Readers who want to ask me any question and have it answered can comment on this post. I’ll be answering all questions on October 18!

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice has been reinvented many, many times. Seth Grahame-Smith added zombie revisions to it in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and it’s also been retold in a Facebook version.

Now, there is a Twitter version of Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Complete with @replies, #hashtags, and DMs, “Pride and Twitterverse” retells the classic tale of Lizzie Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy in tweets of 140 characters or less!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I definitely got the quiet, relaxing summer I hoped for back in May. I think I may have gotten a little too much of this particular type of summer, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Here are some of the few things I accomplished in the last few months:

• Failed my self-assigned summer reading
  To be fair, it was a very ambitious summer reading list, especially as I don’t read as much as I’d like to anymore. I didn’t fail it altogether, though. I did reread all seven of the Harry Potter novels, read three quarters of the complete works of Sarah Dessen, and read two of the books in Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. I just didn’t read any of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants by Ann Brashares or A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.
• Did lots of crafting
  Those of you that followed my blog this summer will know about my various ventures into crafting. Sewing, knitting, cross stitching… I dabbled in lots of it this summer and have a lot of finished products to show for my work. It was definitely a way to increase my summer productivity!
• Actually began writing a novel
  Longtime readers of this blog will remember a few casual mentions of “my novel” here and there. This summer, I finally got around to actually writing it and even launching my online writing portfolio, amandaosborn.com.
• Failed to find a job
  I talked about how it sucked to be unemployed in May, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to find a job for the summer due to the increasingly poor job market. However, being unemployed this past summer wasn’t all bad. I made conscious efforts to not spend money unless absolutely necessary, and I was able to spend time doing things I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to, like crafting and writing.
• Experimented more with cooking
  I’ve always loved cooking, and for a portion of this summer, it was my job to do the cooking and making sure no one in my house starved to death. I had lots of successes, like my seafood paella, red velvet cake, and mac and cheese. I had one disaster where a carrot cake turned into a carrot souffle… but I’d rather not talk about that

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

My second favorite book is Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen. As much as I love Scarlett, the best friend in the book, it is the story of Halley, the main character, and the trials and tribulations she goes through with her family, falling in love for the first time, and her friendship with Scarlett that resonates with me.

There are many amazing quotes in the book, but this one in particular stands out to me every time I read it:

Everything, each line I’d held close to my heart, had been said a million times to a million other girls under their windows and in their side yards, on back streets and in backseats, in dark rooms at parties, with the door locked tight.

It’s hard to remember that there were a million other girls before you, let alone remembering that there will be a million other girls after you. It’s hard not to wonder why you were different and it’s even harder to wonder why you were the same in the end. But when the truth finally hits you and you realize the true meaning behind every action, every word, and every thought, it’s easy to understand why you have to let things go.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

I blogged about my favorite TV shows, so now it’s time to do books. (I guess that means I’ll do a favorite movies entry soon?)

Here are my favorite books, in order:

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
  I am wary of trying to describe this book because I am lousy at summing things up in a succinct manner and I know whatever description I come up with won’t even come close to doing the book justice. Suffice to say that Zusak is one of my favorite authors; he’s immensely talented and a storyteller that is great with words and language. The Book Thief is one of the few books I have read that totally and completely changed my life. Not in an earth-shattering my-entire-lifestyle-is-now-going-to-change kind of way, but it definitely has impacted on the way I look at things now.
• Someone Like You by Sarah Dessen
  Dessen is one of my favorite authors; Someone Like You is by far and away my favorite book of hers. The tagline to the book is “Anyone who’s had a best friend – or a first love – will understand,” and it’s so true. The story of Halley and Scarlett’s friendship and Halley and Macon’s relationship is written perfectly, and every time I read the book I can connect so well to the story that I always want to cry. The tagline is so true; I’ve had both a best friend and a first love and every line in Someone Like You resonates deeply in my heart.
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland / Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
  It’s no secret that I’m a huge Alice in Wonderland fan; I love both Carroll’s books and the Disney movie. What I love most about the books is how every time I reread it, I discover something new in the story, whether it be a different reading of a character or a new interpretation of the text. It’s such a simple story, but it’s also incredibly complex. I’ve always envied Alice and her adventures in Wonderland and when I was little I wish I always wished to be able to step through a looking glass and see what was on the other side myself!
• The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde
  I love how Fforde plays around with language and words and literature. He does this amazing job at setting up this alternate!reality as well as a book!reality and my favorite parts of the series are when Thursday bookjumps into the BookWorld. He brings famous characters in literature such as Edward Rochester (Jane Eyre) and Miss Havisham (Great Expectations) to life and manages to make them his own characters, adding dimensions and layers to them that make them lead characters in their own right. It’s a great series and a must-read for any book lover.
• His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman
  While The Golden Compass is my favorite, I do like the other books in the trilogy as well. Pullman does such a great job of dealing with so many concepts and overarching storylines and a fantastical, alternate reality. I’m not really a huge fan of this genre but I really liked Pullman’s writing. The characters are so vivid, the worlds so real, the forces of good and evil so strong and powerful… it’s just brilliant, really.

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.

Flying Ford Anglia

This, my friends, is the famous Flying Ford Anglia from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. It was stationed outside the Harry Potter Exhibit, so I was able to take a picture of it without the exhibit workers armed with cloaks, pointy wizard hats and wands telling me off. As cool as it is, it’s so unbelievably small!

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.