Two for Tuesday (and a contest)

Firs up, if you haven’t been by GotYA today you’re missing out. There’s a fabulous contest on the blog with one fabulous prize: a partial crit from an agent. I won’t tell you which one. You’ll have to visit the blog to find out.

And now, onto the Two for Tuesday. Brainchild of the ever fab Kate Hart, it’s where you post two of anything: book reviews, pictures, quotes, poems, songs, videos, rants, shout outs, whatever floats your boat. Just connect them somehow. That’s it.

My Two for Tuesday? Datebility tests. That’s right, men of Canada, I’m judging you. It may not be on the first date, it may not be on the second date but, before I agree to go on a third date, there are two questions I will ask you:

1. Bailey Quarters or Jennifer Marlow? Which one would you rather go out with?

2. Han or Greedo? Which one shot first?

Flashback Friday – Filmstrip Definitions

“All the great themes have been used up and turned into theme parks.” – Mark Hunter, Pump Up The Volume, 1990

We wore short skirts and Doc Martens. We embraced grunge but only after it made its’ way onto MTV and Much Music. We flooded coffee houses and wished we were just a little bit older, a little more Gen X. We were manufactured and we bought into anything and everything.

We came after the great teen movies, after Cameron Crowe and John Hughes had moved on. We watched Pretty in Pink and Say Anything and we loved them even though they weren’t really ours. We had the angst of Pump Up the Volume and Heathers but we had somehow lost the jokes.

This week on Flashback Friday, GotYA is asking what movies defined each of our generations. As you can see, it’s a question I don’t have an easy answer for. We had Clueless and The Craft but those were both movies that appealed to very specific groups and, while I loved them both, I doubt either enjoyed a generation-wide affection.

But it’s a Flashback Friday and I am duty bound to select something and, while it may not be a conventional choice, I’m going to go with The Crow. Why? Because it was one of those rare movies that was spoken about in constant whispers. The story and the real-life tragedy behind Brandon Lee’s death were impossible to ignore. Years later, in college, I still had the poster on my wall and I was hardly alone. More than a decade later, I still think it’s one of the most visually stunning films I’ve seen and I still catch my breath at certain moments.

Even watching the above trailer (my favorite one which made me fall in love with “Big Empty” by The Stone Temple Pilots) took my breath away a bit.

Flashback Friday: Books We Grew Up With

There’s a new feature over at GotYA. Each Friday we’ll be taking to our own blogs to write about a particular flashback topic. This week we’re chatting about the books we grew up.

I was unique amongst a lot of my friends in that I had a weekly book allowance. My parents are both voracious readers and it was a quality they wanted to pass down to me. The result? I had enough Sweet Valley Twin and Sweet Valley High books to supply a small army of pre-teen girls. Plus I had Judy Blume and Anne of Green Gables shelves before I was old enough to read.

For the first post in the Flashback series, I thought I’d throw out a few titles that had big impacts on me.

1. Christina’s Ghost by Betty Ren Wright. I remember sitting in my fourth grade math class, this book hidden on my lap, reading when I was supposed to be learning how to do division. My entire arms broke out in goosebumps. It was the first time I was ever really scared by something I was reading, the first time I had that “my heart is going to stop and I’m on the edge of my seat” feeling.

2. The Secret of the Unicorn Queen series by Josepha Sherman. This was the series that taught me all about anticipation. I was always eager for the next Sweet Valley book but I was positively desperate for the next Unicorn Queen book. It was also the first book where I made up stories about what happened to the characters off the pages — elaborate bits of fanfiction that existed in my head.

3. The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams. This was the first book I read by DNA. I was in the eighth grade and I remember thinking that it was THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN. All in caps in my wee little brain. Over the next few years, Douglas Adams would come to my rescure time and time again, convincing me that there were minds that worked a little bit like mine and places where my sense of humor might actually make sense.

4. The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice. Though I read the first four volumes in the Vampire Chronicles, it was The Vampire Lestat that had the biggest influence on me and which stuck with me. I loved the sarcastic narcissism of Lestat and found myself writing much in the way of bad vamp fiction between the ages of fifteen and eighteen.

New Look, New Platform

Anyone who followed my posts over at OPWFT may be interested in the fact that we’ve got a new name and are blogging on a new platform (*sheds a tear for WordPress*). To celebrate, there’s an awesome contest. Head over to GotYA to check it out.

Pondering Chick Lit

I’ve never been completely at ease with my favourite secondhand bookstore’s practice of shelving “chick lit” in its own little section. It’s hard to say why (I’ve never had issue with Sci-Fi or Mysteries or Romance being on their own), especially since the chick lit section is in a high traffic area and the books probably get more exposure than they would if they were shelved with the others in alphabetical order.

This week, though, I’m rather grateful for the separate section because I’m in a total chick lit mood. I’ve got mice in my apartment, am having some sort of Sally Alrbightish omgimgoingtobefortyinnineyears crisis, and have about a zillion pages to write on the dystopian project. In short, I need me some chick lit.

Happily, the bookstore’s wee chick lit section came through.

I just finished Stupid & Contagious by Caprice Crane which I enjoyed. There were several great one liners and at least two scenes which made me laugh out loud. I liked the alternating POV between Brady Gilbert (aspiring record producer) and Heaven Albright (up-and-coming PR wiz kid turned waitress). Caprice did a great job at capturing the vaguely self-absorbed, “I know every line from every John Hughes movie and I’m totally Rob from High Fidelity” vibe that seems uniquely epidemic to my generation (or, at least, epidemic to my apartment).

The other book I just picked up (and haven’t had a chance to crack open) is Milk Glass Moon by Adriana Trigiani. The the third book in her Big Stone Gap series, Milk Glass Moon returns to Ave Maria Mulligan MacChesney’s life in a small Virginia town. I actually had no idea there was a third book so finding one was a pleasant surprise.