The Must List, October 27

1. "Love to Me" from The Light in the Piazza musical
In my opinion, this is the most beautiful, most innocent love song ever sung!! It will melt your heart.

2. "Rumor Has It/Someone Like You" mash-up from Glee
What a fun song by the Trouble Tones, a group from the hit show Glee. It's fun, it's sassy, it's girl power! And, it features the amazing singing talents of character Santana as she comes to terms with being in love with fellow cheerleader Britney.

3. Halloween candy
YES!!! It's socially acceptable to eat as much junk food and candy as possible again! I love this time of year because I can indulge in my candy addiction without being chastised... as much, anyway! There's now a large bowl on our kitchen counter filled with Nerds, Crunch bars, Laffy Taffy, Air Heads, Pixy Stix, and Butterfinger bars! Delicious!! Now, how to resist having some for breakfast?

4. Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch
Yeah, probably my favorite breakfast cereal. I have loved it since I was a kid! Peanut buttery goodness mixed with crunchy-ness and cold milk, what's not to love? It's better than the regular Cap'n Crunch. I will admit the Crunch Berries are pretty awesome, but nothing compares to the Peanut Butter! Whoever said let's make cereal that tastes like peanut butter is my hero!

5. Green Street Hooligans
It takes about half the movie to finally understand the British English being spoken, but this is a movie with a fast-paced plot and such a satisfying ending --- arguably, the most satisfying ending in film history!! Matt is kicked out of Harvard just before graduating after his roommate frames him with drug possession. He flies to England to visit his sister and nephew where he meets his brother-in-law's brother, Pete. Pete runs the local hooligans that cheer for the West Ham United football team. It's more than a match to them. It's blood, guts, glory, fighting, and life and death. Elijah Wood sheds his Frodo baby face for this moving, gutsy movie alongside future Sons of Anarchy VP  Charlie Hunnam. Be sure to check it out.

6. The Hobbit updates
Come on, you know that you're secretly checking all the different movie blogs to get more and more details about The Hobbit. It's the most anticipated movie release since The Lord of the Rings. Sir Ian McKellen is back as Gandalf the Grey, Elijah Wood is back as Frodo, Cate Blanchett as Galadriel, and Ian Holms is back as the old Bilbo Baggins. This is the movie event of the DECADE!!! And, it's a trilogy yet again! This is an epic moment in film history you're not going to want to miss!

42. The Buddha of Suburbia

Book 42: The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi (B)

I read this book for my English 348 class. I was surprised by the choice, but as I continued to read... the choice became perfectly clear. My professor is in love with the idea of "national identity." It is a passion of his that he expressed to me when I interviewed him for a features article in The Carolinian. He also seems to have an interest and loves to debate about the interpretation of sex in literature. Several poems and as the novels continue through the semester, sex has become quite prominent. The Buddha of Suburbia is no exception.
At first, I was not a fan of the novel. A half Indian, half British teen is growing up in the suburbs of England with his bizarre father who is carrying on an affair behind the back of the miserable, pathetic mother. Karim, the teen, tries to find out who he is in a country that sees him as black and treats him like a foreigner. He's complicated, strange, and messed up from his kinky sexuality and his Indian father leaving his British mother for a very commercial, flamboyant woman named Eva. His parents' relationship and their fall-out is complicated and ugly. One of my favorite moments in the text comes from a visit to the upper class aunt and uncle's house.
"Once I remember Mum looking reproachfully at Dad, as if to say: What husband are you to give me so little when the other men, the Alans and Barrys and Peters and Roys, provide cars, houses, holidays, central heating and jewellery? They can at least put up shelves or fix the fence. What can you do" (29)?
Karim continues to wonder about the differences between what Eva calls "interesting" and "ugly people" later in the text after his parents split.

"When Eva had gone and I lay for the first time in the same house as Charlie and Eva and my father, I thought about the difference between interesting people and the nice people. And how they can't always be identical. The interesting people you wanted to be with - their minds were unusual, you saw things freshly with them and all was not deadness and repetition... Then there were the nice people who weren't interesting, and you didn't want to know what they thought of anything. Like Mum, they were good and meek and deserved more love. But it was the interesting ones, like Eva with her hard, taking edge, who ended up with everything, and in bed with my father" (93).

 The novel is very adult and debates the idea of how to identify with who you are based on other people's interpretation of you.
I'd recommend it for people who are more interested in reading about deep characters than they are a storyline or an interesting, exciting plot. Nothing really much happens in the novel, but the characters are deep like something of Michael Cummingham's.

Works Cited:

Kureishi, Hanif. The Buddha of Suburbia. NewYork: 

The Penguin Group, 1990. Print.