i think i get more insular as i get older. at a friend's gathering today, there were grps other than our class present.. the me 3-4yrs ago would have tried to talk to the 'strangers' and tried to include them in our conversations. i dislike being left out so i try not to do that to others... but i didn't exactly try very hard just now. perhaps i've reached a pt where making new friends is just so ley chey (troublesome, taking too much effort) that i'll much prefer just chatting with old friends, friends i've know for some length of time, because it's familiar, warm, fun and just less taxing because you are so comfortable with them, you are you with them...

it's bad, it's mean, but it takes a whole lot of energy to move a body from inertia.. i think i thrive with familiar faces..

ok, shoot me, but i think the movies are way better than the bks... maybe it would have been different if i had read them first before watching.. but as it is, first impression: nah.. nothing impressive.

don't get me wrong, i think she's quite a brilliant story-teller, but just that her prose doesn't quite captivate the way say dragonlance (Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman) or Hexwood (Diana Wynne Jones - who & which i highly highly recommend. premise was original and intriguing) captivated me. (just to name one popular-but-not-considered-high-fantasy series - which i happen to like a lot, and a novel of one of the authors of fantasy, that i've read)

if anything, i came away with the impression that harry in the novels is very much more an ordinary little schoolboy who gets into scrapes, gets punished... not like the boy we see on screen who, to me, has this sense of dark destiny and an aura of yet-to-be-unleased power.. in a word: cool. like i told a friend, i'm so waiting for harry potter to do magic! real magic, which i was assured i would see in movie3/bk3..

but in the meantime, i'll finish off book2 and then think abt whether i would want to read1 and 3 or just wait to be awed by the movie..

hmm.. and as an afterthought, yes, i am aware she's writing it for children, (make that two afterthoughts..) if you want a good light fantasy read, go read artemis fowl Eoin Colfer.

been raining cats and dogs and more here.. the kind of rain where umbrellas make no difference and wet is all you get...

also been feeling moody and sour.. the dearth of him is getting to me and nothing i do is making it better...

also want to shop, but either there's nothing to shop for, or the things i want are way toooo ex.. sigh

no movies to watch too.. or at least even if i want to watch any i only want to watch it with him!

reading is only appealing in spurts.. gone is the energy to sit and read the entire day. maybe it's the bane of this century.. everything must be quick, fast, now i think i've become more impatient. i need to slow down..

want to buy books.. nothing beats the high of holding, of owning, a few hundred pages of paper and words in your hands. the excitement of expectation of the gems that'll be revealed. i think i love the owning more than the reading.. i've tons of books at home that i've bought over the past 3years which had yet to be read. sometimes i just like sitting there and looking at them.. all arrayed on my shelf, in my bookcase.. and think, the silent babbling of many voices... how beautiful...

then again maybe it's just cos i've matured.. i know i used to pride myself on my ability to wolf down 300pages at one sitting, the speed at which i used to read.. but now... take white noise for example. i'm definitely taking my time reading it.. but perhaps, the pleasure is in the savouring, the breaks from reading when you let what you've just read digest slowly in your mind, where you turn the words and phrases over one by one basking in the beauty of them.. it's not often i come across a bk where the urge to highlight every other phrase hits me each time i open it, flip a page.. what can i say? i suck at writing reviews of things, so if the above actually stirred your interest. white noise is really worth your time.