Banned Books

While I was writing a post for The Great Book Challenge, I was trying to find the title of a book I read when I was about 11 or 12 - I picked it up at the library from a display of "banned books". It was about a young boy who's older brother was part of the resistance movement in World War II. Except the boy and his brother were resisting the Allied forces, not the Axis powers. They maybe lived in the Netherlands or possibly in Scandinavia, but I can't remember and of course, I can't find the book. My mom read it too and then asked if I had any questions about - I remember it being a difficult book because there was discussion of suicide and war and people disappearing in the night, but my biggest question was why would anyone ban a book? Followed by a question along the lines of "War is stupid, no matter what side you're on. Is it bad that I felt bad for the family in the book (I think the kid's name started with A) even though they were on the "other" side?" [My mom's answers: Because people are scared and no, it's not bad to feel empathy for people on the "other" side of a war. It's still a war and it's still horrible no matter which side you're on]

If you happen to know what book I'm vaguely referring to, please tell me.

Anyway. In the course of my internet searching I did find this great list of the top 110 banned books - with instructions to bold books you've read, colour books you'd like to read and italicize books you've read part of.Except there are only 109 books on this list because #58 disappeared.

And we all know I like lists.

So here it goes. It looks like I've read 15, read part of 4, which leaves 89 that I've never picked up. And that reminds me that even though I have a degree in English, I have read pathetically few of the books that most people consider the "classics" and I'm not really sure how I managed to get my degree without reading them...oh well...something to work on I guess! I didn't colour any because I recognized most of the titles and there are some I definitely want to read and some that I feel like I should read...and so then pretty much all of the 89 that are left would be coloured...

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25. Ulysses by James Joyce
26. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29. Candide by Voltaire
30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31. Analects by Confucius
32. Dubliners by James Joyce
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35. Red and the Black by Stendhal
36. Das Capital by Karl Marx
37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47. The Diary of Samuel Pepys by Samuel Pepys
48. Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54. Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
58. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
59. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
60. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
61. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
62. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
63. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
64. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
65. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
66. Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
67. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
68. The Talmud
69. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
70. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
71. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
72. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
73. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
74. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
75. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
76. The Red Pony by John Steinbeck
77. Popol Vuh
78. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
79. Satyricon by Petronius
80. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
81. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
82. Black Boy by Richard Wright
83. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
84. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
85. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
86. Metaphysics by Aristotle
87. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
88. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
89. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
90. The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
91. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
92. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
93. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
94. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
95. Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
96. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
97. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
98. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
99. Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
100. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
101. Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
102. Nana by Emile Zola
103. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
104. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
105. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
106. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
107. The Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
108. Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
109. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

A Broken Magazine...

I'm all for technology, but first the "suffering" caused by lack of Blackberry and now this. Check out the link and watch the video.

This make me sad. Yes, I am a self professed paper addict. Yes, I read real books still (we don't have an ereader or tablet of any kind). Yes, I still have two subscriptions to magazines and pick up an occasional magazine on my way through the check stand at the grocery store. The last lines of text on the video make me the saddest: "For my one year old daughter, a magazine is an iPad that does not work.It will remain so for her whole life. Steve Jobs has coded part of her OS."

Steve Jobs didn't do the coding, the parents did. J is a three year who has grown up in the same world of technology as this kid. True, we don't have an iPad or even an iPhone in our house, but you can bet J knows how they work. She's known for a good two years. But she also knows how a magazine works. She knows how books work.

Will tablets take over part of the book and magazine (and likely newspaper) markets? For sure. But I don't know that tablets will make books, magazines or newspapers obsolete. While there are still people who love to read "real" books, magazines and newspapers, there will still be "real" books. I imagine that one day soon the majority of that stuff will be available on tablets, but I'm not convinced the paper products will go away.

That said, I would have loved to have all of my university texts available on a tablet. Can you imagine how much lighter my book bag would have been!?!

PS Sorry about all grumpiness today...maybe it's a sign that I should be in bed long before midnight. Like hours before midnight. I'll try that tonight...

Mega cross off

So, I get to cross items 5-17 off my organizing list for the 52 weeks of Organizing Challenge. Over a week and a bit I tackled the 13 shelves in our bedroom. We have a double closet and the Billy system from Ikea fit perfectly there. You can see them before we filled them here.



As a whole they looked pretty bad, but individually they turned out to be not as bad as I first thought….here they are in the order they appear on my list.


Okay, not too bad….


This one looks like it just needs straightening


This one isn’t bad except what’s with the take out box? Turns out a gift came in it and the gift has since been relocated to its proper home.


This shelf felt strangely empty…

Books, candles, blue boxes, a piggy bank…


More candles, random heart pillow

So many books!!!


J’s Christmas candy cane and her old shoes?!! The candy cane is on its way to the dump and the shoes have been stored with the rest of the baby gear.

This shelf wasn’t too bad for random stuff – just that squirt bottle of hand sanitizer and a photo envelope. Hand sanitizer is back in my purse where it belongs and the photos in the envelope went to my sister who sent the back framed.


This is where it started to get bad…this shelf is at arm level and apparently it attracts all kinds of orphaned stuff…batteries, exercise resistance bands, bags, receipts…


And it continues….more bags…


This shelf wasn’t too bad…mostly reference materials of some sort.


And my magazines with some books form Alex’s dad. You can read about my magazines here and we donated the books, maybe to BC Cancer…

I tossed a total of about 20 books. Guys, that’s so many books for me. I was pretty proud of myself. I found lots of things that didn’t belong on the shelves…and many things that did. I also discovered a few missing things that I think my be in either J’s closet or the basement…like my Dictionaries and thesaurus. I’ve gone on a dictionary hunt a few times since we moved and always given up and looked whatever it was up online.

The shelves aren’t quite organized the way I would like – but they’re getting there. It does bug me that two of the top shelves have books piled two deep. I ended up with one shelf of family books – references like the What to Expect series, the Health books from our government, a baby name book, a what to do now that you’re a mom book, some toddler activity books, parenting books…that kind of thing. There is an entire shelf of journals. Most of them have never been written in. I have two and a half shelves of books that I haven’t read and one and a half shelves of books I want to reread and then decide if I want to keep them or not…I have a lot of reading to do!

Here’s the after shots. I wish I’d done some panoramics of the before shots…



[clicking on the images, especially the horizontal one should give you a larger picture]

It looks so lovely that I lay in bed and stared at my books for a good 30 minutes last night!

Stephen Harper's Book Club

Or Yann Martel's book club.

Or, because I can't resist a challenge, something new for me to do in my "spare" time.

So, when I saw the link to this, I was a bit skeptical, because really, what would Stephen Harper read? And what would he have to say about what he read?

I shouldn't have worried myself.

Stephen Harper's book club's book were chosen by Yann Martel (of Life of Pi fame).

Yann Martel pledged to send Stephen Harper one new book every two weeks for the duration of his term as Prime Minister of Canada. With each book, Yann Martel included a letter.

Last week Yann Martel announced he had sent the last book, even though Stephen Harper is still Prime Minister.

The list of books he sent to the Prime Minister is intriguing. I went through it and I'm curious and excited - yes, I'm a dork. I've read 9.5 of the books lists (.5 because #61 is two books and I have only read one...Where the Wild Things Are. It's actually on the table at home. J picked it out at the library on the weekend). So, in addition to my other book challenge, I'm going to try to read through this list. 100 books sent every two weeks is 200 weeks - just a couple of months shy of four years. I can do this...it just might take a while! And books from this challenge will count for the other challenge (providing they meet the criteria!) I love that the list isn't just fiction or non-fiction, it's not just about current issues, and it's not just Canadian works.

Oh, and I sort of feel sorry for the Prime Minister's Executive Correspondence Officer. How many boring letters like the response letters to you think (s)he has to write every day.

What do you think of the idea of a Prime Minister's book club? How many of the books have you read?

Books I have already read - but I'll likely reread them. It's been a while since I read most of them:

2. Animal Farm
13. To Kill A Mockingbird
14. Le Petit Prince
15. Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit
31. Their Eyes Were Watching God
33. Persepolis
37. A Modest Proposal
51. Julius Caesar
61. Where the Wild Things Are
79. Charlotte's Web

Oh and I couldn't decide where to post this - it fits with both blogs, so it's posted twice. Sorry if you got it twice...

Does anyone know...

The title of a book, written by a woman, with a yellow cover, about our disposable society that overspends?

It's a one word title if that helps.

It might be something like Spend or Buy or Consume or Cheap. But it's none of those four.

I checked.

The writer lives in New York. There's at least one paragraph about paying for a parking spot.

I think it was published in 2009.

I saw it when we were on Salt Spring Island this summer and decided that I'd get it from the library instead of buying it. I took a picture of it with my phone. But when we got home, it appears I actually took a picture of the floor.

I saw it on a book blog a while ago and went, AHA! That's the name of the book.

But do you think I thought to write it down.

No.

Because apparently I'm not smart like that.

Anyone have any idea?

Thanks.

PS this might show up twice in your RSS feed because I posted it here and there. Sorry if you got it twice.

A new challenge

Hanging on the bulletin board in my office is a now-yellowing copy of the Globe and Mail's 100 books to read (The Globe 100), published on November 28, 2009. It caused much discussion in our office and one of my coworkers thought maybe she'd try to read 100 books this year. Not necessarily that 100, but 100.

That's almost two books a week. You can have four weeks off where you only have to read one book.

I've been pondering her challenge to herself (I do know that she's postponed the challenge as there have been some other, more pressing challenges in her life the last few months) and wondering if I could do it. I KNOW I can't read 2 books a week. I have a toddler. Okay, scratch that, the other day we read about 50 books, some of them multiple times, but toddler books just don't seem to make the cut in my challenge to myself.

I've also been missing my book club. It was fun until it gradually disovled as we all became busier and busier and had less time to read and meet. Those ladies are some great friends!

So I thought about it and thought about it and thought about it and I'm going to try to read one book in a calendar month until the end of December. If that goes well, I'm going to try two books in a calendar month. Ideally I'd like to be at 52 books in the year, but not forcing myself to read one book a week. Quite honestly I know there will be weeks where I won't even pick up a book and other weeks where I plow through a couple.

So, I've started another site over there. Just for The Great Book Challenge.

And I've set myself a few rules:

1. If I cannot, absolutely bring myself to finish a book, I will not. I tend to torture myself and force myself to finish books even when they're not keeping my interest and I'm not enjoying them. I'm not going to do that for this challenge.


2. If I don't finish a book, I will still blog about it. Then I will attempt to read another book in that same, now truncated, month.


3. I will try to read books from all kinds of genres, not just fiction or memoirs or toddler books...


4. I will welcome suggestions from other readers. Actually, I always welcome suggestions from other readers. Please, suggest away!


5. For the purpose of this challenge, for a book to count as the book of the month, it MUST NOT be a book I have already read


6. If you have anything to add to what I write about a book or if you have a completely different opinion, leave a comment. Please...I want to hear about what you have to say (and I miss my book club!)


7. If you want to join me, please do! Click on the join tab for more information. Just because you've joined the challenge doesn't mean you have to post anything or read the same book as me.


8. I am going to only read "free" books. So borrowed, library, gifts, gift card purchases or books that already exist in my bookcases. If you decide to join, you do NOT HAVE to adhere to this rule. It's optional. I'm still on a book diet...hence the free book thing.
   

So, please, go visit me over there and see if I manage to accomplish this new challenge. Before I start it though, I guess I should finish the rejigging of this site. Sigh...multitasking only works when you don't get distracted while doing it. Actually, maybe multitasking is just another way to say distracted.

Six percent?

Okay, I stole this from Hans' Facebook page...apparently most people will only have read 6 of the books on the list. Hans has read 16 which I think is pretty impressive since most, but not all, were originally written in English which is not Hans' first language.

Thanks for giving me something to blog about Hans!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - Yes, in high school, university, for my book club and just because I liked the book
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien - No...I've read The Hobbit a couple of times, but could never get into Lord of the Rings for some reason
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte - Yes - In university
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - Multiple times
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - Yes, many times. I love this book!
6. The Bible - Yes, most of it actually because I took one class devoted to the entire Bible and its literary influences and one class devoted to the New Testament in university.
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Yes, in university
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell - Nope. I've read Animal Farm though.
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman - No
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens - Yes, this was the first Dickens novel I read and I love it. I read it in high school first, then university twice and at least once, maybe twice, just because I felt like it.
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott - Yes! Lots and lots and lots and then once in university for a class and then lots and lots and lots more!
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy - Most of it. I liked Far from the Madding Crowd better.
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller - No
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare - Not the complete works, but a large portion of them
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier - No, but not because I didn't try, many many times! I just couldn't get into it.
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - Yes. I loved it.
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk - No
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger - No
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger - Yes!!!!
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot - Yes. For university. I hated it!
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell - Yes
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald - Yes, for the first time for my book club.
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens - No
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy - No
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams - No
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh - Yes. For a university class.
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - No
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck - No
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - Yes
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame - Yes
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy - No
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens - No
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis - Yes, a long, long time ago!
34. Emma - Jane Austen - Yes
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen - No
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis - Yes
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - Yes
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres - Yes
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden - Yes
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne - Yes
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell - Yes
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown - Yes
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - Tried to many times, but never finished it.
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - No
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery - YES! I think I've read almost all of her novels.
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy - Yes
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood - Yes
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding - No
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan - Yes
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel - Yes
52. Dune - Frank Herbert - No
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - No
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - Yes
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth - No
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - No
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - No
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley - No
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon - No
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez - No
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck - No
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov - Yes. But it was hard to read.
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt - No
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold - Yes
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - No
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac - No
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy - No
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding - Yes
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie - No
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville - Yes
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens - No
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker - No
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett - YES!!! I loved this book so much, mine barely has a spine left!
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson - No
75. Ulysses - James Joyce - No
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath - Yes
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome - Yes
78. Germinal - Emile Zola - No
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray - Yes
80. Possession - AS Byatt - Most of it.
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens - Yes
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - No
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker - Yes - for summer reading at HPA
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - No
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert - No
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry - No
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White - Yes...for the first time not as a child, but in Children's Lit. I liked it then, but never got into it when I was little.
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom - No
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - No
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton - No
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad - No
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery - Yes in English and French
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks - No
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams - No
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole - No
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute - No
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas - No
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare - Yes (Isn't this part of the Complete Works of Shakespeare?
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl - YES!!! I still love this story. Danny the Champion of the World was probably my favourite Roald Dahl book though.
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo - No

I think that's 45/100 plus six that I've attempted or haven't read all of (Complete Works of Shakespeare), but I should qualify that by saying I did do a degree in English Literature.

So, it appears I have my reading cut out for me. There are a bunch of books that I would likely put on my own favourite 100 books of all time...and many on this list that wouldn't be on my list, but that's for another day!

How many have you read?

Time to blog?

Huh? what? blog? I wish! I didn't realize how much of an outlet blogging was for me. It gives me a place to write and to work out whatever is rattling around in my brain, but lately, well, there just doesn't seem to be time. When Baby J goes down for the night, I usually have 2-3 hours for myself before I need to crawl between the sheets, because, really, she might sleep until 7:00, but it may only be 6:00 or if I'm lucky it could be 8:00, but I won't know until I hear the summons ...waaa ... waaaaaaaaaaaaah ... waaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAH ... WWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH ... and then, believe me, I know!

But I think I've missed it. Lots.

The last few months have obviously been full of change. Baby J has been a part of our lives for almost six months now...well, longer than that, but before six months ago, she just pummelled my internal organs and gave me heart burn, she didn't require attention. Five minutes ago. Jeepers Mom, can't you read my mind?

Now, six months in, I think maybe I have a handle on things. It helps that Baby J pretty much sleeps through the night. Not having to drag myself out of bed at 2:00 and 5:00 to feed her means most days I can handle getting up with her and staying up for the day. I still occasionally need a nap when she naps, but not every time like I did for a few months. The kitchen has been clean almost every night this week hours before bedtime. For a while there it felt like dishes were a once a week kind of job and thank goodness we had a dishwasher. We're not eating out of the freezer anymore, although I still make double batches of soup, chili and other freezable foods because, inevitably, when the freezer is empty we have a day that forbids cooking!

I have started reading again...it took me two and a half months to read The Flying Troutmans. It took me six weeks to read The Hour I First Believed. Then I read Gods Behaving Badly in three days and I'm on another book (bad Brit Chick Lit with a title I can't remember) that will only take three nights too.

I have a routine! and being able to read for half an hour to an hour every night before I go to sleep means I sleep better and I get to read more. Both important things for me!

So, maybe, just maybe, I'll be around more in the next little while. We'll see. I'm rusty, so posts could be blah, but bear with me! That is if you're still out there. I've been gone so long I might not have any readers left!!

The Hour I First Believed

I just finished reading The Hour I First Believed and I was a little surprised at how long it took me. I read I Know This Much Is True and She's Come Undone a couple of times each and they were both fast reads. Now, there are 700+ pages in The Hour I First Believed and I do have a baby, but it took me six weeks! I found it was a bit long and there almost seemed to be too many threads. I did like it and will probably reread it at some point, but it wasn't as good as I had hoped.

Twenty-five random things about me

As posted on Facebook

25 Random Things About Me

1. I ignored this note thing until Minda harassed (okay, gently prodded) me about it!

2. I love staying at home with Baby J and would like to be able to do it all the time and never go back to work, but part of me is actually looking forward to going back to work...I may not feel the same way in September, but we'll see.

3. I have a serious book addiction. I have put myself on a book diet which means I am not allowed to buy books for myself unless someone gives me a gift card to the bookstore. I've been borrowing books from my aunt and uncle's collection instead. I tried to pare down my collection when we unpacked this time, but I only managed to find three books I could bear to part with.

4. I have a love-hate relationship with our new place. I'm hoping the hate part will go away once we paint and maybe get a couple of pieces of new furniture...

5. The smiles I get first thing in the morning from Baby J make getting out of bed worth it and bearable...even when she decides to wake up before 6:00 am.

6. I only lived in London for just over 1.5 years total. I've lived in Vancouver for 10+ of the last 13 years. London feels more like a second home than Vancouver. I still feel a bit transient in Vancouver. I have good friends and family in Vancouver, but I feel like many of the special people in my life are scattered around the world...probably because of the time I spent living in Hawaii, London and Switzerland!

7. When I'm working, I only get to see Alex for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half everyday - it's hard and we try to make up for it on weekends. That's part of the reason I'm enjoying maternity leave so much - now I get to see him for four or five hours a day and we even get to eat together!

8. I love going to bed early and getting up early, but I also like staying up late and sleeping in. I need 8-9 hours of sleep to function...unfortunately it usually works out that on the days I stay up late, I need to get up early. Not so good for the sleep quota.

9. I worked in an industry that required talent and skills that I know I don't possess. Thank goodness I was in administration not production, because I have those skills. When I told people where I worked, the looks of disbelief I got from the people who knew me were great. The looks of relief when they heard I was in administration were even better! They made me smile every time!

10. I have an irrational fear of birds. All birds. Alive birds, dead birds, stuffed birds, photographs of birds in books.

11. When I was a kid I thought there was a monster/bad guy/bird living under my bed. I'd turn the light off and take a running leap from the door to my bed so the monster/bad guy/bird couldn't grab my ankle. Good thing my bedroom was tiny.

12. We shared the Blue House with at least two ghosts.

13. I learned more about the Bible from my AP Lit class than I did from Sunday School.

14. When I was in high school, I used to go camping at least once a month. I miss it and I'm trying to convince Alex that camping is fun.

15. I don't like condiments, but our fridge is full of them because I married a condiment fiend.

16. I love that my family is large and that we enjoy spending time together.

17. I had my first migraine when I was ten or eleven. At the worst, they were coming every seven to ten days. My usual trigger is abrupt changes in barometric pressure or altitude. Sometimes lack of sleep, too much sleep, dehydration or food can also trigger them. They have varied in severity and frequency since I started getting them. One of the best side effects of being pregnant was the complete absence of migraines, even when the Vancouver weather was crazy!

18. When I was admitted to the hospital three weeks early to have Baby J, our coworkers knew, but we didn't tell our families until she had arrived safely.

19. I'm a pack rat. Really and truly a pack rat. It's mostly organized, but I know I don't need all that stuff. I'm trying to be more ruthless at getting rid of stuff. It's working better in some areas of my life than others (see #3 above and #20 below).

20. I also have an addiction to stationery and all things related to it. I have three drawers and a bread box full of stationery. I have more pens than I could possibly ever use. But certain types of paper demand certain types of pens. Too bad we're no longer a society that uses the postal service much. I'm kind of on a stationery diet too, but it's not working so well.

21. I have a big postcard collection that started when I was seven.

22. When I was at boarding school I got so much mail that they were surprised at the bookstore when there was nothing for me to pick up from my mailbox. Even when I lived in London I got lots of mail. Not so much now...but that's okay!

23. Maybe my addiction is to all things paper - books, stationery, postcards, letters? Hmmmm...

24. I love having an empty laundry basket but I hate doing laundry, in particular the folding, hanging and putting away part. I never iron, but when I lived in London, I found ironing sheets to be very relaxing and a good time to think!

25. Everyday I look at Alex and Baby J and I can't believe they're my family or how happy they make me! I think I'm pretty lucky to have both of them!

Shannon's 2009 Reading Material

I'm not sure how much I'll be reading this year. Or how much of it won't be stuff like Goodnight Moon and Hug and Pat the Bunny. Those aren't going to be listed here. They just don't need to be!

books in progress

• From Time To Time (started in June? 2008)
  
• What to Expect The First Year (ongoing!)
• Everything is Illuminated (started a long time ago...we still lived in the blue house!)
  
• Anybody Out There? (started February 17)

books just finished

• Daisy Dooley Does Divorce (started February 9, finished February 16)
• Gods Behaving Badly (started February 6, finished February 8)
  
• The Hour I First Believed (started December 26, finished February 5, commented on February 6)

Bye-bye books

So, the bookcases are in. Most of the books are out of their boxes. And we decided it's time to get rid of some books. Yeah, how to choose. I love my books. And I'm definitely still on a book diet. As I unpacked, I was surprised at how many books I hadn't read. And I'm not just talking about Alex's sports/radio/music biographies. I'm talking about my books.

Book diet is still in full force, but it was time to weed out the books.

So, I packed up a couple of boxes of kid lit - like Anne of Green Gables and Rupert Annuals and that kind of thing - for when Baby J is bit older and into "chapter books." I also made a pile of books that belong to other people...I have a huge stack from my parents' house and not quite so huge stack of books that belong to my aunt. I wonder if they'll even notice that the books were on vacation at my house!

Getting rid of books, though, that is the hard part. I think it will take some time to really weed the books out. I'd like to only keep books that I will reread or I haven't read, but I'm just not sure about some of them...

The books that are leaving and need a home are:
Where's Mom Now That I Need Her - (cookbook/general home care)
Middlemarch - George Eliot
At Swim, Two Boys - Jamie O'Neill
Insomnia - Stephen King
Jessica - Bryce Courtenay

Let me know if anything catches your eye. They're in our thrift shop box and are up for grabs until the box is full.

The Flying Troutmans

I actually finished reading a book! I love books, but since Baby J was born, other, more important things have been occupying my time. Rebecca lent me The Flying Troutmans and I read it, slowly, but surely over about seven weeks. I never take seven weeks to read a book!

Now, it wasn't the only thing I've been reading. What to Expect the First Year lives close by at all times and I'm well versed in Welcome Song for Baby, Hug, Guess How Much I Love You and others.

It was good and I'd recommend it. I told Rebecca that if she ever decided she needed to take Baby J on a road trip because I had gone a bit nuts and Alex had moved to a tent city on the California/Mexico border, to at least please make sure the car wasn't going to break down any second after she left.

On to the next book...I wonder how long it will take me to get through that (I'm not sure what the next book will be...suggestions are welcome...)

Four Things

You know it's a slowish day at the office when she-who-never-posts-anymore posts twice in one day!

Four things I did 10 years ago (1998):
1. Survived third year
2. Found out I was going to Pax Lodge after graduation
3. Spent the hottest week of the summer at Camp Arbuckle
4. Went to Victoria for the first time (and the second time too)

Four things I did 5 years ago (2003)
1. Worked for Sammy
2. Lost a lot of sleep because of the Kelowna firestorm and worrying about it and my family
3. Moved into the Hobbit Hole
4. Painted many walls with Fiona

Four things I did yesterday
1. Saw pictures of our baby
2. Invaded six people's homes (legally!)
3. Celebrated a co-worker's birthday
4. Cleaned...lots...nice sparkly apartment for the weekend

Four TV shows I like to watch
1. The News
2. Hockey Night in Canada
3. Bones
4. House

Four things I love to do
1. Read
2. Knit
3. Hang out with Alex
4. Hang out with my family and friends

Four places I want to visit
1. London
2. Kelowna
3. New York City
4. Ireland

Four books I love (and will reread)
1. The English Patient
2. Harry Potter, all seven
3. Maisie Middleton
4. Little Women

Four things to do this weekend
1. Celebrate Alex's birthday
2. Hang out with my Mom and Alex's family
3. Get some warm weather clothes that fit
4. Continue the hunt!

Four things to do before my next birthday (which gives me not quite six weeks)
1. Swim two - four times a week
2. Catch up on my emails and letter writing
3. Reduce the pile of books that are half read to one
4. Reduce the number of knitting projects in progress from about six to two

Four things about you?

Shannon's 2008 Reading Material

No side bar this year. We're starting the book list off right with its very own page. I'm always looking for new books to read, so if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

books in progress

• From Time To Time
• What to Expect When You're Expecting
  
• What to Expect The First Year
• Everything is Illuminated

books just finished

• Knit Fast, Die Young: A Knitting Mystery (January)
• Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (February)
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (February)
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (February)
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (March)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (March)
• Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (March)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (March)
• The Bonesetter's Daughter (March)
• The Other Side of the Story (April)
• Time And Again (April)
• Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging (April)
• On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God (May)
  
• Persepolis (June)
• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (June)
  
• Atonement (July)
  
• Stanley Park (August)
• Pursuit of Happyness
  (August)
• The Flying Troutmans
  (October)
  
• Sway (November)
  

Once Upon a Seven Part Series of Kidlit

NO SPOILERS - I PROMISE

I am now on my second read through of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I can't believe how quickly I read it the first time, even with countless distractions yesterday. Now I need to reread it because I am positive I have missed all kinds of important details.

I won't spoil the ending, or the middle, or even the beginning, but I will say I was surprised and not surprised at who died or didn't die. And while I really was unsure how it was going to end, it ended one of the ways I had thought it could end.

Since I finished reading it, I have been checking out some of the "spoilers" that were floating around the internet before Saturday and while some of them are very accurate (especially when the Spoilers had taken the time to read the photographed copy of it) some are totally inaccurate and almost humorous.

Now I'm just waiting patiently for someone else to be finished too so that we can have conversations like:

"Could you believe it when...?"
"Did you think....would happen?"
"I totally knew that was going to happen..."
"Hey, one of my theories was right..."

Until then...NO SPOILERS! I promise!

Back from the "Island of the Secret Love Nun"

Friday, before we went to the VanDusen gardens for the Harry Potter party, I came straight home from work to finish the book I was reading, Island of the Secret Love Nun. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to finish Harry Potter and Love Nun book was good, so I figured I should get to it!

I got the book for my birthday from my friend Michelle who works at a book store and was determined to get me to read "something different." The bright pink cover didn't scare me away and it was a very interesting, imaginative book. I love that it was totally off the wall, but made me want to read more and more and more.

So today, before the library goes on strike, I think I will venture out to see if they have any more of Christopher Moore's books. I guess Michelle's plan worked. (Oh, and I needn't have worried about how long Harry Potter would take to read.)

Who Dies?!

Well, that's still a mystery, cause I haven't finished the book yet. I decided when we got home at 1:00 this morning that I would put off starting the book until morning. I want the book to last forever because it's the last one, but at the same time, I really want to know what happens. Taking a computer break and not looking at any "unsafe sites" is one of my prolong-the-experience tactics.

I should know better. I have loved rereading the first books so much that I am sure that once I have devoured book seven in its entirety I will be content to reread the series over and over and over.


The Harry Potter Party last night was a lot of fun. Lots of people had very cool costumes, lots of kids (and grownups too) were very excited to be there. The rain held off from the time we walked through the entrance to the Gardens until we got back to the rock star parking we found for Stacey's car. The mist from all the rain made the garden eerie in a very good way.

There was much discussion about turning off cell phones and hermiting away until the last page of the book is turned by many people who *never* *ever* turn their phones off and can't imagine being disconnected from the world for long. Facebook, online newspapers, other social networking sites, Yahoo, MSN, and email in general were to be shunned. It's amazing the response to a "kids' book!"

Aleksandra, Shannon and Alex, waiting patiently

"Why am I here?"
"Because, secretly you like Harry Potter and one day you too will succumb and read the books!"

Hogwarts Express

Alex tests out the Goblin Gold

Looks like Voldemort takes many shapes. The lady on the left doesn't look like a Dark Wizard, but she's marking Aleksandra!

Aleksandra, scarred

Shannon is scarred too

Fawkes the Phoenix

Trust Snape

Dumbledore

Whoosh....it's midnight...here come the books!

Shannon and Alex

Alex and Stacey, ready to go home and read the book

Countdown to Harry...

Eight hours and counting. I sure hope the rain goes away in time to see lots of little Harrys, Hermiones, and Rons. Sounds like we're going to the party with a Hermione (and a grump too...someone doesn't like rain!).

I'm very excited to get my new book and spend some quality time in an imaginary world, but I'm also sad that this is going to be the last book. And nervous about who she might kill off this time...oh well, I will enjoy the Harry party and then make sure there is a box of kleenex nearby while I read the book, just in case! And I'll be sure to become a hermit until I'm done. There have been all kinds of warnings today to avoid your email and the internet if you want the ending to be a surprise.

No spoilers here...not now anyway. And if there are later, well, I'll make sure they're very clearly marked.

Here comes Harry Potter

Kidsbooks has turned into the Telephone Box used to enter the Ministry of Magic! The arrival of book seven can't be far off!


There's even a map to the "Ministry of Magic."


Anybody want to go the Ministry of Magic with me on July 20?