Day 5: My favorite quote

No fanfare needed, here's just a few quotes I love.

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness." - Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

"We save our lives in such unlikely ways." - Neil Gaiman

"I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars." - Og Mandino

"Brighten the corner where you are, and you will light the world." - Dean Koontz, From the Corner of His Eye

"Now I'll only think about you if it's raining or it's not." - 'Jolene' by The Weepies

Day 4: My favorite book

I almost blogged yesterday. I was this close. Oh well.

So, my favorite book, eh? My canned answer (as in, the one I tell myself is true for ease of answering such a question) is Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. And it's a great book, don't get me wrong. But I read it years ago; I think when I was a college freshman. I've read a lot of great books since then, and there were plenty of lovely ones before. Middlesex is deep and kind of heavy, but still I love it. It's about hermaphrodism, incest, sexuality, and acceptance. It's a coming of age story. And yes, it was an Oprah Book Club choice (I'm okay with that).



Another great book is The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Yeah, it's about a guy who can time-travel, but it's not a scifi. It's a drama and a romance. It's about what it's like to love someone who uncontrollably disappears sometimes, and lives his life out of order. It's sweet and tragic.


Poster for the recent movie, which I thought was enjoyable.

But I don't just like books that are kind of a bummer. And I don't just like books that are considered 'literature'. I like popular fiction, too. I don't really buy into the distinction. I mean, sure, there's a difference in the writing styles, but I don't think that you should bother with making yourself 'look good' by only reading 'literature'. I will read anything, as long as it's halfway decent or at least entertaining. I do follow the practice of ditching a book if I'm not into it by 50 pages (not a hard and fast rule - I've quit books after 100 pages or even halfway through). The latest book I've stopped reading was Atonement by Ian McEwan.

So, some other stuff I like: the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett (hilarious satirical fantasy), From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz (good thriller), anything by Neil Gaiman (invariably fantasy, sometimes a bit creepy), The Stand by Stephen King (a huge apocalyptic novel), Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (great fantasy with some romance thrown in), the Harry Potter series, and Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson (awesome techy scifi).



There you go! A sampling of some of my favorite books! I think you should just read whatever suits your fancy. Even if it's Twilight, because yeah, it was addictive.

Day 2: My Favourite Movie

Well, crap. I already missed a day. But that's because we did trivia last night, and I didn't have time since I didn't go home first. Trivia was in Alexandria this week, and it was pretty decent, though the place got pretty smoky at 9 o'clock. So anyway! Time for: my favourite movie. So for a while now I've been saying it's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's sweet, but also weird. A bizarre love story. I like it a lot.



But there are certainly other movies I really like. The Lives of Others is one of those, as is The Talented Mr. Ripley. Those are kind of darker, and very clever. I enjoy a clever film. I also like watching sweet romantic comedies like Love Actually, or mindless action like, most recently, the new Clash of the Titans (though that last is definitely not a favorite). So it would be a lot easier to pick my favourites from each genre (and even then, still hard). I know "it totally depends on what mood I'm in" is a crap answer, but there it is, the best I can do.

Day 1: My favourite song

If you know me, you know I find it hard to choose favourites. But I'm going to try.

There's one song I can listen to over and over and over again and still love, so perhaps that's my current favorite. It's "Nineteen" by Tegan and Sara. I love them, I love their atypical voices and alternative style. Their songs are so simple but so infectious.


This acoustic version is a bit different than the one I have but you can see how awesome they are here.

Jeff and I have also been really obsessed with Laura Veirs lately. Here's the video for "Cast a Hook in Me" which I've been humming almost constantly.



One last song to make note of is "The Taste of Ink" by The Used. It has been one of my favourites for a long time and is the inspiration for my blog title. Despite no longer really being into screamo or whatnot in general, I still love The Used.