my generation was so jaded, why none of us were patriotic.  I can’t seem to make her understand that patriotism shouldn’t have to mean that you never question what you’re told. But my mom is a sweet and innocent flower who has a hard time seeing beyond appearances. She wants to believe that people tell the truth, and that there reasons for saying things are genuine, because that’s how she would be if she were in their place. Maybe I’ve gone too far in the other direction — thinking that everything that comes out of a politician’s mouth is a half-truth, even from the ones I vote for and support.

Is it weird to admit that I have gotten most of my in depth election talk from John Scalzi? Love that guy. (You guys have seen this, right? I typed ‘love that guy’ and then my mind immediately went to, “Lick Matt’s face – love that guy.”)

This post has become useless very fast so instead of typing more word vomit, I am going to stop tying word vomit and go order some fucking Thai food, turn on Comedy Central, and go pull out some or all of my hairs instead.

Stupid and embarrassing stuff I have done at work (that I can remember):

10. Accidentally calling clients/students/tutees/fellow employees/whatever by the wrong name, even if I have known them for over six months/have hung out with them outside of work. Have done this on multiple occasions, usually in front of other people.
9. Accidentally hitting myself in the eye with a banana, while my co-worker was watching.
8. Accidentally hitting myself in the mouth with the phone handset, causing my lip to split open and bleed for two hours.
7. Accidentally slicing open my finger down to the bone with a brand new knife while cutting a sandwich at work for a co-worker.
6. Accidentally dropping a bucket of long, sharp knives onto my head from where they were sitting on a high shelf, and then watching in dismay as all co-workers within hearing distance run to the back room to see what I’d destroyed this time.
5. Accidentally slamming right ring finger in pastry case, causing the finger nail to pop out of its nailbed (and as I later learned, causing a hairline fracture) . . . and then in a bit of a daze, with a horrified customer looking on at my limp, disgusting and bleeding finger, attempting to continue ringing up said customer’s transaction. After said finger injury, being unable to think or do anything other than stare in horrified shock at my finger, interrupting several co-workers important duties to have them deal with me, and in particular, having one co-worker drive me to Urgent Care and spend four hours there with me until finally I saw the doctor and he numbed me up and PUSHED MY FINGERNAIL BACK INTO ITS SOCKET. Also my legs were hairy and I hadn’t showered.
4. Accidentally belching while in the middle of leaving a voicemail for a client.
3. Accidentally letting a fart slip out during an . . . inopportune moment.
2. Accidentally saying the word “sex” instead of “success” while on the phone with a client . . . three times in a row.
1. Crashing my brand new company car into a pole and then having to tell my boss and watch his face go FLOOP down to the ground.

And those are just the ten that I could remember right away. I can’t be the only one who is a huge idiot in such inappropriate places. So please, I implore you if you can, make me feel better about the disaster zone that is my life and TELL ME YOUR EMBARASSING STORIES.

Also, I just want to say, for those of you who didn’t get the reference (and honestly, you’re better off that way), that I would have found Bella Swan and her supposed clumsiness much more endearing if she would have actually done herself some damage once in a while instead of just yapping about it all the time. Also, if Ms. Meyer didn’t insist on using the adjective “clumsy” as a substitute for characterization. How did this post about embarassment turn into a Twilight rant? No idea. These things just happen, I guess.

So yesterday I found out that GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE, I don’t have cancer. As I noted on Twitter earlier, that thing they sliced off my leg two weeks ago* was just a butt ugly piece of shit that decided my leg was its new home and it was time to start throwing wild parties. I knew I should probably tell people that love me and care about me that I do not have cancer, but all thoughts of my own health and well-being were pushed so far to the back of my mind that they fell off the giant Cliffs of Dover way back in there and then they probably also fell into a river and started screaming help me, help me! i’m drowning! in their tiny little voices, because all my brain wanted to think about was that Mulder and Scully = True <3 IRL. And it’s all Jennie’s fault.

*In the process of being butchered, I had stitches, developed large ugly bruises all over my calf, and threatened to rip those stitches in half every five minutes when I was moving last weekend. I sent my dear friend Emily a picture of the hideousness and her response was to be jealous that she didn’t have a “rainbow” on her leg, and then she proceeded to photoshop lots of sparkles and unicorns onto the picture and sent it back to me with a smiley face.

Now, the rumours have since been squashed by David Duchovny’s killjoy rep, but for a glorious ten minutes, it was like my entire adolescence had reawakened and I was back in high school again, unable to think about anything else but whether or not Mulder and Scully would ever get together*. I wasn’t one of those people that wrote fanfiction about the actors (that is SUPER CREEPY behavior, by the way), and I don’t necessarily actually CARE one way or the other if GA and DD are boning each other, but for those ten minutes, it was like the story that shaped my entire adolescence had just come to life. I wasn’t even making thoughts, just noises — nothing but squirrels up in the noggin.

*Sometimes I would also think about what I would do if Mulder were real and he walked into my 2nd period European History class with his gun and his badge and whisked me away — the fantasy never got farther than the whisking, so who knows if I was being led away for romantical purposes or for questioning in a mysterious paranormal investigation. Either way probably would have been okay with me, honestly.

Anyway, so then I hijacked Jennie’s comments for a while with my typing farts when I had an idea to watch The X-Files again, but like not the whole thing, because a full rewatch took me six months the last time I did it back in 2009. This rewatch would consist of my favorite all-time episodes, the ones that used to make me want to roll around screaming on the floor and then die (I believe I actually did this during the seventh season finale) — The Good Parts Version, to steal a phrase from The Princess Bride. And then my brain was like, oh! LET’S MAKE A LIST. I love making lists, you guys, but you know this. So those of you who were expecting a quality post when you clicked through here today, I’m sorry but you can probably leave now because the rest of this post will be devoted to mindless X-Files nostalgia and list-making. Actually, if you’ve never seen The-X-Files before, this list might be a good place to start. Of course, if these are the episodes you watch first, it might be all downhill from here.

The X-Files: The Good Parts Version, for use in a Mini-Marathon, Weekend-Ruining Capacity

1X01 — “Pilot”: Special Agent Dana Scully meets Special Agent Fox Mulder, the FBI’s most unwanted, as she is assigned to the bureau’s black sheep unit The X-Files to spy on and reign in Spooky Mulder himself. She’s a skeptic, and he wants to believe, and he sucks her right in to his creepy, government conspiracy and alien-filled world.

3X04 — “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”: Mulder and Scully meet a man who knows how everyone he meets will die. This man is played by Peter Boyle, and he is cynical and awesome.

3X17 — “Pusher”: Possibly the greatest X-Files villain, M&S chase serial killer Robert Patrick Modell, a man who can “push” people into doing or seeing whatever he wants using only the power of his mind.

3X20 — “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space“: The first time the show went meta — famous author Jose Chung writes a book about a supposed alien abduction and interviews Mulder and Scully about the events, both of whom give very different versions of the story.

4X14 — “Memento Mori”: Scully learns she has cancer thanks to the events of her abduction two years before. This is the opposite of what happened to me. (Also, I’ve never maybe been abducted by aliens/the government/whoever.) It is awful and heartbreaking and they totally cut the scene where Mulder kisses her. Also, during the infamous “hallway scene,” Gillian Anderson had to stand on a box. HA HA HA.

4X20 — “Small Potatoes”: The funniest/saddest episode this show ever did. Moose and Squirrel investigate a series of babies in a small town who are all born with tails. It involves Luke Skywalker, doppelgangers, and almost kisses. It is amazing.

5X01 & 5X02 — “Redux I,” “Redux II”: Scully is dying of cancer, and Mulder almost loses his mind trying to save her.

5X05 — “The Post-Modern Prometheus”: Creator Chris Carter’s black and white ode to Frankenstein, with a post-modern twist. It has a dude with two faces, questionable sexual encounters, and lots and lots of Cher. I used to teach it to my students when we did our “Monster” unit. They ate that shit up.

5X08 — “Kitsunegari”: Robert Patrick Modell has escaped, and this time he’s on a kitsunegari — a foxhunt. (Mulder is the fox because his name is Fox . . . get it?)

5X12 –”Bad Blood”: If “Small Potatoes” was funny/sad, “Bad Blood” is just plain funny. Mulder is accused of murder, and his only defense is that at the time, he thought the kid he’d murdered was a vampire. Mulder and Scully take turns telling Skinner their version of what happened, much in the vein of “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space,” except way way better. This is the most quotable episode the show ever did.

5X19 — “Folie à Deux”: Mulder drags Scully to check out the claims of a man who believes his boss to be a murdering monster. The perfect example of The X-Files monster-of-the-week format at its finest: Scary monster, great character work for Mulder and Scully, and a hell of an ending. (Plus also a scene where Mulder tells Scully she’s his one in five billion.)

5X20 — “The End”: Psychic chess prodigy. Mulder’s evil, horrible ex-girlfriend. The X-Files closed down and burned to the ground. Sigh.

The X-Files: Fight the Future — I know every line of this movie by heart. Fucking bees.

6X03 — “Triangle”: The X-Files meets Wizard of Oz meets World War II on a boat. You were there, and you, and you . . . but was it a dream? This episode has some of the coolest camera work in the series, including an impressive long take set to jazzy, trippy 40s music.

6X04 & 6X05 — “Dreamland I,” “Dreamland II”: Mulder switches bodies with Michael McKean, and Michael McKean doesn’t want to switch back.

6X14 — “Monday”: Groundhog Day, a la The X-Files. Mulder is stuck in a time loop that starts with a leaky waterbed and ends with a disastrous bank robbery gone wrong, and he and the bank robber’s girlfriend are the only ones who know it’s happening. The loop won’t stop until they get the ending right. Notable for the scene where Mulder is shot and dies in Scully’s arms. I rewind that scene like five million times every time I watch this episode. (Sad ending, though :( An ending which was echoed in real life, when the actress who played the bank robber’s girlfriend — Carrie Hamilton, Carol Burnett’s daughter — died of lung and brain cancer.)

6X15 — “Arcadia”: Mulder and Scully pose as a married couple in the suburbs. That’s really all you need to know. Also, “Woman, get back in here and make me a sandwich.”

6X18 — “Milagro”: A writer whose imagination brings words to life becomes obsessed with Scully. but the important part is when he gets all upset that she can’t love him because she’s totally already in love with MULDER. Let me get all Britta up in here when I say, “Da doi!”

6X19 — “The Unnatural”: David Duchovny wrote and directed this ode to baseball, about an alien who’s greatest love is playing ball, but let’s be honest, as great as the middle parts are, I really only love it for the opening and ending scenes. Duchovny writes verrrry flirty Mulder/Scully.

7X21 — “Je Souhaite”: Mulder is convinced that a genie is responsible for a series of deaths. Scully encounters an invisible man; Mulder gets three wishes and tries to make the world a better place. I’m not sure why, but I just LOVE this episode.

7X22 — “Requiem”: The aforementioned seventh season finale that punched me in the face so hard, but before that even it was great because the whole thing brought the show full circle back to the pilot episode.

8X14 — “This Is Not Happening”: Scully’s search for the missing Mulder finally comes to end, and it’s not the happy ending she was looking for. The last ten minutes of this episode are completely unbearable in the best way possible.

8X15 — “Deadalive”: But don’t worry! Mulder is like Jesus — he rises again. Both of these episodes are totally worth it just for that moment when Mulder first opens his eyes and Scully smiles back at him.

8X19 — “Alone”: A tribute to well-known fan and fanfic writer, Leyla Harrison, who died of skin cancer earlier that year. Young FBI Agent Harrison is Mulder and Scully’s biggest fan, but she’s in way over her head as the newest X-Files agent. It’s schmoopsy and sentimental, and I absolutely love it.

9X19 & 9X20 — “The Truth”: Mulder is put on trial for the murder of a man who can’t die, and his whole career is called into question. A lot of people don’t like this episode, but I love it because it give me two things: 1) Mulder and Scully making out and for the love of God finally acknowledging their romantic relationship, 2) An absolutely pitch-perfect final scene that always makes me cry.

If you have more than a weekend to waste fill, also add in: “Squeeze,” “Ice,” “Eve,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Jersey Devil,” “Tooms,” “Duane Barry,” “Ascension,” “One Breath,” “Irresistible,” “Humbug,” “Paper Clip,” “War of the Coprophages,” “Quagmire,” “Home,” “Paper Hearts,” “Leonard Betts,” “Gethsemane,” “Detour,” “Christmas Carol,” “Emily,” “Kill Switch,” “Drive,” “How the Ghosts Stole Christmas,” “The Rain King,” “Tithonus,” “Three of a Kind,” “Millenium,” “The Goldberg Variation,” “Sein Und Zeit,” “Closure,” “all things,” “Within,” “Without,” “Badlaa,” “Essence,” “Existence,” “John Doe,” “Jump the Shark,” “William,” “Release,” The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Under no circumstances watch: “3,” “The Field Where I Died”

I was going to add in a little list with the best MSR scenes (Mulder/Scully Romance, for you noobs), but then I decided that I should probably just make that a separate post, because I’m pretty sure I can find the elaborate spreadsheet I concocted in high school listing out EVERY SINGLE ONE because that’s the kind of thing I did all the time back then instead of dating. And then I realized I could make an endless amount of lists about this show, and I could probably do them all from memory. (If anyone would actually like me to do this, just let me know — I’d be happy to waste even more time oblige.) I guess what I’m saying is, it’s important that ya’ll know my priorities are straight: Mulder and Scully > Not Having Cancer.

Also, I’m going to be watching a shit ton of X-Files this weekend.

And then, AND THEN.

Okay, I’m being dramatic, but seriously, SERIOUSLY. The universe is being a complete asshole to me this week. First I had to have this thing carved off my leg and biopsied (it’s probably nothing . . . probably) and now I have stitches in my leg and it hurts a lot and I’m being a huge baby about it. So I’ve got this new financial situation going on that I haven’t quite figured out, and I’m moving this weekend, and I’m gravely wounded . . . and then today happened. Again, it’s not that bad so don’t freak out or anything, but it FEELS that bad. Maybe that makes me an asshole, because so many people in this country and not in this country have it so much worse off than I do, and if so, THEN I AM AN ASSHOLE. But I actually felt like writing this out, which meant I felt like writing*, which meant I actually had something to say, which would be an improvement over the last month and a half of my life. So I’m going with it.

*Not feeling like writing is a side effect of something that has happened to me, but I’m not entirely sure which thing that was.

So I was all excited because I was picking up the keys to my new apartment today, but when I actually got there, the situation, as they say, deteriorated.** Due to a lot of boring but anxiety-causing details that I’m not going to go into, I basically have to double pay August’s rent on my new apartment, which was something I very much wanted to avoid. On top of that, once I got into the actual apartment, it smelled like smoke, and the configuration of the bathroom means that I am either going to have to put the litter-box on my bathroom counter, or in an extra closet in my bedroom. Either option is not going to be pleasant. So I was distracted, and aggravated, and I forgot to take a gate key with me on my way out. There was a large rock propping up the gate, and I went out of my way to kick the rock and close the gate. Approximately one second after I committed these actions, I realized that I was now effectively locked out of my apartment. That last part is my favorite part of this story, by the way.

**I may or may not have picked this phrase up into my vocabulary due to re-watching five seasons of Stargate SG-1*** in less than a week and a half. I never said I made good decisions all the time.

***Remember what I said above about not feeling like writing? What I meant was that I don’t feel like writing anything that isn’t Stargate SG-1 fanfiction, which is all my brain wants to do now. I say to that: Brain, you do what makes you happy, but the consequence of this is that I spent eight hours last Saturday writing something that I will show nobody and that will not help me further my writing career IN THE SLIGHTEST.

This is the state of mind I was in when I backed my two week old car into a pole and it went CRUNCH.

Now, I acknowledge this was 99% my fault, but I would also like to lodge a complaint with the universe and whatever fuckwit decided it was a good idea to put a tiny little pole in my blind spot. I mean, who puts a pole near the passenger side back door? It should be in the middle or up front so people can see it. This is how things would be in a logical universe. And did I mention before about how it’s not even technically my car? And about how my boss’s face went white when I told him what happened, and how I honest to God thought he was going to have a stress-induced aneurysm while standing in front of me because I, his idiot employee, sideswiped her brand new car INTO A MOTHERFUCKING POLE? DID I MENTION THAT PART YET.

To sum up: 1) I have stitches in my leg and it’s going to escalate and I’m probably going to die tomorrow from who knows what, maybe some flesh eating bacteria or gangrene; 2) I am moving this week, which means dishing out lots of money, and packing; 3) I HAVE TO PACK UP ALL MY THINGS AND MOVE THEM AND THEN UNPACK THEM AGAIN; 4) I am locked out of my new apartment; 5) Smoke and litter box in the closet; 6) I smashed up my two week old car that isn’t even mine and now I have to pay even more things and I hate everybody.

It’s like that wise philosopher Rachel Karen Green once said of life, the universe, whatever: ”I mean, isn’t that just kick-you-in-the-crotch spit on your neck fantastic?”

Yes, Rachel, YES IT IS.

Just a quick post to let you know I’m still alive. Or am I . . . ? (Yes, I am.)

Also, I felt like sharing that I just stubbed the shit out of my big toe and it started bleeding. A lot. But that’s not the point of the story that I want to share with you. The point is that as all that blood was running down my toe onto my flip-flop, as I looked down and saw that almost the entire left half of my toenail had detached from my toe, it was only my third thought that I should probably wash it off or get a band-aid or something. My second thought was, Oh! What a pretty shade of red!

My first thought? Motherfucker, there goes my pedicure.

Read into this post what you will.

(Oh, and P.S. for all you contest winners, I’m shipping your goodies at the end of this week, so watch your mailboxes for books and cookies. Please try to ignore that I’m writing about cookies and blood in the same post, even though I’ve just made it kind of hard for you to do that by pointing it out. Guess I don’t really care though because I didn’t delete it.)

If you did not just receive an email from me, then I am sorry to say that you did not win a prize in the Ashley Awesome Grand Re-Opening Giveaway. Better luck next time (yes, there will be a next time). That is all.

First of all, this post is literally titled “this post is disgusting,” and you’re still reading it anyway. Either you’re a sick human being who gets pleasure from reading about disgusting things, or you’re awesome. I can’t decide which. Of course, there is a third option, that you’re just so used to my neverending hyperbole* that you’re either sticking out the disgusting for the surely ridiculous confessions to come, or you don’t actually think what I’m about tell you will be all that disgusting. Well, I’m here to tell you that if you don’t think what I’m about to tell you is disgusting, then you are probably way desensitized to stuff and I worry about your mental health and safety. Or maybe I’m overreacting. This is a distinct possiblity.

*Hey, guys? What happened to Hyperbole and a Half? I miss it! Allie Brosh, come back!

So here’s my question for you: Is it possible to be allergic to yourself? The reason I ask is because I think at the very least I am a mutated freak who is actually allergic to myself, and at most that the human body has this secret super power from evolution that is designed to discourage cannibalism and zombies. Yes, that is what I said: CANNIBALISM AND ZOMBIES. Let me lay out my science for you:

FACT #1: I have extremely dry lips. I am a chapstick addict and have been since middle school. (P.S. If you care about the best kinds of chapstick, I recommend Aveeno, or Ecco Bella’s vegan vanilla because both have SPF 15 and taste like CAKE.) If I am away from my chapstick for more than a couple of hours, my lips start looking like some sort of plague victim’s. It is super gross.

FACT #2: I am a scatterbrained moron, so being away from my chapstick is a frequent occurrence.

FACT #3: It is gross to walk around looking like a plague victim, and also I learned from TV that it is a good idea to be prepared for possible kissing at all times, so I do what you’re not supposed to do and bite off the flaky pieces. This is almost 100% of the time a bad idea, because sometimes my lip starts bleeding. I know I’m not the only person who does this so don’t even act like this is the gross part.

FACT #4: About 10% of the time, I accidentally swallow the dead lip pieces. This isn’t the gross part either.

FACT #5: THIS IS THE GROSS PART. Immediately after I accidentally swallow pieces of my own skin, my throat swells up. I am not really allergic to anything severely. I have dust and pollen allergies, pretty crappy sinuses, and a near constant flow of post-nasal drip running from said sinuses down the back of my throat (SEXY, YES?) that has lead to more sinus and ear infections in my lifetime than I can even count, and I’m used to all of those things, but I’m not like one of those tragic kids who’s so allergic to peanut butter that his entire airway closes up if he gets within five feet of a PB&J sandwich, so he has to eat all by himself at lunchtime and probably cry into his crappy allergy safe food. ALL THAT is to say that I’m pretty sure my body knows when it’s swallowed pieces of itself and so it goes into attack mode, because SOMETHING JUST ISN’T RIGHT.

So with all of that extremely scientific evidence in front of you, how can you NOT think that the logical conclusion here – assuming that it’s not just me that’s the freak, and assuming that you actually believe me and don’t think I’m just a hypochondriac (I assure you, I’m not, although both my mother and my sister are) — is that our bodies have evolved precisely the tools with which to prevent us from eating one another! What other purpose could this bodily function serve? None. It is the only purpose, and because I listed all of those facts up there, and this is my conclusion, logically this is now also a fact. One time in high school I got an A in Biology, so I’m pretty sure you can trust me on this (I got a B in Chemistry, but that’s only numbers and mixing things in beakers, so it’s not relevant).

Of course, there is also the distinct possibility that this is simply a leftover evolutionary reflex from caveman days or something, like those people who have vestigial tails. For example, you see that I am not actually dead, and that I have never been hospitalized for anaphylactic shock from accidentally swallowing myself. This would also make a lot of sense seeing how people actually do eat each other sometimes in lots of places all over the world, for example those Donner people everyone is always talking about (but we’ll never know for sure if this zombie allergy happened to them because they all died anyway — zombie allergy is now officially what I am calling this). Anyway, even as my throat is closing up because I’m a completely gross human being, I find it sort of comforting that my body is working hard (if futilely) to protect me from the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

(On an unrelated sidenote, don’t forget to enter my giveaway while you still can, and I promise that even though this post is super gross, the baked goods you shall receive will be delicious and meet food health safety standards.)

How does that dang song go, the one you’re now going to have in your head all day?

So apparently I made all these promises and now I have to keep them. One of those promises was that I would do a giveaway, so here I am. Fulfilling my promise. One less thing to feel guilty about in the coming months. And it’s not like I didn’t have fun with this one, because here’s what I did. I spent four and a half hours in my local used bookstore scouring the shelves. A lot of the books I went in to look for specifically* were, no surprise, not there, but I did end up coming away with seven of my favorite books, which I will now proceed to give away to you.

*Did you know that it is almost impossible to keep Kurt Vonnegut novels in stock, for instance? This is what I was told when I went looking for The Sirens of Titan. So, sucks for you all that I didn’t find that one. Also, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And basically any Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman.

So here’s how this is going to work. I’m giving the books away in packages. If you want to sign up for a specific package, email me which one you are interested in and I will put your name into a drawing. Winners will  be chosen with one of those random internet generator thingies, so I promise: no favoritism.** If you don’t care which package you win, you can enter your name in The Grab Bag package, details below. The packages are as follows:

**Yeah, I’m talking to you.

PACKAGE #1 — Gone With the Wind: This book is approximately a billion pages long, so it is a package all in itself. This is one of my all-time favorite books, and I’m of the extremely sound belief that every American needs to read this at least once in their lives.

PACKAGE #2 — Mad Fairy Tales: As pictured above, the winner of this package will receive a copy of William Goldman’s The Princess Bride (which I just re-read, so not only do you have my assurances that it is 100% awesome, you also get the book as my leftovers, and doesn’t that just make you so happy?) plus one other thing. I tried SO HARD YOU GUYS to find a copy of Stardust, but it just wasn’t happening, but as this book was kind of the inspiration for this whole giveaway, and because it fits PERFECTLY in with TPB, I am determined to find it. So: you will also be getting Stardust (I’m not sure yet if this will be a copy of the original illustrated text, or the re-worked novel, but either way, this is happening).

PACKAGE #3 — Those Lovely Brits: At first I was going to give away Pride & Prejudice, but then I thought, no! Poor Persuasion, so lovely and wonderful, deserved it a little more. PLUS, the themes and story fit in so well with my other choice, The Remains of the Day (both being about people who fucked up in love the first go-round, you see). This package is perfect for people who like to have their emotions punched in the face.

PACKAGE #4 — I am Five Years Old: You people with kids might like this one, but honestly? Fuck the kids. Get these for yourself. I read kid stuff all the time, and I have read all three of these books sometime in the past three years. All three are still awesome. The Witches by Roald Dahl, Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher by Bruce Coville, and Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (for older kids, maybe even YA), are all storyteller books. They’re the kind of books you want to read curled up by a fire with hot cocoa, where dragons are real, and magic is terrifying and wonderful.

PACKAGE #5 — The Grab Bag: If you sign up for the grab bag, your name will be entered in all four drawings. If you choose this option and win a package, yay for you. BUT. If you happen to win more than one package, your win comes secondary. People who sign up for specific packages will get top priority for those packages, and you will get whichever one is left. Capiche?

Here are some things to keep in mind: 1) All the packages will come with some sort of baked goods, haven’t decided what yet; 2) It would be cool if you would tell everyone you’ve ever met about this giveaway, because as you know, I am a giant internet whore (but not a sellout! you will notice how I don’t have ads and am very poor); and 3) Don’t leave your entries in the comments, please remember to email me: narfna at gmail dot com.

GO.

UPDATE: Deadline to enter the giveaway is 4/24.

Tonight was not the first night I’ve cried during a phone call to a 24 hour banker. It wasn’t even the second or third time.

Look, I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m bad with money. I’m bad with money, and I have no shame. A lot of people in this world think pride is bad and shame is good, but those people are idiots. It is the exact opposite. Pride is the thing that makes you feel like a lion, and shame is the thing that makes you feel like you just got squeezed out of a lion’s butthole. We like shame here in America. We have lots of shame, shame to spare. We feel shame about sex and about our bodies, we feel shame about farting and burping, the things we eat and the way we spend our money.

Now, don’t go confusing shame with guilt. Guilt is fine. Guilt is acceptable. Guilt means we are human beings with feelings and responsibilities towards other human beings, and not empty, scary robots. Guilt means we recognize the difference between right and wrong. The important thing to remember about guilt and shame is that guilt is something we put upon ourselves, but shame is something put upon us by other people.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any shame because otherwise I’d be feeling pretty bad about myself right now. Because I’m going to share a secret with you.

Did you guys know that if you call up the bank and ask them nicely and with logic to please oh please get rid of at least one of those three overdraft fees that is on your account, oh please pretty please, they will always always tell you no? Because they will always always tell you no. I bet at least some of you did know that, but maybe not. It takes a special kind of shameless person to call up a bank and ask them to refund an overdraft fee. I will freely admit that I’m that kind of person. I want my money back and I don’t care what the person on the other end of the phone thinks of me, and as my mama always told me, it doesn’t hurt to ask. So I ask and they say no, and I still have $105 in overdraft fees.

But that part isn’t the secret. The real secret is that you don’t stop there, if you’re me. You ask to speak to a manager. And because you’re desperate and you have no shame, you give your sob story for the second time that night, only this time instead of being angry and righteous and sort of annoyed at being a pawn in the system, you just flat out start crying because you’re sick of having no money, and yeah some of it is your fault because you’re stupid, but some of it isn’t, some of it is you still paying for old mistakes, and some of it is arbitrary rules and guidelines and dates and times and fees, and more fees on top of the fees that cause more fees that start breeding with one another until you’re drowning in fees and your only lifeline is some guy in a 24 hour bank call center who hates his life and his job and his only pleasure comes in telling people “no” . . . but this guy’s never dealt with you before. He’s so clearly flustered by what’s going on, your broken voice and incoherent words — it’s an ugly cry, this one — the documented evidence of a truly pathetic life is staring at him from the words and numbers in your bank account on the screen in front of him, and they’re screaming “FEEL SORRY FOR ME.” So he tells you, “Okay, just this once, as a special consideration . . .” just so you’ll stop crying.

I know I promised you some advice, but truthfully, I’m not exactly sure what we can learn from all of this. I’m just the writer. Show, not tell, remember? I showed, now you tell. And please don’t think that I’m condoning false tears here, or instructing the lady folk to use the biases against our gender in sneaky ways, in order to manipulate a system created by and for men. I’m not even telling you that you should call up your bank and cry on the phone. Because let me assure you, I didn’t plan on crying to the anonymous customer service man, or begging him for my $35 back, please. It just happened. That’s probably the real secret: you have to mean it.

Mean what, now? I don’t know, I’m just saying things. Figure it out yourself. I’m going to eat a cookie. And I’m not going to feel bad about it.

Welcome, children, to Ashley Awesome 3.0 — ain’t she purty? I haven’t really changed things much in terms of content, but I’ve been unhappy with the look and feel of my site for quite some time now. (For those of you feed-reader people, click your asses over here already. Come on, you can do it . . . click click.) You might see some little changes here and there over the next few weeks as I sort the bugs out and update a few things I didn’t have time to update before the site went public, but in all honesty you probably won’t even notice.

So what else can you expect to see in the coming months? Honestly I have no idea. I am just making this up as I go along. Here are some possible possibilities:

✗ I have this idea that I want to write about sandwiches, like once a month or something. I don’t really know if I will follow through with it, but I am hungry all the time, and I do eat a lot of sandwiches. I feel like both of those things are in my favor.

✗ There will be a giveaway sometime before my birthday. I just don’t know what it is I want to give away quite yet. I’ll have to think of something (I’m open to suggestions, since ya’ll or going to be the ones who are getting the goods anyway).

✗ I am going to try and write in this blog AT LEAST twice a month, and somebody send me angry emails if I don’t follow through. I respond very well to threats and intimidation.

✗ If you’re wondering how you should feel about my new design/layout, this clip from Star Trek should help you out. This is what film is for, you guys. Filling our empty brains with awesome stuff. Now I want to call in sick to work and watch Star Trek all day. Holy crap, that sounds amazing.

✗ I thought I was going to have more bullet points, but I don’t, so whatever.

Please leave me comments so I don’t die of neglect.

Starting January 30, 2012, Ashley Awesome will be under construction and you will not be able to access it. But please do not fret or worry: the site will be back up bright and shiny on February 15. Ashley is tired of her layout and her font and her pictures and basically everything and wishes to completely overhaul everything ever, but does not wish for you to see the ugly while she fucks around with HTML and Photoshop and such.

In the meantime, if you’re just really wanting to read some stuff that has a nice Ashley-cracked-out flavor to it, Big Damn Heroes, Goodreads, and Film.com can probably help you out with that. Also to pacify you, there will probably be a rather large Ashley Awesome Grand Re-Opening Giveaway, so you know, get excited and stuff.

Peace out, yo.

Got a fun package in the mail today. I guess this is what happens when you introduce your friends — especially ones who enjoy giving gifts and baking things — to Doctor Who.

My friend Stephanie has been texting me for a little over a month now as she watches the show. I’ll get text messages in the middle of the night that say things like, ”My brain just broke. I can’t brain today . . . I have the dumb,” “Oh Frick. Oh balls. Oh fup!”, and “This show is breaking my soul.” I also get nifty presents in the mail, like this TARDIS cookie jar I got for Christmas, and today, these cookies I got to fill it:

The adipose is my favorite, I think. And so appropriate, considering.

Take note that the #10 cookie is in the shape of a heart . . . because I heart him so.

WHAT!? (For the love of God, would somebody please find me a YouTube clip of David Tennant saying WHAT!? Update: Thank you, Jennie. Clip found.)

I ate the TARDIS. It is inside of me.

That Dalek’s head fell off. He got murdered by the USPS.

I share these pictures with you not to brag (okay, maybe a little . . . or a lot), but also to put it out there in the public sphere that my friend Stephanie is wonderful. Everyone should have a friend like her. And it’s not just because she sends me fun, nerdy, and delicious presents in the mail. During what I’m going to start calling my “dark year,” she — along with my other besties Alison and Emily and Lindsay and Krystal — helped me out of a tar-filled financial hole large enough to smother a fully grown male rhinocerous. The Doctor has Rose and Martha and Donna and Amy and Rory to help save him from blowing himself up or whatnot, and I’ve got my friends, who send me cookies, and rescue me from my own financial stupidity. Thanks, guys. I sure do appreciate it.

Happy 2012, people. Here’s my annual list of all the books I read in the past year. I’m exhausted just looking at it. My original goal was to read 150 books, which wasn’t all that outlandish considering I was supposed to read 70 books in between January and March alone for my exams, but alas, after March I got lazy or distracted by Doctor Who or work or something (but probably Doctor Who) and only made it to 125. I also seem to have misplaced five books from this list, and again, too lazy to compare lists and try to find the missing five. If you want the full 125, click here, otherwise there’s a respectable 120 down below.

I’ve also pulled out my ten favorite books of the year and lazily linked to reviews I’d already written about them (if you think you’re sensing a pattern, you would be correct). (Speaking of lazy, I’m going to bed immediately after posting this, and I’m going to curl up with a fluffy blanket and 11/22/63, the first new book of 2012. And then I’m going to fall asleep. It’s going to be SO GOOD.)

125 in 2011

- – -

1. Ceremony, Leslie Marmon Silko*✓
2. The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne*✓
3. A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid*✓
4. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin*✓
5. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston ✓
6-7. The Walking Dead Vols. 2-3, Robert Kirkman
8. Marvel 1602, Neil Gaiman
9. Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe ✓
10. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood*✓
11. The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston*✓
12. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, Mary Rowlandson*✓
13. The Awakening, Kate Chopin*✓
14. The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton*✓
15. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson*✓
16-18. Fables, Vols. 3-5, Bill Willingham

19-21. The Unwritten, Vols. 1-3, Mike Carey and Peter Gross

From Amazon.com: “Tom Taylor’s life was screwed from go. His father created the Tommy Taylor fantasy series, boy-wizard novels with popularity on par with Harry Potter. The problem is Dad modeled the fictional epic so closely to Tom’s real life that fans are constantly comparing him to his counterpart, turning him into the lamest variety of Z-level celebrity. In the final novel, it’s even implied that the fictional Tommy will crossover into the real world, giving delusional fans more excuses to harass Tom. When an enormous scandal reveals that Tom might really be a boy-wizard made flesh, Tom comes into contact with a very mysterious, very deadly group that’s secretly kept tabs on him all his life. Now, to protect his own life and discover the truth behind his origins, Tom will travel the world, eventually finding himself at locations all featured on a very special map — one kept by the deadly group that charts places throughout world history where fictions have impacted and tangibly shaped reality, those stories ranging from famous literary works to folktales to pop culture. And in the process of figuring out what it all means, Tom will find himself having to figure out a huge conspiracy mystery that spans the entirety of the history of fiction.”

What I said: “I wasn’t sure how I felt about this series after Vol. 1, partly because sometimes it takes time to feel comfortable in complex fictional worlds, but mostly because I wasn’t sure where this was going. After Vol. 2, however, even if I don’t know specifics, I have a definite feel for this world and the things Carey and Gross are trying to say. That feeling is ‘awesome.’. . . I can’t really sum up the plot of this series very well without giving anything away, so I won’t even try. Half the fun is experiencing the ride yourself. Seriously. Go out and buy [it] right now. It’s the whole package: fun and intellectually engaging. The Unwrittenis basically like the entire reason God invented post-modernism.

22. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner*✓
23. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov ✓
24. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and Other Puritan Sermons, Jonathan Edwards*✓
25. Pamela, Samuel Richardson ✓
26. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain*✓
27. Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman ✓
28. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson ✓
29. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
30. Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Benjamin Franklin*✓
31. Kim, Rudyard Kipling ✓
32. Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett ✓
33. Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe ✓
34. Matched, Ally Condie
35. Evelina, Fanny Burney ✓
36. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Laurence Sterne ✓
37. Daytripper, Fábio Moon & Gabriel Bá
38. Moby-Dick, Herman Melville ✓
39. Middlemarch, George Eliot ✓
40. Volpone, Ben Jonson ✓
41. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare*✓
42. The Winter’s Tale, William Shakespeare*✓
43. The Complete Sonnets, William Shakespeare*✓
44. Othello, William Shakespeare*✓
45. Henry IV, Part I, William Shakespeare*✓
46. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare*✓
47. The Tempest, William Shakespeare*✓
48. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe*✓
49. Edward II, Christopher Marlowe*✓
50. Sir Philip Sidney: The Major Works, Philip Sidney*✓
51. Everyman, Anonymous*✓
52. Abraham and Isaac: The Brome Play, Anonymous ✓
53. Noah, Anonymous ✓
54. Paradise Lost, John Milton*✓
55. The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss*

56. The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss

From Amazon.com: “The Wise Man’s Fear continues the mesmerizing slow reveal of the story of Kvothe the Bloodless, an orphaned actor who became a fearsome hero before banishing himself to a tiny town in the middle of Newarre. The readers of Patrick Rothfuss’s outstanding first book, The Name of the Wind, which has gathered both a cult following and a wide readership in the four years since it came out, will remember that Kvothe promised to tell his tale of wonder and woe to Chronicler, the king’s scribe, in three days. The Wise Man’s Fear makes up day two, and uncovers enough to satisfy readers and make them desperate for the full tale, from Kvothe’s rapidly escalating feud with Ambrose to the shockingly brutal events that mark his transformation into a true warrior, and to his encounters with Felurian and the Adem. Rothfuss remains a remarkably adept and inventive storyteller, and Kvothe’s is a riveting tale about a boy who becomes a man who becomes a hero and a killer, spinning his own mythology out of the ether until he traps himself within it. Drop everything and read these books.”

What I said: “Feeling too emotionally roller-coasted to write a review. Will have to come back later . . . much later. This isn’t an unqualified five star review. I have so much things to say . . . I’m just not technically sure of what those things are at the moment. For now, just go read this guy’s review. Done? What he said.”

57. The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer*✓
58. Le Morte D’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory ✓
59. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens*✓
60. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte*✓
61. The Poems of Alexander Pope, Alexander Pope*✓
62. The Lost Hero, Rick Riordan
63. Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
64. Waterland, Graham Swift*✓
65. Naked Heat, Richard Castle
66. A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens*
67. A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin*
68. Child 44, Tom Rob Smith
69. Last Argument of Kings, Joe Abercrombie

70. Bossypants, Tina Fey

From Amazon.com: “Before Liz Lemon, before ‘Weekend Update,’ before ‘Sarah Palin,’ Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV. She has seen both these dreams come true. At last, Tina Fey’s story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon — from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence. Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we’ve all suspected: you’re no one until someone calls you bossy.”

What I said: “I have never felt more solidarity with another human being than I did with Tina Fey while reading the chapter entitled ‘All Girls Must Be Everything.’ As a person of distinctly Mediterranean heritage myself, what I’m saying is I can relate. There’s also stuff in here about show-business, motherhood, traveling on the interstate, fannypacks, fathers, men being dicks and peeing in jars, the drudgery of having an awful job, and farting. So: something for everyone.”

71. The Science of Kissing, Sheril Kirshenbaum
72. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
73. In the Garden of Beasts, Erik Larson
74. A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin*
75. The Throne of Fire, Rick Riordan
76. The Well of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
77. The Machine of Death, ed. Ryan North, Matthew Bennardo, & David Malki !
78. The Unwritten, Vol. 4, Mike Carey
79. The Thank You Economy, Gary Vanderchuk
80. Something Rotten, Jasper Fforde
81. Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
82. Tiger’s Curse, Colleen Hough
83. Midnight Sun, Stephenie Meyer

84. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

From Amazon.com: “Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first “immortal” human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. If you could pile all HeLa cells ever grown onto a scale, they’d weigh more than 50 million metric tons—as much as a hundred Empire State Buildings. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions . . . Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave . . . Now Rebecca Skloot takes us on an extraordinary journey, from the “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers full of HeLa cells; from Henrietta’s small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia—a land of wooden slave quarters, faith healings, and voodoo—to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells . . . Intimate in feeling, astonishing in scope, and impossible to put down, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks captures the beauty and drama of scientific discovery, as well as its human consequences.”

What I said: “Oh, man. There is just so much in the world that I have no idea about. Maybe more detailed thoughts about this later, but probably not. I just finished, and my head is swimming. For now this is what I have to say: Well-written, staggeringly well-researched, staggeringly and painfully personal. The story of what Henrietta Lacks’s genetic legacy has done to her family is the main focus of the book, but how Skloot uses that story to illuminate criminally neglected areas of history, law, medicine, economics, and education intersecting with race and class issues, is just riveting. Go out and get this one right now.”

85. Delirium, Lauren Oliver
86. A Storm of Swords, George R.R. Martin*

87. Old Man’s War, John Scalzi

From Amazon.com: “John Perry did two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife’s grave. Then he joined the army. The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad news is that planets fit to live on are scarce–and alien races willing to fight us for them are common. So: we fight. To defend Earth, and to stake our own claim to planetary real estate. Far from Earth, the war has been going on for decades: brutal, bloody, unyielding. Earth itself is a backwater. The bulk of humanity’s resources are in the hands of the Colonial Defense Force. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you can join the CDF. They don’t want young people; they want people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You’ll be taken off Earth and never allowed to return. You’ll serve two years at the front. And if you survive, you’ll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one of our hard-won colony planets. John Perry is taking that deal. He has only the vaguest idea what to expect. Because the actual fight, light-years from home, is far, far harder than he can imagine–and what he will become is far stranger.”

What I said: “It’s been a long time since I’ve read a good sci-fi novel, and this one sure did hit the spot. In fact, it was so delicious I gobbled it up in one sitting, and I wouldn’t say no to seconds. Probably going to go get the sequels tomorrow. Man, there’s nothing in the world like good sci-fi. In fact, I wish I’d never read it, because then I’d get to read it again for the first time. Great concept, great execution. Extremely solid first novel. I’ve been reading Scalzi’s blog for years, but I’ve never read any of his fiction. Why didn’t somebody slap me upside my head? I now want to read everything he’s ever written. This is my kind of shit.”

88. The Ghost Brigades, John Scalzi
89. The Last Colony, John Scalzi

90. Sisterhood Everlasting, Ann Brashares

From Amazon.com: “Return to the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants . . . ten years later. From #1 New York Times bestselling author Ann Brashares comes the welcome return of the characters whose friendship became a touchstone for a generation. Now Tibby, Lena, Carmen, and Bridget have grown up, starting their lives on their own. And though the jeans they shared are long gone, the sisterhood is everlasting. Despite having jobs and men that they love, each knows that something is missing: the closeness that once sustained them. Carmen is a successful actress in New York, engaged to be married, but misses her friends. Lena finds solace in her art, teaching in Rhode Island, but still thinks of Kostos and the road she didn’t take. Bridget lives with her longtime boyfriend, Eric, in San Francisco, and though a part of her wants to settle down, a bigger part can’t seem to shed her old restlessness. Then Tibby reaches out to bridge the distance, sending the others plane tickets for a reunion that they all breathlessly await. And indeed, it will change their lives forever—but in ways that none of them could ever have expected. As moving and life-changing as an encounter with long-lost best friends, Sisterhood Everlasting is a powerful story about growing up, losing your way, and finding the courage to create a new one.”

What I said: “Until about the last forty pages, I thought I knew what I was going to write in this review. I was going to say that Brashares is incredibly good with the inner lives of her characters. I was going to say that she brings people to life in magical, absurdly readable, and moving ways. I was going to say that despite this, reading this book is like expecting to jump into pool and float back to the surface, but instead you start drowning, sucking up little bits of air at a time, just trying to survive. I was going to say that as readable as it was, it was just too much for me to handle, and that these girls always seem like they need to learn the same lessons over and over again, and the lesson never sticks. But then I got to the end, and I started crying, and I couldn’t stop. To be honest about it, I’m still crying right now. (They’re the good kind of tears, by the way, the bittersweet ones. Ann Brashares is not Nicholas Sparks or Jodi Picoult, both of whom I always feel manipulated by, like with them tears are the goal, and not just a product of something great that they’ve created. Sparks and Picoult want me to feel luxuriously sad about my life, Brashares just wants to tell me something true. Does that make any sense?) This book just got to me. It got to me on an emotional level that a book hasn’t in a really long time, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t feel like critically evaluating this book for its failings. I only feel like feeling. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

91. A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin*
92. The Map of Time, Felix J. Palma
93. A Dance With Dragons, George R.R. Martin

From Amazon.com: “In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the Seven Kingdoms hangs in the balance once again–beset by newly emerging threats from every direction. In the east, Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen, rules with her three dragons as queen of a city built on dust and death. But Daenerys has three times three thousand enemies, and many have set out to find her. Yet, as they gather, one young man embarks upon his own quest for the queen, with an entirely different goal in mind. To the north lies the mammoth Wall of ice and stone–a structure only as strong as those guarding it. There, Jon Snow, 998th Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, will face his greatest challenge yet. For he has powerful foes not only within the Watch but also beyond, in the land of the creatures of ice. And from all corners, bitter conflicts soon reignite, intimate betrayals are perpetrated, and a grand cast of outlaws and priests, soldiers and skinchangers, nobles and slaves, will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Some will fail, others will grow in the strength of darkness. But in a time of rising restlessness, the tides of destiny and politics will lead inevitably to the greatest dance of all. . . .”

What I said: “I loved seeing all my favorite characters again, but like in A Clash of Kings, this one felt more like it was putting pieces into place for the next two. As much as I loved seeing Dany and Jon and Tyrion again, the whole time I was reading, I kept waiting for things to happen, and I feel like they just didn’t. It was also jarring to essentially have one book’s storylines dragged across two giant books. I feel like Martin could have cut a lot of the fat off this one (although, again, I reserve the right to change my mind about this once I’ve read the next two; some of the “unnecessary” stuff might actually turn out to have been necessary). Mostly, though, I think I’m just impatient. I waited six years for this book, and now I have to wait who knows how long for the next two. Normally waiting is an excruciating pleasure, but this book just made me want more without actually sating anything. I have no idea what is going to happen next, and that is both exciting and annoying.”

94. Beauty Queens, Libba Bray
95. Packing for Mars, Mary Roach
96. Best Served Cold, Joe Abercrombie
97. Stories, ed. Neil Gaiman
98. The Andromeda Strain, Michael Crichton*
99. Divergent, Veronica Roth
100. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs
101. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane, Katherine Howe
102. The Son of Neptune, Rick Riordan
103. The Lightning Thief, Rick Riordan*
104. The Sea of Monsters, Rick Riordan*
105. The Titan’s Curse, Rick Riordan*
106. The Battle of the Labyrinth, Rick Riordan*
107. The Last Olympian, Rick Riordan*
108. Incarceron, Catherine Fisher
109. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Mindy Kaling

110. Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor

From Amazon.com: “Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky. In a dark and dusty shop, a devil’s supply of human teeth grown dangerously low. And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war. Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she’s prone to disappearing on mysterious ‘errands’; she speaks many languages–not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she’s about to find out. When one of the strangers–beautiful, haunted Akiva–fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?”

What I said: “In a genre that is absolutely saturated, Laini Taylor has managed to write something genuinely fresh (and something that threatens to transcend it’s YA trappings every time you turn the page). Taylor fills her book with lovely poetic images that somehow manage not to annoy me (a feat in itself). There’s no love triangle (which are always always always predictable and annoying). The characters are intriguing, even scary. And the world she’s created is impressively dense; it feels lived in and real, which is especially impressive considering half of her characters are ‘angels’ and ‘devils.’ The fact that I had to put those two words into quotation marks is yet another indication of the author’s ingenuity. You’ll have to read it to find out just exactly why. I’m not spoiling you in this review.”

111. The Constant Gardener, John Le Carre

From Amazon.com: “The Constant Gardener is a magnificent exploration of the new world order by one of the most compelling and elegant storytellers of our time. The novel opens in northern Kenya with the gruesome murder of Tessa Quayle–young, beautiful, and dearly beloved to husband Justin. When Justin sets out on a personal odyssey to uncover the mystery of her death, what he finds could make him not only a suspect among his own colleagues, but a target for Tessa’s killers as well. A master chronicler of the betrayals of ordinary people caught in political conflict, John le Carre portrays the dark side of unbridled capitalism as only he can. In The Constant Gardener he tells a compelling, complex story of a man elevated through tragedy as Justin Quayle–amateur gardener, aging widower, and ineffectual bureaucrat–discovers his own natural resources and the extraordinary courage of the woman he barely had time to love.”

What I said: “Holy cow and for the love of Batman was this a good book. I know that I’ve been subsisting mostly on YA dystopian romances and sci-fi/fantasy ‘escapist’ stuff for the past nine months or so, so you might not trust my judgement at this point, but you should really believe me when I say that this is a book you should read. You, lover of action adventures and thrillers. You, lover of tense but thorough case studies into corruption and intrigue. You, lover of words. You, lover of intricate explorations into the human heart. YOU, MOTHERFUCKER.”

112. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien*
113. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien*
114. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, J.R.R. Tolkien*
115. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, J.R.R. Tolkien*
116. Heat Rises, Richard Castle

117. The Help, Kathryn Stockett

From Amazon.com: “Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed. In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women—mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends—view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.”

What I said: “Hot damn, that was a good read.”

118. Stay, Allie Larkin
119. The Big Over Easy, Jasper Fforde
120. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists, Gideon Defoe

- – -

Other books I would single out from the list include Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Divergent, The Map of Time, Packing for Mars, the Fables series (which only narrowly missed being included above), In the Garden of Beasts, Into Thin Air, Elantris, and Middlemarch (which I read the for the first time this year, and surprisingly very much enjoyed).

The worst books I read on that list? Pamela (oh, dear God, that was so awful) and Tiger’s Curse (siiiigh). And while they weren’t bad necessarily, I was disappointed in Stay, Matched, Beauty Queens, Delirium, The Science of Kissing, and Incarceron. You’ll notice that most of those are derivative YA dystopian fictions, so I suppose I deserve what’s coming to me. A special mention also goes out to Lolita for making me feel dirty in my soul, even though it is very well written.

Happy New year, all, and may your 2012′s be fruitful and full of good reading. And hopefully those damn Mayans were wrong and I’ll see you here, same time, same place, next year for 100 books in 2013.

*Re-read
✓ Masters Exam Booklist

For example, some stuff that has happened to me since last May:

• Graduated from college for the second time, this time with a Master’s degree in English Literature or something. This is apparently a big deal, but I have yet to write about the lengthy and ridiculous process of my exams, which several of you have been requesting since March. Sorry about that, and I’ll get to it eventually? Hopefully? Meanwhile, even the thought of reliving that experience in any form makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. EYE JELLY.
• Got a job working for an insurance agency as a receptionist. Somehow this evolved into getting licensed to sell insurance, something that I never asked for, and which ended up causing me even more stress. I’ve been in school for 80% of my life (80%!!), and I liked it – and you know what? Not being in school SUCKS.
• Hated my new job more than I’ve ever hated anything, and it basically ruined my life for five months. By the end, I was having trouble sleeping and eating, and every morning before work I’d be so nauseous I’d think I was going to barf. (You know it’s bad when I can’t eat.) I had two nervous breakdowns. I’m not going to go into details, mostly because I feel like it would be inappropriate, but also because I’ve put the whole situation behind me and don’t really want to think about it anymore.
• Was fired from that job in the middle of October. Again, not going into it any further than to say: it sucked (both the job, and being fired).
• A mix-up in the way my credits were handled almost meant that I didn’t officially get my degree. My very smart way of handling this situation was to ignore my school email-account for three months, like it was going to go away on its own, and when I finally worked up the nuts to read it, I panicked so hardcore. Luckily, things worked out, no thanks to me, IDIOT.
• Lost all the weight I put on in grad school (ten pounds), because of stress, and because I was subsisting pretty much on iced tea, beans, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches.
• Got another job working for the same company but for a different agent, and it’s been like night and day. I don’t see myself at this job long-term, but it’s a nice enough way to spend the day, and most importantly, the working environment is incredibly pleasant (as opposed to the toxic work environment I’d been in for five months previously).
• My roommate of five years left me to move in with her boyfriend. This was incredibly traumatic. I miss you, Strawberry :(
• Moved into a new apartment with a friend from Barnes & Noble. Moving expenses gutted my bank account.
• I was homeless for a period of three days.
• Moving expenses, among other changes, helped me to dig myself into an impressively deep financial hole that I am only now finding my way out of.
• I literally borrowed money from everyone I’ve ever met.
• Defaulted on one of my credit cards in early September. This made me feel awful, but I couldn’t afford to pay it. I’ve been dodging calls from creditors ever since. One day, I will have NO MORE DEBT. ONE DAY!
• It hasn’t been all bad. I was offered a writing position with Film.com in September, and it’s kind of a dream come true. I feel like I should write more about this later, but I’ve been writing about TV for four years now, just for shits and giggles, and now I’m getting PAID to do it. Not to be obnoxious or anything, but it’s totally awesome.
• My cats broke my DVD player. (Don’t ask.)
• On a related note, I finally bought a Blu-Ray Player! (But then I had to return it.)
• I watched the entire revived Doctor Who, and it was so good, you guys. It was like the only good thing in my life for like months and months. BTW, I still owe you a post about Doctors Ten & Eleven. (Here’s my post about Nine, just in case you missed it.)
• All of this, the leaving of the safe bosom of mother education, the having to work all day every day, the constant paying of the bills, even the cool new gig . . . it has all lead me to one conclusion. I have no freaking idea what I want to do with the rest of my life.
• None of the previous bullet points are hyperbole, and you guys know how much I like using hyperbole. Why am I not dead right now?

To sum all of this up: QUARTER LIFE CRISIS. IT IS HERE. I WILL NOW PROCEED TO TYPE THIS IN ROBOT VOICE. BECAUSE I CAN.

This is Denise. She is my one year old desert tortoise. I named her after my aunt who isn’t really my aunt but who is my godfather (it’s complicated). Denise was a gift from a friend. She wanted her to have a more permanent home, and I told her I’d take her in and she could live in my mom’s backyard, which is plenty big enough to hold a slow-moving, slow-growing tortoise. The funny part about this story is I still haven’t told my mom she will be getting a tortoise some time in the coming months. I think what’s going to happen is I’m just going to show up at her house and be like, hey, mom, I have this tortoise for you. Isn’t she cute? That’ll work, right?

It’s not like she’s hard to take care of. She poops about once a day and it’s really small, and all I have to do is make sure her heating lamp is on, and that she has fresh food and water. She moves only slightly faster than a snail. Apparently I also have to hibernate her this winter, which involves sticking her in a cardboard box and putting her under my bed. I’m not making this up. The other other best part about this story is that tortoises live about 150 years, and never stop growing. Denise is going to be alive and kicking long after I am, even thought right now she is so tiny she can fit in the palm of my hand.

Everybody say “Hi!”

I think that must be some sort of record for me in not blogging. Although, I don’t know if “not blogging” describes what it is I’ve been doing. I still write regular reviews over on Goodreads, I’m still posting semi-regularly over at Big Damn Heroes, and I still talk to most of you more than I talk to my own mother. (I’m sorry, Mom, I love you, even though you are not reading this because you don’t understand about computers.) I guess what I meant to say is that I just haven’t been blogging HERE. Blogging HERE on this personal blog of mine just feels very PERSONAL.  And I guess writing about PERSONAL issues right now feels a little too much like actually dealing with my life, instead of NOT dealing with it, which is what I have preferred to do for the last couple of months. I don’t actually know why I am typing in all caps right now. Maybe because IT IS FUN.

You know what else is fun? Having a quarter-life crisis. I know this because I am in the middle of having one. For example, let me tell you a story.

Once upon a yesterday, which was actually Friday, I didn’t have work for the first time in a million years, so I had all these grand plans: to finally finish my Farscape post that I’ve been working on for four months (FOUR MONTHS), or failing that, write something else. To job hunt, maybe (don’t want to talk about it). To clean things, at least. TO READ A BOOK! But no. Instead, I turned on my television and watched three movies in a row (Overboard, About a Boy, and Back to the Future II, if you’re curious). And then, in the middle of the second movie, I happened to stick a finger into my belly button, because I guess that’s what assholes who sit on the couch all day do? Stick their fingers in weird places? I don’t know. My point is that THERE WAS SOMETHING IN THERE. I’m just telling you right now, you might not want to finish reading this post.

I paused the movie. This was important.

I don’t know if I’ve ever told any of you about my intense fear about belly buttons, but it’s a thing. The idea of anything being put inside of my belly button freaks me the hell out, and that includes fingers. Like, when my friend Ashley had her appendix removed, and I asked her if I could see the scar, she said, “There wasn’t one because they went in through my belly button.” And so what happened next is that my head exploded because THEY STUCK THINGS INSIDE OF HER THROUGH HER BELLY BUTTON. And then they pulled her appendix out of her body FROM INSIDE HER BELLY BUTTON. Excuse me, but no. If someone ever came at me with so much as the idea of sticking something in my belly button, I would just hit them so hard on whatever body parts were closest, and I would probably scream and scream until they went away. Maybe also I would keep screaming for a while. Perhaps I sounds like an insane person by admitting this, and perhaps most of you don’t understand this extreme reaction (to which I say congratulations on your sanity), but you’ve got to admit it helps to set the scene a little. Remember the scene? Where there was something INSIDE OF MY BELLY BUTTON?

Just checking in case you’d forgotten.

I got the tweezers, the hydrogen peroxide, the paper towel, and twenty minutes later, that little fucker was out of there. I then spent the next twenty minutes disinfecting my belly button. I don’t want to go into details because I might freak out again, so you’ll just have to use your imaginations. In fact, yes. Use those imaginations well, because this could happen to you. It could be happening to you RIGHT NOW. All those dead skin cells, all that time it’s just sitting there, and you’re so oblivious . . . I mean, is this a thing? Should I have regularly been cleaning out my belly button all of these years and I didn’t even know it? Is it like with ears? Because I clean those out regularly. But guess what? My ears have never smelled like a toe.

Something you probably have forgotten is that there was a point to this story, and that point is that I strongly feel that this whole experience is a metaphor for my life. I’m not exactly sure how all the pieces fit together yet, but I’m pretty sure part of it is about not paying attention to details, and part is about letting things fester, and part is about the darkness of the human soul and the rot that hides in the daylight while we go about our pointless lives, and part of it is about being a lazy asshole on a couch with nothing better to do than freak out about the contents of that thing that used to be attached to his or her mother, and then there’s also probably something in there about it being significant that the belly button is a dried up husk of what was once proof of a tangible human connection, but is now only a reminder that someday we’re all going to die, that we have, in fact, been dying since the moment we were ripped from our mother’s bodies, and there’s nothing we can ever do about it except to perpetuate the cycle over and over and over again. There’s probably also something in there about being completely full of shit, but I’m not sure yet. On the plus side, I think I’m really getting the hang of hyperbole.

Just in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel the need to confess that earlier today I cried while watching Sandra Bullock make out with Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal, and that it was the happiest I’d been all day.

Thinking about my belly button again. . . I still think there’s something in there.