Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Books, books and more books.

I love to read.

I love good books.

I share this love of reading with my sister and Sophia, and we all get it from my mother.

My mother was a voracious reader.

She read Harlequin romance novels.  I totally remember them, thin books with a couple posed in a romantic embrace...the woman's bosom falling, pushing or somehow close to exposure and clearly the woman enjoyed/was tormented by it.  There were hundreds of them...she got them from the library sales for a quarter or something. She also read Gone with the Wind, which she passed on to me when I was about 17 or 18.  I loved it...I feel in many ways I am Scarlett...daughter of a rich plantation owner...lily white skin...green eyes...see the connection?  My mother also read books by Pearl S. Buck, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Robert Mitchum, and I am sure more interesting things than just trashy romance novels...but she did love them.

We all have our genre.

I decided that this summer I would read all the books on my shelf that I have never made it all the way through.  Those just happen to be the ones that aren't novels.  They are the ones that might teach me something.  I wonder why I never read them?

I am about halfway through the pile I wanted to read...my determination failing.

So I thought I would post about it so that I would be inspired to continue...to persevere.


I may have bitten off more than I can chew.

 Do you see one that doesn't fit the bill of non-fiction?








This one fiction, but so good!  It is about following your dream...and the nature of the universe.




I think I read this on a trip I took to Costa Rica...I will have to see when I finally get to it.




This one is fiction too...but a great American Novel for sure.  The young author of this book took his own life before it was published.  The manuscript was turned down countless times and he was discouraged because he felt it was such a great work of humorous fiction.  He had other problems, but the rejection was too much for him.  After his death, his mother took it to publishers and after 6 years of trying...finally got it published...to wide literary acclaim.




Marianne Williamson...a blast from the past.  I read her book, A Woman's Worth when I was about 26 and it changed my life.




This one I want to read for obvious reasons...but I just can't bring myself to do it.




I gave the Thich Nhat Hanh book to Marcus about a million years ago.  I stuck it in his suitcase one time when he was leaving for a business trip.  It was surprise. 




I like nature...so I want to read this one.




I just finished, A New Earth, I loved it and it was the follow up to, The Power of Now...so I might skip that one.  I figure the one I just read has all the same info.




I have had a hard time finishing this one because I feel like it is all stuff I already am aware of.  But I am sure there are things for me to learn...I should push on.




And did you see...one of these kids is doing his own thing?  

That's right...HARRY...HARRY POTTER is doing his own thing!
Now it is unfortunate that this series has been so commercialized and over marketed.  
This is an epoch journey through human conciousness...told through a magical teenager.  It is filled with good, bad, tragedy, laughter, love, honor, truth, dignity, evil, betrayal...it has it all.  

This series has been a huge part my family.  I didn't let Kai read it until he was in 5th grade, I didn't think that he was ready.  But once he picked it up...he was hooked.   We eagerly awaited books 5, 6 and 7 together...staying up late reading them in a day or two.  Sophia was lucky, once she started reading them,   they were all in print and so she go to read them all back to back...no waiting.

We have slowly made our way through the movies after we were all done with the books.  Movies are never as good as the books, especially these ones.  But none the less we enjoy them.  The final movie is coming out in October or November, and although it is broken up into two movies, one to be released this year and one next year...this is a final chapter.  It kinda feels to me like the closing chapter in the era of my kids childhood.  The end of the Magic so to speak.  It makes me sad...really I am sad about the last Harry Potter movie...and it isn't even happening yet.

To prepare for this momentous event, I am brushing up on the last book, refreshing my memory.

One thing that I do know...I was right about Snape.


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