on my nightstand.

When things go topsy-turvy, upside down, when things hurt and I'm trying to heal I turn toward books. I try to look up and in and hold on tight to beliefs that have gotten me through so many tough times. This is not always easy which is why books can be so helpful. At least to me.

So, on the nightstand right now are The Me I Want To Be by (one of my favorite Christian authors) John Ortberg.  I just finished a powerful chapter on Surrender. I love his humor, his honesty and his straightforward ideas on living our best life. I picked this book up a few months ago and right now is the perfect time for me to be reading it.

Next is The Gift of Imperfection by Dr. Brene Brown. Her blog Ordinary Courage has been in my reader for several years and her words are truth and thought provoking. Courage, Compassion and Connection. Setting boundaries, loving and belonging - so many great topics woven together.

Both of these are easy to read, tender to digest. I find myself stopping, thinking and exploring...it's all good. I just wrote my cousin and in our exchange I think I said it best as, "I'm raw right now so right now is the perfect time to tend my heart and grow."

The last book in the pile is The Awe-manac. This one is fun filled with daily doses of inspiration for creativity. While I haven't been fully engaged with the book I have been following along daily, reading, reminding myself that writing/creating is important to me and my well being. The website for the book is a fun stopping point for me in my blog reading.

And of course at the bottom of the pile is my journal. Never far from me I use it for prompts, spontaneous writing, lists to keep my mind from forgetting what it is I'm suppose to be doing...

When I read I keep a journal or at least a piece of paper next to me....today I came across a line that I felt like I needed to write down.

"She handled life with grace instead of fighting it."

Sometimes a line or two just speak to me. Handling life with grace is my goal - not often reached but always there to strive for.

Happy day my friends.

"There is a tree that grows in Brooklyn. Some people call it the Tree of Heaven. No matter where its seed falls, it makes a tree that struggles to reach the sky." - Betty Smith

(my great-great grandmother Nellie. My love of reading seems to be inherited. LOVE it.)

When I was a little girl one of my favorite things to do was grab a book off of my grandma's bookshelf. One would think that I would grab a book and begin to read, but it was never that simple.

First, I would grab the book and then the fun would begin. I would take the book to my grandma and ask her about it. What is it about? Whose was it? Why does she have it? Has she read it? How many times? Should I read it? Will I like it? And the list goes on. As you may have guessed I was an inquiring child. I loved to talk, I loved to ask questions and I could do both for a long, long time - usually until someone asked me to stop or told me to go outside. However, when it came to her books my grandma was infinitely patient. She would answer my questions, no matter how many there were.

See, she was a reader. She understood. She always fostered a love of reading in me (and my dear cousins, most notably Lorinda with whom I have much in common).

When I look back on those times with my grandma I do so with gratitude. No book was ever off limits. No book too hard, too old, too anything. They were books and her idea was if I didn't like it/understand it/or even if I didn't posses the skills to read every word it was okay. I could either plow through, asking questions along the way or I could set it down and come back to it at a later time (Think about a seven or eight year old trying to read A Tale of Two Cities or East of Eden - YIKES).

One of my favorite memories of grandma was when I pulled a book off the shelf and brought it out and began my quest of knowledge with the seemingly never-ending questions. When I showed her the book she smiled and said it was perfect and that I would love it. I was about eight at the time and thrilled with her response. The book? A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. And I did love it.

The best part was that she said she wanted to read it with me. She knew it was beyond my reading level (just as A Tale of Two Cities was earlier) and she wanted me to enjoy the book so we spent the next few weeks reading it together. I would read aloud and she would read aloud. It was perfect. (Just thinking I haven't read this since high school, maybe it is time to take it off the shelf and give it another go. Splendid.)

Several years ago grandma gave me her copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It is one of my favorite possessions. I cherish it, but most of all I cherish the memories. I miss my grandma everyday, holding tight to her memory and loving the lifelong gifts she has given me.

I love you Grandma! Thank you!

The Big Read

Angie posted about The Big Read by the NEA on her blog. The NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) started The Big Read to restore reading to the American culture.

This is a list of 100 books and it is estimated that the average adult has only read 6 of these books. I put in bold the ones that I have read - some were in high school and I think I should reread them and some that I previously read are on my TBR pile to read again. I put in red ones currently in my TBR pile (ones I own and could read at any time. Watch out!) Cut and paste into your blog and let us know which you've read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling - I read the first book of the series but wasn't really interested in the rest (just like Angie).
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible - I've read parts and I continue to do so!
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
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
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll - I bought this and is on my tbr pile
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens3
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini - on my tbr pile
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
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 - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
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 - in my tbr pile
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
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
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
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
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
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
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So far I have read 29 and there are several on my list. A few I will never read...no desire. However, having read over a quarter of them I feel somewhat good about my reading history.

Would love to see your list. Leave a comment and a link and I will come visit!

Yay for sunshine!

What a beautiful sunny spring day! Lovely. So far I have read a book on the back patio...I probably won't accomplish much as one of my favorite things to do is read in the sun. Maybe I will finish a book. That would be an accomplishment.

Have a wonderful Saturday! See you soon.

so happy together...

Troy and I spent the day together - running errands, having lunch, then spending some time at Village Books and Old Town going through some antique stores. I picked up a book at Village Books - using my birthday discount and a few "new" Fiesta Ware items at the antique stores.

Caught reading.

Love this.

A pick up the camera and snap pic. I like it though. Doesn't he look happy?

Happy Saturday!

Lookey here...

Lookey what I got. Lovin' it. Read more about it here.

Jodi, Jodi, Jodi!

Yesterday Lorinda, Cheryl & I went to Seattle to see Jodi Picoult . Jodi is by far one of my favorite authors. I have written about her/her books a few times on this blog. Two years ago Jodi was inBellingham for my birthday (nice of her huh?) and this year we went to Seattle on a birthday outing to see Jodi again. I highly recommend her books. Read them! Just do it! Jodi, me, Cheryl and Lorinda...

Lorinda & I before the signing
Lorinda on the 'red' floor. What a fabulous floor.
The Seattle Public Library. Very cool indeed.

We began the day with a trip to Trader Joes in the University district. I loaded up on pomegranate juices, however they were out of dried mangos for Cheryl! So sad! The warehouse was out...they are waiting for a shipment from Thailand...man oh man she needed those mangos!

After the signing we headed to University Village. I love U Village and am happy to be the one to introduce it to Lorinda & Cheryl. It was a long, yet fun filled day!

Reading Now...

I am currently reading the Jonathan Kellerman book. I love Alex Delaware (psychologist/detective). I have read every book and don't plan on stopping! I don't want to give anything away if you are a J. Kellerman fan...but this book is great! There is a sad part in the beginning, it was unexpected for me, but don't worry it isn't a sad book. If you are a fan of Psychological Suspense you need to read this (or any of his) book!

Book Club: For the past couple years I have had to take a hiatus from attending a book club due to school and other commitments. I am back at it now. This month we read The Magician's Assistant, by Ann Patchett. Good discussion and food followed. During the meeting we picked out books for the next three months. These are our picks:

• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See
• March, by Geraldine Brooks

If you have any suggestions we love to know what others are reading. Let me know....