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’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.

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.

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.

I actually came home last night, but I was too tired to even check my e-mail (although my sister and I stayed up until 3 in the morning playing video games that we bought at a sale in New York). As expected, I got very little internet access while I was in the US. The hotel that we stayed two nights in New Jersey, as well as the one in Pennsylvania where we stayed for our last night had Wi-Fi, but the condo that we spent six nights in Virginia did not. My dad payed 20$ to get internet on his laptop, and while my sister and I were allowed use it, it was only late at night for an hour or so before we went to bed.

I cannot begin to describe the amount of fun that I had during this trip, especially while were in New York City. I have been dying to see Manhattan since I was a kid, and even if the rest of the trip had been lousy, I would have still said I had a great time because of that day and a half I spent in the city. Although, to be honest, we didn’t see very much. There are dozens of things that I wanted to see in New York, but my father had warned me that we were just making a stopover, so I shouldn’t expect too much out of it. We spent a lot of time in Times Square, the Theater District, Central Park,  as well as Bryant Park. We also spent a couple of hours touring the Metropolitan Museum of Art, although it wasn’t nearly enough! I could have spent all day in there looking at the art (not to mention that it was boiling hot outside, and the museums were nicely air conditioned!). We mostly walked around the city taking in the atmosphere and passing by places likes Rockefeller Center and Radio City Musical Hall. Strangely enough, we did not see the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty, since we were pressed for time. Oh well, next time!

The highlight of our time in the city was definitely my sister and I’s birthday present - a Broadway Show. We originally planned to see Wicked but had difficulty buying tickets in advance (they were charging us 40$ to ship them to Canada! Ridiculous!). Instead, we stopped by the In the Heights box office early in the morning and got two tickets that were in the middle orchestra. There aren’t enough words to describe how spectacular our seats were. And the show was absolutely amazing – it’s one of my favorites, and I was thrilled to see it. My sister was hesitant about it, but she downloaded the soundtrack as soon as we got home yesterday. And she bought a shirt with Corbin Bleu on the front.

After our time in New York, we spent the next six days in Williamsburg, Virginia. We spent most of our time relaxing. We did some shopping at the outlet malls and toured Colonial Williamsburg. I have to admit that I was pretty disappointed with that part of the city, especially since they were chargint 40$ a person to see inside the buildings. We have a similar area in Canada called Upper Canada Village, which is much more impressive to see as well as much cheaper! We also spent a couple of days at Virginia Beach, which was my favorite part of our stay in the state. We got some perfect beach weather, as well some great waves! It had been awhile since I’d been swimming in the ocean, so I was really pleased. I’m used to the ocean in Greece which is really placid, so it was fun to be able to run around  in the waves!

On our way back to Montreal we decided to spend a day in Washington, DC. I had been there before with my mother, stepfather, and my sister, so most of what I saw was repeats on a couple of years ago. We toured the Air and Space Museum, as well as the National Mall. My sister and I had already seen the Lincoln, Korean War and Vietnam Memorials so we decided not to make the long walk and hang around the shady parts of the Washington Monument because of the intense heat. I really wanted to see the National Art Museum, the National Crime Museum and the International Spy Museum, but sadly, we didn’t have enough time.

Anyways, I haven’t uploaded any photos yet to my computer because I’m lazy, but I will definitely try and post some pictures up tomorrow! I don’t have many photos of our time in Virginia and DC, but I do have some great photos of New York (especially Times Square).

Anyways, in about six hours my parents, my siblings and I will be getting an early start on the day so that we can make the seven hour drive to New York City. We are most likely going to get there around 2 in the afternoon, after which we are planning to do some sightseeing around the city. We’re also planning to get a full day’s worth of touristy things on Friday, after which my sister and I will be most likely heading off to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked. I have never been to New York City before even though it has been a dream since I was a little kid, so I am really looking forward to this trip. I have made a long list of places that I want to see, of which I would be satisfied if I saw half.

Then, on Saturday, we are going to be heading off to Virginia for about a week, in which we have booked a condo-hotel, which is equipped with two bedrooms and a mini kitchen. Most of our time there is going to be spent relaxing, but we’re hoping to find things to do. I’ve also been told there’s a large outlet mall near our hotel, so I’ve brought plenty of money! We might also be passing by Washington D.C. on the way back home. I’ve already been there, but my father hasn’t, although I don’t mind seeing the city again.

I am bringing my laptop with me to keep me occupied during the long car rides, but I probably won’t update this blog very often within the next couple of weeks (if I do, it’ll be at night). Now, it’s time for me to get some sleep because I have a long day ahead of me tomorrow!

Rating: 7.5/10

Tagline: With the right song and dance, you can get away with murder.

Summary: Chicago centers on Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart, two criminals-of-passion who find themselves awaiting their trials for murder in 1920s Chicago. Velma, a vaudevillian, and Roxie, a housewife with aspirations of having the same profession, fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows.

Stars: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Renée Zellweger, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly, Christine Baranski, Lucy Liu, Taye Diggs, Colm Feore

It’s been awhile since I’ve reviewed a movie, well…because it’s been quite awhile since I’ve actually seen a movie. I watched two yesterday, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape ? (starring Johnny Depp and Leonardo Dicaprio), and Chicago. I’m a huge fan of musicals and had been dying to see this as well as Moulin Rouge! (which is still overdue) for a long time.

I have to admit that it was quite a fun movie – Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones are both great actresses and I really enjoyed their performances. The characters are not sympathetic at all, but their spiteful and cruel demeanors are fun to watch. Richard Gere was also good as the charismatic Billy Flynn, who somehow manages to twist everything to suit his defendant’s case. All in all, I enjoyed the dialogue and the storyline, as well as the characters of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, and their rivalry. Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu also had small little cameos, which I enjoyed.

What I really loved – not surprisingly enough – was the choreography and the soundtrack. My favorite song is definitely We Both Reached for the Gun. I reminded the recording at least five times to watch that number. I also really loved Cell Block Tango, especially the fierce looks on the actresses’ faces, as well as Roxie. I was really impressed with the two lead actresses’ voices, especially Renee, who had never had professional training prior to filming this movie.

All in all, if you’re a fan of musicals, you should enjoy this movie. If you’re not, I would probably stay away from it, since the songs are what really make it. After this movie, I would curious to see how similar the stage version is.

Have you seen Chicago? What are you thoughts?