Well you get the idea.

If you’re a bookworm like me–go ahaed. Step into my web….

What are some of the things that fuel your reading addiction?

Cartoon showing woman asking booksller for her-books, as opposed to hymn-books from Library of Congress

Ovester? Semester?

Enid (from Legally Blonde): So I'm petitioning to have next term be referred to as the winter "ovester".

Potaytohs? Potahtohs?

What’s behind a name and why after all these years are we still having discussions about nomenclature as it pertains to gender integration—especially in the most rapidly evolving arena in our society, technology?

Damned if I know. Although it might just unleash my inner riot grrrl.

I recently bumped into this video by Caroline Drucker and seeing as it relates to the obsession with the word “GIRL” as oppposed to “WOMAN” to define a female in the professional environment I found it very pertinent to my (not-so) ongoing discussion of words and their use.

Now, while I don’t particularly mind being called a girl in my day to day life BY MY FELLOW FEMALES, it does irk me to be referred to as a girl in a professional context and even by men in my day to day life. This isn’t so much a gender equality issue for me, just an “I look really young and I still get snubbed and patronized at the grocery store when I try to buy a bottle of wine” issue.* Come to think of it, I feel like the word seems to undermine my potential and my ability to do things. But again, I come at it from a different perspective. I’ve also worked in estrogen-heavy environments, so my experience with the word “girl” at work in this particular discriminatory context is not relevant.

I do understand the principle of the lecture, though. That perhaps in an environment (the office environment) where nomenclature, titles, and rank do define you and catapult you into situations that are unfavorable/favorable, using the term “WOMAN” as a shield might be useful.

What do you think? (You are allowed to give opinions even if you are not a menstruating tax-payer).

BONUS!!!

Brit-Brit Discovering she’s not a girl….

But not yet a woman.

Intrigued?

Also–she turns the tables on men:

* Side note: If I were really underage don’t you think I’d try to buy something a little stronger and cheaper?

** Side-side note: When I bought my car a few years ago I got a very long lecture from the car salesman about the responsibility of driving, etc. Even though I’ve been driving for YEARS. It turns out the man thought I was 15…

**sigh**

T-minus a few days until the weekend and its limitless potential for bookworming. Meanwhile here’s a nice little image to sustain you courtesy of the Library of Congress. Enjoy!

Bookworming it...at sea!

p.s. check out other images here!

What is Mookology?.

NYPL has a website called the Stereogranimator that allows you to make animated versions of archived images. History coming alive.  Check it out!

I did the thing any rational human being would do.

I bought coffee on my way to work.

Why?

Because I need coffee–just like a lab rat needs crack…or experimental drugs.

Yes, my friends. Coffee is my drug of choice and I need precisely one cup in my system every morning or things get too real–just like the following people (replace Snickers with coffee).

Today, my options for coffee were the following: Starbucks or McDonalds. As I’ve been MickeyDing it a bit much of late, I thought I’d diversify my investment by patronizing the Evil Coffee Empire as people affectionately refer to it.

For those of you who hate the Big S, I must tell you if it were up to me I’d stop by my favorite neighborhood coffee shop and order a cappuccino without sugar (good coffee doesn’t need sugar). But my life revolves around my commute, so Starbucks it was.

Needless to say, I was punished severely for my poor judgment.

Why is it that I keep falling for the old “Starbucks is on my way to work” trap?!

WHY!!

Einstein, I believe once said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and I was definitely cuckoo for coffee cup this morning.

Forgive my brain but it ran out of fuel.

I think I’m still trying to process the awful taste that my taste buds were relaying. I swear my cup of drip coffee tasted like the illegitimate child  of burnt plastic and boiled vodka sprinkled with cigarette ashes.

But I can’t really blame Starbucks can I. I mean I knew this coffee wasn’t my cup of tea, but I went for it anyway. Starbucks is great if:

• You want a decent designer brew. They are especially handy in Podunky places where they might not have a big chain store for miles but they have a Starbucks to fulfill your soy latte needs.
• You feel like having a sugar rush at 7 am.
• You get a nice coupon or gift certificate.
• You want to look cool, busy, and imporant in the morning (“Out of my way woman on a mission–Can’t you see I’m rushing with a STARBUCKS CUP IN HAND! Hold the elevator peasant!”)
• You need a great travel mug for your home brewed drip coffee so you never have to be without some great drip coffee (especially if your coworkers don’t drink coffee). In fact, I have one of those.

This whole coffee episode reminds me of my other addiction (*ahem* books, of course) and the sort of insanity that brings with it.

Like when I pick up a book by the some author I’ve read before and not liked, decide to read another book, and hope that magically I’ll like this author.  I used to think that I could never run into a book I wouldn’t like but I have been proven wrong. Prime example.

The Nanny Diaries.

Now hear me out. I know that there are lots of readers that love this book and catapulted it to fame and the big screen via Scarlett Johansson and Alicia Keys. However, I just never got the appeal. I stopped in the middle of the book called it a day. But several years later picked up the sequel in hopes that I’d like this…

I gave up after the 1st chapter, flipped to the back, and promptly returned it to the library. I’m just glad I never bought it!

I know it’s a matter of taste–much like coffee.

Some people like their coffee beans roasted, others toasted. Blah, blah.

But these little episodes make me realize more and more that sometimes I can’t rely on the palates of the masses.

Something so obvious, but that I forget because I want to roll with the masses.

Have you ever been a literary contrarian? Did you ever read a book everyone else liked but you just didn’t get?

**Side Note: This BusinessWeek article might prove a point. Apparently, there are many others that don’t like Starbucks coffee. So perhaps sometimes the masses secretly hate things and/or are lying. Just a thought**

Okay so I have to put this out there because possession of this knowledge is poisoning me slowly but surely.

As I was on Goodreads rating books I had already read and making note of the ones I’d like to read there was one book that came to mind that I started but never finished (as I so often do). It was one of those situations that likens those romantic movies where there are two perfectly matched people that meet on a boat or a park or store or something and then somehow lose each other tragically without knowing or remembering each others names. The young lovers have to rely on a fortuitous turn of events or some sort of benevolent serendipity to be reuinited.

That’s not what the book’s about but it’s sort of my story with this book. Book clues after the jump:

* the author is a British man and an editor of an American magazine like W or Vanity Fair

* Setting: English countryside, small town

* The story starts out in the 1960s with a wealthy young man who lives in one of those country estates. His parents are lord and lady I think.

* the son is getting ready for a party he doesn’t want to go to

* he meets a sultry young French woman who came with a friend of his

* He runs after her to France and they get married

* They live in a cottage of some sort, but not happily

* the story alternates between present and past. The young man I believe grows up and later marries a few other women.

* the book tells the story of him as the patriarch of his own family and of this family

* The book was published fairly recently like between 2003 and 2010

I know it’s not much to go on but could anyone help me name that book?

Also: had to give honorable mention to Dolly Parton and her interesting video for her cover of Help!

I’m not much of a country music person but Dolly is pretty adorable and I just had to share the video.

Reblogged from AustenBlog:

Reblogged from 53 weeks:

Well here we go again, another 53 weeks lie ahead of us.

If anything this next period will be more difficult than the first, if only because doing something again is often more difficult than setting out to do something the first time.

They say you should start as you mean to go on, so at the last minute on the Sunday afternoon (before the light faded), I walked up to the Belvedere Palace to shoot this.

Read more… 11 more words

In the vein of new beginnings, I promised myself I'd start diversifying my posts. Not because books I've started running out of things to say. Believe me, I think most of the people in my life once in a while hope I do run out of things to say...But because, although I've already read 6 books this year and I'm chugging along with my resolution to read 100 books this year, I have to acknowledge the change in my reading style over the years. I no longer wish to maintain the segmentation of my reading from my life. In fact, it's not an entirely sustainable scheme. Eventually things you read start informing your daily life and your daily life obviously informs your reading choices.

 

With that in mind, I am sharing this gorgeous and stately picture of the Belvedere Palace in Potsdam. Sad I didn't get to see this when I was there a few years ago. Although, can't complain as I was able to visit Sans Souci.

[caption id="attachment_1331" align="aligncenter" width="538" caption="Sans Souci Palace is the place that Frederick the Great used to retreat to. Sans Souci means "no worries" in French."][/caption]

Lately, I've been thinking about the places that my reading has allowed me to travel and how books have ignited my curiosity for the world.

 

I do think, that as a kid and even through high school I buried my head in a pile of books desperately hoping not to be noticed and trying to stave off as much expectation from people about my personality or beauty or other things I was not so sure of as a high schooler with frizzy hair, braces and giant eyebrows. I shielded myself from critique by becoming an overachieving student. What's the worst people could say about a bookworm?

Oh she reads too much. That didn't seem too harsh....

But strangely enough, it was those books that made me realize what I was missing out on. There is just so much world to see, so many people to meet and so much to learn. And so, it was that I was lured out of my bookish caverns to go out to the world, book under my arm, of course. Granted, I'm not much of an adventurer or thrill seeker. I am so easily consoled by new experiences that for me discovering a new aisle in the grocery store is magnificent. Truth be told, there are still a lot of days when I prefer the comfort of my couch, a hot cup of tea, and a good book. However, I think that this has now become a choice formulated from my enjoyment of reading and not because I wish to hide from people.

In fact, as I was looking around the web for some literary genius to fortify my sense of nostalgia, I ran into this quote:

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

Even if I don't get to go to Potsdam again or see the Belvedere or get the same guilty pull in my gut when I look at lost opportunities in my travels, I have to retract those feelings.

 

I'm just glad I have seen a little bit of the whole wide world.

From: KPRC Houston

From: KTRK Houston

It’s a typical Houstonian experience. Run home by the torrential flooding on my way to work.

Thankfully, my exile is fortified by a good dose of Whataburger and Tabitha’s Salon Takeover.

I know. I know. On a nasty day like this, I would be much better off reading. However, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing this whole time. So much so, that I haven’t updated the old blogeroo since Halloween. Today’s the day, kids, that things get updated.

New year new posts!

Therefore, I give you mini book reviews of all of my recent reads. Published one day at at a time. Today, I’ll review Mindy Kaling’s newest. Stay tuned.