Is it just me or all the popular YA books these days dystopian novels?

I knew the basic premise of Delirium from the recommendations I received, but was still thrilled while reading it. It sort of reminds me of The Giver in a way, but with more of a romantic bent. And less…foreign, I guess.

I expected a betrayal by Hana but she surprised me. (I don’t know if that counts as a spoiler but…yeah, she doesn’t betray Lena. Sorry for giving that away. =P)
The ending surprised me as well. I know there are books following this one so it makes me wonder how the story will continue. But it doesn’t make me feel like I must must must read the next book right this minute.

I felt like that with Angelfall too. A good stand-alone first book – leaves room for more but doesn’t feel incomplete on its own.

So I had a banana and it was brown. I mean really gooey soft brown. I remembered that I posted a banana bread recipe on here a little while ago, so I went back to look for it. For some reason, I thought the recipe called for 1 banana or maybe 1.5 bananas. Nope, it calls for 3 bananas.

You can see the recipe here: Banana Bread.

Because I’m crazy, I decided to third the recipe. Mike was like, “Just throw the banana away.” But I was determined!

Here’s my thirded and edited recipe (differs slightly from the original post linked above):

(Makes 4 normal-sized muffins.)

1 over-ripe banana
1 tbs butter
1/4 c sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch and a half salt
~1/3 tsp baking soda
1/2 c flour
handful chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350F.

Take the butter out of the fridge.

In a medium bowl, mash banana. Add butter and chop/mash/cut in as well as you can. You’ll end up with mostly gooey consistent banana with chunks of butter, oh well.
Add sugar, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. I literally have a measuring spoon that says “pinch” on it (1/16 tsp) that I normally use in my salt jar. And I only had a 1/4 tsp measuring spoon for baking soda, hence the approximation for baking soda. Stir.
Add flour, stir until consistent.

Spray muffin pan (or at least four of the wells) with Pam. Divvy out mixture (2/3 full). I added 6-8 chocolate chips in two of the muffins, as an experiment. Bake for 20 minutes.

They turned our pretty tasty! And I didn’t have the problem I had last time of banana bread overload. You eat one, it’s yum. You eat another one and you’re like, okay that’s enough banana for awhile. And look how perfect, there aren’t any leftovers you have to force yourself to finish before it goes bad.

I liked the plain ones better. Mike liked the chocolate chip ones slightly better (but he said not a LOT better).

It’s maybe a pain to wash an entire 12-well muffin pan for four muffins (well, I used to have a 6-well pan, so I guess that wouldn’t be as bad), but I more often have one banana left over and over-ripe than 3, so I’m glad I tried this and that it worked out.

[Edit]
I just realized something funny. I forgot the egg again! Although I would’ve skipped it anyway because how do you third an egg, I actually didn’t mean to do it. I just didn’t see it when I glanced over the list of ingredients in the original recipe. I also skipped the egg in the Cranberry Orange Scones I made last time, but it also turned out fine. ^^;

So I’m reading Angelfall by Susan Ee. Really had no idea what it was about, but it was highly recommended by an acquaintance who likes some of the same genres I like. I’m pretty sure I’ve never read it before, but the main characters are named Penryn and Raffe which sound very familiar. I still haven’t figured out where I’ve heard those names before.

Another surprise is that it’s set in the San Francisco Bay Area, or at least the beginning is. In the very first chapter they mention El Camino and Page Mill. In the second “Silicon Valley” is directly named. I’m on Chapter 28 currently and they main characters are heading toward the Financial District of San Francisco. So that tickles my fancy.

And a third thing that caught my eye:
“A group of angels called the Watchers were stationed on Earth to observe the humans. Over time, they got lonely and took human wives, knowing they shouldn’t. Their children were called Nephilim. And they were abominations. They fed on humans, drank their blood and terrorized the Earth. For that, the Watchers were condemned to the Pit until Judgment Day.”

Reminded me of “Nephilim Valour” from D3. =P

Anyway, I can see why it was recommended, and I’m enjoying it so far. At first I heard it was going to be a trilogy, and now I hear it’s going to be 5 books? So I’m not quite sure. And I don’t know the schedule for how quickly the next books will be released, or even if at the end of the book the author will have me begging for more. We’ll see.

If you’re interested, you can read the book for free at ePub: Susan Ee – Angelfall. Not sure if it was uploaded herself or illegally? According to the author’s blog, susanee.com, the book was being sold earlier this month on BN for less than 5$. The actual, literal, paperback book, not an eBook. If the following books are that inexpensive I may spring for them so as not to have to wait to read them, and also to support the author. =)

Carlos Fuentes sounded kind of familiar, so I picked up this book from Geisel Library. Turns out it’s a collection of short stories related to Cortés and the New World. Very interesting, and a clear central theme of the orange tree, which I appreciated.

Although the book is a work of fiction, after a glance at the Hernán Cortés Wikipedia page, a lot seems to be based on fact. I ended up learning a lot of history, which is always a nice bonus.

So, it’s long been a goal of mine to get through all the works of Shakespeare. One good thing about this is that it’s relatively easy to find copies of all his plays when you’re on a college campus. According to my Shelfari account, the last time I polished off a piece of Shakespeare was in December of 2010, when I read “Julius Caesar.” I remember I started going through the Histories, which I had never had interest in before, because they were always on the shelf, and probably because I’d already read most of the Comedies and Tragedies.

Apparently, “Coriolanus” was the last Tragedy that Shakespeare wrote. I guess I’m reading them out of order. It was actually kind of a depressing story (fitting, I guess, being a Tragedy). The thing is, as you’re reading, you don’t really feel that anything Coriolanus says justifies his image of an arrogant, prideful man. So then he just comes off as sort of misunderstood, and his motives don’t seem all that bad. And that just makes his death that much more tragic.

Yeah, he dies. I don’t think this counts as a spoiler since you know “Coriolanus” is a Tragedy, and you know that in all Shakespeare’s Tragedies, pretty much everyone dies at the end. If they get married then it’s a Comedy.

Anyhow, I have one other Shakespeare play on my reading list at the moment, and then I will have to go back to the library and check what else I still need to read.

Nutmeg starts out with Gabriel Angélico and an interesting situation – his heart is on the right side of his chest rather than the left. So you are led to believe that this will be the premise of the novel and that somehow, “nutmeg” will come into the story. While Gabriel Angélico does indeed share a nutmeg tree with his neighbor, the story ends up being broader than this one man. I don’t even feel that he ends up being the main character at all.

I have no idea what language this book was originally written in, but it felt like a Gabriel García Márquez novel. It talks about love in a roundabout way. It shows you the intimate, painful details of every day life. And it feels just the tiniest bit foreign, and yet completely familiar at the same time. Universal.