August Wrap-Up + A Quirk!

(The university library stairs. *chef's kiss*)

Hey guys! I survived August! *fistpump*.

So, I mentioned in this post, I'm changing my wrap-up format to be less static & formulaic and more conversational. Basically, inspired by Jennifer Fulwiler, I am bringing back Seven Quick Takes Friday for my blog wrap-ups! (This is non-affiliated, there is no linkup, nada. I just like the name and the format. XD) (But you're welcome to join me if you want to.) (Completely unofficially, of course.) 

So what that means is that I'll have seven paragraphs or categories where I may talk about a favorite book, how reading went, fun life events, things I found, etc. Basically what I'd talk about in a normal wrap-up, but with less pressure on me to include EVERYTHING I watched, read, did, etc. It should be pretty self-explanatory, I think.

Before we start: I apologize in advance for the quality of all the photos, because I took them on my phone, and they are, thus, far worse than I'd like. One of these days I'll break out my camera and take actually nice pics of Newman and the campus, but today is not that day.

(Newman has a LIBRARY CHAPEL. In addition to the main chapel. YES REALLY.)

1. You probably want to know how the road trip & transition to college went! (Or maybe you don't. But I'm going to tell you anyway. So there.)

We left on Sunday right after Mass, which meant that yes, a lot of goodbyes happened on the church steps. Merry was leaving the same day, so Father DD gave us a joint travel blessing, which was beautiful. 

Mom and I took four days on the roadtrip, which happened to be around 30 hours of driving in total (yeah, it was a lot), and saw a lot of cool stuff along the way, including:

-A bear
-A bunch of bison, antelope, and prairie dogs
-The Artist Paint Pots at Yellowstone
-The Badlands
-Big Horn National Forest & Shoshone National forest in Wyoming
-Tiny Midwestern towns that make me laugh because literally how do you survive without a grocery store??
-The Illinois State Fair (complete with butter cow. They don't really have those in the PNW.)

So, lots of good memories from that! (Including driving late into the night through upper Missouri listening to my pastor's streamed talk on a chapter in Orthodoxy. That was epic.)

My dad flew out on Wednesday to help with move-in, I moved in on Thursday, and he and Mom flew back out (after dropping off the rental car) on Friday afternoon. As I'm drafting this post, it's Saturday, and so far, I've not been homesick at all, possibly because Newman already feels like home and so does the entire UIUC campus, but also it's not inconceivable that I might develop a raging case of homesickness tomorrow and regret these rash words. 

But the campus and Newman really do feel like home! It's mostly red brick (which is the same material that our house, our church, and the college campus near our house that I've spent time on are constructed of), there's a beautiful chapel at Newman, and then a smaller library chapel for private prayer as well (yes, really), and I've found my Catholic-nerd people (some of them at least), which I was worried I wouldn't...and overall, I feel like I'm settling in nicely. I mean, there are always bumps in the road, but not too many of them so far.

2. I have two media-related things that I really enjoyed this month, both consumed on the road trip, that I wanted to share! 

First of all, back during the heyday of the Lizzie Bennet diaries, my aunt (the one who taught me literature through most of HS) was challenged to write a fic from Darcy's perspective each day during her rewatch of the series to go along with the video from Lizzie's perspective. The resulting Darcy Diaries are highly diverting, and can be found here. My aunt goes by "JaneDoe" in the forum. Also, my grandfather, a Jane Austen fan in his on right, got into some fun arguments with her in the comments, so there's that. :)

Second of all, while on the last leg of the trip, Mom and I listened to an episode of Pints with Aquinas, a podcast by Matt Fradd where he talked to Peter Kreeft, ostensibly about Tolkien, but really the conversation ranged from liquor to Tolkien to humor to death in the course of two  hours that were hilarious, convicting, and very much worth listening to. You can find it here, and you can either watch or listen to it. If you do, let me know what you think!

(Our main chapel at Newman.)

3. I've seen other people (I can't remember who off the top of my head, sorry...) do compilations of hilarious quotes from college as a post/part of a post, and I have some good ones, so, here goes. (Names changed to protect the innocent and the guilty.)

[On the first night, I found people in the chapel praying the rosary in Latin, and joined in. They brought me back to the caf to meet some of their friends.]

Peter: "Fia, we found a trad!"
Me: "Well, I'm not really a trad, I go to Novus Ordo. I just like Latin."
Fia: "Yeah, people don't like labels, PETER."

James: "I need to go to Walmart to get some little knives."
Lana: "..."
James: "No, I mean butter knives! That came out wrong, I swear!"

Sarah: "I like to eat lemons. I thought this tangerine was a lemon, which is why I got it."
The three other people at the table: *burst out laughing*
Sarah: "So I'm...wait, what are you guys laughing at?"
Other people: *continue laughing*
Sarah: "Wait, are you laughing at me?"

James: *says he needs to go study*
James: *gets up and goes over to another table and starts talking to people*
Me and Thomas: *in nearly freaky unison* "JAMES GO STUDY"
James: "Okay, okay, fine."
James: "That was actually a really impressive unison. How did you do that?"
Me & Thomas: "GO STUDY."

4. I read simultaneously fewer and more books than I thought I was going to read this month, which was fun. I frontloaded all my fiction into the month, so I'm finishing up the month with Chesterton, Sheed, Knox, and Chernow (Alexander Hamilton, if you're wondering, which is an excellent biography imo), and that is...an interesting choice for a time when I'm also Starting College.

Also, since I turned 18 this month, I got NetGalley.
I've gotten three eARCs already and read two.
Someone help me. I regret nothing.

I think the most interesting book I read this month was Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which I had seen recommended by Joy Clarkson (she did her summer book club on it) who I really like, even though she's not Catholic yet, and decided to give it a shot. 
And I'm still not entirely sure what I think of it.
It's written in a sublimely beautiful way, with a sense of awe and child-like trust and wonder that is very Chestertonian, and it has many Lewisian aspects as well. "I am a beloved child of the house." And the symbolism & description! Ahhhh so good.
But somehow, the ending, while seeming to "fit" also reduced a bit of the magic of the beginning. I'm sure not everyone would share that opinion, but that's just me.
It might also be a statement, though. Uncomfort, uncomfortable changes, exiting the comfort zone, the "bubble". (I've been told recently that I was in a bubble apropos of my Catholicism, i.e. that our Dominican parish is vastly better than most. Which is probably true. But it doesn't mean I like the real world any more, or that I want to exit into it.) 
Additionally, it has a certain element of anthroposophy (a philosophy that Barfield espoused--I'll say that for Clarke, that she's consistent in drawing material from the Inklings!) of which I disapprove, although technically speaking it's disapproved of to one degree or another by the good characters in the book, too, so? 
Anyhow, I wrote another review on Goodreads, which you can find here, I just thought I'd share my thoughts after I'd been thinking about it for longer on here.

(Illinois, ily.)

5. I had two funny/interesting spiritual moments on our drive that I wanted to share as well...

First of all, when we were driving through Bighorn National Forest, there were these huge rock walls, all patterned in stripes of different colors, and it was awe-inspiring and somehow made me think very differently about the Incarnation.
The God who made this...became man. Usually we think "oh, you know, God became man" without thinking about how MINDBLOWING that is. God made everything! That's a LOT! He's all powerful, makes beautiful and huge things, and is much bigger than we can possibly imagine.
And he became a human. A nothing. One of us puny, weak, frailty-ridden people.
Wow.

Second of all, we entered Illinois, after having driven through similar terrain for much of South Dakota and Missouri, and it was like a switch flipped as soon as Mom pointed out that we were in Illinois.
I loved it.
Irrationally and arbitrarily, as Chesterton would say, "completely arbitrarily, because it is MINE", and it was very strange. And lovely. I love it here, and I don't know why, only because it is mine, and it definitely made me think of that Chesterton quote and ponder why we love things. Because if someone tried to make me articulate it, I would only say "trees...and, and, groves, and, and, corn, and, and, sky", and fumble for the nearest things, just as Chesterton says a man would if you asked why he preferred civilization to barbarism. 
But anyway. It was weird and Chestertonian, and that's why I brought it up. :)

6. Legolas, Mom and I watched Little Women (2019) while Dad and Eomer were at scout camp. (They had a great time, and no one got hurt, despite their best efforts, thank you for asking.) 

And I know it's a really controversial movie, but I LOVED it! (Disclaimer: this is the first Little Women movie I've ever seen. Just putting that out there.)

The TIME FLIPS were SO BRILLIANT and the way they were differentiated by the color tone, and they went back and forth at just the right times, and I didn't feel more attached to one time or another, and it felt like they were balanced, and all my favorite parts were in there, and YES!

Also, it was hilarious. That part where Amy traps her foot when she's trying to make a mold of it for Laurie to remind him how small her feet are? We laughed so hard. But it's also heart-rending. Beth? Both Mom and Legolas cried. 

It just so accurately portrays what it's like to have sisters.

And the casting! Saoirse Ronan was SO PERFECT as Jo, Teddy was amazing, Eliza Scanlan was an excellent Beth, I liked Emma Watson as Meg (I did think hers was perhaps the least memorable performance, but she was also onscreen the least), and Florence Pugh as Amy was great! (And also hilarious, because she basically played Amy the same as Yelena in Black Widow, and the best part is IT WORKS.) And I loved how they used the same actors in the past as the present and somehow made them look older in the present. I don't know how they did it, but it was amazing.

The one thing I didn't really like was the ending. It kind of felt like it was invalidating the whole thing? But also not. It was confusing and uncomfortable.

Overall, though? Would definitely recommend.

7. I wouldn't usually smoosh two posts together like this, but I just realized that I haven't participated in Jem Jones' One Quirk Later yet, and we CAN'T HAVE THAT, now CAN we? Of course not! So, without further ado, my Quirk. (It's short. I'm sorry. Idk, short tends to be how I do Quirks? They get my brain into the mood for flash fiction, which is a nice break from...everything else I write.)

"Are you coming to the farmer's market today?" he asks, plopping himself down on the arm of my chair.
I look up and suck my cheeks in, then slowly release them, considering. "Does it look like I'm coming to the farmer's market today, José?"
"Yes," he says confidently.
I roll my eyes. "You need to get your eyes checked."
"You exist, it's a Saturday, and you're just writing something. Of course you're coming to the farmer's market! Homework can wait."
"This isn't homework."
"You're writing for fun? Ayyyyy, tu es loca."
"I'm not crazy. I'm having fun here. I'm plotting a murder."
"Muuuuuyyyy loca."
"Look, just because you can't even write..."
"Hey now," he protests. "I can write."
"When was the last time you wrote? Scrawling a dirty word in the bathroom at school?"
"I'll have you know that I wrote an entire paper for English class on Wednesday. And got an A. I write, hermana. But not for fun."
I grin up at him mischievously, to show him I was just teasing. "I know you can write. But I'm still not coming to the farmer's market."
He groans. "But it's flowers, Estella! You love flowers!"
"I do. I love writing murder mysteries more."
"You're going to let me haul around all those pink girly things by myself?"
"Pobrecito! Having to haul around pink flowers! My heart bleeds for you. Papá will be there."
"Papá...is boring. You are interesting. You do things like plot murders. I will be so, so bored, Estella!"
"I apologize for the inconvenience my murder is going to have on your life," I say, and use my elbow to shove him off the arm of my chair.

How was your August? Have you seen Little Women? What's the most interested book you read this month? Have you ever seen a butter cow? Are you excited for Hamlette's Tolkien Week next month???