A quote from Eat, Pray, Love

"I keep remembering one of my Guru's teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consquence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness doreverm to stay afloat on top of it. If you don't, you will leak away your innate contentment. It's easy enough to pray when you're in distress but continuing to pray even when your crisis has passed is like a sealing process, helping your soul hold tight to its good attainments."

Elizabeth Gilbert

Did I mention that Eat, Pray, Love is a book that will have you underlining passages through it?

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

This is one of my favorite books in the world. I'm re-reading it for the third time now. I was having Harry Potter burnout and now I feel so refreshed reading Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir of her year spent in three countries: Italy, India, and Indonesia, putting her life back together after divorce and a failed relationship. She went to the three countries in search of not only herself but to learn what each place could teach her: pleasure from Italy, spirituality from India, and balance in Indonesia.

Elizabeth has the best luck of anyone I have ever come across, in a book or in my life. She always meets the perfect person who can guide her to want she needs. She meets good friends like Sophie from Sweden, Maria in Indonesia, and Richard from Texas.

My favorite part of the book is the section on Italy. Elizabeth eats her way into self-discovery, trying new things and relearning what pleasure is and that she too, deserves it in her life. Toward the end of the section the reader can already see the stronger and improved Elizabeth. She's someone who you would love to meet and have in your corner.

The sections on India and Indonesia, for me, don't have that spark that Italy has, but it might be just me. In India Elizabeth goes to the Ashram of her guru and learns how to finally heal her mind and heart from the painful divorce she went through. In Indonesia, she learns how to finally balance herself and also ends up finding love. A good read that will leave you wanting more.

Randomness (Book Meme)

So I discovered Rhinoa's Ramblings blog and saw a really interesting meme. She's tagging anyone who wants to do this meme. She saw it on Nymeth's blog, Things mean a lot, who saw it on Trish's blog, Trish's reading nook.... So here I am. From what I've read this is an old meme. The rules are if you're reading this, you're automatically tagged. So below are a list of like a hundred books, bold the ones you're read, mark in blue the ones you want to read, cross out or mark in read the ones that you don't want to ever touch, and italize the ones that you have never heard of.

1. The DaVinci Code -Dan Brown

2. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

3. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

4. Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell

5. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers - Tolkien

6. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the ring -Tolkien

7. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Tolkien

8. Anne of Green Gables - L.M. Montgomery

9. Outlander -Diana Gabaldon

10. A fine balance - Rohinton Mistry

11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire -Rowling

12. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - Rowling

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving

15. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - Rowling

17. Fall on your knees - Ann-Marie MacDonald

18. The Stand - Stephen King

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - Rowling

20. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

21.The Hobbit - Tolkien

22. The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

23. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

24. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

25. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

28. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis

29. East of Eden - John Steinbeck

30. Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

31. Dune - Frank Herbert

32. The Notebook -Nicholas Sparks

33. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

34. 1984- Orwell

35. The Mists of Avalon - Bradley

36.The Pillars of the earth- Ken Follet

37. The Power of One - Bryce Courtenay

38. I know this much is true - Wally Lamb

39. The Red Tent - Anita Diamant

40. The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho

41.The Clan of the Cave Bear - Jean M. Aurel

42. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

43. Confessions of a Shopaholic - Sophie Kinsella

44. The Five people you met in heaven - Mitch Albom

45. The Bible ( if I can just get pass Genesis, I'll be okay =)

46. Anna Karenina -Tolstoy

47. The Count of Monte Cristo -

48. Angela's Ashes - Frank McCourt

49. The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck

50. She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb

51. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

52. A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens

53. Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

54. Great Expectations - Dickens

55. The Great Gasby - Fitzgerald

56. The Stone Angel - Margaret Laurence

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - Rowling

58. The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough

59. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

60. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenger

61. Crime and Punishment - Dostoyevsky

62. The Fountainhead -Ayn Rand

63. War and Peace - Tolstoy

64. Interview with the Vampire- Anne Rice

65. Fifth Business - Robertson Davis

66. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Grabriel Gracia Marquez

67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - Ann Brashares

68. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller

69. Les Miserables - Hugo

70. The Little Prince - Antonie de-Saint Exupery

71. Bridget Jones's Diary - Fielding

72. Love in the time of Cholera - Marquez

73. Shogun - James Clavell

74. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje

75. The Secret Garden -Frances Hodgson Burnett

76. The Summer Tree - Guy Gavriel Kay

77. A Tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

78. The World According to Garp - Irving

79. The Diviner's - Margaret Laurence

80. Charlotte 's Web - EB White

81. Not Wanted on the Voyage - Timothy Findley

82. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

83. Rebecca - Daphne DuMaurier

84. Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind

85. Emma - Jane Austen

86. Watership Down - Richard Adams

87. Brave New World - Aldous Hexley

88. The Stone Diaries - Carol Shields

89. Blindness - Jose Saramago

90. Kane and Abel - Jeffrey Archer

91. In the Skin of a Lion - Ondaatje

92. Lord of the Flies - Golding

93. The Good Earth -Pearl S. Buck

94. The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

95. The Bourne Identity - Robert Ludlum

96. The Outsiders - SE Hinton

97. White Oleander - Janet Fitch

98. A woman of substance - Barabara Taylor Bradford

99. The Celestine Prophecy - James Redfield

100. Ulysess - Joyce

Summary: Okay so that's 31 books I've read, 29 on my TBR list, 29 that I won't touch, and ten that I haven't heard of. Not bad. This tells me after next week I need to get start reading books on my TBR list.

Booking Through Thursday

Here's this week's questions for Booking Through Thursday:

1. Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?
2. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
If you’re not going to read it, why not?
3. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?

I love Harry Potter. I don't remember what made me start reading the series in the first place, but I'm glad that I did. I'm definitely going to read HP7, but not right away. I'm still re-reading the series. I just started HP5. While I'm waiting to read it, I am not reading the newspaper at all or watching the news. I don't want to see any spoilers. I've been thinking about attending a midnight party, but I doubt it. I'm a single mother of babies, I should be at home. But I will buy the book Sunday morning though. I am not making any predictions at all. I'm just looking forward to the end of the story because I want to know everything. But I am sad that this is the end.

Four Questions

I have to say that besides books and book challenges, one of my other addictions is Yahoo!Answers. I absolutely love answering people's questions about things from love (does he love me?) to financial aid to song lyrics. I try not to go on it very much. But the other day I was on and someone asked four very good questions. It made me think a lot. I think I know have my topic for my future essay for This I Believe. The four questions are:

1. Three words that describe my life... interesting, hard, and loving

2. My life goal is... to be the person that I am meant to be.

3. If I gave this goal my all but failed, did I really fail? I don't know.

4. The legacy that I want to leave behind... to show people that if you believe and you try, you can be whoever and whatever it is you want to be and that no goal is unreachable. I also want my family to know that love and family are too important and you get so much from it, that you should never not give it your all every day.

For the longest time I've been wanting to write an essay for This I Believe. Ever since I read the newest edition of the book, I've dreamt of writing my own essay on what is one core belief in my life. I think my essay will be about the importance of family, something I cannot live without at all. My family has taught me so much in life, that everyday I try to repay them by living a good life.

******

Speaking of making by life better, tomorrow I won't be able to go to school because my youngest isn't feeling up to par. Last week it was one of my younger twin sisters. I had to stay out of school almost all week. I doubt mind being out, but the semester is almost over and I'm a little antsy. I'm trying to finish up all my classwork, before the end of next week. The next semester won't start until September. Let's hope I finish in time.

Where has the time gone?

It has been so long since the last time I've left a post. I just haven't been feeling well. I've missed this blog. I still don't feel well, but I feel a little better so here I am. I've still been reading, but not nearly as much as I was before. I finished my 100Th book, The Killer's Tears, weeks ago. It was a very good book. It shocked and surprised me, having me yell out loud towards the very end.

After The Killer's Tears I started a book by Nora Gallagher called Practicing Resurrection. It was such a slow read for me. I read it for maybe three weeks, I swear, and I only got to page 70, maybe. Practicing Resurrection is a spiritual memoir about the author coping with the death of her beloved brother and trying to figure out whether or not she want to become a priest. There were a couple of passages that I thought were so beautiful and brought tears to my eyes, but not beautiful enough to get me to read the rest of the damn book. I couldn't do it. Maybe I'll try again another time.

So right now, I'm re-reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It's been a while since I've read any of the Harry Potter books, but something came over me last week and made me check out most of the series to re-read. I'm not in a hurry, since I'll probably read the last book in the series in a month or so. I haven't even read book #6 Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. But I can't wait to read it. I'll wait to read anymore books from my challenges list.

I also read while on my little "vacation" The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the witch, and the wardrobe by C.S. Lewis for some challenge I signed up for. Now which one was that? Oh yeah, the Series Challenge which goes from December 1st of this year and goes until May 31, 2008. I guess you can just say I'm an early bird. I had never read any of the books from the Chronicles of Narnia series. They were both great. I was so moved by Lewis's description of the lion Aslan creating Narnia. Very beautiful. So I'm going to try and wait until the challenge start to finish reading the series. Harry Potter can keep me busy until then.