Commencement!

Hi! I am really excited to be starting this blogging expenditure! My name is Rebecca, but in Your Pants I go by the username anomalous_bibliophagus, which is mostly an unwieldy way of saying that I am pretty strange and I love reading.

So, I figure to start off you should know the basics. I think that before we dive into this, I should warn everyone that I am a massive Harry Potter nerd. Of course, I could probably be more obsessed than I currently am, but I think I drive my family and friends crazy enough as is :). I have a tendency to turn anything (and I really do mean *anything*, although some connections might take more time to make) into a Harry Potter reference (because Harry Potter relates to everything, of course), and I also get ridiculously excited when Harry Potter crops up outside of the Potter-nerdiverse sphere. Aside from Harry Potter, my obsessions include:

1) Doctor Who: By which I mean 'New Who' because I have not yet attempted to undertake the feat which is Old/Original Who, except for a few William Hartnell episodes (which, unfortunately, completely bored me, largely because Hartnell and Carol Ann Ford were slightly annoying :/). I started watching Doctor Who because I was getting sick of not understand the Who references in Charlie (McDonnell) and Alex (Day)'s videos, and once my family got a Wii and I could watch on instant play which made it easy to speed through five seasons in the space of maybe two (summer) months (maybe less). But once I was finished I was still not satiated with my new want for Doctor Who, so I would constantly re-watch episodes. It got to the point where my mom limited me to one episode per day. Natch.

2) Learning About Tudor England: Seriously, the English monarchy is one of the most fascinating things to learn about. I think this obsession started after I read 'The Other Boleyn Girl'. But I had found Tudor England fascinating before that point as well. That time period had it all: scandal, love, gossip, religious upheavals, corruption, death. Not to say that the majority of these things were *good* they're just really interesting.

3) Reading: I rarely go anywhere without book, and whenever I volunteer at my public library, I find it nearly impossible to leave without at least one book (Which quickly pile up, as I volunteer at least once a week). Reading for me has always been a sort of escape that TV and the computer can't fully satisfy (although Doctor Who comes close). I don't think there is one genre I'm partial to. I enjoy sci-fi/fantasy (probably fantasy a bit more than sci-fi), and I generally read YA novels, but honestly, I'm just a sucker for a good story. Or for an engaging non-fiction book. I also really like analyzing literature, which seems to be the bane of most high school students' existence, but I find it intriguing.

4) Writing: Although I am so self-conscious about my writing that I rarely finish the things I start, and I'm also very busy with school (and procrastinating), writing is one of my favorite things to do. The actual process of writing can be tedious sometimes, to be completely honest (which is why I don't generally write when I'm procrastinating), but when I'm on a roll its good. I've started a short story about  Gussie Manlove, so hopefully publishing this information somewhere aside from Your Pants will hold me to that.

5) Crocheting/Knitting: I don't do it often, but I'm an obsessive person, so when I get into a project I generally finish it pretty quickly.

In general I really love learning about things. There are few topics that just completely bore me. English is really my passion though, followed by history, which I think is largely because the stories and learning about certain events social impact (social studies in general are really fugging cool).

These are just a few things about me, but throughout this entire (year-long?) project hopefully these types of things will just come out naturally. (Especially the ones that I'll just completely forget I like to do). But feel free to ask if there's anything specific you want to know about me!

Is it just me, or does this post seem ridiculously long?

P.S. So, I don't know if any of you have listened to the podcast Smart Mouths, but at the end of each episode each of the hosts would give one recommendation. I think this would be a cool way to end posts, so...

My Recommendation: The book Mindblind by Jennifer Roy. It's about a 14-year-old boy named Nathaniel who has Asperger's Syndrome and an IQ of 182, attempting to become a genius (~a person who uses their intellect to accomplish something and make an impact on the world). It's a *really* good book, and it portrays Nathaniel in a really relate-able way. (My summary probably has not done the book justice).