Summer List Review {Looking for Alaska + Contracted}

This is the fifth installment of me reviewing a list of books and movies I set out to read, watch, and enjoy throughout the summer (even though this is going up in the winter). You can check out my other posts in the following links. 

Summer Reading and Movie List

First Installment

Second Installment

Third Installment

Fourth Installment 

Next up is Looking for Alaska by John Green. Anything written by Green is all the rage among fangirls and kids who never read, so I was all like why not. 

Before I go any farther, I'd like to say I read The Fault in Our Stars and enjoyed it a lot better than I'll ever admit. I loved Green's writing style and it's one of the few romance novels I've ever liked. I know a lot of people say it "romanticizes cancer" or that Augustus is way too perfect to ever be a real person, but I looked past all these things rather easily to my surprise. Books (for me) are a way to create unrealistic life situations and turn them into something as realistic as possible. Saying The Fault in Our Stars is an awful book because it portrays an unrealistic love story is in many ways like saying "The Lord of the Rings is a bad book because that could never happen in real life." Well duh, that's the point of books:  Creating worlds and love stories and plots that will never happen in the real world.

Alas, that's a side rant that's been building up inside me for a long time. Also it's probably the only rant I've ever put on this blog that doesn't involve feminism or a cuss word so I'm not sure where I'm going in my life.

But I digress.

Looking for Alaska is the second John Green book that I've acquired and read. I hate to say that I wasn't a big fan of it. I felt that I loved Green's writing a LOT better in TFIOS versus Looking for Alaska. 

For one, the main character annoyed me beyond ever return. I was so done hearing about "how many layers of clothing" was between him and Alaska and how badly he wanted to have sex with her. Every time he was around her he immediately noticed what she was wearing and called her hot/a babe/other terms I hate. I mean for God's sake the cover sleeve straight up described Alaska as sexy. If I'm not mistaken the very first time we our introduced to Alaska the first thing that comes to Pudge's mind (the main character) is that she's hot. The entire time I was inwardly screaming THERE HAS TO BE MORE TO ALASKA THAN HER LOOKS.

Also the character of Alaska herself was irritating and hypocritical. She was constantly preaching about breaking patriarchal society, yet if anything she was conforming to it. To me I felt she was an obsessive girlfriend who toyed with her friends emotions and couldn't even control her own. I can't really describe it to be honest. She was spastic and a very stereotypical "hot girl." 

Anyways, not my favorite John Green book. I'm hoping to read his other books so I can get more of a feel for the guy, but I was rather disappointed. The ending wasn't as fulfilling as I had hoped, and the book was not nearly as enjoyable as The Fault in Our Stars.

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Then I watched a movie by the name of Contracted. It was very...interesting...and I should stop there.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't an awful movie necessarily, but it would be definitely shelved away in the gross/horrifying sub genre of horror. It wasn't necessarily 'shit is jumping out at me' scary, but more of a 'what is happening to her nails/teeth/eye/lady parts' scary.

But here's a quick summary if you made it past the freaky movie poster:

A girl whose name I can't even remember goes to a party and does the one thing no one should ever do at a party:  She sets her drink down. *face palms* Honestly after this I was getting to be a bit uninterested as this all happened within five minutes of the movie, and I was already predicting the outcome. Her drink then gets drugged by a mysterious man. Then, despite her being a lesbian, she has sex with said man who spiked her drink (although this can be attributed to the fact she drank a drugged drink but whatever).

After that a lot of random shit happens that eventually leads up to her having a massive constant period, a single red eye, weird rashes all over, and her teeth and nails just nonchalantly fall off all over the place.

Somewhere in between the rape and her final moments she fights with her mom (who thinks her daughter is constantly on drugs and spends most of her time on screen bitching and yelling), she breaks up with her girlfriend, she repeatedly visits an imbecile of a doctor who claims she's contracted a simple STD and essentially calls her a whore, she loses her job because, hello, her finger nails are falling off, and somewhere in the middle I remember her smoking marijuana.

Basically the plot line revolves around people repeatedly yelling at her yet NO ONE BOTHERS TO HELP HER EVEN THOUGH SHE IS CLEARLY DYING.

Anyways it was a pretty good movie if you're looking for something that will make you want to throwup every two minutes plus a relatively decent plot line. Although it did really annoy me that they never fully revealed how she got so sick. You're lead to believe that the guy who raped her gave her a horrifyingly nasty STD, but this is never really confirmed. Like they never actually tell you anything about the disease or the guy nor do they resolve anything at the end. Kinda annoying.

On the good side, the movie makes me never want to have sex.

Have a fabulous day.

Merry Christmas to All

I may only be writing this so I can say I've been posting more on here, but let's focus on the good shall we?

Merry Christmas or whatever it is you might be celebrating this year. I hope it's as great as you hope'd it would be and then some. Enjoy yourself and your family and even those annoying two sizes too small sweaters that your cousins always buy you. Look on the bright side, they simply think you are skinnier than you actually are—who cares that you'll never be able to wear it!

So anyways. Enjoy those mediocre deviled eggs your aunt brings and pretend to love those socks your grandmother buys you every year. She gets such a great deal on them at costco, how could she even think about passing them up?

(Disclaimer: I've never actually been to Costco so I do not know if they even sell socks yet alone at a great deal.)

But really. Enjoy the holidays and at least pretend you enjoy your family. I'm sure they are all lovely people.

Have a fabulous Christmas.

{Update} Summer Reading + Summer Movies

So I know summer is long gone, and you thought I had checked off every book and movie from the list I made here a long, long time ago. They were supposed to be books that I read during the summer, but it seemed new and more interesting books were cropping up all over the place, and before long summer was over, and I still had about four books left unread.

For the most part though this was not entirely my fault. My public library has been rather deceiving as to what they have and don't have in stock and what is currently available to me.

Long story short this is my list of things that I've actually read vs what I haven't:

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja

Divergent by Veronica Roth
Post Secret by Frank Warren
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

Under the Dome by Stephen King

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Looking for Alaska by John Green

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

The online library database told me they had all the books in the above list (as the responsible person that I was checked all this before ever adding a book to the list). When I went to the library every two weeks, I would simply have a note on my phone of all the authors and titles and simply look them up myself among the shelves (I mean the Dewey Decimal system isn't that hard to decode). Eventually I began noticing that I continually couldn't find certain books week after week after week, but I simply chalked this up to the fact that they were popular, and I was simply going to have to place the books on hold to actually get my hands on them.

Time went by, and the same four books couldn't be found no matter how hard I looked. For lack of a better plan I would just check out other random books I happened to stumble upon until the summer ended and it occured to me that well shit, I still had four books left on my list. 

I then put off the mystery until a week ago because I procrastinate when things get tough. Then as I sat on my computer one day and looked through the database once more I realized that my library system had the books, but the library branch I use, does not.

This then led me to the not so grand world of interlibrary loan request forms which were still not much help at all. I could only request one book at a time (which wasn't so great considering I needed four), not to mention I would have to pay for the postage to ship these four books individually across town. I then had the option of simply driving to another one of the county libraries to check out the books myself, but considering I can barely squeeze in the time to make it to my own library 10 minutes away, there was no way I could make time to go to one 25-30 minutes across town. I also tried my own school library, which is probably one of the worst libraries ever chalk filled with cliche romances and the only good books are on hold by seven other individuals. 

So alas I am ditching the four unread books above and replacing them with books that I own/my friends own because the library is misleading. Learn from your mistakes I suppose.

Without further ado my new and improved Summer (er Winter) Reading List:

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

The Blue Mirror by Kathe Koja

The Jury by Steve Martini
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

Looking for Alaska by John Green

If I Stay by Gayle Forman

My Point and I Do Have One by Ellen DeGeneres

So I know, this summer reading/movie thing has been dragged out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long, but I'm an occasionally irresponasible teenager. You get what you can get.

I also still have two movie/book review posts that need to be published as well, I was just waiting to get this post up before I continued. I hoped to publish the other two to allow myself time to read the other four books. So FINALLY, I will get this whole thing wrapped up after nearly five months (oops is really all I can say at this point).

Alas, have a fabulous day. 

I'm Not Dead

Today marks the first official day of my Christmas break. School has been full of 12 page group papers and calculus tests and lots of note taking on the subject of US history that never ends because there is a lot of US history, and I'm tired. Really tired. I'm honestly writing this to show you I'm not dead. Maybe halfway dead, but not fully dead.

me

 It feels nice to sleep and love life and enjoy myself here for two weeks. I have a lot of plans to accomplish over this break so the blog won't be so empty once school starts back up again. A lot of pre-writing posts and finishing up some things. If I'm feeling crazy I might even change my blog layout/color scheme/pictures/whatever the word is for the technological stuff that makes my blog look the way it does.

Anyways, until then, have fabulous day.

Two Years

I feel like one of those dead beat parents who forgets their kids birthdays and tries to make it up to them with a gas station candy bar and a sip of their beer. Long story short, I forgot my kid's birthday. Well my blog kid, but kid nonetheless.

And I wouldn't necessarily use the word forget I just simply kept putting it off and off (and off) until three days after the actual date I was all like, "Well damn, that snuck by me."

So here we are (thirteen days late might I add) with the miraculous two year anniversary of Sunsets and Sundays.

maybe then I'd remember it

I struggle with what do for this occasion every year (and by every year I mean last year and this year aka the only two years I've ever had a blog anniversary). I see other bloggers with contests and giveaways and new posts every single day of their anniversary month, and I just gawk at them wondering how in the world they have their blogging lives together so much.

So after months days hours minutes of struggling with an idea for such an occasion as this, I am going to simply link back to my hand selected personal favorite posts of mine and slap a big bow on top of it and call it a celebration.

Without further ado, here are the best posts Sunsets and Sundays has had to offer over the past year:

Feminism {A Dictionary}

This was one of my FAVORITE posts to write as I loved every single minute of it. I'm still procrastinating the sequel, but as all things go, I'll get around to it.

International Women's Day (And Why I'm Slightly Against It)

This was back when I was in my normal feminist writing groove, and reading this post makes me miss what I love to do most.

Why Aren't Men Criticized for not Staying Home with the Kids?

(Another rant on society. I guess it's kind of my topic of choice.)

Why I Didn't Tan for Prom

Read this if you want to know more about the odd cultural practice of tanning that seems to be in abundance here in America.

The Truth About Christopher Columbus

This is one of my most accessed posts via Google. I guess a lot of people want to know the real truth behind Christopher Columbus which I can't say is a bad thing.

I hope everyone is enjoying this blast from the past as we celebrate the accomplishment that is two years in this blogging world. It's a strange thing to think that I've been writing about my life online for two years now, and equally strange to think about all the connections I've made with everyone reading this. I could have never imagined that I would find myself in this beautifully knitted together community.

I thank you all.

Have a fabulous day.