Thoughtful Thursday...

What books have made you think?

Most books usually make me think. There are the what if's, what would I do's, and wouldn't that be cool thoughts that usually go through my mind. Jodi Picoult's books usually really make me think, whether it's about a child who is sexually abused, in Perfect Match http://www.amazon.co.uk/Perfect-Match-Jodi-Picoult/dp/0340897228, a teacher being accused of sexually abusing his students in Salem Falls http://www.amazon.co.uk/Salem-Falls-Jodi-Picoult/dp/034096278X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241102014&sr=1-1 or dealing with school shootings in Nineteen Minutes http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nineteen-Minutes-Jodi-Picoult/dp/0340935790/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241102045&sr=1-1 Picoult always makes me think and feel.

Another book that made me think recently was My Not So Fairy Tale Life by Julie Wright http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Not-So-Fairy-Tale-Life-Julie-Wright/dp/1590384768/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241102112&sr=1-1 , which explores changing from pretty anti-Mormon to Mormon.

I like fiction books that deal with real life issues that challenge me to think, what would I do?

What about you? What makes you think?

PS I love you...

Oh my goodness. I picked up PS I love you on Friday and devoured it! It had been sitting on my shelf for awhile and I wish I would not have waited so long. I don't remember the last time I laughed and cried interchangably throughout the whole novel. I also cannot believe that Cecilia Ahearn was 21 years old and that it was her first novel. It was fabulous. It was heartbreaking and real, yet hilariously funny at parts. You get sucked into it and cannot stop. My only complaints is that I wish Daniel and her had been right for each other. I do not understand Daniel's love for Laura's "drama." I fully agree with Holly's opinion of her just being a bitch. I also wonder what kind of person Daniel really is if he was friends with her ex and her boyfriend. That part of the story could have been better written. Anyway, I definitely give it 2 thumbs up. I even went and got another one of her books from the library and will start that today!

Some things about me...

Getting to Know Me From A-Z:
A - Age: 25
B - Bed size: Full but it needs to be bigger!
C - Chore you hate: hmm, I will have to say dusting but up there very close to the top are folding laundry and washing dishes!
D - Dad's Name: Mike
E - Essential start your day item: A caffeinated beverage
F - Favorite food: nachos
G - Gold or Silver: white gold or silver..
H - Height: 5' 3" ish...
I - Instruments you play(ed): none..
J - Job title: temporary title 1 math teacher
K - Kid(s): none yet
L - Living arrangements: with my hubby
M - Moms name : Sherry
N - Nicknames: Em, Emmers, Fred...
P - Pet Peeve: Chewing with your mouth open and my hubby comes up with new pet peeves of mine daily haha..
Q - Quotes you like: "Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars - points of light and reason. .. And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brillancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything was black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything." - Edward in New Moon
R - Right or left handed: Right
S - Siblings: a younger brother who is 21
T - Time you wake up: Anywhere between 7:30 and 9:30
U - Undying love for: cheese and books ;)
V - Vegetable you dislike: not sure..
W - Ways you run late: sleeping in
.X- X-rays you've had: teeth, knee, ankle...
Y - Yummy food you make: mexican dip
Z - Zodiac: Aries

March Lull..

One would think with it being reading month I would have gotten my read on. Not so much, I really need to buckle down or there is NO WAY I will make my reading goal this year. The things holding me back is my goal at reading books that are classics, or longer, or not really my style and it's slowing me down. After I finish the books from this library trip, I am going back to what I like,and maybe some more mindless reading!

Here is the wee lil damage of reading I did in March..
10. The Hours – Michael Cunningham (March 9th)
11. Monster – Walter Dean Myers (March 12th)

Eeek. This is bad. I have been reading Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates since March 12th, but I haven't picked it up in about a week.. I think my goal is to finish it by Friday, which is totally doable. Must step away from the computer for the rest of the week!

Dorky me

So last week I decided to find the list of books that Rory Gilmore read in Gilmore Girls. I want to try to read them all, and in my search I found this -- http://www.goodreads.com/group/show/758.The_Rory_Gilmore_Book_Club and I am in LOVE. My two loves have come together, books and Gilmores. :)

2009 100 book reading challenge update

1. The Female of the Species – Joyce Carol Oates (Jan 3rd)
2. Twilight – Stephenie Meyer (Jan 4th)
3. Harvesting the Heart – Jodi Picoult (Jan 9th)
4. American Wife – Curtis Sittenfield (Jan 12th)
5. New Moon – Stephenie Meyer (Jan. 16th)
6. Eclipse – Stephenie Meyer ( Jan 20th)
7. Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer (Jan 24th)
8. The Boleyn Inheritance – Phillipa Gregory – (Feb. 23rd)
9. Wives and Sisters – Natalie Collins (Feb 26th)
10. The Hours – Michael Cunningham (March 9th)
11. Monster – Walter Dean Myers (March 12th)

And I am currently making my way through book number 12.. Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates.. Always looking for new suggestions!

2009 A-Z Reading Challenge Update

Books

A-
B- The Boleyn Inheritance - Phillippa Gregory
C-
D-
E-
F- The Female of the Species – Joyce Carol Oates
G-
H- Harvesting the Heart – Jodi Picoult
I-
J-
K-
L-
M-
N-New Moon, Stephanie Meyer
O-
P-
Q-
R-
S-
T- Twilight – Stephanie Meyer
U-
V-
W- Wives and Sisters –Natalie Collins
X-
Y-
Z-

Authors
A-
B-
C- The Hours - Michael Cunningham
D-
E-
F-
G-
H-
I-
J-
K-
L-
M-
N-
O-
P-
Q-
R-
S- American Wife – Curtis Sittenfield
U-
V-
W-
X-
Y-
Z-

Some of my favorite quotes from The Hours

Yes, Clarissa thinks, it's time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it's as simple and ordinary as that.

Still, there is this sense of missed oppurtunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it's as simple as that. Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment.

What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk o a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at that time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.

What is your reading personality?

Taken from.. http://www.bookbrowse.com/quiz/


Your Personality: All-Rounder!

Your responses showed you fitting equally into all four reading personalities:
Involved Reader: You don't just love to read books, you love to read about books. For you, half the fun of reading is the thrill of the chase - discovering new books and authors, and discussing your finds with others.
Exacting Reader: You love books but you rarely have as much time to read as you'd like - so you're very particular about the books you choose.
Serial Reader: Once you discover a favorite writer you tend to stick with him/her through thick and thin.
Eclectic Reader: You read for entertainment but also to expand your mind. You're open to new ideas and new writers, and are not wedded to a particular genre or limited range of authors.

BBC and Reading

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?"
Instructions:Copy, paste, put an 'x' after those you have read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwel
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (That's not fair. I've read a lot of Shakespeare but the complete works?!?!)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
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 X
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 X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
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 X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini X
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan X (Half-way through it.. )
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 Zafon
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 X
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold X
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 X
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 X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
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 X
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

24.. Not bad.. but not good.. there are alot on here on my "Need to Read" list.. so maybe when I do this in 2010 I will be further along.. :)