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Up For Renewal by Cathy Alter - The subtitle is "What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over". This fun quick non-fiction is just the kind of chick lit in the Eat Pray Love genre that can be a lot of fun to read. Cathy decided to try living a year of her life based totally on magazine article columns. Let's face it...magazines love to help us out in all kinds of ways. She took the advice to heart and put it into place, and, although she was tired of magazines at the end of the year, I think it worked. Thanks, Susan!
Looks like I might have to subscribe to Real Simple for a year and take every bit of advice to heart myself. There is too much stuff around here, and not enough open serene space. Too many books, too many beads and bead supplies, too much fabric, and too many sewing supplies, too many pieces of paper representing things I want to do or remember, too much china and too many pretties, too much scrapbooking stuff, too many photos, and way to many library books. And that is just in the upstairs. In the basement we have too many frames, too many toys, too much saved stuff, too many Christmas lights, too many extra lamps, too many extra lamps that don't work, too much packing material, and too many of the wrong size packing boxes. In the computer are too many pictures and too many saved emails. Also too many iTunes. What to do? There are also too many organization books! OK, today's goal is to go through the library books on How to Make A Website. I have easy ones, quick guides, and html code complicated ones. I'd like to have a great little website. After all, it will be my Her Heart On Her Sleeve store. The only way to do this is to read the books and learn how. To me.
Speaking of Yummy Foods, I bought and tried the Cheddar variety (as opposed to the Mild Cheddar variety) of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Snack Crackers. They're pretty good. If you can get here in the next couple of days, I'll share some with you. After that they'll be gone, and I can't be sure I'll buy them again.
The First Billion is the Hardest by T. Boone Pickens - I just finished this well written autobiography which includes an analysis of America's oil consumption. He suggests that natural gas is a local resource that could be used in place of the oil that we import from other countries. He has ideas for keeping the money in our own country, and for becoming self-reliant as a nation when it comes to natural resources, which, after all, are finite. There is so much good stuff in this book. It's very difficult to effect change in America, though. My favorite quote: "A fool with a plan can outsmart a genius with no plan any day". I'm not sure who the fools are, though!
Finally, here I am....Since arriving home from vacation, it's been a whirlwind of activity and things to do around here. Of course I'm still not caught up! Today I finally finished making this skirt to match a jacket that I made a couple of years ago. It feels so good to complete a project that has been on my lists for weeks. I've seen a few movies and read a book......
Burn After Reading - This was a great little Cohen brothers movie with Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, George Clooney and others. It's changing and engaging, and you can't believe what these people get themselves into all for a little nipping and tucking. Too funny and too scary. Just what we like.
What Happens in Vegas - How can you go wrong if you want a few laughs from Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz? It ran a little long, but otherwise, you know the drill. Couple meet in Vegas, except what happened there didn't stay there. Fun to see On Demand. For free.
Paradise Lost by Giles Milton - Smyrna 1922 The Destruction of a Christian City in the Islamic World - This is a non-fiction book about the Smyrna Catastrophe. The Smyrna Catastrophe took place in a land called Asia Minor in 1922. The Greeks were encouraged by the allies to invade western Turkey after the first world war, in 1919. They never really came close to establishing power because the world leaders never gave clear direction, and didn't want to offend the turks after all. So the turks pulled themselves together under the leadership of Mustapha Kemal (Attaturk), and pushed out the Greek soldiers, and then the Greek and Armenian population, straight into the sea. The turks set fire to one of the most beautiful of the ancient cities of the world, and it was all lost. This was first documented by George Horton, the American Consulate in 1922 who lived in Smyrna, a few years later in a book called Blight of Asia.
This author, Giles Milton, has used Blight of Asia as well as numerous accounts of the British and French Levantine population of Smyrna to compile a complete history of those times and those events. It's remarkable reading and so thorough, and adds a new dimension to the history through these new accounts.
My grandmother was one of the Smyrna refugees. She was on that pier, and she and her sisters and brother survived. I know her story, but now after reading this book, including a day by day account of the last days of Smyrna, I have more questions than ever about how she and her siblings (who had been orphaned years before) made it to the city from their village (which is an 1 1/2 hours from Smyrna by car now), then made it onto a boat and to safety in Greece.
This is a story that is known the world over by those people called "Refugees" and their children and their children's children. Some children and grandchildren know it and live their lives. Others keep the story inside them always, and it's a part of who they are, and they are always aware of it. It's just a word. Refugee. Except if you think about it, it's about a life lost. It's about never being able to go home to home as it was.
It's about painful and life changing events.
Tonight is Easter Eve, and we are going to church where my candle will be lit in honor of my Grandmother and her siblings. Xristos Anesti.
The Four Seasons - A Novel of Vivaldi's Venice by Laurel Corona was my last vacation read. I finished it the night we returned home. It was absolutely wonderful historical fiction about life in Venice, Italy in the early 1700s. It focuses on the orphan female musicians of the Pieta Coro, or the figlie de coro, daughters of the chorus. Vivaldi was a priest and composer at that time, and he would write music for the figlie to play and sing. Maddelena and Chiaretta are sisters who were left at the Pieta when they were 3 years old and a few months old respectively. I loved reading about their lives, their music, and venetian society.
