Maria’s Neighborhood

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Despite the seemingly nonstop bar studying, I managed to finish 5 books this month.  I'm impressed.

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls: I love this one.  Definitely read it.  It will only take you a couple of days and it a really good memoir.
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath: I loved this one, too.  It lived up to the expectation I had for it after waiting so long to read it.
• Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut:  I liked this one.  It was different form other Vonnegut books but I still found it entertaining.
• A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby: My first Hornby novel.  I thought it was pretty enjoyable.  It lagged at some points but for the most part it was hilarious.
• Lies...by Al Franken: My first complete audio book.  I listened to it on my drive to class and found it funny, engaging, and disturbing.  It brought back all of the political rage of the early 2000s and reminded me how it is still just as frustrating today.  I like the idea of listening to political/economics books in the car since I'm not very good at actually sitting down and reading them.  My next one is hopefully Obama's The Audacity of Hope.
  

How much does a ticket cost at your usual movie theater? Does the price affect the number of movies you see at the theater?
Submitted by Kristie.

I'm answering this one because it is Kristie's question and it is fun when you get picked for things on vox.  :)

Unfortunately, I don't know exactly what a movie ticket costs here.  I think it is about $9 or $10 at the theater we go to.   Which is more than I was paying in Ann Arbor because all the theaters there have student prices.  There is a cheaper theater right down the street.  They just upped their prices from $6.50 to $6.75 for all shows.  But it is a very bad theater.  I've seen one movie there and the sound quality was so poor that Ben and I decided to see all other movies at the AMC from then on.

The high movie prices do affect how often we go to the movies.  We are very poor at the moment so we just wait until they come out on dvd or we don't see them at all.  We do see some bigger movies.  We saw Sex and the City and we are going to see the new batman movie this weekend.  But mostly, we don't go very often.

How much does a ticket cost at your usual movie theater? Does the price affect the number of movies you see at the theater?
Submitted by Kristie.

(Yay! This question was recommended by my friend Kristie!)

A movie ticket here is $12. That's a lot, and it does affect the amount of movies we see in theater. On weekends though, all showtimes before noon are $6. So sometimes we'll go in early and see something. This weekend we did that - we went to an 11:15am showing of WALL-E.

They are opening a movie theater in Hoboken though, and I'm very excited for that. It should be cheaper, and so much closer! We'll be able to walk to it. They just started construction, and it's supposed to open next year.

Recently finished:

A Long Way Down

Nick Hornby

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right

AL FRANKEN

People of the Book: A Novel

Geraldine Brooks

Emma (Signet Classics)

Jane Austen

Mikaila

Mikaila made it safely to Florida.  She's a very mellow, go-with-the-flow kinda dog, and she didn't even seem to mind the traveling that much.  Unfortunately, the usually immaculately sunny weather gave way to thunderstorms all weekend so she spent the better part of two days terrified.  I feel bad that she has to live in an apartment now when she used to have free run of a whole house + 5 acres (and then some since she often visited the neighbors...), but she's getting used to being on a leash and going for walks.  I hope she doesn't miss the house or my mom too much.  Gatsby is adjusting well to the new addition to the household.  I think they may have bonded over their shared phobia of thunder.

The Office - Season One

I am still reading A Long Way Down.  I'm hoping to finish it soon.

The Fourth Bear

Jasper Fforde

I have been a fan of Jasper Fforde´s works since I bought The Eyre Affaire a couple of years ago because of the dodo on the cover. However I was quite sceptical when it comes to his Nursery crime series and haven´t read The Big Over Easy so far but then I found The Fourth Bear at the book bazaar for 50 cents and thought that was a good reason to start :)

I like fairy tales by the Grimms and Andersen and detective novels (mostly Agatha Christie because everything else pales in comparison) and intertextuality so I should like it- and so far I do! It´s not as fantastic as the Thursday Next series but plenty of fun in its own way.
The themes are absurd as usual, plenty of fictional characters and an interesting whodunnit. Oh, and beware of the cucumbers!

Here´s a description:

Like The Big Over Easy (2005), Fforde's first Nursery Crime novel, this sequel offers literary allusions, confusions and gentle satire, though, again like its predecessor, it lacks the snap of the author's Thursday Next series (The Eyre Affair, etc.). Jack Spratt, DCI of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department, is also a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality), as are most of the characters Jack deals with, including the Gingerbreadman, a notorious killer, and Punch and Judy, a violence prone couple who are also marriage counselors. An alien policeman named Ashley, talking bears, a devoted group of cucumber-growing enthusiasts and an immensely powerful company, Quang Tech, add spice. All are grist for Fforde, whose word play runs the gamut from puns to shaggy dog stories. The Gingerbreadman's on the loose, Goldilocks is missing and Jack's once again persona non grata at headquarters. As Jack and his associates "bring justice to the nursery world," they also cast a Swiftian eye on corporate hubris, race relations, the drug trade and myriad other targets. (Publishers weekly)

Complete reviews

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That´s the pile of books I got at the book bazaar that the library back home has about four times a year. I got 15 books for only 10 euros so even though I´m usually broke l could indulge!

Here´s the complete list:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
The complete short fiction of Oscar Wilde
Oracle night by Paul Auster
Speak, memory by Vladimir Nabokov
My uncle Oswald by Roald Dahl
Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are dead by Tom Stoppard
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
Gulliver´s Travels by Jonathan Swift
Everything in the garden/ All over by Edward Albee
Animal farm by George Orwell
The fourth hand by John Irving
The fourth bear by Jasper Fforde
Watching the English by Katie Fox
Slaughterhouse five by Kurt Vonnegut
Albertine Disparue by Marcel Proust