books: i read one.

hey guess who is making good on their new years goals? i know some of you may laugh at this (my literary friends have surely scoffed at me), but one of my goals this year was to read 4 books from start to finish. i have a nasty little habit of reading the first couple chapters of books and losing interest. what can i say, i am a girl of many interests.

the book i chose to read: the guernsey literary and potato peel society
a writer in england strikes up a relationship with a book club group from one of the channel islands, Guernsey, during the german occupation and WW2.
i enjoyed the book, but found myself skipping through parts of it, particularly because of the format. if you haven't read this book, it is set up as letters back and forth between a handful of characters. there isn't any dialogue or description other than what the characters offer in the letters. i had a difficult time getting on board with the letter writing, but i made it through the book to the sweet ending.
i don't know if i'd recommend it, although i really did love the protagonist, juliet. parts of the book were extremely heartbreaking, but i found myself skipping through the pages quite a bit. maybe i'm just a bad reader?

onto the next book...maybe the little bee? have you read any beautiful books lately?

some stories about books.

some stories about books:

1. last week TH and I were discussing how our neighborhood really needs a good bookstore. he quickly pointed me to the bookstore by eastern market, but i'm sorry that one is too crowded for the bookstore i'm talking about. i'm talking about the cafe, and lots of reading chairs, and big spacious places to think and socialize with your community...GASP! i'm talking about cans of olive oil, big box bookstores that put the little man out of business! awkward. but the heart wants what it wants.

2. the borders at 19th and L is closing its doors and EVERYTHING is 20-40% off. i went in last night and browsed around for about an hour, picking up chick lit (sorry, can't do it), travel books, biographies, and finally settling on cookbooks. ahh yes, food, my true love. i picked up heidi swansons (of 101 cookbooks) "super natural cooking" and molly wizenbergs (of orangette) "a homemade life". i've already picked out a handful of recipes i can't wait to try from heidi's book, including barley risotto and pumpkin muffins. and molly's book seems like such a comfortable atmospheric cookbook, i'm sure i will get lost in it. can not wait.

moral of these stories: i want a big box store, but i don't want to put the little guy out of business. but the box stores go out of business, you get a discount. so, everyone wins! except i still don't have my neighborhood book cafe. womp womp.

(photo from 101 cookbooks)

expanding my reading horizons.

i'll be the first to admit that i am not a great reader. i love to read. i love the thought of "curling up with a good book", but i am not well-versed enough with the vast selection of literature to know what i will love or hate. and this is why everytime i go to sunflower, i always get the general tsao's, because i already know it's good and i'm afraid to try anything else for fear of wasting calories. same goes for books - i fear wasted book calories. if i'm going to read something, i want it to be good.

(though, side note, maybe i should take the same approach to movies as i do to books - i've seen some pretty crappy movies in my day just for entertainments sake.)

anyway.

in the spirit of summer vacation, i am going to make up a summer reading list. i want to fill it with a variety of books, including my favorite genres: biographies, historical non-fiction (especially early U.S. or eastern european wartime), dystopian sci-fi, and jane austen. yes ms. austen has her own genre. i'm also going to branch out and read some things i usually wouldn't, like good fiction or mysteries. why not.

so, now is the part of this post where i ask you what books are on YOUR summer reading list? or what could you recommend to me? i have a hard time starting with this stuff, but as i've found with running lately if you just stick to it and make a goal, wild things can happen.

p.s. i'm still reeling over my 4 mile run yesterday. yay!
p.p.s. did you know i tried to write a book about dystopian society a while ago? ahhh, i still laugh about it.

oh, ahem. yes.

So I'm sitting here thinking -

It'd be really awesome if there were a service like Netflix, but for books. You could read a book and have it for a few weeks, then send it back to get a new one. What a great service - you don't have to shell out all your monies to buy new books!

Then someone informed me that this service already exists and it's free. They call it the "public library". It sounds kind of strange, but I think I'll go check it out!

And one more item of business for today

Read the People magazine spoof here.
I love that even Voldemort has a reaction.

Haha. Oh, Harry Potter...it's too bad that Dumbledore's outing is being overshadowed by all the wildfire blazes in SoCal. Talk about bad PR timing.

I love you. Let me count the ways.

Everyone's favorite child star wizard! Child star wizard turned...blech. Why does he look so skeevy? I've been racking my brain to figure out how our cute little Potter turned from this into the adult he is today. Well, here are some things that I think would make Harry Potter look a little more...natural.

1. Tan. For the love of Hermione, get a freaking tan. You're skin is translucent and you are soon going to be mistaken for a dementor if you keep wearing black clothing.
2. Do something about those eyebrows! The problem is, the rest of him looks so girlish that the bushy eyebrows are just throwing me off. They look like caterpillers attacking his face. Take care of it.
3. Stop faking that smile. I think what good ol boy needs is one of those bite guards. I feel like he probably has grinded his teeth into nothingness. He always looks like he's just moving those chompers back and forth with his mouth closed. Just relax, geez.
4. Maybe sleep a little bit. Either that or lay off the drugs. Your eyes always look like a 22 year old college drop out. Red...watery...psychotic...I don't know. Maybe invest in some visine.
5. Stop posing in awkward positions for MENS magazines! Blech.

Seriously. If you just take these simple words of wisdom to heart, maybe you will be able to stop Voldemort. I mean, I haven't read book 7 yet and I don't know your fate, but I think you should hold on to atleast a little dignity. Start now.

Oh and as self-proclaimed facial hair advisor, please would you please stop trying to grow a beard? It's not working yet and it just makes you look a little more...skeevy.

I long for the days of yore...

I'm really hating the internet lately.

It's keeping me from reading from paper sources. I miss reading the newspaper in the morning. I miss looking at the obituaries to see how everyone passed on. I miss thumbing through magazines. These days everything has a blog. And, while convenient, it takes away from the comfort of sitting down on a big fluffy couch and trying to catch up on world politics or laying the comics out on the living room floor and trying to keep the good ones away from your lingering brothers and sisters.

Along with the internet comes my recent hatred for television.

I always get sucked into some horrible {read: awesome} lifetime movie or a repeat of SNL. And while these are sometimes funny, it makes me miss sitting in my bed on a rainy evening and reading a good book. My reading lately has only consisted of metro reads, which only amounts to about 45 minutes a day. Not enough to get anywhere in a decent book.

I guess I just miss the comfort of being lazy and doing some old-fashioned activity. I started reading a Book last night. I use the term Book lightly, because it is really a manuscript that was never published into a book. It is a record of one womans life, being a member of the Nazi party and mistreated by the Poles and Russians. I started it last night and could hardly put it down after 2 hours of reading. Learning about this womans life, how her mother was banished from her home as a little girl, forced east to Siberia by the Ural mountains and out of her large family was one of the only two to survive the starvation, sickness and cannibalism. Then by luck and the grace of one progressively thinking woman, she was given food and shelter and education. She met a german-polish man and proceeded to have four children, one of them being the woman who wrote the book. The atrocities she speaks of are amazing. What is even more amazing is she is still living, and is in the same ward as my Dad. She has all but lost her mind and talks only of this experience, according to my Dad. I really can't wait to get back to this book and read the rest, probably over the weekend. I really like books, to be able to feel the material in your hands. Especially this womans book - which is really just a large stack of 8 x 11 1/2 white paper. Something about lifting each piece of paper after I've read it feels so comfortable and nostalgic. Have any of you read any good life-changing books lately?