Everyone who is at the ALA conference is about to miss the earthquake story I am about to tell and I bet they are so jealous right now!

HAR HAR HAR!

So guess what Internet! Most of you know this because I can’t shut up about it everywhere, but last Wednesday there was an EARTHQUAKE in CANADA and I FELT IT.

Here is my story:

I woke up and I was in my bed and then my bed started shaking–like little vibratey shakes–and I thought two stupid things 1) that a big truck had gone by outside or 2) it was me that was shaking (I DON’T KNOW) and then it stopped and then I went on Twitter and everyone was talking about this earthquake in Ontario and I was like oh how interesting and then I got up and then I was like

OH MY GOD THAT WAS IT!

And then I told my dad about it but because he was on the road when it happened and it hadn’t hit the news yet HE DID NOT BELIEVE ME but then my brother-in-law also experienced the same thing at the exact same time AND IT WAS TRUE THAT I FELT THE EARTH QUAKE and I have always wanted to experience an incredibly mild, non-destructive earthquake so there you have it. That is my story and I think it is a pretty great story, personally.

In other news, Fall For Anything is available most places online for pre-order! Active pre-order links are on the book’s page if you’re into that sort of thing. I will be getting copyedits for it sometime next week. I have bought myself a pack of these for the task:

They should serve me well.

While I wait for copyedits, I have been writing (while listening to a lot of Fiona Apple–God, she is so great) and reading this book:

PROBABLY you have heard of Battle Royale, but if you haven’t, here is the summary (from GoodReads): “As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one “winner” remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television. A Japanese pulp classic available in English for the first time, Battle Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today’s dog-eat-dog world.”

I actually bought this book and started it last year, but for some reason couldn’t get into it. I think I tried reading it outside of a reading binge (I am a binge-reader) and that is why. So I decided to give it a go again because I am dying to see the movie–and refuse to until I have read the book–and OH MY GOD YOU GUYS IT IS SO GOOD! I am only about 250 pages in (it’s like 600 pages) and it is just deliciously thrilling and hard to put down and SO VIOLENT and what can I say, I am enjoying the violence very much! There is a girl character in the Program with a SICKLE and she is A RUTHLESS KILLING MACHINE and she is awesome and she would totally kill me ASAP if we were in the program together but oh well.

In other news I watched Doppelganger, another Kiyoshi Kurosawa film and I LOVED IT. I think it displaced Retribution as my second favourite of his (Pulse is always in first place), but I’m not sure. I just can’t say enough good things about Kurosawa’s films. I want to write books like he makes movies. JUST LIKE THIS:

And now you know my secret. I screencap movies and save them to my inspiration folder. I just love how he is so visually DIRECT and how he uses distance and aaah, he is so my favourite. It’s that he doesn’t feel the need to overcompensate with fancy camera tricks–he just presents something that feels incredibly real and so supported by the stories he’s telling.

I look for that in books too; books that just say it! No hiding behind prose, those ~twenty dollar words~. Just saying it. JUST SAY IT! That’s what I like. And that’s what I like about his movies. He just says it. Anyway, all that’s left for me to see is Charisma and that’s on its way to me in the mail now. Dear Internet, tell someone to distribute Loft so I can watch that too. I am so sad Charisma will be my last Kurosawa film until more are released in North America. I guess I’ll watch the ones I have over and over again until this situation changes. Sigh.

ANYWAY.

Now I am going to get back to reading Battle Royale. I hope everyone is having an amazing weekend! As you can see, I am having quite an amazing weekend myself, what with the reading and the movie-watching and the earthquake that led up to both. My weekend is WAY more amazing and exciting than the weekend everyone at the ALA conference is having, I AM SURE.

ALSO did I tell you there was an earthquake in Canada and I felt it.

I DID.