A mini book discussion

A good book.  There's nothing like it.
I just read one and I'm recommending it.
It's a book by an author about an author interviewing a famous author. Suffice it to say everyone in this book loves words and books and the telling of a good story. And, by the way, there actually is a pretty interesting story within the pages as an added bonus. There's even a little mystery to figure out. It has almost everything Awesome.

A writer/reader friend of mine borrowed the book to me and it came out around 2006.. I'm not sure how easy it will be to find but it's worth a little hunt if you love getting caught up in the world of storytelling..



My book club is currently reading this book.

This one will be much easier to find because it's his latest book  but beware... it's a long story but it was a fast read for me and I was immediately caught up in the story and this is another great book.

I've read three or four other Stephen King books (includng "On Writing" because I definately admire his talents as a writer) but I'm not a dedicated reader of his novels (the gory stuff and all). This book, however, is an adventure ... one that includes a little time travel which is always fun to contemplate and he has created such interesting characters to travel with.
Stephen King - I'm hooked and this tale was entertaining enough that I'm going to pick up some of the books by you that I've previously passed up before and was too scared to read..

My next book?  Until our bookclub meets next week to pick a new title I'm starting The Hunger Games. I wanted to read it before I saw the movie and my daughter already had all three in the series.

What are you reading? If it's something you'd like to recommend, drop me a line - Summers coming!!

Shhhhhhhhhhh! I'm making an audio memory

I have learned to capture my memories in ways other than still photographs.
They are a little harder to share but most of them are personal memories anyway.

I'm not a genius or an originator of a great idea by any means - I actually think I started doing this because I'm more or less scatterbrained.  When my kids were little and we won the big game or the cutest thing on earth was happening I was the mom that stood in the background and repeatedly asked of all of the other mothers armed with 35 millimeters and Canon One-Shots..., "Hey! Can I get a copy of that?"  Most of which you know never really happens because I'm just scatterbrained enough to forget to follow up on that too.

So at different points in the past dozen years or so when life has been happening all around me I've paused.

Just paused.

Watched.
And listened.

To the boys on the team cheer and laugh and debate on what the best pose for the photograph of a winning team might be anyway - who should stand where - should it be silly or 'straight up'.  I can hear the giggles of a dozen girls coming up from the basement on a Saturday night and the wail of my son's voice coming from the garage when his knee suffered the repercussions of a really bad bike jump attempt gone wrong. I can pick the memory of the first notes of the Wedding March at my daughter's wedding and remember exactly how that moment felt because I was making one of those mental recordings.

Because of this I don't have beautiful scrapbooks and organized photographs. I'm pretty sure other mothers have more pictures of my children then I do. Someday my kids will look through the beautiful books their friends' mothers made for them, laughing about their years growing up together, and realize I dropped the ball a little. But, I think they already have a clue in the ways I was inept at the job.
But I swear to God I can actually HEAR the things I've made mental audio recordings of. Somewhere in my brain there really is a magical zip drive full of these videos. The truth is sometimes I can smell the wet sand of the rain delay and I can feel the hair of the perfect tight braid the girls mastered in my kitchen. I can perfectly recall the sounds my kids singing along out of tune to a song on the radio on a summer day in the car. I know this is all pretty weird. But it's okay because you know what - maybe I am a genius.

And in the spirit of full disclosure ... I know a video camera would have accomplished the same thing and we have actually owned various models since the second our first baby was born. I...err...uh... usually forgot that too.