10 Day You

1. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky.  I can't even tell you the ways I love this book.  It just speaks to me.  They are making a movie, and Emma Watson (aka, Hermione Granger) is playing Sam.  I'm half excited and half scared to see how this turns out.

2. The Book Thief - Markus Zusak.  I just finished this recently and I could not believe how much I enjoyed it.  As I reached the end, I wanted it to keep going. 

3. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold.  Some people think it's really dark and weird that I like this book as much as I do.  But I love Ms. Sebold's interpretation of what heaven is. 

4. Harry Potter series - J.K. Rowling.  I wanted to pick one of the books, but I just couldn't.  Each book is so amazing because of it's interaction with the other books.  Each book builds and develops the other books. 

What are your favorite books?

Books

I just finished reading The Book Thief.

If you haven't read this book, go out and buy it.  Now.  Stop reading whatever you're reading and get this.

The story is about a girl who is growing up in Nazi Germany.  I know what you're thinking - been there, done that.  I promise you, this book is different.  The narrator is Death.  It is crazy interesting and intriguing.  Death has actual thoughts.  Death has feelings.  About death.  About carrying people's souls on.

But that's not even what makes the book so incredible.  It's the writing.  The author uses amazing imagery.  The similes he choose to use to describe things are just...wow.

"Up high, in the window, her face appeared like a white flag with moist eyes and an open mouth.  Her voice was like suicide, landing with a clunk at Liesel's feet."  -pg.390

Amazing, right?!  I'd love to quote more, but I don't want to give much away.

Please.  Do yourself a favor and read this book.  Give it a chance - it's a little tough in the beginning but it is so so so worth it.

Book Challenge

Found this over on Meme Addict and thought it was kinda fun.  But rather than drag it out over 30 days or weeks or whatever, I'm just gonna do it all at once.  Cuz I'm impatient like that.

1. Favorite book -The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (I love her description of heaven)
2. Least favorite book - Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris
3. Book that makes you laugh out loud -Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
4. Book that makes you cry - lucky, Alice Sebold
5. Book you wish you could live in - Harry.  Any of them
6. Favorite young adult book - Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
7. Book that you can quote/recite - Love Story, Erich Segal
8. Book that scares you - A Child Called It, Dave Pelzer (it scares me that there are parents like this)
9. Book that makes you sick - same (it also makes me sick)
10. Book that changed your life - A Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl
11. Book from your favorite author - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
12. Book that is most like your life - Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, Chuck Klosterman (a randon stringing-together of funny anecdotes.  Totally like my life)
13. Book whose main character is most like you - Jenny, from Love Story.  (Minus the whole death thing)
14. Book whose main character you want to marry- Noah, from The Notebook (loyal, funny, hard-working)
15. First "chapter book" you remember reading as a child - Charlotte's Web, E.B. White (isn't this everyone's?)
16. Longest book you've read - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling (870 pages)
17. Shortest book you've read - CDB!
18. Book you're most embarassed to say you like - Turn Me On, Cherie Jeffrey (a totally ridiculous book, but I liked the silliness of it)
19. Book that turned you on - Ummm?
20. Book you've read the most number of times - Love Story
21. Favorite picture book from childhood - Goodnight Moon (I now buy Goodnight Philadelphia for all my pregnant friends)
22. Book you plan to read next - A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrich
23. Book you tell people you've read, but haven't (or haven't actually finished) - Pride and Prejudice (just cannot get into it)
24. Book that contains your favorite scene - Probably Love Story
25. Favorite book you read in school - Man's Search for Meaning
26. Favorite nonfiction book - Man's Search for Meaning
27. Favorite fiction book - The Lovely Bones
28. Last book you read - Those Who Save Us, Jenna Blum
29. Book you're currently reading - The Help, Kathryn Sockett
30. Favorite coffee table book - Ultimate Beer, Michael Jackson

A lot of repeats.  But that's ok.  What are your favorite books?

Books

Did you ever have one of those books?  You know the one.  You bought it because all the reviews about it were good.  Friends or family - the trusted ones - recommended it.  You cracked the spine, expecting to be wowed and...

(source)

You are less than whelmed.  But you keep plugging away.  Keep reading.  Keep trying.  "It has to get better," you think, "NPR said it would."  "Why would preciousflower164* have given it such a glowing Amazon review...I have to be missing something!"

400 pages in, you realize - you're hooked.  And not just because you've been forcing yourself to keep reading.  But because the book has finally managed to suck you in.  You find that you love the characters.  You're anxious to find out what happens to them.  How their lives change.  Will he ever make up with his brother?  Will he ever forgive the girl who destroyed his heart?  Will he ever see his father again?  These questions nag at your heart, begging you to come back to the book.  Once finished, you find out it has changed you.

Or do I just sound like a crazy person?  Well, anyway, I just finished that book.  2 hours ago.

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Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese.  I started this book at the end of April.  I just finished it.  It took me a really long time to get into it.  But it just snuck up on me.  All of a sudden, I couldn't stop.  I read on the train - I have a 1/2-hour ride to and from the city, and I pass that time reading.  Occasionally, I read at home, but not often.  Once I'm home, I prefer to spend my time hanging out with Matt, cooking, baking, or, well, doing this!  So I know I'm sucked into a book when I find myself reading it on my off-hours.  I came home Friday night and read until Matt got home.  I read more yesterday when we got home from Hershey.  It took me a month to get through the first 400 pages.  It took me 3 hours to get through the last 150.

If you're a patient reader (which I am often not), give this book a shot.  And if you do read it, or have read it, how did it go for you?

*Amazon usernames have been changed to protect the innocent

Committed

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This weekend I picked up the book Committed, by Elizabeth Gilbert.  [I joined the Millionaires Club at Books-A-Million - can't wait!]  Today on the train I finished the second chapter.  It provoked some pretty serious thinking for me.  I know, dangerous, right?  Seriously, though.  I finished the chapter and really reflected on her words.  The end of the chapter she talks about people's expectations for marriage:

Life is hard work and work is hard work - I'm quite certain they would agree with those statements - but how does marriage become hard work?  Here's how: Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life's expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. (pg. 48)

Whoa.  That is heh-vey.  I mean it!  Do we put so much into our spouses, fully expecting that they are going to be the one and only reason for our total happiness?  Yikes!  

I thought about this one.  Long and hard.  I thought about my expectations for my marriage and future with Matt.  And you know what?  This is not how I think: "...we should somehow be answerable for every aspect of each other's joy and happiness.  That our very job description as spouses was to be each other's everything" (pg. 49).  I don't expect Matt to be my everything.  I'm not putting all my happiness eggs into his basket.  I expect him to work as hard as I do at continuing to grow in our relationship and to make sure that we are meeting each other's needs.  But I am more responsible for my happiness than Matt is.  It is up to me to recognize what I'm not getting or doing or whatever and fix it from my end.  

Maybe this is because of my age.  Maybe it's because I've always relied on myself.  Maybe it's because I've always been a strong and independent person.  Maybe it's because I'm an introverted, introspective, deeply philosophical person (ha ha).  Yeah, no...it's probably just because I'm old and after pouring everything I had into past relationships and then losing myself entirely when they ended, I realized that my happiness depended on me.  No one else. 

I am capable of being happy on my own.  With or without someone else.  Having someone else (Matt) to enhance and deepen and share that happiness with is awesome.  But I can achieve it on my own.  And I think that's why Matt and I have always had a pretty easy way in our relationship.  Cuz he's the same way.  While we love our time together and treasure the moments we share as a couple, we also enjoy our time apart.  I like escaping to the window seat in our bedroom, putting on some of "my" music, and reading a good book while Matt plays Tiger Woods on Playstation in his "man room" (with lavender walls, crack me up!).  I'm proud of that.  Better yet, I'm proud of us.  And I think (and hope) that we will continue this way and continue being happy - with, within, and without each other (for brief periods of time, only, of course!). 

This is, of course, not to say that I wouldn't be devasted if our relationship ended.  It killed me when it was briefly suspended a few years ago.  But that is when I learned this valuable lesson - I will survive.  While I invested time, energy, love, and whatever else into our relationship, I still had my sense of self.  I still knew who I was.  I didn't have to spend a year traveling around the world to "find myself" (a la Eat, Pray, Love).  I never let myself completely become "us" or "we" - it was always very important to me to understand that I needed to have that me-ness in tact at all times.  Because things happen.  Like it or not. 

I can't wait to delve deeper into this book and keep reflecting on our relationship and why it's soooo awesome.