A Little Bit of Reading

I was on a roll with my reading! But then finals struck and my reading time quickly dwindled. However, I have read 2 1/2 books since the last time I posted about books. I reread Speak, picked up a random book called All We Know of Heaven, started Jane Eyre, and have gotten almost half-way through Spindle's End. Here's the recap for anyone who's interested.

Speak
Amazing, just like it was the first time! I love this book because it's all about finding your voice and speaking up, standing up for yourself. I think I especially like it because it's about a girl in high school who is dealing with a lot of depression and other horrible problems, and I really want to go into social work with teens. It's just such a great message! A message about making it through hard things and realizing that bad experiences don't have to define who you are.

All We Know of Heaven
It was kind of a cute story...I don't know. I got tired of it. (The following is not a spoiler, it all happens in the first chapter or two of the book.) It's about two best friends who look a lot alike and they get in a car wreck...one of them dies and one of them lives (in a coma for a while) but the authorities mistake the girls for each other. That's basically the first little section of the book. The rest of it is boring. And it seriously didn't mention or allude to heaven at all, except for when the coma girl was thinking, "Am I in heaven? Am I in limbo?" for 4 pages. It wasn't even uplifting. So I don't get the title. The end.

Spindle's End
It took me forever to get into this book. Once I realized it's basically the story of Sleeping Beauty, I got a bit more excited about it. Now I'm on page 174 out of 422 and am thinking I'm done with it. I love Harry Potter but I've discovered I'm just not entertained by a lot of other fantasy. I love detail, but this book is over the top. No one cares if an "earth sprite" is digging through the ground and gets interrupted by a mole. Plus this book is a week overdue at the library so it's a good excuse to stop. I wish I wanted to finish it.

Jane Eyre
I started it but couldn't get past the first 10 pages. I might try again in a few years.


So, for my own personal records, here is my updated list.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
((Spindle's End))
Pride and Prejudice
Moby Dick
Lola and the Boy Next Door
1984
The Da Vinci Code
Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Cinder     <-------picking up from library today
The Book Thief    <--------have but already overdue :[
((Jane Eyre))
Atlas Shrugged
Speak
The Hiding Place
Harry Potter
**All We Know of Heaven
**The Once and Future King (Sword in the Stone! Though I'm afraid it will turn out like Spindle's End...)

((gave up for now or forever))
**added to original list


A lot has happened in the last few weeks so hopefully I'll post about that when my mom sends me pictures.

Irrational Childhood Fears

I was a really weird kid. I had the strangest fears. Here are the main fears that my parents (especially my dad) ALWAYS made fun of me for:

Empty Gas Tank
Even if the gauge showed there was 1/8 of the tank left, I would freak out and ask my parents the entire time we were driving, "Are we going to make it? Shouldn't we get gas? Will our car explode?"
One time my dad's gauge was nearing empty so he thought it would be funny to speed up and slow down and tap on the breaks so that the car would shake. I freaked out. Not funny, Dad!

Inside-Out Umbrellas
When the wind caught an umbrella and turned it inside-out, I freaked out. It was creepy to me. I think it had something to do with Mary Poppins, but I haven't seen that movie is so long that I can't remember.
Also this picture of George W. is funny.

Elevators
I was always SURE we would get stuck. Never happened.
I'd always prefer to take the escalator until, of course, I tripped getting off of one then was sure that I'd be sucked into the tiny crack between the floor and where the stairs disappear.

Pool Vacuums

I was fine with house vacuums. But pool vacuums were a different story. Especially the ones that looked like those in the picture below....they were the scariest!!! The other models of pool vacuums were of course terrifying too but nowhere near as much as these.
My aunt's pool had a vacuum like this, but it had these creepy white tubes that twisted out from the blue part and wrapped around the hose that looked like antennas. So scary.
And to be honest, as irrational as it is, I still hate pool vacuums. :)

Toilets
Anything but a regular, white porcelain, clear-watered, manually flushing toilet was horrifying to me. I was most afraid of the types of toilets pictured below: metal toilets, toilets with blue water, port-a-potties/outhouses, and automatic flushing toilets.
-Story 1: Every year, my dad's side of the family has a "Cookie Day" sometime before Christmas where we elaborately decorate sugar cookies. One year when I was about 5, my dad and grandpa thought it would be funny to take the blue food coloring and put a few drops in the toilet, then call me into the bathroom. When I walked in and saw the blue water, I got that fear-sucking-out-all-the-oxygen-in-my-lungs feeling and ran screaming from the bathroom. My mom was not pleased with them but they thought it was hilarious.
-Story 2: Once when I was younger, we were on a road trip and I told my mom I had to go to the bathroom. So we pulled over at the next rest stop and my mom took me in. When I saw that the toilets were metal, I magically didn't have to go anymore. But my mom knew better and said that I absolutely HAD to go there because we wouldn't be stopping for another few hours. After much protesting, my mom forced me down onto the toilet, where I sat clinging onto her leg for dear life, screaming of course. She said she could hear my heart pounding on her leg! Haha.
-And I still don't like metal toilets, outhouses/port-a-potties, and have discovered that toilets on airplanes and cruise ships are equally terrifying.

What are/were your weird fears?


I graduate next week. Woot!