The other day i was over at my MIL's house and was telling her how i have kinda ran out of books to read. Until i have some money to go out and get some i just am stuck.
her being the great person she is told me she had a stack of books on the porch and to take what ever sounded interesting. I rummaged through and found Lord of the Flies.
I knew nothing about it other than it is a classic and suppose to be good, so i decided what the hay i will give it a go. Well that was just a great idea right.
Now to preface this, i consider myself a smart person. I read a lot. A lot of different types of books. I have read about 100 books just this year. All ranging from far out fiction to true stories. But i do not get Lord of the Flies.
Maybe it is the words from a time and place that i dont really understand. Maybe if it was written in all English(USA) then i might get it more. I dont really know what it is but it is just making me feel really dumb.
I like the plot well enough and i have been told to just hang in there and it does get good, but it is only a little over 200 pages long and i am more than half way through. When does it get better?
I guess i will just have to finish it and then see what my overall opinion is. At least i am reading and i guess that is what truly counts. i am showing my kids that reading is fun and enjoyable. And they will hopefully follow in my footsteps and become great lovers of books.
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Reading. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
What I Did in 2009
Well besides gestating a baby, giving natural birth, and cuddling 3 handsome, healthy boys!
I did a whole lot of reading. I mean when you are pregnant for a whole year (yes i realize you are not pregnant for a whole year but when you find out at the beginning of March and don't give birth til November it feels like a whole year) what else is there to do to pass the time besides read, write, and take care of your family.
So i added it up and i am pretty sure i read 12 books. That is probably (and i am sad to say) the most books i have read in the past 5 years combined (not counting children's books lol). I remembered how much i love to read and how entrapping a book can be. I threw myself into these stories and allowed myself to become part of the book and the characters.
So what are these wonderful books i read? Well don't be shocked when i tell you lol!
The first ones i read i was very hesitant to read. The Twilight Series was not even on my radar until i saw the preview for the movie when it was coming to theaters. I remember telling my friend that i refused to see the movie until i had read the book. It then took me another 6 months or more before i actually started reading the books.
Yes i said 6 months! See i have this problem, or so i thought i did, with series books. I usually shy away from any popularized, teen/tween, written for movies, type books. I would usually just opt to see the movie and say forget the hyped up books. I never read R.L. Stine Goosebumps books as a kid. I stayed far away from Stephen King books as an adult. I have never even picked up a Harry Potter book. I realize now that it was probably a big mistake. Alas i didn't know what i was missing.
The Twilight Series sucked me in. I am now in the not so exclusive Twihards club. Everything from the characters to the scenery i created in my imagination fully engulfed me. I finished the series in just 3 weeks. I was left sad when i finished and begging for something else to fill the void that i was left with.
I had purchased Angels and Demons by Dan Brown at the same time i started reading Twilight so i had that on the back burner waiting. Since i had already read The Da Vinci Code a few year back so i figured i would give it a try. Now i can hardly wait for my friend to pass me her copy of Lost Symbol! The Langdon Series is a interesting read. Dan Brown mixes fiction with history so well that you barley realize you are learning something as you become involved in the adventures of Robert Langdon.
Then a friend filled my vampire craving void with P.C. and Kristen Cast's series House of Night. There are six books so far and i have downed them all. With six more to come i can barley contain myself till the seventh is released. These have also been adapted to be made into movies and i just wonder when that adventure will begin.
P.C. Cast is a teacher and has entwined the worlds of vampire and high school so well that if you didn't know better you might think you were reading about a human high school. There are clicks and drama and the ever so "high school" boyfriend problems. It takes me back to a time when i was 16 and in high school.
I also started Alyson Noel's Immortals Series. I only have read the first, in the series of three, Evermore so far but i look forward to making time to start on the rest. It is a lot like Twilight but shorter and with less details. I can't say it was the best book i have ever read but none the less i was sucked in and will definitely be reading the rest of the series as it comes out.
Now i have started on another vampire series by Richelle Mead called Vampire Academy. It is good so far but i am taking longer to read than normal due to all the baby loving i have going on right now. There are four books out for far with the 5th and 6th due to be released this year! I have a lot of reading to do.
So i have two more Immortal books to read, three and a half Vampire Academy books to read, and then waiting on the next installment of the House of Night. I will eventually move away from the vampires and on to something else lol. I think i would love to read James Patterson books (specifically The Women's Murder Club Series). I love a good mystery/adventure.
Anyways the whole point is i never knew what i was missing! I love series books no matter how popular they are. I will always read the book before i view the movie from here on out because 9 times out of 10 the book is so much better. So throw me a line here! What series could you not put down? I need to make a wish list!
I did a whole lot of reading. I mean when you are pregnant for a whole year (yes i realize you are not pregnant for a whole year but when you find out at the beginning of March and don't give birth til November it feels like a whole year) what else is there to do to pass the time besides read, write, and take care of your family.
So i added it up and i am pretty sure i read 12 books. That is probably (and i am sad to say) the most books i have read in the past 5 years combined (not counting children's books lol). I remembered how much i love to read and how entrapping a book can be. I threw myself into these stories and allowed myself to become part of the book and the characters.
So what are these wonderful books i read? Well don't be shocked when i tell you lol!
The first ones i read i was very hesitant to read. The Twilight Series was not even on my radar until i saw the preview for the movie when it was coming to theaters. I remember telling my friend that i refused to see the movie until i had read the book. It then took me another 6 months or more before i actually started reading the books.
Yes i said 6 months! See i have this problem, or so i thought i did, with series books. I usually shy away from any popularized, teen/tween, written for movies, type books. I would usually just opt to see the movie and say forget the hyped up books. I never read R.L. Stine Goosebumps books as a kid. I stayed far away from Stephen King books as an adult. I have never even picked up a Harry Potter book. I realize now that it was probably a big mistake. Alas i didn't know what i was missing.
The Twilight Series sucked me in. I am now in the not so exclusive Twihards club. Everything from the characters to the scenery i created in my imagination fully engulfed me. I finished the series in just 3 weeks. I was left sad when i finished and begging for something else to fill the void that i was left with.
I had purchased Angels and Demons by Dan Brown at the same time i started reading Twilight so i had that on the back burner waiting. Since i had already read The Da Vinci Code a few year back so i figured i would give it a try. Now i can hardly wait for my friend to pass me her copy of Lost Symbol! The Langdon Series is a interesting read. Dan Brown mixes fiction with history so well that you barley realize you are learning something as you become involved in the adventures of Robert Langdon.
Then a friend filled my vampire craving void with P.C. and Kristen Cast's series House of Night. There are six books so far and i have downed them all. With six more to come i can barley contain myself till the seventh is released. These have also been adapted to be made into movies and i just wonder when that adventure will begin.
P.C. Cast is a teacher and has entwined the worlds of vampire and high school so well that if you didn't know better you might think you were reading about a human high school. There are clicks and drama and the ever so "high school" boyfriend problems. It takes me back to a time when i was 16 and in high school.
I also started Alyson Noel's Immortals Series. I only have read the first, in the series of three, Evermore so far but i look forward to making time to start on the rest. It is a lot like Twilight but shorter and with less details. I can't say it was the best book i have ever read but none the less i was sucked in and will definitely be reading the rest of the series as it comes out.
Now i have started on another vampire series by Richelle Mead called Vampire Academy. It is good so far but i am taking longer to read than normal due to all the baby loving i have going on right now. There are four books out for far with the 5th and 6th due to be released this year! I have a lot of reading to do.
So i have two more Immortal books to read, three and a half Vampire Academy books to read, and then waiting on the next installment of the House of Night. I will eventually move away from the vampires and on to something else lol. I think i would love to read James Patterson books (specifically The Women's Murder Club Series). I love a good mystery/adventure.
Anyways the whole point is i never knew what i was missing! I love series books no matter how popular they are. I will always read the book before i view the movie from here on out because 9 times out of 10 the book is so much better. So throw me a line here! What series could you not put down? I need to make a wish list!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Get It Read
I got this from my friend over at Happy Family. It is the Top 100 Books from The Big Read Project. They are trying to reintroduce America to reading. It is a great project as i don't think many of us read as much as we should. So i am going to post the list and bold the ones i have read (about 11 out of 100). I want to challenge myself to read as many books on this list as i can. I will update as i read them so you will know if i do. Now i just need to renew my library card (that is sad right).
Top 100 Books
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
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
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 Traveller'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
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
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
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
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
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
The Big Read estimates that the average adult has only read about 6 out of 100 of these books. I guess i am a little above average but sad enough most of the ones i read were in my teen years and was made to read the by a teacher. I really do love to read. I think i just have not given myself the time. Like many adults i have indulged myself in the TV instead of a book. Why read the book when you can watch the movie, right? Wrong...but i didn't realize this until i read The Da Vinci Code and couldn't put it down. Then i saw the movie and was so disappointed that it was not as exciting as the book. Now i find myself saying i don't want to see that movie yet because i have not read the book. Sadly i think a lot of people have not read these books because i notice that most of these on the list have been made into movies. Now i am not saying that all books are better than the movie but why chance it. Read the book and them watch the movie. Note the differences and use your imagination to develop the characters. I know it was very fun for me while reading The Da Vinci Code. So i challenge you guys to do what i have done here. Tell me how many of these you have read and then try to read them all. Keep track of it in your blog or hey if you don't wanna share with all write it down in your own personal journal. Just get out and read.
Top 100 Books
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
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
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 Traveller'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
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
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
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
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
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
The Big Read estimates that the average adult has only read about 6 out of 100 of these books. I guess i am a little above average but sad enough most of the ones i read were in my teen years and was made to read the by a teacher. I really do love to read. I think i just have not given myself the time. Like many adults i have indulged myself in the TV instead of a book. Why read the book when you can watch the movie, right? Wrong...but i didn't realize this until i read The Da Vinci Code and couldn't put it down. Then i saw the movie and was so disappointed that it was not as exciting as the book. Now i find myself saying i don't want to see that movie yet because i have not read the book. Sadly i think a lot of people have not read these books because i notice that most of these on the list have been made into movies. Now i am not saying that all books are better than the movie but why chance it. Read the book and them watch the movie. Note the differences and use your imagination to develop the characters. I know it was very fun for me while reading The Da Vinci Code. So i challenge you guys to do what i have done here. Tell me how many of these you have read and then try to read them all. Keep track of it in your blog or hey if you don't wanna share with all write it down in your own personal journal. Just get out and read.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Addicted
Hi, my name is Courtney and i am addicted to blogs!
Yes you heard that right. I am a blog addict. Not just addicted to reading blogs but to writing them. I constantly will have a thought roll through my head and think "oh that would make a great topic to blog about". At this moment (and i say that cause it changes at least once a day) i have 32 blogs that i read daily. I know what you are thinking!!! How in the world do i find the time to read that many blogs when i have a 2 and 3 year old running around my house? Well this is how. I have a morning routine. I wake up when the kids get up around 7 or 8. We eat some kind of yummy breakfast. While they are eating i sit at the computer and sip my coffee as i check my e-mail. When i am done checking e-mail and MySpace i start on my blog list. By this time the kids are done eating. This is usually when i entertain them with a little TV lol. Playhouse Disney makes a wonderful 30 min babysitter when needed. So as they sit watching TV quietly (yea right they don't do anything quietly) i read as many blogs as i can (usually about 10 or so). After that most of the other blogs get read between nap time and then after the kids go to bed.
My day is totally not complete til i have read all my blogs and posted in mine. Now i am fairly new to blogging. I just started this blog in August, but i have always "blogged" somewhere since at least 2000. I use to have a live journal for years. Then when i found MySpace i started writing there instead. With so many of my friends in my Yahoo Parenting Group having blogs that i read i decided i needed one. That brings me to here and my addiction. I have to read and write. I find it so amazing to read the thoughts and lives of others. Maybe because a lot of them sound so similar to my life and make me realize i am not the only one feeling a certain way, or maybe because some of them are so polar opposite of my life and give me new perspectives of life. Either way i love reading and writing. I love getting to know all these people and letting them get to know me.
I will ask now that you all feed into my love of blogs (aka addiction) and send as many people my way as you can. Tell them to come read my posts and leave comments. I am sure no matter their background or writing style that i will add them to my list of blogs and i will fall in love with them as a bloggy friend. So send then my way. I am just a mother of 2 boys and wife, who happens to be a lover of blogs and people.
Yes you heard that right. I am a blog addict. Not just addicted to reading blogs but to writing them. I constantly will have a thought roll through my head and think "oh that would make a great topic to blog about". At this moment (and i say that cause it changes at least once a day) i have 32 blogs that i read daily. I know what you are thinking!!! How in the world do i find the time to read that many blogs when i have a 2 and 3 year old running around my house? Well this is how. I have a morning routine. I wake up when the kids get up around 7 or 8. We eat some kind of yummy breakfast. While they are eating i sit at the computer and sip my coffee as i check my e-mail. When i am done checking e-mail and MySpace i start on my blog list. By this time the kids are done eating. This is usually when i entertain them with a little TV lol. Playhouse Disney makes a wonderful 30 min babysitter when needed. So as they sit watching TV quietly (yea right they don't do anything quietly) i read as many blogs as i can (usually about 10 or so). After that most of the other blogs get read between nap time and then after the kids go to bed.
My day is totally not complete til i have read all my blogs and posted in mine. Now i am fairly new to blogging. I just started this blog in August, but i have always "blogged" somewhere since at least 2000. I use to have a live journal for years. Then when i found MySpace i started writing there instead. With so many of my friends in my Yahoo Parenting Group having blogs that i read i decided i needed one. That brings me to here and my addiction. I have to read and write. I find it so amazing to read the thoughts and lives of others. Maybe because a lot of them sound so similar to my life and make me realize i am not the only one feeling a certain way, or maybe because some of them are so polar opposite of my life and give me new perspectives of life. Either way i love reading and writing. I love getting to know all these people and letting them get to know me.
I will ask now that you all feed into my love of blogs (aka addiction) and send as many people my way as you can. Tell them to come read my posts and leave comments. I am sure no matter their background or writing style that i will add them to my list of blogs and i will fall in love with them as a bloggy friend. So send then my way. I am just a mother of 2 boys and wife, who happens to be a lover of blogs and people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
