I’m Spreading the Mono!

 

“So, the point (and I do have one) to this post is motivated by my desire to hand some of that love and kindness back around to those who have been so very, very, very good to me in this bloggy world. My hope is that those who receive this award will pass it on to those who have been very, very, very good to them as well. It’s a big kiss, of the chaste platonic kind, from me to you with the underlying ‘thanks’ message implied. I really do appreciate your support and your friendship and yes, your comments. … Mwah!”  - by the originator of the smoochie mwah blog post thingy.  I don’t know who it is.  I got this from A Readers Journal.

LK - The Literate Kitten.  LK is a smart, funny, and kind woman, very good writer as well.  She always stops by with a kind word, even on her worst days.  *smoochy poochy coochie coo* for LK.

Trifecta Mwahs’s for Stephanie, Heather, and Iliana who welcomed me into the book blogging world with open arms, and have helped me along the way.  For my book blogging big sisters - *SMACK*

Big *sloppy wet kiss* for Literary Gas.  Please come back, seriously, I miss you.  I know I’m really needy, but I promise to be good.  please.

For Nonanon - the Parker Posey of the book blogging world, for making me scoff and laugh all in the same breath -  *Mwah*  “don’t stop believin’, up and down the boulevard”.

Reading Matters.  Stop reading in your sleep.  Seriously, you make us all look bad.  *SMOOCH*

A Life in Books.  One day we shall be friends.  I have convinced my family on the basis that your blog is way better and more intellectual than mine, that you are not psycho and therefore safe to meet in real life.  Looking forward to it. *High Five*

 

OK, Tag you’re it, pass on the lurve……….germs included.

7 Things I Approve of

I got this meme from Cam, who got it from Charlotte, who got it from Hover Frog. Cam provided some lovely quotes to go along with his choices, be sure to check it out. Here are my seven things.

1. Reading in the bath-tub in the middle of the day. Actually, I approve of doing this at any time of the day but there is something so decadent about just dropping everything, chores, agendas, whatever, and surrendering to a hot steaming bubble bath and a meaty paperback.

2. Conversing with God. I talk to God all the time. Mostly when I need comfort, or strength, or when I am walking around the lake and I feel like its a good time to check in and say hello.

3. Relishing in the joy of my children. The type of happiness that you get from your children is called joy. Pure joy, unfiltered. A poem ala Bookie.

Pockets of Joy

The garbage disposal is making a shrill sound when I turn it on.

I turn it off and investigate, a shard of glass has been caught, and has destroyed the gears.

The IRS sent a letter today, an error was made when filing your 2006 return, you owe $1023.63. Please submit as soon as possible, the letter asks coldly.

The fault between you and I keeps growing, I nurture it by sleeping on the couch and I lay there trying to remember what deep kisses used to feel like.

The weight of it all starts to pull and tug at my temples, and my spirit. Sleep does not come easily.

Then, morning comes.

I am awakened by tiny soft hands on each of my cheeks, hot sweet breath in my face. I smile knowingly. He smiles back, the blue of his eyes gleaming with the delight of a new day. “I love you mommy”, he says, unprompted. We stare at each other with grins the size of Texas, emitting the sweetness of a shared love.

These little pockets of joy, as I call them, exert their power on my spirit, and I feel my self folding into the joy, relishing in it, taking full pleasure in the love of my children.

Then my heart, which was just so heavy, is swollen with the power of my gratitude.

4. Expressions of Gratitude. See above. Appreciate what you have, appreciate your life, your family, your friends.

5. Vacation. Life is too short to work all of the time. Take a break, enjoy your life.

6. A fine brew at the end of the day. Nice crisp cold glass of beer at the end of the day. Priceless.

7. Random Acts of Kindness. I whole heartedly approve of this movement. Wanna pay it forward, this website will show you how.

Yes! Bloggers Rule!

Read Sarah Boxer’s piece on blogs and blogging in The New York Review of Books. I think her conclusion is that bloggers are like Superhero’s. OK - so maybe that’s not what she meant, but who cares, after reading this article, I kind of feel like one. BLOG POWER!

Also, on a sidebar, I could not start work today because my criminal background check has not come back from the FBI yet. lullzzzzzzzzz

Got a job!

I start tomorrow as a teachers asst. in a nearby school.  It’s not much money, but its income while I take a couple of courses I need and try to finish up on a couple of children’s books that I’m trying to write.

whew…

Far be it from me…

To resist a book challenge called The Pub.  Now you guys know I hate challenges BUT, with a name like The Pub, who am I kidding?  Check out Michelle’s Challenge rules below.

Want to read more books that are published in the current year? You’ve come to the right place! This challenge lasts all year. The rules are simple:

1. Read a minimum of 8 books published in 2008. (Library books are acceptable!)
2. No children’s/YA titles allowed, since we’re at the ‘pub.’
3. At least 4 titles must be fiction.
4. Crossovers with other challenges are allowed.
5. Titles may be changed at any time.

Sign up HERE using Mr. Linky.

So far, I have 2 books on my list:

Cleaning Up by Tania Glyde

and

People of the Book - Geraldine Brooks.

 

I better get a few free beers out of this…

This and That

*I’m purposely reading Carol Shield’s The Stone Diaries very slowly because it’s such a divine book I can’t bear for it to end. 

*Nancy Pearl has served up a new batch of under the radar books on NPR.  This is a great little feature, do check it out and go ahead and click on all her previous lists of under the radar books, you’ll be adding several to your TBR.  I added these, and I’m not done yet.

After by Jane Hirschfield - Poems.

Dingley Falls by Michael Malone

I Capture The Castle by Dodie Smith

*Fans of Joanne Harris, might enjoy this podcast.

Oh…and I have a job interview in a few hours.  Wish me luck.

Twilight movie News!!!! Is this Edward Cullen?

Hmm.

…hmmmmmm?…HMMM.

Yeh sure, OK.  He’s pretty darn cute.  I can almost see the fangs.

Old news for rabid Twilight fans, but the book series is being made into a movie *shocker*, and Robert Pattison has been cast for the character of the most dreamy vampire ever, Edward Cullen.  Yeah, you heard me right, ef off Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.  Lestat who? Lestat what?

Also cast, is Kristen Stewart to play Bella, who is Edward’s love interest and the Cullen family’s pet human. *snort*

I think she’s totally perfect for Bella.  TOTALLY.

What do you guys think?  C’mon Twilight fans, I KNOW you have opinions on this, lets hear um.  Tell me what you think in the comments section…er, you know where it is.

For more news on the movie go here.

 

Technorati Tags: Twilight, Stephenie Meyer, Edward Cullen, Bella, New Moon, Eclipse, Breaking Dawn, Kristen Stewart

Bookie’s best of 2007

Better late than never yeh?

The Birth House - Ami McKay

Our Native Land: Poems by Adrienne Rich

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters

Half of A Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Achibe

The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson

A Northern Light - Jennifer Donnoly

A Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley

The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson

Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

The House Next Door - Anne Rivers Siddon

A Farewell To Arms - Ernest Hemingway

Looking For Alaska - John Green

Poetry Drop - Mark Strand

This was thieved directly from Jeannette Winterson’s website, www.jeanettewinterson.com.  If you are a fan of Jeanette’s, please go there, it’s fantastic and her poetry section is divine. Big love for Jeanette. Big, BIG, BIG love.

 

ANOTHER PLACE

Mark Strand - USA

Mark Strand is the American Poet Laureate. This poem is taken from his SELECTED POEMS 1992 published by Knopf USA.

I’ve chosen it this month because it is helping me to feel what I am feeling and would rather not.  - Jeanette Winterson

---

I walk
into what light
there is

not enough for blindness
or clear sight
of what is to come

yet I see
the water
the single boat
the man standing

he is not someone I know

this is another place
what light there is
spreads like a net
over nothing

what is to come
has come to this
before

this is the mirror
in which pain is asleep
this is the country
nobody visits.

 

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: Poetry Sylvia Plath Rain Rooks, Mark Strand, Jeanette Winterson, American Poet Laureate

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

It’s hard to go wrong with a book that starts out at a Denny’s in Japan in the early hours of the morning. With After Dark, Murakami nails it once again.  Nice cover as well.  Props.

From Amazon

When amateur trombonist and soon-to-be law student Tetsuya Takahashi walks into a late-night Denny’s, he espies Mari Asai, 19, sitting by herself, and proceeds to talk himself back into her acquaintance. Tetsuya was once interested in plain Mari’s gorgeous older sister, Eri, whom he courted, sort of, two summers previously. Murakami then cuts to Eri, asleep in what turns out to be some sort of menacing netherworld. Tetsuya leaves for overnight band practice, but soon a large, 30ish woman, Kaoru, comes into Denny’s asking for Mari: Mari speaks Chinese, and Kaoru needs to speak to the Chinese prostitute who has just been badly beaten up in the nearby “love hotel” Kaoru manages. Murakami’s omniscient looks at the lives of the sleeping Eri and the prostitute’s assailant, a salaryman named Shirakawa, are sheer padding, but the probing, wonderfully improvisational dialogues Mari has with Tetsuya, Kaoru and a hotel worker named Korogi sustain the book until the ambiguous, mostly upbeat dénouement.

To be honest, I’m not a real fan of novels that drift in and out of reality, but its hard to resist Murakami’s hypnotic voice.

“And so we decide to transport ourselves to the other side of the screen. All we have to do is separate from the flesh, leave all substance behind, and allow ourselves to become a conceptual point of view devoid of mass. With that acomplished, we can pass through any wall, any abyss.”

Also, call me crazy but this book had a sound like a flourescent light bulb. Buzzzzzzzz.

What I liked: The characters were enjoyable especially Tetsuya the trombone player who seemed dead set on pulling Mari out of her own isolation. The setting in Murakami’s books is always so well crafted you can almost taste the flat coffee at the Denny’s.

What I didn’t like: I felt the book could have been about 100 pages longer and some story lines more developed especially with regards to Shirakawa, the man who assaulted the Chinese prostitute.

Recccomend?

Of course! For fast readers this is a long lunch read, go for it! I just wish I could get that buzzing noise out of my head…

…buzzzzzz

Technorati Tags: Haruki Murakami, Japan, Surrealism