The deep inner reason I wear black

Every now and then (like every couple of months) one of my wonderful relatives or very close friends will graciously chide me on my propensity to wear black often, quite often.  They think I need more color, more variation, more pop!  I tell them that I am boring; I am classic black; I carry a red purse for color; I don’t pop.

And then last night I discovered what must be some unconscious reason for wearing black…

Speaking of clothing in the time of Shakespeare, Bryson quotes a 16th century expert,

It takes a lot of dye to make a fabric really black.  It was much cheaper to produce clothes that were fawn or beige or some other color.  So black clothes in the sixteenth century were nearly always a sign of prosperity. 

Cleaning Up and Out for the New Year

One of the goals I always have for Christmas break is to get everything cleaned out and organized, so I have had a great few days of sorting through everything…Here are a few highlights.

*Collect all my spare change, take it to the coinstar redemption center and voila…I was able to buy most of my 888 books from Amazon last night.

*Reorganize my books yet again and voila…find a few that I was sure I owned, but had so far alluded me.

*And…get rid of bags and bags of Goodwill and trash stuff and voila…I now have room for more books!

The 888 Reading Challenge

Stumbling upon this reading challenge was just what I needed!  I have been thinking lately that my reading over the last year was so disappointingly hit-and-miss…I read some wonderful books and then there were all the ho-hum books that I read just because they were there and easy to get.  I knew I needed a plan.  Then voila!  I came upon the 888 reading challenge.  (The short explanation is 8 categories of 8 books each with 8 books overlapping for a total of 56 books.) Who wants to join the fun?!?

 Here is my list as it stands now.

8 History Books

1.        Mistress of the Elgin Marbles

2.       Walk Through the Bible

3.       A Short History of Nearly Everything

4.       The Odyssey **

5.       Cat of Bubastes **

6.        Desire of the Everlasting Hills

7.        The Gifts of the Jews

8.         

8 Novels

1.       Washington Square

2.       Persuasion

3.       Cry, the Beloved Country

4.        Lake Wobegon Days

5.       Love in a Time of Cholera

6.        The Silence

7.        Middlemarch

8.           

8 Mysteries

1.        Maisie Dobbs

2.       Murder on the Orient Express

3.       Father Brown

4.       The Name of the Rose

5.         

6.         

7.         

8.         

8 School Related

1.        Cat of Bubastes **

2.       Voyage of the Dawn Treader

3.       As You Like It

4.       Till We Have Faces

5.       The Odyssey **

6.       The Tempest

7.         

8.         

8 Non-Fiction

1.        Shakespeare, by Bryson

2.       Summer at Tiffany

3.       Reading Like a Writer

4.       Sister Bernadette’s Barking Dog

5.       Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

6.       How to Read a Book

7.        Small is Beautiful

8.        Conflict of Visions

8 Food Books

1.        The Perfectionist, Life and Death in Haute Cuisine

2.       The 64 Dollar Tomato

3.       Blithe Tomato

4.       My Life in France

5.       Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

6.       Dining Out on Adventure

7.         

8.         

8 Book Club Books

1.       The Future and its Enemies

2.       Stop Dating the Church

3.        

 4.         

5.         

6.         

7.          

8.         

8 Religious Books

1.       Screwtape Letters

2.       The Cost of Discipleship

3.       Orthodoxy

4.       Mere Christianity

5.        Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance

6.        Steering Through Chaos

7.        For the Life of the World

8.          

My New Hobby-Audio Books

Now that I have rejoined the commuting world, I am loving audio books.  In determining my new work schedule, I knew that I would be very happy with it all if I made sure to include a variety of books on tape.  It makes my drive so happy! 

I have been introduced to the world of audio books-so many choices!  And I don’t even have to go anywhere to get them now-no library late fees, no super expensive books on tape at the store, just a great book plan from Audible.com. 

I must say that one of the things that amazed me in a recent perusal through an audio books catalogue was the fact that they sell abridged fiction books…Who can’t take the time to listen to a whole Nicholas Sparks novel?!?  Is a James Patterson novel really so  loaded with pithy, heavy ideas that you might want to take in only part of it on your first exposure…

Anybody have an audiobook reccomendations?  Or want to trade?

I have some truly coveted, popular selections that you might want to check out-

Beowulf, read in a beautiful Irish accent by Seamus Heaney

The Iliad, with Susan Sarandon and Stanley Lombardo

A Biography of FDR

Some fascinating book on the building of the Brooklyn Bridge

Some lectures of the Iliad

A lovely collection of Bill Bryson books

and A Thousand Splendid Suns

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