The jam of this song is infectious!! I love the groove and the lyrics. Bailey Rae’s voice is so soothing and just skips along the melody with the heavy beat of the bass and drum holding everything together.
Corrine Bailey Rae’s “I’d Like To”
Month: April 2008
Today’s Favorite Song
It’s a rainy Monday here in Okinawa. I spent the morning at an AWWA (American Women’s Welfare Association) formal lunch and learned that throughout the last 25 years, over 3 million dollars have been donated to local Okinawan and American charities. AMAZING!
After two hours of bing prim & proper I went to my first acupuncture/massage appointment in about eight months or so. Way too long, so I have another one in two weeks. I feel very relaxed and slightly drained after my session but today being dreary and a Monday makes it perfect to come home and just be. I was listening to Sara Bareilles today and this tune, “Vegas”, is just wonderful and makes me want to get on the road and just see what happens.
Today’s Favorite Song
Over at my friend’s blog Bibliofool, he has the occassional post called “What received multiple plays on the iPod this morning?”. I loved his idea soooooo much that I hope he doesn’t mind that I’m adopting it over here at Planet Books. I LOVE MUSIC!!!!!! Actually, I hate silence and find myself unbearably uncomfortable in it’s presence. I am constantly listening to tunes if the tv isn’t on and I love sharing music with people so this is a great way for me to do that.
Today, and probably for the last month or so, my favorite song has been by a great little band called VAMPIRE WEEKEND. The tune is titled A-Punk and though the whole album is fanastic this track has a cool yet simple video so here ya go!
Assignment Planet Books
I am gathering info and questions to put together a discussion post for the March/April book “St. Lucy’s Home For Girls Raised By Wolves”. I hope to publish the post by Wednesday. In the mean time, I am using a suggestion from Beast Momma about how to handle the book selections for the May/June vote. Her Idea was to ask people for titles to be voted on. So…. the first four books that are posted by you in the comment section of this post will be the four titles we will vote from for our upcoming reading selection. Only one title per person/comment please. I look forward to seeing what you come up with!! The deadline is this Wednesday, April 30th!!!
Truckin’
I don’t have much to share tonight. The hubby and I had a busy social calendar this weekend so there wasn’t as much down time as usual. I just picked up BOOMSDAY last night and picked up where I had left off a few days before.
I do have a new obsession and that is downloading NPR podcasts that are available on iTunes for free. Especially the show “All Songs Considered”. I’ve also been listening to segments on www.npr.org and learning more and more about music. I was inspired to create my own song list as if I was a guest DJ with host Bob Boilen. It’s of course a very very long list but to give you a peek into what music has inspired me in my life here are ten songs and the artists that I love.
Baby Can I Hold You ~ Tracy Chapman Pictures Of You ~ The Cure No More Words ~ Berlin True Blue ~ Madonna Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover ~ Sophie B. Hawkins Ants Marching ~ Dave Matthews Band It Hurt So Bad ~ Susan Tedeschi Morning Song ~ Jewel Church ~ Lyle Lovett & His Large Band Knock ‘Em Out ~ Lily Allen
Cookie Marathon ~ Week 4
After this week I’m going to cut down on the baking and only make a cookie recipe every two weeks. The hubby is starting to complain about the yummies every week and I am using so much butter, it’s a bit ridiculous. Plus it doesn’t help that last week on Martha Stewart Living it was Cupcake Week and I couldn’t resist making two of her cupcake recipes in the last week. Her Coconut Cupcakes and her White Cupcakes. DELICIOUS!!!!! (Sorry there aren’t any pics… they were gone in an instant!)
Today Rocky and I had a lovely day of making Martha Stewart’s Almond Horn cookies from the Martha Stewart Cookie Cookbook and reading BOOMSDAY. Tomorrow I’m going on a guided tour with friends of the local Japanese Love Motels. It should be interesting and I will report on what I learn right here on Planet Books.
The Almond Horns turned out pretty well on their own but would probably be better accompanied with a cup of coffee or tea.
A Favorite Book meme!
Care’s Online Book Club over at http://bkclubcare.wordpress.com posted this MEME about Favorite Books. I thought I would join in on the fun and see what answers I come up with. If you would like to play either cut and paste the meme to your own blog and link back here or cut and paste the meme to the comment section of this post and answer there.
MEME: A FAVORITE BOOK meme!
1. A book that made you cry: Marley & Me: Life & Love With The World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan
2. A book that scared you: The Ring by Koji Suzuki
3. A book that made you laugh: Candy Girl: A Year In The Life of an Unlikely Stripper by Diablo Cody
4. A book that disgusted you: Nothing’s popping up in recent memory
5. A book you loved in elementary school: Where The Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls (5th Grade)
6. A book you loved in middle school: I don’t remember junior high… because it SUCKED!!!
7. A book you loved in high school: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
8. A book you hated in high school: Beowulf
9. A book you loved in college: College was a mix of music and partying. I majored in Musical Theatre, Vocal Performance & Music Business and in that order but not all at the same time. I don’t remember reading a book for fun or even for the one year of English that I had to take.
10. A book that challenged your identity or your faith: The Left Behind Series and most recently Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
11. A series that you love: I loved the Sunfire Romance series when I was growing up. They were books with a heroine set in different periods of American history. My favorite that I remember was Cassie by Vivian Schurfranz
12. Your favourite horror book: Salem’s Lot by Stephen King
13. Your favourite science-fiction book: I think that Angels & Demons by Dan Brown falls under this category
14. Your favourite fantasy book: The Heavenly Horse of the Outermost West by Mary Stanton
15. Your favorite mystery book: The Alienist by Caleb Carr
16. Your favourite biography: It’s an autobiography and it’s called The Inner Voice by Renee Fleming
17. Your favourite coming-of-age book: The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger
18. Your favourite book not on this list: So many books to list here…. Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams, Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden,; The Red Tent by Anita Diamant, The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, Mermaid’s Song by Alida Van Gores… just to name a few.
Staying On The Reading Wagon
I started to read a book from my TBR shelf last night. It’s called “BOOMSDAY” and it’s by humorist and political novelist Christopher Buckley. A few months ago the hubby and I watched the film version of the book “Thank You For Smoking” starring the gorgeous Aaron Eckhart. Great movie! I had picked up “BOOMSDAY” some time last year when it came out at the PX and placed it on my shelf. Well I guess this it’s time I’m meant to read it. I’ve said before that I believe books find you.
So far, so good. I haven’t made too much of a dent yet but it’s caught my attention. I’m still thinking about “Change of Heart” and what I read about in that book which may be why I was attracted to “BOOMSDAY” on my shelf. It’s about a young lady who got screwed out of her dream of attending Yale University because her father invested her college fund into his start-up dot com business. He suggests she join the military because they offer free education when you are done sweating and bleeding for them. She joins the ARMY and finds herself doing PR work for the ARMY in Bosnia. That’s where I’m at so far. I do know that she becomes a Washington spin writer ten years after this whole Army expereince and that is where most of the story (I think) will take place. Her big personal fight (probably due to her father’s success in screwing her so royaly) is about not wanting her generation to have to pay the bill for the Baby-boomer’s Social Security checks.
What are you reading right now? Anything that a previous book brought you to? Maybe a train of thought that you can’t seem to get off quite yet?
Book Review ~ Change of Heart
I just finished Jodi Picoult’s “Change of Heart” and I loved it! I found myself thinking about the story and characters many times throughout the two weeks or so that I was reading it and wondering what was going to happen to them and how the story would play out. This was my first experience reading a Picoult novel and I was not disappointed. The topics of religion, the possibility of a Messiah floating through the U.S. prison system and the lives that were affected by selfish acts of sexual abuse were woven together so beautifully and intricately that I know I will be thinking about this story for a while to come. The characters were so clear and bright to me though I did have some trouble flipping from one first-person account to the next as the chapters (not really chapters though) flew through my fingers.
I would recommend this book to someone who is looking for something completely different and thought provoking. Remember that this book is the one that lifted me off of my reading block stump. I am so glad that I picked it up at the Base PX. I am interested in reading Picoult’s “Nineteen Minutes” about a small town high school shooting because I lived in Denver when the Columbine shootings devastated the area and the country. I attended the memorial service at the high school and saw, with my own eyes, the boarded up windows where students and faculty had jumped to safety on April 20th, 1999.
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter comes to Lifetime Television
I just read an ARTICLE in The Washington Post about a recent book I read debuting on Lifetime Television this Saturday night (I hope it’s available on iTunes next week). The Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards was a book that I really enjoyed for the most part. I swept through the book pretty quickly and was flabbergasted at the choices made by the father in the book. If you haven’t read this book it’s a quick read and an interesting story. If you have read it are you going to watch or TiVo the tv movie version (it’s airing on Saturday night)? HERE is a link to the Lifetime Television site and some videos about the movie version of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.
Planet Books 