February Reading and Movies

Books:

3. Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult. This was an interesting book, the premise about a 7 year old girl, Faith, and after her parents separate and divorce she starts to see and speak with "God". Slowly the world starts to become interested in this Jewish child who seems to have visions of god, can heal, and experiences the stigmata. It called into question how you view religion and faith, and whether it is really something that chooses you. Whether you are brought up with beliefs or not, God and the power of his influence can still find you. Not sure if I believe any of this, but it made it an interesting read.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I had never read this in high school, and this was another great book that I really enjoyed. The author really was able to write the novel from the eyes of a 7/8 year old young girl, who wanted to hear and know everything, but really didn't most of the time. Or heard things that just didn't make sense until later on upon reflection. The story has a bunch of things going on, the family dynamic of Jem, Scout and their father Atticus. The race tension of the south in Alabama, the social tensions between the different classes of people, the hysteria of people and how gossip and prejudism always plays a card in opinions and judgments no matter how "fair" and "equal" we may try to make them. This was a sad story, but a triumph as it shows the potential for people to learn from the mistakes of others and educate themselves to be better.

5. Game of Thrones by George Martin. Loved this book. I mean I watched the HBO series so reading the book was basically like re-watching the the series. The show is almost word for word what happens in the book. So I of course loved this. So many characters and plots going on, but personally my favorites are Arya and Jon Snow. (The chick with the dragons, Daenarys or however you spell it, shes pretty awesome too)

6. Safe Haven by Nicholas Sparks. This book had its moments. I liked the main character, Katie and her plot line as the woman from an abusive relationship that finally runs away. The love story was pretty cheesy, like most of Nicholas Sparks books. A little too gooey for me, but the story overall was cute and interesting. The way her past was revealed kept me hooked. However, the last two chapters of the book really ruined it for me. I liked the book up until that point, and the ending just made me mad.

Movies:

3. Trouble With The Curve I like all the actors in this movie so I enjoyed it. The plot was very honest, about the troubled relationship between a father and daughter, and older man loosing his place in the modern world, and what we have to cling to in our lives that matter. I thought this was heartfelt and nice, and Amy Adams was great.

4. 21 and Over This movie was hilarious. It was extreme and ridiculous and I loved it. Plot is 2 friends go to visit their friend JeffChang who has finally turned 21. This movie had elements of The Hangover, Beerfest, Eurotrip, Old School, and any other hilarious comedy involving drinking and making poor decisions. I recommend as an extremely funny movie.

New Year, Same Challenge.

Alright so last year I kinda fell behind on blogging and reading. I hit 50 movies, but on the book front, I only got to 24. So this year I am going to be more on top of it, and keep my blogs short because I think I was overthinking it. So as its basically the end of January I will recap what I have done so far this month:

Movies:

1. Looper - So I watched this movie. Not really a fan. It was too weird and it ended without really explaining itself, and nothing bothers me more than that. I love all the actors in this movie though, Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and even Emily Blunt. But not too strong of a plot for me.

2. Zero Dark Thirty - Bradley basically dragged me to this movie. I was not looking to see it, its another movie cashing in on the 9/11 situation. It had an interesting story, but still it was more sad to see how we torture each other, all people, and I still don't feel like it has mad much of a difference.



Books:

1. The Falls of Giants - Loved this book! It made historical fiction fun to read! The plot at times seemed to be too coincidental for the characters to keep running into each others, but it didn't bother me too much to take away from the overall story. Very epically long, but I liked it. As I read it made me reflect back to my high school History class and the events that led up to World War I.

2. Cloud Atlas - One of the oddest books I have ever read. I think the main thing you are supposed to take away from this is that coporations will lead to the world's demise if we don't reign in control. The different stories that came up did not seem to make sense nor tie in to one another, until you finally get halfway through the book. Then it slightly makes more sense, but I would not recommend it, to be honest. I felt I had to finish the book to make sense of it all, but I didn't want to. And I still don't feel that I have a strong grasp on what the heck it was I read.