Outing with friends and catching up on the book meme.

[sivaroobini]

Today I returned home from another awesome day out (I rarely spend my days off at home these days, it seems; friends and family are all clamouring for my time. I feel loved.) and was placing my necklace and earrings back in one of the tiny drawers I keep my [numerous] accessories in, when I noticed something that most of the contents seemed to have in common.



I was wearing that long necklace of polished garnet chips, those red-and-brass earrings, and that red-and-beige wooden bead bracelet with a red tartan hair scrunchie and glittery red hairband, a figure-hugging red blouse, a long ochre skirt with a few flowers embroidered in red and green thread and with red tartan on the hem, and very dark red shoes. And even my pottu was dark red and gold. GUESS WHAT MY FAVOURITE COLOUR IS. XD

So, in the morning I met Vatchala, an old friend of mine (she's seven years older than I am and used to be one of my mum's favourite students years ago; she became a family friend :D) for some delicious brunch and catching up. Awesome food, awesome company. <3 We need to meet up more often! :D

Later I went to Gena's house so we could work on our appeal letters for the universities together. We only got a little bit done, though. >_> Then we packed up and went to another friend's (Liying) house. Gena and Liying are singing at some charity performance to raise funds for dyslexic kids, so they were practising; they're really good singers. Alvie joined us later and we had lots of fun. :D

On to the book meme!


16. Adaptation: What book would you most like to see made into a film? Do you like to read the book first or see the film? Any books you have read after seeing the film version?

I can't really think of any book I'd like to see made into a film that hasn't already been adapted or is going to be adapted. Hmm.

Generally, I like to read the books first. :D It gives me an idea of the plot and what to expect. Plus I just like reading. XD

As for books I read after seeing the film version... The Lord of the Rings, definitely. I saw the Fellowship of the Ring movie when it first came out, in 2001 if I recall correctly, and was blown away. I continued to be a huge fan of the movies, watching them over and over again, and I'd also loved The Hobbit for ages (I'd read it a couple of years before seeing the Fellowship movie). However, it was only in mid-2005 that, upon discovering a thick one-volume set of The Lord of the Rings in my school library, I read the book. Once again, I was blown away; I absolutely fell in love with the book and reread it about two or three times in as many months. Now I am a huge, diehard Tolkien fan; he's my all-time favourite author and I own a lot of his books.

I think having seen the movie helped; I could picture the characters and the settings very clearly as I read, and had a good idea of the plot. Peter Jackson changed quite a few things, but I think he did an amazing job.


17. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

  Hmm. Possibly Charles Dickens' David Copperfield; I highly enjoyed the abridged version as a child, but when I was about twelve I got the complete and unabridged version. I barely made it through a quarter of the book before giving up, finding it too dry.

I don't know why; I'd read the complete and unabridged versions of both Oliver Twist and Great Expectations when I was eight and nine, respectively, and I'd loved them and even reread them a few times. I never had any trouble with the literature from that era; I'd loved Jane Eyre and most of Austen's works when I was eight or nine too. But for some reason I just couldn't get through David Copperfield.

I'm also still halfway through Tolkien's The History of Middle-Earth Volume One: The Book of Lost Tales. It is, I am ashamed to admit, somewhat dry. Still, I was making progress until sunflower_mynah  tempted me with The Dresden Files a week or two back. Now I'm already on the sixth book, Blood Rites. I'll try to continue with Tolkien once I'm done with The Dresden Files!


18. Your favourite book series & your favourite book out of that series

Um. Oh man.

The Lord of the Rings and the rest of the Middle-Earth legendarium? I tend to consider LotR a book by itself and not a trilogy though, probably because my own copy is the thick three-in-one edition. If I had to pick a favourite out of his works it'd probably be either that or The Hobbit.

The Sandman? I'm awful at picking favourites in a series. Probably either A Game Of You or Brief Lives.

Harry Potter? Hmm. I think Prisoner of Azkaban might be my favourite.


19. Your favourite picture, junior fiction and Young Adult books

I suck at these too, mostly because I don't know how to classify most of my books. Harry Potter's Young Adult, right?

My favourite picture book? Probably the Lion King book I mentioned in one of the previous book meme posts, the one with me in it as a character. :D I also love Jill Thompson's Delirium's Party: A Little Endless Storybook, though that's a very recent acquisition. XD

What's considered "junior fiction"? I never let that stop me when I was a kid. XD Artemis Fowl? Narnia? I always loved The Famous Five though.

Young Adult? Definitely Harry Potter.


20. Least favourite plot device employed by way too many books you actually enjoyed otherwise

Besides annoyingly ambiguous solutions or endings? Hmm. Well, it can be annoying when the main character is the most powerful witch or wizard or sorceror or warrior EVER and just has to learn to draw on and control his or her enormous reserves of power, but some authors can handle that quite well. And then of course there's the mystical device or heirloom which suddenly appears to solve the problems. Or the character who single-handedly serves as the source of all knowledge about plot and/or backstory, but again, that can be handled well by some authors.

Really, I think this can be said for most examples. There are a lot of overused boring plot devices, but there are always some talented authors who can make it work.

Now to read some fanfiction minselding  has sent me. :D