Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Jitterbug Perfume

"They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.
"Compared calender page against calender page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes--and you'll never catch February in stocking feet--it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose.
"However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behaviour that grows quickly old."

Tom Robbins.


... I am still without a convenient computer to blog on.
My thrush is on the mend, but still lingering.

Lastly, an on going thought; I used to talk to myself, and in a way I still do, but now instead I blog in my head. Sometimes I write those blogs, other times they pass and fade, as momentary thoughts. I think blogging for me is very much a way to knit together my lose strings. It becomes more obvious as days pass when I don't write any blogs, and my thoughts pile up and then move on. I start talking to myself again.
I appreciate my brain's way of using different mediums to calm itself. With one, I do not need the other, but it lingers in my pathways just in case.... the internet dies.

Monday, January 3, 2011

New Year

Last book of 2010:


I love Steve Martin. He is too talented. I actually finished reading it today, but was only 30-40 pages to the end for a painful 4ish days, where I just couldn't seem to get more than 4 pages at a time in.

Unlike our Charlotte, I enjoy resolution because I dont see  it as a time to break a bad habit, but more like a marker for checking off progress towards my ambitions. Why not new year?! It is really a wonderful time, and there's not much else to do but introspect. I do like to improve myself all year round however!
Here's the list:

1. Make strides in learning to live our lives more and more free of plastic. Especially the disposable kind.
2. Start running, and keep it up.
3. Confidently make all our bread (and crackers, and cereal, and...)
4. Write more songs on guitar
5. Find time for sewing regularly
6. Garden successfully, ie. don't kill all my seedlings
7. Get back on my bike. Reestablish my old feeling that cars are almost useless in the city.
8. Spend more time outside (made easy by numbers 2,6, and 7)
9. Pay off my student debt
10. Learn to silkscreen
11. Learn to make food preserves
12. Get pregnant!

I may have to expand it. I may be too ambitious.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Books 2011

1. The Shallows, what the internet is doing to our brains, by Nicholas Carr
2. Better Off, by Eric Brende
3. Jitterbug Perfume, by Tom Robbins
4. Science, Sense, and Nonsense, by Joe Schwarcz PhD
5. Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk , by David Sedaris
6. The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham 
7. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
8. 100 selected poems; e. e. cummings...
9. Children of Men, by P.D. James...
10. Eating Animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer...
11. Diet for a Dead Planet, ..
12. Heroes, by Robert Cormier
13. Tenderness, by Robert Cormier
14. Skinny Legs and All, by Tom Robbins
15. Shopgirl, by Steve Martin
16. An Object of Beauty, by Steve Martin
17. A Member of the Family, by Cesar Millan
18. Jurassic Park, by Michael Crichton...



Some books I've been reading, but not front to back:
* the Diaper Free Baby, by Christine Grosse-Loh
* Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, by Jeff Hertzberg MD & Zoe Francois
* The Baby Signing Book, by Sara Bingham
* Urban G


Books of 2010

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Many Things..

Going to the library is like going to a new country for me. Seriously, I don't understand the signs, there are strange rules of order (being quiet (((with a baby)))), you need ID. Overwhelming. Oh man. But I got through it. With the reward of new books. Which I found, ALL BY MYSELF. Despite that crazy Dewey Decimal System. I decided to get a card at the Grande Biblioteque, because its HUGE, and just that much more confusing.
I finished A Wrinkle in Time quite quickly because it was another youth oriented book, kind of. It was really good. Requiring the use of my rusty imagination, which felt lovely to dust off, and give a go. These here are; In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan, which I've been recommended many times over, and searched high and low for a poor ladies way to get her read on; and Falling Upwards, by Lee Siegel, I have no idea what its about, but the cover caption reads "essays in defense of the imagination". Since I just said mine is in need of a little exercise, it make sense.

We woke up this morning to find the lovely friend, whose has dug up ALL of my gardening veggies this year, at it again. I wasn't sure whether it had been squirrels or raccoons, but now the answer is clear.


She is taking my potted potatoes and planting them all over the yard, after some munches of course. I've been loathing the creature that's been ruining my planting, until now, she is just too beautiful to hate.

Lastly, my friend Bubzee's been learning how to tattoo, so Greg and I offered ourselves up to be some first time guinea pigs. Here's mine:

Turned out pretty wonderful. Its the third tattoo she's ever done. Over a year ago I wrote a little story about a girl who listened to her tea cups for secrets, and Bubzee drew up some drawings to go with it. There's one more to come on the other side. Its essentially a tattoo of myself. My favourite at the moment. 'Cause I'm like that.

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Books 2010

Not a bookworm by far, sometimes I go months without reading, it really depends on my mood, but but but but I AM ...a lover of books. It started only when I was 19. I read before that, mostly school assignments, or I had a couple childhood favourites, which I actually get into here, but really I dont feel that I got it, why people love books, until then. I read a few Stephen King books (shameful?), one is still a favourite of mine, and then I got into Kurt Vonnegut, and Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I reread Catcher in the Rye, a book which in highschool I thought was Stupid, with a capital S. Now I think I could eat up anything by J.D.Salinger. I see it all in a new light. I love words, and how they help me think. If I read something, and strongly disagree with the author, I still appreciate how it cements my feelings. That now I know what I think. And I can see the ways in which others will relate... or not. It is a love really.

x Wise Blood, a short story by Flannery O'Connor 
x Tree: a Life Story by David Sazuki and Wayne Grady
x Baby Sign Language Basics, by Monta Z. Briant .
x Endgame, Volume I, by Derrick Jensen
x Trixie Beldon and the Gatehouse Mystery, by Julie Campbell
x The Giver, by Lois Lowry
x A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle
x In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan 
x Our Babies, Ourselves, by Meredith Small
x Baby Signing for Dummies, by Jennifer Watson
x The Stranger, by Albert Camus
x Cradle to Cradle, by William McDonough & Michael Braungart -
x The Goonies, by  James Khan - 
x The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier 
x Bagombo Snuff Box, short stories by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. ...
x The No-cry Sleep Solution, by Elizabeth Pantly 
x How to Build a Dinosaur by Jack Horner
x Endgame, Volume II, by Derrick Jensen
x The Breastfeeding Cafe , by  Barbara L. Behrmann
x The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky 
x Still Life With Woodpecker, by Tom Robins 
x Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robins 
x Nighttime Parenting, by William Sears
x Early Start Potty Training, by Linda Sonna
x Travels With Charley: In Search of America, by John Steinbeck... 
x The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
x The Pleasure of my Company, by Steve Martin 


365/27 = 13.5 or about a book every 2 weeks. I think for next year I would like to be at about 1 a week, but I've always been a leisurely reader soooooo no pressure.