1. Time’s 100 Best Books of All Time

    October 4, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Nerd Topics, Writing by Kristina Horner

    I’ve had this list saved on a page in Evernote for months; when I realized I didn’t have any ideas for today’s blog post, it seemed like just the thing to do. What are we doing exactly? We are embarrassing ourselves with how not well read we are. This is Time’s 100 Best Books of All Time. The list was compiled by Time magazine’s critics Lev Grossman and Richard Lacayo, and I’m about to show you how many I’ve actually read cover to cover.

    The Adventures of Augie March
    All the King’s Men
    American Pastoral
    An American Tragedy
    Animal Farm
    Appointment in Samarra
    Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret 
    The Assistant
    At Swim-Two-Birds
    Atonement
    Beloved
    The Berlin Stories
    The Big Sleep
    The Blind Assassin
    Blood Meridian
    Brideshead Revisited
    The Bridge of San Luis Rey 
    Call It Sleep
    Catch-22
    The Catcher in the Rye
    A Clockwork Orange
    The Confessions of Nat Turner
    The Corrections
    The Crying of Lot 49
    A Dance to the Music of Time
    The Day of the Locust
    Death Comes for the Archbishop
    A Death in the Family
    The Death of the Heart
    Deliverance
    Dog Soldiers
    Falconer
    The French Lieutenant’s Woman
    The Golden Notebook
    Go Tell it on the Mountain
    Gone with the Wind
    The Grapes of Wrath
    Gravity’s Rainbow
    The Great Gatsby
    A Handful of Dust
    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
    The Heart of the Matter
    Herzog
    Housekeeping
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    I, Claudius
    Infinite Jest
    Invisible Man
    Light in August
    The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
    Lolita
    Lord of the Flies
    The Lord of the Rings
    The Moviegoer
    Loving
    Lucky Jim
    The Man Who Loved Children
    Midnight’s Children
    Money
    Mrs. Dalloway
    Naked Lunch
    Native Son
    Neuromancer
    Never Let Me Go
    1984
    On the Road
    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    The Painted Bird
    Pale Fire
    A Passage to India
    Play It As It Lays
    Portnoy’s Complaint
    Possession
    The Power and the Glory
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
    Rabbit, Run
    Ragtime
    The Recognitions
    Red Harvest
    Revolutionary Road
    The Sheltering Sky
    Slaughterhouse Five
    Snow Crash
    The Sot-Weed Factor
    The Sound and the Fury
    The Sportswriter
    The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
    The Sun Also Rises
    Their Eyes Were Watching God
    Things Fall Apart
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    To the Lighthouse
    Tropic of Cancer
    Ubik
    Under the Net
    Under the Volcano
    Watchmen
    White Noise
    White Teeth
    Wide Sargasso Sea

    So… 10 out of 100. That’s terrible. And to be perfectly honest, most of those were books I read for school. There were a few titles I am so ashamed I haven’t read (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Slaughterhouse Five, A Clockwork Orange, 1984) that I almost didn’t post this list, but I figured it would be a good catalyst for discussion. So here is my literary shame. Also, I didn’t count the ones I have only seen the movie of (Lord of the Rings, Never Let Me Go, etc).

    How many have you read on this list? Why do you think we often shy away from these classics? How important is it that we read them? Let me know in the comments!

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  2. Video: September Favorites & More

    October 3, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Nerd Topics, YouTube videos by Kristina Horner

    It’s time for this week’s video roundup! I know I post a lot of videos, and YouTube has been making it increasingly more difficult to find the videos you want to watch… so here’s a quick post updating you on everything I put online this week.

    We are well into October now, but I think there’s definitely still time to talk about the list of things I discovered last month! My September favorites video went live yesterday, and it’s absolutely bursting with all the fun new games I probably shouldn’t have gotten myself quite so addicted to.

     

    I also posted this month’s Loot Crate unboxing video recently, which featured a ton of fun items all related to animation and cartoons… which was totally right up my alley:

     

    And lastly, Team Hypercube put a quick pause on its regular scheduled programming to bring you another BOARD GAME WEEK! This time, we featured Jetpack Unicorn, the game that was created by none other than myself and Joe (in conjunction with Wyrd Miniatures). I’ll post Episode One below, but make sure to head over to the channel and subscribe if you want to find out who wins!

     

    Thanks for watching my videos, and more importantly, for reading my blog. You guys rock.

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  3. Why NaNoWriMo is Important to Me

    October 2, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Geek Events, Journal, Writing by Kristina Horner

    nanowrimo

    This will be my eighth year participating in NaNoWriMo. I sort of can’t believe it. I remember so vividly how I found out about it and honestly, it feels like no time has passed… but in fact, seven novels worth of time have passed since that day (and here I am mentally preparing for number eight).

    I was at home in my bedroom at my parent’s house. This is really embarrassing to admit, but I had this “friend” on AIM that I had never spoken with, but kept her on my buddy list because I thought her away messages and buddy profile were funny. I don’t even entirely remember, but I think she was a fanfiction author I had admired but never worked up the courage to say hello to. It was 2005; I was 17 years old, give me a break. Around the time of November, her away messages starting referencing this project she was working on, something called NaNoWriMo. After a few days my curiosity got the best of me and I finally clicked the link.

    What I found on the other end quite literally changed my life.

    I wrote a lot of fanfiction in middle school and high school. I had always loved writing, and fanfiction seemed like the only way to get other people interested in reading your words. People love hearing about what new capers Harry, Ron and Hermione got themselves into – so I wrote my crappy fanfiction – and people read it. It was a beautiful thing. But as I got older, I didn’t just want to use other people’s characters. I tried my foray into fictionpress.com (fanfiction.net’s sister site for original works) and people just didn’t care. It was disheartening. It made me want to stop writing.

    But then I found NaNoWriMo. A site dedicated to encouraging writers to do what they were meant to do: WRITE. Constantly. For a whole month.

    I will preface this by saying that even after seven novel attempts, I still haven’t shared much of my work with any other living, breathing humans – but that wasn’t the point of NaNoWriMo for me. While I craved the comments and feedback on my fanfiction, NaNoWriMo made writing a whole new animal for me… rather than a solitary task I did alone in my bedroom against the protest of my mom who wanted me to come out and actually interact with people sometimes. Suddenly NaNoWriMo gave me not only a supportive community of other writers to talk with and gain encouragement from, but it managed to somehow turn my favorite lonely solo activity into a sport. One where people root for each other!

    It’s been such a positive force in my life, even when it means I am ignoring plans with friends, falling behind in TV shows, or working myself into a stupor. It’s the kind of exhaustion you earn after a job well done, and I look forward to it year after year. I learned that writing is much less about those immediate comments you receive on fanfiction.net, but about cultivating the skills required to take on such a gargantuan task on your own. About learning discipline, and powering through something even when it seems impossible, and how good it feels when inspiration truly hits.

    I recommend NaNoWriMo to anyone who has ever had even the smalled nugget of an idea for a story in their brains. If you want to follow my progress in the coming months, here’s my profile. And if you’re at all interested in helping out the nonprofit behind this wonderful event, I’m raising money for their annual gala on my personal fundraising page here.

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  4. I Made This: Spaghetti Squash!

    October 1, 2013 ♥ Posted in: Food, Kristina Makes Things by Kristina Horner

    Welcome to Round Two! The theme this time? “Kristina likes this semi-exotic food, and then her mind is blown when she realizes it’s so easy to make that she’s embarrassed she never tried it before.” Let’s begin.

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    So, let me preface this by saying all you really need is the Squash itself. I thought it was going to be super complicated, but you literally just cook a squash and spoon out its guts.

    Ingredients:

    1. Spaghetti Squash
    2. Big Knife
    3. Muscles

    Ah, a problem. Muscles. Right. I don’t have those. So, there are two tricks here. One, ask your roommate who is much stronger than you to cut the squash in two, lengthwise. Don’t have a strong roommate? Dang. Okay, plan B. This is to cut a few little ventilation slits into the squash (even someone lacking muscles can do this) and then stick it in the microwave for 5-10 minutes to soften it up. Then, using an oven mitt to steady the squash (because it’s hot now, duh), cut that sucker in half.

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    Yummmm. Look at all those guts. I’m just kidding; get that junk out of there, you’re not a monster. Using a spoon of some sort, scoop out everything that looks like seeds or other unappetizing squash innards.

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    Much better. You can either keep the guts to bake the seeds (they’re just like pumpkin seeds!) or you can toss them because duh, Halloween is right around the corner and we’re going to have more pumpkin seeds than we know what to do with — and right now we’re only concerned with Spaghetti Squash. One thing at a time!!

    So next, you place the two cleaned out halves of the squash on a cooking sheet, and stick it in the over. No sauces, no seasoning, nothing. Just get that thing in the oven. And make sure the oven was preheated to 350 degrees. It’ll take anywhere from 30-45 minutes, depending on how big your squash is and how well it wants to cooperate. This is much too long, in my opinion, and led to a lot of whiney impatience in the kitchen.IMG_5285I call this one the “are you kidding me, it’s only been two minutes since I last looked at the timer?”

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    This one is the “what are you even doing in there you ungrateful vegetable, can’t you see I’m hungry?”

    Once it finally finishes (it takes it sweet time, I must say) you pull the squash out and the insides should be nice and soft and stringy. Gently pull the soft parts out with a fork and dump it into a bowl. Make your favorite spaghetti sauce (my favorite is a secret home recipe called “from a jar”) and dump it over the squash. Ta-da! Spaghetti, and even more delicious than using pasta.

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    My favorite thing about this recipe is that as long as you don’t tell anyone how easy it is, everyone you make it for will think you’re so fancy. Wait. ….I’ve made a huge mistake.

    Have you ever tried Spaghetti Squash? Have you ever made it yourself? Let me know in the comments, or let me know if this post inspires you! It’s very delicious, and one of the many reasons I look forward to fall.

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