In the Beginning...

I'm not always great at keeping up with my personal blog, and lately I find that all that I think about blogging about are the books that I am reading. So, I decided to create a separate blog for my book reviews and here it is.

Quick note: my reactions to books, the perspective that I bring to them, is my own. If I hate a book, it does not mean that you will hate it. If I love a book, you will not necessarily love it. Reading books is such an intensely personal experience and our reactions to books are created out of our own personality, history, fears, hopes, understanding of the world, etc... Here's a bit about me to help you understand where I am coming from when I post my responses to a book:

I consider myself to be a "compassionate misanthrope" (thanks to the amazing Hillary Clinton for that phrase) whose life philosophy can be summed up in the words of Elizabeth Bennet of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice: "There are few people in the world whom I love and even fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense." However, I believe that people are full of potential and tales of people overcoming their own personal circumstances or the circumstances that the world has created for them are amongst my favorites. I am somewhat of a dark person. Dark, understated humor is my favorite: I always appreciate sarcasm and irony. I love to travel and see how others experience and respond to the world around them. I want to teach English and History and have the necessary degree to do so; in being a teacher I hope to open the world up to my students, to encourage them to take note of the small things and also to appreciate the interconnectedness of everything: "No man is an island, entire of itself" (John Donne). I fear failure more than anything else; I also fear losing the ones that I love, a fear that I believe no one is exempted from.

Favorite movies: The Hours, Little Miss Sunshine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Finding Neverland, Sweeney Todd.

Favorite TV Shows: Will and Grace, 30 Rock, The Office.

Favorite Books: Pride and Prejudice- Jane Austen, Letters to a Young Poet- Rainer Rilke, The Great Gatsby- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Jonathan Safran Foer, The Book Thief- Markus Zusak, Running With Scissors- Augusten Burroughs, The Harry Potter Series-J.K. Rowling, and anything by Toni Morrison or David Sedaris.

Least Favorite Books: Catcher in the Rye-JD Salinger, The House of Sand and Fog- Andre Dubus.

So, that's me. I hope that the two or three people who actually care to follow this blog will be pleased and hopefully, moved to read some great books.