Day 16 – Favorite Collection of Poetry

This night
While I am dreaming
Searching for you
I have a message, but you're not sleeping
I wade through deep black waters, endless deserts
Turning my eyes away
From the criminals who seek to shame me

Meet me at the crossroads
Where we will come together
And nothing else will matter
From now until forever

These things
The only way I know to tell you
Whispered in the static
Screaming through the veil
Please say
The message came through
As intended
Code deciphered and recieved

I'm not a poetry person. I get the point of poetry but any real enjoyment I might have gotten out of it was burned away by the rubbish assigned in the GCSE syllabus. So for this one I'm choosing someone who is a poet but a musician and author as well. I own a copy of Ladies and Other Vicious Creatures by Donna Lynch, but I couldn't find it to photograph it, so this is part of an image by Steven Archer, the other half of the band Ego Likeness.

I love the universe Ego Likeness operate in, as twist and disturbing as it is. Its a place where reality and nightmare blend together until you don't know the one from the other, where the witches and demons are real and just might be you. I recommend that you read the madness that is Isabel Burning, and hear the darkness that is Breedless, marvel at the beauty of Luna Maris and maybe pick up some animal bones in resin whilst you're at it.

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 16 - Day 16 - Track That Describes You

Day 15 – Your “Comfort” Book

Hmmm most of the books I'd consider as "comfort" books have already been mentioned, so I'm going to go forthe books I turn to when I've had a long day and I'm too exhausted to concentrate on anything complicated or clever.

The Sookie Stackhouse (a.k.a Southern Vampire (a.k.a True Blood)) series by Charlaine Harris is neither complicated or clever. These are literary soap operas, the kind of books you can read in one sitting and never think about again. Fortunately the characters are just this side of one dimensional and some of the set pieces are imaginative enough to keep the reader entertained. This series treats the vampire mythos with some degree of respect whilst still letting the characters be flawed, both of which seem to be missing from Twilight. Sorry but I like vampires to be real vampires. Just like Dexter and Bones, the TV series that has been spawned by the Sookie Stackhouse books is wildly better than its source, which makes it all worthwhile in the end :)

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 15 - Track That You Wish Described You



Heh, I wish I looked that good, just so I could complain about it :p

Day 14 – Favorite Character In A Book

[caption id="attachment_469" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Mug courtesy of Protowilson.deviantart.com"][/caption]

I tend to get obsessed with characters more for the inspiration they represent than for their representation in the original book. As my name suggests I'm a huge fan of The Phantom of the Opera, but not for Gaston Leroux's original book, which lets face it, is completely terrible. I love Erik in all his forms, in versions official and fanfiction, from Susan Kay to Andrew Lloyd Webber via Brian De Palma, but I don't especially like his portrayal in the original book. Same goes for Dracula, whilst I appreciate the original book, I'd much rather have the Gary Oldman , Christopher Lee or Richard Roxburgh version.

So for this prompt I decided to choose Severus Snape from the Harry Potter series by J K Rowling, a character that I love as much in the original books, as for his portrayal in film and fanfiction. Saying that I originally only agreed to read the Harry Potter books because Snape is played by Alan Rickman, one of my very favourite actors.

I was a Snape fan before it turned out he was a good guy, he always struck me as the only sane and sensible teacher in the whole school, since he was the only one to react to Potters constant acts of near insanity with anything approaching the appropriate response. He was also in charge of the coolest of the four houses and taught the most awesome subject. By the end of the books he turns out to be the most powerful, and in many ways the most important, character in the whole series, without whom the entire endeavor would have failed with Harry's death at Quirrell's hands in the first book. And yet in the end, his life ends with the same sense of waste as when it was lived, with insufficient recognition and a pointless death for ridiculous reasons at the hands of a lunatic. He never even gets a funeral! It's all so depressingly tragic.

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 14 - Track You Only Like For Its Sentimental Value

Day 13 – Favorite Opening Scene In A Book

“It was a dark, blustery afternoon in spring, and the city of London was chasing a small mining town across the dried-out bed of the old North Sea.”

That is, for me, one of the best opening lines I’ve read in a very long time. It sucks you immediately. What happened to the North Sea to dry it out? And, wait a minute, what the hell do you mean, a city is CHASING a mining town?

The four book series (Mortal Engines, Predators Gold, Infernal Devices and Darkling Plain, and their prequels - A Web Of Air, Fever Crumb and Scrivener’s Moon) takes place in a post apocalyptic wasteland where cities and towns, on wheels or tracks or gas balloons, chase one another down for resources. It’s like Mad Max on an epic scale, with airships and robots thrown in. The series is aimed at teens so most the characters are children and young people, but like any good children’s book there are sill some adult characters and a good depth of storytelling to keep the interest of older or more advanced readers. Though if you’re considering these as a gift for children be aware that death, war and emotional conflict are major themes and can get a little graphic.

(I know this is a copy of what I posted before. I have food poisoning.)

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 13 - Track That Gets Stuck In Your Head



I hate this song with a passion but once I hear it I get it stuck in my head for weeks and weeks. Though I've had Haben Sie Gehort Das Deutsche Band stuck in my head for the last month

Day 12 – A Book You’ve Read More Than Five Times

Hmmmm... that covers an awful lot of books...

Ok, I've chosen one of the few books I've actually had to replace due to over-reading. My original copy of American Gods by Neil Gaiman had been glued, taped and even stapled trying to hold it together for one more reading. I finally gave in when I picked it up and the spine just dissolved into confetti. I'm not kind to my books.

It's hard to pinpoint why I'd addicted to American Gods. It might be the depth of the story, the range of the characters, the flashes of humour or the sheer scale of the set piece battles combined with the individual tiny dramas. I love recognising a new god or a new reference each time I read it. I adore Wednesday for his sheer magnetism and Shadow's pathos. But I think the most endlessly appealing part is the strength of the characterisation, Gaiman somehow makes you feel that you know even the smallest character personally and then wraps you up in their world.

It also contains one of my favorite speeches of all time.

Hannah's Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 12 - Track for a Thoughtful Montage Sequence

Day 11 – A Book that Disappointed You

I'm a Philip K Dick fan. I have a whole shelf filled with his books. Generally I enjoy most of his work, even if the things they have inspired are better than the original books (Blade Runner is one of my favorite movies, and Total Recall is one of the few Schwarzenegger films I can stand). I even liked The Penultimate Truth, which has the single most frustrating ending of any book ever written!

So why can't I finish The Man In The High Castle? I'm told (by people who read real literature) that it's his best book. But nothing happens?!?! Not only does nothing happen (in the first half at least, which was as far as I could drag my boredom) the language actually makes sense. You don't spend every page wonder what the f*** is going on, or what drugs Dick as taking on that particular day. The fact that it didn't read like a Philip K Dick book is probably the reason I couldn't finish it, that wasn't that promise of complete bats**t insanity that kept the other books interesting. I knew I should have stayed away from literature :p

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 11 - Track That's Gibberingly Upbeat & Happy



As a member of CAMRA I too enjoy a fancy beer!

Day 10 – A Book You Thought You Wouldn’t Like But Ended Up Loving

As previously mentioned, I was given Lord John And The Private Matter after my grandmother mistakenly bought it second hand from The Famous Bookstall. I originally assumed it was going to be the usual slightly incipid womens fiction that she generally read. Then I realised why she hadn't read it herself. My poor gran! LOL!

I've tried to read Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which the Lord John sequence is a spin off from, but I found it to be exactly the kind of fluff I'd expected this to be. Time travelling love affair? Yawn. Secretly gay nobleman/military leader solves ridiculous whodunnit? Yes please! This is even more amusing if you read it in the voice of John Barrowman. It's not deep and its neither big nor clever, but it is a lot of fun. We need more historical novels like this!

Even Better 30 Day Song Challenge - Day 10 - Track for Expressing Howls of Pain



I do love Emilie Autumn and her drama. I was going to use a Cradle of Filth track for this one, but I thought the howling there would be a bit too literal.