Wednesday, October 28, 2009

I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love . . .

With the entire line of earrings currently at Banana Republic.
So unique, so pretty, so vintage glam.  And, sadly, so pricey.
(At least for my meager budget)

Here's a quick sampling:





And many, many more.  We wants them, my precious!!!

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Plum Confused

We popped into Barnes & Noble the other day to pick up copy of the old "Where the Wild Things Are" Naturally, we have to get one before everything goes completely Hollywood-ified and there are no unsullied, original copies left.  Not that we didn't love the movie.  We loved  the movie.  We just want to keep a copy of the book as we originally experience it.  For posterity.  And because we love it.  And for the future children we hope to have someday.  But not too soon.  But we don't want to wait too long either, because we are not spring chickens and neither of us is getting any younger.  But my husband needs to finish school.  And get a job.  Which means we'll probably be moving and  . . .  I digress.  This is not a post about "Where the Wild Things Are" or about the timing of our procreative plans.

So, Barnes & Noble.  As we walked past the bargain bins just inside the front door, my eye was caught by the glossy bright cover of the latest Stephanie Plum novel marked down to the basement price of only $6.99.  Truly a steal, especially since I've been waiting all summer to read it, but can't bear to part with the full hard-cover price for something that is admittedly not much more than a guilty pleasure read, being quite entertaining but having no true literary merit.

Feeling smug and superior, I scooped it up along with a pristine and unaltered-by-the-glamour-of-fame copy of "Where the Wild Things Are" and proceeded home to the couch for some blissful reading time under my Snuggie.  (Mine is leopard print.  They are truly the most amazingest things in the world!  Trust.  Though I  I still prefer the term Slanket over Snuggie.)  Somewhere around page fifty I found myself thinking, Well this seems familiar.  Someone is CLEARLY running out of fresh ideas.   At a hundred and fifty pages, after predicting an outlandish plot twist miles before I should have been able to see it coming, comprehension dawned.

The newest Stephanie Plum novel, "Finger-Lickin' Fifteen" is still only to be found at full and exorbitant hard-cover price.  I mistakenly snagged the previous novel, "Fearless Fourteen."  Which, of course, I have already read and devoured.  Right after paying full, hard-cover price for it.  I still finished the re-read anyway.

The moral of the story?  Just pay full price for the damn book when you want it or you will find yourself confused, bereft, and buying it twice.  Or you know, check the cover more carefully?  Or (and this is the most likely) Brooke's mind is so overworked and overloaded it has officially turned into pureed cauliflower and cannot be trusted.  For anything.  Put me in a rubber room.  A rubber room with rats!  Those rats made me crazy . . .

See!?!?  Please help.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Justification for my "Reading Problem"

"Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce every day."

– Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Shadow of the Wind, p. 484


AND


"Literacy is a very hard skill to acquire, and once acquired it brings endless heartache – for the more you read, the more you learn of life's intimidating complexity of confusion.  But anyone who can learn to grunt is bright enough to watch TV... which teaches that life is simple, and happy endings come to those whose hearts are in the right place."


– Spider Robinson