In My Copious Free Time

Good Reads

For the record, see how right I was about not blogging every day?

Ahem. So, today I got turned on to Good Reads, a social networking site where the social objects are books. (Really, you should follow that link to Hugh MacLeod's blog. Brilliant stuff, illustrated.) If there's anything I like more than reading books (or fondling books, or shopping for books, or browsing for books), it's talking about books. I'm the one who is always sneaking peeks at friends' bookshelves when I'm in their homes. So Good Reads is a good match for me.

I'm just getting started, but I'm always open to new friends and to new book lists to devour, so consider signing up at Good Reads and adding me as a friend. I can be found with the email onepinktee   {at} gmail dot com.

Book meme

Fellow blogger and Twitter friend Drew McLellan tagged me a few weeks ago with this book meme. I'm a sucker for memes like this and the fact that it involves books makes it even better.

How many books do I own?

A lot. I'm out of room for them on the shelves and, frankly, out of spaces I can put shelves without some serious house reorganizing. Books are stacked everywhere. I need to get Library Thing. (man, should have asked for that for xmas)

Last book I read

The Day I Turned Uncool, by Dan Zevin. Hilarious, quick read.

Last book I bought

If I count gifts, then In Vogue: An Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine. If I don't count gifts, then the new Patricia Cornwell book (below).

What I'm currently reading

I usually have too many books going. Right now I have the new Patricia Cornwell (Book of the Dead), Microtrends by Mark Penn (haven't gotten far) and Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson.

What I'll read next

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Myths of Innovation by Scott Berkun

The Imagineering Way

Shoot, I just remembered I have my TED book club books to read, so I better add them to the list. One is a coffee table book (Blue Planet Run) and one is The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. I don't remember the third and the box they all came in is still at my office.

What's on my wish list

Lots and lots.

The Kings of New York: A Year Among the Geeks, Oddballs, and Genuises Who Make Up America's Top HighSchool Chess Team

Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman

The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

Know-How: The 8 Skills that Separate Those Who Perform from Those Who Don't by Ram Charan

It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden

5 Meaningful Books (for me)

1. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I came to read this book through unexpected circumstances, and learned a lot about myself in the process.

2. The Nibble Theory by Kaleel Jamison. Taught me power of nibbles and that big me doesn't have to equal small you. And vice versa.

3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Probably my first "grown-up" read of a book, opening my mind up to the complexity of human nature in a way nothing else ever had.

4. One Writer's Beginnings by Eudora Welty. Slim, quiet book that packs a powerful 1-2 punch of razor sharp prose with equally sharp powers of observation.

5. Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (might as well provide the link since I had to go get the spelling of his name). Tackles a fundamental question -- what is a good life? -- in a surprising way.

So...now I have to tag some folks.

Jocelyn
Mack
Joan
Doug
Angie

Best $79 I ever spent

I really have to go on about Amazon Prime for a moment.

When it was first offered, I scoffed. I laughed. "Who would pay for that?" I asked. Then I got a free trial at the end of last year. Who would pay for that? People who need to buy a gift at the last minute. People who like something a little closer to instant gratification. People who buy lots of books. In other words, people like me.

I love it. LOVE it. I love that the other day I pre-ordered the Cars DVD with about two clicks and yesterday it showed up at my office. No going to the store. No facing empty shelves. If I need something in a hurry, I can just choose the $3.99 overnight option -- that's come in very handy for ordering things for work. Doesn't really hurt in the "she makes things happen" category, either.

Anyhow, if you are like me (and bless your heart if you are), you need this. And no, I don't work for Amazon.

(And yes, I still love my local bookstore and I've filled three frequent shoppers cards since they opened about 18 months ago, so that's over $750 I've spent with them, so I do my part to keep my local, independent bookseller open, too.)

The one about crushes

Looking back, I didn't have a lot of celebrity crushes when I was a teenager. Really just Michael Hutchence. Well, John Cusack, too, but he was a distant second. As an adult, I've developed one particular crush that overshadows them all. Say what you will, but Cary Grant was the epitome of style, good form, and good looks. He was just a beautiful, beautiful man, with the good sense to make great movies and wear clothes that set him not just apart, but above the rest.

I say this because I saw this book on Saturday:

<sigh>

Books. All the pretty books.

So, remember what I said about getting some business books? Well, I wasn't kidding. How I spent some of the backlog of Amazon GCs:

• The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play
• Stumbling on Happiness
• Sticky Wisdom: How to Start a Creative Revolution at Work
• You Don't Have to Do It Alone : How to Involve Others to Get Things Done
• The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers (Past & Present)
• Late Orchestration: Live at Abbey Road Studios [Explicit Lyrics] [Live] [Import]
• Who Are You? : 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself
• Orbiting the Giant Hairball : A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace (a replacement since I gave my copy to a coworker)
• Change the Way You See Everything: Through Asset-Based Thinking
• The Autobiography Box
• A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age
• It's Not What You Say...It's What You Do : How Following Through At Every Level Can Make Or Break Your Company
• Kokology : The Game of Self-Discovery
• Glamorous Disasters : A Novel
• Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement With Everyday Life
• Unstuck
• Ready for Anything

Let me just say that I love Amazon Prime. All those books and 2-day shipping for free.

Media acquisitions

Everything Bad is Good for You
Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
Intuition
Between You and I
The Bright Forever
Mindfulness (1)
Emotional Intelligence (2)
The Science of Happiness

(1) Mindfulness is very linked to choice in my way of thinking. This caught my eye when I was looking for The Science of Happiness, so I thought I'd give it a spin. Both made me think of this book that I just added to my wish list yesterday.
(2) Lately it seems that this book has come up a lot during potential client phone calls, so I figured I'd better read it.

After thinking about music recommendations for a friend, I realized that I ought to get the cds for a few artists/bands who I've enjoyed hearing on the radio lately.

How to Save a Life, The Fray
Back to Bedlam, James Blunt
Let Love In, The Goo Goo Dolls
Blue Light, Red Light, Harry Connick, Jr

Rounding it out with a DVD...

The Sound of Music, 40th Anniversary 2-disc DVD

A travel case with several DVDs, including the older version of TSOM was lost recently (likely left at my in-laws' house), so I figured that was a good excuse to get this newer version. The extras are great.

The week in book purchases

At Simply Books, a lovely bookstore at Atlanta Hartsfield:
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Devil in the Details
Housekeeping

At Davis-Kidd Booksellers in Memphis, one of my favorite stores (though I prefer the Nashville/Green Hills location):
Adverbs!
Seven Types of Ambiguity (on my Amazon wish list since 6 April 2005)
Candy Freak (on wish list since 12 June 2005)

Book! Book! Book!

Okay, I've purchased a few books in the last week. Just a few.

At Barnes & Noble last Thursday:

Poem a Day, vol 2
I Love You More Than You Know, Jonathan Ames
A Great Improvisation (Ben Franklin bio)
Staying Alive: Real Poems for Unreal Times
A handful of travel guides

From Amazon this weekend:
How to Read Literature Like a Professor : A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines Thomas C. Foster
Eudora Welty : A Biography Suzanne Marrs
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays Joan Didion
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations James Surowiecki
Poems to Read: A New Favorite Poem Project Anthology
Fiasco : A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops James Robert  Parish
Lincoln's Melancholy : How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness Joshua Wolf Shenk
The One Thing You Need to Know : ... About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success Marcus Buckingham
How Full Is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life Tom Rath, Donald Clifton
Poem a Day, Vol. 1
The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953
One Writer's Imagination: The Fiction of Eudora Welty Suzanne Marrs
Poem a Day, Vol. 3
Also, 2 more travel guides

Despite all that (and, well, the Amazon books won't be here until Wednesday), I think I'll start reading this before bed.

Better than pennies from heaven

Today, in an unassuming white envelope, I received my first $25 gift certificate thanks to my Amazon Visa. Because I am both thrifty AND patient, I am hustling over to my wish list right this instant to buy something fun.

Updated to add the results:

Songbook
Old School
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers

And I got a 2-month free trial to Amazon Prime, so I got 2-day shipping for free instead free super saver shipping. Not too shabby for $7.24 out of pocket.

Guess I ought to get around to updating my sidebar lists...

No clever title here*

Tonight I read some Joan Didion, but not what I was expecting to read. Last week I heard her on discussing her book, A Year of Magical Thinking on "Fresh Air", and I realized that I needed to read this book, and it's been on my mind since then. However, tonight I read "Goodbye to All That". It's an essay from Slouching Towards Bethlehem, something else I've been thinking about as I recently read a description of it as the "best book of essays, ever."

So tonight I read this essay, and I am blown away. First off, it's just perfectly written. I can't imagine a word a single word being altered. I find myself reacting to it on a number of levels. One,the circuitous path that led me to read it, I can't even explain. But it plays into my ever-expanding belief that we come to things (more than they come to us) when we need them. And tonight, I needed this. It was odd to read the piece, written in 1967 and full of melancholy, while holding in my memory the sound of her voice, almost forty years later, talking about not being able to divest herself of her dead husband's shoes. "Because he might come back," she said. The pain of a young girl discovering herself contrasted with the pain of an old woman who must find herself after being a part of a "we" for that same four decades.

Whenever I read something like this, I am inevitably struck by the same feeling -- profound gratitude. I'm grateful for being led to the work, grateful that there are people who are brave enough and skilled enough to put their own lives into words, and grateful that I can open myself up enough to receive those words in a way that affects my own life and builds my own self-awareness.

*This is not to imply there are clever titles elsewhere in this blog. It simply means that this post is about something beyond cleverness.