I’m a Quiet one

Hello Dear Followers,

I am going to share a little secret with you – I am quiet.  I have been quiet my entire life, never really facing conflict head on, never speaking up, very introverted in how I lived my life. Only taking chances with situations when I felt I absolutely needed to or I would run the risk of losing sleep.

So you can probably see why I am a writer.  Why my greatest form of communication is through the art of writing.  It has always been the best way I communicated with the world.  I was always a thinker, sometimes  I have thought too much about things, never acting on anything always fearful what people might say to what I had to say.

I found a book  titled “Quiet” by Susan Cain a few months ago. It grabbed my attention because it spoke to my personality, who I have been my entire life and I wanted to learn more about my personality and why I do the things I do.

Why spending time in a bookstore and why I collect books in general, why driving through the countryside in my car by myself is bliss. I wanted to learn more about all of this.   Why I would prefer a night in a coffee shop or a dinner with friends much more than a loud and crowded club/bar.

I wanted to learn more about me.

When I told people on Facebook through my Facebook status that I was reading this book, a friend of mine called me a “Facebook extrovert” which is totally true, because as secluded as I’d prefer to be, I want to be heard and what better place can you be heard without physically being seen than Facebook?

I’ve often told people that I have always been awkward when it comes to speaking to people in social situations or with members of the opposite sex, my introverted self needs to feel you out,  I need to see if it’s safe to get to know you  before I allow myself to.

A friend of mine asked,  ”Then how are you a journalist?” I told her I had absolutely no idea.  The idea of talking to someone one-on-one and trying to pull answers out of someone was definitely not something I enjoyed doing especially in a social setting.  But I did it for my job. It was somehow different.  I did it because I had to.

Image by citypaper.com

Another friend of mine said to me recently “when something is bothering you, you should speak up, who cares?” He was very right, but I was never good at verbalizing my thoughts, because my thoughts are so many that sometimes what makes sense to me may not always to another person.

I’ve taken a lot of risks as an introvert, I’ve  fought to fix things I have cared deeply about no matter how uncomfortable I am doing so.  This is where my strength comes through. I’d rather run and hide than deal with anything head on, but I have.

I have spent my entire life always thinking, thinking, thinking and wondering and coming up with conclusions (eventually) that I may not have, if I hadn’t.

My mother and others who should be now know how introverted I am, still tell me I need to “come out of my shell”  or “you need to speak up” etc. etc.

I feel more than I say, I see more than many people realize, as introverts often do.

So I right now I am reading “Quiet” and so far I would say I recommend it.

Until next time…

The Circus Is Over

Hello Dear Followers,

I finished “The Night Circus” by Erin Morgenstern a few days ago. Sadly, “American Wife” by Curtis Settinfield is still not finished.

What I wanted to share about “The Night Circus” is when you finish it, start over and re-read because I found the author wasn’t clear about a lot of parts in the book leaving me confused and having to go back.  Or trying to remember why certain parts were being said again, if they were said before.

The author would do short chapters to give clues and  leave you guessing more, but you never found out what the significance was, and by the time you did, if you did, you didn’t remember it anyway.

I can see why The New York Times didn’t rate this book a best seller, you are often confused by what is happening most of the time, at least I was.  I was trying to figure out what the connections were of the people involved and why certain events happened.  I was very confused most of the time.

The good points of the book  was that it kept you wanting to read more, it had excellent life lessons throughout and like the circus itself, it reminded me of a dream.

The love story in the book was intense towards the end and lovely, but the author didn’t clarify I don’t think at least, what happened to the couple or how they got to be where they were.

I have always wanted to go to a circus and I love hearing about the circus during the turn of the 20th century, and the 1920-30s.  There is something magical about that a time period in history, I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

I think that is why I loved “Water for Elephants” by Sara Gruen so much, I love the time period it was in.

So basically, re-read again if you have read it already to get a good handle on the story she is trying to tell and you may find you will enjoy it even more.

Until next time…

The Night Circus Is Magical

Hello Dear Followers,

Image courtesy of http://www.npr.org

I am back! While I am still in the midst of reading “American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld, I wanted to share my thoughts with you about another book I am nearly finishing.  I am reading “The Night Circus”  by Erin Morgenstern.  

The best way I could describe this book is by comparing it to Harry Potter meets Water For Elephants meets Hunger Games.  This book has elements of all three of those books.

I have never seen a book so openly and honestly speak  about Tarot cards that could be considered by most as dark magic.  Everything in this book is dream-like with historical elements and love.  It takes place during the turn of the 20th century and a decade before.

It involves a circus (obviously) which poses as the backdrop to a competition between a  female and male magician who for most of their “magical” training know nothing of the other until they meet through this circus and fall in love. What happens next is to be determined.

I have found this book enjoyable, I love history, so this element keeps me wanting to read more. I love the love story, but I have to admit the author keeps the love story at bay for a long time, she introduces the circus thoroughly, she introduces the cast of characters thoroughly. You almost want to tell the author, get on with it.

Most of what happens in this book is unbelievable, their love story while it is enjoyable as well, is just developing 250 something pages in. I am having trouble believing their love or connecting the dots of their love.

I also find the author isn’t clear in how the other characters are playing a clear role in this so called competition.  You need to pay attention to everything in this book closely to make the connections of why certain people and events that have happened are important.

The author does keep you guessing.  I am looking forward to finishing this book and “American Wife” and moving on forward with this blog again.

Oh! And does anyone want to take me to the circus?

Until next time..

A Book of Substance

Hello Dear Followers,

As you know I am reading “American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld and its an excellent book. It is a real work of fiction, it’s not crappy, its real. It has substance and definitely worth the read.

This book is also fictionally and loosely based on former First Lady Laura Bush, now I am not sure which parts are or aren’t real, but all I picture as I am reading is her and former President George W. Bush.  I see him as he is in this book, it’s so weird to visualize him young like this and reading the experiences they have had together.

I think the author has painted an excellent fictional account of Alice Lindgren and the twists and turns that bring her to the inevitable title of First Lady.

I won’t be done with this book by October, but I can most definitely recommend this book. It’s not everyday you find a book of substance and I think I’ve found a new author I’d love to explore in the future.

Until next time…

American Wife

Image courtesy of http://www.ew.com.

Hello Dear Followers,

For September, I’ve decided I will be reading “American Wife” by Curtis Sittenfeld. The book, some say is loosely based on former First Lady Laura Bush.  

According to Amazon.com, on what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

I have to say, I had a difficult time choosing a book for September.  I had no idea what I wanted to read this month or what I was even in the mood for.  I had toyed with the idea of taking two months to read “A. Lincoln: A Biography” by Ronald C. White Jr.

I found in searching for a new book that I have a lot of books based on real people’s lives.  I am so fascinated by people and what their lives were about, who they are or were.

I hope that you will enjoy reading this along with me, if you are.  I think its a good read.

Until next time…

Escape to Guernsey

Hello Dear Followers,

I finished “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” tonight and wanted to share my final thoughts about the book.

I thought overall it was a sweet book, it was quaint at times and teetered a little on boring.  I did however, find myself craving an opportunity to read it throughout the day, brought it with me everywhere as a chance to escape to 1940s Guernsey just after World War II. 

Photo courtesy of http://www.oldUKphotos.com

I tend to enjoy escaping into novels that take place in a  different time period, especially a time period I know little about.  While at first I thought the constant correspondence between the characters via letter writing dragged the book a bit, it gave it character and personality that you may not have gotten if the book been made up of chapters.

The characters in the book will become your friends, you will want to join them for their literary meetings and want to be part of this circle of friends that would ultimately become family.

You will want to travel to the Channel Islands of the British Isles and see Guernsey for yourself once you read this book.  The authors do a great job at making this place seem magical in a time of such darkness.

I love history so learning what I could about the German occupation on this island and a little more about the Nazi concentration camps was fascinating and terribly sad at the same time, I can’t imagine going through something like that.  These poor people.

I have heard  bits and pieces about World War II  from my grandparents every now and then,  but they were young when it was happening around them in Italy.  They remember only so little about it.

I would recommend this book for its simplicity, its escapism and its character. If you are looking for something more enticing however, this isn’t it.  I kept waiting for something more to happen that would consider this book a page turner, but it never came.

Until next time…

The Lost Art of Letter Writing

Hello Dear Followers,

When I think letter writing I think of it as an act of  romance, something so personal and in the 21st century, so lost in the age of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, texting and the internet as a whole.

As many of you have read in my previous post, I am reading “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society”  and the book is not made up of chapters, but rather of letters between several characters in the book, which at first I thought was great, then I thought well this could take a forever and hard to keep up with who is writing to who.

But as I have gone on, I can see why it was done this way, because I can’t see how else the two authors would have conveyed this story, how they would have properly introduced these characters as they have.

While the ability to communicate with people far away from us has gotten a lot easier, far easier than our parents,  grandparents and great-grandparents for that matter, it lacks personality and lacks the proof that someone dedicated the time to write  a letter with an actual  pen and paper.

It is so easy to send off an e-mail, often times without thinking. I’ve done it. Often times we don’t even realize what we are writing because we are in such a hurry to get on to the next thing in our lives, we don’t stop and think of our words.

I’ve always been old-fashioned and very nostalgic in many ways, when I was 13 or 14 years old, I wrote letters to all my friends who were near and dear to me at the time, many thought I was odd, because what 14-year-old spends the time to write an individual letter to someone?  That would be me.

When I was 18, I wrote an e-mail to a boy I liked in high school telling him how I felt, you could call that both ballsy and very 21st century.  That was the way people began to communicate, how they expressed themselves.  Writing a letter with a pen and paper began to be long lost memory.

I returned to the art of writing a letter (via pen and paper) a few years  later to someone I felt was of great importance to my life at the time. It felt more personal, I felt there was a deeper connection because I had taken the time to write several drafts before I could perfect what I wanted to say to this person.  It was me, it wasn’t an e-mail set up by the internet  it was just me, a pen and paper.

This art of letter writing is fading, Andrew Lam, author and editor of New America Media writes about this exact topic in a  blog post “The Lost Art of Letter Writing” on the  Huffington Post.  

“For the rest of us in this age of mobility and information, there simply isn’t any time for such a thing as a long, flowing, hand-written letter. I am no exception,” says Mr. Lam in his post.

Catherine Field, an I.H.T Op-Ed contributor of the New York Times says in her Op-Ed piece “The Fading Art of Letter Writing”:  ”Letter-writing is among our most ancient of arts. Think of letters and the mind falls on Paul of Tarsus, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Austen, Mark Twain; on love letters written during the American Civil War, or letters written to a parent by a frightened soldier at the battlefront.”  

There is a ton more on this subject, because it is clearly something we don’t do in a digital age. And I am someone who loves digital as the next person, but I think we should revive this lost art and bring it back to something more personal, romantic and connected.

Don’t you agree?

Until next time….

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Hello Dear Followers,

The book I am choosing as my August book choice is “The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society” by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  It is January 1946, London is emerging from the shadow of theSecond World War and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject.  Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’d never met, a native of Guernsey, the British Island once occupied by the Nazis. He’d come across her name on the flyleaf of a secondhand volume by Charles Lamb.  Perhaps she could tell him where he might more books by this author. As Juliet and her new coorespondent exchange letters, she is drawn into the world of this man and his friends, all members of Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a unique book club formed in a unique, spur-of-the-moment way: as an alibi to protect its members from arrest by the Germans, according to the book.

Not too long ago, I realized that we don’t write letters anymore, like real letters as in paper and pen? And this book celebrates the art of letter writing and the love of books. What could be more wonderful? (For me anyway)

I hope you will read along with me. I look forward to sharing my thoughts with my followers for this book.

Until next time..

Randy Pausch

Photo of Randy Pausch, courtesy of Wikipedia.com

Hello Dear Followers,

It took me way longer than I thought it would to finish “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch, however I have finished it and can now give you my closing thoughts on the book.

I thought overall the book was very good, a lot of life lessons that we often take for granted. It seemed like the ongoing theme in the book was to have fun in life and dream.  We so often forget to do both, or give up on our dreams because too often reality sets in.

In my last post I asked followers if they were to vanish tomorrow, what would be their last words of wisdom to those they were leaving behind? Maybe vanish isn’t the correct word, I’d have to go with die. If you were to die tomorrow, what would be the last words of wisdom you would leave as your legacy?

( I hate thinking about dying) but I’d say just let go to things that are holding you back, don’t hold on to things that happened in your past and just live. I know its easier said than done, because we are so defined by our experiences and so impacted by the people in our lives.

I also recommend to not sweat the small stuff, because seriously life is too short.  Mr. Pausch was dying of cancer, do you think towards the end of his life he was worried about the small stuff? I doubt it. I think about those dying of cancer and how those of us that are healthy are so quick to worry about the little things in life we make them big things. What I have learned too is that it is not the end of the world, you just keep going forward. What you might think is the end of the world yesterday, may not even phase you tomorrow.

Also let go of the toxic people in your life that bring you down, you don’t need them, they do nothing to your personal growth.

All these “words of wisdom” may sound cliche or redundant, but its true.

Have fun even if you aren’t having fun, have fun. Be happy.  Okay. I think I have given you all enough of my words of wisdom for one day.

But I thank Mr. Pausch for his inspiration book and I now think of his family as they continue to go on with their lives.  I dedicate this blog to Mr. Pausch.

Until next time…

“The Last Lecture”

Book image courtesy of http://www.bestsellers.about.com

Hello Dear Followers,

My July book choice is “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch.  I chose this book a few years ago or so because it reminded me in a lot of ways of books written by Mitch Albom and I thought that this would be an interesting read.

The book tells the story of late author Randy Pausch, who gave his “last lecture” at Carnegie Mellon.  According to the book, a lot of professors are asked to consider their demise and to ruminate on what matters most to them.  And while they speak, audiences can’t help but mull the same question: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance? If had to vanish tomorrow, what would we want as our legacy. Mr. Pausch, a computer science professor was asked to give such a lecture, he didn’t have to imagine it was his last since he had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

So while I read this book, I am asking my followers that are reading this post, if you were to vanish tomorrow, what would be your last piece of wisdom you would want as your legacy?  I ask that each of you think of that, and I love to hear from all of you about it. I will think it over myself and in my concluding post on the book which I am hoping will be next week, I will tell you all.

I hope you all follow along with me or at least consider this book as a good suggestion for a summer read.

Until next time…