September 4th, 2013 @ 10:09 pm

so i have a pile of fear street books at home, they’re begging to be read.  in fact, i did read “silent night” (pt. 1) last winter, and it was still good.  by still good, i mean not too teenagery where i shouldn’t be reading it.

it turns out, rl stine wrote his first fear street book when he was nearing 50.  i guess that’s why it may seem more on the adult side? i know a good few take place during autumn, and i’m DYING for autumn to get here already.  i’m waiting for the delivery of my next helene turstene book, and i love reading on my commute, so why not? well…

i take the M train, known for a small population of commuting hipsters/transplants.  as much as i unfortunately can relate a lot of things that i love, to hipster-affiliated things, i hate admitting it.  or maybe i just hate hipsters, i know i’m authentic, SOOOOOO…  lol.

anyways, i was worried about these things being what others would think:

a) are fear street books ironic enough to be classified as a hipster thing?
b) am i too old?
c) will people think that i am not educated enough to enjoy adult books?

even if i covered it/wrapped the book so that you couldn’t see the cover (which makes it worse, i think), you can still see the info at the tops of the pages, lol.

am i being crazy about this?

September 1st, 2013 @ 12:47 am

recently, i read these two swedish crime novels by helene tursten, and they are awesome.  i love her style of writing, and i fly through her books.

they’re about a swedish detective inspector (irene huss) and her intensely strange/brutal police cases/mysteries.  her family is also mentioned often in the books.

i read “night rounds” first, which was about murders involving a ghost and a hospital, and secondly, i read “the torso” (which was actually made into a decent movie).  that one was about a series of murders that featured dismemberment and necrophilia (i know, GROSS!  but the book was so good!).

both were excellent, but both were very different.  i can’t wait to buy some more books from her to see if they somehow match up to either of the ones i’ve read already…  i’ve been snagging them on amazon.

apparently, i’m a horribly indescriptive critic (sorry! lol), but i don’t want to give much away.

there is a lot of creepiness and gore, if that helps (score!).  since i want to buy all of the other books, OBVIOUSLY, these two are highly recommended.

here is a screenshot from the torso film (tatured torso), so you can get a taste of what the stories are like…

July 28th, 2012 @ 8:11 pm

…my week in pictures.

lauren and i decided to get together on thursday night for shopping and some after work drinks. we also decided to do this right before a huge storm brewing over NYC…  this was just moments before shit hit the fan and we ducked into the bowery electric for cover.

read more…

June 10th, 2012 @ 9:58 pm

i reeeeeeeeeeeally want to read this book: “unorthodox: the scandalous rejection of my hasidic roots“, by deborah feldman.  being from NYC, you’re around a ton of different cultures.  where i’m originally from in queens, you rarely see hasidic jews, and when i moved out to brooklyn for the first time a few years ago, i moved to a heavily hasidic residing neighborhood (midwood).  it was a strange experience for me because i knew nothing of their culture at all, aside from the way that they dress and the fact that the women wore wigs for a reason…

one friday when i had come home from work, a loud, wailing (and spooky) siren started going off at sundown.  the first thought going through my head was that NYC was about to be in another crisis because of terrorism (no, not even joking).  my roommate at the time never told me about the siren that went off on friday evenings, as a warning to go home for the arrival of the sabbath.  i recorded it from my phone, to send to my mother that first time, because i was like WTF?  then the next day, my ‘hood was like a ghost town… there was NO ONE around. i couldn’t believe it. i think it was within the next two weeks that he told me the deal.

in the dunkin donuts two blocks from my apartment, i would go in and hear the 15/16 year old girls talking about their wigs and upcoming husbands and stuff, and i was in awe.  at 15/16, i was playing super nintendo, started going to concerts and had my first real boyfriend.  it was kind of a culture shock for me, and i felt really ignorant for automatically thinking that they were odd, so i started googling more and more about hasidic culture.  why they had to cover all of their skin, the deal with the curls, the strings around their waists, etc.

i guess now i have better understanding of why some of those things are done, and not that it’s my place to try to “approve” of it, but i can’t.  i try so hard not to judge it or mock it, but i can’t say that i have come to terms with it.  some of the rules are out of this world.

i’m not a super-religious person to begin with, but i am catholic – and i thought the rules that we have to live by are ridiculous and strict…  this is seriously a whole other level.

and not to sound like a total dick, but it’s 2012.  with the modern world surrounding all of these young people, how do they not feel pressured to live a “normal” life?

i’ve read a couple of websites that had articles about the book that deborah feldman wrote, and it stated that they’re raised to be scared of “normal”/non-hasidic people.  i think that’s absolutely fucked up, because as odd as i think the culture may be, i wouldn’t ever discriminate or be rude to a hasidic jew JUST BECAUSE THEY’RE HASIDIC.  i think that’s awful, if that’s true.

i don’t want to turn this post into how i “don’t get hasidic jews” and seem like an ignorant/judgemental asshole, my point was that i wanted to see the point of view from someone that has converted.  i wondered if there were younger people in our generation that broke free because of curiosity, and the outcome.  i’m super excited to add this to my book queue.

February 13th, 2012 @ 7:26 pm

[my week in pictures]

decided to bleach half of my bangs again, i was getting reeeeeeeeeally tired of my hair being all one colour. went purple, planning on back to blue soon 🙂

read more…

January 23rd, 2012 @ 5:49 pm

my boyfriend and i got into an amityville horror interest the other day, which led me to googling it this afternoon.  i wanted to read the book, based on the happenings when the lutz family lived there (for a measly 28 days), so i looked into it…

back in the 70’s, this guy “butch” defeo killed his entire family – both of his parents and his four siblings. from what i gather, he claims it was his sisters idea and that she helped in the murder but ended up also being murdered – and found in a naturally sleeping position (under the covers and all).  he also said that voices told him to kill his family, but there are so many inconsistencies over the years that no one seems to know the real story. he does claim that there were no paranormal things going on growing up.

moving along, the next family that moved in a year later, the lutz’s are the family that claimed all of the paranormal stuff had happened.  i never knew that there was a whole controversy about the lutz’s being “liars” and making up the entire story.  the family that lived in the house after the lutz family claims there is absolutely nothing paranormally happening, or has ever happened in the house.  for me, that takes away from the potential scariness of the book.  i think i’m going to read it anyhow, but it boils down to paranormal activity and whether it really exists or not.  personally, i’d never want to find out, lol…  but if it really does, that’d be crazy if the lutz family did actually have to deal with that.