I love Twitterature days. Once a month, Anne at Modern Mrs. Darcy hosts a link up of short, Twitter style book reviews. Below are my books for the month.

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett

I thought I was going to hate this book and I ended up loving it. To read my full review, please click through to Great New Books where you can read my thoughts.

Dust by Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell is comfort food reading for me. Weird given the topics of her books but true. I read this one over the holidays when I wanted a bit of a ‘vacation read.’

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

We read The Lake of Dead Languages for my library book club and we were lucky enough to have the author attend our meeting. Hearing about her process and where her career has taken her since writing this book fifteen years ago was fascinating.

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

While Caroline was reading Tuck Everlasting, she had so many questions that I decided that I should read too. I haven’t read Tuck since my fifth grade teacher read it aloud. It was even better this time around.

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This was the year that I started watching television again. Therefore, it was confusing that my two favorite shows, Homeland and Scandal, seemed to play no part at the Golden Globes.

Therefore, I decided to focus on the dresses.

Here are my top 5 favorites and why I liked them.

Clearly Amy Adams really liked the way she looked in American Hustle and she decided to wear more of the same. As a girl who wishes she could still wear a uniform, I admire Adam’s desire to stick with something that worked.

Clearly, Sofia Vergara has a body to support whatever the heck she puts on so I love the fact that she went with basic black.

A simple and perfect dress. Just like Jennifer Lawrence.

Lupita Nyong’o’s  red dress is stunning but the cut is even more incredible. I am not quite sure how she pulled off a cape without looking like a super hero but she did it.

I’m not sure why but Margot Robbies’s was my favorite. Maybe it’s the simplicity with the little bit of bling? Maybe it’s the slit. Maybe it’s the neck line (what there is of it)? Not sure why, but I love it.

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This weekend we traveled to the city to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the girl’s art teacher and three other families from our elementary school. Last spring, we had bid on an item at our school’s silent auction that made this event possible. Caroline and I took this same trip two years ago following that auction and we had such an incredible time that I knew I wanted to do it again. This time we all went; the four of us and my mother  (who had heard such fabulous things the last time that she was dying to go).

Imagine the chance to be escorted through the Met (which an enormous and overwhelming museum on it’s own) by an art teacher who knows all the best stories, all the short cuts and the best time to hit the cafeteria. And imagine if she brings her husband, also an art teacher who has an equal amount of knowledge. Well, that was what we were lucky enough to do this weekend.

I’m going to try and share a few tidbits here as I truly feel a bit guilty that everyone can’t experience the Met this way.

While most of the color from ancient art has been lost, the walls of this room were preserved under the volcanic ashes of Pompei and the metal bars on the window were melted by the heat of the same volcano. The picture obviously does not do the color justice. It was truly incredible.

In the main entrance there are dozens of these enormous vases filled with amazing floral arrangements that are changed every Monday. Until someone tells you to notice them, it is easy to forget that they are, in themselves, pieces of art.

A few years ago, when the Met was trying to find space for it’s ever growing collection, they realized there was indeed, unused space. Under the stair case. And I loved that they left the stairs uncovered.

Caroline went to the Met with her class last month and she told me that this her favorite piece from that trip. I did ask her to pose in front of it but no luck. She always wonders why there are more pictures of Katherine…

This is ancient graffiti. Years ago, Egypt sold an entire temple to the United States because it was continually flooded in it’s original location. Each time it got wet, the surface was soft enough for people to write on it. After the sale, the Met took ten years to construct a room that would house the temple. Gorgeous windows surround the temple as one of the stipulations of the sale was that the public would be able to see it at all times.

It turns out when you go to a museum with a bunch of children that it’s pretty important to see any dead bodies that might be there. When the teacher asked for requests, multiple people asked to see the mummies. Truth be told, they were pretty cool.

In the world of painting, we saw some pretty amazing work by familiar artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Mark Rothko, Roy Lichenstein and Jackson Pollock.

And we learned about a ‘new-to-me’ artist named Chuck Close. If you don’t know this man’s story and if you haven’t seen any of his work, it is truly incredible. You should really Google him.

So… there was that and so much more. It was really an incredible experience.

And of course, I also loved the inspiration provided by a quick (and inevitable) trip to the gift shop.

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“The fire of literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, a book, and the person reading. It isn’t achieved by the book alone, nor by the child alone, nor by the adult who’s reading aloud—it’s the relationship winding between all three, bringing them together in easy harmony.”

-Mem Fox (Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever

For more moments, visit Amanda’s Soule Mama where she describes her Friday posts this way, “A Friday ritual. A single photo- no words-capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause and remember.”

 

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Last week I wrote briefly about choosing my ‘one little word’ for 2014. Shine. I wrote that I wasn’t sure where the word would take me. I signed up for Ali Edwards on-line class to give me a bit of motivation. I’ve enjoyed the beginning of the class but as is often the case with me, it took a ‘real life’ friend to really get me going.

I have been having monthly lunch dates with my friend Donna for years now. Sometimes we have set goals for our get togethers or read books together or just talked. This year we decided that we would do something creative each time we met. Today, Donna came prepared to lead us through creating not a vision board, but a vision card. Something to motivate but something small enough to display and carry and move.

I have been wanting to do this my word but it definitely took Donna to get me going. As we talked and worked, I realized that there are, as I suspected, many layers to my word. I found that Shine means giving myself the chance to shine and in order to do that I want to set goals and actually ‘make it happen.’ The thought of setting public goals gives me a bit of a tummy ache but it seems that maybe this is the year to do that. We’ll have to see…

Donna’s word for the year is Move and she found all sort of amazing things today too.

Below are a few pictures of our process.

Thank you Donna for the motivation and inspiration. I can’t wait to see where the year takes us.

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With long school breaks and snowy days and travels, this week finally feels like the beginning of the year for me. I didn’t have a post written for today and then Katherine stood at the door this morning and called me over.

“Look! I made a heart!”, she said.

This reflecting heart seemed like the perfect start for a new year…

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Rob and I spent this weekend in DC attending a memorial service for our friend CAM. It is hard to explain the weekend and I know that my thoughts will not do it justice. The first words that come to mind are sadness yet joy, tears yet laughter, confusion yet comfort.

Both CAM and his wife Becky graduated from college with Rob and me so I knew that we were going to reconnect with many people. What I hadn’t realized was quite how far CAM’s reach had been. We joined 1,000 people in the church and hundreds more who watched the service streaming live on the internet to celebrate the life of this amazing man. We joined CAM’s family, his work colleagues and friends from so many corners of his life. We joined with friends we see often, some we have not seen in months, others in years and still others since graduation. Tonight, we realized that every single one of Rob’s groomsmen were there.

Speakers talked of CAM’s love, his generosity, his humor, his golf game, his drum playing and his incredible faith. But the theme that we heard over and over again and was so evident in the room was CAM’s ability to connect people and to build relationships. One speaker joked that he always thought that he was CAM’s best friend but as he looked around the room, he imagined that many people in the room thought the same thing. That was CAM. That amazing ability to make everyone he touched feel that special and that loved.

CAM was our age and his children are the age of our children. It was inevitable that attending this service would make me think. While we all spent much time laughing and crying as we heard stories and watched an amazing video montage of our friend, how could we not think about ourselves? How could we not want to be more like CAM?

After the service, we all gathered for dinner and the remembrances continued. We all promised to do better about staying in touch. We promised that we  would no longer only gather at weddings and most unfortunately, funerals. We all said that CAM would want us to do just that.

My hope is that after this weekend, we all hold up our promises. I hope that my relationships with the friends we saw this weekend will continue to grow. Because CAM would want us to do that. I hope that I do a better, more CAM-like job of developing friendships in my daily life. I hope that I remember that it takes work to develop these relationships and that the work is worth doing.

Rest in peace CAM and thank you for all you taught me this weekend.

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Today I will participating in Modern Mrs. Darcy‘s (of Twitterature fame) Best Books of 2013 link up.

So here goes and please share yours too!

Best Memoir:

Best Historical Fiction:

Best Mystery:

Best Surprise Ending:

Best Audio Book:

Best Young Adult:

Best Book Read for Bookclub:

Best Book by an Author I Didn’t Think I Liked:

Best Picture Book:

Best Non-Fiction:

Best Middle Grade:

Best Overall:

 

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I had all but decided I was not going to chose One Little Word this year. Nothing was speaking to me. There have been years where words were so obvious but this year… nothing.

And then today, as I caught up with blog reading I noticed more and more people choosing words. I decided to give myself the day to see what happened. And of course, a word came to mind. And then I read the quote above that just happened to include the same word. And then I saw an adorable picture on Facebook with an even greater quote that included the word.

And so here it is. Not sure exactly what it means or what I’m going to do with it. But my word for 2014 is Shine.

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“You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. “I cannot,” never accomplished anything; “I will try,” has wrought wonders.”

-J. Hawes

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