Top Ten Tuesday - Jenny's Top Ten Favorite Movies

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week we are taking a break from lists of books in favor of movies! I (Jenny) don't know about y'all, but it is nice sometimes to talk about something other than books on here - hence all my tea posts :). The topic for this week is Top Ten favorite movies and/or TV shows. I am a movie person myself, so that is what this list is going to be. I would love to hear your Top Ten; I am always looking for new stuff to watch!

1. Gladiator <featuring Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix> This. Movie. I will always watch it if it comes on t.v. If I am in the mood to watch a movie and don't know what I want to watch, I will end up watching this. The story is so, so good.

2. Braveheart <featuring Mel Gibson> This movie makes me wish I was Scottish so badly. The sacrifice, the uncompromising force of nature that is William Wallace, the humor- this is the total package as far as I am concerned.

3. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade <featuring Harrison Ford and Sean Connery> I love all of these movies (with the exception of The Crystal Skull) but this one is, hands down, the best. The only way it could be more perfect is if they had managed to work Short Round into the movie.

4. LOTR Trilogy  <featuring lots of popular actors> This one does not need an explanation.

5. The Last of the Mohicans  <featuring Daniel Day-Lewis> Movies set in the colonial period are normally not my favorite but the story of this movie is beautiful. When Major Heyward mistranslates Hawkeye's offer.... there are no words.

6. The Princess Bride <featuring Cary Elwes and Robin Wright> One of the all-time funniest and most quotable movies out there. Every time I watch it I catch some subtle joke or reference I had never noticed before.

7. 300 <featuring Gerard Butler> The special effects. The costumes. The storyline. The bad guy. This movie is as beautiful as it is defiantly sad.

8. Despicable Me <featuring Steve Carell and Jason Segel> I'm a huge fan of animated movies and this is one of the funniest. You cannot lose with Steve Carell as a lonely, quasi-Eastern European (?) super villain who adopts three little girls. Oh, and MINIONS.

9. The Goonies <featuring Sean Astin and Josh Brolin> Lesley Anne and I had the requisite group of friends to go on a treasure hunt but were, sadly, lacking the perfectly preserved pirate ship in which to find said treasure. This is another movie that I will always watch if it is on t.v. I hope Gladiator never comes on at the same time. I do not know what I would do.

10. King Arthur <featuring Clive Owen> The reason I love this movie is because it is about my area of interest- early medieval Britain. This one is more of a guilty pleasure. Most of my love is wrapped up in the time period and not the story, though I like it as well.

Jenny Reviews: Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

The Vitals

Moon Called by Patricia Briggs
Release Date: 31 January 2006
Page Count: 288
Genre: Paranormal Fantasy
Target Audience: Adult
Series: Mercy Thompson #1
Source and Format: Purchased; e-book

Summary (From Goodreads)
Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson is a talented Volkswagen mechanic living in the Tri-Cities area of Washington. She also happens to be a walker, a magical being with the power to shift into a coyote at will. Mercy's next-door neighbor is a werewolf. Her former boss is a gremlin. And she's fixing a bus for a vampire. This is the world of Mercy Thompson, one that looks a lot like ours but is populated by those things that go bump in the night. And Mercy's connection to those things is about to get her into some serious hot water...

Notes on Moon Called
(This review is actually going to focus on the series as a whole, rather than me reviewing all 8 books that are currently out. You're welcome.)

This series is so refreshing. I am a big fantasy fan and I enjoy paranormal fantasy, but it is so blasted hard to find stories that don't rely on sex and foul language and characters who think very highly of themselves to capture your attention. Patricia Briggs is a breath of fresh air. Mercy & Co. are down to earth and relatable. I mean, think about it for a minute- it's a bit difficult to make werewolves relatable while still retaining their other-ness. Mercy is a mechanic who does not really care what she looks like. She is comfortable in her own (and her coyote) skin. She does not like cursing and often gets onto the other characters when they slip up. Speaking of other characters, secondary characters are fabulous. As a matter of fact, the secondary characters are actually my favorite part of the later books in the series. If you do not want to be best friends with Warren after the first book then something is wrong in with your head. As I've said before, I am a big fan of solid, well-written characters and this series delivers.

The world building and conflicts are also well planned. Most of the otherworldly creatures coexist with humanity just fine, so Briggs had to focus on culture building rather than world building. She balances the line between too much information and not enough information nicely. There are no rambling info dumps in an effort to tell a lot about the culture in a short amount of time. You are also not left to wonder how the heck these creatures work. The conflict she lays out in the first book has consequences that reverberate through the other books, which gives the series a sense of continuity that is sometimes lacking in long running series. You don't feel like each book is a vignette in a character's life; the events of one book carry over into the other books, as our decisions and circumstances do in our own lives. Briggs has another series- Alpha & Omega- which is also set in the Mercy Thompson world and ties into the plot at large nicely. (I love it too, though the first book was not my fave. I'm glad I stuck with the series though!)

Chief Complaint

I have two complaints and both are relatively minor. The first is that the covers of the books are a bit misleading. It makes the heroine out to be a bit more... flamboyant than she really is. The Mercy in the books does not dress like the Mercy on the covers of the books and does not want to dress like that. The second complaint is that the series is starting to drag. Some of the conflict in the later books is a bit flat, though I believe she is setting up plot lines for later books. Don't get me wrong. I like all of the books, I just don't like them all equally well. Where (for me) Alpha & Omega starts out slow and gets better and better, Mercy Thompson starts out good, slows down, hits a high note with #5, and then slows back down again.

 
Memorable Quotes
“Love thy enemies, it says in the scriptures. My foster mother always added, "At the very least, you will be polite to them.”

“Happiness is German engineering, Italian cooking, and Belgian chocolate.”

“I have a degree in history, which is one of the reasons I’m an auto mechanic.”

Overall Diagnosis
                        

Get a Second Opinion

• Jess from Gone with the Words - "Mercy, a strong heroine. Adam, the alpha who completely intrigued me from the get go. The world building, which I’m guessing we’ve only seen a bit of, was totally magical. The plot was mysterious and exciting. The secondary characters had so much character, they completely cemented my feelings on how much I will enjoy the rest of this series." 
• Daniela at Lit Snit- "At times, I forgot I was reading fiction and caught myself thinking how cool it would be if the History Channel did a doc on these werewolves."

Newest Tea Obsession

I (Jenny) have discovered a new brand of tea and I am IN LOVE. I want all other tea drinkers to be in love too.

Allow me to introduce you to Paromi Tea. I myself am only familiar with two of their teas (at the moment) so it is, I admit, a new friend for me as well. I discovered it at Fresh Market in Athens one day. I was immediately drawn to the packaging:

Gorgeous, right? They are packaged in beautiful gray glass jars. You know something is good if it is packaged in glass. Plastic is for the every day tea; glass indicates that this tea is something special. Of course I had to pick up a jar to study the label more closely. The jar is smooth and cool and feels lovely in your hand. These people know how to draw you in without even having tasted the tea! You just want to own tea that comes packaged in these special jars.

Moving on. The next step to falling in love with these teas was this little beauty on the lid:

It might be a little hard to see in the picture, but the top says "Mug-Size Tea Sachets". Just think on that for a sec. These sachets are potent enough for a mug of tea, not just a cup! I don't know about y'all, but that is something special. There are tons of times when I want a huge cup of tea, not just the dainty Victorian sized cup. Often that means that my tea is a little more diluted than I would like, but I suffer through. No need to suffer now! Paromi has solved that problem.

The final step to falling in love was the taste of the tea itself. The first one I bought was the Chamomile Lavender. I was out of chamomile tea and decided to be good and buy only what I needed. When I opened the tea at home I was blown away by the smell alone. I could have left the jar open and used it as potpourri in my kitchen. This tea is so smooth. The chamomile and lavender pair nicely to create a tea that does not need any sugar added. Sometimes chamomile tastes overwhelmingly of apples, but not this chamomile. The lavender tempers it so it is more well-balanced.

The second one I bought was the Cinnamon Chai. As you all know, I am a huge fan of chai. Most chais already have cinnamon in them, but you cannot taste it like you taste it here. Cinnamon can be too spicy if it is not tempered with other flavors and this tea does that beautifully. It is not made with black tea, as is most common in chai, but with African rooibos, which helps to calm the spiciness of the cinnamon. This tea is, hands down, my new favorite chai (from the store).

(Cup vs. Mug)

This tea is on the pricy side- about $10 per jar, but I cannot emphasize enough how much it is worth it. You are really getting your money's worth because of the quality of the ingredients and the fact that you can get at least 2 cups from each sachet, depending on how robust you like your tea. I hope you will branch out and try these wonderful teas. If you live near me, contact me and I will get you a sachet so you can try it before buying it. I can promise that you won't be sorry!

Baby You're So Classic

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is your Top Ten Favorite Classics or Top Ten Classics You Want to Read. Basically I (Lesley Anne) had to jump up and down and do a little happy dance when I saw this topic. I don't know what it is, but classics get me so fired up about reading! I'll be the first to say I didn't always feel this way about classics, though, and I know they aren't all fun and games. I definitely get that. I mentioned this exact struggle yesterday when I talked about my Jane Austen goal and Mansfield Park. But classics are really the building blocks for the books we enjoy today, and they deserve to be read! So here are the top ten classics Jenny and I hope to tackle next.  

1. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell | 2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy | 3. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo | 4. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett | 5. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas | 6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë | 7. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier | 8. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | 9. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray | 10. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett

1. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer | 2. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 3. Ulysses by James Joyce | 4. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway | 5. 1984 by George Orwell | 6. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton | 7. Paradise Lost by John Milton | 8. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck | 9. The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan | 10. The Mabinogion by Unknown

If you've read any of the above, let us know where you think we should start! And tell us: Which classics are your favorites, or which classics do you hope to read soon?