books and a movie

Brief run-through of my recent and future reading/movie watching experiences.

Annie and I rented "The Da Vinci Code" last weekend. I loved the book. Thought it was great. I was also aware of the fact that the movie had gotten quite a large number of negative reviews. Despite that fact, I wanted to see the movie and judge for myself. And it actually wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. My only real big qualm was that they left out pretty much all of the really interesting details involved in the whole mystery-solving procedure. Obviously, not all of them could have been included or the movie would have been ridiculously long. But I knew some of the bad reviews said that the movie sort of dragged along, whereas I got the opposite impression. It seemed to glide along, skipping everything that was interesting in the book. I actually thought for a moment that I had fallen asleep for a while and woken up at a much later point in the movie. Nope. Oh well. Not as bad as anticipated, yet still not the best adaptation.

Finished reading "The Aeneid". Loved it. Especially the chapter about Aeneas and Dido. Awesome.

Currently reading November's National Geographic, along with a really good biography of Richard J. Daley for my history class. (Which, by the way, is one of the best classes I've ever taken.) I still intend to make my way through my book of Emily Dickinson's poetry, but haven't picked that up in a while. The next books I plan to read are Alfie Kohn's "Beyond Discipline, from Compliance to Community", which I borrowed from work (about running a smooth classroom, not being authoritarian, stuff like that), and "Death in the Haymarket" by James Green, which my grandpa lent me. That would have been good to read for my history class earlier in the semester, when we were actually talking about the Haymarket riot, but would still be a good book to read.

Made chocolate-chip cookies and a pumpkin spice cake today. Yum.

Going to bed early. I think I may be getting sick. Boo.