Let’s face it: I like college-based shows. Maybe because I’m in college and I enjoy a satirical outtake on that sort of life. Greek had finished a while ago and I felt like I needed to watch a show with a similar premise.

So, I decided to watch Community.

The show revolves around the (mis)adventures of a Spanish study group from Greendale Community College. In the beginning, this group is formed out of a shameful plan. You see, Jeff, a has-been lawyer who cheated his way to the top, wants to sleep with Britta from his Spanish class. He learns that she is afraid of flunking tomorrow’s test and so, he tells her of his non-existent study group.

Britta agrees to meet Jeff later in the library. However, she invites Abed – who, in turn, invites other people to join them – and thus, the Study Group is formed. The pilot episode does a great job of introducing the characters and we get a glimpse of who they really are. The characters are one of the best things about Community and the show features a wide range of them. And, unlike most of other shows where there’s an array of wildly different people, Community does it right.

Jeff is a former lawyer and used to getting his way. Britta is an idealist hippie. Shirley is the middle aged mother of two who just got divorced. Abed is a strange, strange person and he is obsessed with TV and movies. Troy is a dumb jock who lost his scholarship to a better college, Pierce a racist old man and Annie an insecure young girl who had a pill addiction and dropped out of high school. The characters are, however, much more than this. They’re all three-dimensional, their relationships with each other are well-built and their quirks funny. There is never a time in which they are out of character and you have to give the writers credit for making such a diverse, wacky cast so consistent.

There are times in which Community is borderline genius. There are times in which it’s just plain funny. Also, the variety of the cast in every sense (at one point, we learn that there are not two people in the study group who share the same religion) is endearing and it shows that friendship has nothing to do with race or beliefs.

Community does a lot of pop-culture references and perhaps that’s why it’s so easy to identify with it. Whether it be movies or TV or comics, they’re constantly being referenced, and always in funny, smart ways. I don’t think there’s a show out there who does pop-culture referencing as well as Community.

But to me, it’s the characters that make the show. They’re constantly involved in shenanigans, whether it be building a blanket fort, watching Kickpuncher, setting up a chicken-fingers mafia ring or a Día de los Muertos party, there’s always something funny happening, and the characters’ dealing with the events make everything even better. There is even an episode that’s shot entirely in clay-motion (Abed has a supposed meltdown and sees everything that way) and it’s genius.

Another great thing about Community are the short scenes at the end of each episode—most of them featuring Troy and Abed and their budding friendship. And they’re funny, like the rest of the show and absolutely not to miss.

So, Community. It’s a show that is funny, smart and has one of the most talented casts ever. It’s a show about friendship and all the good and bad things that happen when you have such a different group of crazy people together. Give it a chance and you’ll soon be adding it to your list of favorite TV series. I know I have.

How do you judge a really good book? Is it the way it resonates with you and changes you in some way come the last word on the final page? Is it the way the world falls away while you’re reading it and nothing can stop you from turning the pages? Is it when you lovingly add it to the pile of books you WILL reread until the book falls apart?

For me Throne of Glass is all of the above and more. My hubby was incredibly embarrassed when I refused to leave the book at home and was reading while we were grocery shopping. (Sorry to the people I accidentally ran into in the store that night.)

I was reading the uncorrected proof of this epically engaging tale of strength, so the cover art isn’t the finished version, but it is pretty close. On the proof, we have an icy blue backdrop and the shadow of Celaena stalking toward us. On the finished paperback book we have the artist’s rendering of Celaena in some seriously awesome clothes and deadly looking weapons out the wazoo.

I’ll grab the blurb from goodreads.com, so I don’t give away anything the publishers don’t want you to know until you pick up the book… and you know, I think you should.

Celaena Sardothien is a daredevil assassin with unrivalled fighting skills. After a year’s hard labour in the salt mines of the kingdom of Adarlan, Celaena is offered her freedom on one condition—she must fight as handsome Prince Dorian’s champion in a contest sponsored by the king, facing the deadliest thieves and assassins in the land in a series of set-piece battles in the country’s stunning glass palace. But there is more at stake than even her life—for Celaena is destined for a remarkable future…

I was in awe of the world building Sarah has worked so hard on; I was enchanted with thoughts of entire castles made from glass and the gentle way the seasons turned. The clock tower sounds rather foreboding, and who doesn’t love the thought of exploring a long forgotten part of a castle?

The characters were well developed and I think Celeana will become one of the best heroines of 2012.

The theme of the book is strength. You don’t have to have rippling muscles to be the strongest person. There is strength of morals, strength of will, courage is a type of strength and so is making the difficult decisions even if they go against every fiber of your being. All Celaena wants is her freedom, but is she strong enough?

If you like Jaqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, Rowena Cory Daniell’s King Rowland’s Kin and the T’en series, then you will seriously love this book.  I recommend reading it while the weather is cooler so you feel even more a part of the story, not that you won’t get sucked in even in the repressive heat of summer.

This will definitely be on my top 5 list of best books of the year.

Will it make your top 5?

http://sarahjmaas.com/

http://sjmaas.livejournal.com/

Paperback, 404 pages

Expected publication: August 2nd 2012 by Bloomsbury

ISBN 140883233X (ISBN13: 9781408832332)

You probably see her on daytime TV and love her or not, she has to be one of the funniest people on the planet… Today we’ll go squinty eyed and look at Ellen.

Ellen Lee DeGeneres was born in New Orleans Louisiana on January 26 1958. She found the best way to get through a fear of public speaking was to use humor to get her audience to enjoy themselves.

At 23 she started doing stand-up comedy at a local coffee house until Jay Leno pointed Johnny Carson in her direction, and she was booked to appear on the Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson. That one performance led to many other doors opening for her, and she quickly bcame a household name.

For the woman who didn’t study to be a veterinarian because she ‘wasn’t book smart’, Ellen was still on the rise, landing a job in 1994 on a sitcom called These Friends of Mine, later to be renamed Ellen.

1997 was a HUGE year for American talk show and Sitcom history, with Ellen and her sitcom character becoming the first openly gay lead character on TV, both in their private and make believe lives. For those who lived in Alabama, it was an ABC executive who decided the controversy far outweighed the value of showing the episode where Ellen’s character came out of the closet. Continuing on with the gay themes brought on a storm of criticism. The show was axed in 1998.

Bring on the new millennium and 2001 saw CBS pick up Ellen, in a new sitcom, aptly named The Ellen Show. Unfortunately it didn’t garner the ratings she needed to make it a runaway hit. It was axed after one season.

The Ellen DeGeneres Show began airing in 2003, in competition to plenty of other celebrities having their own talk shows. Her wit, individuality and kindness has led to this show running strong now for almost a decade.

And just in case you’ve lived under a rock for the last 10 years, Ellen was the voice for the ditzy fish Dori in the Disney/ Pixar film Finding Nemo in 2003. She was also the voice of the prologue dog in the 1998 20th Century Fox film, Dr. Dolittle.

Outside TV and movies, Ellen is an advocate for many wonderful charities and causes; it amazes me she has any private time. She’s a spokesperson against animal cruelty.  Gentle Barn; they rescue and rehabilitate abused farm animals, is a commonly mentioned organization on her show. She’s a proactive supporter of anti-bullying through her website and the Untied Against Bullying movement, also it goes without saying she’s an ambassador for Gay Rights.

Find out more from the links below, and in the words that will forever be this magnificent woman’s legacy, “Be Kind To One Another.”

Seriously…I’m Kidding by Ellen DeGeneres

Hardcover, 241 pages

Published October 4th 2011 by Grand Central Publishing ISBN 0446585025 (ISBN13: 9780446585026) ***There are other books, but we’re running out of room here***

http://www.biography.com/people/ellen-degeneres-9542420

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_DeGeneres

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/ellens_life/ellens_organizations/ellens_pet_initiative/

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/resources/united_against_bullying/

http://gentlebarn.com/page.php?id=Emergency%20Ohio%20Dog%20Rescue

Our beloved staffie Mandy Wrangles got to meet Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, at a bookseller breakfast this week and you can read a full account of it over at Marianne’s Tara Sharp website. However, we want to especially share with all our baby bats the beautiful Burn Bright book Mandy made as a gift for Charlaine.

How many different ways can we say AMAZING!

What if you knew exactly when you would die?

It seems I’ve lucked in with book covers in my reading choices. In my previous review, I commented on how Jodi Meadows’s Incarnate had a beautiful cover. Well, it’s the same for Lauren DeStafano’s Wither. It has a gorgeous cover that perfectly matches the book.

But let’s get on with the review, shall we?

Wither is yet another dystopian Young Adult book set in US. Sometime in the future, a generation of perfect human beings—strong people without diseases—has been genetically engineered by scientists. However, once that generation reproduced, the people realized there was a big price for such perfection: their offspring had a virus that invariably caused them to die young. Women can only reach the age of twenty, while men can get to twenty five.

Sixteen-year-old Rhine lived in New York until one day, when she gets captured and sold to a 21-year-old House Governor to be his wife in a polygamous marriage. Sold along with her is 19-year-old Jenna, who is quiet and graceful, and 13-year-old Cecily, who seems to believe she’s the luckiest girl alive for having found a rich husband. But Rhine, unlike the other two brides, doesn’t want to be in captivity. She wants to escape the beautiful mansion where she’s been kept prisoner (albeit with every luxury available) and find her twin brother Rowan.

Rhine’s character is finely crafted in almost every aspect and you do root for her to escape. While at first, you hate Linden, as Rhine gets to know him, he slowly creeps into your heart as he did with Rhine. Jenna is beautiful and reserved and hides a very dark past and Gabriel is a sweet, caring boy. Even Linden’s father Vaughn, the villain of the book, is well thought-out in his cruelty and you do understand why he does the experiments he does. The only character I did not care about was Cecily, who’s an annoyingly bratty 13-year-old with a big fondness for playing house.

I have to admit, I found the premise to be quite captivating, especially the part where people know their time is ticking away. There’s an urgency to everything Rhine does, all because she knows she only has four years left to live. Of course, there are people trying to find an antidote through some grueling methods and while they’re depicted as awful, both the character of Rhine and the reader understand the motive behind such cruelty: despair. I don’t know if it was Lauren’s intention or not, but despair seems to be the main focus of this book: Rhine’s despair to escape, the people’s despair to find a cure and the despair felt when a girl is close to twenty.

I found the weakest part of the book to be the romance. Rhine is being held captive and she resents her husband Linden for it, but she soon realizes things are not what they seem and begins falling a little bit in love with him. Then, there’s Gabriel, one of the house’s many attendants, for whom Rhine risks a lot despite not knowing him very well. Both relationships are not very deep and I found them to be somewhat awkwardly handled. It’s a shame, because it’s what keeps this book from being stellar instead of merely good.

Lauren’s writing is very competent and she manages to capture the struggle that goes on in Rhine’s head, well—should she just give up and live the remnants of her life away from her brother in such a lascivious place or should she run and be free? Often, the prose has a creepy quality and it fitted perfectly with the book’s theme.

Overall, Wither is a capable debut whose premise is intriguing, with an aura of anguish, and an ending that will make you want to read the sequels.

Paperback: 320 pages

Publisher: Harper Voyager (4 Aug 2011)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0007425473