BOOKS...no commercials

I spent a few hours of fun this week reading titles of 1000 best and/or famous books bringing back good memories trying to recall where I was when I read them...some of them I read as a young kid when we didn't have TV growing up in Montreal; some in college, but most at home as a dad while the kids were crying their heads off...reading is a wonderful distraction from real life especially when your spouse takes care of them. Why did I do this exercise? Because for the past six months I’ve been on a reading kick and been devouring novels and short stories like they’re going out of style. Being semi-retired has its benefits sometimes.

Some of my old favorites include Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), Alexander Dumas (The Count of Monte Christo), Herman Melville (Moby Dick), Agatha Christie (and Then There Were None), and Robert Lewis Stevenson (Treasure Island).
Lately I’ve found several on-line sites offering free or very inexpensive e-Books for my Kindle. Kindle-ing is a great way to go...while reviewing tons of books I saw many authors and books I’ve always wanted to read but have never gotten around to reading.

I've read about 95 of those thousand famous books. Years ago I began reading best sellers like James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, Stephen King and about a dozen others who’s latest books I have a hard time staying away from…I don’t hardly have yard work to do anymore, the house needs a bit of painting here and there and I hope to one day paint something...I don’t think anyone can read 8 hours a day but reading is a nice way to spend a few hours (a few time a day) and I’m not going to stop reading these favorites. (A home office can be a real curse for readers)

But I’ve always had a desire to read some of the early 20th and late 19th century authors...when I watch an old movie from a book by one of these authors or if I don’t have a good answer to (A question really) to Jeopardy 20th century authors’ category it makes me want to read these people.
As I was reading the list of 1000 I jotted down authors' names and book titles that wrung a bell for me...just about everybody’s heard of these authors or books:
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller (I did see the movie and liked it),
Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut,
The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms by Hemingway,
On the Road by Kerouac,
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger,
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis,
War and Peace by Tolstoy (On second thought it may be a bit too long to keep my attention…I might order the movie from Netflix instead)
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Smith
Herzog by Saul Bellows
Don Quixote by Cervantes

From now on I'll be reading a Hemingway then Patterson...F. Scott Fitzgerald/John Grisham...Jane Austen/Dean Koontz...yup, that’s it……

and so it begins...

Today is the Autumnal Equinox meaning the day and night will be approximately the same, 12 hours...the sun rose at 6:40 and will set at 6:45...
to put it in more common terms the 'days' are getting shorter...
Get your compass out of your hiking back pack and check its accuracy by watching the sun set due West on the first day of fall in North America...

“You know if you’re from America ...

Facebook has a new feature that connects people who grew up in the same home town…I haven’t tried it yet because it probably works only for people in the United States…and I only know a few Facebookers from Canada and they’re all way younger than me…

This is how it goes:
You know, if you’re from Terre Haute you…” is the setup and Facebook members take turns reminiscing about things only natives of Terre Haute would know like good pizza joints, schools and teachers they hated or liked, etc.

The truth is I was looking for a blog topic and I liked this one…I’ll call it:

“You know if you’re from America
...you always want fries with that,
...you’ve taken a road trip that lasted at least three days
...you still like Peter Frampton
...you know who Matt Kemp is
...you remember paying $1.00 a gallon for gas
...you remember Little House on the Prairie
...you know all the words to the Brady Bunch theme song
...you know who Bobby Thompson is
...you know the last year the Dodgers won the World Series
...the Cosby Show was one of your old time favorites
...you love apple pie and Chevys
...you love iPods, i-Pads and everything Apple
...you love bar-b-queing in the back yard
...you appreciate the Kindle, savior of trees and book publishing (OK, not all of you)
...you love duct tape and WD-40 to tie things up or loosen them
...you never get tired of the Geico gecko
...you don’t like Le Bron James anymore
...you love your GPS
...you love James Taylor
...you’ve read To Kill a Mockingbird
...you learned yadda, yadda, yadda on Seinfeld
...you’re a blogger...we’re all writers now, uh-oh!
...you’re one of 44% of people who believe in legalizing marijuana
...you feel patriotic eating a hot dog, especially a Dodger Dog
...you’re one who believes in the pursuit of a really great picnic but seldom have one

Ah, the Joys of getting older...WHAT???

Years and years ago I remember my father saying to me, "Do you know what the advantages are to getting older?" Expecting pearls of wisdom from the lips of the man who had taught me a few things…
I waited for the answer: "Nothing. There is no advantage to getting older at all”.
End of lesson, grasshopper

And all I’d been doing was waiting to get older.

But I found that they were pearls of wisdom after all.

I blog, therefore I am...

There have been some pretty amazing things going on in my life lately and I can make my blog either accurate or interesting, but I can't make it both.

Have you noticed?

The other night Posh and I were having a nice meal in a restaurant dining room that was right next to the bar...a few feet away I could see and hear four young men talking about what they had recently bought at department stores and, oh yeah, all four were drinking lite beers...

At a table a bit farther away I could see four young women shooting tequilas and, oh yeah, three of them had tattoos...

It's different out there now...A lot of things have changed and I hadn't really noticed...

THINGS I’LL NEVER DO OR NEVER DO AGAIN

• Eat 5 banana splits at one setting…did it in high school to win a $5 bet…
• Outrun my grandkids…no sense in even trying
• Do a cartwheel…never could and never will
• Drink gin…it tastes like juniper berries, which is what it is…crappy…
• Go on a roller coaster…not necessarily afraid of heights but afraid of falling and hitting the ground…
• Try to pogo…tried it once when I was a little kid and thought it was stupid and still do…
• Drive cross country…did it a few times…once when family moved to Calif from Canada and again with my immediate family in a motor home…the second time was great…again is not in the cards,
• Think I don’t need sunblock…a sign of old age
• Drink alcohol with any kind of worm in it…yeah, sure!
• Use mascara to hide the gray in my mustache…everyone knew.
• Wear a leisure suite with flared lapels…I looked cool…everyone was doing it…
• Buy a dictionary or thesaurus…who needs these anymore with computers.
• Buy another set of golf clubs…I’ve purchased 5 sets in my life, all were the latest equipment guaranteed to shave 5 strokes off my game…by now I should be shooting in the 70’s…but I ain’t.
• Play video games…never again…never liked them and my 4 year old grandson beats me all the time; I quit.
• Get a tattoo…yeah, right
• Buy a book…if it ain’t a Kindle I ain’t buying it.
• Play solitaire on the computer…I play Spider Solitaire.
• Buy a time share…you can get one for almost free now.
• Buy new hand tools like hammers, saws…I stopped building stuff…I read.
• Load up my BlackBerry with ring tones, wallpaper, games and stuff…when I go out these days I leave it at home…it feels so good.
• Send a message in a bottle…I live too far from the beach
• Hug a tree…I love them but don’t need to hug ‘em.
• Take a cold shower…never had to and never will.
• Go without food for 5 days…why?
• Go to Thailand…ditto
• Scuba dive…it’s why I play golf where nothing’s gonna bite me.
• Walk the Golden Gate Bridge…too high, too long and too windy.
• Have a body part pierced…would be hard deciding which part.
• Hike the Grand Canyon…dumbest thing I ever heard.
• Para sail…another dumb thing…if God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings.