Top 5 Movies

This list includes December of 2009, since I didn't include those in last year's list because I hadn't had a chance to see them yet. Oscar voters have advantages I don't... :)

5. Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Oh man. I'm pretty sure people who don't really enjoy video games (I'm not talking Halo or Modern Warfare here. I mean old school platforming Mario games and Donkey Kong Country) will not really enjoy this movie. People like me, who hate the vast majority of these new video games (no, I cannot control them), will thoroughly enjoy this movie. It was fun to watch and funny to boot. Oh, and the music was really good.

4. The Princess and The Frog

Dear Disney, Renee and I have dearly missed movies like this one. Thank you for making it. Love, Us. Really though, we have missed the hand-drawn animation, the silly, over-the-top songs, and the predictable outcome (oh wait! This one actually surprised me! Sweet!). Any girl who grew up loving Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and the like should love this movie. It also owes some debt to the lesser known Rescuers (not Down Under, mind you). It was like a mix of Aladdin and The Rescuers because it did such a good job of mixing the backwoods bayou Louisiana, the voodoo crazy side streets of N'Awlins, and the "modern" setting of New Orleans. Oh! And it surprised me! I didn't get the ending right!

3. Toy Story 3

I feel like I could probably copy my rant about Up from last year's post like this and have it still be accurate. When has Disney/Pixar ever let you down? When I heard they were doing this movie, I was really, really unsure what to think. When I heard that the premise was that Andy is going off to college and the toys get donated, I changed my tune. Genius. Zak said it best: "Andy was like 7 in the first movie and now he's going off to college. I feel like I've grown up with the guy!" Anyway, the characters in the Toy Story franchise are each other's family and this movie really touched on that. It was really good.

2. Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges deserved an Oscar for this movie. The acting was great. The music was great. The story was...I don't know the right word. It was sad, but so happy all at once. I don't know how else to describe it.

1.Inception

Holy mother! I HATE Christopher Nolan. The man always makes me leave a movie theatre going "Well...was it like this or like that?" Aside from that, what a phenomenal film. I like that he took an idea that I can relate to, that sometimes we dream things and wake up a little confused (Wait. Did I just make out with Joseph Gordon Levitt?), and made it even crazier. Honestly, this happens to me all the time. Not 3 nights ago, I sat straight up in bed and had no idea where I was because I couldn't remember if I had married some random dude in the dream I was in love with or not. I also loved what he did with the concept of time. Dreams really do feel like you've been in them for days or years sometimes. Nolan did of course leave us with a question at the end, as is his wont, but the main concept of the film, the theory that if you can give someone an idea while they're sleeping, it will linger in waking life even if they don't know where it came from, is really flipping cool. Ignore the question part if that bothers you at all.

Honorable Mentions:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1

I have to give a shout out this one simply because it's the first movie version of the books that I've actually thought they did a really fantastic job with.

Hot Tub Time Machine

I have to throw a straight up comedy on here since the other ones are not. This movie looked stupid because it was. The premise was ridiculous; there's no arguing that. But it was freaking hilarious. There was one scene with John Cusack that had me laughing for days.

How to Train Your Dragon

This fell short of Toy Story 3, but it definitely still deserves a mention. This was a super cool movie.

I do feel like a bunch of good movies are coming out this December and that many of those would probably have topped some of these. I hope I can remember them next year.

Top 5 Books

As another year comes to a close, I think I'll again spend some time reviewing with some lists of things from 2010. This list is kind of crappy. I did not read that many great books this year. Sad. In fact, really only number one is a great book, a classic; the rest of them are good books.

5. Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

I will happily admit to jumping on the bandwagon with Gilbert's first book, Eat, Pray, Love, which was one of the first "adult" books I read after graduating from college, along with She's Come Undone, by Wally Lamb. In fact, I didn't really read anything for about 2 years after graduating because I was so tired of reading things. When I finally did, those two books ended up basically changing my life, so I got pretty excited when I heard about her new book. It ended up not being quite as life changing, which is to be expected, all things considered, but I really enjoyed the topic. Gilbert was basically being forced to marry the guy she met during the love part of her first book if they wanted to be able to live in the states, and she was second guessing this because of the unfortunate end of her first marriage. She travels around the world with her partner waiting for some things to happen with the government and does research into the institution of marriage while she does so, attempting to define for herself what she wants her marriage to be. As a 27 year old woman who questions that institution in our country on a somewhat regular basis, I found the topic interesting and appealing.

4. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

The second installment of Stieg Larson's trilogy is by far the best of the three. The first book was really good but doesn't really get into the story of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo despite the title. It focused more on the story of the other main character and presented us with a murder mystery for intrigue. The Girl Who Played With Fire does focus on her and I found it even more interesting than the first one. Also, the girl who played with fire is kind of a badass.

3. Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

I found this book on my bed when I came home right before we went to New Mexico, open to the first chapter. I think Zak tried to read it. Anyway, I took it with me to New Mexico and read it there. I had not seen the movie, nor did I know the movie was based on a book. Actually, Dennis Lehane writes lots of books that turn into movies that I didn't know about. Anyway, the book actually reads very much like a screenplay, and the story was super good. It was a mystery with one of those twists at the end, like I like. But I much prefer to read them than watch them.

2. Atonement by Ian McEwan

This is yet another story that I always wanted to see the movie version of but put off doing until I had read the book. I tried to pick up the book once before and didn't make it, but was bound and determined this time. I ended up really liking it; it's probably the only really "literary" book I read this year. It is often easy to misconstrue things that you're only seeing a little bit of and definitely easy to let things get out of hand when you don't fully understand them. And then it is especially hard to go back and fix those things that you messed up. It's so real, such a "close to home" problem at times, that it really appealed to me.

1. The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carlson

This was, by far, the best book that I read all year. It explores the relationships in a family of many women, something that falls rather close to my heart. It goes beyond the basic familial relationships to the very core of what it is that makes us human: our emotions and decisions. We love each other and we hurt each other and there are reasons for those things that make sense and reasons that absolutely, 100%, do not make any sense whatsoever. The book starts with a simply chapter introducing the characters, who count the number of flowers they get on the moonflower vine every year. It comes full circle, back to the moonflower vine, in such a way that it actually almost changes the entire story. I had to go back and reread the first chapter.

Honorable Mention: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max

Let me preface this one by saying that this book is not for everyone by any means. Tucker Max is a complete douche who writes about his shenanigans. I have no idea if they are real or not. I assume mostly not, all things considered. And many of them gross me out. However, this is the first book that I have ever read that literally made me laugh out loud. Hysterically. Tucker Max is a really phenomenal writer. I don't mean that he will go on to write the next Great American Novel. He absolutely will not do that, but his writing is absolutely hysterical. It's a combination of topic and his style.

This really wasn't a good year for good books, honestly. This list was hard to put together. Better luck next year.

Do I Really Want To Be A Student Again??

Sure enough!

Actually, that sure enough sounded a lot more positive than I actually feel. I definitely want to get my master's, but there a lot of pros and cons about the lot of different ways that I could go about doing this. First, I had to decide what I actually want to get a degree in, and I'm still really unsure. Literature is such a passion of mine, but getting my MA in Literature pretty much leaves me with a career in teaching. And recently, teaching has become a profession I don't think I want to be in.

It was a really good option at first, but over the course of the 5 years I have been teaching, my optimism for everything has been in a slow but steady decline. The system I work for is broken, and it is really hard to find the motivation to work for a system that is not working for itself. Also, the students are eating away at my belief in the ability of humanity to save itself. I went into this profession believing that I could change and affect things. I know that I do, but it's not enough.

So I've gone back to what I originally thought that I wanted to be when a grew up: a librarian. Or sort of a librarian, anyway. Librarians are slowly disappearing, so I'd be doing my MLIS (Masters in Library and Information Science) with a concentration in Archives and Preservation. Depending on where I end up going, I may be able to do a dual master's with other programs, like Art History, Children's Literature, Law, Library Science, or American Studies.

One way I could do this is to keep teaching and take night classes. This would be good because then I would still have a steady job, as long as they don't make cuts that apply to me, and a steady paycheck, but I would be taking classes again and on my way. However, I am fairly certain the stress of taking classes and teaching all at once would just about kill me, and I'm pretty impatient when it comes to things I want. Doing a couple classes at night would take me longer than two years and that's not really okay with me. The other problem with this is that, if I were to stay here in Asheville to do this, I would be pigeonholed into taking classes from Western Carolina University at UNCA and having it be either a MA in Literature or Education. I don't really think I want to do either of those things because they leave me in the teaching profession.

Another way would be to do summer programs. Many cool colleges offer programs, essentially for teachers, in the summer. This one actually really appeals to me because many of those programs are not around here, so it would be a lot like traveling during the summer, except I'd be somewhere else and taking classes. I would still have my job (again, given that they don't cut my position), but I wouldn't have to teach and take classes at the same time, so the stress levels would not sky rocket. This choice has the same problem as the last; it would take me something like 4 or 5 summers to do this. That would probably be even longer than the first choice. And unfortunately, it would also pigeonhole me into Literature, again.

The last way is to leave teaching and go back to school full time. Best choice, personally.

Then I had to decide on schools, because this particular degree is actually kind of hard to find. I am applying to UNC Chapel Hill, UT (in Austin), Simmons College (in Boston), San Jose State, and UH Manoa. I would also prefer them in that order. The first three are in the top 10 Library Science schools in the country; the last two are in the top 25 or so.

With the GRE scores I have right now, I will not get into Chapel Hill, UT will be questionable, but Simmons should be good. My grades from UNCA are pretty good, but I need the scores to go up. I'm a better student and a smarter person than I look on paper right now.

The other fear that I have is leaving the job that I have right now, being out of work for two years, and not being able to find a job when I get back. What I'm hoping is that I will be able to go to school for a few years, the issues in our country right now will have turned around, and it won't be that difficult for me to find a good job. Then again, I suppose I can always wait tables. Good waitresses at popular places make more money than teachers anyway.

So there's the story of grad school.

I will say this; my ambitions are high. Daddy said he likes the idea of "my daughter, the doctor" to Renee. I'm definitely thinking about a doctorate too.