Monday, January 3, 2011

A Year's Journey

My greatest pleasure in life is reading. I have been a prolific reader for 24 years since my older sister taught me to read when I was 5. I owe my love of books and reading to her. She introduced me to Black Beauty, Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (no Disney versions for us!), Lucy Maud Montgomery and others at such an early age. She showed me how a book could transport me anywhere... experience people, lives, point of views, worlds that I may never otherwise be apart of. Over the years reading has been a comfort, a joy, an escape and a major part of growing up.

In Grade 1 we kept track of all the books we read that year and prizes were given out for the top readers. If memory serves me right my mother and I managed to get me to just under a thousand books! Unfortunately I wasn't the winner, but was out read by Pat & Ryan the twins in my class. However 3rd place was nothing to sneeze at and my teacher gave me a copy of "Green Apple Street Blues" by Ted Staunton.

When I was around 10 I would wake up early before the rest of the house and steal to a corner with a blanket and a book to sit over a heat register and read. In those days it was C.S. Lewis and my favourite of the Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader that I read.

While going through the tumultuous teenage years, reading often was the only comfort that truly eased my angst filled soul!
I have read countless of books, some very memorable that lingers in my conscious (The Road by Cormac McCarthy), some are dear friends that I return to read again and again (Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling ... I love you!), others have been lost in memory. This past year I started a book club with 2 of my sisters and have explored some fabulous stories (East of Eden by John Steinbeck) and after reading my sister's 2010 Reading Roundup I realized I wished I had kept track of all the fabulous books I read this year which were so enjoyable and include some of my now top favourite reads of all time:

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Series by Stieg Larsson
The Hunger Game Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
East of Eden by John Steinbeck

So going forward in 2011, I am going to keep track of all that I read and my thoughts about the books. I often read multiple books at the same time as well as listen to favourites on audio as I go about my days. I also am curious to know how many books I will read in a year.

5 comments:

  1. Coolio! I am looking forward a window into your reading world.

    PS That big sister of yours sounds like the awesome! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Elizabeth, I just found my way here via Evangeline's blog, and I'm always happy to find a new blogger! Those are great books on your list too. I too had a cool big sister who set me on a path to reading good books, and my big brother too...East of Eden has to be one of my all time favorites and it felt like a dear old friend the minute I started reading...I'm currently reading Steinbeck's "Journal of a Novel, The East of Eden Letters", which he wrote on the left hand page of a notebook to his friend and editor Pascal Covici at Viking Press, on the right hand pages he wrote East of Eden...it's pretty cool so far.

    I'll stop by again!

    Best wishes,

    Laura

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi, I am a huge fan of your sister. I love your taste in books, and rank your favorites among mine, so we must have similar taste in our books. I hope you keep blogging about your reads so I can know what to read next! Happy reading and blogging,
    Mel

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lemme give yoo somma
    our X-acto-knife experiences...

    Would U please help a plethora of King Size, wildchild, rawkuss poetry/wordz which are lookin 4 a home in thy novelty?? Thx. Whew. They're pretty insane. They're bereft of reason. Oi! Blimey! They're bloody PINK spiders!!

    Gotta lotta gobba shrewd, surreal, supersonic, sardonic satires, sassy N savvy elixers N electronic elegance ( ...and palpable nuance) on our YOUTHwitheTRUTH blogs. Wannum? Have'm. N'joym. Gettm outta my hair!!!

    How mucha wanna betcha our sugar-high-mojo, antioxident, hot-shot, full-throttle, pleasure-beyond-measure, fuse-blowin-exploits R a copious madhouse of one lavish bookay D.O.A.? Our proFUSE NRGod who leads U.S. to explosive fairy-tales in the 'one-stop-shop' symphony Upstairs? God's the BigDude, the Owner of ElysianFields, the Grand Prize, the Austere Overdrive, NoPurchaseNecessary: our bombastic tenaCITY on a Hill which'll plant the Seeds 4u2 grow-up to new N greater heights!! Mama mia! Thatsa good pasta!!

    CAUTION: our 22ish, avant-guard, accurately-atrocious, offa-the-reservation-like-Jimmy-Hoffa, metal breadcrumms R sooo out-of-order, toots, they're an intimate wealth of bottomless sophistication. And dats da lethal fak, Jak. Go ahead. Sue me. Yawn. But, yet, here's the perennial KOO D'TAH: who else has actually SEEN the Great Beyond in spirit & lived to tella youse bout the bionic, bloated, brevity-like-earth we're living on?? Yes, earthling, I had an NDE, almost salivating4salvation. So gain altitude, never attitude: death has no intrinsick favorites.

    If Mr. abSUREditty's an ultra-great-reward, and not everyone enters, Q: why is it an excruciating deluge of epic-.357-caliber where the quality's a limitless bulldozer plowin, pushin-your-power-cord with eternal goodies? A: the Prize-A+-TheEnd just gives U.S. moe-curley-graphix 2 VitSee: an explosion-of-extravagance which few R asking 4 anymore! Grrr. They're too concerned withe grotesque sanity of ambivilant piss-ants which swiftly crawl like lemmings to their scorecard, effusive destruction. C'est la guerre.

    THANK GAWWWD!!! the Don has the ebullient BAWLS!!! to do the Manifest Destiny!!! To lead U.S. forward to the White House Upstairs with his SQUARES!!!

    So, break-free, earthling; be like a contraversial outgrowth of incredibly-intoxicating-effusiveness in your zeitgeist to give the ultimate stunning, avant-guard, bareknuckle potency: Wiseabove. Wanna join this useFULL idiot Upstairs 4 the most zany, kooky, X-acto-knife antidotes? Extremely exquisite, explicit endorphins in abundance? Puh-lenty of pulverizingly-tantalizing psychopathic psychosomatics with eXtras? i2i-kick-velocity's-ass-ultra-maximum-rocket-fuel-party-hardy at my pad ya ever encountered without d'New Joisey accent 4 an eternal slew of precarious, magnanimous & primeval absurdities indelibly etched in the granite corridors of eternity with a total-barrage-of-melt-in-thy-mouth 'depth-of-undenial'???

    Make Your Choice  -SAW
    ...cuzz nobody gitts outta here alive, earthling.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lemme give yoo somma
    our X-acto-knife experiences...

    Would U please help a plethora of King Size, wildchild, rawkuss poetry/wordz which are lookin 4 a home in thy novelty?? Thx. Whew. They're pretty insane. They're bereft of reason. Oi! Blimey! They're bloody PINK spiders!!

    Gotta lotta gobba shrewd, surreal, supersonic, sardonic satires, sassy N savvy elixers N electronic elegance ( ...and palpable nuance) on our YOUTHwitheTRUTH blogs. Wannum? Have'm. N'joym. Gettm outta my hair!!!

    How mucha wanna betcha our sugar-high-mojo, antioxident, hot-shot, full-throttle, pleasure-beyond-measure, fuse-blowin-exploits R a copious madhouse of one lavish bookay D.O.A.? Our proFUSE NRGod who leads U.S. to explosive fairy-tales in the 'one-stop-shop' symphony Upstairs? God's the BigDude, the Owner of ElysianFields, the Grand Prize, the Austere Overdrive, NoPurchaseNecessary: our bombastic tenaCITY on a Hill which'll plant the Seeds 4u2 grow-up to new N greater heights!! Mama mia! Thatsa good pasta!!

    CAUTION: our 22ish, avant-guard, accurately-atrocious, offa-the-reservation-like-Jimmy-Hoffa, metal breadcrumms R sooo out-of-order, toots, they're an intimate wealth of bottomless sophistication. And dats da lethal fak, Jak. Go ahead. Sue me. Yawn. But, yet, here's the perennial KOO D'TAH: who else has actually SEEN the Great Beyond in spirit & lived to tella youse bout the bionic, bloated, brevity-like-earth we're living on?? Yes, earthling, I had an NDE, almost salivating4salvation. So gain altitude, never attitude: death has no intrinsick favorites.

    If Mr. abSUREditty's an ultra-great-reward, and not everyone enters, Q: why is it an excruciating deluge of epic-.357-caliber where the quality's a limitless bulldozer plowin, pushin-your-power-cord with eternal goodies? A: the Prize-A+-TheEnd just gives U.S. moe-curley-graphix 2 VitSee: an explosion-of-extravagance which few R asking 4 anymore! Grrr. They're too concerned withe grotesque sanity of ambivilant piss-ants which swiftly crawl like lemmings to their scorecard, effusive destruction. C'est la guerre.

    THANK GAWWWD!!! the Don has the ebullient BAWLS!!! to do the Manifest Destiny!!! To lead U.S. forward to the White House Upstairs with his SQUARES!!!

    So, break-free, earthling; be like a contraversial outgrowth of incredibly-intoxicating-effusiveness in your zeitgeist to give the ultimate stunning, avant-guard, bareknuckle potency: Wiseabove. Wanna join this useFULL idiot Upstairs 4 the most zany, kooky, X-acto-knife antidotes? Extremely exquisite, explicit endorphins in abundance? Puh-lenty of pulverizingly-tantalizing psychopathic psychosomatics with eXtras? i2i-kick-velocity's-ass-ultra-maximum-rocket-fuel-party-hardy at my pad ya ever encountered without d'New Joisey accent 4 an eternal slew of precarious, magnanimous & primeval absurdities indelibly etched in the granite corridors of eternity with a total-barrage-of-melt-in-thy-mouth 'depth-of-undenial'???

    Make Your Choice  -SAW
    ...cuzz nobody gitts outta here alive, earthling.

    ReplyDelete