Top Ten Tuesday: Top 10 Books I'm Dying to Read!

Keep in mind that naturally I have a very loooooong TBR(to be read) list and it's a challenge to choose only 10 from so many choices. Plus, as a bonified bibliophile I'm always on the lookout for more! So, I'll put my Top 10 choices down of ones that have been on my mind recently.
Remember, if you'd like to read more Top Ten choices or participate in making a list of your own, check out The Broke and the Bookish for yourself.

1. Evermore by Alyson Noel - At times, all it takes is a little background information from the author herself to get you excited about reading a book! The only secret I keep/is immortality. ~Emily Dickinson

2. Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, Book 1) by Cassandra Clare - I absolutely love the cover of this book! Plus, it is set in Victorian London and I love that era. Magic is dangerous--but love is more dangerous still.

3. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins - I'm sure I'm cheating a bit here because I've read about the first 5 pages already but I haven't had time to immerse myself in this book yet. I'm dying to see how things will end and I have to admit I'm a bit afraid of how it will turn out too. Whereas Katniss kills with finesse, Collins writes with raw power. -Time Magazine

4. Bink & Gollie by Kate DiCamillo and Alyson McGhee - I enjoy reading her books and so do my children. This fun new book is a collaborative effort and should come out later this month but it may take some time to get my hands on one. Funny, ebullient ... two friends, three adventures.

5. Murder at Mansfield Park by Lynn Shepherd - I've been hearing all sorts of great things about this book! As you know, I love Jane Austenish stuff so this is right up my alley. This is a superb retelling of the Jane Austen novel in which the house at Mansfield Park becomes the scene of one murder after another.

6. The Seventeen Second Miracle by Jason F. Wright - After I heard Jason F. Wright speak once at Time Out for Women, I've been a fan of his books. I look forward to this one! To the teachers who believed.

7. Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles #1) by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl - I know very little about this book but I like the premise and the fact they collaborated to write it. So cool! In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

8. Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey - I'm always so excited to start a new year of reading in a local Classics Book Group I attend. This is the first book choice of 2011. I happen to like Westerns once in a while and this seems like pure classic. Perhaps more than any other novel, contributed to the concept of the American West.

9. Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed - This book will most likely take me a long time to read but I hope that it will be very interesting. With penetrating insights for today, this history of the world economic collapse of the late 1920s presents unforgettable portraits of the four men whose personal and professional actions as heads of their respective central banks changed the course of the twentieth century.

10. Sophie Scholl and the White Rose by Annette Dumbach, Jud Newborn - Ever since I read The Silenced by James DeVita I have been interested about Sophie Scholl. I haven't found the time to read this version of her story yet and I'd like to. "We will not be silent! We are your bad conscience!" they exhorted the German people to stand up and fight for freedom.

Let me know what books have been on your mind and what you've been dying to read in your comment! Too bad, making and finding time to read all I want can be a complex project of itself but I'm content to keep trying! Eventually, I'll make progress, read and learn something in the process which makes all the difference. Reading is so worthwhile.

Also, if you're interested in book blogs like I am be sure to check out Book Blogger Appreciation Week going on this week! You'll find lots to read from these amazing book bloggers and enjoy reading their blogs in the process. Be warned: reading book blogs can become addictive! ;)

Teaser Tuesdays(14):Evermore by Alyson Noel

My teaser:

"Normally, I'd do anything to avoid a place like this. A place so congested with the random energy of people, their bright swirling auras, their odd collection of thoughts."

My thoughts:

I had to choose this quote after feeling the crowd of people from last night's energy! You see, I feel so lucky that I was able to attend a book signing event at the BookPeople in Austin, TX. I heard Alyson Noel speak and hearing her story of how she came about writing this book convinced me to buy it! I hadn't realized that she would be there so I hadn't thought of buying her book. I can't wait to read it! It was so nice to meet her even if only for a couple of minutes. I love how she signed the words "peace*joy*love" in my book too. I wish everyone the same. Thanks for reading my teaser today!

Introduced to me by: Bookworm Barista
Hosted by: MizB of Should be reading

*Anyone can play ~ Find your current read, share a quote from a random page plus do tell what you're reading.
*Remember, you are always welcome to share your teaser in the comments as well.
*For more details be sure to look up how on the links above.

Journal Entry: Reflection of 9-11

It’s hard to believe that it has been 9 yrs. since that fateful day. I don’t always realize it but I am still affected by the experience, by the emotion that seized me as I watched a plane dive into the World Trade Center on TV. At first, I was driving down the Interstate listening to the radio after taking my husband to work. I heard what I thought at the time was a commercial for a movie and I remember thinking “That sounds like a bad movie, I don’t want to see it.” At the end of the segment, it was repeated so it dawned on me that it was news not fiction. It worried me. I rushed home to watch TV news. Up to this point, I was curious how an accident like this with a plane could even happen. I had to find out so I trusted what was being said on TV. Safe in my home, I tuned in and in just a very few minutes another plane hit a second huge tower in New York. I was stunned. How could this be real? I already wished that it wasn’t. People - real people were dying even jumping to their deaths. It scared me. I was gripped with a feeling that I couldn’t shake that my husband would eventually be deployed to war. This was real. It wouldn’t be something that an American President would be able to ignore. Life around me was changing. Tears still well up in my eyes, even now, as I truly think of the magnitude of this day and what has happened in my life since which in comparison to those lost is insignificant. I will never forget.

*This picture above was taken when we welcomed our husband/dad home from his deployment in Iraq. (Nov. 2005)

Random Supplement to Words I Love

On Tues., I filled out my top ten words which was so much fun to think about. Now, I've been seeing lots of words everywhere that I like. I also found more quotes to supplement the words I originally chose for my first list. So just for fun, here's a few of those findings:

Ability:

In a search for the words uncanny ability, it brought up a story about a cat who fortells death in a nursing home and funny piece from SNL from the famous Tina Fey portraying Sarah Pallin.

Persuasion:

"You have widely mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your nephew might approve of your interference in his affairs, I cannot tell; but you certainly have no right to concern yourself in mine."
- Chapter 56, Pride and Prejudice, ~Jane Austen

“The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty and bloody-mindedness.”
~Terry Pratchett

“In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance”
~Thomas Jefferson

“Advertising isn't a science. It's persuasion. And persuasion is an art.”
~William Bernbach

Love:

A bell is no bell 'til you ring it,
A song is no song 'til you sing it,
And love in your heart
Wasn’t put there to stay -
Love isn’t love
'Til you give it away.
~Oscar Hammerstein, Sound of Music, "You Are Sixteen (Reprise)"

"Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love." ~Albert Einstein



"If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen." ~Henry David Thoreau

"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once never forgotten, never let it disappear." ~John Lennon


Fantastic:

"Fashion, by which what is really fantastic becomes for a moment the universal.”
~Oscar Wilde

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”
~George W. Bush


Thinking about my favorite words has been a fun exercise for my brain. As you can plainly read, it's been a bit humorous too. :D Be sure to find a reason to smile or laugh today!

Top Ten Tuesday: Words I Love

Since I love words and quotes so much I thought I would combine the two today for The Broke and the Bookish Top Ten Tues.: Favorite Words. Here’s my choices which may be subject to change on any given day but for today these are the words that came immediately to my mind that I love, especially the way they sound!

1. Ability ~ " 'I never cheat at cards.' It was true, if one ignored his uncanny ability to keep track of every card in a deck. Some people didn't."
p 10 "A Hellion in Her Bed" by Sabrina Jeffries (ARC) Found in Teaser Tues. at In the Hammock blog.

2. Ludicrous ~ “I could feel his muscle tissues collapse under my force. It's ludicrous these mortals even attempt to enter my realm.”
-Mike Tyson

3. Intensity ~“Personally, I experience the greatest degree of pleasure in having contact with works of art. They furnish me with happy feelings of an intensity such as I cannot derive from other realms.”
Albert Einstein

4. Lovely~I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.
~Ogden Nash, "Song of the Open Road," 1933

5. Influence~The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years. Most people believe that aging is universal but there are biological organisms that never age.
Deepak Chopra

6. Fantastic~“Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.”
Bill Gates

7. Truth~"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
- Chapter 1, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

8. Imagination~"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."
- Chapter 6, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

9. Persuasion~“Character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion.”
-Aristotle

10. Deceive~"It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us."
- Chapter 24, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

Now, it's your turn - think about your favorite words and share them with me!

Teaser Tuesdays(13): Unwind by Neal Shusterman

Introduced to me by: Blue Duck Book Reviews
Hosted by: MizB of Should be reading


My Teaser:

"Sure enough, the safe is open wide-but it's not entirely empty. Inside is the bracelet, its gold and diamonds looking even brighter against the ugly gray steel of the empty safe."

pg. 161 in Unwind by Neal Shusterman


*Anyone can play ~ Find your current read, share a quote from a random page plus do tell what you're reading.
*Remember, you are always welcome to share your teaser in the comments as well.
*For more details be sure to look up how on the links above.

A Quote About Art

Recently, I went to two local Art museums and I saw this quote on the side of a building close-by one of them so I snapped a picture. I enjoy thinking about this essence that it seems to be relating about Art through this quote. I wonder how you might relate or what you may think of this quote. I'm curious so let me know.
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