Favorites from 2012

Photo from Pbs.org

Favorite movie from 2012, easily, was Lincoln. Devastating. Beautiful.

Danial Day Louis is everything.

 

Les Mis had its moments but overall it just wore me smooth out.

 

I have previously posted my top five favorite books of the year the last few, but I liked almost nothing I read this year. I read all but one book on my iPad so I am thinking I chose less interesting books to have in electronic format. Maybe that's all it was. 

My one favorite book rom 2012 was Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts.

Photo from GoodReads.com

I do like an epic story and this was it. There was action and adventure then slow methodical descriptions of life in India in various capacities. Just my kind of book.

This author is interesting, hasn't written anything else.

 

I am enjoying my GoodReads. I use it as an app on my iPhone but you can create an account from your Mac or PC.

I would love for you to join me there, we can see each others reading lists and opinions.

And I am really enjoying Instagram.

I love to look through galleries and to post a photo a day there.

My January theme is quilts.

 

On to good things in 2013...

Book Shelf: Best of 2011

My favorite five books from the last two years actually.

Five: The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature and Fowl Obsession by Mark Obamascik. This book has been made into a movie starring Steve Martin. I already had it in my library when the movie was released.Although I didn't see the movie, it prompt me to read this true, well-written story. A girl named Robin naturally has curiosity about birds and ever since Ornithology class in college I have been a bird watcher. Not a birder who records every siting and works on a life list. I simply utter the prayer "thank you" when I see a beautiful bird. Enjoyed this book.

Four: Jessica by Bryce Courtenay. I love this author, a big deal in Australia, his book aren't released in the US. I found him many years ago through my book club and he's so good. This is the story of a young Australian in the 1800s who shames her family and is put out in the woods to pioneer her life. The outback is so similar to the land settlement days here in Oklahoma that this foreign setting felt familiar. And I do love me some settlers. So, so good...

Three: The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. A lovely life story of a young writer who works for Freda Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Well imagined it creates an epic travel through Mexican and American history. Loved it. Art, writing, history, love, it's all in there.

Two: Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette by Sena Jeter Naslund. Another novel set in historical truth, Naslund writes a fully realized creation of the life of Marie Antoinette with facts woven through this tapestry of royal abundance and the harsh fall from grace. I like just to touch the spine of this book to return to the lush imagination of this brilliant author.

One: One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp. A gift from my dear friend Beka, it was a grappling hook in my early days of grief over mother's death. A song, a poem, a lovely reality, this breathed gratitude into those long foggy days.

Also during those sad days, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a puffy, ashen face that needed a change. I would go to CVS and look at pretty make-up. I bought all new cosmetics and started playing again with brushes and colors. Shortly Jessi Nagy started her video series Jessi Girls Beauty World. I have watched them all and am like a puppy waiting for her return with each video. It is such a lucky world I live where I can care about make-up. It adds something pretty and positive to each day. I have tried many of the products Jessi recommends. It has really been a great diversion from myself and has actually brought me lovingly back to myself.

To that end I thought I would just sit down and talk about the make-up I was wearing, record it with my phone and upload it to You Tube, none of which I had ever done before. I am not sure why I did this, or why I am sharing with you but I with embarrassment and truth am...

Tea and Sympathy

I went into the garden and threw a swath of saffron silk over my eigthteenth century potting table. I was thumbing through a first edition Jane Austen when my dearest Stefanie came to call for tea...

Well, no...but I do follow blogs that read like that. Ideal lives, in the garden while the rest of us are thawing out in pilled sweat shirts and tubesocks. Still, I read the idyllic posts because I need someone to be living a content warm life somewhere. However Friday afternoon I was writing a post in my head that did sound a little like that...

I had gone to the school book fair. Parents donate books all year then same tired parents return to scoop up the discarded books of others. I expected loads of paperbacks but was surprised to find many old books and sheet music as well. I took armloads from the very first shelf. I had to drive up while children hauled boxes then loaded the car. For. Thirty. Dollars. Seriously, who gets rid of a field guide?

We brought the books into the library and started going through them. My daughter delighted at a book of quotations which, in turn, delighted me. 

I took the opportunity to show her a rare and unexpected gift I had received from my sister as a kid. The Treasure Chest is a book of quotations I feel in love with when I was close to my daughter's age.

The phone rang. Stefanie was nearby and wanted to come get a box of books (again) that involved a poor book club timing issue on my behalf. She offered to help me out with that. As we sat flipping through these old books Stefanie pulled up {in her MiniCooper which is so her because she would be called Sporty Spice in a diffeent set of circumstances} and she was  bearing a cup of tea.

A hot cup of tea. In a birdie and nest mug. Bird and nest. She knew I had been sick with a cold all week and she knows first hand what is to care for a fading mother. And she knows me.

I do not know if Stefanie really knows what that mug of hot tea meant to me. I settled back inside, sipping tea, perusing old tomes and wrote this post in my head.

I receive that tea and friendship Stefanie. Thank you so much.

Book Shelf: Best of Aught Nine

I was a reader as a kid then kind of backed off once I was pursuing science in college, then graduate school, seven years of research, and 20 years of teaching. Reading was work so I liked to use my hands for spare time and relaxing. In the last years I have started reading and realized I can't die, I have too many books to read.

My friend and I started a book club. It went like this...I was on a driving trip with my husband. In. An. R. V. That is a whole other story. Anyway, barrelling down the road in the big bus, I finished the last page of the best book I have ever read, closed the book, hugged it and sighed aloud.

Cricket.

Nothing.

Sound of that Cummings diesel pusher engine and 18 wheels, more or less.

I was telling Beverly that. Of course she asked "what was the book, who wrote it, how did you come across it, what was it about, how did it smell, glossy or matte?"

So we formed a book club about 7 years ago. We meet each month. The hostess selects the book and brings it to the last month's meeting, sells it to us, then feeds us while we talk about the book, taking home a new one.

These are my favorite five from 2009, some are book club books, some were on my own 'to read' list. I can highly recommend any of them.



5. Chocolat by JoAnne Harris. This was made into a movie years back. The movie is good but the book is a delight. Takes you to a chocolate shop in Paris complete with a priest with a secret and a bit of magic. There is a sequel as well which is on my 'to read' list.

4. The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan. An autobiographical story about a young mother's breast cancer journey at the same time her father is diagnosed with cancer. It is actually upbeat, funny, and you really want to meet these people. I immediately googled videos of her because I really felt like I got to know Kelly. I missed her when all was said and done.

3. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. Have you seen any of the Showtime series The Tudors? I love Tudor England and this is a long story with tons of detail in a historical setting. Settle in and read and read with reckless abandon across the years of patriarchal English loves and lives. This is part of an entire series of exploration of the lives of woman in medieval England. Oh delicious, thank you Phillipa.

2. The Wisdom of Menopause by Christiane Northrup. I have never recommended a book more. Don't wait until you think you might be in perimenopause. Realize it can start in a woman's thirties. I do not joke about PMS or menopause. I think it is fine amongst your girlfriends but I hate when women are seen as irrational and defective because of natural hormonal ebbs and tides. These things give birth to babies, wisdom, traditions and bonding. This book is a road map to loving the changes.

1. Joy in the Morning by Betty Smith. Oh Betty, sigh. She wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, another favorite of mine. This book explores young marriage. So simple. These gals from the 20s and 30s didn't examine their lives and spend time feeling unhappy whilst looking for joy. I can learn so much from that. The simplicity of a good bar of soap or bread, getting a meal at all. The smell of your husband. Sounds in the hall. My favorite book of the year.

Thank you for a great blogging experience in 2009. Comments have really been my favorite reading of the whole year. please don't be afraid to leave them. I am a comment monger, yes, I am.