Month February 2011

“One Day” by David Nicholls

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Never Judge a Book by its Movie

Image by Enokson via Flickr

Read a big chunk in the book yesterday and then finished it up today.  I loved the premise – one day a year in their life – and I liked the characters.  I loved how it ended but I didn’t love some of the things that happened.  I don’t want to be **SPOILERY** so I am not going to say more than that.  I look forward to discussing it more with others who have read it!

I’m going to start a QUOTES page.  I love quotes and collecting them, and I think it will work to start a page and continually add to it!  So, send your favorite quotes about books or reading or the life of being a reader or a writer or even a quote from your favorite book my way!  Yay!

I’m not so sure I’m crazy about wordpress.  The blogging features I like.  I like the current design of the blog and the widgets available.  I don’t find it difficult to post, although it took some research to be able to incorporate graphics easily.  But I love to read my blog subscriptions and find it very easy with blogger, but through wordpress my blog subscriptions take FOREVER to load!  If they will at all!  (Yesterday and today they won’t.)  I moved all my blog subscriptions about books or writing over to wordpress, since it’s a booky blog, but that maybe wasn’t a great idea.  Hmm.

Any others experience the same frustration?  Ideas to lessen my frustration?

Do you have favorite quotes?  Send them my way!

Have you read “One Day”?  What do you think?

Does anyone else have OSCAR FEVER???  I’m ready and excited to watch!

Well, off to read!

A library run…

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Library Pengo

Library Image via Wikipedia

I went to the library and the item on hold for me was the print copy of “Jane Eyre,” not the audiobook.  Hmmm.  I was looking forward to listening to that book as my pile of books TBR is getting bigger and bigger and a few have deadlines.  I’m not the speediest reader around and I find so many distractions – like reading blogs!

I finished my Trigiani audiobook today on my way home and I needed something to listen to and so I ventured into the nonfiction audiobooks upstairs!  I grabbed a David Sedaris book, as well as “Traveling with Pomegranates” by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter.  Deadra just finished it and loved it, so I will listen and we’ll discuss!  🙂

Monday meandering…

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Decorative header displayed before Chapter I f...

Decorative header displayed before chapter 1 from Jane Eyre Image via Wikipedia

I’m so looking forward to crawling into bed in a few minutes and reading some more in “One Day” before bed.  We drove to Des Moines this weekend and I got to sit in the backseat and read… something I haven’t done in a LONG time!  I’m usually the driver, so being driven and being able to read in the car (thankfully that hasn’t changed) is a blessing!  I’m really liking the book, and I’m about half done.  I’m also almost done withe “Brava, Valentine” on audio – put in the last CD before I got out of the car on Friday – and then I’m going to try “Jane Eyre” on audio!  I’ve never read it and I signed up for the goodreads challenge to read it before the movie comes out mid-March.  My second goodreads challenge, for the record!

I skimmed through my blog reading and came across a list of contemporary books (1983-2008) that may become classics.  It was a list created by Entertainment Weekly, so not too high brow, maybe.  I’ll post it and welcome your thoughts on it.  I skimmed the list (lots of skimming tonight) and think I’ve read less than 20 of the 100. I love lists.  🙂

It’s Marissa’s birthday today.  Hard to believe that she could be 23 years old.  We had a great weekend celebrating together and since she’s moving home I’m looking forward to a whole bunch more quality time with her.  Technically she’s moving into mom and dad’s home, but it will still be close and nice to have her around.  I think I’ll starting thinking of the ‘guest room’ at my house as Marissa’s room.  That’s exciting.

So, what are you reading?  What have you finished reading?  Have you ever read “Jane Eyre”?  What do you think of these ‘contemporary classics’?  Any that you will put on your TBR list?

Well, off to read!

1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars’ Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
14. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
47. World’s Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators’ Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

 

Yeah sirsi!

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Cover of One Day

Sirsi is where the emails come from to let me know that books I’ve reserved at the library are ready to be picked up! Yeah! So tonight after work I sat down with the last forty pages of “Faking It” by Jennifer Crusie and then headed to the library to pick up “One Day” by David Nicholls (finally!) and “Juliet, Naked” by Nick Hornby.

I find the Rochester Public Library a little difficult to navigate. Well, maybe not difficult to navigate but overwhelming. Summer of ’09 I started with the fiction in the Zs, thinking I’d work backwards, and I read quite a few fun books, but soon that didn’t work for me. This past summer I referred to my goodreads TBR account via my smart phone and would look for specific books – either on the shelf or in audio version – but very rarely would I find them shelved! So this winter I’ve gotten a little smarter and I started reserving the books so that when I go in I just need to go to the reserve shelf and check out! It’s nice to be able to get exactly what you’re looking for sometimes – but there is also something about wandering around in the stacks, too. I’m sure I’ll do a little of both – reserve and wander.

Other random thoughts:

  • I didn’t know “One Day” was going to be made into a movie, coming out in July!
  • “Faking It” was a fun easy read. Not great but witty.
  • I’m falling behind in my magazine reading.
  • I’m not going to fall into the meme trap again – I hope. Maybe I’ll come up with my own weekly blogging themes – I do love themes, after all! Not that I’d ever blog every day, but how about Saturday or Sunday Smorgasbord? Monday Musings? Teatime Tuesday? Thursdays Thoughts? Ugh… ideas welcome!
  • “Water for Elephants” will be out in the theatres before we know it!
  • I’m super excited to watch the Oscar’s this year!

I think that’s all for tonight! My TBR list now includes: “One Day,” “Juliet, Naked,” and “Plain Truth” – probably in that order! Book club discussion for “Plain Truth” is March 8 so we’ll see if I need to rearrange the order. Good times! I love to read and talk about books!

Off to read!

Teaser Tuesday

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Cover of "Faking It"

Cover of Faking It

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I’m reading “Faking It” by Jennifer Crusie.  Picked up the paperback at the library, wanting a quick fun read before I delve into a couple of my next book club books.  I’m not too far in the book, so I’m just gonna pick a few places:

“So I thought I could go and distract them and you could sneak in and steal it,” Gwen said. “And then we can bury it in the basement again.”

Three blocks away, Clea sat at the breakfast table, tapping her fingernail against the coffee cup.  It was the closest she could come to throwing the damn thing at Mason and still project loving warmth, the kind of woman he’d want to face over the breakfast table for the rest of his life.

 

I guess I didn’t follow the rules exactly, as I chose two different locations in the book!  Oh well.  They were fun and random little teasers from a fun little book!  I also had to look up the definition of ‘meme’ because I keep seeing it places!  According to Wikipedia (the source I love to use when I don’t care about the research!) a MEME is:  meme (play /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with “cream”[1]), a relatively newly coined term, identifies ideas or beliefs that are transmitted from one person or group of people to another. The concept comes from an analogy: as genes transmit biological information, memes can be said to transmit idea and belief information.

A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures
Your turn!!!  Comment with your thoughts on MEMES or your teaser!

Off to read!

TBR Pile Minus One

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Reading in bed

Reading in Bed Image via Wikipedia

Well, I didn’t exactly have a marathon of reading over the weekend, because I think that means that you spend more time reading than doing anything else.  I did have some marathon mornings – staying in bed on Saturday and Sunday and reading – but that was about it.  I finished the book I started – ‘The Summer We Read Gatsby” – and I really enjoyed it.  It was a nice summery read for a cold February weekend.

It seems I have a hard time making a dent in my TBR pile – or more accurately,  my TBR shelf!  That durn library always impels me to pick up new books every time I’m there!  So yesterday I picked up a quick paperback, then I’ll read “Plain Truth.”  If “One Day” comes up in my reserve list at the library, I’ll mosey on to that one.

So many books.

I have been enjoying the audiobooks in the car, since my iPod died.  I’m listening to a Super Sad one right now, and it kind of leaves a pall over me when I get out of the car.  Very sad.  I don’t like to recommend very sad books, because I don’t think it’s fun to feel this way, but it is called “Every Last One” by Anna Quindlan (sp).  I like that Hope Davis is the narrator, because that is fun, but that’s the only fun thing about the book.  I can only hope for a happy ending.  I’m about 2/3 through and then I’m going to listen to “Brava, Valentine!” by Adriana Trigiani, a favorite of mine.  Yeah!

Well, off to read!  What are you reading?

48 Hour TBR Marathon, et al

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pile of books

Someone's TBR Pile (Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr)

Exploring book blogs is SO fun, but can get overwhelming!  Did you know there are blogaversaries?  I wonder when this blog should have celebrated that?  There are book challenges: read so-many pages, read all of Austen’s books, read all science fiction, read all romance in February.  There are Blog-Hops – what do you think that is?  I think that it’s where several blogs ask the same question and want you to post comments all over? But I’m not sure.  There are Three-Things Thursdays, Wordless Wednesdays, lots of giveaways and long-term big-book read-alongs.

And now this weekend is the 48 hour TBR Marathon!  A good idea for a cold, early February weekend when there will be LOTS of football talk on TV.  A good idea to work on that TBR (to be read) pile.  Friday night to Sunday night.  Read read read.  Blog about it.  Post your TBR list.

I’m not a fast reader, so I doubt much of a dent will be made in my TBR list.  Especially if I keep reading book blogs!  But first on my list is reading “The Summer We Read Gatsby,” which I am enjoying so far.

 

Coffee, Scones, and Colin Firth…

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66ème Festival de Venise (Mostra) Colin Firth

The Sexy Colin Firth

Greetings all!  This is Sarah… My maiden voyage post!

Today has been a FAB day! Danette and I have the day off- Hooray!  What a wonderful end to the week!  The day has been full of coffee, yummy scones (made by Danette), a mall walk, a quick peruse through Barnes and Noble, and a trip to Trader Joes….and it isn’t even 2pm yet!  I may even make it to a movie this afternoon.  I want to see Black Swan before it leaves the theater.  However, I am not really a “movie buff” like Danette, so my trips to the theater are limited.  By “limited”, I mean that I may see a movie in the theater once per year.  Given this year’s Oscar selections, I am tempted to shatter my previous movie-going record! I also want to see True Grit (currently reading the book), The Fighter, and The Kids are All Right. I did venture to the theater a few weeks ago to see The King’s Speech and was blown away by the story, the humor, and the stellar acting.  It was a WOW movie! Plus, Colin Firth is quite sexy!

Speaking of True Grit, my next post will be about that book!

Cheers!

A Walkie Walkie

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Cover of "The Position: A Novel"

Cover of The Position: A Novel

Tonight Sarah and I mall walked and did a little planning of “what’s next.”  She’s reading “True Grit” and then going to see the movie.  She’s enjoying the book, so that will be on my TBR list.  She’s also working on “The Magicians.”  Then we’re going to read “The One,” and “Plain Truth.”  I’m gonna jump into “The Summer We Read Gatsby” and am listening to “Every Last One.” Then I’ll read “Plain Truth.”  Oh, it’s so fun to plan and dream about all the books we will read!

This morning I finished “The Position” by Meg Wolitzer.  It was ok.  Don’t know what else to say about it.  It’s about a couple who write a sex book in the 70s and how it affects their four children.  Then (as 10-17 year olds) and now (as adults).  It also is about the relationship of the couple and how it changed.  I’m not gonna recommend it to anyone, but I have a copy if anyone is interested!  🙂

Well, off to read!