Title:

Author: Daphne du Maurier

Published: 1938

Summary: The story concerns a woman who marries an English nobleman and returns with him to Manderley, his country estate. There, she finds herself haunted by reminders of his first wife, Rebecca, who died in a boating accident less than a year earlier. In this case, the haunting is psychological, not physical: Rebecca does not appear as a ghost, but her spirit affects nearly everything that takes place at Manderley. The narrator, whose name is never divulged, is left with a growing sense of distrust toward those who loved Rebecca, wondering just how much they resent her for taking Rebecca’s place. In the final chapters, the book turns into a detective story, as the principal characters try to reveal or conceal what really happened on the night Rebecca died.

Rating: 8.5/10

I have to admit – I’m always hesitant before I read books that have been dubbed classics. Some of them, like Jane Eyre, prove to be rather disappointing, while others, such as 1984 or Anna Karenina live up to their hype. Thankfully, Rebecca belongs to the latter category.

I won’t get into too much detail regarding the plot as there might be someone who stumbles across this with the intention of reading this book in the future. The title refers to the first wife of Mr. Maxime de Winter, whom the narrator and heroine of the novel meets and marries during the story.  While the narrator is timid and introverted, Rebecca is notorious for having been the life of the party, a woman who was loved by all. Her struggle with this feeling of inferiority is only heightened by the fact that her name is never given, despite the fact that the story is told in the first person perspective.

This doesn’t happen very often for me, but I truly did not see the ending coming. It was obvious from the first few chapters of the book the nature in which Rebecca died, but the details surrounding her death were quite a surprise to me. As was Maxime’s confession his wife about the true nature of his feelings regarding Rebecca.

All in all, this book was a really interesting read, with some great characters. Little by little, the reader discovers the mystery and secrets surrounding Manderley, as well as the reality about the nature of the first Mrs. De Winter and the night that she met her end.

I’ve included music videos with each song – I tried to find official music videos, and managed to do so with all of them except for Sia, since I wanted to use a video that included the song, “Breathe Me”, since it’s my one of my absolute favorite songs.

7. Sia

6. Fiona Apple

5. Lily Allen

4. Kate Nash

3. Florence + the Machine

2. A Fine Frenzy

1. The Hush Sound

I’d love to know what your favorite colors are, and why.

I’m one of those social network whores.  Like most people, I created a MySpace account back when it was still popular, although I never used the thing (I mostly just friended some celebrities here and there). One of my other accounts that went really underused was my LJ account, which I posted on maybe once or twice every couple of months. Looking  back, I realized that within the last few years I mostly used it to rant about the worst things in my life or make a sporadic “Hey, I’m finally going to use this thing!” post. I was never the type to write about my feelings, hoping that other people would read them.

Our pool’s heater broke down last week, and it rained so much that the pool’s water dipped down to 70 degrees. Since I’m not fond of feeling like an ice cube, I’ve been spending a lot of time on the internet, during which I recently discovered my old LJ account. I found out that there are some pretty nifty things that I didn’t know about on livejournal, which can be pretty fun and great time-wasters. They’re also fantastic ways to meet new people.

Land Communities

As far as I know, the first one of these things was called whedonland. These are basically interactive communities in which you apply to be a part of a certain team and compete with others to earn points. Different challenges could involve graphic making, trivia, or puzzles. I’m currently a member of crimeland for Criminal Minds (supporting Team JJ), Bonesland (supporting Team Squint), as well lost_land, in which I’m part of Team Survivors. I’ve also sent applications for gleeverse and cw_land, which I’m currently waiting on. They’re insanely addictive.

Icon Contests

I’ve never really considered myself that talented when it comes to making graphics, especially icons (my argument: they’re so small, how the heck do you work with them?), but I recently came across some lovely tutorials which have helped me improve tenfold. I’ve entered a bunch of challenges this week for different fandoms like Criminal Minds, Glee, and Lost, and have actually won a bunch of awards at a few that I’ve entered. They’re pretty fun, and a great way to exercise your creative side. These are some examples of some of my entries (the one on the far right actually won first place).

Hogwarts is Home

This is for all you Harry Potter fans with Livejournal accounts. There’s this fantastic, fantastic community on livejournal called hogwartsishome, where you send in an application to be sorted into one of the four houses (other members judge what house you should be sorted in by reading your application). Once you’re sorted, you’re added to that house’s common room, and voila! You’re free to join the many, many  communities that HIH has to offer ranging from the Daily Prophet, Saint Mungos, The Quibbler, etc. They even have “Quidditch” matches (each house has their own locker room, haha) and icon challenges. It’s pretty much the biggest and most interactive HP community there is, with hundreds, if not thousands of active members. My application is currently going through, but it looks like I’m going to be sorted Hufflepuff house soon.

And that’s it. If you guys want, you’re free to friend me on LJ. I’m not too abundant with personal posts, but I use it mostly to post fanfiction and graphics.

If I were a colour, I’d be red.

If I were a dessert, I’d be cookie dough.

If I were a season, I’d be summer.

If I were a time of day, I’d be midnight.

If I were a direction, I’d be south.

If I were a tree, I’d be a willow.

If I were a flower, I’d be a lily.

If I were a pair of shoes, I’d be ballet flats.

If I were a city, I’d be New York.

If I were a fruit, I’d be an apple.

If I were a animal, I’d be a black cat.

If I were a musical instrument, I’d be a piano.

If I were a food, I’d be a peanut butter and banana sandwich.

If I were a song, I’d be “Breathe Me” by Sia.

If I were a place, I’d be underwater.

If I were a flavour, I’d be sour.

If I were a sound, I’d be waves.

If I were an emotion, I’d be satisfied.

Now, onto the tagging! I’m going to tag Abby, Meg, Brandi, Maria Celina and Carolynne.

As I return to school on August 25th, yesterday marked the first day of my three weeks left of vacation. Honestly, just yesterday I was thrilled at the fact that I had nearly three months to do whatever I wanted, and yet now I’m realizing that summer’s end is rapidly approaching.

I think this is the case with most people, but I start off every summer vacation with this to-do list, things that I hope to accomplish with the newly-found abundance of free time. Things that I’ve said during the year that I would get to in the summer. Usually, by the time August rolls around, I realize that I haven’t done more than 10 or 20 percent of the things that I planned on doing. This summer wasn’t any different, although I had fewer expectations of myself. I have a really busy semester in terms of classes and extra-curricular activities coming up, as well as college applications, so I wanted to take this summer to rest and enjoy the summer.

I don’t plan on not doing this for the rest of the summer, although there are a few little things that I want to get out of the way before I go back to school. First off, I need to transfer all of my leftover files from my desktop to my laptop, since it’s the only computer I use anymore, as well as back up all of my information in the process. I’ve had two scares where I almost lost all my data, but I still haven’t learned it seems. I’ve also been preparing myself for the SATs, which I plan to take in October – I bought the official collegeboard handbook and have been studying and taking practice tests, as well as brushing up on the Latin that I started studying last semester so I could continue next semester. As well as a dozen of other little things that need to be done.

One thing I usually do near the end of a break is writing. I spend my semester writing exams, study notes and term papers, so I never get the chance to do as much creative writing as I would like to. I have a dozen plot bunnies for fanfiction stories running through my head, and I’m finally starting to put them to paper (or Microsoft Word, to be exact).

So, even though there is technically three weeks left of summer, I am officially in that mode where I am tying up loose ends, preparing for back to school shopping, and window shopping for fall clothes, especially outerwear. We’ve been having torrential rains the last few days, which has only increased my dampened spirits regarding summer ending.  Although winter is the only season that I really dislike because of the Canadian cold, summer is my favorite. I love the sunshine, being able to wear tanktops, and being able to lie beside the pool reading a book. We only get three months or so of nice weather in a year, and it’s always a shame when it comes to an end.

I really love Washington, although I didn’t think much of it before I visited it for the first time. It’s a beautiful city, with so much to see, and I would love to go back to do a proper visit, where I can finally visit the National Museum of American History, the National Gallery of Art, as well as the National Crime Museum, and the International Museum of Espionage, among other things. It’s a fantastic city, especially for tourists!

The Smithsonian Castle.

The National Museum of American History.

Inside the National Air and Space Museum.

First stop: The box office for our Broadway Show.This is the poster found outside.

The M&Ms store. We went in mostly for the air conditioning.

My brother got to meet "Elmo" - other characters at the same corner were Spongebob and Minnie Mouse, as well as a Statue of Liberty.

Taking a stroll through Central Park.

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The Met, where I took most of the rest of my pictures.

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The highlight of the evening was definitely the walk through Times Square. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a street corner that it that illuminated. It looked just like on tv, with the Broadway and television ads lighting up the whole street.

This was a very cool advertisement from Forever 21. Three of four girls would take turns on screen taking "photos" of the crowd, which they would then shake a few times and hold up to the crowd to see. There was a huge group of tourists huddled in the street taking pictures and watching, getting all excited every time they saw themselves in the photo.

The Broadway show that my sister and I ended up seeing for our birthdays. Amazing!

Stopped off at Gershwin Theater to see where Wicked is performed. I'm really hoping I get to see it soon.

This is the CBS merchandise store, which I took a look at the next day when they were open. They had some really cute t-shirts, like the Big Bang Theory and How I Met Your Mother ones in this photo. I was looking for some Criminal Minds merchandise, but unfortunately all they had was CSI.

We spent a lot of time walking around the Theater District, looking at what shows were playing.

We actually went into this store the next day. It was supposedly for my brother to find some toys (which he did), but my sister and I ended up walking out with M&M pillows.

Rockefeller Center. We didn't have time to go in, unfortunately.

Bryant Park

We stopped off at Bryant Park to rest and to let my brother run around and burn some energy. But, of course, as soon as I'd whip out my camera he'd run sit down and look all innocent. He's not even two and he already poses for the camera.