OakMonster’s Den

Support Banned Book Week, y’all!  About time we stop those crazy nutcases from burning them books!

According to the ALA, here are the “10 Most Challenged Books of 2007” with the reasons why they were challenged.

1) “And Tango Makes Three,” by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
Reasons: Anti-Ethnic, Sexism, Homosexuality, Anti-Family, Religious Viewpoint, Unsuited to Age Group

2) The Chocolate War,” by Robert Cormier
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Violence

3) “Olive’s Ocean,” by Kevin Henkes
Reasons: Sexually Explicit and Offensive Language

4) “The Golden Compass,” by Philip Pullman
Reasons:  Religious Viewpoint

5) “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” by Mark Twain
Reasons:  Racism

6) “The Color Purple,” by Alice Walker
Reasons: Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language,

7) “TTYL,” by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

8 ) “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” by Maya Angelou
Reasons:  Sexually Explicit

9) “It’s Perfectly Normal,” by Robie Harris
Reasons:  Sex Education, Sexually Explicit

10) “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons:  Homosexuality, Sexually Explicit, Offensive Language, Unsuited to Age Group

Hmm…all but 2 is challenged because of sexual content.  Gee..doesn’t this sound eerily like the censorship board MPAA and the rating committe? (If you haven’t seen “This Film Is Not Yet Rated”, rent it.)

And after all THESE YEARS, Huck Finn and The Color Purple are still being fought over.  Unbelievable!

ETA: This reminds me of the list of books I should’ve read/did read/planning to read.

ETA2: From @dananner, the video by the ALA.

Okay. I am no bookworm. And definitely I ain’t well read. But this post by Kuri a while ago sparked my interest. Let us see who’s read what around here.

The intro:

From CV Rick, the 106 (why 106? nobody knows) books most often tagged “unread” at LibraryThing. The idea is to mark the ones you’ve read in bold, the ones you’ve started but not finished in italics, and the ones you read for school in bold and underlined italic. À la CV Rick, I put asterisks next to the ones I plan to read.

And I shall do the same.  A few of these I’ve read in Thai, I hope that counts.  Here goes my list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (Gave it many tries. Couldn’t get past the first few chapters.)
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22*
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel (I loved it!)
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick (Okay, I read this one in Thai.  The WHOLE thing.  That and Robinson Crusoe.  And many times.  I hope that count.)
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice* (Planned to read as many of Jane Austin’s as I can.  Watched the Kiera Knightley version bajillion times though…)
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife*
The Iliad
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner (Also loved this.)
Mrs. Dalloway (I did, however, read The Hour…)
Great Expectations (Fell asleep a few times. And tried it over different years.)
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books (Got bored after about 2/3 in. So close, but just couldn’t go through with it.)
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West (slow in the beginning but it’s way more awesome than the show!)
The Canterbury Tales (Don’t we all read bits of these in American high school?)
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula (Read this one in Thai too…)
A Clockwork Orange (I’m sure movies doesn’t count here, does it?)
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise) (However, I read The Dante Club…)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Adore this one)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves*
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion*
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers (Also in Thai)

/me puts on a dunce cap…

I dreamed that I was in Las Vegas on a school trip. My room actually had an upright piano in it, apparently by the school’s request, and overlooking the Strip. As I was settling in for the night, someone knocked on my glass door.

I peered around the curtain, and there stood Fred and George Weasley.

They weren’t tired and apparently they were also piano student. They wanted to hang out in my room since I had the piano AND the view. Everyone else’s room was facing the other direction.

The next thing I knew, my room became a common room. Everyone was just hanging out.

And then outside my door, I saw the light went out and the emergency light came on. People were passing by the door in somewhat of a panic. My room didn’t seem to be affected at first but then the lights also went out.

I wandered over to the window and it was all dark outside. Buildings are dimly lit by the moon and emergency power. Black out in the entire Las Vegas. Wow.

The hanging out in my room with the Weasley twin and fellow students supposedly continued for another hour or two because with the power out, no one can get back into their rooms. Once the power came back, everyone went back out and suddenly it was morning and we had to pack up and leave.

Out of nowhere, my maid Pueng showed up to take my bags to the bus. I had one carry on and a backpack to re-pack so I told her I’d be right down. Suddenly I found myself packing my bag on the steps of on of the older classrooms at Mater Dei. Everyone was packing their stuff and getting ready to leave too. The Weasleys came by to try to get me to hurry up so I wouldn’t miss the bus.

The last thing I remembered of this dream is settling on to the back of the van, not a bus after all, with Fred and George and one other kid.

Gotta love my dreams, huh?

Well, at least it wasn’t too complicated to deconstruct the dream.

1. Mazing Amy wrote about a black out in Malibu.
2. I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix in IMAX 3D last night. I mean, how could you NOT have the images of the cutie pies Oliver and James Phelps plastered in your brain! Those boys left some impression.
3. The piano. Duh.
4. Las Vegas, now that one is a bit out from the left wing. I think it’s contributed to a few moments of Austin Powers on TV a few nights ago.
5. Finally, this is something I talked with Brandon a few days ago. It seems that at least once a week, I would dream about Mater Dei, either the school ground and buildings themselves, all of my friends, and/or the concept of being back at Mater Dei. Hogwarts reminds me a lot of my school, so it was a natural choice.

Interesting huh?

Also, for those who have finished HP7, I’d recommend seeing HP5 once more, in IMAX 3D or otherwise.   Any Potter fans should see HP5 in IMAX 3D.  It’s only 3D for the final battle but oh my god is it worth your money!!  Nora’s sister Sara had already seen HP5 once and just finished the book as well.  She and I were nudging each other through the movies.  Once you read HP7, you definitely have a different appreciation for all the nuances in the movie.

For example…SPOILER GALORE below…

You see Hedwig at the beginning and you already miss her. You try to catch Tonks and Lupin’s reaction to each other, but it’s not really here just yet. I think you’ll have to wait for HP6 to see that blossom some more. But the most pleasant surprise is when Hermione, Harry, and Ron walked into Hog’s Head. You now know who the bartender is…and the significant of the goat! You also get to see Neville progress on the path to become a hero. And Snape’s bit of memory that we thought we knew what it means but in actuality it holds an entirely different meaning. He didn’t remember being tortured by the 4-some but what he said to Lily at that moment that broke them apart.

You know, that kind of thing. :)  Oh, and on that note, Kuri discussed HP7 - spoilers a plenty.  Go read and even join in if you’d like.

Okay. I’m done.

*sigh*

*sniffle*

*sigh*

The best in the series for sure. Order of Phoenix is still my least favorite so far. Whiny Harry just wasn’t becoming.

It seems Kuri finished as well. Haven’t heard from Demi-Boss or Mazing Amy just yet. I’m sure they are not far behind.

Email me if you’d like to discuss.

Harry Potter arrived about 2 hours ago. I had one break so far. This is my second.

At some point I’ll have to make dinner so I might as well take a breather now before I get in too deep.

Will still avoid all internet and email contacts until I finish…hopefully maybe tomorrow morning. I’m a slow reader so sue me.

‘Mazing Amy is doing the same thing right now I am sure.

I finally got to watch Memoirs of a Geisha last night when it arrived via Netflix. I must say I was a little disappointed.

The movie sticks to the book quite well, but something was missing though. I can’t quite put my finger on it. Well, for one thing. Everyone speaking with thick accents kind of takes away a little bit of the drama. I couldn’t quite call it my new favorite.

And I miss reading during my commute. The bus shakes way too much to focus, and of course there’s the stop and go. I didn’t get dizzy the first week, but my eyes got so tired. I didn’t want to jeopardize wrecking my vision all over again.

I’ll hit the library today for some books on CD. Hopefully I can do that on the road instead.

The King Never Smiles by Paul M. Handley is coming out on April 16. It is a look at Thailand’s beloved King Bhumibhol in a way that no Thais would ever do: telling the story of a King as a person not a demi-god we make him to be.

This summer marks the King’s 60th year on the throne, making him the longest reigning monarch in the world.

The release date of this book in April is purely coincidental my ass, Yale! I don’t really object your coming out with a book, but can you show any less respect for the man?

Yeah. And you wonder why most of the world hates Americans.

Anyhoo. Folks in Thailand have already caught wind of this, and this very website is currently blocked by Thai police. No one can access it from the kingdom. I have news for you, Thai folks. How about using Amazon.com?

Expect some kind of shit storm from the country of Siam over this book next month, people. Not that we have enough troubles on our hand with our fucked up political climate at the moment.

Having grown up in Bangkok where royal gossips fly around almost at a level of Hollywoood celebrity gossip but in a very strict definition of gossip: only in word of mouth. Nothing written, of course, or you’ll find yourself up to your neck of up to in 14 years of prison love. We all have heard something about the royal family at some point. The King has so far been the only one out of the gossip circle. Well, him and the much beloved Crown Princess Sirindhorn.

Are they all true? May be a little bit true? We don’t know. Probably would never be able to confirm otherwise unless your source is super good.

With all due respect to my King, whose DNA I also share, I do want to see what other people have to say about him. Whatever information this Yale guy has or wherever he has dug it from. I hope my interest in this book isn’t considered a betrayal against my country and my very own bloodline.

But you know, the truth is, as always, out there.

I finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I am starting on Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix because all the references this one made to it, I barely remember.

The following section will be written in “Invisible Ink” for your protection as I will discuss my thoughts about Half-Blood Prince which obviously contains TONS AND TONS OF SPOILERS!! Use your mouse to highlight the section if you wish to read on. And oh yes, profanity abounds. Watch out, kiddies.

THAT FUCKIN’ SNAPE!!!

Oh, sorry. I meant, I LOVE the book. The best one yet! So much fun to read. I spent a few hours each day for a week reading it, so I did savor the flavor quite a bit.

But man, that SNAPE!!!!

Does it bothered anyone that no one, not even Hermione, would make the assumption that the “Half Blood Prince” could be Voldermort? After all, we keep revisiting his half blood history. Other suspicious things would be those weird spells and jinxes, and the fact that Voldermort was once Slughorn’s student. And no one would come to a conclusion that it could possibly be Voldermort’s book? I find that hard to believe.

But hey. A lot of things in this one are hard to believe.

I can’t believe Dumbledore is dead. I mean, I kind of suspected it originally when he turns up with one dead arm. I was thinking that arm is a part of something that was slowly killing him or something.

Then again, you know how Dumbledore was talking about “faking the death” of Malfoy. He could’ve been faking his death just then too. You know, he plotted it out with Snape, and planted the clone thing, Mad Eye Moody style, on the grounds with the fake Horcrux. After all, NOBODY saw Dumbledore hit the ground. Right? Right? He’s faking his death so he could go around and get to the rest of the Horcruxes. Out of sight!

What about the green potion he drank? I think Snape planted that too. I mean, why else would Dumbledore only ask for Snape, and trusting him with his life? If I’m going with that plot line, so yeah Snape would be well hated and gained more trus with Voldermort, and therefore better access to all the secrets and things.

Wishful thinking? Well, we’ll find out when the next book comes out if I’m right or not. I don’t think Rowling would totally kill of such character without having something planned. Well, there will always be Dumbledore in the portrait in his office.

Now, Harry and Ginny. Anyone else feel a little odd about that? I guess I’ve always seen Harry as a part of Ron’s family and Ginny the baby sister. How in the hell could he even think to love her any other way?? Then again, that happens in real world all the time. I am kind of happy they went out. They are right for each other. But originally, when Harry starts “fantasizing” about her, that freaks me the hell out! I winced still at their first kiss. But since they weren’t “nogging” all the time like Ron and Lavender, thank god, I didn’t have problems with Harry and Ginny after that so much.

And man, I WISH Hermione and Ron would just get it over with between them! Then again, I guess it’s necessary to keep that little sexual tension between them for the next few books.

Ew. Sexual tension. It creeps me out when anyone of these kids doing anything like that. I guess I’ve watched them grow all these times and now that they’re all grown up and stuff, it’s weird watching them kissing and having sexual thoughts. Double EWWW! Oh well. They’re all going to be 18 soon. I’d better get used to it.

Yep. Love the book. Love. Love. Love. Love. LOVE!

That Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell book will have to wait some more. Heh.

PRAY to the gods that my copy of Harry Potter would be here on Monday.

We have so many books in our reading line up right now, including my never ending attempt at reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Yes. I’m still gnawing at this one!), but I’ll wait for Harry.

Brandon discovered his new favorite in Barb & J.C. Hendee’s series about Magiere, the half human half vampire, vampire slayer. A mix of Buffy and Blade taking place in Middle Earth sort of thing. And we just bought the latest 2 books in Jim Butcher’s Wizard Harry Dresden series: Blood Rites, and the first hardback Dead Beat. Dresden is a wizard and preternatural detective who keeps getting his butt kicked long before he could turn around and beat the bad guys.

Although, I’m a little pissed at Amazon for not delivering the book on time. I could’ve gotten one at Barnes & Noble today instead of waiting until Monday for it. I asked VERY nicely with whipped cream and cherries on top for Brandon to run to the post office on Monday/Tuesday if by some miracle of God he gets home before 5 and finds that little pink pick up slip in the mailbox.For Goblet of Fire, I pre-ordered it through B&N to have it delivered to work. The book was to be released at midnight on Friday which meant that I wouldn’t get to read it until Monday. But I didn’t want to risk a chance of someone snaking my copy from my dingy apartment mailbox.

Friday around 3:30 p.m., screaming something in joyous gibberish, I ran through the office, holding up over my head the Holy Grail, Goblet of Fire — several hours before anyone else could get theirs!

No such luck with Order of Phoenix, nor Halfblood Prince. That’s too damn bad.