Fifty Fifty Book Round Up: Books 6-10

I thought I had blogged this, but I guess I hadn't.  Well here we go!

6. Winesburg, Ohio: A Group Of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life by Sherwood Anderson (11/5-11/9).  This was a quick read and interesting, but after a bit all the stories tend to bleed together.  I can see how it inspired similar works.

7. Taft 2012 by Jason Heller (11/12-11/16).  I liked this, and I'm glad it was short because if it was too long it might get tiring.  A quick, clever read.  All the Craigslist rants were really funny.  Interesting to read post-election, too.

8. Definitely Not Mr. Darcy by Karen Doornebos (11/16-11/29).  I liked this book a lot.  It was entertaining, fast, and I love writing about Austen from an Austen fan.  It's expected at times, but I didn't even care.  A good, girly, fast read.

 

9. When You're Engulfed In Flames by David Sedaris (11/30-12/11).  Standard Sedaris.  It was interesting reading an earlier Sedaris and then a later one to see just how different his life has become ever since writing/This American Life.  Typical weird and funny.  If you're a Sedaris fan, you'll enjoy it.

 

10. A Separate Peace by John Knowles (12/11-12/19).  I think if I was a boy who went to boarding school I'd enjoy it more.  But when I started reading it I knew that one of the two best friends was going to die, and since it couldn't be the narrator, I guessed the end correctly.  I get a feeling the writer was a bit of a one-trick pony, since he wrote a similar work later on in his career.

Fifty Fifty Movie Round Up: Movies 11-15

I haven't updated this in a bit, and since I'm at home I figured why not?

11.  Lincoln (11/17/12).  SO GOOD.  OH MY GOD.  It's a quiet movie that says a lot and is riveting.  There's no crazy action scenes and the only special effect is good acting.  Daniel Day-Lewis is pretty much a shoo-in for Best Actor and he deserves it.  Ricky loved watching all the political wheeling and dealing.  It's also great that a book like Team Of Rivals can get a movie deal.

12.  She's Having A Baby (11/21/12).  Very sweet and cute.  It's a weird movie at times, but I enjoyed it.  The end credits is pretty much made for John Hughes fans.  I loved young Elizabeth McGovern, especially since we're in the midst of our Downton Abbey watching.

13.  The Last Waltz (11/25/12).  This movie has been on my mental queue for years, but I wanted to wait until we had a bigger TV.  Well that finally happened so I rented it.  It's really beautiful and good, a loving tribute to some of the best musicians from the 70's.  Oh, and so much coccaine.  Soooo much coccaine.

14.  Miracle on 34th Street the 1947 version (12/21/12).  Neither of us had seen this movie, so during our Christmas movie stretch we made sure to watch this.  I liked it, a lot more than the remake from the 90's.  The end feels a little rushed.  It's great seeing what parades and deaprtment stores from the 1940's looked like.  And the guy who played Santa Claus... I'm pretty sure he's Santa in real life.  He was that believable and filled with mirth.  I read that Natalie Wood thought he was actually Santa, and was disappointed that he was not.

15.  Les Miserables (12/26/12).  Day after Christmas we made our pilgrimage to the Salem Cinema to see this movie.  Ricky enjoyed it, but me being a fan of the musical enjoyed it.  Yes, some of the performances were bad (Russell Crowe) and he used too much upclose and didn't mix it up at all, but I had realistic expectations and they were met.  This won't win Best Picture or even Best Actor, but it was enjoyable.

For Fran

All men have stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems... But all these stars are silent. You-You alone will have stars as no one else has them... In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. ...And so it will be as if all the stars will be laughing when you look at the sky at night..You, only you, will have stars that can laugh! And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me... You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh.
~The Little Prince

Fifty Fifty Book Round Up: 1-5

I just finished books 1-5, so I decided I'd speak on each of them.  The books are obviously taking longer than the movies, but I think I'll be able to catch up over the next few weeks and the holidays.

1.  Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  (And Other Concerns) by Mindy Kaling (9/30-10/3).  It's funny and cute.  And Minday Kaling seems like a genuinely nice person.  I think my issue is tha I read Tina Fey's book first, so the whole time I thought "this is really funny... but it's not Tina Fey funny".  Worth a read and would make a good gift for someone.

2.  Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (10/3-10/7).  This is a great read.  And quick.  I also think dear Mr. Huxley is onto something with how the future will be.  Everything will be despensible and synthetic, and if you don't buy into it you'll be cast out.  I strongly recommend it.  I also read that he had the misfortune of dying the day of JFK and C.S. Lewis, so it was completely overshadowed.  But yeah, great book.

3.  Naked by David Sedaris (10/11-10/18).  I am a fan of Sedaris essays, and he's had a crazy life.  It also takes talent to find humor and tenderness in every moment, such as the death of his mother and his crazy (and dangerous) stories of hitchhiking.  Ricky has a ton of Sedaris books, so I'm looking forward to reading the rest over the year.

4.  Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (10/18-10/23).  I really hated this book.  I get that it's a classic and the protagonist is supposed to be the anti-hero, but I couldn't get beyond the idea that he was raping his stepdaughter the whole time... who was 13.  (Spoiler alert, he has sex with his pre-teen stepdaughter the whole book)  Maybe I'm not smart enough, or cultured enough, but I hated this book so much.  Wow.

5.  Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (10/24-11/2).  This was a nice book to read following up after Lolita.  Bourdain is entertaining and it's an engaging read.  His writing style is just like how he talks on his shows, and he looooooves lists of different ways to describe things.  Still, he's had an interesting (and off beat, since most people aren't professional chefs) life, and it's fun.  Lots of swearing.

Fifty Fifty

Last week, I was at a party when my friend Meg told me about this challenge she's doing, where for a year she's reading fifty new books and watching fifty new movies.  I thought it sounded like a good idea, so I decided to start as well.  From September 30, 2012-October 1, 2013 (I realize it's over a year, but I liked that it was a rounded-ish number) I'm going to try and read 50 new books and watch 50 new films.  I figure it will not only help with expanding my reading/viewing horizons, but will also help keep stress down with wedding planning.

So far, I'm in decent shape on both fronts.  For the books, I have read Mindy Kaling's book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me and I am winding down on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.  I am lucky in that Ricky was also an English major in college, so he has a big bookshelf of potential.  (not a euphemism).  For the movies, I am also in decent shape, though I'm not worried about the movies because it's easy for us to watch a movie a week, as we have a Netflix Subscription.  We've seen Hamlet 2, The Secret of the Kells, and the new Frankenweenie movie. 

I'm lucky to have a good amount of time each day on public transportation, so it's making the reading part easy.  Are there books I should check out?  Movies I should watch? 

I'm recording dates and reviews on my Pinterest Page, but I think I'll recap in tens here as well.  Keep an eye out, since I only have 2 books and 3 movies, for this to come in a few weeks.

Garden 2011

Today I planted the garden! I must say, it was nice not having to drag all my stuff up to the third floor like I did at my old apartment. Still a container garden, because we have no land. For my birthday, Ricky got me the book The City Homesteader by Scott Meyer, to give me other ideas on what to garden and how to have a country lifestyle in a city. Definitely a good read, I recommend checking it out. Because of this book, I'm expanding into more veggies, such as three varieties of pepper, eggplant, and miniature cucumbers. All three I read were good for containers, so here's hoping.

I'm also excited about all the herbs I'm growing, because I love fresh herbs and it'll make all our meals this summer that much tastier. The list of herbs was inspired by Apartment Therapy's list of the Top 10 Herbs to grow. Normally I just do basil and rosemary, but I decided to try others to make for a more flavorful summer. Going to be great!

Above are my three pepper plants (along with the pot I've designated for all our smoker friends to put their cigarettes so they don't dirty the walkway) and below are my herbs (back to front basil x 3, dill, mint lavender, cilantro, thyme) and veggies (back to front miniature cucumber and Japanese eggplant). Not featured are my parsley and my rosemary plants.

I also have some flowers, beans, and radishes growing from seeds, so it's just dirt right now and not very exciting. The book says multiple times that radishes are very quick to produce, so I'm hoping to have a few batches of them.

I'll be posting pictures as they grow along with my bounty. Hope that they turn out nice, the squirrel next door doesn't eat everything, and that they all taste good. I also can't wait to sit out on my porch around my plants and enjoy it all summer long. Something I definitely missed when I lived in that studio, and one of my favorite parts of this new apartment.

Nothing of great substance today

Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.


It's a quiet Sunday. Ricky's watching the Sox game and napping on and off, and I'm catching up on emails, paying bills, and planning the next sweater I'll make. So nothing very exciting happening here.

Anyways, I wanted to post something, so I decided to post a sweet picture I saw of Harper Lee with the actress who played Scout in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird. I thought it had nice composition and had a sweetness to it.

There'll probably be a new post tomorrow with more substance. Probably about knitting updates. But for now... just a neat little black and white photo.

I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it.

Image from Time Magazine...

I read online today that JD Salinger - author of the novel Catcher in the Rye - died at age 91. This isn't surprising, but more sad and a moment to reflect on his influence on literature and society. I quote this from the Washington Post:

Salinger was writing for adults, but teenagers from all over identified with the novel's themes of alienation, innocence and fantasy, not to mention the luck of having the last word. "Catcher" presents the world as an ever-so-unfair struggle between the goodness of young people and the corruption of elders, a message that only intensified with the oncoming generation gap.

Novels from Evan Hunter's "The Blackboard Jungle" to Curtis Sittenfeld's "Prep," movies from "Rebel Without a Cause" to "The Breakfast Club," and countless rock 'n' roll songs echoed Salinger's message of kids under siege. One of the great anti-heroes of the 1960s, Benjamin Braddock of "The Graduate," was but a blander version of Salinger's narrator.


I didn't read Catcher until I was in my early 20's, so perhaps it was a bit too late for me, but I did appreciate his themes of alienation and innocence. My youngest brother Sam read my copy, and it definitely resonated far more with him.

I feel like his legacy will be just as much tied to Catcher in the Rye and even Franny and Zooey as it will be with his rejection and seclusion from society. The society that Holden Caufield grapples with Salinger eventually rejects outright, fighting every attempt to be out of the limelight.

It's been real, JD Salinger. Enjoyed your book, as did countless others.

Book meme

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.


Here's the list:

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen (x+)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien (x)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (x)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (x)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (x+)
6 The Bible (x)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (x)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (*)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens (x)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (x+)
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (x)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (*)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier (*)
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ( )
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (x)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (x+)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ( x)
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (x)
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (x+)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ()
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (x+)
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (x)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (x)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (x)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (*)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis ()
34 Emma - Jane Austen (*)
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (x)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (x)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (x)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ()
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ( )
45 The Woman in White - () author??
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery (x)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy (*)
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ()
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ()
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (*)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (x)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ( )
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ( )
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (x)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (*)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon ( *)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ( )
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck (x)
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ( )
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ( )
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold ()
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (*)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding ()
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ( )
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville (x)
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens (x)
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker (x)
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (x)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ( )
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (* )
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ( )
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt (x )
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (x)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ( *)
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ( )
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ( )
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ( )
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White (x+)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom ( )
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ( )
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (x+)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ( )
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Toole ( )
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (x)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (x)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()



37 if my math adds up. In my defense, I was an English major in college... so many of these I read for one class or another. Oh, and I'm a giant nerd. That's also in my defense.