The books of February 2012

Another month has zoomed by me and I'm not totally sure how that happens anymore. Possibly that whole aging thing. Well, I guess it's not totally passed us by since Leap Year gives us one more day in February, but it's as good as done, right?

This month was busy, but fun. I saw The Artist at the Art theater in town (while I was there, I also joined the co-op to help keep the theater going...read more about it here). If you haven't seen this movie, you need to do so. As a bonus, it won one of those sparkley Oscar things, so it's not just me that thought it was good. I also saw Hugo, which I also liked a lot. It's coming out on DVD soon, so make sure to rent it or stream it or whatever you need to do to watch it. Oh! And I saw One for the Money and This Means War. Both of which were hilarious. Don't believe the bad hype!

Craft-wise, I'm going to post a few things I made last month and everything from this month because all of the February birthdays are over. IronCraft challenge two was hearts and flowers. I made a friend in California a gift out of that one by doing a little craft math:

Chocolate is greater than or equal to hearts + flowers all of the time!

The third IronCraft challenge was called warm up. This time I made a matching cowl and wrist warmers...mostly because my neck and hands are generally cold:

Baby, it shouldn't be cold inside...

IronCraft four was catalog creation. What it really made me realize is that I don't get a lot of catalogs anymore...except cooking ones. Anyway, the ones I did look at, as well as the stores, had a lot of loop scarves (aka infinity scarves). Seemed simple enough, so I tried one:

It's a scarf! It's a circle! Possibilities are endless!

I made a few things for friends with February birthdays. My friend who often takes time out to tell people how she really feels about what they just said to her got a visual aid from the Subversive Cross-Stitch book:

Now she can just point and roll her eyes, saving her voice!

A friend who wanted a ribbon...a yellow one...got a version he could keep forever instead of a jpg:

Aaawww, who's a good scientist?

My friend who loves Zoolander required my having a custom pattern made from the weelittlestitches esty shop.

"A eugoogolizer. One who speaks at funerals."

Last but not least, the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (also from weelittlestitches): 

I'm such a good friend that if you liked Hellboy and I didn't, I'd make this for you.

So books! The thing this blog should be mostly about! I have to admit a very guilty secret. I bought Snooki's A Shore Thing. You can't convince that it won't be just like watching the show, only I won't have to look at or hear them. That was it. My hard earned (about) $6, given to Snooki and her publisher.

The books I've read list is only slightly less embarrassing. With all the crafts and movies and Oscar watching...and being sick, which was awesome...reading needed to be very light and fluffy. This month I read: Overbite by Meg Cabot, Red Carpet Diaries: Confessions of a Glamour Boy by Steven Cojocaru, Incendiary by Chris Cleave, The Wolf Gift by Anne Rice, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, and Four to Score by Janet Evanovich.

Overbite was a continuation of Cabot's book Insatiable that I read last month. Cabot's going against the current grain by not including a werewolf in these, but they are highly enjoyable. Meena now works for the Vatican's Palatine Guard, and while she broke off the affair with the vampire (possibly frowned on by her new bosses), she couldn't quite shake him. Meena, her brother, her friends, her over-protective bodyguard, her vampire ex-boyfriend, her vampire ex-neighbors, and of course, her doggie Jack Bauer are back. This time they're trying to figure out which is the least of the evils and get rid of at least one of them for goodness sake! They work for the Vatican. Isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? This book, and the first one, are just fun to read.

Red Carpet Diaries...yes, I purposefully saved this for red carpet month. Steven Cojocaru is quite the character. Hard knock life? Triumphant rise from horrid circumstances? Only if you count not having the right hair products or clothes. This was complete fluff with a side of name dropping. He's met a lot of people working tv and the red carpet...and he's willing to share. It was a quick read, but not one I need to read again.

I won't lie. The real reason I didn't focus on reading for a bit was the book Incendiary. It was written as one long letter from a woman who lost her husband and child to an act of terror in London committed by Osama bin Laden. Was it sad? Sure, but it was also funny at times...and a pretty thought out story for being written in a way that nearly drove me nuts (nowhere near as bad as the worst book of last year, Room). She was also having an affair...right smack in the middle of the deed, when they saw the bombing on tv. Your sympathy goes up and down for her. In the end, it was a decent read, but again, not one I'll be keeping.

Full disclosure? Ann Rice and I broke up a long time ago. Sometime around books 4 and 5 of the vampire series. The ramming of her thoughts on religion into my brain didn't sit well, so I decided no more. And then she came out with the books where apparently she found some other religion to share with the masses, so I avoided those as well. But a little over a week ago, I saw that she had a new book out called The Wolf Gift. I like wolves. I like gifts. And she seemed to be not discussing religion along side her occasional smut anymore so I was game. It's actually quite good. It's definitely Anne Rice though...like if you've ever read anything by her, you'd know right away that she wrote this. And I was wrong...I mean yeah, there's a wolf and they're calling the bite that turns you into a werewolf a gift, but she's back to rethinking her religious thoughts...and trotting them out through philosophical arguments...right next to a storyline that seems to involve more "civilized" beastiality than I ever thought I'd read (the total I thought I'd read was NONE, by the way). I checked it out from the library and I can't for sure say if I would read it again or not, but if she writes a second one, I'll probably read it to see if she's gotten over any of her issues yet.

You might remember that a while back, I read Janet Evanovich's One for the Money. Well, when I went to the library to get the beastiality Anne Rice book, I was in that fluffy book needing mode. I remembered that Evanovich has plenty in the Stephanie Plum series (eighteen full novels and several side books), so I made my way upstairs and grabbed two through five (five will be on next month's list...I didn't feel like staying up all night to read it). All three books are completely fun, insane, no-way-did-that-happen, and man-those-guys-sound-hot (and after seeing the movie and having people in place for those guys, yes, they are indeed hot) books. The grandma is still cracking me up and so are the guys. Her ineptitude and sheer dumb luck as a bonds agent is what ends up unbelievable, but still really funny. There's always something highly entertaining in her burgh...blowing up cars, hanging out with cross-dressers, hanging out with ex-hookers, burning down funeral parlors, standing on the tables in Atlantic City...this girl gets into everything. If you need to kill a few hours with something mindless but highly entertaining, read these. I'll be reading all of them.

Did you watch the Oscars? Did you check out the dress reviews online to see if your opinion matched Tom & Lorenzo's (the link is part one of three)? No? What?! What do you mean who are Tom & Lorenzo?! Stop reading this and go to their site!