Friday, March 23, 2012

Bookshelf update and other things no one cares about

So I rearranged my books so they're ordered a bit better. I'm still not entirely satisfied with the way they are but my dad stashed some of my books elsewhere so I'll reorganize when I find them.
The top two shelves (fairy tales/myths/Arthurian and CSL) are the same, but the third shelf is now animals (anthropomorphic and otherwise), fantasy, and Old-Fashioned Books (this will be rearranged because I'm thinking of moving my Discworld books down there to make room for the other Gaiman books); the fourth shelf has poetry, Austen and mysteries; and the fifth has Dickens and girl/Old-Fashioned Books and other/modern.

Over three days into my spring break and I still haven't caught up with or even watched any of my TV shows. And I was just on Tumblr so I got kind of spoiled on some of them, especially Community. I need to go see The Hunger Games too, and I want to go see it with my best friend and my brother and his girlfriend (who is the one who introduced that series to us) and my dad and I doubt it will happen because it's too many schedules to coordinate. It's been just appointments and cleaning for me this week ever since I came home. Sigh.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Thrift Store Book Haul/Bookshelf Blues

Ah, spring break! How sweet it is to not have to worry about homework for a little under two weeks. Well, except that I should work on my portfolio. And I returned to my old room to find that my dad had rearranged it all and left me with 12 boxes of stuff to go through that are cluttering up my room. But oh well. One of the first things I did when I got home was to go to the neighborhood thrift store with my dad. He found a large mirror with a wooden frame he was able to varnish and hang over my mom's dresser for $5, and I bought books! I wanted to look at the clothes too but I never seem to make it there. This time I bought:
-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (I have this one already, obviously, but I'm collecting the Cliff Nielsen covers)
-Heroes and Villains: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi by Rudyard Kipling, The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame, and "Custard the Dragon" by Ogden Nash (this mini anthology was made for use in the classroom to teach elementary kids literature)
-The Golden Key by George Macdonald with illustrations by Maurice Sendak (lovely, lovely story. Maurice Sendak's style isn't a very good match for George Macdonald's stories, but I'm fond of him because he's one of the illustrators of my childhood. George Macdonald was basically C.S. Lewis's C.S. Lewis, if that makes any sense, and you see his influence in CSL's books)
-Ex-Libris by Ross King (a mystery set in 1600s England where a bookseller/antiquarian must find a lost manuscript. This sounds so up my alley; I can't wait to read it)
-Silas Marner by George Eliot
-Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (a Chilean woman makes her way to Gold Rush California. I've been meaning to read Allende; there are so few Latina writers, especially Latina fantasy writers. This book is historical fiction though)
-Life of Pi by Yann Martel
As always, these are up on my LibraryThing (widget in sidebar).

I've also had to rearrange my books because when my dad moved the bookshelves, he put back the books but mixed mine with my sister's. It's interesting because he mostly left them in the same order, but in an entirely different place. So my C.S. Lewis shelf is down pat, as is for the most part my fairy tales/myths/Arthurian lit/primary fantasy shelf, but I'm not so sure about the bottom three shelves. I'd like to keep all my fantasy books together, especially because I have a lot of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones and they are/were all pals, but since I'm out of room I have a second fantasy block on the fourth shelf. Right now after CSL I have poetry, then Possession forming the poetry-literature bridge to my Austen books, and since those are all B&N Classics I keep The Scarlet Pimpernel with them and that leads me to mysteries (No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, Sherlock Holmes and Rivals/Further Rivals of, The Woman in White) then my Dickens (starting with The Mystery of Edwin Drood to bridge with the mysteries, then going backwards in time), then I have my second fantasy set because they don't quite fit in elsewhere, plus DWJ's Dogsbody bridges nicely with my animals books. Then from animal books I go into Old-Fashioned type Books and books about girls. Then after that it's just what fits (mostly modern). I'm actually thinking of switching my poetry/lit shelf and the fantasy/animals shelf so that it's after CSL; that makes more sense. And my dad stuffed other books of mine elsewhere, so I'm probly going to come across them and wail in despair. I've actually started putting some of my books (either religious or less-loved) in my sister's bookshelf; she has way fewer books than me. I do NOT need fewer books; I need more shelf space. And more time to read.

There's this contest I'm sort of toying with the idea of entering. Students are supposed to submit a bibliography of 50 or fewer books they've collected. I have exactly 50 CSL books if you count the extra Narnia books and ignore the George Macdonald writing anthology edited by CSL. I'm afraid I'd look like a fanatic turning that in, though. But I could also possibly win money. IDK.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore


This movie won an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. It is now one of my all-time favorite movies. Utterly lovely and wonderful. (I didn't get the pun in the main character's name until just now.)