This class rules

This is another video I made for my Web 2.0 Class. The assignment was to take photos of students collaborating on a project and put them in a video using this program. I hope you enjoy this as much as my snowman.

I just made a new Voki. See it here:

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I don't even know where to begin with this book. I feel that what I read was truly a piece of poetry. When this book was recommended to me I was most interested because much of the setting is in places I know, Boston, Cambridge, NYC, and because I like reading immigration narratives. But what I most took with me from this novel is a story about how people grow both closer and further away from their parents and how their parents affect and permeate every facet of our lives without ever realizing it. I also very closely identified with the main character Gogol's struggles with identity and relationships. I particularly enjoyed the way the author changed perspectives so the reader could see inside the minds of most of the characters at their most private moments, especially when we see inside of the mind of Gogol's bride. I understood and sympathized with her own struggle for autonomy. The author's style and word choice is very deliberate, much like her characters. Highly recommended.

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The Fart Party by Julia Wertz


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Uri and Sheila let me borrow this book one day during the blizzard and I just read it yesterday. It chronicles a year in the life of the artist as she navigates graduating college, growing up, and her relationship with a pretty ok boyfriend and how that fits in with her growing up. I have to say that I do wish I had read this book when I was 23 because the main character might as well have been me at 23. I enjoyed reading this because it was like a look into a piece of me that I am not anymore. It was nice.

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Thirsty by M.T. Anderson


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This story takes place in a time when vampires and other supernatural beasts are real and everybody knows it, however they are still hated and hunted and killed. The main character is a teenage boy who is slowly turning into a vampire and he doesn't understand why or how, all he knows is that it's bad and he wants it to stop. So when a stranger offers him a cure if he does a simple job for him he takes the opportunity without ever asking any questions or verifying the truth.

The best parts about this book were the vivid descriptions of his ever growing thirst for blood. The author does a tremendous job at making the thirst feel progressively worse, and when the main character does some damage to himself as a result I was right there feeling the pain with him and I was a little disturbed. I also loved the main character's description of all his side thoughts and little teenage witticisms and fantasies about the girl he likes. Also, the author drives a pretty quick pace through the story and I was driven right him to the point that I read the last 100 pages in one sitting because I didn't feel like there was a stopping point. I had to finish. Part of that urgency came from the uncertainty in the choices the main character was making. He wasn't sure who to trust with his secret and as a result some seriously perilous things happen. Great book. Highly recommended.

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What I Was by Meg Rosoff


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I started reading this book before Christmas and I just can't seem to finish it. I fell in love with Rosoff's writing with How I Live Now - what an amazing book that was - but this novel is missing something.

*EDIT* I don't know what happened, but yesterday I just felt like I couldn't abandon this book and I finished it. I'm glad I did. The second half of the book picks up and slides back into Rosoff's comfortable prose. She just has a way of creating a magic bubble around her characters so for moments in their lives they exist in their idea of a perfect world. Of course that bubble can't be permanent and something has to ruin it or soil it. In the end nobody gets what they set out to want, and though things are different the character's aren't unhappy. Thee characters accept that things are what they are now, and sometimes that is the price of stealing momentary happiness.

I felt like this novel was missing something, a certain amount of heart perhaps. We weren't left with any kind of closure with the main character, known as H, who admits he is entirely unreliable as a narrator. For a minute I thought perhaps his best friend might just be some sort of invented phantom he was projecting to interact with the person he wanted to be (I'm explaining that poorly - sort of like Fight Club). H seems squishy, soft, doesn't take any personal accountability for his life, and he needs this external character to model on to make a change in his life, but then he doesn't make any change for about 2/3 of the novel so we're stuck listening to his internal monologue idolizing his best friend/hinted love interest. He is borderline obsessive and stops investing in his real life so he can sink further into his idealized life with his friend.

What really annoyed me was the twist, which I won't reveal, but I felt it took something away from H's personal struggle with his identity and reality. All in all I was disappointed with this book and I wouldn't recommend it for fans of Rosoff's writing. She doesn't really come into her voice until it's too late.

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and the first photos are in

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Originally uploaded by sans-santina

Today was the second saturday spent at tech, and while we did leave earlier than I expected, let me tell you we were definitely productive. This is the first of three Who-houses, unfinished in the photo. I'm very excited to see how it all turns out!