Passive-Receptive.

That's the State of Mind that I've been in, friends. Passive-Receptive as opposed, to say, Active-Productive or whatever you want to call it when you're writing or otherwise creatively engaged. So, In other words, I've been Reading and Watching. I've gone back to the gym (after every kid illness is over, so--again, again, again, again, again, infinity) and so I've had time to read (while doing cardio.)

I've read so many books that I've lost track, really, but I reread the entire Harry Potter series. (Again.) (omfg. I KNOW.) (It's a problem.) I usually find something new that I missed or that I somehow forgot. This time through, I realized that the Expelliarmus curse was taught to Harry by Snape and it's the curse that saved his life and also the curse that ultimately gave him control of the Elder Wand. Hmmm. Interesting. To NO ONE.

Moving on.

I also read Room and if you haven't read it, you really should. It's disturbing in a haunting, afflicting way and I was thinking about it for DAYS after I finished. It was so good, though, imaginative and really, really, well done. I read the Golden Compass trilogy (finally) and liked that well enough, too.

I figured out how to connect my Nook to my library--LOOK OUT. No late fees! Whooo hooo! Anyway, the only books that are available without a wait are Agatha Christie books. I have one out right now--The Third Girl. And, as an aside, I had absolutely NO IDEA how many books Agatha Christie had written in her lifetime. NO IDEA. Holy shit, there are like, A BAZILLION. Where she got all HER Active-Productive, I'd like to know.

I'm always on the look-out for books. I get a kind of preemptive panic when I'm nearing the end of a book without a wisp of an idea for the next one. I like Goodreads and all but it still seems so...huge. I get a little weirded out, sometimes, when I think of HOW MANY books exist in this world. It makes finding a good one feel so...random. (I feel the same way about blogs, btw.)

On the Watching front, I'm slogging through the Six Feet Under series on Netflix (Why, oh WHY, put only two episodes on one DVD, HBO? Huh? Whyyyyy?) I'm up to the last season now.

While I fold COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF FUCKING LAUNDRY, I've started watching the new episodes of The United States of Tara. Love it so far and I *know* therapists who don't 'believe in' DID. Interesting plot-line, that. I was afraid to start watching Nurse Jackie again, with the whole..."BLOOOEEEW ME" thing. I thought it might be getting a little *too* real and well, you know, she's an addict and all. I'm hoping that's not a spoiler or anything.

ANYWAY.

What are you guys doing?

Surely you're not spending all your time Drinking and Dreaming. You're days are filled with Creating and Completing, no doubt.

Comments

[Swistle]

I'm reading Some Days There's Pie. So far I like it, but it's not over yet and it's difficult to tell where it's going to go.

I like the passive-receptive/active-productive categories. I hadn't thought of it that way before.

[bea]

I am VERY interested in your observation about Snape and the Expelliarmus curse.

I wanted to like Room more than I did - it was incredibly compelling, but I didn't find it all that meaningful in the end. The one thing about it that has stayed with me, though, is my knowledge that I would not have had the courage to do what she did with the escape plan - I could not have sent my son out of that room in that rug. In some ways, the fact that it turned out well is what makes the book so convicting.

I've just finished reading The Hunger Games trilogy and I'm frantically recommending it to anyone who will listen.

[Manic Mommy]

HRH is reading the Harry Potter series and we read it with him at bedtime. I'm discovering much more and will definitely need to reread (again). Very interesting about Expelliaramus. Hmm.

ROOM definitely piqued my interest but bad things happening to young boys give me nightmares.

[kirida]

Have you found that the Nook helps you read more? I want to buy an e-reader, GAWD I'M SO BEHIND. And I really just want an iPad2 to be cool, but there are none to be found. So that's what I'm up to: envy.

[kayla]

Hey New Girl,

What is going on with me.. Lots of just bad stuff but what can you do.. I have been reading like a little crazed person (it's what I do to escape all my shit) and right now I am enjoying a little tina fey bossypants! After that I am going to enjoy some scandel A La Furious Love.

If you just got your nook you will come to realize what a great investment it is... ALL hardcover books I now buy via my Nook.. paperbacks I buy in real edition.

I wish I had more time to read but tiss is life.

hugs
Keila
pS I LOVED that HP fact.. That is something I never picked up on and now makes me love my snape even more.. TOTALLY dreading the last part of the moving.. THEN it will offically be over.

[Alexis]

If you like historical fiction, go read The Historian. Don't look at the synopsis inside, just read it. It's about Vlad the Impaler and it was fun. Yeah, I said it. Read the first few pages, and you'll get sucked in. I didn't like the epilogue at all, but that was the only part of the book I disliked. It wasn't really important like some are, so the good news is that you can take it or leave it.

I'm on a US of Tara roll, too. If I watch it before Jackie, than I probably won't get around to watching Jackie. I like it, but Tara is the dessert to Jackie's good dinner.
What I'm really in love with is the Big C with Laura Linney. I love the quirk, dysfunction, and emotional honesty (despite actual deception) of this show. I want a friend like Cathy =) Season two should be on sometime in June. Go watch season one first. You'll love it.

[PrincessHippopotamus]

Ok here is a rundown of the most recent and memorable items on my library account.

*The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson
*The Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle (I couldn't stop telling people about this one while I was reading it)
*Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant (written by a grad student at the University where I work)
*Shattered by Karen Robards

I don't think I'm in either the passive-receptive or active-productive categories. Maybe they come after the 'barely keeping myself and my child alive' category.

[parkingathome]

I feel that way when ending a book too, which is why I generally choose the ones in a series, so I have two or 13 more books before I have to feel fear.

Lately I've read The Forest of Hands and Teeth, chosen for the awesome title, but a great read. The second...i never finished

Matched - sort of a run of the mill dystopian, but I liked it

Also, you know about whatshouldireadnext.com right? It helps with the end of book fear.

[The New Girl]

Bea: Oh, I would love to have a HP-Crazy Group to discuss these points that are of questionable interest to others. I liked Room but I'm easy like that. I was struck by her youth, really, once she got out. Her plan seemed an extension of that, too. It WAS compelling, right? And, not so super meaningful, I agree. I loved how when they went back, though, how the boy observed the smallness and shabbiness in a way he hadn't when it was all he knew and when it was only in memory.

I loooooved The Hunger Games and was a little mystified at everyone's visceral hatred of the last book. Any thoughts on that?!

[MamaBub]

I have a bunch of books on my Kindle waiting to be read, and I feel so much pressure to pick a good one from the bunch when the time comes. Maybe that explains why one of the last books I read was Sweet Valley Confidential.

[The New Girl]

kirida: I don't know if it helps me read more but it makes it EASIER to read. I can get a book at ANY TIME and plus? I don't have to FIND SOMEWHERE TO PUT IT. omfg. So, SO AWESOME.

I have been a little put off by having to BUY lots of books, though, so figuring out the library thing is a SCORE.

PS. You're cool, e-reader or no.

[J from Ireland]

Oh the Harry Potter talk interests me so much. Do a whole post, go on please!! I have read the series a few times myself and will continue to do so till am totally sick of it. I loved Room too so compelling. I just finished reading the Divine Secrets of the YAYA Sisterhood and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think I want a Kindle, I have the app for my iphone and think its class but the screen is a little small especially at the Gym.

[bea]

I am longing to discuss Mockingjay! I read somewhere that Collins' adult readership loved it but the YA readership hated it. I found it was one of those books where I didn't start crying until I finished it and put it down - and I am still tearing up about it, two days later. I am just GRIEVING over the irreparable damage to Katniss and Peeta. I thought it was the perfect balance between a hopeful (but not absurdly sunny) ending and the very real price that was paid for it.

My real problem is that I am playing a John Denver CD in my car, so everytime "Country Roads" comes on I get emotional all over again about the destruction of District Twelve. ("Almost heaven / West Virginia ..." Here I go again with the tears.)

[The New Girl]

J: Oh, be careful what you ask for. I can't imagine outing my own self like that--writing a whole post. I did, though, also realize something that I missed the first bazillion times through the HP series. I don't know how I missed it, as it's completely spelled out for you but I did. I missed that Harry, by way of walking into his own death without trying to defend himself--willingly dying for all the others at the school, in other words--that he had cast the same charm upon them that his mother had upon him. He had made them all invincible, unable to be killed at Hogwarts by Voldemort.

I was also mystified, until this read-through, as to why Voldemort had the snake kill Snape. Somehow, I'd missed that the wand passed by "manual" murder--or force. That was, kind of a DUH moment for me.

[The New Girl]

Bea: I thought it was so good, that series. So..imaginative. I think that the last book had real 'costs of war' type stuff in it, right? Like, the new president planning to continue the games, the destruction, the personal loss for Katniss. It had all that in a way the other two didn't. I wonder if the youngsters wanted Katniss to end up with the other kid. The hunter. I can't remember his name. I need to read them again. I sped through them the first time, enthralled.

[bea]

I think there was a good Team Peeta contingent - I know that Katniss's relationship with Peeta always got more screen time than her relationship with Gale. The unpopular elements were: (a) the changes in Peeta's character as a result of the hijacking (which I found terribly, terribly sad - but also necessary for the kind of book it was: there was no room in Mockingjay for the kind of simple, good, and wholesome character that Peeta had always been), (b) the death of Prim (very unexpected and daring, especially since it calls into question the entire purpose of Katniss's involvement: she had always been acting to save Prim, and in the end the war took Prim, though it gave her a more meaningful death than she would have had in the Games), and (c) the lack of a happy ending. I thought that (c) was especially brilliant because it is, technically, a happy ending: the Capitol is defeated and Paylor seems like a trustworthy President. It is, in the end, a just and even necessary war, so it's all the more poignant and powerful that Collins manages to leave us mostly with a sense of sadness at the cost, rather than triumph at the victory.

The one thing that seems, in retrospect, to be unnecessary is the invasion of the Capitol. Once District Two fell, the Capitol was totally isolated, with no further source of weaponry (aside from their nukes). The Districts would be free to trade among themselves, elect their own government, etc., and Snow's reign would have been of short duration given Fennick's revelations about him. If the rebels had just held back and given the people of the Capitol a chance to rise up themselves, the most costly part of the war could have been avoided.

[Issa]

I adore Harry Potter. I have read them a ton of times. Sometimes with kids. Sometimes without. Ahem.

I did read Room a few months ago. The one I just finished is Pioneer Woman's love story. It was a good easy read.

[Issa]

Also? I'm with others. I can always talk HP. Each time I read them, I find new stuff.

Oh..have you looked at the Percy Jackson series? Is for kids too. But dam, I love it.

[Kathleen Thomas]

Hi,

I am writing to inquire about any homepage link opportunities you may have available or perhaps a link exchange. Please let me know if this may be of interest to you!

Thanks,
Kathleen

[jodifur]

We are reading Harry Potter to Michael. I never read them and I'm enjoying it more than I thought I would.

Also, love the new design!

[visual impact muscle building]

I doubt it. Its easier for them to get dates. They will never do half of the initiating of anything. All women are more passive, receptive and reactive than men.

Since men take on more than 50% of the rejection this makes men more nurturing and nurturing a male quality.