Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore

While out on vacation one thing we like to collect are books about the area. We love to read about the history and things that make the area unique, it is also a great way to get ideas about what else to go see.

We recently got back from a trip to the Outer Banks area of North Carolina. While at the Wright Brothers National Park and Museum we picked up a couple of books: 'Pirates, Ghosts, and Coastal Lore: the Best of Judge Whedbee' by Charles Harry Whedbee. I was also so excited to start Lady A's Vacation Book Collection for her too and got 'First Flight: the Story of the Wright Brothers' by Caryn Jenner.

On our drive home we read some of the tales about the OBX area. Even though I am not done with all the stories about the Coastal Lore I have so enjoyed this book. Being from the west, most places have/are just celebrating their 100 year or 150 year 'birthday.' Reading these stories about stuff that has happened so much as twice as long ago has been fun. These are stories I have heard about, maybe a little, but know they seem so much more real having been to the OBX myself.

Charles Harry Whedbee is a great story teller. As I am reading through his tales I can hear my Grandpas voice in my head. He has some of the most amazing stories to tell from his childhood and is a fantastic story teller, it's like I am right there with him experiencing it all and Judge Whedbee has that same talent fro bringing you right into the story with him.

 

It might be some time before I am ready to let Lady A handle her book alone but for now I will read it to her. It is part of the www.dk.com readers program and is a level 4: proficient readers, she is 18 months so it will be a while but we will read over it and learn about the history together. The book is an easy read with great illustrations and photos.The content is of the history and process behind the Wright Brothers first flight. Pages are laid out to give informative facts that go along with the story and it is all done in a manor to keep the young reader engaged.

Be sure to check out my book shelf off to the right to see what I am reading now. Please feel free to leave suggestions for my next great read.

Simple....Yet AWESOME!!

My mom has recently been able to achieve one of her life long goals. She went back to school to get her degree in special education and is now teaching. The principle gave all the teachers a book for Christmas, 'The Book of Awesome.'

This fun book highlights those simple things in life that will put a smile on your face leaving you with a felling of Awesome!

If you need a little pick me up or something to put a smile on your face, this will do the trick. While I haven't read the whole book, the simple Awesome acts I have read through have struck a cord with me. They are those things that we can all appreciate and identify with.

Check out my review on my shelf. 

On being a first time parent...

I asked a SIL of mine if she had any books that she might recommend I read while we are expecting our first baby, she is so good to always be reading for fun or about a topic that she is interested in, so I knew she would be a great resource. I don't really care to read tons of books and get overloaded on everything either because I think a lot of it comes with just being a mom. Every child is different and you have to trust your own instincts and feelings. But I would still like just one book, something that I could draw back on when things seem like they are out of control. The book she suggested to me is On Becoming Baby Wise: Giving Your Infant the Gift of Nighttime Sleep. I just got the book and have read over the first chapter. It's amazing how simple it all is and it seems like it would just be common sense. But I have also realized over my many years that while stuff seems like it should be common sense sometimes it clicks better if we actually read it or have someone tell the stuff to us that we already know.

My husband and I had an experience like that just the other week. With trying to plan a move all the way across the country, planing to have a baby and have him start Grad school all this fall, things got a little stressful. That, plus all the extra hormones in me right now, well it didn't take rocket science to see we were stressed and not working together. My parents sat us down and even though they didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, for some reason it all clicked.

I am going to miss having my mom so close and her motherly wisdom as I become a first time mom, good thing my cell phone has free long distance on it, I'm sure I will be calling all the time.

Eclipse . . . Finally done with it!!

Well since we moved in January I miss placed my book and didn't find it {in the most random box} until just two weeks ago. I finished it a couple of days after that. I needed to know how it was going to end but I really didn't need that final book to be so long. From the point where I picked up Alison had left and no one could figure out why, other than to save herself from the ensuing destruction that was coming.

Oh could Bella complain any more?? I almost really don't think she could. From the time I picked up the book a couple weeks ago and started from where I had left off, she has done nothing but whine and complain. Wow is her!! I couldn't stand it, but from all the self pity and worry I had to read on to see how this epic fight was going to be carried out in the end.

Then . . . NOTHING!!! With everyone and their mind games and powers, everyone just stood around chatting. VERY anti climatic!!! A bit disappointed in how the series ends. I have heard some say they like the series because of the love and devotion that they have towards each other but it reminds me of 'The Bachlor' or other reality TV shows where someone is supposed to find true love in completely non-real world settings. Are you kidding me!!! There is no responsibility and you don't ever get to see that person in their own real life element . . . but that is a post for another day, I could go on and on.

Over all, I think the first book was the best and the series just went down hill. Will I keep the books, Yes . . . my husband bought them for me and maybe I'll try reading them again and not spreading it out over such a long period, maybe that will help them be a bit better. Will I let me daughter read them . . . only if I feel she has a great grasp on what is real and what isn't. While I have seen it work out many times, my parents in fact, I don't want her to think she needs to find true love in high school.

My Sister really likes the Harry Potter Series. She says there is so much that is left out in the movies and I have heard that in the final book, during their epic fight, there really is a fight and Rowling isn't affraid to kill anyone off. But I have also heard from others that it almost goes to the other extreme, that too many main characters whom we have spent the last 6 books getting to know and love, end dying in the end. I wonder how far I could get in those before we move again in 6 weeks.

I think I am more of a movie buff...

I got this list from a friends FaceBook and thought I would post it here. I have also added a * next to the ones that I have seen the movie. After looking at the list it sure seems like I have some catching up to do. What would you suggest I start with??

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt...

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 Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice' Adventures 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 - A.A. 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 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’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 Inferno - Dante

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 - E.B. 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*

Looks like I need to get me a couple Jane Austen books and catch up a little.
What Books have you read that you would suggest I start on next???

Out of Jacob's Head...Thank Goodness!!

It's finally here. I am at the half way mark and the book is back to Bella's voice.

Jacob's head was a very depressing place to be. His life is terrible, he's going to run away his group of friends has split, his first love wants to belong to a group that are his mortal enemies.

I'm glad that it is back to Bella's voice, Stephanie seems to be able to write better from Bella's perspective. Now that the baby is finally born I am kind of curious what kind of turn the story is going to take now. In my mind there is so much more to cover about other loose ends and the first half of the book {Jacob's part} could have been A LOT shorter. Well, I'll continue going to the gym and reading as I'm on the treadmill. Time really does go by faster on the treadmill when you have something else to help occupy the time and I'm all about multitasking.

A New Determination!!!

WOW!! I have been slacking. Looking at this blog I have realized how long it has been since I added anything here. The main reason for that is I haven't been reading my book. I really need to finish this book but it is being a difficult one as well. It is completely obvious that she didn't have her editor go over this book and help tighten it all up. I have already read about a third of the book but all that has happened is that Jacob figured that the baby needed to be fed blood so that it would stop attacking Bella. I mean everything that has gone on so far could have all been told in just a few chapters.

Well I just need to finish it and move on. I am making a new resolve to finish the book. I also haven't been as diligent in my exercise routine as I would like. The in-laws have decided that they want to do family photos some time this month {it will most likely have to be the end of the month because everyone has so much going on}. So my new resolve is to loose 10lbs. by the time we do family pictures and finish the last book in the Twilight Series.