Saturday, July 4, 2009
The secret life that will never know...
So, when I was putting my summer list together I thought it would be good to read "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd. The books I read depend on the mood I'm in, so I usually have three or four going at once, so I can have a choice. Today was the third time I have tried reading it with no luck at all! Someone tell me it gets better after chapter 5??!!
Reading List for the Summer
Before we begin, let me state, for the record, that this list is in no way binding in any way shape or form. I reserve the right to change it at any time, and to not finish it if so desired!
The Wednesday Letters
My Sisters Keeper
The Four Loves
Surprised by Joy
Eat, Pray, Love
Father of the Bride
The Secret Life of Bee's
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Scarlet Letter
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The God Delusion
Joan of Arc
The Virginian
Sinners in the Hands of an Argry God
The Celestial Railway
The Turn of the Screw
Ben Franklin's autobiography
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
The Wednesday Letters
My Sisters Keeper
The Four Loves
Surprised by Joy
Eat, Pray, Love
Father of the Bride
The Secret Life of Bee's
The Man Who Was Thursday
The Scarlet Letter
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The God Delusion
Joan of Arc
The Virginian
Sinners in the Hands of an Argry God
The Celestial Railway
The Turn of the Screw
Ben Franklin's autobiography
The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Books, oh so many books...
I know I haven't written much lately, but I've been reading quite a bit! I have found that the books I am supposed to be reading, seem less and less appealing. I have however picked up several books over the last few weeks and enjoyed them very much.
Last week I spent three wonderful days at the lake soaking up the sun and reading 'My Sisters Keeper'. I was thrilled with how well written the book was! I found myself laughing and crying much more than I expected. While in the midst of a hockey game, I was nearing the end of the book much sooner than I realized. If you know anything about hockey the periods are 17 minutes long. I missed the entire 2 period because I found myself sitting in the woman's restroom with many used tissues! Now, I will confess that the purpose of reading this book was to go see the movie. Let it be stated now that you should read the movie first! It has always been a rule of my mothers, and I am adapting it to my own life. I won't go in to great detail about the movie, because that is the whole purpose of seeing it for yourself (although I will recommend taking plenty of tissues!). It was well acted, and they did stay pretty close to the original story line. I took the advice of a friend and didn't have any expectations going in to the theater, which did help immensely.
Quotes from the book:
"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."
"When you love someone you let them take care of you."
"A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you."
"You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact they're not."
"Doubt thou that the stars are fire;
Doubt thou that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt that I love. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Last week I spent three wonderful days at the lake soaking up the sun and reading 'My Sisters Keeper'. I was thrilled with how well written the book was! I found myself laughing and crying much more than I expected. While in the midst of a hockey game, I was nearing the end of the book much sooner than I realized. If you know anything about hockey the periods are 17 minutes long. I missed the entire 2 period because I found myself sitting in the woman's restroom with many used tissues! Now, I will confess that the purpose of reading this book was to go see the movie. Let it be stated now that you should read the movie first! It has always been a rule of my mothers, and I am adapting it to my own life. I won't go in to great detail about the movie, because that is the whole purpose of seeing it for yourself (although I will recommend taking plenty of tissues!). It was well acted, and they did stay pretty close to the original story line. I took the advice of a friend and didn't have any expectations going in to the theater, which did help immensely.
Quotes from the book:
"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."
"When you love someone you let them take care of you."
"A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you."
"You don't love someone because they're perfect," she says. "You love them in spite of the fact they're not."
"Doubt thou that the stars are fire;
Doubt thou that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt that I love. -William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Thursday, July 2, 2009
BBC Reading List
Apparently the BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books on the BBC big read top 100 book list. It is on my Bucket List to read all of these books, but after Becca's review of Bleak House, I might not be able to :)
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK 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 – Philip 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 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
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 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 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 – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
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 – AA 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 Zifon
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 Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
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’s 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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS 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 – EB 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
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 Factoy – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK 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 – Philip 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 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
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 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 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 – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
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 – AA 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 Zifon
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 Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
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’s 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 Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS 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 – EB 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
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 Factoy – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Friday, June 13
I must say that I thought today went the best of all the days! The boys wanted to be at home for the Hockey game, so Domitille and I went shopping!!
After having no luck at Delia*s or Forever21 (can you believe it!) we went shoe shopping and both bought a pair of shoes! Hers are yellow and mine are grey. Then at Charlotte Ruse she bought a hat, sunglasses, and a scarf. All of which made her look very American! (I got a dress too).
That night was the 7 Brides for 7 Brothers play that Hannah See was staring in. We went to pick up TJ and Domitille loved him! He bought Domitlle all kinds of American food which she thought was so funny! We then went to Walmart and McDonald's for coffee (probably doesn't compare very well to what they have in France). We are becoming such great friends and are finding more and more things we have in common!
After having no luck at Delia*s or Forever21 (can you believe it!) we went shoe shopping and both bought a pair of shoes! Hers are yellow and mine are grey. Then at Charlotte Ruse she bought a hat, sunglasses, and a scarf. All of which made her look very American! (I got a dress too).
That night was the 7 Brides for 7 Brothers play that Hannah See was staring in. We went to pick up TJ and Domitille loved him! He bought Domitlle all kinds of American food which she thought was so funny! We then went to Walmart and McDonald's for coffee (probably doesn't compare very well to what they have in France). We are becoming such great friends and are finding more and more things we have in common!
Thursday, June 12
After some sleeping in we went to the Women of Excellence Lunch which was wonderful! My mom won the purse raffle, and so she gave it to Domitille. We then went to the Pony Express Museum, since this is our favorite museum! The boys gave her every piece of information they new, and she was a little overwhelmed!
After dropping off the boys at home, Domitille and I went to Panera Bread. She laughed because the same things are sold in France for much cheaper!
We drug her along to our Fiddlers Three Show (which was short one...we missed Reid very much) and she loved it!
Next was the American passtime, baseball. We took lots of pictures with the ball players, which she thought was great! (Thanks to Miss April who made this all possible!)
Wednesday, June 10
After some confussion about the time of her arrival, we picked up Domitille from the airport! Her flight came in at 5pm, which was midnight in Paris! We then proceeded to take her straight to McDonalds!That night was Family Night for Boy Scout camp, so we went to visit Reid. Although the singing and dancing probably made her wonder about our country, she seemed to enjoy it very much!
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