I had some very sad news yesterday, my grandmother passed away. Its something that we all knew was coming, but it is still sad nonetheless. I’m going to miss her and I’m so glad that she had a chance to meet J and see me get married. Also, there are so many traits, hobbies and interests that I have inherited from her, especially my love of food and cooking. I know she will will always be a part of my life through my food.
A Book List
This is from my friend JJ’s blog. Thanks for a super fun blog post!!!
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) Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them 😉
1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials-Phillip Pullman
10. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14. The Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. MiddleMarch-Geroge Eliot
24. The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy- Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. The Grapes of Wrath- John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia- C.S Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. There is no 36 anymore. I’m going to add Anne Frank, everyone needs to read The Diary of Anne Frank.
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini –
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi- Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60-Love in the Times of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez– Probably one of favorite books of all time. I try to revisit it every few years.
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – I really want to read this book ever since I read Reading Lolita in Tehran.
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones- Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons- Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – A.S. Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – E.B. White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton I would underline this book 5 times if possible. I love it so much. It was my very favorite book when I was a kid. I still love to read and pretend I am a child again.
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
News and such
I’ve slacked off on posting this week, just because its been a chill and mellow week and I really haven’t done anything super fun. But a few updates are in order I guess
Cilantro Project- After looking high and low ( okay, only Home Depot and Lowes) I had to give up hopes of finding cilantro seeds in stores and just ordered some online. I also ordered a few other seeds just cuz it was standard shipping. So, basically I am going to be planting two varieties of Cilantro, Dill and Basil. I am really excited for this project. My seeds should get here by next week and I’ll get started then.
Other than that I am having a very lazy summer, I’ve been reading a lot and watching movies. J and I are currently hooked on the HBO series The Wire. We don’t have HBO but we have been getting Season 1 on DVD. There’s also been some impromptu parties and get togethers. This weekend J and I are planning a trip to the Farmer’s market and we have semi formal dress up party on Sat night.
I’ll post more if something exciting comes up.
Talisman
Some people wear Grace, others Love, or Family, or Hope, and some nothing at all or something completely random. But most people have a word or an affirmation that they like to keep close to them, to maybe remind them what is important in their lives.
One birthday a good decade or so ago I got a tiny black bracelet with a little silver bead that said “courage on it. I don’t think it was given to me as a charm , it merely matched the necklace and earrings I also got with it. But over the years, that bracelet became not only a talisman, but sometimes even a lifeline. I didn’t start wearing it with special meaning either, it just always seemed to be the right “accessory” until I realized I always accesorized with that bracelet when I most needed courage. It has seen me through insignificant crisises like going to a party where I felt out of place, or anxious because I didn’t know anyone to a cross country move, and even transitioning from a singleton to a newlywed, that bracelet has given me exactly what it says on it- Courage.
It seems weird that I place so much importance on a few beads strung together but it is my private talisman and it reminds me what I value most in life, of how I want to live my life – I want to be fearless, I want a fearless life.
In 2007 a musician and a poet that I admire , Patti Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Zach De la Rocha of Rage against the Machine introduced her with the following words –
” Patti once said, ‘I stand in front of a microphone, and I’m not afraid,’ and she remains just that, fearless. Fearless throughout her losses, fearless as a mother, fearless when she put the Bush administration up on the firing line for this illegal war and pulled her poetic trigger. Fearless in prose, and fearless in life…”
This inspired me so much and maybe thats why I cling to my little talisman because maybe I won’t be fearless in prose, but I can be fearless in life and everything it offers. Sadly my little talisman is dying, the elastic is stretched out to the limit, the bracelet barely stays on my wrist and I haven’t seen another one like it anywhere. However I did a little charm hanging from black cord (pic above) that can be worn as a necklace, so maybe its time to wear a new version of my talisman.
Heat Wave
It was weekend with weather in the triple digits. On Friday, J and I spent entirely too long out in the pool in nearly 102 degree weather and it did not prettily. J burned and I am entire race darker. After this debacle of too much heat and sun we had to cancel our weekend plans because the weekend just kept getting hotter.
Somehow it didn’t seem like it would be a treat for anyone to hike in the middle of a humid, and hot heat wave, thus there was no camping. I did not venture out into the heat at all this weekend, therefore no Cilantro potting, but thats in the books for tomorrow. We wrapped up the weekend by watching the NBA Final and the Lakers lost 😦 Oh well, Basketball really isn’t my thing anyway!
Weekend Project- Herb Garden in a pot
I have never had a green thumb, in fact other than an odd aunt here and there, no one in my family is gardening oriented at all. My mom was never a gardener and my dad didn’t even mow our lawn, we always had someone else do it! J always screams at this info in horror with “Oh my God, how UnAmerican.” Unamerican but true!
I married a non green thumber as well, J and I are just not good around plants, we really can’t even manage to keep house plants alive. This is really not an exaggeration, my mother will testify about the number of her prized potted plants that have met an early death, just because I was house sitting.
But all that is going to change, this weekend, I am going turn a new leaf ( snort* ha ha…get it) and start my own herb garden. This is something I have been meaning to do for a while and I am going to start this sunday with my very favorite herb- Cilantro and if all goes well, by the end of the summer, I might have Basil, Dill and Parsley as well…but I’m getting to ahead of myself.
I found this method here that I am going to try , so lets hope this works!
The Long Hot Summer
Unlike last year, we have a return of a hot sweltering summer here in NC. There is a heatwave in the region with high’s in the upper 90s and lower 100’s the rest of the week, not to mention the humidity. Yesterday was especially bad because our a/c stopped working and J , Layla and I were nearly dying from the heat, thank go for little fans. My hubby can be mightly resourceful sometimes.
Because we are completely obsessed with our dog we are planning on taking Layla camping this weekend. We will only go for one night, somewhere really close and let her dictate the trip. We’ve been feeling really bad lately because the last few times we went camping,we didn’t take her with us. Yes, I know we are crazy.
So far the choices are Rollingview at Falls Lake, but Layla won’t be allowed on the beach there, so it defeats the purpose, or Eno River, where she can get in the water, but we go to Eno all the time. Either way, I still think it will be a good way to kick off camping season.
A Movies Weekend
This was the weekend of movies. On sat I watched Sex and the City and on Sun, J and I watched Iron Man. What can I say, we love to support our local theaters. Other than movies, J and I have perfected our Bloody Mary recipe, well actually mostly J worked on the recipe and I worked on drinking them. Also we bought some new RAM for the computer. On to the movies:
Ironman: Pretty good Super Hero flick! Never thought I’d like Robert Downey Jr. in anything, but he was actually pretty good! Also Gywneth Paltrows black dresses and heels look uber fab!
Sex and the City: It was everything I wanted it to be- a 2 hour episode of the movie. Some parts were good, some were brilliant, some were just boring, but overall, despite the tepid reviews, I thought it was pretty good. I enjoyed the fashion eye candy- SJP out did her self and there were definitely looks that I want to steal- Argyle Knee socks and oversized graphic tees= awesome. And of course the female bonding was at its best! I was more upset about Carrie and Miranda’s quibbles instead of Carrie and Big’s problems.
Really, As much as I love J , I wouldn’t know what to do without the women who keep me sane! Boys are good, but girls are better 🙂
Trixie Belden Illustrations
Since I’m so excited about the Trixie Belden Series, I thought I’d post some of the cool Dust Jacket Book covers and illustrations I have found online.
If you want to learn more about Trixie Belden and her fab boys and girls club and their super fun retro adventrues , you can check it out here –
Vintage YA Fiction – Trixie Belden
I have just discovered some new young adult vintage fiction series. Trixie Belden was written around the same time as Nancy Drew but for same reason did not make that transition into my generation unlike Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys. I was lucky enough to pickup two paper backs from the 50’s for a dollar each, they are #4 The Mysterious Visitor and #5 The Mystery Off Glen Road. Like all other YA mysteries the plots are really simple and of course has very little violence. In #4 ,which I just finished, the villain is an imposter who is trying to swindle on of Trixie’s friends and a revolver or real danger is present only in the last 3 pages.
The most charming thing about the series is how well the era is captured in the dialogues and the writing. Trixie is 14 years old and lives in Sleepyside, NY which is a suburb of Manhattan. She lives on a farm with her three brothers and parents. She also has a neighbor Honey Wheeler and her adopted brother Jim Frayne. Jim, Honey, Trixie and her brothers Brian and Mart make up the Bob-Whites which is their secret society. Trixie also rides the bus along with her friends because they all live far from the village , which is where the poorer people live. She struggles with math woes and hates to write “themes” which I gather are essays or term papers. They all also have to dress for dinner and dressing in jeans is referred to as dressing “sloppy.” In fact one of the character’s mom won’t let her wear jeans at all. Trixie also calls her mother “Mom’s” and the book definitely reinforces the idea that women who cook, clean etc are virtuous. In fact, Trixie, for being a tomboy even makes comments like “Mom’s just goes in the kitchen and walks out with something delicious.” Also, her chores are babysitting, while her brothers get to groom horses.
Its charming to be transported back to a post WW II suburb in NY.
I’ll post more as I read more.
Orange You Grape 