Practically Alice

I don't re-read as much as I should. Sometimes when I'm just looking at my books I think time after time "I really should re-read that sometime" and then sigh wistfully at my school reading and my to-be-read shelf and my amazon wish-list... I've got into a very bad habit of starting books and not finishing them so , I tell you this now: I will not start anymore books until I've finished the ones I'm reading at the moment which are... Tommy's Tale by Alan Cumming Good Omens  by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman Me and Mr Darcy by Alexandra Potter Life of Pi by Yann Martel Q: A Love Story  by Evan Mandery Stasiland  by Anna Funder My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult East of Eden  by John Steinbeck .   .   .   Christ I'm bad. Okay - never mind NaNo Wri Mo I'm going to do NaNo Re Mo. I'm going to aim to hit my 60 books mark by the end of November. I try to re-read A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett every year just becau...

I think the reason I loved the Disney film Tangled  so much is because it explained something to me; it explained that life can be lost, it can be controlled, emotions can get tangled, some dreams are worth chasing and... love. It explained love to me. Rapunzel and Eugene grew together and they needed each other and yes, it's a Disney film and yes it's a fairytale but the message it held was so much more than that... Emotions are messy. We question the motives of people and sometimes we judge someone before we know them; it takes a girl who has been so sheltered from life to show us that it's sometimes better not to judge and to trust people with more ease. As well as being funny, Tangled - for me - was about questioning things, about enjoying life and yeah, chasing that dream. Tangled  is the hug that I really needed right now.

It wasn't entirely that long ago that I sat down with my sister and channel hopped, looking aimlessly through what was on TV. It was there we came across the film Cabaret . I had heard of this film, yes, and admittedly I did get a little mixed up between it and Chicago  but upon watching it I was absolutely fascinated. I'm not really one for 'analysing' films but  having just come out of watching the televised 1993 version, directed by Sam Mendes (starring: Alan Cumming as Emcee, Jane Horrocks as Sally Bowles and Adam Godley as Cliff) I cannot help but look at the differences between it and the 1972 film directed by Bob Fosse (starring: Joel Grey as Emcee, Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles and Michael York as Brian). Saying that this is not a comparison ! I'm not going to say 'this' is better than 'that' because they are both bloody marvelous. What I am going to do is say what I preferred. The story of Cabaret  is shocking, thought-provoking and just...

Our school has made the decidedly huge leap forward and has offered all our students to purchase an iPad over the course of a number of years. Now, I'm all for enhancing learning and I'm all for moving with the times but  when I walk through the corridor at lunch time and people are not conversing, oh no, but sitting on their iPads I get a little downhearted. I'm not saying that I don't do this either; there are times when I will sit on my phone and not talk, or read and not talk but there's always been some  people talking in those situations. I can understand the attraction of an iPad; there's an abundance of apps and there's emails and there's messaging and facebook so it's not exactly unsocial... but it's somewhat unnerving when no one is talking because of these devices... Perhaps people need to look up and look around them a little more sometimes. I don't know, iPads seem a good idea in some situations but maybe not this one.

I would class myself as a bit of a Romantic. I like gestures and the idea of a happily ever after and the thought that two people can fall in love and stay together forever. I like that, I like it a lot. The first quotation that ever really stuck in my mind was a Shelley quote: soul meets soul on lovers' lips . Iloveit... I love the thought that when two people who love each other kiss a connection is formed. I love it but I don't know if it's true. I'm not trying to be all mopey and depressing, because that's not the stance I take on this; but if this idea of love we have, the sublime and Romantic one, exists then why do people act the way they do? People cheat, people fall in and out of love, people get confused. I'm not saying (some of) this is wrong, I'm just questioning this existence of Romantic love... of something that seems so unbelievably honey-sweet that it seems unobtainable. Not only is this sort of love written in fantastical terms, it seem...

Today is National Poetry Day so I decided to write a poem. It is not very good and yeah. It has the very inventive title of School Day What the hell are we doing here? Do we exist? Are we just being stupid? Is this a tale full of twists? Why are you asking me that?! You’re such a fool! You’re a bitch and I hate you We are just too cool It’s written like that because... Because it is. He said so, so it must be. No one says ‘gee whiz’! Two plus two equals four That, my friend, is phallic Four for you Glen Coco! Write it in italic! Can we trust our feelings? I like him, don’t tell a soul Yeah, that was my school day On the whole. Voila! Happy poetry writing and reading everyone.