My epic clumsiness has struck again. Why? Why? Oh why could it not have been some other bottle I hardly care for? Why did this bottle of Juicy perfume my husband gave me last Christmas slip right out of my hands to get smashed on the floor?
Top 100 Books
August 30, 2011 By 15 Comments
By now most of us have heard about BBC Top 100 Books I was perusing the list to see if there was anything that might interest me for my “want to read” list and I discovered I’d pretty much read most of the books on the list save for a few. The bolded books I’ve read, italicized books I’ve not yet completed, and the ones with an asterisk have been added to my “want to read list”.
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger*
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy*
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh*
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini*
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold*
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
‘Hunger Games’ First Teaser Trailer
August 29, 2011 By 2 Comments
Urban Outfitters ‘The Early Fall Catalog’
August 8, 2011 By 6 Comments
A Night Out- This Is Teen - Meg Cabot, Libba Bray & Maggie Stiefvater
August 7, 2011 By 1 Comment
A few weekends ago, I went to a book signing at my local indie bookstore, Books & Books to attend Scholastic’s “This Is Teen” event with authors, Meg Cabot, Libba Bray, and Maggie Stiefvater. It was a lot of fun and these ladies made us all laugh quite a bit. I had my books signed by both Meg and Maggie, but the line for Libba was very long and after a long day of baseball, a beach party, and the heat I had to call it a night-not to mention the shoes I was wearing were really pinching on my poor feet!
Here are a few photographs from that night.
Geeks for Sartalics!
August 6, 2011 By Leave a Comment
What is sartalics ? It’s basically a font that has been italicized facing left. As a self professed geek and fan of sarcasm in general I just love this. Just think about all the online drama that could be avoided. I’m so not a fan of drama. I do like the idea of a twitterblitz is kinda cool. For more info check out http://sartalics.com/.
Changing My Point of View Mid-Story
August 5, 2011 By 2 Comments
I’ve banged my head against my desk on a number of occasions today because I’m fighting a decision. A decision that isn’t really a decision anymore because I already know what I should do. My current manuscript-the one I’ve been working on for what feels like an eternity-and is nearly complete has taken me, the story teller to a cross roads. It’s not a pretty sight, I’m a disgruntled traveler who is being stubborn-refusing to move in the direction I know I should. Instead I’m standing here kicking up dust on this dirt road lost in thought. One question tumbling around in my psyche, the answer I know, is already weeding it’s way further into brain…making it’s self comfortable even while I fight it.
How should I proceed?
I’m almost to the part where things really start to take off, where the adventure comes in. I’m nearly to the point I’ve envisioned and however excited I want to be at this point in my story I’m just not. I’m not, because I can’t be.
I can’t, because I fear I have told the story wrong. I wrote it in first person and now, in retrospect I think a third person omniscient POV would be best suited for this story. By keeping the story in my protagonist’s head I’m missing out on some really great scenes that would enhance the story for good. Scenes that would be a cherry on my proverbial sundae I suppose.
I know it’s the right path to take I’m just annoyed it took me so long to realize it. Though I’m not new to books, I’m new to writing them and just like anything there is a learning curve, one I’ve just fell off of. I keep thinking about all the work I’ve already done not wanting to start over, but here’s the thing…Anything worth doing takes work. I know this, I know I need to stop fighting and simply get to work. I’m going to focus on these words by Ira Glass because they give me, this novice writer hope.
Back to School with Gap (giftcard giveaway)
August 5, 2011 By
The school bell will be ringing again very soon at schools everywhere! Which can only mean that fall is near. Sure, Summer won’t be officially over until September, but the unofficial start of fall (for me anyway) is always back to school. I love this time of year, I always have. When I was young it was mostly because it meant I’d be back in class. I was (still am) a geek and loved school. Now that I’m a mom-geek it’s just as exciting. I love all the preparation for school, especially checking off our school supply list, and buying the important staples of my son’s school wardrobe.
One of the first places I always head to when shopping for back to school is the Gap. I absolutely love this store for myself, and when I became a mom, shopping at babyGap and GapKids was a natural progression. Sure, sometimes I may have to pay a little bit more, but I’ve found that the quality of their clothes makes my initial purchase well worth it. For instance, when my son Michael was a toddler I purchased a pair of Gap jeans, my nephew has worn them, and now my son Evan is wearing them. Even though these three boys are your average rough and tumble sorts, the jeans are still in excellent condition and could-and probably will be worn by a few other boys.
Which is why I can’t wait to shop their $15 jean sale when making my back to school purchases. (Mark your calendars! Gap’s $15 jean sale for baby/kids will run August 5-17 2011)
My son has to wear a uniform to school, and I love their khakis and polos but will be sure to kick up his plain school uniform with pieces from their The Portobello Road collection like these skull slip on sneakers.
Gap clothing goes the distance as far as the quality and durability when compared to other children’s clothes while offering exceptional style. From sophisticated little details like those you can see in their “London Calling” collection, which is so timely with the world’s eyes being on Will & Kate; to the soft cotton of their signature t-shirts, I know that when I stop into a Gap store, I’m going to find clothes that I love and will continue to love seasons later and that is important to me.
Required Entry:
I’m happy to share a $25 Gap gift card with one lucky reader. To enter please tweet:
Win a $25 @Gap gift card http://t.co/tDFBhW3 #GapSchool from @WriteSpell If you don’t have a twitter account please do any two from the list below.
(All tweets must have @WriteSpell @Gap and the hashtag #GapSchool along w/ the URL to this post.)
For additional entries (do all or as few as you like):
- Visit gap.com and have a look at their back to school and fall collections. Tell me which item would you want to wear back to school if you were a kid?
- Follow me on twitter @WriteSpell
- Like WriteSpell on Facebook.
- Follow Gap on twitter @Gap
- Like Gap on Facebook. (On Gap’s facebook page under Kids+Baby you can upload pictures of your little one sporting their Fall Gap style! Fun!)
- Share and like this post on Facebook.
- Stumble this post.
- +1 this post.
- comment on any post from www.writespell.com or www.primthings.com
Winner will be chosen at random via comment, so be sure to leave me a comment for each action you take. You can tweet once a day during the duration of this giveaway (8/5-8/19 2011). This giveaway will close at Midnight (Easter standard time) on August 19, 2011).
Love & Back to School,
nicóle
**I was compensated for this post as part of a Brandfluential campaign.**
‘The Help’ Movie Prizepack Giveaway!
August 3, 2011 By
Next Wednesday, August 10 The Help will be released. I’m really looking forward to seeing this film adaptation of a really exceptional novel
.
Here’s a bit about the movie… “The Help” stars Emma Stone (“Easy A”) as Skeeter, Academy Award®–nominated Viola Davis (“Doubt”) as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minny—three very different, extraordinary women in Mississippi during the 1960s, who build an unlikely friendship around a secret writing project that breaks societal rules and puts them all at risk. From their improbable alliance a remarkable sisterhood emerges, instilling all of them with the courage to transcend the lines that define them, and the realization that sometimes those lines are made to be crossed—even if it means bringing everyone in town face-to-face with the changing times.
I’m also looking forward to seeing all the clothes and sets from the 1960′s!
