My Goodreads 2024 Reading Challenge

I read 40 books so far in 2024.

An Elegy for Old Terrors by Zoë Orfanos was recommended to me by the poet's parents, who live here in Indianapolis. 

Most of these were library books I borrowed using the Libby app. I own An Elegy for Old Terrors, Bury Your Gays, Happiness Becomes You, Heathcliff Redux, How To Be Invisible, and Life's Too Short. Nightbooks is my brother's.

My Goodreads Reading Challenge 2022

 

Art Matters is one of the signed copies of books Tit and I picked up when we saw Neil Gaiman in person.

The book with "No image available" is this one.

The Books I Read in 2021

 

Of these, the best was The Whale: A Love Story by Mark Beauregard. It's the fictionalized story of the forbidden love between Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. It's so good and so sad. The Hawthorne character is exactly how I always imagined Nathaniel Hawthorne would be. Herman Melville is, surprisingly, extremely relatable. 

I haven't read Moby Dick, and honestly I probably never will because I asked my dad what it was like and he said, "Boring." We both like the Last of the Mohicans novels, so if he thinks it's more boring than James Fenimore Cooper's six pages of descriptions of trees, it's probably pretty boring, even if it is an extended Symbolist metaphor for love. 

Just know, as a bit of background information, that classic American literature lives rent-free in my mind at all times. 

There are a lot of really good ones in this middle photo, but I think my absolute favorite was State of Wonder by Ann Patchett. My copy belonged to my grandma, who loved Ann Patchett, especially Bel Canto. State of Wonder knocked me for several loops and, although it may seem counterintuitive to read about diseases in the midst of a pandemic, actually a good read for the COVID-19 outbreak. I highly recommend it. 

Carmen Maria Machado's graphic novel The Low, Low Woods is excellent, and of course reading Alex Trebek's memoir was a bittersweet pleasure. I think my favorite of these was the first one I read, Ayiti, a short writing collection by Roxane Gay. Everything Gay writes is phenomenal. And I'm not even that upset that she and her wife moved (moved back, in Gay's case) to Omaha and don't live in West Lafayette, Indiana anymore (where I always hoped I would accidentally run into them. Oh well, Indianapolis still has John Green). 

What was your favorite book that you read in 2021?

All the Wrong Questions #4: Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?

Why Is This Night Different from All Other Nights? by Lemony Snicket

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'm glad I read this series but also sad to see it end. I thoroughly enjoyed it but was saddened when one of my favorite (relatively minor) characters died. I hope Lemony Snicket, a.k.a. Daniel Handler, returns to middle grade writing again some day.

Favorite quote from this book: “Villainy can win against one library, but not against an organization of readers.”

I purchased this book with my own funds from my local brick-and-mortar Barnes and Noble and I was not obligated in any way to review it.

The Woman Who Couldn't Stop Reading 'The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming'

Hanukkah begins at sundown tomorrow, but I (finally) read this book at a really inappropriate time: in mid-March, much closer to Purim than to Hanukkah.

...but I couldn't find any books about screaming hamantaschen, so it had to do.

Actually, I bought it because I got a good deal on a used copy from Better World Books, and it happened to be almost springtime. I'd been wanting to read this for years, and I wasn't disappointed.

Like almost everything Daniel Handler writes as Lemony Snicket, it's laugh-out-loud funny. Some of the best quotes in it are:

1) “Santa Claus has nothing to do with it," the latke said. "Christmas and Hanukkah are completely different things."

"But different things can often blend together," said the pine tree. "Let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals.”

2) “It is very frustrating not to be understood in this world. If you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else, it can make you want to scream. But somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us, whether you are an electric form of decoration, peppermint-scented sweet, a source of timber, or a potato pancake.”

One caveat: It did make me crave deep-fried foods.

#BookReview Lemony Snicket's 'File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents' #Mystery #KidsBooks

File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents by Lemony Snicket

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


These 13 short stories are further evidence that Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions series is ever bit as much subversive fun as A Series of Unfortunate Events - if not more so. I'm starting to think the solo adventures of juvenile Snicket in the village of Stain'd-by-the-Sea are my favorite brainchild of Daniel Handler thus far.

That village librarian Dashiell Qwerty has become yet another of my fictional boyfriends does not hurt the case.

The mysteries are fun. Some of them are fairly obvious, but overall they remind me of a junior version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's best work. That they allow us yet another opportunity to interact with Stain'd-by-the-Sea's quirky residents is yet another point in this book's favor.

Yet those who haven't read Who Could That Be At This Hour? and When Did You See Her Last? can still enjoy this book as a stand-alone. Any young reader who likes Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, or any of the other half-grown sleuths of literature will find this volume delightful, whether or not they've read Snicket before.

I purchased this hardcover at Barnes and Noble with my own funds and was not obligated to review it in any way. I'm simply a Lemony Snicket fan.

Find it on Amazon.com: File Under: 13 Suspicious Incidents (All the Wrong Questions)

View all my reviews on Goodreads

Top 10 Tuesday: 10 Books I Wouldn't Be Sad If Santa Brought Me

Inspired by this post at It's a Book Life, which in turn took its cue from this post at The Broke and the Bookish.

I love to give books for the holidays, as my nieces will find out tonight (they're also getting Subway gift cards so they can pay for their favorite sandwiches with their own money - very exciting when you're 7 and 9) and my cousin's baby daughter will find out tomorrow.

Which books would I most like to get from Santa Claus? I checked with my Goodreads to-read list, and here's what I came up with (in no particular order):

1. I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb

2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

I really want to see the movie, because Emma Watson looks amazing in the previews, but I want to read the book first. I've simply refused to pay the full retail at my local Barnes and Noble.

3. Delirium by Lauren Oliver

4. Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

5. Lillian Holmes and the Leaping Man by Ciar Cullen

Gender-swapped, steampunk Sherlock Holmes? Uh, yes please!

6. The Latke Who Couldn't Stop Screaming by Lemony Snicket

Hanukkah is over, but my desire to read this is not.

7. Christian Bale: The Inside Story of the Darkest Batman by Harrison Cheung

8. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones

9. Little Women and Me by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

10. This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl

Okay, this one doesn't come out until January 28th, 2014, but Santa can preorder it for me if he wants to.

Which books are you hoping for on Christmas morning?

#BookReview 'When Did You See Her Last?' (All the Wrong Questions, Book 2) by Lemony Snicket

A little over a year ago, I was in Venice Beach, California, browsing Small World Books, petting the bookstore cat Conan the Librarian and wishing I wasn't traveling on such a tight budget so that I could spare the cash to buy the first book in Lemony Snicket's All the Wrong Questions series, Who Could That Be At This Hour? I never did buy a copy, but I did borrow it from my local library.

On Wednesday of last week I walked over to my library and picked up a copy of the series' second book, When Did You See Her Last? The "her" in question is the brilliant young chemist Miss Cleo Knight, missing from her family's home in the mysterious town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea (once known for its octopus ink). Our protagonist, 13-year-old Lemony Snicket, must search for her despite adults like his guardian S. Theodora Markson.

As you probably recall from A Series of Unfortunate Events, adults in Lemony Snicket's books are generally ineffective at best and downright wicked at worst. S. Theodora Markson is the ineffective type (at least, from what we know at this point). Snicket gets more reliable help from local teen journalist Moxie Mallahan and underaged taxi cab drivers Pip and Squeak, the Bellerophon brothers.

I finished this book Saturday morning. I find this series delightful, not only as a companion series to A Series of Unfortunate Events, but also in its own right. One of my favorite things about it is the way Snicket makes humorous and pithy observations in his narrative. This book contains several memorable quotes, as Snicket's books often do. Several of these I added to Goodreads myself, including:

“I'm not a stranger," I said, and pointed to his book. "I'm someone who reads the same authors you do.”

“Complimenting someone in an exaggerated way is known as flattery, and flattery will generally get you anything you want...”

“[I]t was the color of someone buying you an ice cream cone for no reason at all.”

“Of course you can trust me," Jake Hix said. "We read the same books.”

“I don't know why wicked places generally look wicked. You'd think they'd look nice, to fool people, but they hardly ever do.”

“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”

Another favorite thing? Dashiell Qwerty, the sub-librarian who always wears a studded black leather jacket and has wild, spiky hair. 

Another fictional crush for me? Yes, I'm afraid so.

The literary references fly fast and furious as well. I don't even know all of them (I can't have read everything), but Pippi Longstocking is discussed at some length, Jane Eyre is mentioned, and we discover that Lemony's sister Kit enjoyed reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond. When Snicket must go to the lighthouse, it reminds him of a book he's been meaning to read. When he suffers an unfortunate tadpole bite, Snicket says, "It might be little, but it's fierce," which you and I know is a paraphrase of a famous Shakespeare quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream. 

If you enjoyed A Series of Unfortunate Events and haven't picked up Who Could That Be At This Hour? yet, I encourage you to read the All the Wrong Questions series. The questions may be entirely wrong, but the writing is oh so right. 

 

Is It Autumn Yet?

The last couple of nights, the weather has been beautiful for sleeping with the window open. Although more hot days are forthcoming, there's also a pleasant hint of autumn in the atmosphere. The equinox, and its Neopagan celebration Mabon, may still be two weeks away, but Rosh Hoshanah is upon us, and it already feels like the season has turned.

U.S. Labor Day was this past Monday, and in the Lake Michigan region, this feels like a seasonal holiday rather than only a national calender holiday. My mom and I went on a road trip to Plymouth, Indiana, for the annual Blueberry Festival. We walked around in the sun, refreshing ourselves with blueberry shortcakes, then fish tacos cooked on the grill, washed down with a blueberry iced coffee.

Huckleberries: closely related to blueberries, but not exactly the same

One of the indigenous peoples of the southwest Michigan/northwest Indiana/eastern Illinois and Wisconsin region, the Pokagon band of the Potawatomi (one of the Algonquin peoples, Pokégnek Bodéwadmik in their own language), celebrates this time of year with a pow wow, attended by several of the regional indigenous tribes. The name of this event is the Kee-Boon-Mein-Kaa pow wow, translated as "I have quit picking huckleberries*." The end of berry-picking season has been celebrated at this time, in this place, as far back as the Pokagon can remember. 

By the way, there is also a Potawatomi band in Kansas; they were forcibly moved there by the U.S government. When I went to Kansas last year, it made me incredibly sad to see how flat, treeless and riverless Kansas was. Imagine your culture was based upon living off of forest resources, that wild berries and fish went into many of your cultural dishes, that weaving river grasses into intricate baskets was one of your favorite visual fine art forms, and then you were forcibly moved to a dry, flat land with few rivers and scarcely any trees. It makes me angry every time I think about it. 

Autumn 2013 Events:

Sept. 22 - Autumnal Equinox

Oct. 15 - release of When Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket

Oct. 18 - release of Kill Your Darlings movie with Daniel Radcliffe as Allen Ginsberg

Oct. 22 - release of Allegiant by Veronica Roth

Nov. 11 - official release of Lady Gaga's ARTPOP album

Nov. 15 - release of The Book Thief movie

Nov. 22 - release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire movie

Nov. 26 - third book in Barbara Longley's Perfect, Indiana series, A Change of Heart, releases

Nov. 27 - Hanukkah begins at sundown

"Kore" by Lisa Sotilis, Creative Commons license.

I've already written detailed posts on Mabon scheduled for the 22nd-23rd of September. Still, I was thumbing through an old journal the other day, I came across this, copied from a Unitarian Universalist church bulletin's Pagan column (unfortunately, I haven't written down the name of the columnist):

"The wheel turns to Mabon - the Fall Equinox. Mabon marks the second harvest on the Pagan calendar...

"In Greek mythology, Autumn begins as Persephone returns to the Underworld to live with Hades, her husband. The myth says that Demeter's daughter, Kore, had taken a day to pick flowers in a meadow when the Earth opened up, and Hades pulled the girl into the Underworld to become his bride. Kore's name became Persephone when she married Hades. For nine straight days, Demeter searched for Kore. Helios, the Sun God, informed her that her brother, Zeus, had given the girl to Hades. In fury, Demeter cursed the Earth so that it would yield no crops. Zeus sent her a frantic message inquiring as to why she had prevented growth on the planet. She replied that there would be no regeneration of vegetation on the Earth until her daughter, Kore, was safely returned.

"Zeus immediately dispatched Hermes into the Underworld to retrieve the girl. Hades did not want to relinquish his bride permanently. Ever the negotiator, Zeus declared that Kore-Persephone would live with her mother during one half of the year and return to her husband, Hades, during the other half. In thanks, Demeter lifted the curse on the Earth, creating Spring. Every year hence, during her time of greatest sorrow, Demeter renews the curse, as her daughter returns to Hades and the Underworld."

The curse is starting to take effect. It feels like it should be Autumn now, but all things in their due time. For now I'll enjoy the late summer.

Well, maybe with one Starbucks pumpkin spice latte...

*Gaylussacia baccata and related species, which if you are an English speaker not from North America you may call bilberries.

'This Star Won't Go Out' Teaser

On Thursday, Publishers Weekly sent me an e-mail with the subject line "John Green and Esther Earl: Lives Connected by Words." It's a teaser for the book This Star Won't Go Out: The Life and Work of Esther Grace Earl, with additional writing by Esther's parents Lori and Wayne Earl and an introduction by John Green.

Esther, diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was only 12, passed away from the disease at the age of 16 in 2010. She's the real-life inspiration for Hazel Grace in John Green's The Fault in Our Stars.

The title is a play on Esther's name, which is the Persian word for "star." She was named after the Biblical Queen Esther.

The e-mail took me to a page of Scribd (the website for uploading and reading e-books, many of them free) with a sample of the book to download. I can't share the link because the link won't work for anyone else's computer. The sample is only 11 pages long. It contains:

- Childhood photos of Esther from 2000 and 2003, showing her bright blue eyes

- Lori and Wayne's introduction, writing about who Esther was as an individual and some of her diary-keeping habits. They write, "She loved words, felt their power and believed in the magic of story."

-A photo of Esther reading a Judy Blume book in 2009, and another of her using a laptop inside Boston's Children's Hospital after she became ill

-Esther's drawing of colorful flowers on a black stalk, underneath a blue sun

-A facsimile of a note written in Esther's own handwriting, to her parents on their anniversary. It reads, in part:

"Parents, I love you two. So much. I am so lucky to have such amazing people raising me. Because...really, I wouldn't be who I am today if not for the love and care of you two. Please realize that you  are amazing. I thank God that He blessed us with two such loving people.

"Cancer is hard. I wouldn't have made it this far if it weren't for my family. Thank you, very much, for being here for me. It makes it seem less hard."

I'm very excited for this book. I want to get to know this young aspiring writer who lost her life too soon. I want to read her words and understand her life from her point of view. I never made a blog post with my review of TFIOS, and part of that was because I was so shocked by how good the book was, I couldn't articulate anything other than, "This is really, really, really good and you should just read it right now." That Esther Grace inspired the goodness is the very reason I want to read her very own words. I want my life to be connected to hers by words.

It might break my heart - TFIOS sure did. I cried, and then I dropped the book, and then I called it a stupid book because it made me cry and drop it. But when that happens, you know a piece of literature has seeped into your heart because it deserved to. Heartbreak or no, I must read TSWGO. Esther Grace Earl didn't have a long life on earth, so now she'll live in readers' hearts.

This Star Won't Go Out is available for pre-order on Barnes and Noble and Amazon now, and will officially be published on January 28, 2014.

Another book release I am eagerly awaiting:

...and, of course, Allegiant by Veronica Roth (October 22, 2013). The same actress, Shailene Woodley, will play both Hazel Grace and Tris Prior at the movies. If you follow John Green on Tumblr, you'll see he is currently fangirling over the filming of his book. 

P.S. You can add John Green and his brother/fellow writer Hank Green to the list of cool people from Indiana. 

The Best Books I Read in 2012

Catch Up:

Best Books of 2011

Best Books of 2010 

Best Books of 2009

Ok, I'm cheating a little bit. I'm counting a series as a "book." It's always hard to narrow it down to only ten, and a series was meant to read as a single unit anyway. That's my excuse, and it's my blog, so there.

The Best Books I Read in 2012:

10 - House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

This is a multi-generational book in my family - my grandma read it, and then I did. It's very tragic and very well-written. The narrative voice gets more chaotic as events in the characters' lives slip through their fingers.

9 - Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks

If your nonfiction tastes run to neurology, then you probably know that anything Oliver Sacks is worth reading. He's never dry and clinical, but always engaging. Most important take-away lesson from this book? Hallucinations are common, often have an organic cause and are rarely a sign of "losing one's mind."

8 - Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket

I am so glad that Lemony Snicket has started the All the Wrong Questions series. I'm not expecting any answers to the questions remaining from the Series of Unfortunate Events books, but I am expecting insouciant wordplay and copious literary references. The Maltese Falcon, Johnny Tremain, Little House on the Prairie, and "The Interlopers" by Saki are but a few of the literary works mentioned in this first of four novels in which we're introduced to Snicket as a 13-year-old apprentice to V.F.D.

In April 2013, we're going to get The Dark by Snicket, but it's an unrelated, stand-alone picture book, like The Lump of Coal or The Composer Is Dead.

7 - Shadow of Night/A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

I can't believe I only read this books earlier this year - it feels like I've known this story for years and years. I didn't think I was going to like Diana Bishop at first, but what I didn't like about her was that her natural witchiness was so repressed. Once she started to come into her power, I really started to love her.

Also, if I had to marry a fictional character, it would be Matthew Clairmont. Seriously, give him to me. I anxiously await the third book, but a release date has not yet been set. 

6 - The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss

This story is dramatic, heartbreaking and unforgettable - and nonfiction. With a dissolute aristocratic French father and a Haitian slave mother, Alex Dumas (father of the great French novelist) spent his life torn between French Revolutionary ideals of universal equality and harsh racism. Although his famous son was only four years old when Alex died, Alex's nightmarish captivity in Italy and his heroism inspired his son's great novels.

Despite what I said in In Which the Term "13-Inch" Is Thrown About Shamelessly, I'm putting The Count of Monte Cristo on my reading list for 2013.

5 - The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

The blogosphere, all pumped up for the movie release earlier this year, got me interested in this series. I was surprised by how much I actually like it; it wasn't nearly as grim as I imagined, owing to Collins' skill in getting the reader inside the head of Katniss Everdeen.

4 - A Study in Scarlet/The Hound of the Baskervilles/The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Except for a handful of short stories in grade school, I'd never read the original canon Holmes stories before. This is what I was reading when 2011 turned over to 2012. I quite enjoyed the Holmes tales, though I still have one more volume on my bookshelf unread.

I read the full-length novel and the graphic novel adaptation, too

Maybe in the spring when there's more sunlight in the evenings, I won't fall asleep halfway through every dang episode of Elementary. Maybe then the lovely Lucy Liu and the lovely Jonny Lee Miller will inspire me to read more Sherlock Holmes. 

3 - The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

The ending to the His Dark Materials trilogy felt like Philip Pullman reached into my chest, pulled out my beating heart, and showed it to me, but it was worth it to learn what Pullman knows about love and about being a good person. (So many tears.) I don't think I can ever look at marzipan the same way again.

2 - Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I kept thinking that since Wuthering Heights is the closest thing I have to a favorite book ever, it was silly that I hadn't read Emily Bronte's sister's greatest novel. I didn't think I would like it as much - I already knew the plot after watching the Orson Welles movie on AMC years ago - but it's really quite a compelling story. Best part? Jane and Edward's verbal sparring. The dialogue is brilliant, on par with Lizzie Bennett vs. Fitzwilliam Darcy. The best, best part? Jane's stubborn independence. Go, girl.

I started a GoodReads discussion of Rochester vs. Heathcliff here. Now I need a t-shirt that says "Team Edward" on the front and "...Fairfax Rochester" on the back.

Fassbender Rochester - hawt.

My annotated copy of Jane Eyre suggested that since I liked it, I might also like Middlemarch by George Eliot, so I'm putting that on my reading list for 2013. I imagine that someday I'll also want to read Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea. I do feel quite a bit of sympathy for Bertha Mason Rochester already.

(I also feel a kinship with "that strange woman" Grace Poole, because Grace's job is strikingly similar to the job of a modern-day mental health technician, which I have been. I didn't keep a bottle of gin nearby, though. Just 7-Eleven coffee. That's the only difference.)

Everand (Scribd): https://www.everand.com/audiobook/1039689816/The-Sisters-Bronte

Kobo, Walmart: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/sisters-bronte-the?sId=6a01a41a-6954-46e2-92b7-715ecb984101&ssId=rkt46HsVt7MIaCMsbQc2V&cPos=1

1 - The War Trilogy by James Jones

Am I obsessed with From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, and Whistle much? My blog posts from summer and fall of this year would indicate that yes. I really had no idea that James Ramon Jones was such an amazing writer - I think he's quite underrated and under-read today. (I remind you that From Here to Eternity beat out Catcher in the Rye for the 1950 National Book Award.) I've spent so much digital ink on these three brilliant books this year, so I will simply tell you, good readers, what I told my cousins when they said they couldn't understand the 1998 film version of the Thin Red Line film, written by Terrence Malick: "Read the book. First read From Here to Eternity - not the heavily-censored 1950s film, but the book - and then read The Thin Red Line. Then it all makes sense."

My perfectly PG-13 comment to the effect got removed from this post about songs inspired by books, but I still say the Flo Rida song "Whistle" is inadvertent homage to the James Jones novel of the same name.

I have not read the newest, "restored" edition of From Here to Eternity, though, so I am going to have to get the new edition and read it all over again. Don't think I won't enjoy it, especially if one of the restored sex scenes involves Isaac Nathan Bloom.

A few snaps from my trip to Los Angeles

On of the first things hubby and I did in Los Angeles? See the Pacific Ocean - my first time, his real first time even though he may have seen glimpses when he was a truck driver. We walked from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica pier on Sunday. We saw a pod of wild dolphins - I never saw wild dolphins before, either, not even in Key West.

Here I am having a beer at the Sidewalk Cafe on the boardwalk in Venice Beach. I also had a cheeseburger and fries. The menu has a "Bookshelf" section, which includes sandwiches named for the Iliad and the Odyssey, the thesaurus, Daniel Pinkwater, Mario Puzo, Henry Miller, and Ernest Hemingway. Why no female authors, I wonder?

The street art outside the cafe was also bookish: this is Edgar Allan Poe with Alice Cooper-esque eye makeup. Why Poe? I wonder. I would think John Steinbeck would be more California's style.

Next to the Sidewalk Cafe was Small World Books. I bought a blank journal there, and was sorely tempted to buy the latest Lemony Snicket volume, Who Could That Be at This Hour? I also wanted to buy - but didn't - The Dial Press trade paperback of From Here to Eternity:

...and The Thin Red Line:

...although I cannot for the life of me figure out why The Dial Press has not released a new edition of Whistle. My book obsessiveness demands they complete the trilogy. My favorite part of Small World Books? Petting Conan the Librarian, the bookstore cat.

You can't see it because he's sleeping, but he has a black spot on the nose. He's almost, but not quite, a Cat That Looks Like Hitler.

Venice, California, is named Venice because of its human-created canals. They're quite beautiful.

It's nice to just wander around in the canal neighborhood and sight-see, and then come out and have a beer at the Baja Cantina or another place. Next time I come to Venice Beach, I am definitely renting a wet suit and a surfboard. (This time, we rented a tandem bike. That was fun, too.) I still contend that if I can stand up on a paddleboard, I could totally learn to stand up on a traditional longboard. 

OHP! My Favorite Quotes

...is on Labor Day vacation this week, but will return to its regularly scheduled programming next Monday. In the meantime, let's link up with The Vintage Apple for Oh, How Pinteresting!

Have I ever mentioned that if I had to stranded on a desert island with just one book, I would want that book to be Wuthering Heights?

This is such great advice.

My fellow Hoosier learned this sentiment from his father and uncle. A wise family, those Vonneguts.

Another wise one is that Lemony Snicket.

Sorry, hubby, but this is so true. I would marry the shizz outta Bob Witt, Matthew Clairmont, vampire Bill Compton, Finnick Odair...

Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.

Thank Goddess.

I leave you with the words of John Waters. This is just one of the many reasons why I adore him.