Last time: Avery, Blake and Charlotte headed off to college. There was lots of drama involved. Charlotte hooked up with her creepy old drama professor. Avery beat up on some random girl for no reason. And Blake's girlfriend died! The horror! How in the world will he ever manage to move on?!?

( 5.6: The Grim Reaper Is Not Amused. )

In non-Sims related news, I just bought, um... seven new books. Eek. I actually narrowed the list down a lot though from the original amount because I told myself I could only spend $20 right now. So I decided on these:

• Like Life - Lorrie Moore (Love her. I hope I like this better than Birds of America though I'm afraid nothing will ever effect me like Anagrams did; it was just the perfect book at the perfect time type situation.)
• The Violent Bear It Away - Flannery O'Connor (I thought Wise Blood was amazing and needed more right away... well, I've still got her short stories but that's a huge collection and I wanted to read this first.)
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald (I am long overdue for reading this.)
• Atonement - Ian McEwan (I tried to buy this from Amazon but they apparently ran out of stock permanently and canceled my order so let's try it again, shall we?)
• Less Than Zero - Bret Easton Ellis (I limited myself to one book of his for now. In case I hate it or something. But I am excited to read it!)
• The Blindfold - Siri Hustvedt (Total impulse buy. Someone mentioned this book in the same breath as The Secret History - it wasn't even a comparison between the actual books, just between how much the person liked them - but I looked it up on Amazon and the summary literally sent a shiver down my spine. A shiver as in, "OMG, this sounds so perfect! I need it now!" So yeah, I've got high expectations here.)
• I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith (It's been on my wishlist for awhile. And it was cheap. So I finally caved in. I feel similarly about this as I do about reading Atonement - I'm kind of weary about whether I'll like them or not but I have a weakness for 20s/30s era stories so I must read them.)

Neko Case and the Decemberists are coming to Michigan this summer and I really want to go. Up until now, I kinda sorta wanted to but was pretty indifferent (I haven't been much in the mood for shows lately; the long traveling really wears on me after awhile) but now I suddenly feel much more passionate about it. They're both pretty expensive - well, more expensive than I'm used to - but I have most of the money right now. I just wish they weren't so damn far away. Neko's actually playing twice and one of them is much closer but it's also more expensive. So I don't know. We shall see.