My Favorite Books. Right Now.

Okay. I had to drive 10+ hours back to the good ol' North East. Or to be more "accurate" - the Mid-Atlantic region. Doesn't matter....when you drive a good work day plus overtime, you get to thinking. alot. about everything.

Therefore I have compiled a list of my favorite books currently that are a good read on a ten hour journey in case you ever find yourself on one. And you should once...more than once...in your life experience a road trip so phenomenal, that when you reminiscence with your friends, drinking a beer, and sitting on the couch with your head back...you say, "hell yeah. That was legendary." (I have become obsessed with the show 'How I Met Your Mother' and it is awesome. I really need to write about it here...but it's not a book but damnit, its going to be in here. I just gotta figure out how to do it...Everyone should be watching this show.)

Anyways, it needs to include getting lost, walking into a random cornfield, eating in a restaurant named "Restaurant" (and believe you me, they are OUT THERE...haha), stealing a road sign, and sitting on the side of a back road. At least it should include that. I don't know, make your own agenda on what should happen. Then film it and send it to me. That would be cool.

I am way off subject right now so let's get to it, yo. Okay here it is:

1) Bridget Jones' Diary by Helen Fielding. Every woman's best friend. I love this character. I think I have read and re-read Bridget Jones at least thirty times. I'm that obsessed. And I think I need a new word or a better vocabulary.

2) The Strain by Chuck Hogan. Scare the daylights outta your friends. It's kinda a long for a ten hour drive but just read them the scary parts. Make sure they don't drive off the road though.

3) The Ultimate Dirty Joke Book. HEY, no judging. We all need some of these jokes when we don't feel like thinking.

4)Fatherhood by Bill Cosby. This book is hilarious.

5)Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain. I love this guy. He is a witty, no bs writer who describes food like he is in love. And by god, he makes you want to eat things that you never even heard of it but it sounds like the best thing on earth. It will make your mouth water. But not recommended reading right before you eat at 'Restaurant.' You need to be staaaaaaarving before you eat there so your apple pie, greasy cheeseburger, and overly salted fries will be the most delicious things in the world.

Okay, I think that is it right now. Let me know what your list is! I want to read it. Hahaha, I originally wrote, 'let me hear it.' I am tired and I need some sleep. This has been the craziest two weeks of my life.

Tonight, Tonight

Time is never time at all.
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth.
And our lives are forever changed.
We will never be the same.
The more you change, the less you feel.

Believe, believe in me, believe.
Believe that life can change.
That you're not stuck in vain.
We're not the same, we're different tonight.
Tonight, so bright.
Tonight.

And you know you're never sure.
But you're sure you could be right.
If you held yourself up to the light.
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake.
That place where you were born.

Believe, believe in me, believe.
Believe in the resolute urgency of now.
And if you believe there's not a chance tonight.
Tonight, so bright.
Tonight.

We'll crucify the insincere tonight.
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight.
We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight.
The indescribable moments of your life tonight.
The impossible is possible tonight.
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight.


Thank you.

September 1, 1939

September 1, 1939 by W.H. Auden

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.

Towards the end of the poem (its really long but worth reading and savoring), he writes "We must love one another or die." Auden wrote that poem at the start of World War II.

September is one of my favorite months:

1. Falltumn is officially here. I was so excited about saying 'fall' and 'autumn' that I combined it. Maybe it will become a trend like 'bro' or 'fist pump.'

2. Back to school supplies. Nothing better than immersing yourself within the shelves of Staples. All those fancy planners, papers, binders, pens, pen holders, organizational cubes. Gah, I love it. I don't have anything remotely cool like that myself and that's because I don't own a desk. One day....I will become known as the woman who loves the Staples store. Maybe I will become their mascot.

3. MY BIRTHDAY. That is right. At 2:32pm, a lazy afternoon (hahaha I bet my mom didn't feel that it was lazy), I was born on September 10... my mom said I was on that little table that nurses put you on, wailing and my dad looked at me and said "oh, don't cry little girl." I stopped crying, stuck my middle two fingers in my mouth, and started sucking on them, staring. AH. Good memory. Good day.

4. Football. I can't help it. The energy, the community, the competition, the GAME. Cheering, drinking, eating, the heartache you feel when you know your team can do better, the faith you have when you say "it's alright, it will get better next weekend," and the immense "holy shit" followed by screaming, shouting, dancing, when your team wins. Plus the halftime shows are amazing. I love watching the bands...and cheerleaders, spirit squad, what have you. I like doing the chants with the band. I like college football as you probably can tell.

5. Books. Hah, of course books. AND MOVIES. I'll post more later.

Eat Pray Love

The time has come to eat absurd amounts of delicious food in Italy, meditate with monks in India, and then dance and fall in love in Bali.
Or, you can be like the rest of normal society, and just read about these adventures in Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love. And then watch the movie to compare it to the book. I admit I got through India and then lost interest in Bali. That might be because I was nursing my own heartbreak and had no desire to read about falling in love again so I just stopped at the meditation part.

Maybe the movie will be good. ENJOY.

I also want to add that it has taken me over like a year and a halfish to FINALLY figure out how to embed videos to the correct viewing size on this blog. HTML and I really are not the best of friends.

You Say It's Your Birthday....ERNEST HEMINGWAY

"It's the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1899. He was just 22 when he moved to Paris with his wife, Hadley, having taken a job as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Daily Star. Even though he was making decent money, he liked the idea of living like a bohemian, so they moved into an apartment in the Latin Quarter, in a neighborhood full of drunks, beggars, and street musicians. Rent was 250 francs a month, or about $18, which left them plenty of money to travel around Europe when they wanted to.

He rented himself a room in a hotel, and every morning, after breakfast, he would walk to his writing room and work. He said: "I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'" One of those sentences read, "I have stood on the crowded back platform of a seven o'clock...bus as it lurched along the wet lamp lit street while men who were going home to supper never looked up from their newspapers as we passed Notre Dame grey and dripping in the rain."

WRITER'S ALMANAC.

I Write Like...

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

I found a website linked through the New York Times that "analyzes" your works of writing...such as blogs, journals, anything except for that dang Twitter (because 150 characters are too short to analyze). Anyways, I plugged in my little review for Sh*t My Dad Says and viola! I write like H.P. Lovecraft!

This would be more exciting if I read any of his works.

I did wikipedia him and he writes "weird fiction," a subgenre that is quasi science fiction, quasi supernatural, quasi horror. "Lovecraft's guiding literary principle was what he termed 'cosmicism' or 'cosmic horror,' the idea that life is incomprehensible to human minds and that the universe is fundamentally alien."

I have written nothing that comes close to this type of genre in my life (okay, I am lying...in seventh grade, I elaborated on an Archie comic book story and turned it into science fiction...something about aliens landing and being nice. I don't remember. I was 13, geez).

But I better start. I don't want to disappoint those at the I Write Like...site.

http://iwl.me/

Hey All You Mystery/Horror Fans

NPR wants your opinion, book readers...they want you to vote in the Top 100 'Killer Thriller' best ever poll, so no pressure in voting for the best.

You get TEN votes...so read through the list and check your favorite. I haven't read too much in the thriller genre so I'm not going to vote. But you should. And then get yourself something to drink. And read a book. Go a pub, drink and read a book.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1008