10 Books on Your To-Read List

10 Books on Your To-Read List

• Topsy-Turvy Inside Out Knit Toys: Magical Two-in-One Reversible Projects by Susan B. Anderson
• Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing the World One Nonprofit at a Time by Katrina Fried
• 1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up by Julia Eccleshare
• Riding with the Queen by Jennie Shortridge
• Away: A Novel by Amy Bloom
• The Lace Reader: A Novel by Brunonia Barry
• My Only Story by Monica Wood
• The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook: Recipes for The Best Pan In Your Kitchen by Sharon KRamis and Julie Kramis Hearne
• Unravelled by Robyn Harding
• Home: A Novel by Marilynne Robinson

Currently Reading

The book I am reading right now is The Art of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau.

Book Description:

If you've ever thought, "There must be more to life than this," The Art of Non-Conformity is for you.

Based on Chris Guillebeau's popular online manifesto "A Brief Guide to World Domination," The Art of Non-Conformity defies common assumptions about life and work while arming you with the tools to live differently. You'll discover how to live on your own terms by exploring creative self-employment, radical goal-setting, contrarian travel, and embracing life as a constant adventure.

Inspired and guided by Chris's own story and those of others who have pursued unconventional lives, you can devise your own plan for world domination-and make the world a better place at the same time.

I am reading it on my Kindle and it says I am 18% into the book and I already have 34 highlights.  I am thinking that this book is so great I am going to buy it in print and an extra copy for my 17 year old daughter.  His insights are great and his motivations to be different are right on point.

I will post a more in-depth review once I am done reading it.

You Were Made to Make A Difference by Max Lucado and Jenna Lucado Bishop

This is an excellent book for teens. This book is full of examples, inspirational stories, biblical examples and the best part is that it is all in modern language for teens.  Not only does it effectively illustrate the problems in the world (poverty, AIDS/HIV, orphans, lack of health drinking water, etc.) but it gives ideas on how teens can help with these problems to make a difference both globally and locally.  It also frankly discusses the benefits teens receive when they open their life up to God.  This book also provides biblical reasons to help others but, more than that, it shows teens how sharing love with the “unloved” can really make a difference to everyone, including the teen.  This book has great, inspiring stories from teens who have made a difference on large and small scales. Throughout the book there are exercises that teens can do to help them make a difference and brainstorm problems in the world and solutions.  There are also interesting little trivia tidbits throughout the book, as well as quotes, and other language to really inspire teens.  I would definitely recommend this book for my teenage daughter as well as any teenager looking for a deeper relationship with God through public service. 

*To comply with FCC regulations, please note: Booksneeze has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy.

Outlive Your Life by Max Lucado

This is an excellent book if you are searching for justification for doing good deeds.  The first few chapters are wonderful.  They talk about the huge problems in the world (poverty, illness, etc.)  Those first few chapters, psych you up to start thinking of helping in those areas.  But then the rest of the book is all the biblical reasons why you need to help other people.  “Jesus said this” or “Jesus did this” or “the Bible says this”.  There is no discussion about ways to help other people or ways to “outlive your life”.  The main content of the book are the reasons why you need to help.  I didn’t feel that this book was very helpful because many of us know why we need to do things to help others, otherwise, why would be reading a book like this?  Most of us, I feel, are looking for inspiration on how an ordinary person can make a difference in the world.  I had hoped this book would answer that question for me.  Sadly, it did not.  However, it was very well written (as most of the author’s books are) it just didn’t address what I had thought it would. 

To comply with FCC regulations, please note: Booksneeze has provided me with a complimentary copy of this book or advanced reading copy.

Weekend Activities

I absolutely love Masterpiece Theatre. There is just something about those wonderful, amazingly talented actors enacting the classics like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and so on.

Wuthering Heights was on last night. Well, at least part one. Tom Hardy, who plays Heathcliffe, is an amazing actor and pretty damn good to look at too. I can’t wait for next week when the conclusion will be on.

This weekend was very strange. Princess Ivi and I went to town (Palatka) and cashed my paycheck and went to Walmart. While there, I bought a replacement camera because I can’t stand it any longer. I just bought a Kodak Easyshare C913. It is just a basic camera.

Then, we went home, ate frozen lasagna, made Toll House cookies and vegged. I went to bed at about 9:30 slathered with Vicks Vapor Rub.

I slept very late on Sunday because I had not been sleeping well since having this cold.

After getting up though and taking some medicine, I did laundry (about five loads). Yesterday was the perfect day for drying them on the line since it was about 68 degrees and the wind was fairly constant. Most of the clothes dried within half an hour to 45 minutes.

I also cleaned my bedroom, did dishes, made dinner, sewed a button on a Calorimetry and took a shower.

But I ran out of steam at about 7:00 p.m. and spent the rest of the night parked in front of the tv working on the Spiral Tube Socks.

Princess Ivi has been reading the Twilight books and she was very touched by them as she spent a good deal of time crying while reading Twilight and New Moon. I love to see her get so involved in a book.

A Book Meme

I found this on my Ravelry group - 52 Books in 52 Weeks and I thought I would share it.

What we have here is the top 106 books most often marked as “unread” by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you’ve read, underline the ones you read for school, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno (and Purgatory and Paradise)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Lazy Long Weekend

I had a long weekend this weekend due to New Year’s. I read a lot. Which is good because I joined the 52 Books in 52 Weeks group on Ravelry.

I read Chasing Fireflies by Charles Martin. This is a wonderful book. I especially liked this book because it was set in Brunswick, GA and mentions St. Simons Island, Jekyll Island and even Jesup, GA. I find this interesting because my daughter was born in Jesup, GA. I liked this book because the story is wonderful, the detail is awesome and the characters were lovable.

I also read When Crickets Cry by Charles Martin. I liked this but not as much as Chasing Fireflies.

I finished The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd as well. This was enjoyable and I love the thought of living with "colorlessness".

I just started Home to Big Stony Gap by Adriana Trigiana this morning.

Princess Ivi read quite a bit too. I love that she likes to read. She started Twilight last night.

The rest of the weekend was spent resting as I have a severe sore throat, and watching movies from the DVD shelf. I did a little knitting on the Spiral Tube Socks but not much as I was so achy that it hurt to lift my arms.

I made banana bread with the pile of over-ripe bananas which were sitting on the counter. It was good (although I don’t care for Banana Bread). Princess Ivi and Mom both enjoyed it. The recipe was from Mom’s old Joy of Cooking cookbook. I love the simplicity of the recipes in the book. Although there are some that have strange ingredients like cow’s tongue.

I did make a yummy quiche. It was a ham, potato, broccoli and cheese quiche. Mom made the crust for me since I can’t make pie crust to save my life. Instead of shortening, she used bacon grease so the crust tasted like bacon. It was very good and I will definitely make it again.

Here is the recipe if interested:

Ham, Potato, Broccoli and Cheese Quiche

3 to 4 medium potatoes, cut and partially cooked,
1 to 1 ½ cups frozen broccoli, cooked
3 cups cheddar cheese
2/3 cup heavy cream (or milk)
4 large eggs
3/4 cup cooked ham (or bacon)
Basil
Parsley
Salt
Pepper
1 uncooked pie crust

Whisk together eggs and cream. Add potatoes, broccoli, cheese, ham and spices. Stir well. Pour into pie crust and make sure level. Cook at 350 for 1 hour or until done.

Back to Business....

My Christmas was wonderful. I hope everyone else’s was good as well.

On Christmas Eve, I got home from work and my brother Dan and his three kids were there. We opened presents with them and had chili for dinner. Yum.

My niece Emily picked out a very nice knitting book for me and did a great job wrapping it. The label said “To: Aunt Lennie From: The Family”. She cracks me up.

After they went home, we talked to my sister (in Massachusetts) while they opened their Christmas gifts. It was great to hear my nephew “singing” in the background. He really enjoyed his gifts including the Florida Gators t-shirt I found for him. My sister loved the lemur and the movie. And of course, Rob loved his pistachios and his book. My mom bought my sister a Go Phone so we can all talk to each other for free which is always a good thing.

Then, Princess Ivi and I watched movies (although I can’t remember which ones) while Mom finished wrapping her presents.

We woke up early Christmas morning and opened our stockings (mine was filled with nail polish, cotton balls, remover, nail files, etc.) and then said “what the heck” and opened our gifts. Princess Ivi gave me new pjs, the winter edition of Interweave Knits and Creative Knitting, and a new hairbrush. Mom gave me a pen set and handmade stitch holders (which were beautiful). I also got a new tote bag filled with yarn, lotion, a spa set, and body wash from Pat and Barry. The bag is now my new “bring to work bag to collect all the junk I accumulate throughout the day”.

Princess Ivi liked her keyboard and her Ipod but she really loved The Nightmare Before Christmas. We watched it Christmas afternoon. We have decided that when we find the dog to add to our family, he (or she) will be named Zero in honor of Jack’s trusty pooch.

Later that day, Dan came down to deliver the lawnmower and his plants (weeds, dying plants, etc.) and had dinner with us. Mom made a pork roast with roasted potatoes and broccoli. It was good.

I took advantage of the beautiful weather and did lots of laundry (all weekend actually because it was perfect line drying weather).

We also went to a new bookstore in Palatka and I bought Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Lady Susan all by Jane Austen and The Seven Wonders of Sassafrass Springs. I also bought my nephew some books and Princess Ivi got two books.

I splurged on myself and Princess Ivi this weekend as well. I bought myself two shirts for work and a pair of pajamas. I bought Princess Ivi a new purse. I also purchased Speed, The Replacements, The Da Vinci Code, Stardust, and Stand By Me to add to our DVD collection.

Then we watched movies and I knit.

I am working on the Cranberry Biscotti socks. They are coming along. I have turned the heel on the first sock and will start on the gusset tonight.

I also have a scarf in the works for Pat with the wonderful yarn she bought for me. It started out as a basket weave scarf but I am bored with the pattern already so I thought I would do stockinette stitch and do the same length of basket weave on the other end.

Oh, I almost forgot. I found a wonderful magazine. It is called Life: Beautiful. It is a faith based magazine with no advertisements. There are great articles and wonderful quotes from the Bible. I love it and I am going to subscribe to it. It is $18.95 for 4 issues but with no advertisements and such wonderful articles, I think it is definitely worth it. I think it will add to my walk with Christ.

I just realized today though that I did not take any pictures of Christmas. I think I am not inspired to take pictures because my camera is broken. I can’t see the pictures in the little digital screen after I take them. It really stinks. Sears has a sale on a great Canon camera. It is $179 and I am trying to decide if I should get it or not. I am worried that if I buy it now, I will need the money for something else but I am worried that if I don’t get it now, I won’t find such a good deal. Hmmm.....decisions, decisions.

Reading

I finished reading The Alchemist's Daughter. It was good. The main character was slightly irritating and at times you wanted to smack her for being so stupid but other than that, it was a good book.

I also read Dirty Blonde by Lisa Scottolone. It was okay. Not one of my favorites but it was a nice change.

I just finished Keeper and Kid by Edward Hardy. It was sweet. There were parts that irritated you but the Kid sounded pretty cute to me.

Books

Princess Ivi, mom and I went to the library on Saturday. We got our library card so I feel like I actually live here now. I picked up two books: Follow Your Heart by Susanna Tamaro and The Alchemist's Daughter by Katharine McMahon.

I just finished reading Follow Your Heart. It was very good in a slightly heartbreaking sort of way.

Interestingly, this library had a cat. They left the door standing open and this stray cat came and went whenever it pleased. It was very cool.

I am trying to find someone to give Princess Ivi her school physical. I am looking for a Saturday appointment. No luck yet....Grrrr!!!

Books

I started a list of all the books I read in 2008. So far it contains:

The Wednesday Letters: Sweet and sad but an enjoyable read.

The Book of Names: Wonderful. I have already recommended it to my mom.

The Kite Runner: This was a good book but it was painful to read because the Afghan peoples story can break your heart. However, A Thousand Splendid Suns is on my to-read list because Khaled Hosseini has a wonderful way with words.

Eat, Pray, Love: I liked this book because it takes place in several places. It gave me great meditation ideas but there were parts that were difficult to read. However, I wish when I got divorced that I could have taken this type of journey. I am definitely putting her next book on my list.