The Wisdom of 33 Books

As I go through them again, I will add quotes.

1. Eragon - Christopher Paolini
"Every age needs an icon- perhaps that lot has fallen to you."

2. Baggage - Emily Barr
"I want to see her, and yet I need to run as far from her as I possibly can."

3. Emily Ever After

4. The Guy Not Taken

5. Wuthering Heights

Catherine says she loves Heathcliff "because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..."

"My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."

6. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix 

7. A Wind in the Door 

8. Dirty Girls Social Club 

9. Miracle 

10. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 

11. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

12. His Dark Materials:: The Golden Compass - Phillip Pullman

13. Serenity

14. Little Earthquakes

15. The Know-it-All
16. His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife

17. Life of Pi 

18. His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass
19. Girls' Night Out
20. Twilight
21. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America - Bill Bryson

22. I'm the One That I Want by Margaret Cho

23. Solo - Emily Barr
24. Good in Bed - Jennifer Weiner

25. Certain Girls - Jennifer Weiner

26. Under the Banner of Heaven - Jon Krakauer

27. Flatland - A Romance of Many Dimensions - Edwin A Abbott
28. The Big Love - Sarah Dunn
29. The Dark is Rising - Susan Cooper

30. How to be Good - Nick Hornby

31. Travels - Michael Crichton

"Brugh talked about the value of being able to see a card, or a life situation, from all sides. To see the good and the bad, and not to consider the thing itself as possessing either goodness or badness. He talked about how people became rigid when they assigned fixed values to things.

32. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer

33. milkrun - Sarah Mlynowski
"How could I ask for a better friend? Someone who gives me a backup plan. Instead of someone who makes me the backup plan."

Eye of the beholder

"It's rude to be rude. It's not rude to be direct, especially in business situations."
phunniemee on AskMeFi

Ask Metafilter

Yes, I know I just mentioned Ask Metafilter, but I am obsessed. Be glad you don't live with me and have to hear about it every day.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the Green (that's what Ask Mefites call AskMefi):

"As a friend of mine said once about being a woman dating geeks - "The odds are good, but the goods are odd". -ysabet I also heard this on the casting episode of Beauty and the Geek

"In practice, lots of drama comes from people being unclear about their roles in other people's lives." -booksandlibretti

"Definitely be frank with him without doing the whole "let me pull you aside like I'm about to tell you I'm a cannibal" thing." -cashman This was in response to one of the thousands of questions asking how to admit something unpleasant/wierd about yourself to someone else.

We are conditioned to traffic in cool. You have to look cool, not look nice or distinguished or presentable, but cool. But it's all so generic. Everyone seems to have the same new haircut that no one 5 years ago had. We all have the same cynical politics ... There is something fundamentally anti-intellectual about this, but I can't quite articulate it. There some element of arrogance there. Like everyone is perpetually 18... Maybe that's what cool is - withdrawing from the context of one's life into an artificial one, in which the cool perceives itself to be somehow outside of reality, looking in and commenting on it. But this isn't insight, it's not reflecting on the world. It's standing at the edge of the world sniping into it. - Pastabagel Parts of a big long response to a thread about Mr. Rogers. The whole thing is quite good, and it's actually in the Blue, not in the Green.

Too True

Malcolm Gladwell: "What a gifted child is, in many ways, is a gifted learner. And what a gifted adult is, is a gifted doer. And those are quite separate domains of achievement."

Gin ears or John Ruhs

Genres exist so morons don't forget what they like to read.
--David Miller

Five Quotes

Go here and look through random quotes until you find five that you think reflect who you are or what you believe.

Mine:
Only I can change my life. No one can do it for me.
Carol Burnett

The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
G. K. Chesterton

Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.
Mason Cooley, O Magazine, April 2004

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.
Sidney J. Harris

Whoever ceases to be a student has never been a student.
George Iles

via kottke

This one didn't come up for me, but was on someone else's page:
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere." Agnes Repplier

Webtracks

City Pages' annual Best of edition has pixel art by Eboy, which I dig.

I found this quote on a coaster at a bar, but I like it anyway:
"We do not remember days. we remember moments." -Cesare Pavese
I also like this one: "If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears."

Ever been mistaken for an employee while shopping? I have and it is hilarious.

Myspace is not just for 14-21 year olds - it's for me too.

Trader Joe's is "coming soon" to Minnesota, before the end of May hopefully. I was 100% wrong about the location. I forgot all about Excelsior Boulevard. Could they have built any closer to Whole Foods?

Also, the new library downtown opens May 20th, or for $250 (or more!!) you can attend the benefit on the night of the 19th. This includes a progressive dinner, and I really need to attend something like that.

Logic

Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic. - Dune by Frank Herbert

My Favorite Fortune Cookie

You are an angel. Beware of those who collect feathers.

Carolyn Hax

I used to read Ann Landers all the time, but then I found Carolyn Hax. She writes for the Washington Post and is syndicated all over the country. Her column is called Tell Me About It and used to be subtitled Advice for the Under-30 Crowd, but she's lost that part. She also hosts a weekly chat at noon Eastern on washingtonpost.com. I like the advice she gives, here are some samples:

It's called "coping." If it were fun, it would be called "fun."

If you can't stop judging these people enough to put your whole heart into loving them, then leave. I mean it.

Trust and respect just aren't that complicated: Find someone who treats you as well as he treats himself, and then show the same kindness to him. Ta-da. Both of you will make mistakes, but that's okay, as long as they're infrequent, unintended and remedied quickly, with care.

Trust your ego to withstand someone who sees herself as your equal.

No healthy relationship ever dies of an open debate.

Be who you are. If you feel the need to change anything, look for ways to have more fun. That way you'll avoid any disastrous attempts at becoming someone you're not, and you might actually have more fun--which is a great way to get your mind off whatever it is you think you're supposed to have but don't.

Something to look for to tip your decision toward anything new and unknown is the sense that there might be something more rewarding out there than what you have now.

Ask yourself these questions every time you catch yourself comparing your life with others': Who are you; what do you want; is that fair to expect? And are you strong enough not to look back?

We're all afraid of something, and we all run the risk of meeting someone who knows how to prey on that fear. It's not an excuse not to try.

Pretty wise, huh? She gets a lot of "I'm unhappy and I don't know why" letters and she does a really good job of answering them, as well as telling the ones that need it to seek therapy. Check her out, you'll be glad you did.