A Decade's Worth of Random Thoughts

Two days ago, I opened up the little black moleskine I keep in my purse to make a note, and realized I had only one page left. I bought this moleskine just before I left for my junior year abroad . . . almost exactly ten years ago. And it's one of the things, along with my wallet, keys, and a pen, that I always make sure I have with me before leaving the house.

Reaching the end made me stop to think about everything that has happened in life since I first cracked it open: the year studying in England, my first broken heart, graduating from college, moving to NYC to start my career, family dramas, world dramas, friends made and lost, apartment hunting and moving, books read, re-read, loved, recommended, or abandoned, discoveries of all kinds, friends and family members' weddings & babies. Basically, the period of life in which I grew up. It's neat to compare what's written here with the journals I've kept during the last ten years, too. There's a lot of telling in the journals, but the random snippets from the moleskine are just as revealing and memory-triggering. It's full of notes from talks I've gone to, brainstorming for talks I've given, lines from articles or books I like, funny things friends have said, t-shirt ideas, lines of poetry (most of which never became anything more than that), illustrators I like, authors I want to read, shopping lists, and other random thoughts and observations.

Here are just a few:

words I like: chthonic, tiptoe, lamppost, unfurled

the curl of pianist's back

open by chance or appointment

Umberto Eco: "'who dunnit?' is a theological question"

things i don’t have keys to

Ira Glass: "notice the people who won’t go away"

grocery list: milk, butter, eggs, whipping cream, raspberries, dark chocolate

shopping list: shelves, hammock stand, pillows

Friend: “I don’t like worms, but leeches concern me.”

At final Harry Potter book street party at Scholastic:
Woman 1: "So what’s going on here besides the book releasing?"
Woman 2: "Oh, the book releasing. That explains the capes."

How do you share ebooks? If one sibling finishes book and starts another, how do you pass the finished one to other kid?

Big Read

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list.

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Bold those you have read.
Italicize those you intend to read.
Underline the books you LOVE.--I couldn't do this so mine are starred.


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. 1984 - 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 (Oh, come ON! I've read 11 and seen 11.)
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 (well, I skimmed a lot, but I did go the whole way to the end)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (this book made me angry)
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 Zafon
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' 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 (but I've seen it!)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

38 . . . that's not too shabby!

Comfort Books

Alice Sebold wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times last summer that had a great sentiment I wrote down for my quote collection, and part of it says very much why I'm a big re-reader of books:

"It is comfort, company, a way to buffer oneself form the pain and isolation of the everyday. It is the peace I find by visiting my closest friends. I have given up thinking I'm deranged for discovering them between the covers of a book."

Perhaps I would not necessarily call my books my closest friends, but I do certainly think of them as friends. They're familiar and engrossing and give something to me every time I open them, regardless of whether it's the first time or the twentieth. And some of them have been with me since my childhood. They have not only their own stories inside them, but pieces of my story, my memories.

And so, my favorite comfort books, the ones that are as welcoming and comforting as old friends, the ones that make me feel that all will be right in the world...

The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce
Beauty by Robin McKinley
Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins
Matilda by Roald Dahl
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling
Persuasion by Jane Austen