Calling It Like It Is

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a hundred years. Ok, maybe not that long, but definitely not this season. In any case, it's pretty obvious that I don't keep up with this thing. This blog.

I used to keep a journal. I started in fourth grade with things like which boy I liked at any given moment, lists of things/people I liked, loved, and hated. And the occasional list of those that I like-liked. I threw in a little of the general goings-on of my life, if you can call the goings-on of a fourth-grader a life. My writing continued on like that through high school. Only the lists went away. The thing is, there would be days, sometimes weeks between entries. I would spend the first six pages of my next entry with apologies for not writing sooner and updating the journal pages on everything that I had done since the last time I wrote, finally getting to the latest and greatest in my life.

Apparently, my delinquent journaling habit bleeds into the world wide web. What I'm trying to say is that I think it's time to give up the blog.

Something to think about.

Here's a list of books that have been floating around the internet. I don't know what the list is about, but it was interesting none the less. I have read all of the ones that are bolded. Any recommendations from the ones that are left?

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible - most, but not all
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

The Pact

Jodi Picoult is like the J.K. Rowling for adults. Her books are easy to read, require very little brain power and are fun. She is remarkable in the sense that her books are quite well researched and very realistic. (Case in point: "My Sister's Keeper" is basically my job in words. Very true to life.) And yet sometimes I feel as if I am a book whore for reading her, because the literary value is, to me, lower than many books.

The Pact is disturbing. It's about two kids, boy and girl, whose lives are intertwined so much that the line between them blurs beyond reach. There's a thing, then a trial, then the end. Seems simple, huh? Here's the thing that is so cool about Jodi: I read that simple book in two days. I couldn't put it down. Thank the Lord I was working nights so that I could read in between things while the kids were sleeping.

So. The moral of the story: Read Jodi's books in between those heavy lit books for a little breathing room. Because she sucks you in and keeps you to the end.

The Namesake

This book is amazing. Amazing! It's a coming-of-age story about identity and family and growing into one's own. It follows a boy named Gogol (as in Nikolai Gogol the Russian author) growing up with Indian parents in Boston and his struggle for identity. Are you hooked yet? I was so impressed with Jhumpa Lahiri's use of language. Her words flow over you like, hmm, what paltry simile can I use? Like a warm summer breeze on your face, water lapping up on the shore, hot fudge over a bowl of ice cream? None seem right. It's just beautiful. That's enough.

I was especially taken with the tradition of naming babies in the family's culture. The grandmother was going to name the baby. And that each child has a "good" name that is on official documents, and another name that family and friends use. Like a nickname but more important -- a symbol of devotion from loved ones.

At the same time I was reading this book, I was taking care of a little boy from India here for treatment with his parents. I wondered if he had a pet name that his parents called him and we all used his "good" name in the hospital. I wondered if the parents followed the tradition of grandmother naming their child. I wondered what his name means.

Read this book. Read it. You will love it.

Easter

It's not the Easter season until you've had your first Cadbury egg!

(Yes, yes, I know that it's really Lent that is upon us, but the commercial world doesn't know that!)

Baby, It's Cold Outside

I just need to say out loud that people in Western PA do not know how to handle snow! It's snowing here. There is a winter storm watch because the weather people forecast three to five inches. Schools are closing left and right. People are crashing their cars.

Can I just say that WI people are toughter about winter?

Thanks.

A Confederacy of Dunces

I am reading the best book of the year. Granted, it is only day #23 of the new year, but seriously, this is the best book. I guess I'd call it a tragicomedy. I laugh out loud while reading, which is mildly embarassing when you're out in public. (People stare.) The main character's name sets the whole tone of the book: Ignatius J. Reilly. He wears a green felted hat with ear flaps every day and uses it to block out things he doesn't want to hear. Ear flaps up: he's willing to listen. Ear flaps down: he's tuning you out. So funny.

The author's story is interesting too. He wrote the book in the mid-sixties, then committed suicide shortly afterwards. His mother found the manuscript among his things, read it, and immediately sent it to a publisher. With it, she sent a letter, saying that although she was his mother, she thought it was a wonderful book. The publisher rejected it, saying that he doesn't take unsolicited manuscripts. But the mother was persistent, she sent it back and asked him to read a little of it anyway. So he was like, fine!, I'll read a bit! And he read it, the whole thing, then read it again, and again. He said it was the best thing he'd read in a very long time. And what a shame, he said, that we are deprived of this author's body of work due to his suicide. The author's name is John Kennedy Toole.

I am only on chapter four, not far enough, usually, to make a sound judgment on a book. This book, however, is excellent from the very first page. You'll laugh and simultaneously cry for this man Ignatius of the Ear Flaps.

New Career?

I have finally found my (third?) calling in life. Selling books on the internet. The Professor's dad did this for a while when we were in high school. He is a very smart man. Too bad eBay stole his idea and ran with it. (I mean, I can't prove that eBay stole his idea. It's just that I never knew Half.com existed when The Prof's dad was doing his thing. In my world, that makes eBay an idea thief. So there.)

No really, Hubby and I have been selling our unwanted books on Half.com. We have made $75 in sales in ten days. That's $7.50 a day in free money. (Even though we haven't actually gotten any of that money yet. But we will! We will!!) Apparently, others find our books cool!

It makes me want to quit my job and read all the time, then sell the nearly pristine books for less... than... what I... paid...

Crap. This is no career.