I usually write all of my blog posts ahead of time, but not this week. Somehow I managed to get through most of my weekend without getting to do any writing of any kind. Blasphemy! I know. I did have lunch with a friend and my husband. The friend is a librarian so we spent a lot of time talking about books and banned book week.
I finished a few books this weekend too, including Return to Paradise by Simone Elkeles, The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (For my banned book week challenge) and Paranormalcy by Kiersten White. I didn’t expect to read quite so much, but after spending a week reading The Chocolate War in which the closest I got to teen romance was a boy with his hand in his pocket lusting after the backside of a girl he’s watching in a crowd. Yeeeeeah. Also there are no actual girl characters in The Chocolate War, so I really needed a fix.
Paranormalcy was amazing by the way. I picked it up around 12:30am (I don’t sleep much) and by 5am I had devoured it from cover to cover. OH man, it’s a great book. I knew it would be a great book, but I had no IDEA how great a book it would be. It reminds me of a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Alias. There were a lot of really great moments, but one of my favorite’s happens when Evie, the main character, gets to go to high school for the first time. She asks if there are a lot of paranormals at school too, like vampires. Arianna, a vampire in the room, snorts and asks, “Why on earth would a vampire go to high school?”
Hahahahaha! Awesome.
So if you haven’t picked Paranormalcy up yet, I highly recommend you to so. Great fun. Great romance. Great ass-kicking, pink-wearing, strong female lead!
We also saw The Last Exorcism which is really an interesting movie. Really well done, really well acted. It was a fantastic horror/psychological thriller movie until the last like 2 minutes and then it just sort of shot itself in the foot. But if you can get past the last two minutes of stupid twists, the rest of the movie is AWESOME.
However, the experience of going to the movie was the worst I’d ever had. I like teenagers, I think they are pretty awesome in general. But I was not liking the teenagers in our auditorium. There was a large group of like 15 or so, and before the movie started they were extremely loud, running around the theater, jumping over chairs, answering cell phones, and there weren’t a lot of people not in their group in the theater. My librarian friend went to talk to the manager because they hadn’t quieted down through the previews. The manager came in and gave us all a lecture that while they were happy we’d selected their movie theater to come to, excessive talking and cell phone use would not be tolerated and we would be asked to leave if it continued through the movie. The kids quieted down at first. Then they’d get going again and a manager would pop in and they’d quiet down. Then they’d get going again. At one point my husband (a high school English teacher by day) told them to shut up in his teacher voice and they listened for most of the rest of the movie. It was bad, bad behavior. Seat kicking, rough housing, talking, yelling, getting up, getting down, running around, changing seats…I thought I was going to murder someone halfway through the movie.
So in light of that, I’d just like to put a general plea out to the universe of adults and teenagers alike: We all pay $8 to go to the movies. That’s no small sum. Sit still and watch the movie quietly. If you want to socialize with your friends, a movie theater is not the place to go. Watch a movie in a living room where you can have fun and watch at the same time. Don’t ruin the experience for other people. It’s just bad karma. </ endrant
One last thing to share: Slush Pile Hell is an interesting tumblr where an agent responds to the craziest parts of the query letters she receives. I’m sort of on the fence about whether or not this should be ok agent behavior. Should agents be allowed to make fun of our query letters?
I think: yes and no. Not when they include our names and really rip us apart. I think that is sort of on the same lines as bullying. Slush Pile Hell, however, takes ridiculous bits of queries (RIDICULOUS) and puts a funny spin response on them. I think they serve as a good reminder that we need to really think hard when we write our queries about how they are going to come off. I see it as a good place to see what not to do. But to each their own, some people are very upset over this sort of thing, some people aren’t. I respect both sides of the coin. I personally don’t let a lot of things get under my skin (except noisy people in the movie theater! <Shakes fist.> <Yells at the kids to get off her lawn.>) so it is easier for me to find these funny.
