She's Crafty | Crafty New Year!

Oh my gosh, HAPPY NEW YEAR! 2014 is here already and it feels like I barely got to know 2013.

With the new year comes a heap of resolutions...right? Right. I'm a resolution makin' machine and over the year's I've kept some really important ones so I continue to keep up the tradition. Something about new beginnings that make us stop and take stock of our lives. But that's another post for another time.

My resolutions usually include: read more, exercise more, travel more, quit doing this, definitely stop doing that, play more, smile more...

But I also have a long-list of crafty resolutions:

• I resolve to sew more. 

• I resolve to finish more projects that I start. 

• I resolve to learn more about basic painting techniques. 

• I resolve to keep an art journal.

More goals exist in that lofty, dreamy area of my brain, but these are the ones I feel are most important and attainable.

To help me keep my art journal resolution I found two colorful and thoroughly enticing titles at the library, Art Journal Workshop by Traci Bunkers and Journal Junkies Workshop by Eric M. Scott and David R. Wodler. I also found two thrift books to journal in that I purchased from a Friend's of the Library booksale. Come tomorrow, I'll be ready to start 2014 with my first messy and colorful journal page! I also resolve to post more about art journaling in the new year, so stay tuned for that.

Ohh so colorful and enticing!

Can't wait to dive in!

Do you have any crafty resolutions? Let us know in the comments.

May your 2014 be happy and crafty!

~Kaye & Malia

Just Life | Words Of Wisdom From Our Postcard Wall

I love funny and inspirational postcards. At Chavez library, we have a wall full of them. Here are a few of my favorites postcards:

So what are you waiting for. Call a friend before the New Year.

That is my excuse for having a messy house.

That reminds me that I should think before opening my mouth.
 

Reading is anything but boring.

Happy New Year everyone.
 
Signing off until next year- Panteha

P.S. Send me your old postcards & Christmas Cards and I will make sure to add them to our postcard wall at Chavez.

Books On Film | Mary Poppins

Mary Poppins is the first book in a series of six written by English author P.L. Travers. In the first book, published in 1934, the Banks family is in need of a new nanny after their old one leaves in a huff. Mary Poppins blows in on a strong wind to fill the position. The children and Ms. Poppins proceed to have all sorts of wondrous adventures together.

The story of Mary Poppins has been adapted into a very successful film and stage play. The 1964 Walt Disney musical film, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, is considered a family classic. The film, which featured a nicer Mary Poppins than the books, had adventures from all of the books as well as new adventures created just for the film. The movie is great fun and the music is fantastic. If you've never seen it you are missing out.

Saving Mr. Banks, a biopic released in theaters this month, chronicles the life of P.L. Travers including the negotiations between Travers and Disney for the film rights to books. Travers' life story and encounter with Disney is also chronicled in the biography Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers by Valerie Lawson.

If your children are into fantasy grounded in real life, then they may love the Mary Poppins books and if you are into biographies, then you may want to pick up a copy of Mary Poppins, She Wrote. 

Saving Mr. Banks Trailer (2013)  

  

 Covers courtesy of LibraryThing.

The Wanderlust Librarian | Pinball Wizard the Second

After the overnight on the USS Hornet (read about it here), Lizzie had mentioned something about the Pacific Pinball Museum. Wait, wait, wait... WHAT?!!?? A place where I can visit that's less than an hour away from where I live? 

Vintage and awesome! 

Knowing that I loved pinball, Lizzie found her ticket on the Discover and Go website and printed out her FREE ticket. I, on the other hand, forgot to reserve my ticket. The tickets for that day were all claimed. *if you want a ticket, reserve it in advance!!*I had to pay the $15 entrance fee. 

All the pinball in the Pacific Pinball Museum is FREE!!! So, save your quarters and play all the pinball you want. After you pay the entrance fee, get a hand stamp for same day in and out privileges. 

The vintage pinball room

From the outside, the museum looks small. In fact, when you walk in, there are a row of new pinball machines (for $0.50 per game) and behind the cashier, there are a slew of restored machines from 1930's through the 1960's. I was ALMOST disappointed until I looked to the right of the cashier and saw an Addams Family pinball machine along with 2 other machines (of which I ignored because I love the Addams Family machine!). They have a private room for rental. When there's a party, that room is closed and the machines are for the guests only. Luckily, there was no party that day. 

The 80s are alive! 

There are other rooms for machines from the 70s and 80s. There were a fair amount of machines. The rooms were off of an indoor courtyard area. They were small and had a few machines per decade. They were not what I was looking for. 

There is limited pinball art in one of the rooms. There are some pieces on the wall and an interactive display where you can make a bumper hit. The scariest thing in that room is an old clown game (not pictured for "scares the bloggess" reasons). There are 2 machines with a clear plastic body where you can see the innards at work. 

Old pinball boards

Bump the bumper!!

My high school years come alive in music! 

For me, the magic was in the 90s room! It was a lot of my favorite machines crammed into one room. There were about 14 machines and a FREE jukebox. I made a playlist of all of my favorite music from high school: Pulp Fiction, Cranberries, Oasis, etc. Some of the pinball gems I played over and over were: Earthshaker, Doctor Who, Road Show and Twilight Zone. The 90s room provided a good hour and a half of entertainment for me. Though, let me just say that scoring a free game when playing a free game...is not as rewarding as one might think after playing a free game. 

Getting high score, though, is always a huge thrill. It felt good to get a decent win under my belt. Also, it was amusing to see a crowd around me. The folks learned that pinball is an art... and not mashing the buttons around. It was a good run. 

Admittedly, when asked "How do you do that?" I said, "See these buttons on the side? I push them to make the ball go out to the board and on the ramps.". After a hearty group laugh from my sarcastic answer, I told him how to make the points work for him. All in all, it was a good run. 

Should you go to the Pacific Pinball Museum? Yes. 

Is it really a whole day of fun? A few hours, yes. A whole day? No. But if you get your tickets for FREE from the Discover and Go page at the library, it's definitely worth your time and a day trip to Alameda! 

If you enjoy pinball, you can try and find your favorite machine at the Pinball Locator. After all, what good is your love of pinball if you can't play your favorite machine?

xoxo

The Bloggess

I'm the #2 player for the day! 

Book Bucket List | Vote for the Book!

 

This year for One Book, One San Joaquin 2014, we will be doing things a little differently.  We are leaving it up to our community to choose the featured book! In addition, we are moving this community wide program to October. Just click the image below or this link here.

The three titles up for the vote are Dracula by Bram Stoker, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and Frankenstein by Mary Shelley.

We will announce the winner at the end of January, and then start planning programs and events based on the winning book! So keep an eye out for One Book, One San Joaquin updates as we announce the winner!

Learning | Burma-Shave, Part 2

My introductory Burma-Shave post last week barely touched on the discussions we have had on the subject at Troke.  

My co-worker, Ginny, asked the same question that occurred to me, when I received The Verse By the Side of the Road: the Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles through the Link+ program.  We both wondered how the shaving cream got the name Burma-Shave. In short, "Why Burma?"

My father (the co-pilot, back row, furthest left) and
his fellow crew members from the 40th Bombardment Group.
The aircraft behind them is "The Song of India,"
the B-29 they flew on missions from Tinian over "The Hump."

Burma (or Myanmar, as is it currently known) is a mountainous country located on the eastern shore of the Bay of Bengal.  Its northern border touches Bangladesh, India and China; its southern region reaches Thailand and the Malay Peninsula.

Trivia question

Name the television series that is the source of the following dialogue:

"BURMA!"
"Why'd you say 'Burma?'"
"I panicked."

See the answer at the bottom of this post.

Ginny and both have fathers who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during the Second World War, in the China/India/Burma theater. They were both stationed on the island of Tinian. (Small world, isn't it?) Perhaps we're more inclined to ask,"Why Burma?" than the average person.

Clinton Odell, the founder of the Burma-Vita company in Minnesota first invented a liniment which was supposed to have a number of health benefits. It was mostly comprised of ingredients from Burma and the Malay Peninsula, so he called it Burma-Vita. It is reported to have smelled terrible, which may have been one reason why it never became a commercial success.  

Mr. Odell was inspired by a brushless shaving product he saw in England, called Lloyd's Euxesis; he hired a chemist to develop a similar product, which he named Burma-Shave. (I couldn't help but to look up the origin of the name Euxesis; it comes from the Greek root eu- [good] and -xesis [to scrape]...so it's all about shaving well.)

Burma-Shave did not sell very well until Mr. Odell's sons started advertising the product on roadside signs. The first signs were placed 100 paces apart, but those distances grew as people began driving cars faster.  The publicity generated by those roadside signs can still be felt today--most people familiar with the name Burma-Shave immediately think of those signs; and conversely, when people see a sequence of rhyming signs by the road, they think of Burma-Shave.

Answer to the trivia question:

Monty Python's Flying Circus, Series 2.  It was part of the Exploding Penguin on the TV Set sketch from Episode 22, "How To Recognize Different Parts of the Body.". Graham Chapman exclaimed "BURMA!" after John Cleese speculated about where the penguin came from, "Penguins don't come from next door; they come from the Antarctic."

Books On Film | The Secret LIfe of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1939) is a short story by James Thurber which chronicles the fantastical daydreams of mild-mannered man named Walter Mitty. Walter daydreams himself into heroic adventures as a U.S. Navy flying boat pilot, a surgeon, an assassin, and an Royal Air Force pilot as an escape from his humdrum life.

The book has been adapted into two movies, two radio plays, and a stage play. The most famous of the adaptations is the 1947 technicolor comedy film starring Danny Kaye. The plot of the film departs from the story by a fair bit with Walter eventually meeting a mysterious woman and getting involved in a real life adventure involving missing jewels.

A new drama adaptation, starring Ben Stiller, will be out Christmas day. The plot of this film also departs from the original story. In the new film, daydreaming Walter is eventually forced to go on a real life adventure around the world to recover a lost photo. It looks like a heart-felt movie about living life to the fullest.

It's a short read, so if you are intrigued by Walter Mitty's tale then make sure to grab a copy of the book linked above.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Trailer (2013)

 

Cover courtesy of LibraryThing.

The Wanderlust Librarian | Books: Armchair Travel at its finest

When I travel, I love when I have a comfortable seat. It's preferable for me to have some premium coffee and some tasty nibbles. Oh, and while I'm at it... my own private bathroom. 

The bloggess has spoken. 

Right. What I meant to say is when i'm at home and traveling to new places in an engaging book. 

Traveling doesn't always mean luxurious places. One place I (armchair) traveled to this year was prison. I learned what it was like to be in a women's prison with Piper Kerman in her biographical book Orange is the New Black. This book is full of gritty descriptions and more prison slang than I can shake a stick at! This book is a cautionary tale at its best. 

I went to Indianapolis to hear the story of Hazel Lancastster, cancer patient and her journey through illness and love in The Fault in Our Stars by the (AWESOME) John Green. My friend, Panteha, chronicled this book in her blog. My 15 year old daughter and I loved this book. I suggested this read to a guy friend who also loved it. One place that was described lovingly in this book was Amsterdam. My cousin recently moved there and between Green's descriptions and his pictures, I'm wondering what's stopping me from going there! The movie comes out next year, so if you want to be ahead of the trend, check out this book. 

At some point in my life, I wanted to be a coroner. Instead of reading about one, I read about the afterlife of a dead body. In the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers by Mary Roach, I learned the different ways cadavers are used for medical science, automobile safety and the study of decomposition. Warning, this book is not for the faint of heart. While funny and macabre at times, there are still dead bodies in this book. I revisited this book earlier this year (it was published in 2004) and I was still fascinated by the many voyages the body can take after the soul departs. One of the best opening lines from Mary Roach reads: "The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back".  

Give yourself some time to enjoy some reading time. Read a new book from the library or re-read a favorite! Comfy chairs are out there... and they're waiting for you! 

Book Bucket List | Gift Books!

It's December 20th. I have only three real days of shopping left.  I'm still not done and I'm trying not to completely freak out.  (Brothers of mine, I promise you won't go without!) Since I always end up scouring the internet for gift ideas last minute, I thought I would make a list of my own. 

Here's a few bookish gift ideas:

The picture book This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen is not only hilarious, but  imparts some helpful life lessons as well.  It is the 2013 winner of the Caldecott Medal from the American Library Association too.  Follow the journey of a little fish who just happens to "find" a hat. Yikes!

Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan is the Newbery Award winner for 2013.  The story is about Ivan, the gorilla happily living at a mall.  He loves his fellow animal friends and likes to focus on his art.  However, when Ivan meets the baby elephant Ruby, who was taken away from her elephant family, Ivan's perspective on life quickly changes.  This chapter book would be perfect for a young reader. (The cover is also one of my favorites this year!)

Teens are almost the easiest to buy for this season.  There are so many popular series out that appeal to fans of multiple genres.  Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games series is still huge, especially with the recent release of Catching Fire in theaters.  Veronica Roth's Divergent series is another good option, as the movie in that series will be coming out this March. (Yay!)  And as always, there's Harry Potter. (Shameless plug, I know)

One of my favorite books I read this year was James McBride's The Color of Water.  This year, McBride's new book The Good Lord Bird won the National Book Award for Fiction from the National Book Foundation.  The story begins in 1857 when the young slave, Henry Shackleford, leaves the Kansas territory with abolitionist  John Brown after a violent argument.  However, after a case of mistaken identity, Brown believes Henry is actually a girl.  The pair eventually end up at Harper's Ferry, one of the many catalysts of the Civil War.

Vader's Little Princess and Darth Vader and Son are some of the funniest Star Wars books I've ever seen.  If Lord Vader ever knew about the existence of his children (sorry spoiler alert), then maybe the scenes in these books may have actually happened.  Very funny and good for all ages!

For lovers of non-fiction, the recent release of Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower is really fascinating.  Lower has done quite a bit of research on the involvement of the much ignored presence of women in Nazi Germany.  This is a must read for any history buff.

Learning | Burma-Shave, Part 1.

I recently requested a book, that I remembered checking out from my neighborhood library when I was a child. I had started thinking about it when a friend posted something about Burma-Shave on Facebook--and that post had caused a lively discussion about rhymes and roadside signs.  

Every second without fail, some store rings up another sale. Burma-Shave.
(Lori's note: I recall roadside Burma-Shave signs spaced much farther apart.)
 Photo courtesy of Brent Moore's photostream on Flickr.com Some rights reserved.

Just in case you do not know what all the fuss is about, Burma-Shave was an innovative brushless shaving cream product that first appeared in the United States in 1925. Picture the days when people were riding around in Model-T Fords.

The manufacturer of Burma-Shave, the Burma-Vita company, began advertising with roadside signs, which evolved into clever rhymes. The signs were spaced far enough apart that one would have to wait to see what came next.

Photo courtesy of Orin Zebest's photostream on Flickr.com.

Some rights reserved.

Since SSJCPL does not own a copy of Frank Rowsome, Jr's The Verse By the Side of the Road: the Story of the Burma-Shave Signs and Jingles, I had to order it through the Link Plus program.

I regret to say that I don't have time to write everything I wanted to say about Burma-Shave, so I'll have to wait until next week.  

Photo courtesy of miss_curse_10's Photostream on Flickr.com.
Some rights reserved.

In the meantime, I'll share my favorite Burma-Shave jingle with you: 

Don't stick your elbow
out so far
it might go home
in another car
Burma-Shave.

She's Crafty | Winter Wonderland on the Inside

Brrrrrrr! It's cold outside! This kind of weather makes me think of snowflakes. Lots of them. And, while I like the idea of snow, I've never really developed a love for the real deal--not much going for it in my opinion. It's probably because I've never lived where it snows--I just don't understand how people can think sliding around on the cold, wet stuff is so much fun. To each, her own, I guess.

But, the look of snow, that's what I love. Beautiful, soft shapes covering the world outside like a blanket, yet also a sparkling crisp whiteness, blinding in it's intensity when the sun hits it. Oh, and there's the snowflakes;  real ones you can only see in extreme close-up. I've only seen them in photographs, but what amazing things they are, all with six sides, no two exactly alike. Breathtaking. Enchanting. Absolutely beautiful.

Wilson Bentley

Have you ever heard of Wilson "Snowflake" Bentley (1865--1931)? He was the man who first worked out a way to photograph nature's own snowflake designs. Our library has a few titles concerning Bentley and his snowflakes:

• Snowflake Bentley [DVD Videorecording] by Weston Woods (Pub.)

• My Brother Loved Snowflakes by Mary Bhar Fritts

• Snowflake Bentley by Jacquiline Briggs Martin

• The Snowflake Man by Duncan C. Blanchard

And, from a link plus library, there's a glorious photographic album of real snowflakes, The Art of the Snowflake, by Kenneth Libbrecht, who uses technology Bentley had never dreamed of to photograph snowflakes today. Libbrecht has also collected some of nature's most beautiful snowflake designs in his photographs...at least, I think so, but I can't be sure. You see, photographs can't capture all of the myriads of designs mother nature produces every year when the snow falls. I can't even imagine how many unseen snowflakes there might be in a single drift outside someone's cabin door, let alone everywhere there's snow. And, once they melt, the designs are lost forever.

M Scott Moon - AP

I think that's one reason Malia and I have been making our own winter wonderland indoors every year. We can save the designs we like the best. Not that the designs we've created in white paper, white crochet cotton, white coffee filters, and anything else white we could fold, snip, hook, or weave into intricate designs could ever come close to capturing nature's real deal. But, I think it gets us closer to the idea of snow and snowflakes and the enchantment of nature's yearly show. Plus, we don't even get cold or wet!

Last year, snowflakes were a major theme for all my holiday crafting and decorating. During my internet research, I ran across two amazing ideas.

1. Make snowflakes out of coffee filters.
2. Hang snowflakes from the ceiling, around the Christmas tree.

So of course, I had to do it.

Our very own indoor, six-sided, coffee filter snow storm.

Coffee filters make the best snowflakes. They're easy to cut, they twirl around on their own when hung, the translucent paper gives the flakes an ethereal look, and if you plaster them to a window they look fantastic!

If you'd like to try your hand at making some snowflakes, there are some great instructions to be found online. Just type "paper snowflake instructions" into Google's search bar and you'll get plenty to choose from. There's one from the Instructables website that's especially good in that it teaches you to analyze snowflake photographs so you can make your snowflakes look as real as you can get them.

Enjoy your fantastic flurries while you stay warm, dry, and crafty!
Kaye & Malia

Can't Get Enough Bandwaggoning: It's The A Game Of Thrones Graphic Novel!

Greetings and Salutations, fellow reader of the graphic novel form!

So you like Game of Thrones, no reeeaaally like A Game Of Thrones? Can't get enough of the convoluted plot and the need of having to memorize, like, a million names only to find out you needed to really care about 3 of them? You can't get enough of having to wait 2 episodes for something to happen? Well, does Professor O have a surprise for you: it's the A Game Of Thrones graphic novel! Yes, the SSJCPL has that one extra thing that your life has been lacking, the comic book version of the hit George R. R. Martin hit novels/television show. 

                                         

 Both of the comics include a new Preface by George R. R. Martin, renderings of key scenes and favorite characters from the novels, a walk-through of the entire creative process, from auditioning the artists to tweaking the scripts to coloring the final pages, and behind the scenes with the author, artist, and comic book editor. 

What a read for anyone who finds themselves looking for one more way to take in all the epic-ness of  the epically epic story. Look for it on the shelves at the SSJCPL!

Until next time, keep reading those comics!

Professor O

Just Life | Running Like A Girl !

I just finished reading "Running like a girl" by Alexandra Heminsley. 

It is about the author's journey from being a couch potato to being a marathon runner and it is a glance at how to morph into being a runner for life.

Can I learn to run? I doubt it.

But as Henry Ford says: " Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."

Alexandra Heminsley's journey begins when her brother signs up for the London Marathon and she decides to give it a try, not knowing what she got herself into. Part of the book chronicles her journey towards the London Marathon.

What an undertaking.

I don't have any desire to run a Marathon not that I can pull it off if I want to. All I want is to build enough stamina to run a couple of blocks before passing out. I want to work towards that goal.

I got this tip from the book that says: pick a distance around your neighborhood and try to walk that distance for a month and then attempt to run part of it and go from there. It is too cold outside so I am going to the gym to work on my running.

Here we go:

Day one- Went to gym and walked very fast on the treadmill for 30 minutes. Ran five (1 minute interval) in the process. My ankles are on fire. This is hard. What am I getting myself into.

Day two- Even though I only ran a total of 5 minutes yesterday, my entire body is in pain. Even the muscles that I didn't know they existed are hurting. I can't bend my legs. I am not build for this .............

Day three- Walked very fast on the treamill for 20 minutes and ran a total of 4 minutes. My ankles are burning.

I am not giving up yet. I am going to dive into one of these books for insight.

Running 101

Getting started  

The principles of running
 
Just wish me luck.

Signing off until next Monday- Panteha

Books On Film | Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer is a Christmas icon. Few may know that the character originated in a 1939 tale written at the request of Montgomery Ward to sale in the famous Montgomery Ward catalog. 

The story follows a young Rudolph whose unique red nose gets him shunned by the other reindeer until Santa calls on him, and his nose, to save Christmas. The tale was followed by two sequels, movies, and a famous song written by the author's brother-in-law.

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (song)

You can also find the song on Kidz Bop Christmas.

As a kid, my favorite of the Rudolph movies was the 1964 stop-motion animated film which departs from the original story a lot. Rudolph gets in to all sorts of crazy adventures and meets all sorts of characters who never make an appearance in the book, like the Abominable Snowman. If you've never watched it you're missing out!

Test your reindeer knowledge: Name of of Santa's Reindeer! 
The answer will be posed in the comments section.

Covers courtesy of LibraryThing.

The Wanderlust Librarian | Pinball Wizard the First

When I was in school, I was a lonely gal. I had some friends but I spent most of my free time with books, musicals, video games and pinball. The town where I grew up was a small one. There was no public transit system, so you either had to have someone drive you, drive yourself, ride your bike or walk. Since my parents both worked and I was sans license, I did a ton of bike riding. 

The video gaming was easy. I played Nintendo with my brother at home. Through my many bike rides around town, I found the new pool hall. It was time to try a new gaming hobby. My billiard skills were awful (trust me, I tried to learn how to play). Apparently, having a long cue in my hands wasn't safe for me or the public. I learned the term "scratch" quickly. 

I tried darts. That didn't last long because I'm clumsy....and darts are pointy. Oh, and did I mention that I can't throw? Alas, thwarted again by arm movements.

I discovered that the pool hall had a small arcade in the dark backroom. None of the video games were ones I enjoyed spending money on. But, there were two pinball machines: 

     The Twilight Zone                           and                 Tales from the Crypt

I discovered that I was pretty good at pinball! I was mesmerized by the ramps, skill shots, multiball, the variety of missions to complete..... these machines had them all! I learned that the art of playing pinball wasn't all smashing the paddles constantly. There was an artful finesse about rolling the ball off the flipper at an exact time to get it up a ramp. It took patience to practice juggling the ball on the flippers to avoid losing it down the drain (space between the flippers). It was exhilarating to get the multiball bonus or win a free game. The games lasted a long time as I got better. It was a better bang for my buck! 

I was addicted. I played pinball at every arcade I went to. 

As I grew older, I moved into other nerdy gaming pursuits. Mostly of the electronic kind, but it was rare that I saw a pinball machine. 

That is, until, I was planning my trip to Las Vegas. I found the Pinball Hall of Fame . Holy. Cow. I had to go. I was vibrating with excitement. I wasn't much of a gambler and I knew my quarters would be much better spent on a game than giving it to a casino. The  was a huge werehouse chock-a-block full of pinball machines. My ideal pinball situation is a dark, windowless room. The Pinball Hall of Fame delivered. I was in heaven. I played my $10 like a champ. When I won games, I left them there for a lucky passerby and moved on to other machines. I've visited a number of times on my visits to Vegas and continue to squee with glee at the thought. It's free to go, but it costs some quarters to play the games! The pinball is in excellent condition and there are some vintage video games to warm your 1980s heart. 

Your favorite bloggess was interested in watching a documentary called "Special When Lit" but it never made it to the local area. There is, though, a book of the same title which covers the history of pinball. If you're interested, request it through our Link + system! 

After the overnight on the USS Hornet (read about it here), my friend Lizzie said we were visiting one more awesome spot.

A sequel to this post is out there (well... SOON it will be out there!)!

Until then, have a great holiday and keep warm! (play more pinball).

Book Bucket List | Book Riot Book List!

OK, this week I'm going to do something a little different.  I recently came across Book Riot's "100 Books to Well-Read" list.  Book Riot is a website featuring book reviews, lists, a podcast, and all good things book related from a number of contributors.  They're very cool.  On their site, I this list and thought it had a TON of good Bucket List books on it, but then I realized I haven't read as many as I would actually like.  The list has a wide variety of genres from children's books to horror.  The idea is that being "well-read" comes from having read a number of books from many genres.  They picked 100 books like this:  If it takes 2 weeks to read a book, then it would take about 4 years - how long it takes to get an undergraduate degree. (If that's all it took, I would have finished mine a lot faster than it actually took...)

So here's the list.  I've bolded the title's I've read.  

1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
3. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4. All Quiet on the Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque
5. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay  by Michael Chabon
6. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
7. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
8. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
9. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
10. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
11. Beloved by Toni Morrison
12. Beowulf
13. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
14. Brave New World by Alduos Huxley
15. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
16. Call of the Wild  by Jack London
17. Candide by Voltaire
18. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
20. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
21. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
24. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
25. The Complete Stories of Edgar Allan Poe
26. The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor 
27. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
28. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
29. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
30. Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
31. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
32. Dream of Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin
33. Dune by Frank Herbert
34. Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
35. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
36. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
37. Faust by Goethe
38. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
39. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
40. The Golden Bowl by Henry James
41. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
42. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
43. The Gospels
44. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
45. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
46. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
47. Hamlet by William Shakespeare
48. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
49. Harry Potter & The Sorceror’s Stone by J.K. Rowling
50. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
51. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
52. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
53. The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
54. House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
55. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
56. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
57. if on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
58. The Iliad by Homer
59. Inferno by Dante
60. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace
61. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
62. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
63. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
64. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
65. The Little Prince by Antoine  de Saint-Exepury
66. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
67. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
68. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
69. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
70. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
71. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
72. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
73. The Odyssey by Homer
74. Oedipus the King by Sophocles
75. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
76. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
77. The Pentateuch
78. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
79. Rabbit, Run by John Updike
80. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
81. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
82. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
83. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
84. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
85. The Stand by Stephen King
86. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
87. Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust
88. Their Eyes Were Watching by Zora Neale Hurston
89. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
90. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
91. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
92. Ulysses by James Joyce
93. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
94. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
95. Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M. Coetzee
96. Watchmen by Alan Moore
97. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
98. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
99. 1984 by George Orwell
100. Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James
 

So that's 75/100! Not so bad!  A lot of those titles I haven't thought about in a long time.  So I guess that's a year of reading left to finish the list! I wonder if that will ever happen!

How many have you read?