The Author

Over the past few months, my mom has been completely manical about trying to get everything that I ever owned out of her attic! In one box she sent over I even found 6 or 7 old retainers, which I'm really glad were kicking around for the last twelve years just to finally end up in the proper garbage can. On Sunday, I mentioned to my mom that I was redoing our bookshelves in the living room since the clutter of every photo we have printed was starting to be a bit much to look at and I wanted something a little more manageable for the eye. She took the opportunity to suggest that I take my boxes of books home with me, and of course, she threw in a couple extra boxes as well. The extra boxes contained mostly scrapbooks from my childhood through high school that my mom had assembled. I haven't really dove into looking at them all, but I did manage to find a handful of books I wrote as a child, mostly in third grade. Reading through these books was way more fun than it probably should have been and even 20 years later - I thought they were pretty good. I think my favorite part about the books is how much I really tried to model an actual published book. All of my books have not only the title and author's name listed, but also the illustrator (myself, again). A publisher (mostly J.V. Publishing or Detar Publishing, my third grade teacher's name,  or Jenna Publishing), a copyright, and a dedication page. At the end of every book is an About the Author page and in one of them I even included a picture or myself on this page. The About the Author page is definitely my favorite; it's exactly the same in every book and apparently includes all the important details that my readers need to know about me.

Jenna Van Lieshout was born in 1986 in Batavia Hospital and lives in Albion. She goes to Albion Primary School. She is in third grade. Her family two brothers Alex and Mitchell a mom and dad and a cat named shadow. She has written 5 stories including John F Kennedy. She gets her ideas from work at school. Her favorite sport is dance. She went to Washington D.C. when she was seven years old.

The first book I read this in, I thought I had included dance as a favorite sport because the title of the book was The Elephant Who Took Ballet. And I really couldn't figure out why I found it important to tell everyone about some random vacation my family took. Then I realized, the whole thing was pretty random and I had included the exact passage in every book of mine. Also, I wish someone had taken the opportunity to give me a lesson in grammer. I read the teacher comments in the one book that had teacher comments and they all just talk about my great imagination. I mean, a little constructive critism would be nice!

And my newly arranged bookshelves.

Books. Books. Books.

Remember when I lamented over the fact that Aubrey didn't have the patience to sit through a book. When I was worried that my child would not a reader because she didn't have the attention span to read a book at bedtime, let alone have a favorite.

I have memorized Good Night Moon. Along with a few other favorite Sesame Street Board Books. For someone that has seen Sesame Street a total of three times if at all, that girl really does have a thing for Elmo.

Every night before bed and every morning when we wake up and if its the weekend at least three occasions during the day we read a series of books. 8 times in a row. Don't get me wrong, I love it and I'm thrilled that Aubrey has developed the attention span to sit through Good Night Moon on repeat for a half an hour - but I'm now anxiously awaiting the day when I can read her a really good book - like Harry Potter.

What, you think its exciting that there's a picture of a cow jumping over the moon and three bears sitting on chairs and a quiet old lady whispering hush.....wait until I read you this....straight up Magic!

So, yes, book crisis....averted.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Because I haven't done a book post in forever. And because I read this book way back in May or June or something. And because I'm actually in Brooklyn this weekend. ....A book post!

(Gabe feel free to jump up and down for joy at any point in time here)

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn  by Betty Smith was an absolutely amazing novel. It was just so well written, and its so easy to read. And I just really love books where you learn snippets of people's lives. Because the preface of the book did such a beautiful job explaining the book, I"m going to let it do it for me (because I was honestly in love with the writing in the preface too!)

"In its nearly five hundred pages, nothing much happens. Of course that's not really accurate: Everything that can happen in life happens, from birth and death to marriage and bigamy. But those things happen in the slow, sure, meandering way that they happen in the slow, sure, meandering river of real existence, not as clanking "and then" that lends itself easily to event synopses.
If afterwards, someone asked, "What is the book about?"- surely one of the most irritating and reductionist questions in the world for reader and writer alike - you would not say, well, it's about the pedophile who grabs a little girl in the hall, or about the time a man went on a bender and lost his job, or about a woman who works as a janitor in a series of tenement buildings. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not the sort of book that can be reduced to its plot line. The best anyone can say is that it is a story about what it means to be human......instead this is that rare and enduring thing, a book in which, no matter what our backgrounds, we recognize ourselves. Francie does not say "good-bye" to the tenements or the tragedies but to the girl she once was, the illusions she once had, the life she once led." preface written by Anna Quindlen

There are also a plethora of amazing quotes throughout the novel. Here's a few.

"Suddenly Francie jumped up. Her heart was beating fast. She was frightened. For no reason at all, she thought of an accordion pulled out for for a rich note. Then she had an idea that the accordion was closing..closing...closing...A terrible panic that had no name came over her as she realized that many of the sweet babies in the world were born to come to something like this old man some day. She had to get out of that place or it would happen to her. Suddenly she would be an old woman with toothless gums and feet that disgusted people."

"The library was a little old shabby place. Francie thought it was beautiful. The feeling she had about it was as good as the feeling she had about church.She pushed open the door and went in. She like the combined smell of worn leather bindings, library paste and freshly inked stamping pads better than she liked the smell of burning incense at high mass."

"What Katie and Johnny said to each other on that special day, they never remembered. Somehow during their aimless but oh-so-significant conversation with its delicious pauses and thrilling undercurrents of emotion, they came to know that they loved each other passionately."

"And he asked for her whole life as simply as he'd ask for a date. And she promised away her whole life as simply as if she'd offer a hand in greeting or farewell."

One more, then I'll stop..

"There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard unfamiliar things, there is here - hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He may not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise - but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has a good heart and the way of workign honestly at the right things."

So yeah, I have an obsession with good quotes from books and I could like many more from this book here - but I'll just let you read the book yourself!


Oh and just a sidenote, there is a tree growing in Brooklyn in this book, but its not the focal point of the story. The entire time I was reading this Martin kept asking me how the tree was doing and when I said I didn't know he didn't really find that to be an acceptable answer!

Steig Larsson.

I've really been falling behind on book reviews lately, and while I know this probably makes Gabe very happy - my life will not be complete until I catch up. So....here's two together, and its not because I just really want to catch up and slam them all together, but because once you read the first book, you absolutely must read the second book.

Back in March, I posted about Steig Larsson's, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which you can read here. After reading that book, I couldn't get enough of Steig Larsson and decided to read the next book in the series - The Girl Who Played With Fire. While The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an absolutely amazing novel, it can definitely stand on its own. Its conclusive and neatly wraps itself up at the end. If I didn't know that it was the first in a series of three, I would never assume so.

The Girl Who Played With Fire , on the other hand, is definitely one in a sequel. While completely gripping all the way through the book - once you have finished it life with absolutely not allow you to move forward until you read The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest. These two books without a doubt must be read in succesion and present a compelling and breathtaking story. Your heart will be racing.

While, I don't really have quotes clipped from these novels, that is not to say that they are not wel written. They are extremely well-written and fascinating to read. I would highly recommend picking them up if you are looking for some summer reading!

I Know This Much is True

We sat there for a minute or so, watching the ocean, saying nothing. Ordinarily, with a girl, I would have panicked at the amount of dead airtime. But with Dessa, the silence felt comfortable.

I have other book posts to do, but I have this strange orderly obsession and I have to post them in the order they were read. So I am finally getting around to posting about I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb. I read this book a month or more ago, but I keep putting off posting about it. I don't know why. I am pretty sure it has something to do with my mixed feelings about the book.

And without the hope of her ever coming back, I was already a dead man. Breathing was just a technicality.

The book is very well written, don't get me wrong. And it is really interesting to read about a man's struggle through life with a schizophrenic twin brother. The whole thing is interesting for sure. But for some reason, the entire time I was reading it - I just wanted to hurry up and finish it. Not because I had to find out what was going to happen on the next page, but just because I wanted to be done with it.

'It is all connected, Dominick,' she said, 'Life is not a series of isolated ponds and puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on its way to the future. That is not something I have always understood; it is something I have come to a gradual understanding of, through my work as both an anthropologist and a psychologist.' I looked out, again, at the rushing water. 'Life is a river,' she repeated, 'Only in the most literal sense are we born on the day we leave our mother's womb. In the larger, truer snese, we are born of the past - connected to its fluidity, both genetically and experientially.'

So yeah, this book - I would definitely recommend reading it. It's a great look at society and different struggles people live through.

Middlesex

"Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in 'sadness', 'joy,' or 'regret.' Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, 'the happiness that attends disaster.' Or: 'the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.' I'd like to show how 'intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members' connects with 'the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.' I'd like to have a word for 'the sadness inspired by failing restaurants' as well as for ''the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.' I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever."
Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

I recently read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides and found it to be absolutely incredible! To say it is a novel about a hermaphrodite is a gross understatement and doesn't even come close to doing this book justice. Because, yes, it is a novel about a hermaphrodite and the discovery process and life of Cal (Callie) Stephanides, but it is also so much more..

"Lefty never discouraged any speculation. He seized the opportunity of transatlantic travel to reinvent himself. He wrapped a ratty blanket over his shoulders like an opera cape. Aware that whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever seemed to be would become what he was - already an American, in other words - he waited for Desdemona to come up on the deck"

It catalouges the struggles of a Greek family, fleeing Greece coming to America, the epic of their life.

"Lefty, who'd been observing all the ways Greece had been handed down to America, arrived now at where the transmission stopped. In other words, the future. He stepped off to meet it. Desdemona, having no alternative, followed."

Eugenides does such a great job showing the complex emotions of all characters involved in the book. The reader leaves this book and has an extensive history on the Stephanides family and their journey.

"To my grandparents Detroit was like one big Koza Han during cocoon seasion. What they didn't see were the workers sleeping on the streets because of the housing shortage, and the ghetto just to the east, a thirty-square block  area bounded by Leland, Macomb, Hastings, and Brush streets, teeming with the city's African Americans, who weren't allowed to live anywhere else. They didn't see, in short, the seeds of the city's destuction - its second destruction - because they were part of it, too, all these people coming from everywhere to cash in on Henry Ford's five-dollar-a-day promise."

The mass amount of history that is catalouged in this novel is incredible. Invasions in Greece, the rise and fall of Detroit. I honestly felt so much more wordly after reading this novel.

"Until we came to Baker & Inglis my friends and I had always felt completely American. But now the Bracelets' upturned noses suggested that there was another America to which we could never gain admittance. All of a sudden America wasn't about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that has happened since."

Eugenides also does an excellent job portrayig racism, seperation, and the strong thoughts that littered people's mind at the time.

"Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities. Jimmy Zizmo, crouching over the Packard's wheel, has already changed past understanding. Right here is where the trail goes cold. I can take you this far and no further. Maybe it was jealous rage. Or maybe he was just figuring out his options. Weighing a dowry against the expense of raising a family. Guessing that it couldn't go on forever, this boom time of Prohibition."

And did I mention that he does a great job explaining complex emotions?

"There are lots of nights out in Berlin when, emboldened by a good-value Rioja, I forget my physical predicament and allow myself to hope. They tailored suit comes off. The Thomas Pink shirt, too. My date can't fail to be impressed by my physical condition (Under the armor of my double-breasted  suits is another of gym-built muscle.) But the final protection, my roomy, my discreet boxer shorts, these I do not remove. Ever. Instead I leave, making excuses. I leave and never call them again. Just like a guy"
All of this is not to say that this novel doesn't also do an excellent job chronicling the life of a hermaphrodite and the emotions, metamorphasis, and feelings of Cal Stephanides. Because he does an absolutely incredible job. It is no wonder this novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003. I think I clipped a record amount of passages from this novel because it was so well written. Almost every sentence seemed noteworthy.

"Milton's face darkened. He swallowed hard. Callie waited for him to say the word, to quote Webster's, but he didn't. He only looked at her across the table, his head low, his eyes dark, warm, sad, and full of love. There was so much love in Milton's eyes that it was impossible to look for truth."

Internal Urges

I know I have a Kindle now and therefore do not need to go to book sales, but there is a little voice inside of my that says, "Go. Go. It will be a glorious event" And more times than not the little voice inside me wins.

So yeah, I'll probably be there today. At 9:55 AM. Waiting for the doors to open.

Hmm, A Murder Mystery

I'm not typically one to read a murder mystery, but I just recently finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson and I absolutely loved it! This is a book I would highly, highly recommend.

"..the exchange between the two men seemed like a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-one else in the whole world had the least interest in unraveling."

I surprisingly didn't pull too many quotes from this that I had to have but I think that might have something, ok, a lot to do with the fact that it is translated from Swedish, because Steig Larsson is a Swedish writer.

"If she gave him her little finger he'd take her whole arm. And he would never understand."

While this book is a murder mystery, it is also so much more. There are so many elements and factors and amazing intertwining plots and fully developed characters in this novel. It was just absolutely and incredibly amazing!

"At some point on the morning of the second day she came to a terrifying realisation. She had no idea how it had happened or how she was supposed to cope with it. She was in love for the first time in her life."

Another Ghost Story

Has anyone else noticed that almost every book written by Mitch Albom deals with dead people? Is that a conincidence or does he just have a really odd obsession?

Anyway, enough speculating. A couple weeks ago I finished reading For One More Day by Mitch Albom and I figured I should probably write about it, before I forgot.

First of all, Mitch Albom books are nice to read because they are easy to read, and every once in a while, I like an easy read. They are short, they aren't dense, you can basically get through one of these books in a day or two without even really trying. Sometimes, that's nice.

"Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back"

Another thing about Mitch Albom books is they are generally jam-packed with quotable phrases. I'm not really sure how that happens. But whenever I read a Mitch Albom book I think, that sentence should stand on its own!

"The truth is, there is no line. There's only your life, how you messed it up, and who is there to save you. Or who isn't"

That's not to say that I was in love with this book. Because I really wasn't. I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven a long time ago, on a plane to Poland, and I remember loving it. I also remember crying a fair amount. If you haven't read that yet you definitely should.

"She wasn't easy on me, don't get me wrong, She smacked me. She scolded me. She punished me. But she loved me. She really did. She loved me falling off a swing set. She loved me stepping on her floors with muddy shoes. She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless well of love for me."

When I was reading this book I remember waiting for something and I'm not really sure what, but the entire book I felt like I was waiting for something. I want to say I was waiting for the point, but that sounds harsh, so I'm just going to keep it really nondescript and leave it at something. Anyway, that something never really came.

"I fell as easily as you fall into your pillow at night. And I didn't want it to end. That's the best way I can explain it. I knew it was impossible. But I didn't want it to end."

Of course, as I read through these quotes I clipped from the novel I can't help but think that these are really great and therefore, I must have loved the book. Because, these quotes are great and typically I absolutely love books when I love the writing.

"When someone is in your heart, they're never truly gone. They can come back to you, even at unlikely times"

Anyway, what I'm trying to say, basically the entire point of this post is I would still recommend reading this book, because it's a nice, easy read and full of good quotes, but I wouldn't put it on any sort of acclaimed novels list.

Gorgeous!

It's been absolutely gorgeous out these past couple of days. I am absolutely loving it.  I can not get enough!

I had to go in to work for about 6 hours today. But when I got home at three it was perfect weather to take a nice long walk down to the falls and read in sun.

East of Eden

"Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story"East of Eden, John Steinbeck

I recently finished reading East of Eden by John Steinbeck. This novel is amazing and once again I find myself baffled by the fact that it has taken me so many years of reading to finally get to this work.

"There was a nail-hard strength in her, a lack of any compromise, a rightness in the face of all opposing wrongness, which made you hold her in a kind of awe but not in warmth." East of Eden, John Steinbeck

"He felt the warmth for his brother you can feel only for one who is not perfect and therefore no target for your hatred." East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Steinbeck is an incredible writer. His words are so lyrical. His writing just so literary and amazing. I could drink it up.

"He could hear the rich, lyric voice in his ears, the tones rising and falling in their foreignness, and the curious music of oddly chosen words tripping out so that you were never sure what the next word would be." East of Eden, John Steinbeck

I know I've said this before, after I read The Bean Trees, but I absolutely love when a novel starts out with mulitple seperate stories of lives that are seemingly unconnected and then they come together. It's not that the coming together is a surprise ( I mean, it's a novel - there has to be a connection somewhere), I feel like I understand the characters and their complexities so much better having "known" them before they are put into the situation together in which the novel will ultimately focus.

"He turned slowly. He smiled at her as a man might smile at a memory. Then he went out and closed the door gently behind him. Kate sat staring at the door. Her eyes were desolate" East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Steinbeck is also very philosophical in this novel. He makes a lot of comments about society and the human population and what motivates us and provokes us and the reasons for our existence.

"He though dawdling, protective thoughts, sitting under the lamp, but he knew that pretty soon his name would be called and he would have to go up before the bench with himself as judge and his own crimes as jurors" East of Eden, John Steinbeck

There were so many amazing passages from this novel and I had a really hard time picking out just a few to post here.

"We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is." East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Three Cups of Tea

I've really been falling behind on my book reviews. I finished Three Cups of Tea on the plane ride to Florida. Since then I've read East of Eden and I'm now moving on to For One More Day. So. For Today. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson.

Three Cups of Tea is a different kind of book than I normally read. Normally, I am always looking for really good writing. Books that I think are of literary merit. This book, while well written, isn't that type of book. This book really inspired me and taught me at the same time. I always like books that are based in reality. I am a huge fan of historical fiction, but this book is great because it's actually written by the man who is creating the history.

Greg Mortenson is an ex-climber who has devoted his life to building secular schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan because he believes education is the key to ending terrorism. His work is amazing. His life is amazing. He went about doing this with basically no money. He is amazing.

"Apo calling Wahhabi madrassas beehives is exactly right. They're churning out generation after generation of brainwashed students and thinking twenty, forty, even sixty years ahead of time when their armies of extermism will have the numbers to swarm over Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world"

Mortenson, having spent years of his life in the Middle East has a keen understanding of extremists and how intricately and brillantly they are planning the futures of their organization to last for generations.

I don't want to teach Pakistan's children to think like Americans, Mortenson says, I just want them to have a balanced, nonextremist education . That idea is the very center of what we do"

Mortenson, by building nonextremist schools for both girls and boys is building a future for the people in the Middle East. So they have the education neccesary to run successful town,s, villages,schools, hospitals, etc. He is helping them to become self-sustainable in the future.

"It was the most exciting day of my life, says schoolmaster Hussein's daughter, Tahira. "Mr. Parvi handed each of us new books and I didn't dare to open them, they were so beautiful. I'd never had my own books before."

Greg, who started out with his first school in the early 1990s to now 131 schools with over 40,000 girls educated!

Today is a day that your children will remember forever and tell your children and grandchildren. Today, from darkness of illiteracy, the light of education shines bright.

For more information on what you can do to help, or just to learn more about the programs that have spawned from Greg's work and involvement in the Central Asia Institute please read Three Cups of Tea: and visit this website.

Cuddle Up

I absolutely love looking at bookshelves. I find something very soothing about looking through different pictures with books all over them. It's just so calming. I found this awesome site called Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone and that is where I found this adorable photo. You should check it out, because it's just so absolutely incredible to look through pictures of books on shelves!

Feel free to call me a nerd at any point in time. I'm completely over it.

Someone Grab My Smelling Salts!

I have finished the emotional rollar coaster that was Gone with the Wind. I know, it's incredible that I have made it to this point in my life knowing basically nothing about this classic story. It's incredible and it's ridiculous at the same time. You would think that I would have at least watched the movie. I mean, I know 2 girls who were named after Katie Scarlett O'Hara. That is quite a precedent. But, the book always seemed too daunting to me. For some reason I had it mixed up in my mind that it would read like a Charles Dickens book. Was I ever wrong!


She looked - and was - as simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water. But for all her plainness of feature and smallness of stature, there was a sedate dignity about her movements that was oddly touching and far older than her seventeen years. Gone With The Wind (Maraget Mitchell)

I absolutely loved every minute I spent reading Gone with the Wind. At 1400 pages, it's no quick read, but Margaret Mitchell's writing is extraordinary. The story is amazing and the writing, oh, it's just so good. I did not want to put it down. EVER. I basically stayed up most of last night finishing this novel.

Her love was still a young girl's adoration for a man she could not understand, a man who possessed al the qualities she did not own but which she admired. He was still a young girl's dream of the Perfect Knight and her dream asked no more than acknowledgement of his love, went no further than hopes of a kiss.

Scarlett is an interesting character. When I think of the fact that I know 2 people named after Scarlett O'Hara I wonder why. I basically spent the last 25% of the book hating almost everything about her. But then again, she is a very real and very raw character. Mitchell lets us know Scarlett's deepest thoughts. Thoughts that you wouldn't admit to anyone. She is also a very strong character and definitely has a lot of redeeming qualities too. Her drive and determination to achieve her goals being the largest of those.

Talk always turned to war now, all conversations on any topic led from war or back to war - sometimes sad, often gay, but always war. War romances, war weddings, deaths in hospitals and on the field, incidents of camp and battle and march, gallantry, cowardice, humor, sadness, deprivation, and hope. Always, always hope. Hope firn, unshaken, despite the defeats of the summer before.

Throughout the novel, my thoughts on Scarlett wavered between pride for her accomplishments and loyalties and complete disgust and contempt with her thoughts and actions. Mingled in there were comparisons with her to myself. I always do that, compare myself to the main character. I always think, that is something I would do! It's slightly ridiculous I know.

In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came to the end of the long road which had begun the night Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end of the road, there was nothing left of that girl.

When I think of the sharp contrast of feelings I felt in regard to Scarlett's character, I really give Mitchell a dose of credit for that. Throughout the story, she does such a great job showing two sides to every person, every issue, every situation. Everything about the book is just so real and so human. Yes Scarlett has good qualities, but she also has a lot of bad ones. Yes, Rhett seems like a bad man, but he has an infinite amount of good qualities also. Yes, Ashley is a very honorable man, but even he makes mistakes. It is just so real.

She was darkness and he was darkness and there had never been anything before this time, only darkness and his lips upon her.

I also like that Mitchell gives us a different perspective on the war than what we learn in history class. By no means am I saying that I support slavery or any such notions like that, but it is also important to remember that history is often written by the victors and there are two sides to every issue.

...She realized that Melanie had always been there beside her with a sword in her hand, unobtrusive as her own shadow, loving her, fighting for her with blind passionate loyalty, fighitng Yankees, fire, hunger, poverty, public opinion and even her beloved blood kin.

Mitchell was born in Atlanta in 1900 and grew up hearing stories about the war, except no one told her the Confederates lost. She didn't learn that until she was ten. Mitchell's mother also died when she was 19 and she returned home to care for her father and brother. She was married three times (Her first husband's name was Henry and he was killed in World War I). Mitchell was also the first woman to cover hard news for The Atlanta Journal. It makes me wonder if Scarlett was modeled after herself. The similarities do seem to be somewhat astounding. Gone With The Wind was published in 1936. In 1939 when the movie first aired in Atlanta the rights to the book had been purchased for $50,000 which at that time was the highest Hollywood had ever paid for the rights to a first novel!

There was such a note of wild despair in his low voice that she dropped her hand from his arm and stepped back. And in the heavy silence that fell between them, she felt that she really understood him for the first time in her life.

I can't wait to watch the movie this weekend!

Olive Kitteridge

He loved her guilelessness, he loved the purity in her dreams, but this did not mean of course that he was in love with her. The natural reticence of her in fact caused him to desire Olive with a new wave of power. Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout)

A couple of weeks ago I finished reading my first novel on The Kindle! I am obsessed with quotes from books. I love remembering those little snatchels of beautiful written work, or great phrases, or just great philosophies to read later and reflect on and bring all the memories and the feelings that I felt while reading the book rushing back to me. I have been keeping journals full of my favorite quotes and passages from novels since high school. Now, the Kindle will do it for me. Honestly, I really like the idea of them being in my own journal, so I will probably transpose them into my journals, but it is just so convenient that the Kindle will clip the passages for me with just the click of a button and store them in a little folder titled My Clippings and annotate them with the book title and author and page number and date added. It is just so incredible.

But enough with that, I really wanted to devote this post to actually talking about the book, Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. On the first night that I got my Kindle, I was searching for a book to read. I had actually planned on purchasing Perks of Being a Wallflower but since that is not available in an electronic version, I was perusing through best sellers. I had heard absolutely nothing about this book, but for some reason it struck me as something that someone, somewhere, sometime had told me I must read. So, without evening reading the back of the book, I made my first purchase.

This was a very interesting read. The main character, Olive, is an older woman and every chapter in the book somehow links to her life. Some parts she plays only a very small almost negligent character, but in other sections she is the central character and the entire chapter is told from her perspective. It is interesting because the chapters are all fairly unrelated; when one ends you could put the book down and not really need to go on to the next one. It is almost like reading a series of short stories with one common character running through them all. The book is also kind of dark. I don't really know if dark is neccesarily the right word, but Olive is definitely a cynic and it has a strange quality about it.

From the preceding paragraph, you might think that I would not recommend this book and that I regretted reading it myself. However, that is not the case at all. I found myself not wanting to put the book down. Even though the chapters didn't run together with much of a common thread, I found myself wanting needing to know what was going on in Olive's head and in what ways she would enter others lives and thoughts. I actually really enjoyed it. Additionally, the book is very well-written and I found myself struggling to choose just one passage to put on the top of this post.

I haven't really looked in to any other works by this author, but I probably should. Right now I am reading Gone With the Wind and I am 28% of the way through or just starting Part 3(another awesome thing about the Kindle, it tells you the percentage of the book that you have read!)

Because He Loves Me..

For Christmas, my dear darling husband got me a Kindle! It is so amazing. I basically love absolutely everything about it.

1. It has no glare; it reads just like a book
2. You can highlight and bookmark quotations
3. It has a built-in dictionary.
4. You can download books directly to the Kindle from the Kindle.
5. New York Times Best Sellers are 9.99 and classics are typically $.99!
6. I can now carry 1500 books with me at all times.

Even the User's Manual looks awesome!

And, my honey is so sweet to get it for me. When I found out about the existence of the Kindle earlier this fall, I had mentioned to Martin how amazing they were. He remembered this conversation, but couldn't specifically remember what the item was called. So, he diligently went to a Google search typing in different possibilities like candlewick. Then, when he finally struck gold - he had to set up a new email account in order to purchase the Kindle at Amazon because his old own was deactivated from lack of use.

The Kindle marks Martin's first successful online purchase AND the new object of my attention.

The Bean Trees

"The three of us had no idea where we were headed, or why, but the air had sparks in it. I felt as though I had a blind date with destiny..." -The Bean Trees

I just finished readingThe Bean Trees and it was a great read. I love it when a novel starts with two completely different lives and then they collide. It's just so lovely. I would highly recommend it!

Barbara Kingsolver also wrote The Poisonwood Bible which I read in high school and is probably the greatest book ever. I absolutely love historical fiction - I just feel like I'm learning so much.

Sidenote: I absolutely love reading! I went through a phase about a month and a half ago and I was reading books as quickly as I could put my hands on them. And that's A LOT of books. I have an obsession with buying books every single time I walk into a used bookstore. Then, I purchased all the seasons of Seinfeld on Amazon (It was such a good deal, I couldn't resist!) and since then, I've really been slacking in the reading department. Hopefully this post is the kick I needed to get back to reading!

images taken from harpercollins