7 posts tagged “books”
And before I forget...
This was what I saw when I turned around to check on The (all-too-quiet) Boy en route to school this morning:
(Sorry about the awful blurriness. It's hard to hold the phone steady while driving.)
Anyway, what totally made me laugh out loud this morning (and the reason I needed to capture it) was that he quietly was flipping through his book and actually looked like he was reading it because it was properly oriented and everything.
Here's hoping I've got a bookworm in the making!
The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
(A side note from me: I've only struck a few books because I'm honestly open to reading almost anything. I'm ashamed to admit that there are a few books on here that I've never heard of, let alone read. And I'm also ashamed to admit that I honestly thought I would have done better on this list!)
- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
- Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
- The Harry Potter Series - JK Rowling
- To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
- The Bible
- Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
- Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
- His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
- Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
- Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
- Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
- Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
- Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read most of them, but not all. My mother had the complete works and would have me read them when I declared I was bored. It was either Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe.)
- Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
- The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
- Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
- Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
- The Time Traveler's Wife
- Middlemarch - George Eliot
- Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
- The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
- Bleak House - Charles Dickens
- War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
- The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
- Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
- Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck(I really hated this book. I got through the first three chapters and decided never again. Of course, I was never a fan of Steinbeck, especially after reading The Red Pony in 6th grade)- Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
- The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
- Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
- David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
- Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
- Emma - Jane Austen
- Persuasion - Jane Austen
- The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
- The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
- Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
- Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
- Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
- Animal Farm - George Orwell
- The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
- One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
- The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
- Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
- Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
- The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
- Lord of the Flies - William Golding
- Atonement - Ian McEwan
- Life of Pi - Yann Martel
- Dune - Frank Herbert
- Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
- Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
- A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
- The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
- Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
- Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
- The Secret History - Donna Tartt
- The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
- Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
- On The Road - Jack Kerouac
- Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
- Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
- Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
- Moby Dick - Herman Melville (I really got into this one. It helped that Heathers was a favorite movie all through high school and this is a significant part of the film)
- Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
- Dracula - Bram Stoker
- The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
- Ulysses - James Joyce (I really liked this better than Homer.)
- The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
- Swallows and Amazons
- Germinal - Emile Zola
- Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
- Possession - AS Byatt
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
- Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
- The Color Purple, Alice Walker
- The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
- Charlotte’s Web - EB White
- The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
- Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
- Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
- The Little Prince – Antoine de St. Exupery
- The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
- Watership Down - Richard Adams
- A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
- A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
- The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
- Hamlet - William Shakespeare
- Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
- Les Miserables – Victor Hugo (I read the unabridged version in one day. I couldn't put it down.)
My shopping embargo aside (which, let's be honest, hasn't been too hard except for the technology/hardware/software end of things - if I put an embargo on food, that would be a different story), I am trying to justify a $400 expense as soon as the embargo is lifted (in August - don't think I forgot!).
Because I really really really want a Kindle.
I love to read. No, I seriously do. I can't remember a time in my life that I didn't enjoy reading. And there are scores of books out there that I would own if (a) I didn't have to store them somewhere and (b) I didn't have to lug them around in order to read them on trips and such. I have an enormous list of what I call my "Must-Reads", and it just keeps growing and growing. Now, it's not to say that I would suddenly have the time to read once I got a Kindle; I'm just saying that I wouldn't have to worry about physically storing these books someplace in order to read them.
Plus, there's the whole issue of lost bookmarks and such. No one likes dealing with that.
But Amazon has them in stock (finally!), and I again find myself really wanting one.
It's not even a case of But-Everyone-Else-Has-One-So-I-Need-To-Get-One-Too syndrome. In fact, I personally know of no one who has one, and I don't even think my circle of friends is remotely interested in getting one. But I desperately want one. The idea that I can bring a dozen books with me anywhere I go is dizzyingly exciting. The notion that I can instantaneously purchase and read books, newspapers and magazines is so tempting. And knowing that I can indulge in all of this reading without needing to later store (or recycle) said books, newspapers and magazines is all the more intriguing. I could read the Wall Street Journal for $10 a month - and I wouldn't have to worry about storing each issue someplace until I got around to reading it! Bliss!
Thankfully (or perhaps not), I have until August 1 to fully reflect on this and decide, once and for all, if I would truly use a Kindle. There are definite pros (most of them already mentioned), but some cons, too. I may well be tempted to purchase books that merely interest me but never get around to reading them, for example (though, let's face it - that happens in real life, too). And I wouldn't be able to share my books with anyone unless they had a Kindle, too (because I'm certainly not going to give up mine!).
Just a few things upon which to reflect as I ponder the necessity of this item.
Because I really really really do want one!
If you are a mother and have not read this book, please please do yourself a favor and read it. Hell, if you're a father and haven't read it, you ought to read it. And if you're expecting a child or ever hope to have any offspring, you should still read it.
To say that it's funny would be a gross understatement.
To say that I laughed out loud so many times and fought hard to keep back tears would be a gross understatement.
To say that this is one of the funniest things I have ever read would be a gross understatement.
It's just something that you need to experience yourself.
Now, in fairness, it's not just a funny book. In fact, I found a quote within its pages that I plan on posting on my wall and committing to memory:
Something about being a mother makes you put your kid before all else. But the truth is, too much of that and the kid isn't getting what she needs most, which is you. Sometimes, the trick is figuring out how to put yourself first so there's something for the kid's needs to be carried on.
Elizabeth Soutter Schwarzer's anecdotes are hilariously funny but also poignant and sweet. There's a story about a trip to the beach where her daughter let go of a kite and was devastated by its loss. She also talks about having terrible morning sickness and her feelings of inadequacies in caring for her daughter when she was too weak to care for herself.
There's a lot within these pages that I know I can look forward to experiencing for myself, and that's a big part of the reason it's so enjoyable. And I'm really hoping that she'll release a sequel!
I was tagged by Janette and shortly thereafter, Silver:
1. Grab your nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 different people.
Okay, I'm way behind on doing this, so here goes:
From It's a Boy: Women Writers on Raising Sons
"The water is so cold on my ankles it hurts. As green-headed ducks drift by and the sun glints onto the water and three boys with their pants rolled to their knees balance on mossy stones, I step in deeper and cringe. A boy can do that to you."
I tag Blue Rhapsody, Herbeck, Maraschino, Dani, and Lipman!
I love books. I've been a voracious reader for as long as I can remember. In fact, I don't remember what it was like to be unable to read. When I was four years old, I got called into the principal's office to take a test and see if I was ready to be moved into Kindergarten a year before my peers. I remember the person pointing to different letters and asking me to read sentences aloud. Apparently, I did well because I started Kindergarten across the street the following year (and, according to my mother, screamed and cried the entire first week, until I realized that she wasn't going to take me back to the preschool).
My mom used to buy books for me in attempts to keep me occupied. The summer after third grade, I stayed at home while my parents worked and my sister was in New York (her sixth-grade graduation present and congratulatory gift for being valedictorian). I'm sure someone was there with me, but I can't remember now. Anyway, that summer, she brought home three books for me, thinking they would keep me entertained for a few days. Boy, was she ever wrong. I finished them within a few hours, and my mom got so frustrated. The problem, of course, was that I was notoriously bad at returning library books, so it almost always cost more to just buy the book than to borrow it from the library.
Nowadays, I still love books. If you look on my Amazon wish list, just about everything on there is a book. Of course, I don't have the time to read books like I did when I was younger, but I still like having the options of reading them, in hopes that I will one day catch a break. After all, Baby C was kind enough to let me read Book 7 of the Harry Potter series in one day, so it's not like it's an impossible feat.
Books are a major downfall for me. I'm much better than I used to be; I've probably donated or gifted a few hundred dollars worth of books since moving to Florida - and I know I have so many more in storage back home. Baby C has a lot of books now, too, many from his father's childhood library and quite a few from his cousins' libraries. Right now he likes to eat the books more than listen to the stories, though he's somewhat interested in certain pictures. I can only hope that he will enjoy books as much as I did when I was a child.
Of course, this realization has been late in coming - I only discovered it, oh, 8 years ago or so, and she's been my sister for 32! What sparked this realization? Well, on my part, anyway, it was accepting that, yes, she has been somewhere close to here before so, yes, she probably knows a thing or two about [fill in life crisis/change/mystery here].
So why the post only now? I don't know. Lots of other things to rave or complain about, I guess. But today she sent me a very special package: 2 baby-related books that I'm enjoying reading side-by-side. Not that they're meant to be read that way, mind you. But my brain doesn't work very well (I've asked my husband at least a dozen times in the last 72 hours if what I've said made any sense), and I've discovered multi-tasking keeps it in check... sort of.
She recommended both books to me, for different reasons. The first book, The Girlfriends' Guide to Pregnancy, had me laughing out loud within the first few paragraphs. It's the funny side of pregnancy - and an affirmation that, no, I'm not the only woman out there whose acne came back with such force I could have sworn I was in 8th grade again. After the first chapter, I had to put it down to make dinner, and I started reading the second book, Baby Bargains. While Baby Bargains wasn't the hysterically funny book The Girlfriends' Guide is, there's a ton of great information in it, and I already feel much more prepared to set up a baby registry. It's just a matter now of putting pen to paper and writing out a list of what we'll need so that Chris and I can check everything off.
I'm enjoying both books immensely, and I've only had them in my possession about 3 and a half hours. This is what happens when I start to listen to my older sister. I start to appreciate her wisdom.
