Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-22

• Watching Saturday Night Live: You Can Do Anything on @hulu: http://t.co/xlJ27HUA #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15 http://t.co/c5Zfz80S #
• really likes Li Na's new outfit. #AO2012 #
• Unforgiving heat. The players look so languid on court. #AO2012 #
• Li Na took the first set 6-3 in 40 minutes. Not too shabby a performance, given the heat and that it's the first round at a GS. #AO2012 #
• Let's hope that Peng Shuai will take advantage of the Pennetta upset… #AO2012 #
• Until Arrested Development returns. RT @HuffingtonPost Is 'Modern Family' unstoppable? http://t.co/OvWqxDBU #
• Li Na took the 2nd set 6-1. That's more like it. Time to focus on that comical match between Tomic and Verdasco now. #AO2012 #
• Peng Shuai's outfit looks delectable… #AO2012 #
• Peng Shuai's delectable outfit. #2012 http://t.co/auNypzjX #
• Oh gosh… Verdasco… #AO2012 #
• The way that Cirstea is playing against Stosur now is quite impressive and scary. #AO2012 #
• Oh Stosur…..one of those upsets that don't really surprise that many people. #AO2012 #
• @AustralianOpen Agreed. Too much pressure for Sam. Not easy being a GS champ. Just ask Li Na and Kvitova. in reply to AustralianOpen #
• AA Meeting http://t.co/EFcxZCgY via @9GAG #
• Does God like this function? http://t.co/w2lQh43t via @9GAG #
• Foursquare: Foursquare Adds Menus as It Looks to Eat Yelp For Lunch – @Gizmodo http://t.co/iEBKpvIY #
• Zheng Jie finally finished the match on MP #8 (?)! That last game alone was better than the rest of the match combined. Tough lady. #AO2012 #
• Is Kvitova gonna cry? #AO2012 Please don't. Hold on!! #
• @SI_BTBaseline Or Zheng Jie. Just saying… my wishful thinking. in reply to SI_BTBaseline #
• Amusing Accidental Tweets from Popular Twitter Accounts http://t.co/hcqdX1J5 #
• The 10 Most Expensive Books in the World http://t.co/wJgtr0XT #
• Would hate to hurt myself in a match but would hate even more to play a hurt opponent. Not easy to harden one's heart. #AO2012 #
• All the speculations about Joe Paterno…. #
• What interests and baffles me as a psychology major is how Li Na stopped playing her best tennis after her OPPONENT got the injury. #AO2012 #
• This match… too intense. #
• How could you NOT win that point? Li Na? #
• No need to watch this match any more. Time to sleep. Bye bye, Li Na. #AO2012 #
• And awake i am again! RT @AustralianOpen @z_l_z Maybe not yet! Li breaks back… #
• RT @linzsports How did we get through these matches before twitter? #grouphug #
• Going to sleep with tears of sorrow and confusion now. But what a fighter Kim is! RT @AustralianOpen GSM #Clijsters 4-6 7-6 6-4 v #Li #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-15

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08 http://t.co/ZXkuugtb #
• Oh…Li Na… #
• Li Na took a set back. But this is such a strange match…even for Li Na. #AIS2012 #tennis #
• Li Na won! But she needs to forget the first 2 sets and remember only the 3rd set. #AIS2012 #tennis #
• RT @Ratazana Really windy in Sydney… #
• Li Na took the first set from Safarova (6-2) on a VERY windy Court 1 @SydneyTennis . #
• The wind @SydneyTennis is making this match frustrating to play and watch. #LiNa #Tennis #
• Li Na, all you need is to convert one of the match points. Please kindly do so… #
• Oh Li Na…I blame it on the wind. #
• FOUR more match points. Come on, Li Na! #
• Finally…six-win streak for Li Na (counting Hopman singles). When was the last time this happened? I praise you, tennis god. #
• I'm watching People's Choice Awards (1413 others checked-in) http://t.co/T3aGAdRW @GetGlue @peopleschoice #
• #pca #nph #
• Jane Lynch's #PCA skit is hilarious. #
• Favorite Movie Star under 25 at this year's #PCA should have been Favorite Harry Potter Star. #
• My palms are getting sweaty from watching this. RT @Ratazana Woo!!! That's what Li Na said. Let's hold now… (someone hold my hand, please #
• GREAT serves!!! And it goes to the third set!!! Go go go, Li Na!!!! #
• @sallynyan Chirp chirp! When are you getting back to school? in reply to sallynyan #
• Li Na's challenges make me laugh so hard. Love that woman. #
• Why didn't you challenge when you should have, Li Na? And how could the linespeople and the umpire not call that serve out?!?! #
• Li Na, you are unbelievable. #Tennis #AIS2012 #
• @vyssa May I suggest an Android phone? in reply to vyssa #
• YES!!! THIS is what makes Li Na a champion! Remarkable performance. #Tennis #AIS2012 #
• And French Open nightmare for Kvitova all over again? But she did go on to win Wimbledon. So who knows… #
• And Wozniacki's inevitable dethroning will have to be postponed. #
• Great article. Welcome back! "Li Na’s journey back from the brink – Apia International Sydney Tennis" http://t.co/D2M0AQhV #
• @sallynyan yup! Think I am going back on 21st as well. #
• What is happening to Li Na's backhand? This is a bit disheartening to watch. #
• That point. Amazing. #LiNa #
• Sometimes I think Li Na purposely loses the first set to lower her opponent's guard. Lol. #
• And Li Na drew the first blood in the third set. Six games in a row. Way to go. #
• That second set must have tired Li Na out. #
• Oh Li Na… I blame it on that Chinese fan who kept shouting out during rallies. #
• @sallynyan Of course!!!! I am definitely in. Can't believe it's been three/four years. in reply to sallynyan #
• Lol. Flavorwire » A New Species of Horsefly Has Been Named After Beyoncé http://t.co/fexvixrV #
• The Stories Behind Great Iconic Logos http://t.co/IWF1IGkI #
• Faster!!! http://t.co/ATtc9zGm via @9GAG #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-08

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-01 http://t.co/jCrWVB8O #
• is enjoying the aggressive play from Li Na @hopmancup . Hope it's a sign that her confidence is slowing coming back. #
• Li Na still cannot do dropshots. #hopmancup #whatashame #
• And Li just won the first set. RT @Ratazana Zheng is down a break now and Peng is having a tough fight vs Rezai. #
• Where was this Li Na during the second half of 2011? #hopmancup #
• Gosh. How I miss Li Na's beautiful smiles during matches. #
• Zheng Jie lost the 1st set. Peng Shuai broke back. Li Na continues to overpower. #
• What a great win from Li Na @hopmancup ! This is the Li Na I want to see for the rest of 2012. #
• Just when I was celebrating Li's win, Peng apparently took a set back from Rezai. Time to go back to the other stream then. Sorry, Wu Di. #
• Not an easy win from Peng Shuai @ASBClassicAuckl . But hey, a win is a win! So congratulations are in order. #
• Wu Di is playing surprisingly…erm…not bad @hopmancup . This year's #hopmancup will be a great experience for him. #
• If Li Na could return better…if Zheng Jie could serve better…if Peng Shuai could run faster… Am I dreaming too much? #tennis #
• Li Na, Peng Shuai and Zheng Jie all won their matches today. Great day. #tennis #
• Photo: nprfreshair: Couldn’t agree more. http://t.co/SzvjmR8W #
• It's hard to watch Zheng Jie in a match like this and not love her. So much fighting spirit! @ASBClassicAuckl #
• World's biggest tech show looks for "wow": Why This Year's Consumer Electronics Show Is All About Apple … http://t.co/IMOZA3vi #
• Incredible Photorealistic Paintings of Delicious Fruit http://t.co/BF3E0hev #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2012-01-01

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-25 http://t.co/AjaBaVMQ #
• [Book Review] State of Wonder http://t.co/swOcDMSW #
• Photo: nevver: LOVE The Art of Fielding. http://t.co/yJBTI1FS #
• GOOD Lite: The Year in Sports Controversies http://t.co/VOvJeO9l #
• The Atlantic: The Recession in the U.S. and Europe That Never Truly Ended http://t.co/8lHg53sH #
• RT @FootFault_ So, Marion has seemingly stopped all of the crazy shadow swinging and hopping between points. Bittersweet. #
• @hopmancup Li Na! Li Na! Li Na! A very timely win. Keep going! in reply to hopmancup #
• RT @Ratazana Nice start for Li Na! #

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[Book Review] State of Wonder

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first half of the book is an absolute bore, but the second half is an amazing spectacle. The last chapter has so much heart and soul in it that it alone redeems the book. This is Heart of Darkness meeting My Sister’s Keeper, primitive rawness meeting modern ethics. There are some characters in the book about whom I cared deeply, but there are also many about whom I couldn’t care less (one of which is unfortunately the heroine of the story). Overall, a memorable read.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-25

• [Book Review] Catching Fire http://t.co/ZFBHd5zl #
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-18 http://t.co/hgt5Rkxq #
• RT @BreakingNews North Korea says its leader Kim Jong-il has died-@YonhapNews #
• [Book Review] Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3 http://t.co/1VZJelA0 #
• Agreed. RT @RacquetRequired this #playersasverbs thing is awesome. thank you @linzsports #
• RT @pjmouse To Sharapova: to shriek in child-bearing volumes. #playersasverbs #
• To Li-Na: To choke on your own success. "I Li-Naed the rest of my college years after getting an A sophomore year." #playersasverbs #
• [Book Review] The Art of Fielding http://t.co/xRXtWB2U #
• Swype with Dragon Dictation is amazing. #
• [Book Review] Blue Nights http://t.co/QjeyJufj #
• Check out The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: http://t.co/yAyaQZmP via Club Nintendo #

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[Book Review] Blue Nights

Blue Nights by Joan Didion

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sentimental? Yes. Self-indulgent? Yes. Frustrating to read? Yes. Impossible to like? Yes. But Blue Nights is not a book to be liked. After all, how could you like a mother’s mournful meditation over her daughter’s untimely death? (Not that there is ever a death that is “timely”, but losing both your husband and your daughter in the short span of twenty months has to be considered particularly untimely.)

Instead, Blue Nights is a book to be savored. It’s sentimental because it is personal. It’s self-indulgent because it is brutally honest. It’s frustrating to read because it’s a story told in the most poetic way. It’s impossible to like because that story happens to be about death.

To read Blue Nights is to come into contact with a soul that is aged and aching, wounded and waiting. It’s an invitation from the author to the darkest corner of her heart, a corner that she’d rather never touch again. And it’s an invitation to which it is hard to say “no”, but to which it is even harder to say “yes”.

While reading Blue Nights, I constantly felt I was reading too fast, not because I was afraid to miss something – there isn’t anything to be missed, but because I felt uneasy rushing someone’s life, or death for that matter.

Maybe one day I will come back to this book again, when I am ready to deal with death the way that the author is. But then again, this is not a book about grappling with the inevitability of death, but one about struggling with the unpredictability of life – death and life, only some blue nights away.


Memorable Quote:
“The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for which is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.”



View all my reviews

[Book Review] The Art of Fielding

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed reading this odd mixture of literature and baseball, of adrenaline and art. The story was slow-moving but well-paced. The writing was melodic but occasionally pretentious. The book constantly exudes the calculation and patience of a Gabriel García Márquez story mixed with the romance and anguish of a Haruki Murakami novel. It’s a contemporary story with a classical soul.

But what attracted me the most was the characters. I saw so much of myself in those characters that I felt uneasy, despite how different the characters are from each other and how different they are from me. I can’t remember when was the last time I felt so close and attached to characters in a fictional work. A good book becomes great only when you read it at the right time. And I could not have read The Art of Fielding at a better time.

Memorable quotes:
“It astonished and humbled him to think that a mind could grow so rich that its every gesture would come to seem profound.”

“That was what made the story epic: the player, the hero, had to suffer mightily en route to his final triumph.”

“This was the dreamy, paradisiacal side of domestic ritual: when all the days were possessed of the same minutiae precisely because you wanted them to be.”

“For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with a special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.”

“You could only try so hard not to try too hard before you were right back around to trying too hard.”

“It had been forty-two years since he’d lost his virginity. He’d never thought then that he would lose it again. He felt a touch of sadness now that it had happened, now that he knew what it was like. Not because it wasn’t enjoyable, or wouldn’t be repeated, but because one more of life’s mysteries had been revealed.”

“The dream of every day the same. Every day was like the day before but a little better.”

“The only life worth living was the unfree life, the life Schwartz had taught him, the life in which you were chained to your one true wish, the wish to be simple and perfect.”

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[Book Review] Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, #3)

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The last book of The Hunger Games is unquestionably the strongest one in the series, as it morphs from a mawkish young-adult fiction with a promising premise (the first book) into a soulful story that finally recognizes its own potential and no longer shies away from the brutality of the world it is embedded within. Actions are packed. Emotions are raw. Violence is not censored. And for the first time, reading the book actually gave me a restless, nightmare-filled evening.

Nevertheless, there are still flaws with this book and the series in general. One, as I finished the last few pages, I was left with the impression that this would have been a much better series if it wasn’t cloaked in the banality of young-adult fiction. Two, as great as the story is, it is not one that I would read a second time. Most of the “twists and turns” in the story are so predictable and cliched, and for those that are not, none of them left me aghast. My page-turning was driven more by the desire to finish the book than by the plot of the story itself. Yes, Collins did not shy away from the violence that is so crucial to the world she constructed, but stripped of the violence, the story underneath felt really bland.

A test for a great story is a second read. Would the reader still be moved by the story, knowing exactly what lies ahead? Unfortunately, The Hunger Games will not pass this test.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-18

• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-12-11 http://t.co/eQtEKHS5 #
• RT @MensHumor How much Norris would Chuck Norris chuck, if Chuck Norris could chuck Norris? #
• RT @BreakingNews TIME's person of the year is the 'Protester' – @TIME http://t.co/DdwHNJWK #

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