Sometimes, Melissa runs her legs. Sometimes, she runs her mouth.

Month: August 2010

Summer book loving

Apparently everybody and their Mama (well Boots and Savannah) have been putting “books I read this summer” posts and I figured that I am a good little Leming. Here are my books. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I have to admit I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo in April but since the third one came out at the beginning of the summer, I will address all of them in one big Lump. Yes, it’s a mystery/thriller which means there is a lot of gory crime. I have to confess that my experience with the criminal justice system has left me a little warped regarding crime. i.e. I’m a lot more unfazed by it than a lot of people. But yes Virginia, there are some gory, creepy violence against women scenes in this book. It starts with a reporter (Mikael Blomkvist) going to jail for libel and an autistic petite computer hacker goth girl (Lisabeth Salander). Somehow they get together to solve this mystery about girl who came up missing. It’s Swedish. There’s lots of real life places and things in it. It’s riveting. ******

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The Second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire (Vintage), takes up where the second book ends. This one goes into Salander’s background and we find out how she ended up where she was at the beginning of the first book. We find out who and where her mother and father are. We find out why she is in foster care in the first place. We also find out that she has siblings. It’s all kinds of crazy and riveting.

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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest shows where the issues regarding Salander are resolved in an over the top mystery thriller fashion but resolved just the same.

Yes, the books violent. All of the books are violent and people are raping, torturing, and killing other people in all three books. While certain characters have feminist aspects to them, I’m not sure I would call the books themselves feminist. Blomkvist seems to respect women and isn’t threatened by their success or intelligence. At the same time, he sleeps with most of them in the book. While Salander is smart in a typical male field (computer hacking), she also feels insecure about her body and gets breasts implants. While they’re not War and Peace, they’re not nearly as daft as the Twilight series either. I thought there were fascinating and loved them. But I love books like this anyway.

I ended up this summer reading the first three books in the Sookie Stackhouse series: Dead Until Dark , Living Dead in Dallas, and Club Dead . These are the books of which the HBO TV show “TRUE BLOOD” are based. Frankly, I can’t believe someone based a television series off of these books. I can’t believe the author has managed to write ten books based on these characters. The books are merely okay and the first one is pretty gosh darn bad. If I hadn’t heard from multiple sources that they get better, I would have stopped after the first one. I think the author uses the vampire, werewolf, and other mystical creatures as a crutch to avoid character development. Or something. Oh and the descriptions of the clothes bother me. Make the girl fugly why don’t you? ugh. They are mindless and they are entertaining enough that I finished them.

Click: The Magic of Instant Connections is a nonfiction. This book caught my eye because I met a person and it was the stereotypical, “It was like I had known Bucky Chucky my whole life.” It freaked my shit out, actually. I remembered some of the phenomena listed in my social psychology classes from college. The book itself, however, is written in a much less academic style— similar to Blink by Gladwell.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within I like writing and someone recommended this book to me. It was actually recommended by a journaler but the author herself is a poet. It has a lot of writing exercises designed to loosen up and let your writing flow. Some people even call it their “writing practice.” It was a very touchy feely new age type of aesthetic so unless you are into that sort of thing, you might not like it.

Grave Secret This was written by the same author that wrote the Sookie Stackhouse books but I liked it a lot better. I liked the characters better. I liked the plot better. It’s about a twenty something woman whose parents were drug addicts. She got hit by lightning as a teenager and now she can “read the bones of the dead.” This means when she walks across a grave, she will know who the person buried below is and how they died and a myriad of other facts related to the person. Of course, there is a plot of a mysterious death that causes an uproar and shenanigans including two attempts at shooting the “dead reader” herself. Oh and she’s in love and has a relationship with her stepbrother. KINKY MS. HARRIS. KINKY!

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.) I found this in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble and took it for a spin. This is the memoir of a woman from the age of 10 to her 30s. Over the years, she becomes bulimic and then her behavior over time slides over into anorexia. Then she relapses on the bulimia. LAther, Rinse, repeat. She talks about her parent’s crazy relationship growing up and all sorts of other possible causes for her condition but it’s more of a stark, no excuses, reminiscing of her sordid past. It was so sordid and scarring that in the afterword, the author mentioned that she relapsed back into anorexia after writing the book. Yeah it’s a downer.

StrengthsFinder 2.0: From the Author of the Bestseller Wellbeing This is mainly a career type book. You buy it to get access to this online personality quiz and then use the book to examine the results. It was helpful but NOT THAT HELPFUL! So there. boo yaa

Day 2: Listy fresh, slacker stale: More things about me than you ever wanted to know, an introduction

Day two of the 31 Day Blog challenge said “Make a list post” Well I do list quite a bit. Of course, considering that it’s two in the morning, I am cheating and redoing my “about me” with this list. So yeah. cheating

Oh yeah I also agreed to do this flashback thing. Yeah It’s already August 5th. Yeah I should be writing SOMETHING every day. Yeah I should be on day 5 by my own …

No wouldas, couldas, shouldas. I’m writing now.

So this is the “about me” list. Or something. It’s more of an outline.. err.. something. Or Multiple Lists. yeah yeah. Complete with some flashbacks. How about that!!! I am multi-talented. Okay, I’m full of crap, but let’s go with it.

Oh and I think the official Secret in the Sauce Blogger challenge is on day 25 or something like that. But I’m going the distance. I’m
Oh wait. here we go. Let’s call the an introduction. YEAH.

  1. I am a female
  2. I am thirty something
  3. My name really is Melissa
  4. My friend Jennifer from college used to call me “merlisserrrrr” and sometimes I have taken that as an “internet name”
  5. I’m tall
  6. I am fat but I used to be thin and I am determined to be thin again. Or well thinner than I am now
  7. I stress eat sugary stuff. I’m thinking if I can conquer that I should be thinner than I am now even if I am seriously wondering about my metabolism.
  8. I like running. I even like running now with me being all fat and junk.
  9. I like yoga, too
  10. my favorite color is purple.
  11. I like both cats and dogs. I can’t really say which I like more because they both have their charms.
  12. I have completed two half marathons.
  13. I’m a native Arkansan.
  14. I lived in Washington DC for 5 1/2. Not the area but the actual District of Columbia.
  15. I once went to Kenya to help build a school.
  16. I really really really really want to go back to Africa.
  17. I also really want to finish a marathon before I die.
  18. I like lists. In fact, I have a rather long extensive bucket list.
  19. I started going gray very early in life and had a noticeable gray streak by the age of 34.
  20. My grandfather was one of 14 kids.
  21. My father was one of six kids. They’re all opinionated as hell. Oh the family fueds.
  22. My Mom’s mom grows cotton. Or rather rents out her land so others can grow cotton and soybeans. Sometimes they grow corn on it. She hates that.
  23. The highlight of 2010 so far is seeing Conan O’Brien and hanging out with my friend Tiffany, who let me crash at her house since i don’t live in Tulsa.
  24. The low point of 2010 so far is when my dear friend Angela, whom I’ve known since Kindergarten, died.
  25. I’m an attorney
  26. I’m a solo practitioner, which means I have my own office.
  27. I like that alright. I am not too keen on the small town I am living in right now.
  28. I am looking for a new opportunity (job…etc. right now)
  29. I have one much larger yet younger brother
  30. As a kid, I played piano and did so well I went to college with a piano scholarship
  31. I put on my own recital my senior year of high school. I played five different songs from the five major “musical eras” all by memory.
  32. Let’s pad this list, shall we? The songs were (1) Prelude and Fugue No. 2 by J.S. Bach from his Well Tempered Clavier (2) Sonata Op. 27 No. 2 (“Moonlight” sonata) by Ludwig van Beethoven (3)Impromptu in A flat Op. 29 by Frederique Chopin (4)La Fille aux Deveux de Lin by Claude Debussy and (5) Second dance from ” Tres danzas argentinas” by Alberto Ginastera
  33. I’m single
  34. I’m an abysmal failure when it comes to Romantic relationships
  35. I like to read
  36. Three of my favorite books are “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabakov; “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner; and “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt
  37. I like to watch movies
  38. Three of my favorite movies are Splendor in the Grass, Bring It On, and Pan’s Labrynth
  39. I choose Diet Dr. Pepper over Pepsi or Coke
  40. I drink so much Diet Dr. Pepper that I predict I will die from whatever health complications result from drinking too much Diet Dr. Pepper
  41. My favorite bookstore is Kramerbooks in Washington DC
  42. I love Indian food so much that if it were a man, I’d marry him without a prenup. (that’s love y’all)
  43. I do not cook very well. More likely than not, I will burn something. I’m great at burning food.
  44. I am currently listening to “Caramel” by Suzanne Vega
  45. The last book I read was Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (P.S.)
  46. I spent the summer of 2000 in New York. It was an experience of a lifetime.
  47. Those car decals that depict “Calvin” from Calvin and Hobbes peeing something really annoy the crap out of me. I will think less of you if you have one.
  48. Also, I hate “GIT R DONE” HATE IT!
  49. I attended President Clinton’s second Inauguration
  50. I’ve seen Aretha Franklin perform Live (DO THIS!!!)
  51. The day of my first law school exam, someone burglarized my apartment.
  52. I’m a crime magnet, apparently.
  53. Car stolen!
  54. Car broken into!
  55. Car hit by a drunk driver! (okay sideswiped)
  56. Dog not on a leash killed my cat attempting to eat it. (bad Rottweiller)
  57. Sexual assault (okay that one is not nearly as amusing)
  58. Some would say that is all karma for working in criminal defense
  59. I like cheese. A LOT!
  60. I also like chicken mole
  61. I think Veronica Mars should have never been cancelled.
  62. I think the Sookie Stackhouse books are overrated.
  63. Sometimes I think I am the posterchild for this article.
  64. I love playing games — like Scrabble and that Mafia Wars game on facebook
  65. By the way, Facebook has kept me sane living in the crazy small town
  66. I first discovered people writing about themselves online via Pamela Ribon when she had an online journal called Squishy
  67. I was a psychology major in college. Well I started out a music major.
  68. I was either going to be a criminal profiler or a jury consultant.
  69. I ended up just being a lawyer instead.
  70. I’m a twitter fiend. I love that stupid little thing. I’ve met some great people on there too.
  71. And I’m now tired of doing this list so I’m going to quit.

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