TV: Gilmore Girls

After finding out that our Aunt Jocie watched the Gilmore Girls, we checked it out to see if it was worth our while. We were very pleased to find out that it was a show we could enjoy. The cheesy, witty, and wholesome television show is everything you can expect from a single mother/daughter show on the WB. It is quite refreshing.

Lorelai Gilmore, a daughter of privilege, became pregnant at sixteen, where she named her daughter Lorelai after herself, whom she calls Rory. They live in the small town of Stars Hollow in Connecticut where smarty-pants Rory attends private school and aspires to an Ivy League education. Her mother, Lorelai, runs a local inn, has a hectic dating life, and is ridiculously addicted to coffee.


Quick vote: This show is cheesy aand loveable. We have grown quite fond of the Gilmore Girls and we're excited to watch the rest of the seasons and see what life has in store for them!

Music: Bird Wings in the Bleak by Libbie Linton

Libbie Linton is a Logan singing sensation. We got a hold of her debut full-length album, Bird Wings in the Bleak. We were anticipating good acoustic music, but nothing of this caliber. The album has great production quality with a full band. We love her soulful lyrics, sombre sound, and catchy instrumentation.

"Don’t tell me cancer,
It’s just a curse word.
All this pale light has gone to heaven with the dust,
But this would feel just more like having time to yourself."
--Edith Sings For Us

"shackleton, I’m solid,
Only bored out of my skull,
And these two big wandering eyes they lie.
I’ve no one here at all make me out to be the one I wanted,
To be strong and sturdy for you."
--Shackleton, I'm Solid


Quick vote: Great melancholy music, perfect for listening to while reading or on a long contemplative road trip. We try to take road trips to dog parts and PetSmart whenever possible.

Books: Anathem by Neal Stephenson

We are huge fans of Neal Stephenson's works, from Snow Crash to Cryptonomicon, he's one of the best science fiction writers we've ever come across, and we've read quite a bit of science fiction. We were obviously excited to hear about his highly anticipated huge new book, Anathem.

Anathem is about a world, different from our own, in which a portion of the society seperates themselves into monastaries, that study math, geometry, physics, and other hard sciences; instead of religion. These monastaries are known as Maths, and it's in one of these, that life on Arbe will change forever.


Quick vote: If you love Neal Stephenson, pick up this book. If you've never read anything of his, we recommend that you start on something a bit more smaller and more palatable before diving in.

Aunt Kenya's Philosophy: Some complain that Stephenson is a tad too obtuse, and that he tends to obfuscate his reasoning in mundane and extemporaneous descriptions. I would juxtapose this with the position that he is one of the most intelligent and inventive authors of our time, and this book, with it's 960 pages, it worth your effort.

Books: Tweak by Nic Sheff

After finishing the book we reviewed yesterday, Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, we found out about the companion book, Tweak by Nic Sheff. While Beautiful Boy talks about a travel through meth addiction from the father's perspective, Tweak follows the same story from the son's perspective.

We have read a couple of other books from an addict's perspective, and they are all incredibly raw. At times we laughed, cringed, squirmed, and cried for the plight of a stranger, caught in addiction from an incredibly young age. We feel for him, we sympathize, we scorn, we judge; it's a book that consistently evokes an emotional response of some sort.


Quick vote: We liked Beautiful Boy better, but we still thought this was an interesting read, and compelling for its rawness.

Books: Beautiful Boy by David Sheff

Our father recommended the memoir Beautiful Boy by David Sheff, and we always read the books that our father tells us to, because we are good dog-ters.

David Sheff records the details of his son's decline into meth addiction in heart-wrenching detail. The book starts with his son's birth, through a difficult divorce with complicated split custody, dating and remarriage, new children, and finally to the point where Nic starts to lose track of himself. He becomes addicted fast and early, struggling through rehab, relapse, and tragic addiction. It was fascinating to read.


Quick vote: This book was raw, wrenching, heartfelt, and touching. We loved it, but were relieved when we had finished it.

Books: The Hunger Games

Our mother has been reading books with our Uncle Chichi in a sibling book club over the summer. They finished their first book recently, and we picked it up when our mother was done, and we loved it! The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is a young adult fantasy genre of book, which can frighten off some people, but not us dogs!

The Hunger Games is an exciting, enthralling book about a futuristic dictatorship community where they send two children from every city every year to compete in a fight to the death. Katniss volunteers to go for her sister, and finds herself in a more complicated situation then she ever could have expected...


Quick vote: This book was a lot of fun, a well written science fiction/romance/action novel. Pick it up!

Books: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

We have been reading a lot of incredible books lately, and haven't been very good at posting. So to make up for it, we're going to post all week about awesome books that we have loved reading lately. Enjoy!

Our mother's book club picked up the novel The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield this month, and we picked it up out of solidarity. We thought it would be a slower book to get into, but we couldn't be more wrong.

The Thirteenth Tale is an intriguing mystery about a reclusive author's hidden past. It's a story about love, loss, reading, and most of all, sisters. The author wrote about people we knew and events we had experienced first hand, telling qualities of a great author.

Quick vote: We love this book, it's awesome. We recommend it to anyone interested in a good mystery, or is looking for a great book for a winter's night.