I picked up this book (finally!) just after the holidays and ate it up completely. I breezed through it easily in a couple of days, being completely absorbed in J.K. Rowling’s characters, her world, and her plot, just as I have with the previous four installments. I was very happy that though Harry is obviously filling up with some much deserved angst (it’s hard enough being a teenager), that she didn’t “grow up” the prose too much, thus taking too much away from the younger audiences which should be her priority. I guess I’m a very character oriented person in books, as you can tell from my last literature rant. If I don’t feel for a character, or am intrigued by one within the first few chapters, that character is flat and useless to me and the story will most likely fail. Rowling’s characters are definitely not flat for me. It was easy to read the books because I found myself being sympathetic to almost everyone. Professor Umbridge must be the most annoying character ever. Kudos to Rowling for making me almost want to throw the book across the room with how horrible this person was.

In my opinion, it’s very much in the same caliber as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, as far as Harry Potter books go. I wasn’t as fond with the ending here, but overall, I am satisfied. Still, I’m disappointed I have to wait a few more years for the next installment maybe. I hope as far as maturing Harry Potter and his friends go, that she will still keep the magic of her style of writing for these series.

I’ve just written a pretty bad review about Wizard’s First Rule, by Terry Goodkind, on Amazon.com . I’m into a reading frenzy lately, which is a lot better than sitting around drooling in front of the telly or my PC monitor, refreshing my Livejournal friends' list page hoping something exciting has happened to someone else.

I’d have copy and pasted the review here but it hasn’t been updated on Amazon yet, and I didn’t keep a copy of it. Basically, I’m not very fond of this book. I picked it up on a friend’s recommendation and it’s taken me over a year to read up to half the book so far, though I have taken very long breaks in between. This book should be a fantasy epic ... I believe it’s up to Book 8 already, but I’m already dreading reading the next chapter. I haven’t been this bored with literature since highschool, and even then, I’ve been more entertained. The characters are lame; the good guys are really good and the bad guys are just really bad. You know they’re evil when the main baddie is named “Darken” (oooooh, scary!), likes to mistreat and rape women, and his main henchmen is a homosexual pederast. Whatever.

The characters are not only lame, they’re pretty boring and typical. I hope to GAWSH if I ever become a published fantasy epic writer, that my characters don’t fall under this category. I wish they had some kind of personality. Any kind of personality that makes me want to care about them enough to finish reading this book. On top of this, the environment is sort of “whatever” and the historical background doesn’t sound intriguing to me at all. But most of all, it’s just the characters. I don’t want them to be boring and lame, but well, there they are.

I’ve only read half of it so far. Sorry to say, I’m probably going to stop reading it tonight. I have other books to read.

In search for Queen sized burgundy Duvet covers and matching bedskirt, I was forced to buy Martha Stewart brands or else risk a bed with various shades of burgundy all over it. Not that it isn’t like that now.

I want to have a bedroom that would make the Designer Guys proud. They are my home deco idols. But I neither sew, use a hot glue gun, have any space to make my own night table and neither do I have a disposeable income or much access to inexpensive home deco shops.

So I’ll just live and wish. I spent a lot of time in my bedroom these past holidays, either finishing up Final Fantasy X, or reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I can’t stand how messy it is. It’s a pretty large bedroom, our queen sized bed might only take up a bit more than one third of the space. The whole thing right now is basically a closet and a laundry bin. It’s extremely sad. We can pretty much live in there sort of comfortably Unfortunately, I’m a slob, so that isn’t going to change. But little things can. For example, we could stop using our college era blankets on our pretty sleigh-style bed. Today, I bought myself a soft new Queen Sized Duvet (polyester fill!), and that’s where the Martha Stewart sheets came in.

Not like I really care either way what happens to Martha Stewart. As a television personality, she bores me and I wish there were less Martha Stewart, more Designer Guys.

I’ve just finished setting up the bedskirt and the new bedsheets. Things suddenly got five percent more comfortable in there.

Picture of yours truly by David, who is a truly dedicated and wonderful artist.

(Would have posted earlier but couldn’t pilfer the drawing until now. Hope you don’t mind, 8mm!)

Am I making resolutions? I don’t really do resolutions. If there’s something I think I should do about myself, I try to do ASAP, like this going to the gym crap. However, there are a few things I’ve been thinking about more ...

... be more social, and yes even on the internet .
... play more video games, listen to more music, read more books (when I get lazy, I . Do. Nothing. It’s very very pathetic. I need cerebral stimulation that doesn’t come from watching syndicated reruns of Frasier. If you don’t think playing video games is cerebral, try a run through of Resident Evil while drunk. )
... as above, keep up to date with my site(s), though it’s not a major priority

That’s really it, I think. Nothing major, or life changing, though I really, really do have to read more at the least. I have a ton of books that has to be read.

The following is a NY’s survey.

+ entry continued ...

One would have thought this would be a good year for me, but in fact, there were many aspects of it that were ASS. However, it’s gone now, and though it’d be nice to think all of this years ASSness would have ended past the countdown, no amounts of Resolutions would solve all of our problems.

2003 will have a lot of bad memories for me, mixed in with the good. I’ve left them behind already, I don’t need a day to wait for to make adjustments to myself and my life to fix all those things. But still, I’ll be able to say, on this day in 2003 this thing happened and so on and so forth. I don’t think 2002 had so much to tell me.

I think I’ll be looking forward to '04. It might just be a good year, who knows.

Happy 2004 everyone.