Blankity Blankity Blank

So: one of the handful of blogs I follow, my sweet old etcetera, does a fill-in-the-blank every Friday (which the blogger, the wonderful Annie Cristina, gets from a different blog with which I'm not familiar), and this week's intrigued me, seeing as it's about books.

I thought I'd share my answers:

1. My favorite book growing up was Zebra's Hiccups by David McKee. I think it might've been that my dad did the voices and fake hiccups very well.

2. The funniest book I've ever read was probably The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as in the first one. Maybe it's because it's more recent, but that was the first book to make me laugh so hard that I actually had to put it down in a very, very long time. Such is life for an English student, most books of "literary merit" aren't particularly uplifting.

3. The one book that truly changed my life was Les Miserables. I don't know what it was, but there was just something about that book that really struck me.

4. If you're looking for a real "tear-jerker" you should probably read... Elie Wisel's Night, perhaps? I don't know, it certainly struck me hard. I don't really go looking for tear-jerking books all that often; the works we read for class are often depressing enough.

5. If I could meet any author living or dead I would want to meet either Roald Dahl or Mark Twain. Both are among my favorite authors, and I'd like to know how they wrote what they did; both just seem like interesting folks!

6. The next book on my "to read" list is a tough call. I'm deciding between 1984, Manhunt (on the Lincoln assassination), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and perhaps poking around some graphic novels. One thing's for sure: if I keep up with reading this summer I'll definitely be frequenting the library... well, frequently.

7. If I was snowed into remote cabin in the woods and could only choose three books to bring with me I'd bring Hamlet, The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the unabridged Les Miserables. Hamlet would be interesting to look through a few times from different angles; The Ultimate Guide because, well, how else am I going to bring all five Hitchhiker's books?? And Les Mis because I like the way Hugo writes, it just takes a long time to digest. And, at well over 1500 pages, depending on the publisher, it is long, man.

SAT Prep Class: Week 1

Hey howdy all!
Well, it's finally upon us: the beginnings of SAT preparation. So, the proactive studyer that I am, I signed up for the prep course offered by the school, and tonight was the first class. I figured I could mention a few points that came up during the two hour class, and then (for the first four weeks, anyway) list any vocabulary I deemed noteworthy.

- Boba Fett was used as a reference for the adjective "mercenary."
~ I re-remembered a "Frankenstein word" we inadvertently created in English class one day: psychophant: an insane truckler (one who looks to curry favor through praise).
- (Orange, this one's for you) One of the practice questions ran as follows: "To avoid being -------(predictable), Stephen Sondheim strives for an element of surprise in his songs."
~ I have one thing to say: "It blanked the blank!"

And now, in a version of the Princeton SAT Vocabulary Hit Parade, I present to you:
John Stamos's (and g2's) Awesome SAT Words
superfluous: unnecessary
stymied: foiled
spurious: questionable
invidious (the one word the teacher didn't know! I looked it up as soon as I got home): unfair, prompted by envy
dogmatic: stubbornly devoted to cause or idea
sanguine: passionate
intransigence: not lasting
redolent: sweet-smelling
debacle: disaster
haranguing: long-winded lecturing, often looking down upon the lecture-ee
conciliatory: forgiving
imperious: giving impression of importance
inscrutable: unable to be understood by close study
histrionic: dramatic, often melodramatic
solicitous: requesting
profundity: deep, philosophical-ness
palliative: able to reconcile
litigious: like a legal problem
reprehensible: deserving of contempt
insular: limited in scope
viscous: slick
floridity: flowery-ness
dearth: lack of something
demonstrative: openly demonstrating feelings
opacity: quality of hard to penetrate
magnanimous: friendly (man, I love that word)
disparaging: insulting