unfinished woman

**********

I hope you enjoy perusing my shelves, find a writer or book that makes you drool or pant, that compels you to grab your money and run to your favorite bookstore. Off goes the TV, the computer, the cell, and on goes that mellow, smooth CD, and you're buried in your well-worn reading chair with your treasure. Happy... more »

**********

I hope you enjoy perusing my shelves, find a writer or book that makes you drool or pant, that compels you to grab your money and run to your favorite bookstore. Off goes the TV, the computer, the cell, and on goes that mellow, smooth CD, and you're buried in your well-worn reading chair with your treasure. Happy reading!!!

PLEASE NOTE: I want my Shelfari friendships to have meaning, based on shared interests or experiences, similar book/reading preferences, and dialogue in stimulating groups. I am interested in a friend having a bookshelf that stimulates my curiosity, to which I want to return. I appreciate someone who is active on the site, and will communicate with me about books, life and, perhaps, world issues. If you have created your profile, shelved books (enough that I can determine your areas of passion), and you send me a note telling me what motivated you to request a friendship, I will consider accepting your request. I WILL NOT ACCEPT A FRIENDSHIP WITHOUT ANY INFORMATION.

**********

Reading [is] my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head. Paul Auster

A truly good book is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East, Henry David Thoreau, "The Wild Mallard Thought"

I fell in love--that is the only expression I can think of--at once, and am still at the mercy of words...There they were seemingly lifeless, made only of black and white, but out of them, out of their own being, came love and terror and pity and pain and wonder and all the vague abstractions that make our ephemeral lives dangerous, great and bearable., Dylan Thomas, "On the Words in Poetry"

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns. George Eliot

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

I am the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul... Walt Whitman, from Song of Myself
My talisman for my daughter, Breanne.

A minute lived attentively can contain a millennium; an adequate step can span the planet. Chet Raymo, The Path, A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe

**********

LAST UPDATED: January 2, 2010

**********

Some books I am reading or have just finished that I highly recommend.

Walter Isaacson: Einstein: His Life and Universe, 5*
Steig Larsson: The Girl Who Played with Fire, 4*, 2nd of the trilogy
W. H. Auden: The Dyer's Hand
Barbara Kingsolver: The Lacuna
Paul Goldberger: Why Architecture Matters, "The New Yorker" architecture critic
Kay Redfield Jamison: Nothing Was the Same, a Memoir
Thom Gunn (editor): Yvor Winters, Selected Poems

**********

Music that I have recently added that is so fine

Michael Buble: "Crazy Love"

**********

Performing arts that have given me pleasure recently.


**********

Update on life's activities and involvements

I recently returned from a couple of weeks in Chicago, visiting my daughter, who had an amazing amount of time off while I was there. I had a wonderful time setting a new tradition for the two of us. We drove to Milwaukee to stay with her partner, Amul, who is doing his residency there. Our visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum designed by Santiago Calatrava was transcending. It is perhaps one of the most beautiful architectural designs I have ever experienced. The "wings" of the building open and close at designated times and when the wind exceeds 25 mph. It sits on Lake Michigan and is truly a magnificent work of art looking like a powerful bird ready to take flight.

We also visited the new wing of the Chicago Art Institute, which is also beautiful and filled with the contemporary art of many well-known artists...including Brancusi, whose work greatly moved me.

The rest of my visit was filled with yummy food (we had one meal at the restaurant voted the most romantic in Chicago, Geja's, fondue), fun decorating Breanne's charming and cozy vintage apartment in Lincoln Park, playing with Humphrey, her Yorkie, making cookies and fudge and great meals, watching movies and chatting. I had a perfect holiday.

**********

General Profile

As a woman with a deep love (alas, obsession!) for books and words, I spend hours each day in the peace and contentment of my first passion...reading. I am surrounded by thousands of books that I have collected over the years: NW literature, specific authors that I love, mysteries, books about books, reading and literary criticism, lots of poetry, fiction, memoirs, and romantic suspense, just to name a few. Children's books, with wonderful stories and illustrations, also represent a significant part of my collection. I use the library extensively, often to try books out before I indulge. Haunting the many used and new bookstores in my area is a frequent indulgence, yielding current publications and outstanding missed books for a fraction of their initial cost. Hence, my library grows steadily.

I connect frequently with many beloved friends who may or may not share my reading/book passion. While I spend significant time with others, enjoying good food, art, stimulating conversation, playing competitive Scrabble, and games in general, I crave solitude. I'm addicted to gardening, and prefer the Oregon beach for a vacation (where I can read and search for agates). I love to cook, especially ethnic food. I love putting fine jigsaw puzzles together. I love music, particularly classical (Mozart's Requiem and Bruch's Violin Concerto feed my soul.), Leonard Cohen, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Michael Buble', Tony Bennett and k. d. lang, with Les Miserables my favorite musical, to name just a few. I enjoy watching British mysteries; my favorites, Midsomer Murders (to remind me of the three marvelous years I lived on the edge of the Cotswolds, near Oxford), P.D. James' Adam Dalgliesh series and Rosemary and Thyme. Throughout the day I am entertained by the birds that visit and squabble over more than fifteen feeders I keep full. The squirrels and other wildlife also raid the seed and the plentiful water containers.

My exceptional daughter, Breanne, graduated from Northwestern Medical School in Chicago, May 16, 2008, and got her Masters in Public Health, as well. Twelve of us, who travelled to the windy city, watched emotionally, as she was hooded and got her diploma, then we spent days celebrating. She will be staying there for her first three years of residency, moving from Northwestern to the University of Chicago's Comer Children's Hospital. She plans on a specialty in pediatrics, doing her three-year fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine, probably in Milwaukee. I miss her dreadfully, wish she were closer to home, and will have to visit Chicago more often. She continues to teach me and fill my life with abundance and joy.

A new kitty joined my life in March, '09. Her name is Chloe and she is an ocicat. She is a joy and a terror. This breed is a mix of Abyssinian, Siamese and American Short Hair, covered in spots and stripes. She is fawn colored and looks most like an Aby, truly beautiful. Like an Aby she climbs everything and plays hard. She is very small for her breed, doesn't have the explosion of spots as most do, and is her own unique perfection. I have so missed having a feline companion, and her personality fits mine so well; a strong will, outrageous energy and the need to cuddle often. The reading chair is back to normal.

Some personality descriptions of me enthusiastically contributed by friends and family: eccentric, passionate, weird (my daughter's favorite), flamboyant, curious, outrageous, intense, emotional (translate moody), fun, quiet (paradox), enthusiastic, and, best of all, I laugh loudly (Mom, they can hear you clear down the street.)

"My Shelf" contains both books I own and those I have read from the library, friends, or have traded. "My Reading List" contains those books that I am reading or will be soon. If I have rated a book 5*, it is without regard to genre, and is one which I have, or will, read again.

**********

This is the poem that speaks to that place in me that needs poetry to survive:

Question

Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen

Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt

Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead

How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
and wind for an eye

With cloud for shift
how will I hide?

May Swenson

**********

I will not respond to any "Community Query" on whether or not you should read a book. I have no idea what you like to read, and there are plenty of places for one to go to see my review and those of others. You get to do the work, not me. Why one would rely on a yes/no answer to this kind of question is ludicrous to me. « less