Book Meme

Instructions: in bold=have read the book; in italics=want to read the book; with crosses=own the book; with asterisks=unfamiliar with the book. Snagged from The Little Professor.

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. †Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. †To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. †The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. †The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. †The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. †Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. †Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. *Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. †The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. †Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. †The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. †Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. †The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. †Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. †The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. †1984 (Orwell)
35. †The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. *The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. †The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. *Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. †Bible
46. †Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. †The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. †A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. †Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. †The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. *The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. †The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. †The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. †Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. *Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. †One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. †Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. †Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. †The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. *The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. *The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. †Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. †Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. *Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. †Emma (Jane Austen)
86. †Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. †Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. †The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. †Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. †Ulysses (James Joyce)

Spirit Trap

I found Spirit Trap on NetFlix, recommended because of the plethora of other horror movies I rent from them. It wasn’t a complete waste of time, but it wasn’t amazing either.

Spirit Trap is about a haunted house. Four college students are contacted about some cheap college housing. They arrive to an old spooky house and are greeted by Tina. Strange things begin happening. Nick fixes a what we find out is a spirit clock in the front hallway, and soon after, Jenny, who happens to be psychic, starts having dreams that tell about a murder. Nick is Jenny’s love interest and helps her solve the mystery. He's just your average joe college kid. Tom and Adele are a couple, and Tom also happens to sell drugs. His box o'drugs disappears from their room, and this starts a chain of events that brings the house’s history up front and the students discover they are in danger.

You figure things out pretty quickly. You know who will be the killer and what the history and ghosts are. The whole idea of a "spirit trap" is new to me, but a haunted house is a haunted house, even if you do need to be out of there real quick. In fact, it kind of reminded me of the 13 Ghosts remake in the idea of a haunted house that is also a trap for the living. I would embarrassingly have to say 13 Ghosts was better.

Everyone is an okay actor in this, but no one really breaks out of TV actor quality. Billie Piper is there, and Dr. Who fans may “squee” in excitement at that. Luke Malby is here, the prince from Prince and Me and a small part in 28 Days Later. Everyone else is okay, but the only one I really liked Emma Catherwood, who hasn’t done much before or after.

All in all, Spirit Trap is really not all that impressive and not really all scary. It’s sub par straight to video fare, and it doesn't bring anything new to an already very popular genre. Production values were low but not dollar menu low, so if you really like scary movies and straight-to-video doesn' t scare you off, you could check it out. Just keep in mind, this straight-to-video isn't Sci-Fi channel quality with man-sharks or killer ants, so don't get your hopes up.

Rating: 3 Purrs for average Brit horror with a pretty predictable plot and scares

Alone in the Dark (1982)

I can’t remember how I found out about this movie, all I know is it was highly entertaining. How can it not be with Jack Palance, Donald Pleasance, Martin Landau, and an appearance of a punk band called The Sick F*cks?

Alone in the Dark is about a psychiatrist who has just been assigned to working at the local sanitarium with Dr. Bain (Donald Pleasance). Dr. Bain is a little bit of a hippy, and on the fourth floor of his hospital he houses a group of men who are very dangerous. Dr. Bain, of course, has all sorts of rosy ideas about these guys, and doesn’t believe they are capable of violence anymore. The new doctor, Dr. Potter isn’t so sure. Not only is his family a little high strung, his sister, newly recovered from a nervous breakdown, has come to town. Needless to say, things are a bit sticky at home, so when the guys on the 4th floor get it into their heads that the new doc actually killed the old doc and replaced him, and like only a movie can do, there’s a huge power outage, the psychos escape and head towards the new docs house to seek revenge.

There are some very good scenes here. Not only do the babysitter and her boyfriend have a pretty tense dispatching (excellent imagery here folks), the little girl gets to have a tense knifing scene and a scary pedophile in the guise of a babysitter scene, the sister gets to have some claustrophobic breakdown revisits, and there’s of course the twist ending that may not be so surprising anymore but is still good. The best parts go to Martin Landau, Donald Pleasance, and Jack Palance chewing up the scenery in their parts. They all look like they had a great time filming this movie. And honestly, what could be scarier: your family, locked up in your house with no weapons, no phone, no electricity, and a group of psychos armed to the teeth outside? Yikes!

Like I said, it was much better than I expected, and well worth a visit in the sanitarium. Just don’t get any psychos convinced you killed off their old doctor. It might mean trouble.

Rating: 5 Purrs for punk bands with cardboard axes singing “chop up your mother” and the nuclear power plant protest. Oh the 80’s.

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

I like Wilkie Collins a whole lot. He’s one of those writers that even though he wrote in the last half of the 1800’s, you can still read him like he’s a modern suspense writer. His plots are tightly written and his characters are fairly modern. People even credit Collins as creating the first true English detective novel, although I really am not sure I completely agree with them on that.

The Moonstone is a cursed Indian blue diamond with a dubious past. It was stolen from an Indian shrine, and later passed on to Rachael Verinder as a birthday gift. With it brings mystery and danger, first with strange juggling Indians showing up to steal the diamond, and then, with the diamond being stolen and Rachael trying to cover up the crime. Sergeant Cuff is called to the case. He is sort of an early Sherlock Holmes character, but he doesn’t stay around long enough to really make a huge impression. Franklin Blake is in love with Rachael, and he was the one who delivered the diamond to Rachael and who pushes the mystery through to its conclusion.

A different narrator tells each section of the mystery and takes you through their parts of the story. I love that you can hear each character’s voice strongly in their sections, and each is so individual. Some are comic, like Betteredge the house steward, who always finds the answers in his copy of Robinson Crusoe, and Miss Clack, cousin to the Verinders, an old maid who is steadfastly devoted to Christ and is devoted to saving her cousin by leaving pamphlets in secret places around the house. Some are straightforward, like Sergeant Cuff, who looks through people to find the truth, but who still has time for his roses. Each character is unique and vividly drawn, and each adds to the story.

If you enjoy older mystery stories, but are looking for something easy to read but still worthwhile, you should check out Wilkie Collins.

Rating: 4 Purrs, if only for Betteredge and Mr. Crusoe

Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan, Art by Niko Henrichon

Jeremy, the guy at the local comic shop, Titan Comics, insisted I pick up this graphic novel. It is simply remarkable in all ways. The art, the story, the dialog, everything gels in Pride of Baghdad to tell a story of life during wartime told through the eyes of a pride of lions.

In the spring of 2003, a pride of lions escaped from the Baghdad Zoo during a bombing raid to wander the streets starving and confused. In Pride of Baghdad, they have voices to tell you how they are feeling, the fears and confusion, the desire for freedom and what it can mean, and never do you feel like you are reading a Disney version of events. Vaughan doesn’t skimp on the details, but there is never any point where you feel like it is gratuitous.

The art by Niko Henrichon is beautiful. Each lion has character, each animal has human characteristics, and the backgrounds showing the decimated beauty of a great city is striking. You feel drawn into a world you will probably never see on television, no matter how long the war continues. It’s a vivid, orange-hued landscape; some images I still can’t get out of my head.

I can’t recommend reading Pride of Baghdad enough. It’s never preachy, never makes a serious judgment over the right or wrong of the war itself, but it does question what is freedom? How do you truly get it? Can you get it as a gift or do you have to fight, dig, roar, and struggle to get freedom that truly lasts and is deep inside you? Is it something someone can take away, or once you earn it, is it always present? My husband looked over at me after reading this and saw me sniffling. I’ll admit it; Pride of Baghdad brought tears to my eyes. For the struggle those beautiful creatures faced, the young men and women fighting the war, and the people it affects every day. It still is with me, and I am sure it will be for many months to come.

Rating: 5 Purrs for making me tear up with such a beautiful and touching story

Vampires: The Turning

I picked Vampires:The Turning up on my TIVO because I had a friend who loves bad horror movies as much as I do recommend it to me. I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.

Connor and his girlfriend have come to Thailand for vacation. Since Connor is a Muay-Thai boxer, he of course wants to see some real fights, and of course, his girlfriend Amanda get smacked with blood and she throws a fit about going to the fights (never mind that he’s a muay-thai fighter and him wanting to see a fight would not be a surprise). She breaks up with the guy and storms off in the middle of the city, with no idea where she is or how to speak the language. This girl is not the smartest in the pack. Of course, she’s prime meat for the local vampire hood. Connor sees her get hauled off to be a human blood factory, and after some muay-thai fighting, he of course gets beat up. Connor isn’t scared away though, after all, he loves this girl. He tracks down a vampire den, only to discover these are GOOD vampires, who only partake in animal blood, and who are mortal enemies of the bad vampire gang. The head of the clan, a beautiful Thai princess who is mother of all of these Thai vampires, has a plan to destroy the bad guys, but it involves some big thing about going back to her original palace and dying in the sun or something. Connor, after temporarily forgetting the girl he loves, makes it with the vampire princess, becomes a vampire so he can help her fight, and they all go off to kick some bad guy vampire ass, muay-thai boxing style. Oh wait, I forgot. There’s also Raines, a tie in to the original John Carpenter’s Vampires movie. Raines leads the current band of vampire hunters and has teamed up with the good vampires to kill the bad guys. Or wait, has he? Will the good vampires kick ass, will Connor’s girl be saved, and will he be able to magically return into being human? Or will he keep the beautiful vampire princess alive and stay with her? (That would be my vote. She’s better looking and less whiny.)

Well, I won’t tell you what Connor does. You have to see it to believe it. Just know that there are several scenes of silly muay-thai boxing thrown in between some really silly vampire nonsense. In other words, I loved it so much for it’s downright nonsense of a plot and very bad acting. Seriously. I doubt there’s another vampire muay-thai boxing movie out there that I could love so much.

Rating: 4 Purrs, with a hee-ya, turn kick, a total waste of a girlfriend, and a couple of fangs