Author Walkie Talkie Book Club

Again with the lists!

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For the lists

I was at Barnes & Noble the other night with my niece and I was captivated by these little notebooks.  It was a pack of four made to look like “dance cards” from Jane Austen novels.  I’m a sucker for things Austen and also like to have something to write on at any time, so I bought them (and shared with my niece).  I have one by my bed and it has turned in to another place to keep lists.

 

I’ve never written a “Bucket List,” per se, but have created many lists in my day.  So far my book contains lists for potential blog posts (a list for movie blogs, book blogs, and blogs about random topics), as well as lists for places I want to visit – in the United States and the World.

 

I read many blogs and one that I recently found and enjoy immensely is Lesley Carter’s blog, Bucket List Publications.  She is FAR more adventurous than I am, but also quite a list-maker.  After moving to South Carolina, she started and posted a list of the things she wants to do there. It’s a fun read.  And she has thousands of followers!  She hopes to share the wealth, so if you follow my blog, you should check out her blog -and I hope that some of her followers do the same!  (I may need to step-it-up a bit, if that’s the case!)

 

So check out Bucket List Publications for a great blog about Travel, Adventure and New Experiences – Indulge!

 

http://lesleycarter.wordpress.com/

Bucket List word cloud #3

Bucket List word cloud #3 (Photo credit: mccmicb)

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Food and Healthy Eating

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Last week I signed up for Seattle Sutton Healthy Eating program.  A few things were appealing to me:  there is no commitment required – you can order your plan week by week with no penalty for taking a break; you can also get the full 7 day week or you can get a 4 day or 3 day week.  Deliveries are on Monday and Thursday in Rochester or you can pick it up on those days, as well.  It is more money than I probably spend on groceries and eating out in a week so I’ll be weighing the pros and cons as I go, but here are my thoughts so far.

My refrigerator

I wondered what the packaging would be like.  I’m happy to say that the black containers are recyclable plastic.  They are bigger than I thought they’d be, so although they will fit in my lunch bag, I’m not sure two of them will.  In fact, tonight, I repacked breakfast and lunch for tomorrow because they could be packaged smaller.  They’re uniformly packaged, which is nice for refrigerator storage, but not so much for hauling it around.

(Note the Coke Zero in the back of the refrigerator- I think it’s been there for almost two years! Should I do an experiment with it?)

The variety…

I think I can safely say that what I like most about this program is the variety of food that I have eaten so far.  When I cook for myself, I NEVER make peas AND squash AND potatoes for one meal!  And today I had a nectarine for breakfast AND a kiwi for lunch.  This lunch today (seen above) was very tasty.  A cold bean salad with a turkey breast on that yummy toasted bagel with honey-mustard-yogurt.  Oh my!

Breakfast burrito

Yesterday was a chicken breast topped with salsa and some carrots.  I’ve had a breakfast burrito, tasty oatmeal, delicious spaghetti with a yummy celery and onion side dish, and turkey meatloaf with a twice-baked potato.  The only thing I haven’t found really tasty is a hazelnut spread for my English muffin one morning.  I really had a hard time with that.  And would you believe I’ve never had cooked spinach before?  I also had to choke that down.  Quite a variety of meals for this week!  And no leftovers!  Or pots and pans to wash!  

Cooking for one has been a challenge, and I’ve told many people lately that it has been one of the biggest challenges for me with my new crazy work schedule, not the sleeping.  I have been eating out a lot, eating unhealthy cafeteria food, eating dinner at 11:00pm, driving through fast-food on my way to or from work, among other bad habits.  So I’m going to try this a little bit, maybe off and on.  For next week, I only ordered 3 days worth of meals and I’ll not order any when I’m on vacation, of course.  It is expensive but eating healthy is expensive.

I’ll keep you posted on whether or not I continue to like it!

Have you ever tried anything like this?

 

 

Mid-Summer Movie Update

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A Night at the Movies (film)

A Night at the Movies (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since my last movie update, when I talked about the Independent Film Festival, I have seen a few movies.  Not as many as my marathon summer last year, but the ones I have seen I have really enjoyed!

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Five Year Engagement – In May I saw this film and it was good.  I love Jason Segal and Emily Blunt and it was a fun movie, which wasn’t predictable.  A plus, in my books!

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel – What a treat this was!  We definitely skewed the age demographic a bit, as there were many people 60 and over, but it was so fun.  It was a great audience with people talking back to the screen and making jokes, and the movie was a delight.  Loved the sights!

What to Expect When You’re Expecting – I wasn’t expecting this to be as good as it was!  I thought it would be a predictable meaningless movie, but it was more than that.  Worth seeing, even if you aren’t Expecting!  It was funny and touching.  Good stuff.

Rock of Ages – And this was fun.  Just silly fun.  I know that I smiled throughout the whole thing, sometimes in disbelief at Tom Cruise’s character, and sometimes at the silly lines and predictability of the show, but it was a good time.

People Like Us – I didn’t know what to expect with this one, but it was really good as well!  A nice story; again, an unpredictable and well-told story.  There were moments of discomfort, but the resolution was worth it.

To Rome With Love – Woody Allen movie set in Rome.  I was at the 10:00 PM showing, and that sometimes is a different audience.  This time was no exception.  There were three gentlemen who sat in the back and conversed with each other, loudly, in another language, throughout the entire show.  I weighed whether or not I should say something and eventually decided to chalk it up to ambiance in the film-going experience.  This movie had several story lines running through it and some I liked more than others.  It was fun and beautiful.

Moonrise Kingdom – What a fun movie this was!  Silly and sweet and laugh-out-loud quirky.  I really like Wes Anderson movies (The Royal Tennenbaums, Rushmore) and this one does not disappoint.  It was really good.

Magic Mike – Ah.  With the girls, this was a lot of fun.  It certainly didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations, as it turned out to be a pretty realistic and gritty view of the life of a male stripper, so the comedy was hard to find.  But the scenery was great and the company was perfect.

In theaters now I would like to see Brave, Safety Not Guaranteed and Take This Waltz.

On DVD I hope to see Friends with Kids, and Salmon Fishing in Yemen.

I just watched Jeff, Who Lives at Home and The Newlyweds, and really liked them both.  I also have almost finished the NBC series “Smash.” I have the season finale to watch and I keep putting it off!

That’s my May to Mid-July movie wrap up!  What have you seen that you have loved this summer?

 

New York City 2012

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A blur!

Wow!  I’ve been home from NYC for a week now!  The trip was indescribable and a blur, much like the photo above!  I loved every minute:  loved every show, loved the time spent with friends, loved my sleeping accommodations, loved the nighttime, loved the walks, loved the musicals, loved the play, loved the theatre district walking tour, loved the YouTube screenings… loved it all.  It simply flew by and I cannot wait to go back.  I’m thinking October, if it works for you Troy!

Highlights:  Click the links to see clips or the official sites for everything below!

Monday: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was such a fun show to start off the week!  Literally dancing in my seat and singing along to the music!  Quite a spectacle – so glad I got to see it, as it closed last Sunday!

Luis and I at Carnegie Deli

After the show we went to Carnegie Deli for some late night “snacks.”  The portion sizes are crazy!  I ordered a chocolate cream pie and didn’t expect to get the whole pie piled on one plate!  Yummy!

The High Line Park

Tuesday I walked a lot on the High Line, attempting to walk off the previous night’s dinner.  🙂 The High Line is a new park that is built on an abandoned railroad bed above 10th and 11th Avenue on the west side of Manhattan.  I walked its length, getting off in the Meat Packing district and enjoyed lunch at a French restaurant and then rambled around Greenwich Village a bit.  I took a lot of pictures of interesting buildings and sat in a few parks for shade, when needed.

On the Broadway Stage! Once: A New Musical

Tuesday night we saw Once: A New Musical.  It was just sooooooo good.  During intermission they opened the bar onstage and we got to go up there.  It was fun to stand on the stage where the performers/musicians had been standing.  It was a great show – the music is made right on stage and I either had goose bumps or tears in my eyes throughout the entire show.  The show flew by and before I knew it, it was done.  Troy and Luis were kind enough to wait at the stage door with me and I got Steve Kazee’s (Guy in Once) autograph.  Ah.  Afterwards, a delicious pub meal at the Playwright’s Celtic Pub – although it is noted that it wasn’t true Irish fare offered, as there were some Mexican offerings on the menu.  🙂

Kevin, tour guide, and George M. Cohan (“Give My Regards to Broadway”!) statue at Times Square

Wednesday Troy and I signed up for a walking tour of the Times Square Theatre District.  Kevin was our tour guide, and of course he was an aspiring actor.  It was a lot of fun to walk around the district and learn about the history of the theatres and how Times Square has changed.  It was beastly hot on this first day of summer, so a brewery lunch was a perfect respite before the matinee of Newsies!  A great fun show!  I took pictures of the cast after but somehow I saved them so that I can’t get them off my camera.  Ugh.  But what fun, that show was.  Great singing and dancing.  Loved it!  Seize the Day!

Brilliant, it was!

Adam Chanler-Berat (Boy) from Peter and I!

Christian Borle (Black Stache) and I after Peter and the Starcatcher

We freshened up and ordered Chinese before our second show of the day, Peter and the Starcatcher!  What a joy that was!  I loved the books by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, and the play was so fun!  Very musical, very funny, very smart!  Black Stache cracked up the cast on stage, and it was just a delight to be there!  He obviously doesn’t like to smile offstage, as he looked so serious while taking pictures with the stage door fans.  But I smiled big enough for the both of us!  How fun.  His last day in the show was last night, as now he’s focusing on Smash, the TV show.  I’ll have to catch up with it!

Then…

Billy’s Bakery

Delicious desserts were brought home to savor while we sat up late (again!) and talked and talked and talked. Ah.  Good times.

Central Park

Thursday was the hottest day of the week so I jumped in a cab to 80th street, wandered Zabar’s for a bit, and then grabbed coffee and a muffin and walked to Central Park and sat in the shade.  I took a LOT of photos this day, and I walked a lot of the city.  From Central Park I walked down Fifth Avenue for some window shopping, and then caught a cab back to 18th street to meet Kaitlyn for lunch at Room Service (yummy Thai!).  Then more walking around Chelsea and on the High Line.  Then back to Troy’s to rest my weary feet.  I had blisters in several places, I think because of the heat of the day.

After Nice Work If You Can Get It

And then the finale of the week – Nice Work If You Can Get It!  what a fun show!  It is so beautiful to look at and reminded me of an old Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movie.  The dancing, the Gershwin tunes, the beautiful costumes and set, the bootleggers and the high society.  How fun.  And to see Matthew Broderick and Kelli O’Hara was a treat!  I can’t wait til this Broadway Cast Recording comes out!

Post-Broadway dinner at Sardi’s

And to top off the week of Broadway Blitz/Bliss, a post-show dinner at Sardi’s.

This was a perfect vacation.

Broadway Blitz Week

I’m already making plans for next time and hope that I can get there again in 2012!

The Empire State Building from the High Line Park

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

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Lists

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Goals for 2012

I love lists, as I believe I’ve said before.  The above is a list that I made in January of this year of things that I want to accomplish in 2012.  Not big lofty goals, not life-changing goals, really, but a list of things that I want to work on being able to do.

  • Garrison Keillor at the Fitz: I would love to see Garrison Keillor in his home territory of the Fitzgerald Theatre before he retires.  If I can’t do that, I want to get to a stage show of The Wits at the Fitz sometime soon.  I have been a John Moe fan for years – since his podcast Weekend America (which has been off the air since 2009) – and his stage/radio show sounds delightfully fun.
  • Four Daughters Vineyard & Winery: A new winery opened up in our area and it looks beautiful.  Four Daughters Vineyard and Winery has a beautiful building with what appears to be delicious food and wonderful local wine. I need to get there!
  • NYC: “Once” Musical: This is an item that can be crossed off the list this week!  I fly out early tomorrow and have tickets for this show on Tuesday!  If you’ve talked to me at all lately, you know that I’m over-the-moon excited about the entire trip, so I won’t go on and on… but it’s happening, and all because I wrote it on a list in January!  🙂
  • Maybe: You can see off to the side that I also wrote “Maybe a Greenwich Village walking tour with Adriana.”  I love all things Adriana Trigiani and so I checked into this.  No weekday tour groups but they would do a private walking tour – with or without food – for $95-$130.  Well, I can walk around and see a lot and eat a lot of food for that money.  So, not this time.  But I subscribed to the newsletter about her tours in NYC and in Italy… so it’ll continue to be something I look out for!
  • Passport: I still haven’t gotten a passport.  Must do that next!  No trips out of the country planned, but they are not possible until I have the passport!  🙂  Must. Be. Ready.
  • Write, at least weekly:  I haven’t been blogging weekly but feel pretty good about the amount that I am doing right now.  Starting the new job required mucho brain power and I am finally feeling like I can use a little for other things, like reading a novel.  🙂  So I’ll still aspire to weekly writing.
  • Write letters: I don’t do too badly at this.  I can do better, for sure.  But it is something I enjoy doing – writing and getting letters in return.  So fun.
  • Eat healthy and real food: The continual quest.  I thought that getting sleep would be the hardest thing about the crazy shift schedule we work in the Emergency Department, but it turns out that eating meals has been harder.  Working 12 hour shifts is easy when you’re there – it flies by – but so does the 12 hours you’re off!  I don’t cook meals for myself, aside from a cold meat sandwich, and have been eating out a LOT!  I try to make good choices while out.  A few weeks ago I realized that every time I went out I ate a delicious burger and my rationale was that I never make burgers for myself at home; but the truth is, i never make anything for myself at home, so I started making different choices!  That night I ordered Indian carryout and was blissfully happy about that.  I’ll have to keep working on this…
  • Trivia night: I had so much fun at Trivia Night in November with Kristine that I must find other venues for this.  Marissa found a bar in LaCrosse that has trivia on Monday nights and she has gone with a group and kicked butt – 1st place last week! – but I think it would dampen her image if her mom came along. 🙂  So I’ll keep looking!
  • Seek out author/book events: I scoured the web looking for author events while I’m in NYC next week, as I’ll have a few days to myself to wander, but was unsuccessful in finding anything that jumped out at me (by anyone I knew).  I went to B&N today and saw that tomorrow Jesse Ventura is going to be here for a reading and book signing.  I wondered if I would go, if I wasn’t winging it to NYC tomorrow.  🙂  I’ll keep my eyes open for fun opportunities.

What about you?  What’s on your list of things to do in 2012?  Or this summer?  Holler if you want to help me check off anything else on my list!

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Tra La! Goodbye May!

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I can’t believe that in an hour May will be history!  The days and weeks continue to fly by… wasn’t I just celebrating Cinco de Mayo de Derby Day?

Mint Juleps and hats!

There have been baseball games and softball games and musical events and concerts and lunches with friends and work. One blissful day at the lake, resulting in sunshine on my shoulders which kept me warm for a few days!  I’m sorta caught up in my magazine reading (June Oprah awaits!), I culled my blogs so it’s not so overwhelming to read them anymore and I’m reading a great book (The Shoemaker’s Wife by Trigiani).  I saw a couple good movies in the theatre – The Five Year Engagement and The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel – and continue to watch DVDs and wonder why I pay for cable television.  🙂

Life is good.

Now, onto June.  It’s really hard to believe that it will be here tomorrow!  My crazy work schedule continues; I work the next two weekends with random days off during the week.  I have a girl’s day in the works next week and a four night / five Broadway show trip to NYC to look forward to mid-June!  I can barely contain myself — I’m always planning and thinking about how to pack so that I can be minimalist and still bring everything that I need.  I don’t want to be high maintenance but I want to look good!

English: Lower Manhattan at late dusk.

English: Lower Manhattan at late dusk. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Broadway itinerary for the week includes:

Monday: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Tuesday: Once
Wednesday matinee: Newsies
Wednesday evening: Peter and the Starcatcher
Thursday: Nice Work If You Can Get It

Are you jealous much???  It’ll be a dream week for sure!

I look forward to Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Tony’s on June 10 and have a good chance of seeing the Best Musical winner!

Well, enough gloating… I’m going to enjoy the rest of May with a good book in hand!

Off to read!

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Stories

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May 5 was the Kentucky Derby, and my friend (and fellow Walkie Talkie), Sarah, hosted her 3rd annual Derby party!  This year was a bonus event, as it turned into a Cinco de Mayo party, as well.  Cinco de Mayo is always fun to celebrate with my friend, Beth, so we made plans to attend the Cinco de Mayo Derby party together!  And there were stories…

First, the horse race is such fun!  Sarah informs us about the horses and the odds and the jockeys and the owners. I downloaded the iPad app for the Kentucky Derby and could read about the horses and the odds and the jockeys and the owners.  You can even place bets, if desired!  We placed bets at Sarah’s – shouting out the horses we wanted to bet upon – and the two minutes of the race are so exciting!  I chose two horses, because there weren’t enough of us to take all the horses.

Cover of "Daddy Long Legs"

Cover of Daddy Long Legs

I chose Daddy Long Legs (in honor of Fred Astaire), and he was disqualified, and I also chose Dullahan, and he came in 3rd!  I’ll Have Another came in first, and the host’s husband, Bennie, chose him.  More about Bennie later… Beth chose the 2nd place horse – Bodemeister.  We cheered, screamed, watched the replay, and then stopped drinking our Mint Juleps and moved on to Margaritas and Sangria!

We kept the hats on, because the hat-hair would have been horrendous!

Thankfully the rain cleared and we were able to move outside to enjoy some spring weather.  We had tacos and Sangria, there was a pinata filled with candy, and a firepit to sit around while enjoying all of the above.  We saw fireballs in the sky (yes, I read about them later!  It wasn’t fireworks that I saw after all!) and got a glimpse of the Super Moon later in the evening.  And we laughed.

We laughed at stories about the neighbors, about Super Bennie who is called upon to do the strangest things and goes without any questions, about the pizza and pineapple that were given as thanks for the help that Bennie gave, and it was a great time.

Can’t wait until next year.

Off to read!

Book and Movie Updates

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I am so lucky to live very close to a great movie theatre in Rochester and once a year they host an International Film Festival. It started last Friday and runs through Thursday. For the past few years I have tried to go to at least a few movies during the festival.  Memorably, I saw Mid-August Lunch a few years ago, which has inspired my Ferragosto vacation, and I saw a great Greek film, but I don’t remember the name.  It was laugh out loud funny, especially in a theatre filled with Greek descendents!  How fun.

This year I knew that the craziness of my work and family schedule wasn’t going to allow too much viewing, but I did get to see two movies that I wanted to see at 9:30 PM on Saturday and Sunday!  Saturday night I saw “A Separation,” which was the 2011 Oscar Winner of Best Foreign Film from Iran and Sunday night I saw “Sound of Noise,” a Swedish film.

“A Separation” was not what I expected.  It was a beautiful story about a woman who wanted to leave Iran in order to pursue a better life, but her husband refused because he was caring for his elderly father with Alzheimer’s. And their beautiful 11 year old daughter is caught in the middle.  A divorce is not granted to them, so they separate for a time as they try to figure things out. And then the story begins.  There is so much in the story without it being preachy or overt.  It’s hard to say that it has a sad ending, but it does. It doesn’t feel sad, but it feels like real life.  Anyway, I’m so glad I got to see it.

Sound of Noise

Sound of Noise (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

And then last night – “Sound of Noise.”  What fun.  First of all, it is a Swedish film and the first five minutes we couldn’t see the subtitles!  Someone asked aloud if anyone in the theatre could translate!  They got the problem fixed and I don’t think we missed too much of the story.  Essentially, a son of musicians with total lack of a musical sense is an anti-terrorist police officer and starts to investigate a group of musical terrorists who are wreaking havoc on their city.  Musical terrorists.  How fun is that?  They are percussionists who are performing a piece entitled “Six Drummers and a City.”  They use bodies and medical equipment in a hospital, they use money and banking machines at a bank (“This is an exhibition!”), they use jack hammers and bull dozers at a classical concert, and finally they use electric wires and power at a power plant.  What fun.

I will not be able to see the Italian movie starring the same actor that was in Mid-August Lunch, but I put it in my Netflix queue.  And maybe I’ll check out the listings for Wednesday, after I’ve had some sleep!

On the book front, it’s pretty pathetic.  I finished reading The Hunger Games, Chasing Fire, and Mockingjay.  I ripped through the first two books and it took longer for me to read the third.  Maybe if I had taken a break I would have had more motivation to finish?  They were good.  It’s hard to recommend books like that, when the topic they are about is so distasteful, so I won’t recommend them, but I’m glad that I read them.

And then I was trying to help Beth figure out her nook library lending, so I went and checked out the first book that looked semi-interesting that was available on the RPL site – and it was a Harlequin romance from the 90s!  What a fun little break for the mind.  Ah.  🙂

So now, what to read?  The pile of books by my bed hasn’t gone down one bit and I’m still behind in my magazine reading.  I’ll see what inspires…

Off to read!

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Starting a Commonplace Book

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April 30.  How did it happen that we’re here already?  Very crazy.

I was trying to figure out a way to honor the last day of Poetry Month and was reading 30 things to do in Poetry Month.  One of the things to do was to start a ‘commonplace book.’ It sounds exactly like what we did in high school and that I have done every now and then ever since.

Commonplace book

Commonplace book (Photo credit: vlasta2)

I have owned many blank books over the years to collect words inside.  To-do lists or other kinds of lists (40 things to do before 40 or the Man o’ My Dreams list), favorite quotes or paragraphs from books, ideas of things to try or read or watch or do. Once I kept track of random overheard conversations of strangers.  What fun that was!

So I’m inspired to find a small book to write snippets in again.

Below is the information from poets.org.  Visit the site for lots of inspirational ideas!

Start a Commonplace Book:

Since the Renaissance, devoted readers have been copying their favorite poems and quotations into notebooks to form their own personal anthologies called “commonplace books.” These collections can be a source of enjoyment and solace, reminding the keeper of favorite books and poems, and can even become family heirlooms. You may devote a corner of a regular journal to jotting down quotes or poems that strike your fancy or obtain a blank book just for this purpose.

As Max W. Thomas says in “Reading and Writing the Renaissance Commonplace Book: A Question of Authorship?”, “commonplace books are about memory, which takes both material and immaterial form; the commonplace book is like a record of what that memory might look like.” Or, in Jonathan Swift’s words:

“A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that ‘great wits have short memories:’ and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day’s reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there.”
—from “A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet”

Today, find a small notebook to record poems or fragments of poems that you come across in your reading. As you add to your own commonplace book, you will be drawing a map of your life as a reader and thinker, creating a valuable portrait of your memory and time.

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World Book Night is here!

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The books are ready to be in someone else’s hands!  World Book Night is here!  The date was chosen because it is the date of William Shakespeare’s birth, and what better way to celebrate by putting good books into the hands of light or non-readers.  I chose to give “The Book Thief,” because it is a novel written for young adult readers which tells a meaningful and important story.

In a few minutes I am going to venture out and approach strangers and ask them about their reading habits.  It’s such a great thing, putting great books into the hands of people who may not be drawn to books, but it is also feeling daunting right now.  I’m an extrovert but approaching strangers is a little out of my comfort zone.

Maybe it’ll be a life changing experience for me, the giver, as well as for the receiver.

I’ll keep you posted!

For more information on World Book Night you can visit http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/.

Follow me on Instagram for photos of the day!