The Best of Twenty Seventeen!

Five years ago I did a post about the Best of Twenty Twelve and since I have got back into my blog and posting this year, I decided to do one for 2017 to see how this past year has stacked up.

Top 5 Albums of 2017

1. What If Nothing by WALK THE MOON (2017)
2. Wonderful Wonderful by The Killers (2017)
3. Skin and Earth by Lights (2017)
4. WALLS by Kings of Leon (2016)
5. Royal Blues by Dragonette (2016)

Special Mention: Something to Tell You by Haim (2017)

Top 5 Songs I got Addicted to

1. What Lovers Do - Maroon 5
2. Attention - Charlie Puth
3. Feel it Still - Portugal. The Man
4. I Feel it Coming - The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk
5. Tiger Teeth - WALK THE MOON

Annoying Mention: Thunder by Imagine Dragons

Top 5 Great Things that Happened to Me

1. I got a term position as an Academic Advisor in my office for 2 years. I worked my butt off to learn everything that I needed to an applied for it TWICE before I got it!
2. Jason and I went to Saskatoon to ride waterslides for my birthday. Frivolous, but SO much fun.
3. Went on my Girl's Camping weekend for the second year in a row. Looking forward to year 3 in 2018.
4. I got my third tattoo and Jason got his second. This is great because it was at a convention and it was Jason's second tattoo in literally 2 weeks. So proud of him.
5. Travelled to my first ever professional development conference for my advising position.

Top 5 Things I Learned this Year

1. Putting in the time and effort to obtain what you really want can sometimes really pay off. Like getting the term advising position. That was a major goal achieved for me.
2. People come and go. Sometimes friendships can be to much work to maintain, and I don't think you should have to put that much work in. Either you want to be friends and hang out and talk or you don't. Sometimes you just got to let it go.
3. Marriage takes work. I know this is a bit of a contradiction to #2 above, but marriage is a different kind of commitment. We might not always like each other, and we argue, and we disagree, but at the end of the day I still love him and he is still my husband because I choose him everyday to end my day with and start the next.
4. Setting goals makes me happy and feel accomplished. Like setting my mind to get my new position, starting my reading challenge, posting on my blog, organizing next year's book club and all the little things in between.
5. Even though I turn 30 next year, I don't know if I really feel any different. (There will be a post about this later on, don't worry.) I know I'm older, and I sometimes feel it and see it in my body, but I want to think my mind, ideas and spirit are still young. I still feel younger at heart.

Top 5 Favourite Photos I Took

Top 5 Books I Read

1. Me Before You by JoJo Moyes
2. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
3. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
4. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
5. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Top 5 Favourite People of 2017

1. Jason - of course my husband is #1. He is my rock, sound-board, confidante, lover, biggest supporter and everything else in between. 
2. Rebecca - I'm just still glad she puts up with all my crap. #workbestie
3. Carmen - Sad she moved away, but still my book-loving enabler and one of my oldest and best friends.
4. Stefanie - I don't know if I could have endured the crappy work stuff from the past year as well as I did without her.
5. The people of the #metoo movement. Enough said.

Top 5 Best Things I Did

1. Supported my sister when she was going through a big change in her life.
2. Attended my other sister's bachelorette party.
3. Saw Kings of Leon in concert and got a tattoo in the same day.
4. Started my reading challenge and posting on my blog again.
5. Made new friends inside and outside of work.

Top 5 Movies I Saw

1. Star Wars - The Last Jedi
2. Beauty and the Beast (live-action one of course)
3. Anything that Marvel put out this year
4. Bright
5. Power Rangers

Top 5 TV Show Obsessions

1. Elementary
2. Game of Thrones (Season 7)
3. Outlander
4. Star Trek: Discovery
5. Gilmore Girls - A Year in the Life

Top 5 Regrets of 2017

1. Not staying as active and exercising. I bought a new bike this year at the start of August and I hardly rode it all fall. Bit disappointed in myself for that. Need to change it in 2018.
2. Not starting my reading challenge earlier in the year. I forgot how much I really like to read and get lost in the words and pages of a good book.
3. Waiting so long to finally get my wedding album made. Its been 2 years. And it turned out really freaking awesome.
4. Not spending more time with my mom. Really wish I spent more time with her this year.
5. Five years ago this regret was not documenting things as much as I used to. I feel this regret is the same to this day. I even mentioned it a week or so ago that I don't take as many photos as I used to.

Top 5 Things I am Looking Forward to in 2018

1. Ringing in the 2018 new year at my sisters wedding tomorrow.
2. Starting the 2018 Girl's Book Club in January.
3. Going to Mexico. Apparently this was the same five years ago!
4. Celebrating my 30th birthday in July.
5. Spending time with friends and family throughout the year.

Some things are the same. I still love The Killers and great movies. Some lingering regrets, but also some hopes that carry on.  Friends that are still around and new ones to add to the circle. All in all, I'd say it was another decent year.

Reading Challenge - #7. The Great Gatsby

I'm almost at 10 books off on my Reading Challenge List! I feel good about that. Like a mini-accomplishment. The next book I'm going to try and knock off the list over the holidays (Green Rider by Kristen Britain) is a longer one, so we'll see how that goes.

Anyways, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1926) was an interesting book. Definitely a completely different writing style than anything I've read off my list so far. A lot of flourishing descriptions and use of words that are no longer part of the everyday vernacular. The back cover describes The Great Gatsby as "one of the great love stories of our time." I don't really see it though.

First off, this post is going to have SPOILERS about the book and movie. Normally I try not to give too much away, but I can't write about this book and not give away the climax and ending. 

You have been warned.

Two things about this book: 1. So many secrets, and lying, and keeping other people's secrets.
                                              2. It's supposed to be a love story, but all I saw was horrible heartbreak.

Near the start of the book the narrator, Nick Carraway, describes himself as "... one of the few honest people that I have ever known." (pg. 59) Its the last line of Chapter III and stuck out to me, I even made a note about it in my book journal. To make this even more interesting, I was watching the short TV series Liar (2017) about halfway through reading The Great Gatsby and they were discussing it on the show. The one character, a teacher, says that the whole book is full of lies that people tell each other, and that Nick isn't as honest as he says he is. Well, that gave me a whole new look on the book for the rest of the time I was reading it! She was right.

The whole book is about secrets, lying, and keeping other people's secrets. Nick keeps Tom's secret about his mistress, Myrtle, all while lying-by-omission to Daisy about it. Jordan keeps Gatsby's secret about having known and loved Daisy until Nick is told. Daisy is lied to about Gatsby's intentions to win her back after 5 years by having Nick invite her for tea. Nick keeps all of Gatsby's secrets about Daisy, his past and who he really is throughout the whole book! Nick keeps Gatsby and Daisy's secret affair from Tom. Nick and Jordan act like they don't know anything when Tom does confront Gatsby and Daisy. Daisy lies saying she never loved Tom and immediately takes it back. Gatsby and Nick keep the secret that Daisy was driving the car when Myrtle was hit and killed at the end of the book. Its unclear if Daisy lies to Tom about it and pins it on Gatsby. You don't find out until the very end that Tom told Myrtle's husband, Wilson, that it was Gatsby's car. And still, Nick doesn't tell Tom that it was Daisy that was driving! To tie the whole theme of lying and secrets up in a nice neat bow: throughout the entire book all the people on the periphery of the story tell lies about Gatsby and who he is. Only Nick, Daisy and Jordan know the truth. Frankly, Nick is not the honest man he thinks he is, at all.

As for the love story, like I said, all I see is heartbreak. Yes, Gatsby does have the hope of having Daisy love him again and that is about the only love story part of the book. That he knew her when they were younger and loved her wholeheartedly and that did all these things in his life for her in hopes that she would notice. Yes, I can see the love story part, but there is so much more heartbreak overshadowing that for me. 

Tom's affair with Myrtle obviously causes Daisy pain. Gatsby's heart is broken because Daisy married Tom after he asked her to wait for him. Gatsby tries to mend Daisy's broken heart over him by trying to win her back. Both Myrtle and Wilson are hurting because he found out about the affair (not who with though). Tom is heart-broken as he realizes his wife and mistress are both slipping away. Everyone in the hotel room is in turmoil when Tom is confronting Gatsby and Daisy, even Nick and Jordan who are not necessarily part of the quarrel. Wilson is absolutely crushed over the death of Myrtle. Gatsby is worried about Daisy having killed Myrtle by accident and is heart-broken when she doesn't need him after going home to Tom. The Nick and Jordan romance is pretty much extinguished when Nick tells her he won't come in and narrates, "I'd had enough if all of them for one day, and suddenly that included Jordan too." (pg. 136) 

The most heart-breaking parts of the story come at the end. Gatsby waits all night and day for Daisy to call after the accident and she never does. The half-truth that Tom tells Wilson about Gatsby's car causes the heart-shattered Wilson to track down Gatsby and kill him, then commit suicide. And at the very end, Nick is utterly crushed to find that Daisy won't even take his call about Gatsby's funeral and runs away with Tom. Even more so, no one, not a single person that took advantage of Gatsby's hospitality comes to his funeral. So heart-broken, Nick doesn't even stay in Long Island and goes home back West.

This novel is so full of lies and heartbreak. Its depressing writing this post, but it really does ring true that the back cover calls it a 'haunting' tale.

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The most recent movie adaptation for The Great Gatsby was done in 2013 by Baz Luhrmann. It was glitzy, flashy and over-the-top. It reminded me a lot of Moulin Rouge! (2001), but didn't fit together as well. Moulin Rouge! had ups and downs and the downs were toned down and intimate where they needed to be. I didn't find that in The Great Gatsby. The whole thing was up to 11 and didn't tone down for the parts that I thought it should have. Like fun and glitzy for Gatsby's parties yes, but the driving cars scenes were still in the ups, and the car accident part still seemed too 'up' for me even. The only toned down part was during Gatsby and Daisy's affair, which made sense. 

Very true to Baz Luhrmann fashion was the music. It was modern, but chosen as it also fit the 1920's era and theme. However, I personally don't think it fit quite as well as the music in Moulin Rouge! did. Nevertheless, the best fitting song overall was "Young and Beautiful" by Lana Del Ray. It was done for the movie and when it came on in the background for the first time it actually drew me in to what was happening on the screen. It fit. It even appeared again later on in the movie in another spot where it fit well and was used to draw you back to the previous feelings and scenes.

Overall the movie was decent and stayed true to the book. It highlighted the style, ritz and glamour of the 1920's that Fitzgerald detailed on the page. Some parts were a little over done, as I said, but kept everything in the movie together as a thematic and stylistic whole. Some of the narrating was different, but worked, as Nick Carraway recounted his summer living next door to Gatsby. The one thing they took out, I wish they'd kept in, was the short and muted - against the rest of the drama - romance of Nick and Jordan.

Up next, like I detailed at the start of this post, is Green Rider by Kristen Britain. It's the first book in the Green Rider series which is six books in length so far. I doubt I will do them all in a row, but you never know.

Reading Challenge - #6. Animal Farm

As I said at the end of my last post, I never read Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945) in high school. It has one of those universal reputations of 'everyone should/needs to read this book' though, so that is how it ended up on my list.

It was a fairly simple and straight-forward read and took me only a few days to read in amongst my other commitments. Frankly, despite what everyone told me about the book and the ideas and expectations I had going in, it was not at all what I thought it was going to be like.

There was a very quick pace to the story, and obviously it is not a very long book. The animals already had a lot more human traits right from the start than I was expecting. I thought there would be a lot more development in that area throughout the novel. For example, the pigs and some of the animals were literate, could write and use writing implements, use the farm equipment and other human items. There was no learning curve to any of it. It was strange. Like, they're animals. Yes, I realize its a book, but if it supposed to be based in real world, and not fantasy, then things didn't add up for me.

Of course, the over-arching themes are about power, corruption and failed-revolution. There are sections about propaganda, keeping the population under-educated, class division, labour relations, changing historical facts, brain-washing, and convincing all the animals that their memories are wrong. The commandments kept changing to suit the pigs, which rubbed me the wrong way. They kept using their superior cunning and intelligence to brain-wash some animals or spinning the truth and facts to confuse others into believing what ever they said. 

I kept thinking of one of the most famous quotes about power and corruption the whole time I was reading:

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."(1)

It was strange series of events that led to an even stranger ending. By the end, not all the original animals of the rebellion were around, and those that were had grown old and their minds having been twisted could no longer remember what had happened in the past. Even to the point that they could no longer tell the difference between pigs and humans, having been kept secluded on the farm for so long.

There are so many parallels I can draw to today's political climate and past ones. The Russian Revolution and Stalin, today's America and Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un and North Korea, Islamic extremists and the conflict in the Middle East. The list could go on.

In the end, I don't if I really liked Animal Farm or not. I am torn. On one hand it was engaging, on the other it was strange. I just don't know how I feel about it.

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Before I even started reading the book, my husband told me I needed to watch the Animal Farm movie, "the one with Patrick Stewart in it." There were two movies made, one it 1955 that was animated and a 'live-action' one in 1999. I use the term live-action loosely as it was animatronic animals. There is a large dispute online between the two movies, the 1999 one being panned horribly.

Needless to say, I didn't watch or want to watch either of the movies. Mostly because I'm undecided about how I feel about the book and I don't want to swing myself into a worse feeling about it by watching a creepy animated one or a creepy animatronic one. Just not really up for that at all.

Next on the docket is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

(1) John Dalberg-Acton. Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), published in Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504; also in Essays on Freedom and Power (1972)

Reading Challenge - #5. The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I did it. I found one. I wondered if I would. I found a book on my reading challenge list for which I think the movie is better!

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999) was definitely an interesting book in a very different format. The whole book is letters being written by the main character Charlie to some unknown correspondent about his first year in high school.

The format was the hardest part for me to get used to. So odd to read. It did make the book a lot easier to read though, as there weren't paragraphs and paragraphs of description. I had also seen the movie already, so I knew what happened before hand. However, the book did help put a lot of things in the movie into perspective for me that may not have been the most clear, described or as relevant as I thought.

I want to focus on the two most famous lines from the book. First, "We accept the love we think we deserve." This line makes a lot of sense in the context of the book (I won't elaborate, because spoilers), but it also has a real world application. If you don't think you deserve love, you won't seek it. And if love does find you, then you might find it impossible to accept that someone would love and accept you, for you. If you feel you need it too much, you can't live without it. You may seek out "false" or inappropriate love just to feel the rush, the high and can't stand to be alone. Might not even know who you are or how to be alone.

The second, "And in that moment, I swear we were infinite." Simply put, maybe it just felt like the moment wouldn't end. In more complex terms, maybe Charlie was acknowledging that he would never forget that moment, and that it would live on forever infinitely in his memory. Hoping, too, that it would stick with Sam and Patrick as well. Perhaps even, because Charlie cherished his friendship with Sam and Patrick so much, that his stories about their time and adventures would live on infinitely as "those" stories that get passed around and down through time, his school, his town.

There is a third line, or I guess moment in the book, that I also want to mention. It's when his sister is talking about a boy to their parents (she is getting in trouble because of said boy) and she says "He's my whole world." The mother replies back with, "Don't you ever say that about anyone again. Not even me." This really struck me. The line is so important because her mother is trying to teach her a very important lesson. Whether it is to never put a boy before herself, or her family or her happiness. It's very profound and subtly put in the book. Its just a small scene, but had a big impact. And I think it deserves to be up there with other two famous lines from the book. Its just as important, if not more.

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I re-watched the 2012 movie of The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Holy, that was like 5 years ago already. Anyways, I much prefer the movie over the book. The characters are more fleshed out than in the novel, more like real people. Yes, there were changes, such as the addition of a lot more dialogue, because there is almost NONE in the novel due to the format, but that helped bring more life to the characters which to me, other than Charlie, were so flat and dull and just existed in the book.

The soundtrack of the movie was also a big thing for me. Music really helps me get into a movie, especially one that is supposed to get you to relate to the characters in certain ways. Charlie's character also cries a minuscule amount in the movie compared to the book. I prefer this as I don't think I would have liked Charlie as much. Not that crying is bad, it just suited the movie more that he didn't. And Ezra Miller as Patrick was the absolute highlight for me. He made the character so real and relate-able.

~~Additional Thoughts~~

Stephen Chbosky also directed the movie.

How many times can I say 'format' or 'relate-able' in one post?

I wonder if I will find any other books in my list where the movie is better?

I also need to get a better version of this movie. The one I have is crap.

Up Next: Animal Farm by George Orwell. (Yes, I didn't read it in high school. I opted for The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger instead.)