Book: Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality by Jared Diamond

I didn't like this book. Some of the information was interesting, but I thought it would be like 'Sex at Dawn'. This book seemed to be written for a popular audience, thus not being too scientific and using weird and sometimes complicated analogies for any ideas that may have been too science-y.

Goodreads

Book count: 34
Movie count: 21
Other media: 17 

Movie: Take This Waltz

I liked this movie because the ending made me depressed. Yay reality. Also, I recognized many famous people in this movie but it didn't take away from my enjoyment. A good balance to 'Playing By Heart'.

imdb

Book count: 33
Movie count: 21
Other media: 17

Other: TV: Party Down

I'd heard a lot about this show and it did not disappoint. I watched all two seasons in about a week. Yay tv.

imdb

Book count: 33
Movie count: 20
Other media: 17

Book: The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg

I think I am not the target demographic for this book. I should have seen it coming from the title, but I think this book is more suited to overweight middle aged women. The stories were not bad, but not relatable for me. The writing about food and eating made me feel uncomfortable because I don't have that sort of relationship with food where everything is indulgent and guilt inducing and I don't really think that's healthy for anyone either.
This seems to be a trend for me, books of short stories whose topics relate to the book's title, but I'm surprised by (see autobiography of a fat bride).

Goodreads

Book count: 33
Movie count: 20
Other media: 16

Movie: Playing By Heart

This movie was ridiculous. I'm all for romantic comedies, but this was not my thing; too many famous people for one, and also the implausibility of some of the stories was too high for me. Not a bad movie, but not realistic enough for me. I had heard such good things too.

imdb

Book count: 32
Movie count: 20
Other media: 16

Movie: Shame

I didn't really understand this movie until the end. It didn't really match up to the summaries I read beforehand, so I was slightly confused. I did eventually figure it out, which made for a good movie watching experience, maybe I should not read summaries beforehand more often.

imdb

Book count: 32
Movie count: 19
Other media: 16

Book: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

My favorite Murakami yet.

Goodreads

Book count: 32
Movie count: 18
Other media: 16

Movie: Safety Not Guaranteed

I almost didn't finish watching this movie. I think the only redeeming factor of the first half was that the scenes that were supposed to be in Seattle seemed to actually be in Seattle (unlike some movies (50/50)). I thought the second half was much better, although I was a bit confused by the ending.  What is real?!

Book count: 31
Movie count: 18
Other media: 16

Book: Just Kids by Patti Smith

 This book was precious. I didn't know much about Patti Smith except that she part of the New York City 1970s music/art scene and was somehow associated with the Ramones. I liked that this book was about her relationship with her friend, and I thought it was interesting to see the evolution of that relationship, side by side with the evolution of the individuals, over a very long period of time. I think any book about the evolution of a relationship would be interesting, but this obviously was made more interesting because of the fascinating lives that they led.
This book made me feel old, very boring and like I should have done so much more with my life by now.

Goodreads

Book count: 31
Movie count: 17
Other media: 16

Other: Webcomic: Poorly Drawn Lines

 I could relate to the college related comics. And then I felt old because they are no longer relevant to me.

http://poorlydrawnlines.com/
 
Book count: 30
Movie count: 17
Other media: 16

Book: Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami

Yep, another Murakami.
I kept waiting for the story to take a turn and get really weird, as usually happens in Murakami novels, but this one was relatively normal and I was almost surprised to get to the end so with relatively little happening plot-wise. Still enjoyable though.

Goodreads


Book count: 30
Movie count: 17
Other media: 15

Other: Webcomic: Extra Fabulous Comics

Yep, another webcomic.

http://www.extrafabulouscomics.com/

Book count: 29
Movie count: 17
Other media: 15

Movie: One Day

I started watching this movie a couple times before I actually watched the whole thing through. I thought it would be bad, and it broke one of my movie dislikes - famous actors who I recognize from other movies, but I think the accents helped me to disassociate a bit.
This movie win the prize for making me cry from a non-death related scene. yay

Book count: 29
Movie count: 17
Other media: 14

Book: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami

I thought that short stories by Murakami might be a bit of an overload because Murakami does tend to have very similar plot lines in much of his work, but I was pleasantly surprised by the variety in these stories.

Goodreads

Book count: 29
Movie count: 16
Other media: 14

Movie: The Five-Year Engagement

I didn't hate this movie, but I didn't love it either. My main issues were with the scenes depicting academia (a grad level class of 80 people with a wacky professor? deciding details of psych experiments on the fly? really?) and that it of course had to have a happy ending. Of course, I can't really expect a famous rom-com to have anything other than a happy ending.

imdb

Book count: 28
Movie count: 16
Other media: 14

Other: Webcomic: Lunarbaboon

This is definitely the most heartwarming webcomic I've read. A welcome change. I have no idea if it's based on reality, but also I don't want to know because I don't want to give up on my dream that it is real.

http://lunarbaboon.squarespace.com

Book count: 28
Movie count: 15
Other media: 14

Other: TV: Lucky Louie

This show was great, but I can see why it only made through one season, it's quite profane. I thought very similar to the current show 'Louie', but maybe a bit more awkward and less polished.
The best thing about watching this show was learning that the actress who plays the wife does cartoon voices, including Moose from Pepper Ann. That was very exciting to learn, really.

imdb

Book count: 28
Movie count: 15
Other media: 13

Other: TV: Bob's Burgers

I was skeptical of this show because it's on fox and looks like other fox cartoons that I'm not particularly fond of. However, I gave it a shot because Loren Bouchard created it, and he also created Home Movies, which I love.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that this show was unlike the other cartoons I associate with fox. The best thing about this show is probably how frighteningly relatable Tina is.

imdb

Book count: 28
Movie count: 15
Other media: 12

Book: Cool, Calm & Contentious by Merrill Markoe

I didn't particularly love this book, but I think that the essays about her dogs were a big redeeming factor. An enjoyable, easy to read palate cleanser between fiction works, which was what I wanted.

goodreads

Book count: 28
Movie count: 15
Other media: 11

Book: Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno

I think this is my one of my favorite collections of short stories by a single author. The stories have enough differing perspectives and wildly varying plots to keep things interesting for the entire length of the book. Also, the illustrations were great, and a nice break from words every so often.

Goodreads

Book count: 27
Movie count: 15
Other media: 11

Book: Lost and Found in Russia: Lives in the Post-Soviet Landscape by Susan Richards

I thought this book was really interesting in showing the changes that recently happend in Russia, and how it has affected the people there.
I did get a bit confused with all of the names of people, which were hard for me to keep straight, but by the end I pretty much understood what was going on. Definitely the portrait of Russia and the lives of Russians that this book gave was somewhat different from what I would have thought. Also, I didn't know anything about the traditional religious communities who live out in the outerlying areas of Russia, but I found them particularly interesting, and something I'd like to read more about.

Goodreads

Book count: 26
Movie count: 15
Other media: 11

Movie: The Farmer's Wife

I didn't really think anything too interesting happened in this documentary, but I still watched all 5 or so hours, so there was something that drew me in and made me want to continue watching. I was a bit disappointed about half way through, I accidentally spoiled the ending for myself, but, again, despite that I still kept watching. I think that what made this interesting to watch was to see the minutia of the family's life and the how they responded to everything in lots of detail which would probably be skipped over in favor of time usually.

imdb

Book count: 25
Movie count: 15
Other media: 11

Movie: Happy-Go-Lucky

I will admit that I didn't pay too close attention to this movie when I watched, so maybe I missed some bits of important context or nonverbal information. However, I couldn't really get into this movie, I didn't understand what the plot was; it was more of a month in the life of the character than a story with a plot that I would expect from a movie. I feel like maybe my lack of understanding had something to do with this being a British film. Maybe I just can't relate to British culture. Too foreign for me.

imdb

Book count: 25
Movie count: 14
Other media: 11

Other: Webcomic: I am Arg!

Reading this webcomic, I noticed that my preferences in webcomics is strongly weighted by how easily I can read the text. For example, Hark a Vagrant! is on my to-read list, but I can't bring myself to read through the archive because it's too much effort for me to read the text.
So I guess that this comic was easy to read and the content was enjoyable enough for me to read through the entire archive, which was sizable. 

http://iamarg.com/

Book count: 25
Movie count: 13
Other media: 11

Book: The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials #3) by Philip Pullman

This was my favorite book of the series. I still can't believe that these are marketed to children and that they aren't more popular among adults. So many great things about this series. Lots of variety in the subplots, lots of interesting characters, many of whom were female, pretty much all of the heavy life stuff (growing up, love, dying) came up somehow and was resolved in realistic, but pleasing ways.
For reals, the covers with the drawings of children on them need to go.

Goodreads

Book count: 25
Movie count: 13
Other media: 10

Movie: Daria: Is It Fall Yet? and Is It College Yet?

I love Daria. The movies were good, although maybe the college movie wasn't necessary for closure of the series. Still not unwelcome, though.

imdb
imdb

Book count: 24
Movie count: 13
Other media: 10

Book: I Suck at Girls by Justin Halpern

This was my second attempt at humorous nonfiction, ideally short stories. Again, I was somewhat disappointed. When I checked out this book, I didn't realize that the author was of the "Shit My Dad Says" twitter, etc fame. I think this book was almost as much about the dad as the author. Any time someone is recalling full conversations full of witticisms from their childhood, I get skeptical, because who can really remember that?

Book count: 24
Movie count: 11
Other media: 10

Book: Autobiography of a Fat Bride: True Tales of a Pretend Adulthood by Laurie Notaro

I wanted to read something that was humorous, but nonfiction, preferably short stories. Apparently this is hard to find. This author had a good reputation and the book had good reviews so I read it. I guess I should have taken more warning from the title, because I didn't really want to read a book about having a wedding, or getting used to married life. But that's pretty much what I got. I really liked the first few stories though. At some point the author insulted people who live in Casa Grande, which I found almost funny, but more so offensive (what sort of insult is 'diabetic'? I assume that would be just another way of calling someone fat, but since the author confesses to being fat, why would this be a good insult?)

Goodreads

Book count: 23
Movie count: 11
Other media: 10

Other media: webomic: Itchy Feet

I liked this comic. The style is pretty simple, with it only posts once a week.  I'd like to pretend that I could have all sorts of travel and foreign language related adventures.

http://itchyfeetcomic.blogspot.de/

Book count: 22
Movie count: 11
Other media: 10

Book: You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up: A Love Story by Annabelle Gurwitch, Jeff Kahn

While the other book I read about relationships, Love is a Four Letter Word, made me feel optimistic, this book made me feel depressed. I'm not really sure what spurred the authors to write a book about their lives, but I didn't really learn much other than some people are hard to live with and won't change and you'll never ceased to be annoyed by it. Maybe that was the lesson.

Goodreads

Book count: 22
Movie count: 11
Other media: 9

Book: Love Is a Four-Letter Word: True Stories of Breakups, Bad Relationships, and Broken Hearts by Michael Taeckens

I really liked this collection of stories. I like collections of stories. Not usually themed collections, but this was good. I think themed collections work better for nonfiction than fiction. Which apparently is called a collection of essays, not stories, despite the title of this book.

Goodreads

Book count: 22
Movie count: 11
Other media: 9

Other media: Webcomic: Oglaf

I've been seeing Oglaf strips all over for a while now and so I finally decided to sit down and read through all of the archives. Time well spent.

 http://oglaf.com/


Book count: 21
Movie count: 11
Other media: 9

Book: A Dog's Purpose

I mostly read this book out of obligation because it was bought for me. The Help excluded, I usually try to avoid books that are on the best seller shelf at grocery stores. I thought that the writing of this book was rather cheesy, but this book can claim to be the only thing I've read that's made me bawl, so I guess the cheese works.

I found a few things problematic with this book, but I think the main one is the author's interpretation of reincarnation. After being reincarnated the dog has all of its memories from its past lives, however when it's born the first time it has no memories. I don't understand where it came from the first time, since if reincarnation exists, surely there is no shortage of dogs to reincarnate. Also, apparently the dog continues to be reincarnated until it achieves its purpose, which is not to save people as a police dog, but to bring happiness to one specific person. That's pretty specific. What are the odds that the dog is reborn in the same area? Dogs are all over the world, how does this dog keep being born in America? That seems like a weird way for reincarnation to work. I think it would have been a really interesting story for the dog to be reborn all over the world and to explore how dogs are treated in different cultures. Or different time periods; maybe the dog could have started in the Wild West and ended in the current time. I'd read that.

Goodreads

Book count: 21
Movie count: 11
Other media: 8

Book: 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

This book was really long. I would have never been able to read it if not for ebook format!
I liked this book, as I enjoy all of Murakami's. I think that the plot complexity was a perfect balance between being too complex and hard to keep up with and being complex enough to keep the story going and my attention for the whole book.

Goodreads

Book count: 20
Movie count: 11
Other media: 8

Book: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

I thought this book was great, although at times, or maybe throughout the entire book, it was very one-sided. Obviously a book about introverts is going to mention scientific finding that say that introversion is perfectly acceptable and even superior. However, I feel like a lot of the book could have been written for extroverts too, complete with scientific studies proclaiming extroversion to be superior. Also, I would have much preferred footnotes or superscripts to indicate references or something like that instead of putting all the references for one chapter together. There were definitely studies mentioned that I would have liked to know more about that I couldn't find in the endnotes, which bothered me a bit.

Goodreads


Book count: 19
Movie count: 11
Other media: 8

Other: Daria seasons 1-5

I love Daria. I had seen a lot of Daria episodes on cable tv in high school, but I hadn't realized that I had watched almost every episode of every season. Even though it was my second time seeing most episodes, I still found them all very enjoyable. If only my high school experience was a great as Daria's.
I'm counting each season as one entity for my 'other media' tally.

imdb

Book count: 18
Movie count: 11
Other media: 8

Movie: Young Adult

I heard a lot about this movie from a lot of sources saying how great it was, so I think maybe I had my expectations too high. Or also I think that maybe I'm a few years too young to appreciate the story. Also, I read an article about how this movie was very successful at including a lot of product placements, which I'm not really a fan of, so that maybe contributed to my not really liking this movie.

imdb

Book count: 18
Movie count: 11
Other media: 3

Movie: The Big Lebowski

I finally watched this movie. I understand so many new jokes now!

imdb

Book count: 18
Movie count: 10
Other media: 3

Movie: Love Etc.

This movie was really sweet, but not in a gross way. I thought there was a good balance of reality and hope that didn't leave me depressed when I finished the documentary, which is great!

imdb

Book count: 18
Movie count: 9
Other media: 3 

Book: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

I haven't read anything my Murakami in a while, so this was a nice change. There's probably nothing that Murakami can write that I won't enjoy. One big thing I liked about this book was that it's set about 40 years ago but I hardly noticed, save for a few cultural mentions.

Goodreads

Book count: 18
Movie count:8
Other media: 3

Movie: Children of a Lesser God

I'd heard so much about this movie, so I thought it was finally time to watch it. I liked it okay, but like other movies with signing in them the signer's messages were always repeated aloud by the hearing person who they were conversing with. It wasn't super distracting in this film, but subtitles would have been even less distracting. Also, the guy in the film wasn't very good at signing. Poor Marlee Matlin always having to play next to male actors who aren't too skilled at signing. Although Matlin was really great in this film, I can see why she won an oscar for the role.

imdb

Book count: 17
Movie count:8
Other media: 3

Movie: Tiny Furniture

I liked this movie. It was like what my life would be right now if I lived in New York City and mooched off of my parents and went out more.

imdb

Book count: 17
Movie count: 7
Other media: 3

Movie: Sweet Nothing in My Ear

As far as Hallmark movies go, I think this wasn't too awful. The best part about it for me was that the only download I could find was dubbed in some eastern European language that I could not figure out. It sounded a lot like Russian and some words and grammar were the same, but definitely wasn't. I'm pretty sure it was Czech, though apparently Czech is mutually intelligible with Slovak and similar to Polish (and Sorbian which I've never heard of), so I could be wrong.

imdb

Book count: 17
Movie count: 6
Other media: 3

Book: Of Sound Mind by Jean Ferris

I was definitely out of the intended age range for this book, but I think I would have really like to read this maybe 10 years ago. I thought that the author treated deafness very fairly, despite not having any experience with Deaf culture, as far as I could tell.

Goodreads

Book count: 17
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Book: Every Girl is the End of the World for Me by Jeffrey Brown

I'm counting this as a book, because that's what it is, but it's pretty short, and probably took me less than an hour to read, which is much less time that I put in to some webcomics, but oh well.
I really enjoy Jeffery Brown, but I think I hyped this book up in my head too much. My library doesn't have it so I actually bought the book, which is rare for me. I felt like the story was too short, or not really a story just a glimpse into a few weeks of his life, where I was expecting more of a story like other things I've read by Brown. Still, I really like the art style and the story was interesting, although not engrossing.

Goodreads

Book count: 16
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Book: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games #3) by Suzanne Collins

I liked this better than book  #2, but definitely not as much as book #1. I appreciated the slight twist in the ending, but didn't like how easily some plot lines were closed (wtf, Gale).  Overall, I think the series was too simple; the two other books series that I would compare it to would be Harry Potter and His Dark Materials. In both of those other series, the plot lines are much more complex with different stories interweaving and things that seem to have lost importance regain relevance is clever and surprising ways. However, I thought that the Hunger Games series had none of this, which was probably why it was so popular, because it's simple, straightforward and easy to read.

Goodreads

Book count: 15
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Book: The Signing Family: What Every Parent Should Know about Sign Communication by David Stewart, Barbara Luetke-Stahlman

Yay, another school assignment. I thought this was a really informative book that presented information in the most fair way. However, it's about 20 years outdated, so maybe not the best resource by itself, but certainly helpful if combined with other more recent sources of information about signing systems for deaf children.

Goodreads

Book count: 14
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Book: The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I read this because it was the most popular book for kindle at the library, so I figured it couldn't be too bad. If not for the anonymity of reading a book on an e-reader, I probably wouldn't have read this.
I think I am not in the target audience for this book, and if I was I would have enjoyed it much more. I think probably middle aged women would greatly enjoy this book, with its multitudes of characters to relate to and many cultural references of the 60s. For me, however, I felt like it took weeks to finish the book and at a certain point I only kept reading for the sake of finishing, which I'm not sure was really worth it.

Goodreads

Book count: 13
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Movie: Beyond Silence

I found this film off a list of movies I could watch to fulfill a class assignment, so this is another film that I watched for class, which I'm not sure if it should really count in my movie count, but apparently I hardly ever watch movies purely out of my own desires, so whatever.
I did enjoy this movie. It's in german, but centered around Deaf characters, so a lot of dialogue is is sign. I don't know how german sign language works, but in the film whenever a hearing person was communicating with a deaf person, the hearing person would both sign and speak at the same time, and also speak aloud what the signer was saying. If two Deaf people were talking, the conversation was subtitled. I don't understand why all of the signing couldn't have been subtitled. I thought it was really clunky and unrealistic to work in someone repeating half the conversation aloud, when subtitles would have sufficed. Are Germans as afraid of subtitles as Americans? I didn't think they were, but maybe I'm wrong.
Also, the woman on the DVD cover was definitely not, in my opinion, the main character who I would have put as a representative of the film. However, the main character was not "conventionally" attractive, so I wonder if that had anything to do with that. Or maybe these are all techniques of German cinema that are going over my naive American head.

imdb

Book count: 12
Movie count: 5
Other media: 3

Book: The Subtle Knife (His Dark Materials #2) by Philip Pullman

Seriously, the covers for this book and the first book in the series are really bad. Looks like a couple kids going on adventures with cats. But it's so much more than that! I think I liked this book as much or more than the first one, because there were many different story line happening at the same time that all somehow met each other in the end. I think that almost made it feel like reading short stories, which I love.
However, I'm not super eager to read the final book in the series, which could either mean that the story isn't keeping my interest so well, or maybe I'm just used to other series (The Hunger Games) that end books in the series with severe cliffhangers.

Goodreads

Book count: 12
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3

Book: Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein

I really enjoyed this book. It was filled with lots of fun and interesting information about toys and girl culture, which were interesting to me because I could compare what I see at my work with what's in the book, and also my own childhood experiences. The book also was interspersed with bits about how all of the culture of young girls today relates to feminism and how things may have gotten a little confused somewhere since the 70s. Fascinating!

Goodreads

Book count: 11
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3  

Book: The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials #1) by Philip Pullman

I went into reading this knowing only that it was part of the His Dark Materials series. I've heard of the Golden Compass, but the cover put me off when I was the target audience, and assumed that the book would not resonate as much with adults. However, I'm surprised that this is marketed for kids, because the story is definitely complex and deals with themes and ideas that are pretty big to grasp. Also, I came across words that I didn't know which would have been very confusing for me if I was younger (and also didn't have a kindle with a built in dictionary allowing me to look up the definition of any word instantly!).

Goodreads

Book count: 10
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3  

Book: Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) by Suzanne Collins

I read this book in about two days, but that doesn't necessarily reflect how much I enjoyed it. I think that this was definitely not as good as the first Hunger Games book. After the first book I was wondering what sort of twist they would take in the second book in order to get the characters involved in the games again. I think I sort of groaned when I read what ended up taking place. The description of the actual games was less interesting than the that of the first book, but the games were not the main point of this book, so maybe that's forgivable. I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to read the next book, but only for closure, not necessarily because it's a great, well-written book series.

Goodreads

Book count: 9
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3 

Book: The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins

This book is so popular right now, I couldn't ignore it any longer. Plus, another benefit of reading on a kindle is that no one can see the book cover and know what you're reading, which would have made me hesitant if I had had to read this on a hard copy of the book.

I liked the first half of the book more than the second half, because I thought that it went from adventure plot to romance plot towards the end, and hinted at more romantic elements in future books. Which is fine, but not really what I thought I was getting into, although I should have figured, with the story being so popular. But, I enjoyed it overall, and eagerly awaited the first of the month so I could get the next installment of the series for free on kindle. (Why didn't they publish it in one book? Why 3? I think one book would have been more appropriate here, but I guess it would not have been a profitable and easy for the masses to digest.)

Goodreads

Book count:8
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3

Book: He's a Stud, She's a Slut, and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know by Jessica Valenti

I didn't really like this book. Maybe I've been reading too many academic texts, but I found the informal tone to be a bit off-putting. I also thought that some of the material was rather repetitive and that the arguments were often flimsy. I think that maybe this would be a good book for someone younger that me, who's just starting to think about gender differences in society, who maybe needs a bit of a helping hand and friendly tone to help them understand.

Goodreads

Book count: 7
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3

Book: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

First book read on my new kindle! First of all, I was hesitant to get a kindle, because what about flipping pages and other integral parts of the book reading experience?! But, I was won over by the ease of holding the kindle vs holding open a book and how light it is compared to the weight of an equivalent number of books.

I was also hesitant to read this book, mostly because it's so popular, but I did really enjoy it. I wasn't sure that a plot involving 9/11 could be not cheesy or cringeworthy, but I thought that it was entirely appropriate.

Goodreads

Book count: 6
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3

Other media: Webcomic: That Deaf Guy

Thanks to the shoutout from Girls With Slingshots and recognizing the author's work from Sign News, I found this wonderful comic. There's not a ton of backlog, so it was pretty quick to read through. I like that the storyline is about a family with both Deaf and Hearing people, so not everything in the storyline is directly related to being Deaf, but about being human, which is just as interesting!

http://www.thatdeafguy.com/

Book count: 5
Movie count: 4
Other media: 3

Other media: Webcomic: Sorry Comics

There isn't a ton of content here, maybe a day or two's worth of reading, which isn't much only in comparison to other long running webcomics. However, the stories are amazing. It's just autobiographical stories from the author's life, that aren't told in a linear fashion, so everything pieces together as you read more and note the tags for context. Seriously great storytelling and illustrations, this is the epitome of how I like comics to be.

http://sorrycomics.blogspot.com/

Book count: 5
Movie count: 4
Other media: 2

Movie: 30 Minutes or Less

This movie was so stupid. Why did I watch this? I can suspend my belief in reality for something obviously unreal, like magic in Harry Potter, but for movies like this it always bothers me when things take place that could never happen in real life. This movie was full of things that could never happen in real life, thus my disdain.

imdb

Book count: 5
Movie count: 4
Other media: 1

Movie: Vai viegly būt jaunam? (Is It Easy To Be Young?)

The final movie of the required movies for class. I think this was definitely my favorite, probably because it took place in Latvia and was a documentary, not a cinematic reenactment of historic events. What I really liked about this film was that it showed the struggles that the Latvian youths were going through in relation to their situation as members of a state in the USSR and how that effected their lives, but also a lot of the struggles that they went through were universal to being a young person, which made the subjects of the documentary easy to relate to.

wikipedia

Book count: 6
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2011

I've read all of the Best American Nonrequired Reading books, and I think of the last couple years, this has been the best.  Sometimes the collection is filled with a variety of qualities of stories, but in this one, I actually read through all of the stories, which hasn't been the case for the last few years.

Goodreads

Book count: 6
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: A Concise History of the Baltic States by Adrejs Plakans

This was of course for the same class as those other movies that I watched earlier. I haven't read very many history books, but I thought this one was pretty good. It kept my attention throughout the entire span of history, which was quite a feat, because I'm don't consider myself too interested in history.


Goodreads

Book count: 5
Movie count: 3
Other media: 1

Book: I Saw You...: Comics Inspired by Real Life Missed Connections

I thought this book was going to be comics all drawn by the listed author, whose comics I've read before and enjoyed. However, it was drawn by lots of different artists, which I did end up enjoying. As a result of this, I realized that I have very specific tastes in art styles for comics. But I the stories and interpretations of them made up for the many art styles that I apparently don't enjoy.

Goodreads

Book count: 4

Movie: Utterly Alone

I also had to watch this for class, and I definitely would not have watched it otherwise. I found the film really hard to follow, which made it hard to pay attention which made my confusion worse. The short documentary at the beginning was definitely the best part; if the whole movie had been like that, I would have liked it better.

imdb

Movie count: 3

Movie: Names Engraved In Marble

I had to watch this film for a class, otherwise I probably wouldn't have watched it. It was interesting to see how Estonians view or want to view their war for independence, but I think that there were some parts of the movie that were added clearly only to make a better storyline, so it was hard to tell what was a reflection of truth and what was purely cinematic.

imdb

Movie count: 2

Movie: 50/50

I really liked this movie. I didn't have too high of hopes because I haven't really head much about it, but I was pleasantly surprised. Two things, though, that almost completely ruined this movie though.
First, the film is supposed to be set in Seattle. Would it have killed them to actually get some footage from Seattle? Apparently it was really shot in Vancouver, which is sort of similar I guess, but really.
Secondly, I didn't like the ending. Was it not enough of a happy ending that he didn't die? Was it really necessary to show him dating his former therapist? That weirded me out. A lot.

imdb

Movie count: 1

Book: When the Messenger is Hot: Stories by Elizabeth Crane

I don't generally like short stories collections by only one author. I really liked some of the stories though. I particularly liked or noticed that most of the stories were written from female perspectives, which I don't come across too often. I think I liked the title story best.

Goodreads

Book count: 3

Other media: Webcomic: Girls With Slingshots

Note: new category for other noteworthy media consumption

I read the entire archive of comics (1300+) in about 24 hours. Granted, it was a snow day and I had nothing better to procrastinate with, but that shouldn't diminish how much I enjoyed this comic. The only way I can think to describe it would be like Questionable Content, but more ladies and lady stuff, whatever that entails. Plus there's a vegetarian character who is mostly respected and a Deaf character who signs!

www.girlswithslingshots.com

Other media count: 1

Book: Mid-Life by Joe Ollman

I liked the drawing and writing style of this book, but I wasn't super impressed. Still enjoyable on the whole though.

Goodreads

Book count: 2

Book: The Physics of Imaginary Objects by Tina May Hall

This felt like the most literary book I've read in a while. I liked the more straightforward stories and the novella at the end, but I'm sure I missed a lot by not thinking hard enough about the symbolism and all those other fancy writing techniques.

Goodreads

Book count: 1

Books and Movies

Okay, I'm going to try to record every book and movie that I see this year, and also put some notes or a review of some sort too.
I will predict that the latter of the year will be filled with more books and movies than the first few months.

Book count: 0
Film count: 0